Sion Tecwyn retweeted
Sophia Gardens in Cardiff in 1967, the season it opened after the county moved from Cardiff Arms Park
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
‘Threatening to arrest people for providing "logistical support" to peaceful demonstrators is the kind of threatening statement we are used to getting from the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship in Nicaragua. This is not what I expect from PM Andy Burnham’s Government’ says @BiancaJagger
👉🏿 I was born under a dictatorship and have spent a great deal of my adult life denouncing authoritarian regimes. I am deeply shocked to read the threatening statement issued by the Met Police UK. Threatening to arrest people for providing "logistical support" to peaceful demonstrators is the kind of threatening statement we are used to getting from the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship in Nicaragua. This is not what I expect from PM Andy Burnham’s Government. The UK is supposed to be a democracy, where freedom of speech is a pillar of society. Churchill’s words remind us that a true civilisation relies entirely on these liberties to maintain democratic accountability. Criminalising and proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is a shameful authoritarian overreach.
@metpoliceuk @TheBJHRF #FreedomOfSpeech #FreedomOfPress #HumanRights @DefendOurJuries #StopGenocideInGaza #DeproscribePalestineAction
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
If Courtney worked for a mainstream news organization she would be hailed as one of the most courageous journalists in the world.
She is, without them.
No western journalist is even attempting what she does daily.
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
The reporters - and cameras - should walk away. This is horrible behaviour towards people doing a serious job. It is bullying. It is disgusting.
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
BBC managers have endless meetings where they exchange fashionable banalities about the coverage. Editors could make a simple change.. let discussions/ interviews breathe. They could do this with fewer producers nervously filling slots fearful of ‘missing’ fleeting stories
at the end of the Today programme @debmattinson and @CamCavendish were asked for their opinions on the Budget. Neither had more than two minutes to eithrr answer Nick Ribinson's questions or to share their wisdom. Such a waste of the BBC's ability to get such seasoned thinkers together. Listeners were teased but not really fed. if public service broadcasting is to be an alternative to our soundbite culture rather than its echo it needs to have fewer but longer slots so ideas can both be propogated and probed. More of a heaothy meal and less of a quick sugar rush. More like Walden was. Not a speed-date. Like Today, Sunday with Kuennsbwrg also has too many guests. I'm not optinistic that today's BBC has the residual intellectual confidence to be less scattergun and thanks to podcasts there are now multiplying places that are filling the vacuum.
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
Journalist told “If you wait for the press release, you know the embargo. That’s what every other press outlet did.”
Erm, that’s not how journalism works!
Amazing: journalist does journalism to discover something, and because everyone is so used to people living by press release, they literally can't believe the journalist found it out on their own.
holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2026/…
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
In 63 hours hunters will be allowed to hunt Grizzly #Bears in Wyoming for the first time in 40 years. 22 bears will lose their life....so someone can have a rug. RT to show disapproval. #BanTrophyHunting
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
Amazing: journalist does journalism to discover something, and because everyone is so used to people living by press release, they literally can't believe the journalist found it out on their own.
holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2026/…
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
BBC news still telling us what the papers say is anochronistic and idiotic. You're the ones supposed to tell us the news, not give free publicity to some tax-dodging billionaire's warped perspective of it.
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
The compensation bill for the Post Office Scandal has now reached £1.7bn. Every UK taxpayer has paid £44.
Yet in 2014, the PO started mediation that could have settled claims at a fraction. They blew it. It was treated as a box-ticking exercise and a fishing expedition.
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
What a sad end…. So unfair
SHE DIED WAITING
Heather Earley, mother of three, has died waiting for her money. @PostOffice kept her waiting so long she ran out of time. Impressive logistics.
Lawyer @SimonMGoldberg (well worth to give him a follow) shared the sad news today.
Heather Earley was one of 555 postmasters who took the Post Office to the High Court and won, and she died before getting her redress, the money owed to put her life back together.
He points to a @BBCNews article from 2024 on victims who died before getting redress. Winning in court and never seeing the money is a rare talent.
Heather Earley was a mother of three who ran a local shop with a Post Office counter in Mossley, Newtownabbey, in Northern Ireland. In December 2013 the Horizon computer system said she was £10,000 short. A computer said so, and in the Post Office computers are never wrong..
She says one customer kept using a flaw in the system. Every time that customer withdrew £100, the system added £100 to the balance instead of taking it off. I wish my bank worked like that.
Heather Earley called the police, and the customer was prosecuted and convicted. That put the blame on the customer, and the Post Office still demanded the £10,000 from her, took money from her wages and refused to give it back even after the conviction. Crime solved, victim billed ...
She borrowed from family and maxed out three credit cards just to buy stock for the shop. She cashed in £50,000 of her pension to save the house and clear her debts. Her village lost its post office and its shop, a truly generous service to the community.
In 2019 the Post Office settled the group case for £57.75M. Around £46M went on legal and funding costs, which left roughly £20,000 for each of the 555 people. The judge, Mr Justice Peter Fraser, had said the Post Office at times acted as though it answered only to itself, and it seems to have taken that as a challenge.
Reports say at least 350 Horizon victims have died before their final payouts, so at this pace the scheme will finish the moment nobody is left to be paid.
Heather Earley wanted justice and enough money to rebuild what was left of her life. Simon Goldberg says the lawyers and other parties who held up and nickel and dimed her redress should feel nothing but shame, though shame does not appear to be billable. Stop fighting these people and pay them before it is too late.
Heather Earley never got her cheque.
RIP Heather
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
I find it amazing that a Labour Government
is content to watch from the sidelines as the
BBC destroys key elements of what should be
central to a functioning PSB.
Partly because of inadequate funding , which Lisa
Nandy fails to urgently address and partly through
flawed decisions
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
In 2010 the BBC Trust threatened to resign if Osborne ended funding for free over-75s licences. It worked - until new Trustees buckled 5 years later
Now the Board is stacked with patsies & seat-warmers, who put padding their CVs above licence fee payers’ interests
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
Amazing that the destruction of the BBC mirrors that of British state capacity. Savings are invariably done without a wider strategy, with ‘salami slicing’ destroying the very reason the thing exists at all.
Astonishingly poor leadership for decades.
A longer read on BBC cuts:
-BBC not halfway to £500m goal
-More radical savings required
-BBC Sounds under threat?
-Bosses mulled axing CBBC
-1,200 of 2k layoffs confirmed
-Industrial action threat lingers
-Concern at charter talks urgency
deadline.com/2026/10/inside-…
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
This is what the internet/social media has done, it’s given people a sense of entitlement. Quality journalism & content costs money to produce, and it’s being ripped off left, right and centre. Unless it’s sponsored, the funding needs to come from somewhere. Not everything’s free
When I launched The Phoenix, I knew there would be people who wouldn't see the value in paying for online content.
I get that. We've become so accustomed to getting everything for free that, for some, a website overrun with adverts will always be preferable to an ad-free site that costs a few quid a month.
That's absolutely fine.
What I perhaps underestimated was the anger that some people would feel simply because someone was offering them the choice of paying for their work.
Since launching on 20 July, I've added 140 stories to The Phoenix, totalling more than 200,000 words.
That includes in-depth interviews with people like Adi Viveash, Darren Huckerby and Leo Østigård, with at least one new 3,000-plus-word interview every week. There's also tactical analysis, opinion pieces, matchday coverage and plenty more.
Despite that, I've seen people describe charging £5 a month for this work as 'shameful', 'embarrassing' and 'a con'.
I've even been accused of contributing to the 'commercial exploitation of information'.
It's an odd thing. Nobody ever told me it was shameful to charge £16.99 for one of my books about Coventry City. Yet put that same level of research, writing and effort onto a website and suddenly asking people to pay for it becomes controversial.
Nobody has to subscribe. Nobody has to read it. And I'm absolutely fine with that.
But I don't think there's anything shameful about trying to make a living from producing original, independent journalism about a football club I've supported for more than 30 years.
Still, it's sometimes hard not to take the criticism personally.
Anyway, chin up and all that.
I'm interviewing a key member of our League One title-winning team tomorrow, and I can't wait.
You know where you'll be able to read that one...
#PUSB
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
Memo to the government: this is happening on your watch. There’s no clarity on funding the BBC from 2028, and it’s getting too late for radical change at that point.
A longer read on BBC cuts:
-BBC not halfway to £500m goal
-More radical savings required
-BBC Sounds under threat?
-Bosses mulled axing CBBC
-1,200 of 2k layoffs confirmed
-Industrial action threat lingers
-Concern at charter talks urgency
deadline.com/2026/10/inside-…
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
Since this morning, I’ve been unable to leave my home. All checkpoints in H2 and exits from Hebron are closed. Israeli forces have begun demolishing homes and shops near the site of the attack.
Residents are living in fear, cut off from basic necessities.
We urgently call on the UN, international governments, and humanitarian organizations to act now: protect civilians, demand an end to unlawful demolitions and collective restrictions, and ensure safe access to essential supplies and emergency services.
Hebron must not be forgotten. We need urgent action, not just statements of concern.
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
BBC news leading with the two Israeli soldiers shot on West Bank
No mention of the 25 Palestinians murdered in Gaza just this week
Sion Tecwyn retweeted
By a mile the greatest sporting story of the week (that no one actually watched)
theguardian.com/sport/2026/o…
