Rosi Sexton

@rosisexton.bsky.social

1541 Followers 2168 Following

A collection of random hyperfoci held together by anxiety & sticky tape. Osteopath, climber, maths PhD, pianist, former professional MMA fighter. Dabbled in politics (Green). Passionate about health, health inequality, mental health, neurodivergence.

Fluffy grey and white cat curled up on a dressing gown
"If we don't unite progressives, we risk opening the door to the darkness and division of Reform - a party that takes Trump as its inspiration and has promised an ICE-style force on Britain's streets, which will send shivers down the spine of every minority community living in this country."
"Although cannabis use preceded clinician-documented outcomes in our analyses, un-measured confounding (eg, adverse childhood experiences, genetic risk, parent mental health) cannot be ruled out."
Fletton and Woodston by-election council result. https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/2022100418021736716
YouGov MRP: the Greens add a historic second seat to their tally, but are not close to winning any others
Kemi Badenoch is using "Opposition Day" to force through a vote in order to prevent the Labour Party scrapping the two-child benefit cap that was put in place in 2017 by her own party. How fitting, from the woman who complained that maternity pay was "excessive" and said people should exercise "more personal responsibility".
Cat in a box!
I keep hearing that Labour are "reducing NHS waiting lists" - which might sound like a good thing. The trouble is "reducing waiting lists" is absolutely not the same thing as "making sure patients get the treatment they need more quickly". Talking to *lots* of patients and NHS employees about what's going on - let's look at some of the ways this is happening. - Taking people off the waiting list without treating them ("We had to cancel your operation because the consultant was away, and now we've 'accidentally' discharged you.") - Contacting people to ask if they still need treatment, and then discharging them if they don't respond quickly enough. (Didn't get the letter? Too bad, you'll have to ask your GP to re-refer you.) - Incentivising departments to see more new patients and fewer follow ups. Need more than three physio sessions? Better get your GP to re-refer you so we can see you as a new patient again, because it looks better for our stats. Who needs continuity anyway? - Replacing in person healthcare with advice sheets and apps. - Long waiting lists for the tests or scans that you need to get the referral in the first place. - Health professionals are massively overloaded, and more likely to miss important diagnoses in the first place because they don't have time to properly listen to people. (Some are better than others at this in the first place, but being under more pressure makes EVERYONE worse at it). - Getting an appointment to actually see a GP in the first place is so difficult in many places that people just give up. People who don't have the confidence, understanding of how the system works or the education and social capital to be able to push back end up being even more disadvantaged. And then politicians act all surprised when health inequalities keep widening.
My reply to someone who isn't Tom
First - we're reaching the ceiling of what a ground campaign alone can deliver. Not because it's not working. It is - better than ever. And not because it's not vital. We won|t win anything without it. But because we can all see how incredibly resource-intensive they are. They take time, money, staff, volunteers, data, and an unfathomable amount of organisation. Trying to replicate that model to match the scale of ambition for the next general election is just not feasible. So if we want to go from four MPs to the kind of numbers that can make a difference in a hung parliament - especially in seats that are clustered geographically we're going to have to find ways to reduce the volume of the ground game without reducing the number of exposures voters receive. In other words, mare media.
214. Dr Al's seeond complaint is that the WHGP Jette caled for his removal as spokesperson. Promotion and demotion in political parties often depends, among other factors, on the political beliefs of the candidate. The decision maker may appoint or demote a candidate because the candidate shares their belies or alternatively because the candidate comes from a wing of the party with different beliefs, Factions within a party may lobby for or against the appointment of a candidate based on the candidate's political beliefs. To suggest that the manifestation of a candidate's political beliefs, provided that it is not unreasonable, should play no role in their appointment, which is the logical consequence of saying that a candidate should not be treated 1ess favourably because of the anifestation of their political beliefs, rather defeats the point of democratic politics. et thatis the logic of Dr Ali's position. am quite satisfied that this is not what Parliament intended and that the activity comprising the second tomplaint is not prohibited by the EA.
Political favourability ratings July 2025, yougov. Adrian Ramsey 4% favourable, 14% unfavourable, 82% don't know.
Book "Let this radicalise you" by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba
Me, upside down on a rope, lowering from one of Kalymnos' famous climbing routes.
Green Party membership email
David Wimble, who was elected councillor for Romney Marsh with 64% of the vote, said: "We need to be realistic about what we can and can't do." Appearing on Politics South East, he said: "I think the biggest worry is that they will expect to go in and make changes straight away and all of the panel here today know that's just not possible. He added: "Somebody stopped me today and said when are you going to stop the boats then?". This is the county council. Some Reform UK leaflets delivered in Kent did feature national party messaging, including a pledge to "stop the boats"
What will keep Labour in power - the only thing that will keep them in power - is improving people's lives. Basically making life less shit - as Dylan Difford succinctly puts it. Spending your time on messaging that you are kind of like Reform really, if you squint, is a waste of energy. resources, and integrity. As the political scientist Rob Ford says, Labour's current strategy is "Farage is right, don't vote for him". And there are two problems with this plan. First, Farage is not in fact right. And second, if you tell people he is, they will definitely think they should vote for him.
Janel Comeau @VeryBadLlama: "hey sorry I missed your text, I am processing a non-stop 24/7 onslaught of information with a brain designed to eat berries in a cave"
2024 election results for Vauxhall and Camberwell with Greens in 2nd and Reform 5th.
Some rock on top of a hill (Dinbren)
Myopia rate in Europe by birth decade (from Wikipedia) - showing a rising trend.
Ultrasound laptop with images of biceps tendon.
"Dictators don't make the trains run on time, Rufus. They run down the rail networks because they travel in private planes." - Bear Head, Adrian Tchaikovsky
A cat on some laundry
A 2024 study from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimated an extra 300 deaths a week associated with waits of longer than 12 hours.
"I understand why it is easy to rile people by gluing yourself to the road, but when Richard Madeley yet again mounts a high horse and speaks for "the inconvenienced", we see very little concern for the inconvenience of your house burning down, your workplace being destroyed in a hurricane, or your seaside bungalow becoming a submarine. Or the grumbling annoyance of food shortages and the mild inconvenience of child deaths."
Screenshot from: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/general-election-dale-vince-just-stop-oil-labour-green-party-b1168006.html, pre-general election. "Dale Vince is doing his best to stop the Green Party from winning a single seat on Thursday.... now says Labour is the real green option".
Gray and white cat curled up on a pair of shoes.
A fluffy gray and white cat in a shopping bag.
A cat's food bowls, mostly empty, with a torn open packet of dreamies next to it.
Our cat, draped in tinsel lying on the arm of a sofa.
A cat wrapped in tinsel, lying despondently on the carpet.
A cat curled up in a cat tree box.
"This worldview has wider social consequences. When people have more manageable work lives, they also have more time for family, volunteering, hobbies and paying attention to the world around them. Out in their community they meet neighbours with different backgrounds and perspectives and politics. This fosters empathy. It's hard to dehumanise someone who coaches your kid's football team even if they do have weird views about the moon landing. Its easy to dehumanise people if you're working too hard, feel in competition with everyone for resources and keep encountering caricatures on social media instead of actual people."
Across the Midlands region last week, some patients who should have been seen by an ambulance crew within 18 minutes were waiting almost an hour on average. One in ten waited over two hours. At one point there were more than 150 emergency calls in the region without an ambulance response available. For calls involving patients who may have fallen and suffered an injury, such as a broken hip, the average wait was more than four hours and one in ten waited over 11 hours.
The memo says when the ambulance service is under the highest levels of pressure, like last week, this request will also be made of category two 999 calls. These are patients who may be having a stroke or heart attack or have suffered major burns and who should be seen normally within 18 minutes. All ambulance services have adjusted their scripts for periods of surging demand, with some replicating West Midlands and others warning of the long waits patients will face.
"That does not, of course, make doing so either morally or politically right; but it does make it understandable. If a political system gives someone the power to save someone they love from jail, it's absurd to imagine they're not going to use it. The problem here is less with the president's personal lack of moral fibre than it is with a weirdly monarchical political system which allows its president to pardon essentially whoever they want. That system is about to hand all that power to a man with a damn sight fewer principles than Joe Biden. The real world is not scripted by Aaron Sorkin."
Ada - a tuxedo cat - sitting in the sink
[Caption above the panel:] I try not to make fun of people for admitting they don't know things. [Caption right below said caption:] Because for each thing "everyone knows" by the time they're adults, every day there are, on average, 10,000 people in the US hearing about it for the first time. [A list of equations.] Fraction who have heard of it at birth = 0% Fraction who have heard of it by 30 ≈ 100% US birth rate ≈ 4,000,000/year Number hearing about it for the first time ≈ 10,000/day [Caption above the next panel:] If I make fun of people, I train them not to tell me when they have those moments. And I miss out on the fun. [Megan is standing. Cueball is walking, with his palm out.] Megan: "Diet Coke and Mentos thing"? What's that? Cueball: Oh man! Come on, we're going to the grocery store. Megan: Why? Cueball: You're one of today's lucky 10,000.