
I live in Manchester & am a steward & guide at @BridgewaterHall. I volunteer at @TeamTBBT. All views my own
Manchester UK
Joined August 2009
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This summer I spent three lovely days in Limoges, admiring its Town Hall among other buildings. This morning it is in flames ☹️
Drinking deep at the fountain head: recital of mainly French organ music played on the Cavaille-Coll organ of the Madeleine Church in Paris
Great production of the Barber of Seville at @operadeparis Bastille last night
Annual trip to Scarborough with great company, music and weather! @SpaOrchestra
AFD/Derbs🇺🇦 retweeted
BREAKING: Trump's Kennedy Center just canceled its free public tours for the first time in 50 years — because an 87-year-old volunteer told the truth about its Trump-era collapse.
An 87-year-old tour guide told the OBVIOUS truth about the Kennedy Center. Donald Trump's response was to punish everyone.
For the first time in five decades, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has paused its beloved free tour program — and the timing makes the reason unmistakable. The move came directly after longtime volunteer Sandy Weiswasser gave a candid interview to the New York Times describing exactly what Trump's takeover has done to America's national theater.
According to the NY Times article she was quoted in, “Once she was among 140 volunteer guides who gave tours in 10 languages to up to 400,000 people a year. Last week on her Monday shift, only five out of more than a dozen tour guides showed up, and only three people took a tour.”
"This place used to be really thriving and busy and crowded," the 87-year-old Weiswasser told the Times. "Now it's a black hole."
That's it. That's the offense. An elderly volunteer, describing what she's personally witnessed after decades of service, told a reporter the honest truth. Days later, the Kennedy Center's director of the volunteer program quietly announced a "temporary pause" on tours — the exact outcome three separate volunteers had privately worried about before the memo announcing the pause was even circulated, anticipating retaliation.
Petty vindictiveness is who Trump is. Not content with seizing control of one of America's most beloved cultural institutions, purging its board, and driving away artists who refused to perform under his takeover, he's now apparently willing to punish an entire volunteer program, silencing public access to the building itself, because one honest 87-year-old described what everyone can already see.
And remember, this is the same Kennedy Center Trump previously tried to shut down entirely for two years under the guise of "renovations," after his own name change proposal drove away performers in protest. His name was eventually scraped off the building's wall — and now the facade remains hidden under a massive tarp, a fittingly literal metaphor for an institution being suffocated from within.
America's national theater used to belong to everyone. Now it's become a monument to one man's ego and his intolerance for even the gentlest criticism, even from an 87-year-old grandmother simply telling visitors what she's seen with her own eyes.
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AFD/Derbs🇺🇦 retweeted
Thank you to the brave fire fighters and civil guards saving the lives of dogs and cats from the terrible fires sweeping France Spain & Italy
AFD/Derbs🇺🇦 retweeted
Today is the Feast of St. James, Apostle and Martyr, Patron Saint of Spain.
Ora pro nobis
Anthony Powell’s sequence of novels “A Dance to the Music of Time” inspired by the painting of the same name.
Cheeky midweek night away in Liverpool to link up with friends and hear @liverpoolphil
AFD/Derbs🇺🇦 retweeted
🇺🇸🇮🇹Donald Trump attacks Giorgia Meloni — and she delivers a fiery speech he’ll never forget.
Donald Trump thought he could easily score political points by calling Giorgia Meloni “an insult to Jesus,” accusing her of “not being woke,” and claiming that God does not discriminate. Unfortunately for “Don Dementia,” this time he picked the wrong target.
Standing at a historic location, Giorgia Meloni didn’t just respond — she delivered a full moral reckoning.
“The President of the United States just said that I insult Jesus,” Giorgia Meloni declared. “Do you want to know what really insults Jesus? Taking healthcare away from the sick while cutting taxes for billionaires.”
And that was only the beginning.
“Do you want to know what else insults Jesus?” she continued. “Deporting foreigners and separating children from their mothers.”
Then she went even further, touching on war, corruption, and hypocrisy.
“Do you want to know what insults Jesus? Bombing innocent schools in Iran and sending our brave men and women to die in yet another endless war… hiding the Epstein files and then refusing to prosecute anyone involved.”
This wasn’t politics as usual. It was a full moral indictment.
Giorgia Meloni, targeted by Trump for supporting transgender people and for saying that “trans children are children of God,” completely turned the tables. Instead of backing down, she grounded her message in the very teachings Trump tried to weaponize.
“I am not a perfect Christian,” she said. “There was only one perfect man, and two thousand years ago he was crucified.”
Then came the line that hit the hardest:
“Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourselves… Can we imagine war in heaven? Can we imagine hatred in heaven? Can we imagine poverty in heaven? Then why do we tolerate these things on Earth?”
This is how you respond. Not with insults. Not with fear. But with clarity and conviction.
Trump tried to discredit her. Instead, Giorgia Meloni delivered a sermon that now echoes far beyond that hall.
Please share Giorgia Meloni’s inspiring words.



































