Leanne Hitchmough
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leannehitchmough.bsky.social
Leanne Hitchmough
@leannehitchmough.bsky.social
310 followers 170 following 280 posts
Belfast migrant in Somerset. Tá cúpla focal Gaeilge agam ❤️☘️ Economics is my bag
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leannehitchmough.bsky.social
Constance Markiewicz - when Ireland needed her best to put their lives on the line, Constance didn't hesitate. A remarkable woman. The hero that Ireland needed.
Constance Markiewicz standing in front of a fireplace, resplendent in strength and beauty, in a stunning full length gown and flowers or a tiara on her head. Circa 1990. Constance in her Irish Citizen Army uniform (NOT the IRA), standing ready for action with her right leg forward and holding a pistol in her right hand. She is also wearing a hat with what I believe to be are feathers on top. She is magnificent. Photo must have been taken around 1916.
October 24, 2025 at 10:35 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
Too greedy. And well protected. And too stupid.
A toxic combination for the present and the future of our country.
October 14, 2025 at 10:05 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
This…has made my day

There’s always next year, Trump. Perhaps 😐

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...
October 10, 2025 at 10:32 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
I was *very briefly* confused as to why this sunglasses-wearing, moustachioed fella had such a long neck. Thought it was just another ‘AI gone wrong’ deal.
Then I just zoomed in and was disappointed by the normality of both of the Trump cheerleaders/ navy guys 😐
October 5, 2025 at 9:27 PM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
Weird late 90s memory unlocked this morning watching Frasier - the red sign says “Please no smoking in the waiting room”. The waiting room is in a maternity ward 😱Halcyon days 😐
Then…I saw the sign in black behind them -“If you need assistance in paying for your hospital stay…” Shivers.
#NHS 🙏
Frasier episode from 1998. Frasier, Niles and Martin Crane are in the maternity ward waiting room - waiting for Roz to give birth. The red sign asks people not to smoke. Asks them politely. This is the world we once all lived in, surrounded by toxic cigarette smoke. Now we just breathe in toxic car exhaust fumes 😐 The three fellas again - all smiling because Roz was just wheeled past them, ready to give birth. The sign behind them asks people to contact customer services if they need assistance in paying for their hospital stay. This still shocks me to the core as a UK citizen. The NHS has its troubles, yes, but at least we don’t have to worry about the bill for our cancer treatment, etc.
October 2, 2025 at 9:52 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
For those in the UK, with access to BBC Sounds, this is such an
interesting insight into Coleridge-Taylor’s wildly popular The Song of Hiawatha.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
The Hiawatha Phenomenon Sunday Feature BBC Radio Three Uchenna Ngwe charts the changing fortunes of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s choral hit, The Song of Hiawatha, and how its Native American themes connect with past and present audiences.
August 15, 2025 at 2:01 PM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
As per Mr Bates:
“But it was almost like a vigilante-style, people following us down the beach. They hadn’t twigged that we were parallel to the shore for hours and not trying to land.”
August 8, 2025 at 2:30 PM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
I had to rewind BBC2 news headlines (11.30am) today as I couldn’t believe my eyes with theseTrump Putin photos.

Putin looks like a corpse, made to look like a living human by an undertaker’s cosmetic artist.

Trump looks like…I…I…just don’t know…definitely Gene Wilder era Oompa Loompa adjacent.
August 8, 2025 at 10:57 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
The most egregious part of the story is this:
“Mr Bates said it was "almost vigilante-style" how people followed them down the beach”

Mr Lowe effectively wound some people up so much that they formed a posse, waiting on the beach. Disgusting.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
August 8, 2025 at 9:16 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
The next story on Mail online is also revealing.

Note the use of inverted commas, only around the words ‘anti-racism’ in the article. The motivation of this group of demonstrators is called into question (subtlety).

The other group’s motivation (anti-immigration campaigners) - no questions at all.
July 15, 2025 at 12:00 PM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
The Daily Mail absolutely disgusts me.

Their framing of an important story as ‘migrants secretly smuggled into the UK by the UK government’ hides an absolutely heartbreaking truth:
It was a secret operation because they aided UK troops and a data leak put their lives at risk.
July 15, 2025 at 11:48 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
This was an act of terrorism, right? Right?

This whole story felt very ‘downplayed’ on the news yesterday.

Violence against women is downplayed far too frequently. It is a national emergency.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Screenshot of The Guardian text (last paragraph highlighted): “This man was the key suspect and we can name him as Owen Lawrence from Headingley, Leeds. We believe he was acting on his own and are not currently seeking anyone else in connection with this matter. “Counter-terrorism policing north east will continue to conduct a thorough and extensive investigation to establish the facts and circumstances around the incident. A file will be compiled and passed to the coroner.” Counter-terrorism police were called after Facebook posts emerged that appeared to have been made by Lawrence in the lead-up to the attack, which indicated that he had hoped to carry out a “misogynistic” killing spree. Screenshot of Crown Prosecution Service definition of terrorism (from The Terrorism Act 2000): The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism, both in and outside of the UK, as the use or threat of one or more of the actions listed below, and where they are designed to influence the government, or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public. The use or threat must also be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause. The specific actions included are: serious violence against a person; serious damage to property; endangering a person's life (other than that of the person committing the action); creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public; and action designed to seriously interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
April 29, 2025 at 1:51 PM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
Yes, but…were any of these Inuit women sponsored by an Isle of Skye whiskey company? No? Then their trek across their own lands is null and void. Finders keepers, eh?

“privilege and ignorance” is correct.

Feels like a new era for privilege and ignorance.
Headline and lede reads: UK adventurer apologises for record trek claim after Inuit backlash Camilla Hempleman-Adams, who says she is first woman to traverse Canada’s Baffin Island solo, accused of ‘privilege and ignorance’ Woman is wearing a black arctic wear coat with a label “Isle of Skye Torabhaig Single Malt Scotch Whiskey” (assuming this is the sponsor for her ‘trek’) She is hugging her father - another British ‘explorer’ Screenshot from TheGuardian article reads: “This woman is coming here from such a place of privilege and ignorance that it seems dangerous. It was almost like she was bringing back news of a new continent to Europe and saying: ‘There’s nobody here!’ We were and still are.” She added: “It’s such a clear example of how colonialism benefits from dispossessing Indigenous people of their land and writing us out of history.” Hempleman-Adams wrote on her expedition website before departure: “Parks Canada has confirmed there are no historical records of a female solo attempt from Qikiqtarjuaq to Pangnirtung.” Kabloona said this was because crossing the terrain was considered “a normal way of life for them”.
April 10, 2025 at 11:06 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
The picture editor, just boosting my nightmare fuel here…
Getty images photo of a large brown black rat, staring directly at the camera, with its front rat paws and ‘fingers’, stretched out forward, ready to leap at your face. Quote included reads: ‘You see them just sat there, looking at you”
April 6, 2025 at 9:13 PM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
This guy’s soul had to leave his body as soon as Vance started talking about Normandy - as a coping mechanism to deal with Vance’s toxicity, I presume.

What an angry little moon face man Vance is. Angry, graceless and without decency. Is this how you need to behave to flourish in America now?
March 29, 2025 at 4:48 PM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
…as has Katie Hopkins, which tells you everything.
Screenshot of a news article (extra.ie): Katie Hopkins weighs in as calls grow for Garron Noone to return to social media Story by Clare McGoldrick • 1d As calls intensify for Garron Noone to return to social media, controversial TV personality Katie Hopkins has weighed in, offering her support to the Mayo comedian
March 25, 2025 at 2:56 PM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
Jen Psaki is all of us
Screenshot from the video that shows Jen Psaki with an incredulous look on her face: eyebrow raised, eyes wide, furrowed brow, tightly closed lips - as if indicating “what on earth…?” (She’s wearing a gorgeous purple top that really works well with her red hair, but that’s entirely beside the point)
March 25, 2025 at 12:31 PM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
I couldn’t believe what she was “offering” to cut from the education budget (like a sacrifice).
Then I found this from 2018…
The hypocrisy is outstanding and her arguments FOR the cuts she now proposes are astonishing.
Morally bankrupt. Our new Labour govt.

www.bridgetphillipson.com/news/2018/09...
Screenshot of Phillipson’s 2018 musings: “Of course what came next was not reform but savagery. The scale and ferocity of the attack on the welfare state since 2010 by the Conservatives and their Liberal Democrat allies has been extraordinary. The utter cynicism of seeking to secure electoral success by setting people against one another; of separating so-called ‘strivers’ from ‘shirkers’, of taking money away from people who need it most and are least able to stand up for themselves, of whipping up distrust of a social security budget much of which goes to old aged pensioners: all of this has been sickening to observe. We are back to the historic misery of a system where conditionality is used not to prevent abuse, but to punish and humiliate, and where sanctioning is used to enforce fear; where there isn’t anything like enough meaningful support to help people back into work. This is the daily reality for far too many of the people I meet each week.” Another screenshot from 2018 article she wrote for her own MP website: “As well as foodbanks, there have been many campaigns to draw attention to how poverty impacts people and their families, in ways luckier citizens might not have noticed. Various colleagues have led immensely well-intentioned and often successful campaigns to draw attention to the cost of feeding children in the school holidays, when free school meals aren’t there to eke out the budget. They have highlighted the cost of sanitary products for women, especially students. But ‘holiday hunger’ and ‘period poverty’ campaigns, rather like the earlier notion of fuel poverty, leave me a little uneasy. Poverty is something that affects people, not specific goods.”
March 24, 2025 at 11:18 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
Sorry, forgot to say that you need to zoom in to read the bit at the bottom
March 20, 2025 at 11:46 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
H Anna. This print hangs in our hallway here in Somerset, UK. Every time I walk by, I look closely at a different section and remind myself that this is the true America - full of creative, courageous, determined people. This is the America I choose to believe in.
You are that America.
A map of the USA made up of the names of all the writers, where they lived/worked/wrote about. It’s a map of the true spirit of the American dream and its people.
March 14, 2025 at 9:52 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
If you liked that article you are going to adore this 🥰

www.theguardian.com/culture/2021...
Photo of the two main characters in ‘Detectorists’ bbc programme. Headline and lede in The Guardian article says: Detectorists: a sitcom about amateur archaeologists that's a bonafide heartwarming joy This article is more than 4 years old Each short episode of this charming series about a bumbling small-town metal-detecting club is a perfectly calibrated good mood
March 13, 2025 at 11:55 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
“We allowed them to rebuild after World War Two”
Bloody hell.

Ps This prat needs to read a book, any book, but pref one which outlines the details of The Marshall Plan and the Anglo-American Financial Agreement.

May help him understand Ukraine’s sacrifice too.
history.blog.gov.uk/2020/12/07/w...
Seventy five years ago, an agreement was signed in Washington for a US loan to the UK government of $3.75 billion repayable over 50 years.[1] The UK’s final payments on this, and a loan from Canada agreed in March 1946, would not be made until December 2006. Though the terms of the US loan were not ungenerous, the British government found them hard to swallow. Nevertheless, in December 1945 most people in the government thought the agreement an essential lifeline. Some ministers and officials opposed it, with its attached conditions requiring radical changes to UK commercial arrangements. Others favoured refusal, confident the US would improve its offer if the UK held out long enough. But for Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, who successfully urged the Cabinet to agree to the deal, the main arguments were geopolitical as much as financial. In his view, the agreement was essential to emphasise Britain’s key position as a bridge between East and West, to revive trade with Europe, and above all to keep on close terms with the US. The Anglo-American Financial Agreement must be seen in that wider context. The American Congress and the American people have never accepted any literal principle of equal sacrifice, financial or otherwise, between all the allied participants. Indeed, have we ourselves? Lord Keynes, defending the Agreement in the House of Lords, 18 December 1945. Black and white photo: Signing the Anglo-American Financial Agreement. Front row from the left: John Maynard Keynes, Lord Halifax, James Byrnes, Fred Vinson. Back row: RH Brand, Sir Henry Self, Sir Edward Bridges, Professor Robbins, Sir Percivale Liesching, Dean Acheson, William L Clayton, Thomas B McCabe. Photo credit: Commons Wikimedia
March 13, 2025 at 10:53 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
“…channel Milei’s energy”
Yeah, that tracks.

The imbedded video in the link provides ‘crystal ball insight’ for the UK, if anyone in the UK govt chooses to turn off their arrogance for a moment and take note.

apnews.com/article/arge...
AP headline: Argentine retirees and soccer fans clash with police during protests against austerity measures
March 13, 2025 at 10:32 AM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
Thatcher 2.0 - a lesson from history

Also, erecting a statue many years later will never erase the pain suffered by ordinary people (most recent ‘vandalism’ of Thatcher’s statue was in 2024)

m.youtube.com/watch?v=lKGS...
Pensioner caught on CCTV vandalising statue of Maggie Thatcher Grantham is the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher, and in May 2022, officials unveiled a statue of the ‘Iron Lady’ here. It was then pelted with eggs just hours after being introduced to the public, leading to increased security measures being implemented. However, nothing was able to stop this OAP with a grudge. In bright-red paint, the word ‘b*****d’ was sprayed onto the monument. It was scrubbed off shortly after it was first reported, but pictures have surfaced of the graffiti online.
March 12, 2025 at 5:17 PM
leannehitchmough.bsky.social
Never give up on the power of hope and for that hope to result in positive change. Today, tomorrow and the days to follow…

Seamus Heaney:
“History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.”
From The Cure at Troy Human beings suffer, They torture one another, They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured … History says, don’t hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme. So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracle And cures and healing wells. Call miracle self-healing: The utter, self-revealing Double-take of feeling. If there’s fire on the mountain Or lightning and storm And a god speaks from the sky That means someone is hearing The outcry and the birth-cry of new life at its term.
March 11, 2025 at 10:32 PM