An update on my Green Homes Grant odyssey...

**WARNING** contains many hoops...

1/16

Knowing the scheme was coming I used the government website links and started my research in September.

I reckoned solar hot water was the best next step to reduce my carbon footprint.

2/16

I have basic double-glazing that needs upgrading before a new heating system but double glazing was out of scope unless you have single glazing.

I'm adding even more insulation to my loft at my own cost.

3/16

So, anyway, researching 'local' providers for solar water heating installation that are on the website list as allowed to do it under GHG: Three potentials.

First didn't respond and suspect was the wrong contact information was on the website.

4/16

Second couldn't do a quote without a visit and the next time they could would be weeks and weeks after the scheme was meant to open for applications.

5/16

The 101 most un-popular news stories.
Dating from 2021-01-18 11:00:34 until 2021-01-18 17:02:34 (GMT).

The Pennsylvania State Senate begins its new legislative session of the people's business with.....

An argument about masks and whether or not Senators on the floor should be required to wear them.

#WTAE

They're taking a vote now to require senators on the floor to wear masks for today's session.

They DID NOT call on Jim Brewster for this roll call.

Some

OK.

Democratic Senator Steve Santarsiero from Bucks County has requested a delay in swearing in Senators pending resolution of the judicial challenge to Brewster's win.

Critical of Ziccarelli's "specious" actions, and says she didn't go through proper procedure in courts.

"This happens not in a vacuum, it happens in the context of some very serious threats to our democracy today," Santarsiero said.

Brings up tomorrow's certification challenges expected in DC despite Joe Biden being elected and certified as the winner of Presidential election.

"They are not intending to seat Senator Brewster despite the fact that the people of the 45th district have spoken."

"This is the most serious issue that has come before us" in his time in the senate, Santarsiero said.

"All because one candidate is displeased with having lost."

The reality of demagoguery is you cannot control the hate & division you unleash.

You seeing America? Pls notice the distinct absence of the National Guard though the president set the agenda for this rally.

This is his legacy. This is #MAGA. This is America

There AREN'T "good people on both sides", Trump.

He told them to stand back & stand by. Here they are.

Guilliani said at today's rally "trial by combat"

The ugly truth is they've weaponised fear & hate BUT they didn't create it. They weaponised what was already there.

A collosal failure of so many institutions. His entire presidency was leading to this moment and law enforcement weren't ready?

That's the reality that a lot of people are unwilling to confront. It's not just Trump. He is a distilled manifestation of what has never been exorcised. All of it was just waiting there for decency to be replaced with blind ambition & greed.

The levers of white supremacy & racism are as present as they ever were. All it took was for someone to say fuck being decent, tap into the primal. It happened in the UK first and then, having resorted to the same playbook, lightning struck again Nov. 16

THREAD: The insurrection we saw in #WashingtonDC yesterday was an example of how political violence isn’t limited to the fringes of the far-right: it permeates even mainstream spaces.

Insurrectionist and right-wing accelerationist dogma that insists on the utility of political violence and terrorism that has flourished within the far-right for decades emerged in our nation’s capital

For almost 2 years, while mostly ignoring the Proud Boys, federal authorities and law enforcement have focused on white power accelerationists as the predominant terror threat on the right, where insurrectionist dogma has played a

This includes Atomwaffen and The Base, two violent hate groups. More about The Base #SoundsLikeHatePod

These apocalyptic visions of war and revolution permeate all corners of the hard right, and the violence implicit in those visions can become very real — as we saw yesterday.

Let's discuss the environmental cost of the US dollar. Because despite all the push for sustainable and green investment in the government, there's a giant smoldering Chernobyl sitting at the heart of Washington which a lot of investors would prefer you remain quiet about. 🧵 (1/

TLDR on the US dollar and government spending: It's a pyramid-shaped investment scheme backed by the collective delusion that value can created out of nothing by convincing greater fools to borrow more money after you do. (2/)

That alone is sufficiently awful on its own merits, but on top of this the environmental damages of the US dollar and associated military industrial complex are enough to make even Greta Thunberg weep at the pointless waste of it all. (3/)

The underlying technology of US dollar is based on the notion of "printing", a technical term for a process that keeps the government running and processing transactions. (4/)

I won't cover the details of the algorithm, suffice it to say the premise of US dollar printing is to prove how much economic productivity you can waste, and the more productivity you can waste, the more votes you can probabilistically secure in exchange for your waste. (5/)

If you’re frustrated by this lockdown it is worth remembering that there is an alternative. Our country has had a year to build an effective system for testing to identify cases & isolate them & those they have exposed. We are all paying the price for the failure to do this.

The deaths that are occurring now were largely preventable. The people dying didn’t simply want a big family bash over the holidays nor have they all been breaking the rules. They are not all old or medically vulnerable.

They are key workers and people’s whose jobs and lives expose them to crowds. The situation is so desperately tragic it’s much easier to blame them. But really important not to blame them. None of us can reduce our risk to zero and all of us rely on people taking risks.

The deaths, suffering & long term problems caused by the repeated lockdowns are an equal tragedy. It is appallingly difficult for many people right now.

It is not beyond a wealthy state like ours to control the spread of the virus without simply shutting everyone at home but at the moment this is the only alternative we have.

If Republican leaders are actually interested in "unity" rather than using its rhetoric to avoid accountability, here's something they could do. It doesn't involve much in the way of consequences, but it does feature truth-telling, apologies and requests for reconciliation.

To be clear, I don't think any of this would actually happen, but it would be nice (if insufficient) if it did.

Ronna McDaniel, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley could issue a joint statement and do a press conference in which they acknowledged that Joe Biden is president-elect and that he won a free and fair election by a sizable margin.

They could say that there is no evidence of meaningful election fraud and that judges, including ones appointed by Trump, have rejected much of what the president and his allies have been complaining about.

They could apologize for misleading their supporters over the past months and say that they understand why Democrats may think their claims fueled last week's violence and are horrified if that is the case.

Since @erinotoole has invited Liberals to show Conservatives’ connections to the US far right, here are 25 tweets doing so. #mbpoli #cdnpoli (1/25).

There are only a couple of degrees of separation between some Conservative politicians in Canada and the extreme right, because of The Rebel & Hamish Marshall who worked for Stephen Harper, Andrew Scheer, and the Manitoba PCs. #mbpoli #cdnpoli (2/25)

Canadian conservatives have been taking policy and tactics from U.S. republicans for many years. After the success of Fox News in the US, Conservatives tried to create “Sun TV,” then modelled “Rebel Media” on Breitbart. #mbpoli #cdnpoli (3/25)

For years, The Rebel has been weaponizing & inciting hate for profit and political gain without care for the consequences. It is a global source of radical right-wing hate - its ties with conservative politicians across Canada are deep and long-standing. #mbpoli #cdnpoli (4/25)

From 2015 to 2017, Hamish Marshall was one of 3 board members for The Rebel, the far-right propaganda outlet helmed by Ezra Levant. Marshall was a consultant on the PCs 2016 election campaign, and his company, Torch, built the PCs current website. #mbpoli #cdnpoli (5/25)

A message to all US citizens from an experienced and Catholic Venezuelan. V3.

2/

3/

4/

5/

THREAD 1-13

1/ How have we come to this, teetering on the precipice of a political extinction event? The Electoral Certification challenge will certainly fail but immoral political theater is damning. And also a victory. For stupidity, naked greed, personal ambition, raw power.

2/ In which cynical propaganda has superseded campaigning and fund-raising as the most effective political tools. In which endless shit-trains of conspiratorial nonsense cannot be differentiated from policy, from McCain’s bus or RFK entreating crowds on a whistle-stop tour.

3/ Why do we assume we've evolved? The leaders of Babylon similarly ran their society, culture, empire, and the verdant Eden that surrounded them into the ground, sheerly out of greed and willful ignorance. It is now Iraq, a pit of sand and blood and unabated violence.

4/ Sedition. Traitor. Quisling. Apostate. Benedict Arnold. Aldritch Ames. Tokyo Rose. Ezra Pound. Judas Iscariot. Julian Assange. Ted Cruz. Josh Hawley. Tommy Tuberville. Kelly Loeffler. Ron Johnson. Steve Daines. Marsha Blackburn. Mike Braun. James Lankford. John N. Kennedy.

5/ These people, Orwell’s Pigs, flaunting incomprehension and intellectual sterility, are lead weights, the Unbearable Darkness Of Non-Being, want us to knuckle under in exasperation and despair, exhausted from fighting generations of exactly this brand of deceit and moral ruin.

1) Listening to the likes of Tucker Carlson, Lindsey Graham, Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz and many other traitors in our government warning us of the dangers of further division would be laughable...

2) if those comments, weren’t made in the wake of a failed coup that left 5 dead. A coup attempt where people brought guns, bombs and screamed hang Mike Pence.

3) They want to convince us that impeaching trump again would only serve to divide the country further, to enrage trump and his supporters, to create more chaos and invite more destruction…

4) And they don’t see or pretend not to see that this is the very reason consequences must be delt out. Trump can rant and rave out of the white house and preferably behind bars.

5) That people who created and participated in this failed coup attempt, think that they should not have to pay for their crimes because they think they did nothing wrong is the biggest danger facing the country now and in the future.

Good morning KC ☀️ RIGHT NOW we are having our monthly meeting with @QuintonLucasKC. Our goal for this meeting is to flex how much PEOPLE POWER we have built since March 💪 and talk about what co-governance can look like

Our leader Steven is recapping our amazing actions this year:
💥I-70 action calling for our governments to #CancelRent
💥 Marching in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter
💥 Following the leadership of our Black comrades to demand #DefundThePolice

💥 Chaining ourselves to the Jackson County Courthouse doors to end evictions and our virtual disruptions
* Judges pushed their hearings until NEXT YEAR because of our work *

is sharing that we have over 1,500 leaders in our base, and our weekly meetings get around 70 participants each Saturday. Our base has grown across the metro area, and we’re leaders in statewide coalitions across Missouri and Kansas 🌻

How is KC Tenants structured? Basically like this! Read on to learn more about our teams. Interested in joining any of these teams? DM us to plug in so we can build tenant power together 💛

News Safety Update 2#: Let's talk about Situational Awareness! SA is the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical elements of information about what is happening. More simply, it's knowing what is going on around you. @RTDNA @NPPA @rcfp @pressfreedom #tvnewsers

The concept of Situational Awareness isn’t something for spies or secret agents. Applying it to real world conditions is actually rather simple. Situational Awareness is keeping your head on a swivel, looking around to observe what’s going on, who’s there, what they are doing.

What is going on around you that might cause you trouble? If based on your observations and predictions, you feel unsafe, then Situational Awareness means you're able to make adjustments to what you are doing, like changing your body language, behavior or location, to be safe.

Cooper's Color Codes are a great way to remember levels of Situational Awareness. You want to be in condition Yellow when you're on location, in your vehicle, out in the field and even in the newsroom.

Condition White: Unaware and unprepared. If something dangerous occurs in this condition you will be caught off guard and not ready to rapidly react to escape harm.

THREAD: Today, I submitted a resolution to investigate and expel Rep. Maddock for violating his duty to support the MI and US Constitutions.

One week ago, thousands went to our Nation’s Capitol because of perpetual lies and distrust lobbed at our institutions. 1/

#mileg

These lies were spread by those elected to uphold our Constitution. This led to an unprecedented insurrection and acts of sedition. Our Temple of Democracy was desecrated in ways we could’ve never imagined.

These events were not random. 2/

#mileg

They were coordinated and fanned by months of lies by the President, Senators, members of Congress, and other elected officials. They amplified lies about the 2020 elections, which was the very way they were elected into office. 3/

#mileg

Among those who attended the events last week was Rep. Matt Maddock, who has spent months sowing lies and distrust, which culminated in the attack on our Republic. He must be held accountable.

His actions raises questions on whether or not he violated the Constitution. 4/
#mileg

I believe in unity. But we cannot cannot unite as a nation until we hold those who seek to divide us accountable.

The American Idea was attacked last week. If we allow insurrection against the US to happen with impunity and w/ no accountability, it can & will happen again. 5/

1. @GavinWilliamson @NickGibbUK @educationgovuk @Ofstednews @BorisJohnson @RishiSunak @DominicRaab @MattHancock @michaelgove #edutwitter #education #emergencycurriculum #MakeSchoolsSafe Dear UK, we in the government, the DfE & Ofsted apologise for our mistakes. We will attempt to

2. now learn from them. We failed to plan ahead for education, we failed to protect our citizens and we failed to implement safety measures in schools to mitigate the risks. We failed over & over again. We will now truly make education, health & wellbeing a national priority by

3. fully investing in safety measures for workplaces and schools. We know that no where is in fact 'COVID SECURE' but we will fund measures to ensure places have increased security and safety measures. Schools will have: smaller class sizes, rotas, blended learning, improved

4. ventilation systems (yes, COVID-19 is airborne), masks/PPE for all staff and masks for children aged 6+ & required 2 metre social distancing. They will have at least the same safety measures as required for all other indoor settings. We will listen to your concerns & include

5. education staff in one of the priority groups for vaccination. We will support and furlough parents (1 adult per household) to ensure you can support your children with their wellbeing and with learning. We understand this is a national emergency and we will support you.