Ruthi Brandt

What's up, Wembley?

🏳️‍⚧️

How it started ... How it's going

Our Community Hub is here for you. Over the last 10 months we've responded to 600 requests for cost-of-living support in the Vale. Our new budget allocates funding for this important service. Call us on 01235 422600 or go to https://orlo.uk/O7GuP #ManagingMoney #YourMoneyYourServices

Very cool! 🪶

Another feel-good AI story... 🙄😒

If AI bots looked like this we might actually like them. Photo by Emilipothèse at Unsplash.

AI bots are taking Oxford University websites offline by attempting to scrape scholarly databases. Bodley's Librarian, Richard Ovenden, said: “It's the result of massive bot activity, downloading data at a scale which our infrastructure has found challenging.” status.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/detailed/

The Green Party's Mothin Ali on the importance of community spaces and how the Green Party has a plan to invest £5 billion to revive them #C4News

"People are angry, our country is divided. And I get it"

"One of the main reasons is the loss of our country's social infrastructure"

This is spreading all over Bluesky today and is wildly misleading--it is from eight months ago and it is in reference to working with NATO allies and arming Ukraine.

Unsplash.com, Steve Houghton Burnett. Bench with 'polling station' sign on it

District elections will be held across Oxfordshire on 7 May.
Are you ready to vote? 🧵
1. Find out if you are registered to vote : www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter...
2. If you are not, register by 20 April at: www.gov.uk/register-to-....

1/3

So many buses (Image by Roger Close)

More people are taking the bus since Oxford's temporary congestion charge was introduced say Oxfordshire County Council. Data from six local bus companies including Oxford Bus Company shows an 8% increase vs prior year since the introduction of the charge.

news.oxfordshire.gov.uk/more-people-...

Truly, the hallmark of a healthy democracy...

U.S. at Fault in Strike on School in Iran, Preliminary Inquiry Says

NYT is opening its website with this

U.S. at Fault in Strike on School in Iran, Preliminary Inquiry Says www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/u...

When I said 'Kemi Badenoch is so partisan, under her the Tories would oppose puppies and kittens if Labour said something nice about them', I didn't mean it literally.

A vase, bulbous at the top, with turquoise, black and white decorations all over it.

This striking green glazed jar with bold decadent floral and vertical line designs is a beautiful example of fritware.

Fritware is a type of ceramic dating back to around the late 10th – early 11th century. Finely ground quartz is mixed with small amounts of liquefied glass (frit) and refined clay.

This is very important and a major pet peeve of mine. If you don’t know what you’re doing- and if you learned on the internet, then sorry, you don’t know what you’re doing- please leave old gravestones well enough alone.

Rethinking British Democracy - The Globalist Britain's voting system encourages the belief that complex social conflicts can be settled not by compromise, but by conquest.

"Britain’s voting system encourages the belief that complex social conflicts can be settled not by compromise, but by conquest."

Completely right. It's never been more clear that no one party can speak for the whole country.

That's why we need PR 👇

Visa brake imposed on 4 countries after widespread visa abuse Government to end study visas from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan, and work visas for Afghans.

Researchers and students from Sudan will no longer be coming to Oxford University, following the Home Secretary's 'emergency brake' on sponsored study visas from four countries. Professor Trish Greenhalgh called the ban 'a sad day for the University of Oxford'.

www.gov.uk/government/n...

Image is a screenshot of a reasoned amendment to the Courts and Tribunals Bill. It is signed by Siân Berry, Hannah Spencer, Carla Denyer, Dr Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay. It reads: That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Courts and Tribunals Bill because it is an inadequate and dangerous response to the challenges faced by the courts; it does not provide the correct solutions to the chronic backlog of cases in the Crown Court; it would not address the long-term underfunding that has led to the degradation of court systems, infrastructure and buildings; it would limit the crucial civil liberty and constitutional protection of trial by a jury of one’s own peers by removing defendants’ right to elect the Crown Court for all triable either-way offences; this change would cover a range of protest-related offences, and because protest rights and free speech, which act as safeguards against authoritarianism, have already been eroded by this Government and should not be limited further; jury trials build public trust and confidence in the courts and act as a space of shared civic responsibility that builds social cohesion; more effective interventions could be implemented that do not roll back fundamental rights, including expanding the use of ‘blitz courts’, increasing the number of sitting days, removing from the system cases that are no longer in the public interest to prosecute, increasing investment in legal aid, improving court case management technology, and bringing in more efficient processes to ensure defendants are brought to court and to the dock on time; and removing rights to judgment by one’s own peers may have the unintended consequence of increasing court backlogs through a rise in appeals.

🚨We have tabled an amendment to reject the Government’s sinister attempt to remove jury trials including for many protest related offences.

Our civil liberties have already been eroded by this Govt and should not be limited any further.

Greens are standing up against Labour's toolkit for tyrants.

Fascism is, ultimately, an ideology of domination. You can't believe that might = right if you don't believe violence = good. When all the window dressing nonsense about "culture" is stripped away, humans instinctively find this ethos to be weird and gross.

Cleaning monuments in churchyards generally requires formal permission and consultation with the family or heirs. Lichens found on memorial stones can also be rare or protected species. www.oxford.anglican.org/news/diy-gra...

Interesting to think that Donald Trump may have, completely inadvertently and at a horrific cost, finally woken up the world to how urgent it is we get off our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels.

Oil Prices Tumble After Trump Says Iran War ‘Very Complete’ Oil futures, which surged as much as 31% Sunday night to more than $100 a barrel, have tumbled back down, a stunning reversal that gained momentum after President Trump told CBS that the war he launch...

If true that Trump is signalling an end in sight, then what we’ve learned from this fiasco is that the Iranian regime does not collapse even under intense pressure & the rest of the world can’t endure closure of the straits of Hormuz for very long at all www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

If you're in Oxfordshire...
#LocalElections2026

Grok wrongly claims footage of Glasgow fire shows blaze in Tel Aviv – Full Fact X’s AI chatbot also said a real photo of the fire was fake and made with AI.

After a major fire broke out in Glasgow yesterday, X users asked its AI chatbot Grok to verify imagery from the scene.

But it misidentified genuine footage as firefighters tackling a blaze in Tel Aviv - and even claimed a real photo of the fire had been made with AI.

From capybaramaxxing to pangolins: A talk is being held this evening by the Oxfordshire Mammal Group on the world of pangolins, instantly recognizable by their armour of overlapping keratin scales. The talk will cover their evolution, cultural significance & conservation efforts to protect them.

Text: If Europe stays on its current trajectory climate damages will drive debt-to-gdp ratios over 100% high than official projections in the worst hit eu countries. With a heat map showing the increase in debt-to-gdp ratios in different EU countries.

🚨NEW: The impact of climate change on our economic stability is being hugely underestimated.

Our latest analysis shows climate damage could drive the EU’s debt-to-GDP ratio 58 percentage points higher than official projections by 2050.

Quiz question for today:

Compare the two images below and decide which one is best described by the word 'sectarianism'

BREAKING: Greens will return to State Government in Baden-Württemberg for fourth executive term.

Cem Özdemir will be the next Minister-President.

#ltwbw

Great Britain has only two days of gas stored, while Iran war threatens to disrupt supplies National Gas insists storage broadly in line with levels for time of year despite disruption for tankers carrying LNG

This is what I could not get the Conservatives and Reform types at County Council to understand. Anyone who thinks home grown renewable energy is a waste of money and effort is ignoring the elephant in the room.
Not just climate change.

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Sorry, I don't know that. I asked the council folk there about the source material, but not about certification. You can try to ask the council? They're on here