International Software Partners, City of London Guide, 40 years in IT, ex NetApper, experience includes GSI management including Kyndryl, Trustee of 2 charities
London
Joined January 2009
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walks.com/our-walks/kings-cr…
Fantastic walk 1400 Wednesday
Sam L Jacobs retweeted
When I was a local Councillor almost a decade ago I had one of the oddest casework experiences of my professional life.
I got an email from a resident who was afraid to go onto her balcony because her kids had found a snake skin on it. Her and her children were now petrified of going outside, in what was a hot summer.
The ask was: could I come round and find the snake on the balcony. Definitely not a core local Cllr duty, but I was intrigued.
I replied: have you asked the housing association to look? Or a neighbour? The answer came back - no, they won't come round and do it and we don't know anyone who will go outside and look for us - please help.
I lived a 3 minute walk from the property, and I wanted to help so after work the next day I went meet the family.
I was shown (through a locked glass door and locked windows) the large balcony. It was built-in, with wooden slats and a space underneath where rain and leaves would gather. The resident and her kids were convinced the snake was still there.
The ask: would I open the door, go on the balcony, find the snake and scare it away? I was getting quite nervous but decided to step outside...
The whole family stood at the far side of the room as I paced up and down on the balcony, shone a torch in between the gaps in the slats and generally looked carefully for signs of life. But, no snake.
I thought this would reassure and my Councillor duties would be done. But, no, they still did not want to go outside, even after my searching. What if the snake was still there and I'd missed it?
So, at a loss, I called the leadership at the housing association. Have there been any other reports of a snake in the area? They said they'd check.
A few days later, I get a call back.
Actually, yes - we know what's happened. (!) One of the residents in a nearby tower block, c. 50 meters away, has pet snakes. The other day, it turns out, he was drying their shed snake skins on his balcony and one strangely went missing.
So - it turned out that a snake skin had come loose from his washing line, wafted its way over the gardens and houses of Bromley-by-Bow one summer evening, and had landed on the balcony of the most snake-phobic household I had ever met. Just amazing.
Happiest residents ever when I went back to tell them the good news!
Sam L Jacobs retweeted
Number of obese adults in England has doubled to 14.3m since UK's first obesity strategy in 1992, damning analysis reveals trib.al/9yGlnbZ
Sam L Jacobs retweeted
🆘 DON’T LOOK AWAY 🆘
The Islamic regime is going to hang Diana Taherabadi because she participated in the January protests.
She’s only 16.
This is pure barbarism.
Share this before they kill her.
#IranMassacre
#StopExecutionsInIran
Sam L Jacobs retweeted
Some good news you might have missed this week:
Net migration at a 13-year low. UK the fastest-growing G7 economy. NHS waiting lists down half a million. Borrowing at a three-year low. Fuel duty cut extended. Inflation back to 2.8%.
The country is moving in the right direction.
Sam L Jacobs retweeted
Right now some £10m homes are paying less council tax than a normal family home.
It's not right and it's not fair.
So this government is changing it.
Sam L Jacobs retweeted
I just spoke to the young Israeli man attacked in Golders Green. After he was heard speaking Hebrew on the phone, a group of young men in hoodies asked if he was Jewish. Then, they beat him for over five minutes.
Throughout the attack, they repeatedly called him “Yehudi” - Jew.
He told me he feared for his life. “It’s a miracle I’m not badly injured,” he said. “The state of London is sad and scary, but it’ll get even worse.”
Sam L Jacobs retweeted
As an Iranian still inside Iran, writing through Starlink with a broken heart and burning rage, I am showing you what the regime desperately tries to hide
Look at these streets. Look at the blood. They killed so many of our brothers and sisters on January 8th and 9th that the ditches filled with blood, the streets ran red, and the walls were soaked with the blood of innocent protesters. This was one of the most savage massacres of peaceful demonstrators in modern history — and the Islamic Republic’s internet blackout is their attempt to bury the evidence.
Yet while Iranians the ground reject their lies — IRGC propaganda gets almost zero traction and tiny impressions on our social media — the English-speaking world, especially Western platforms, keeps consuming and amplifying the regime’s propaganda non-stop.
This is not the free world.
This is not independent journalism.
This is betrayal.
Stop listening to the Islamic Republic’s propaganda. Stop giving oxygen to the butchers who murder our people and then cry “victim” in English. While they hunt Starlink users with $2,000 bounties, torture fathers to death, and roll out their loyalty-based internet tiers, mainstream media stays shamefully silent on the rivers of blood we have shed.
For 47 years we have lived this nightmare — economic pressure crushing every family, blackouts, arrests, and now open bounties on anyone seeking truth. We danced with pure joy when Khamenei was removed because we saw the beginning of the end. That hope still lives in us.
We are willing to endure everything — the fear, the threats, the hunger, the daily terror that our children feel — because our country and our people are on the line. But we will not let our suffering be in vain while the outside world platforms the regime’s lies.
President Trump sees through them. The rest of the free world must wake up and do the same.
The blood on these streets cries out.
The souls of our martyrs demand justice.
The Lion and Sun will rise again.
#IranMassacre
#DigitalBlackOutIran
#FinishTheJobMrPresidentTrump
Upcoming walks from archaeology, to gardens, secrets and symbols and Jewish City & East End and much more....
open.substack.com/pub/samlja…
Great architecture walk sunday march 15 through city of london ...booking details here:
open.substack.com/pub/samlja…
