Roadside Mum, aka Louisa Britain (also a pseudonym), is an anonymous twitter account / internet persona which tweets about a variety of issues. Initially tweeting about issues relating to her assumed identity as a traveller and living in poverty, the account has now dropped the traveller identity to become a more disability focused account.
Louisa has ME and other illnesses and uses a power chair which was crowdfunded for by a friend of Louisa's called Sam Jennings, a disability campaigner.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/roadside-mum-needs-a-power-chair
She has tweeted about wearing a sunflower lanyard and "shuffling" through car parks in an attempt to impersonate someone with an intellectual disability (her words), in order to shock middle aged women in the car park who then phone the police when she gets into her car, revs the engine and drives away.
Screenshots of this are here courtesy of @BlendedSlop
https://tattle.life/threads/roadside-mum-8-this-is-a-criminal-endeavour.43740/post-18177605
This article was written by Louisa when she was using the traveller identity which has now been dropped:
https://news.streetsupport.net/2020/01/29/roadside-mum/
Roadside Mum was at one time merely a side character in the
Jack Monroe universe, however she then rose to prominence of her own by positioning herself as a spokesperson on traveller issues, and then through a viral photo of a meagre school lunch pack provided by Chartwells.
https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/read-this/it-falls-short-of-our-hamper-specification-chartwells-catering-firms-response-to-unacceptable-food-parcel-3093401
An article about the viral photo, written by Louisa herself:
https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/free-school-meals-what-its-like-to-accidentally-start-a-movement/
On the back of this viral photo and associated press and media interest, Louisa Britain managed to arrange publication of a book called One in Five through Unbound, a crowdfunding publisher.
The book was fully funded in January 2022 with 770 backers, however is, as of April 2024, as yet unpublished. Unbound claim to have received the manuscript but the publication date has not yet been confirmed.
https://unbound.com/books/one-in-five</
There were 2309 backers pledging a total of £40,626.
It is not clear what Louisa's role is in the book as it is an anthology of contributions from writers living in poverty, with editorial, etc., input from professionals at Unbound. Writers were promised either £200 or £250 per contribution. It is not known whether anyone ever received payment.
If / when the book is published, the author (RSM) and Unbound will split the proceeds (anything over the cost of bringing the book out) 50/50.
Louisa mainly tweets about being judged harshly by people in public for her disability. She also sometimes alludes to extreme poverty though that has not been as prominent a theme recently. She tends to tweet long multi-tweet rants and can be very abusive and insulting to other people on twitter, one example being her notorious reply to someone of "DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT" which is often referenced jokingly by posters on her threads.
She frequently tweets about medical episodes, including severe asthma attacks which require transport to hospital via ambulance. She also smokes to deal with stress, and is partial to plenty of gin and other booze.
She also frequently tweets long rants either about or to customer service workers. She often threatens to take legal action against companies, including threats against Amazon. Other targets of her ire include workers in takeaways, supermarkets, petrol stations, coffee shops, taxi drivers, utility companies, food delivery services, and Easyjet, among others.
Louisa claims that she grew up in foster care and has ranted about the care system, claiming that people who foster do so for the money and not because they care about children. She claims to need to maintain anonymity due to being a victim of stalking, and a survivor of domestic abuse. This also conveniently enables her to avoid any accountability or scrutiny.
She has hinted that she played a key role during the conflict in Syria however has not elaborated on what this was:
https://tattle.life/threads/roadside-mum-7-justin-trudeau-wrote-into-canadian-law-that-its-off-with-louisas-head-asap.41971/post-17766548
She relocated from England to Scotland, away from her support network which includes Roadside Dad, her ex, with her two teenage daughters who she often tweets about, often in derogatory and innappropriate ways, such as dubbing them "the Krays", and describing them indulging in acts of violence against other children, and planning in detail how to murder her partner, ML. Her long distance partner is ML who lives in England. She also has an older child who lives independently and does not feature much in her tweets.
When ML is not visiting, or when RSM is not visiting ML, she experiences "crashes" which involve long, late nights spent on twitter, and then days spent sleeping in bed while her children get themselves up and out to school by themselves. She has tweeted about spending up to 18 hours asleep while her young teens go about their lives, presumably unsupervised.
She regularly posts oblique begs for cashapp donations and has posted an amazon wishlist for her followers to buy gifts for her and her children. Despite claiming at times to be destitute and reliant on supermarket food waste, she always seems to have plenty of money for regular fast food deliveries, travel to see ML, and expensive consumer purchases such as a £300 toothbrush for one daughter.
