Patrick Howse☘️🇺🇦 (@[email protected])
@Baghdaddi
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Writer, poet & snowshoe hiker. Journalist: @BylineTimes contributor & ex-BBC newsgatherer. English born, proud Irish & EU citizen: "one of the Wildgeese"
Munich, Bavaria
Joined January 2009
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Pinned Tweet
My collection Shadow Cast By Mountains available here: -
@Sambrook
review:
"The poems are accessible, beautifully written & take us beyond the headlines to an emotional reckoning. This is a compassionate, intellectual & literary response".
@Hayloftbooks
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As a former producer on BBC Breakfast, I think you need to explain this more fully. The edit avoided showing the Prime Minister placing his wreath upside down on the Cenotaph. He was also dishevelled. It's not your job to make the PM look good.
This morning on the programme we incorrectly used footage from a Remembrance Day service that was not filmed yesterday.
This was a production mistake and we apologise for the error.
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I worked for the BBC for 25 years often in dangerous places. I'm now ashamed of it. I've written to BBC Director General Tony Hall. My focus is on the Farage coverage last week, but it was all confirmed yesterday with the way Marr interviewed
@DavidLammy
. (Thread):
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The BBC is enabling fascists and I'm ashamed of it. Here's my letter to Lord Hall.
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I'm former BBC journalist. I ashamed of its political journalism right now. Johnson has a simple "relationship with the truth": he's a liar. The lengths the BBC's political editor goes to to make this sound OK is shameful.
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4. Lammy calls it out, and gets interrupted by Marr saying JRM has "made it very clear he doesn't endorse the AfD".
5. Lammy gets flak for calling out the ERG's links to the far right.
Well, I stand in solidarity with
@DavidLammy
.
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BBC journalists around the world risk their lives to tell the truth on a daily basis. That’s why I’ve been so dismayed by the lack of courage shown by the people responsible for the BBC’s domestic *political* coverage (not the specialists in Health, Soc Affairs and other depts)
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I do hope this is the end of this talentless, dishonourable, dishonest charlatan's career.
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The way this works now is
1. Jacob Rees-Mogg quotes a German AfD fascist (a party that advocates shooting refugees).
2. JRM's supporters get the idea it's OK to be a fascist (as intended).
3. After row ensues (days later), JRM "apologises", an apology taken seriously by nobody.
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Why is absolutely no one talking about the fact that Farage can make himself a party leader just by saying he's now the leader? Reform isn't a party, it's a company, and entities that have no democratic processes or beliefs should not be part of our electoral system.
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The supermarkets near me in Munich are all fully stocked too. The UK's problem is 1. Brexit and 2. Covid ... the common denominators being an incompetent and dishonest government and a shortage of essential workers (who all went home because they weren't welcome).
@nicktolhurst
@ChrisMasonBBC
Indeed. Like I've posted a couple of times, here are pics from a local REWE store (equivalent to Sainsbury's Local) near where I'm presently staying in 🇩🇪. Full of top quality produce:
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The Truth is NOT the mid point between Good and Evil. The BBC also has specific problems on specific programmes.
@bbcquestiontime
has become a joke, giving far too much prominence to extreme views, and subjecting us to
@Nigel_Farage
suspiciously often. 9/12
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I've had several private messages from BBC journalists telling me I'm 'spot on' (a recurring phrase) with this piece. Can the BBC turn this round? It's going to take some gutsy leadership - so probably not.
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The excellent
@AuschwitzMuseum
tweet pictures of people who died (and some who survived) in the concentration camp. They're all heartbreaking, but they tweeted one on 6.10.20 that really moved me. It's inadequate, but I wanted to mark what would have been his 90th birthday:
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I agree with this (25 years a BBC staffer) - this stinks to high heaven.
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When you apply Balance to people like this, & to subjects like
#Brexit
,
#climatechange
#Holocaust
Denial, etc, you don't get balanced reporting, you get a confused "He said this, but she said that" narrative that gives false equivalence to a pack of lies and the Truth... 8/12
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This is what the BBC can do when it has the guts. No false balance here - just the truth. The truth is not the midpoint between a fact and a lie.
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tbh the BBC's coverage of Brexit has broken my heart. It's an organisation I worked for for 25 years, risked my life for... Brexit was its biggest challenge since WW2 and it's failed miserably.
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Some thoughts on Laura Kuenssberg’s tenure as BBC Political Editor (and why it was such a catastrophe, and why it wasn't really her fault).
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@BBCr4today
too is a problem - as many current
#BBC
journalists admit to me privately. John Humphrys is widely perceived by Remainers to be biased, & he doesn't help himself in this regard when he uses works like "unashamed" (why should we be ashamed?) re Remainers... 10/12
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Where it breaks down, though, is where you have malicious people who have no interest in telling the truth, and who in fact set out to deceive. Lets call one such person Donald Trump, and another Boris Johnson, just to pick two names at random... 7/12
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Just to add: It's not normal to have shit in the rivers and sea in order to ensure profits for shareholders. It doesn't happen in Germany, and in lots of other countries; it does in England - because of political choices. Tory Britain isn't normal, and it can change.
#GTTO
Today's cycle in Munich was along the ISAR. It runs through one of Germany's biggest industrial cities. You can see the bottom through the clear water, and look at the fish swimming in it: Because it doesn't have shit pumped in it by a company that pays profits for shareholders
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The rewriting of history to make Michael Gove seem pragmatic and competent doesn't fit with my experience. I was a BBC education reporter when he (or was it Dom Cummings?) was Ed Sec. Getting even the most banal and routine responses or comments from them was slow and painful..
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It has been obvious for years that Boris Johnson was unfit for office. The BBC’s Westminster operation was too frightened to say so. Some even seemed - frankly - enamoured of him. The result is at least 50k dead.
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@BBCr4today
is losing listeners at an alarming rate, and while the BBC blames a quieter news agenda compared with last year, this stretches credulity beyond breaking. Current BBC staffers have told me of a "climate of fear", instructions "handed down from on high"... 11/12
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If you try to be 'impartial' between truth and lies, you end up being on the side of the lies. The truth is not the midpoint between a fact and a lie.
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What they actually needed was someone who could take a step back and tell the audience when we were all being lied to. That was something neither the BBC nor LK ever fully recognized.
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I've said this before, but I'll say it again: Dido Harding is perfectly qualified for this job – Her grandfather was a field marshal, she went to uni with David Cameron, she's a Jockey Club mate of Matt Hancock, and her husband is a Tory MP. Stop carping.
It’s utterly ridiculous & almost unbelievable that a single writer can scale the dizziest, fizziest heights of brilliance as completely & consistently as
@MarinaHyde
.
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The problem now was that, for the first time in my lifetime, Britain’s prime minister and the people around him lied as a matter of routine. And they lied, knowing that their dishonest version of a story would be broadcast verbatim by LK...
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But the BBC DOES have a problem... Balance. When you have people of good will and good intent discussing an issue from different sides, this is a GOOD THING (to quote 1066 and all that) - tell both sides, and let the audience decide... 6/12
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Vote Leave made lying a central part of its strategy during the Brexit Referendum, and the BBC’s response was to just try to “balance” the lies with stuff the other side said. As a result hardly anyone among the audience fully understood the issues involved....
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My piece for
@BylineTimes
in which I basically say the BBC'S political editor should worry less about always being first with a story, and worry more about always being right.
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That’s the fault of the BBC managers, who didn’t think it was the BBC’s role to call out lies, and didn’t start doing so until much too late. Britain’s wrecked political system is one of the consequences.
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The spectacle of a series of high profile journalists saying how shocked they are at how rubbish Boris Johnson was & wondering how it could possibly have happened is one of the most sickening things I've ever seen. It's as if they don't think it had anything to do with them
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So we risked our lives to travel through militia checkpoints across a locked-down city and went to the morgue, and there I counted the bodies (many, many more than we were being told). We did not do a perfect job in Iraq, but in great danger & at a very high personal cost 4/12
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I've written about this before, but the BBC is confusing impartiality with the need to always 'balance' everything. It should be just telling the truth... and the truth is not the midpoint between a fact and a lie...
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My op-ed piece for Byline: BBC Coverage of Farage's new Party 'Facilitates Fascism' via
@BylineTimes
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I'm a BBC person, and there was some good reporting over the election period, but I've been very disappointed overall, and found
@CNNPolitics
much better. The reason can be summed up by 'Balance'.
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If and when the General Election comes, let's remember that Johnson's seat in Uxbridge is very vulnerable. A top priority should be to get behind
@EvendenKenyon
and unseat him.
@UKLabour
should get behind her too.
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Another seasonal poem, this time by Wilfred Owen. He wrote it in response to a flag-shagging shill, Jessie Pope, who'd used the Roman poet Horace's phrase ("it's sweet and fitting to die for one's country") to encourage others to make the ultimate sacrifice.
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for many of us we told the story as fairly and accurately as it was possible to do. BBC journalists like
@sommervilletv
do this all the time, all around the world. Reporters like
@kirbyej
give you angles & insights behind the headlines that you just don't get elsewhere 5/12
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He doesn't lie, apparently, he "recreates the truth to suit him."
I think I'll go for a walk. It's pouring with rain, but that's no problem - I'll just recreate the weather.
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It should not have been allowed to happen. There’s even a statue of George Orwell outside NBH warning you - if the BBC doesn’t speak truth to power, it’s pointless.
@Katysearle
,
@FranUnsworth
- and pretty much everyone down, I’m talking to you.
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@resophonick
I hadn't seen that? Does Chris Mason point out that these are the consequences of 11 years of Tory government?
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Top German TV corr re
#Newsnight
:
"Under pressure from the government, the BBC yesterday publicly apologised for this critical opening and has now apparently deleted it from its website. The BBC was once our model for independent journalism. Not any more."
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A seasonal poem - my favourite by Sassoon. It made a huge impression on me when I first read it as a teenager.
Flag-shaggers should take particular note of the last verse.
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You can't be impartial between truth and lies, or good and evil. The
#BBC
's model of impartiality would not protect Britain against the rise of fascism.
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@RandomThawt
@Beagle141
@BlueBobX
@BBCNews
The BBC is a massive national asset - it enriches the nation and the world. But its journalism needs to sort out a few issues (urgently).
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That story was broken by
@PippaCrerar
in
@DailyMirror
. Before the ink was dry on that story - before most people had read it or heard about it - LK was tweeting Downing St’s rebuttal. Because she was employed to get out there and repeat what she’d been told by her top sources..
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I'm sharing this again because 2 weeks after I wrote it I'm still getting a steady stream of current & former BBC journalists telling me I'm "spot on". >>In this Age of Untruth BBC Journalists Are Being Taken for a Ride
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My piece is about why the BBC should be telling its audience when the government is lying, following Emily Maitlis' MacTaggart Lecture.
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but people quick and eager to condemn should remember that most of what we "know" about this story comes from a malicious and untrustworthy source (Murdoch's Sun), and involves human beings who have flaws and make mistakes. Like all of us.
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He was also hated by teachers. He may have been the "best cabinet member of the past decade"... But if so, that's more of a reflection on the pitiful shower of non entities around him than a compliment.
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In all seriousness, why would anyone care what Truss thinks about anything? She's a proven dishonest fool who was forced to resign a few weeks after taking office because she was useless.
"The free world is in danger."
Liz Truss says "we're living in very turbulent economic times, right through from the shock of the financial crisis, through to the COVID crisis that we're still recovering from".
📺 Sky 501, Freeview 233 and YouTube
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But to give you an idea of the lengths we would go to, in 2006 when the Askari Shrine in Samara was blown up, & the de facto civil war began in earnest, we were lied to by the authorities about the numbers of dead... 3/12
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I recognise this will upset some old friends and I'm burning some bridges here. Save your anger with me and start getting ready for the public inquiry.
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I've written a piece about the BBC's coverage of the US elections compared with the US networks, 'balance', and the obsession with vox pops. 'The truth is not the midpoint between a fact and a lie.'
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Worth sharing this again, I think. Laura Kuenssberg’s new show was everything I expected, and followed on seamlessly from her Political Editor days. " LK's time as BBC Political Editor has been a Catastrophic, Systemic Failure" – Byline Times
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I first worked with
#HuwEdwards
in the mid nineties, when he was making the transition from being a political correspondent to a newsreader....
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@GNDRising
@pritipatel
This looks like a really intelligent, well executed bit of non-violent protest. The likes of Priti Patel and her supporters need to be told that these plans are not acceptable to decent people.
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I could give lots of instances of how LK’s approach - ring up the top people, get a response and get on air - confused and misinformed her audience in the years that followed, but the best was when Dominic Cummings drove north when he had covid...
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He won an election.
Anyone remember
@bbcnews
asking if Tony Blair, on the day he entered Number 10, was fit to be PM?
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@Otto_English
I'm old enough to remember when Theresa May was the worst prime minister in history. It's all been downhill since.
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It has an anti BBC agenda, it has the morals of a sewer rat, and has a track record of making stuff up to suit it's grubby purposes. It has done immeasurable damage to British society, and the sight of it attempting to get on any sort of moral high-horse is absurd and revolting
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@hifalutinways
@jriekemann
Honestly, I can tell you that I've never met anyone in Germany who's envious of America.
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I'm reading John Le Carré:
"The privately educated Englishman...is the greatest dissembler on earth... Nobody will charm you so glibly, disguise his feelings from you better, cover his tracks more skillfully..."
It struck a chord, for some reason.
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My father shed blood in WW2 - you don't speak for him. How dare you try to hijack the legacy of the generations that brought peace to Europe? They knew the value of peaceful co-operation between nations (and the consequences when it's absent).
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Rishi Sunak was Chancellor until a few days ago... If he's so great, why does the economy need rebuilding?
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@MSandersDP
@ajophoto
Johnson's been sacked twice for lying. £350M to the NHS was a lie. ETC. It's not libelous or slanderous to call him a liar, because it's a demonstrable fact.
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I think I'd better not pay any attention to UK 'news' for a while. The UK has the highest Covid-19 mortality per head in the world, but that's apparently not very important to the UK's journalists right now. I'm ashamed of my profession.
Having babies change us. Near-death experiences change us.
@BorisJohnson
has the full set. So will he become a very different PM from the one the UK voted for in December?
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I'm not Scottish, and I've only visited Glasgow three times in my life, so why do I feel proud of these people? Perhaps because they are showing solidarity and humanity, and they're peacefully resisting. They make me feel proud to be a human being.
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That cohort of managers have now mostly left. It's going to be really interesting to see who LK's replacement will be.
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Could
@BBCNews
@bbcpress
and
@BBCPolitics
please explain why this is not a story? Thanks. Boris Johnson urged to justify 'awarding public funds to close friend'
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I think that we can all agree that as the world slips into a heat-fuelled mega extinction and war rages in Europe, the thing we all should really care about is a grifter's exclusive account at the King's bank.
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Former editor of the Today programme is new chair of right -wing 'thinktank'
We're delighted to welcome
@sarahsands100
as the new chair of
@WeAreBrightBlue
. Lots of plans in the pipeline 👍
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There were so many examples of why this was bad for the BBC, and the UK’s political system in the years that followed....
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I remember very clearly the feeling of disgust I felt every time I heard Mrs Thatcher speak - it took about 6 or 7 years for it to be unbearable. Johnson's managed it in less than a year
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Again, it’s not fair to blame LK for this - she did what her bosses expected her to do. But that’s not what the job should have been...
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@clinteldorado
@taylertoons
at the very least it requires a full explanation - and that shouldn't involve scape-goating an exhausted over-worked probably junior journalist.
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@CHTJonas
I had the honour of working with your father in Iraq, and other places. He's calm, professional, good humoured and sensible - you should (and clearly are) be very proud of him. And remember that there's a part of his brain that's always thinking about his loved-ones at home.
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Thanks to everyone who's interacted with this - I should add that I am not trying to "exonerate" LK, or to shift blame elsewhere, just to point out that she was chosen by the BBC to do a job - and she was the wrong person, and it was the wrong job.
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There appears to be something seriously wrong at
@Ofcom
- most obviously in their oversight of GB News, where Tory MPs are allowed to interview other Tory MPs, and where this sort of stuff is allowed to happen...
@BylineTimes
🔴Ofcom Does Nothing as Complainant is Threatened With Violence
When
@DrEllaC
complained to the broadcast regulator that the GBNews channel encourages violent hatred, she was subjected to it on social media.
@BrianCathcart
reports
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Maybe extremely rich people from parasitic toxic families shouldn't be telling us to pay more for stuff that should be free?
'Maybe it shouldn't be such a taboo to contemplate making NHS users pay a bit more for the services they need?'
@RachelSJohnson
asks if making people pay for some healthcare services would make a difference to the NHS funding crisis.
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Not sure why you're suddenly calling Mrs May's deal the "Barnier deal"? Can you explain, please?
Brexit Sec tells MPs Barnier deal is ‘dead’ if they don’t vote for it in first week of June
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Dido Harding seems to be -er, 'subprime' at everything she does, so why does she keep getting government jobs with no selection process? It surely can't just be down to her Jockey Club connection to Matt Hancock.. I wonder if her husband John Penrose MP might know?
Another Pledge Broken: Dido Harding Oversees Dramatic Fall in Quick Coronavirus Test Results – Byline Times
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his colleagues with professionalism, respect and courtesy. It is now claimed that he's done some stupid and reprehensible things. I don't know the truth about that, and nor do any of us - because we only have the Sun's version of events, and the Sun is not a reliable source...
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@jonesarwyn
@Nigel_Farage
Well done. This should be the sort of scrutiny this charlatan is put under by every journalist who talks to him.
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My daughter (three at the time) was told to "f**k off back to Germany" by a respectable looking couple in their sixties in a street in Kent when they heard her talking German to her mother. I think that's a problem. I was brought up in Blackburn. I still think it's a problem.
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that President Trump had not produced evident to support his claims of fraud and the intro to the vox pop also makes that point. But sadly yet again a platform was given to people who repeat lies without being challenged. It's time to stop getting liars on to 'balance' facts.
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This is nothing short of cowardice by Kevin Lygo. He thinks he can get to distance himself from Clarkson to appease advertisers, but still employ him.
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Here's a thread about England I thought up while walking in Bavaria today. I got quite cross, despite seeing hundreds of butterflies, beautiful meadow flowers & Golden Eagles, and swimming in mountain streams and lakes.....
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Today's cycle in Munich was along the ISAR. It runs through one of Germany's biggest industrial cities. You can see the bottom through the clear water, and look at the fish swimming in it: Because it doesn't have shit pumped in it by a company that pays profits for shareholders
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@Peston
It really is time that you realised he's a charlatan who routinely lies and obfuscates and you and others have allowed him to get away with it. It's too late (and a bit pathetic) to take it personally at this late stage.
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The British don't have 'a love hate relationship with the NHS'... They hate what's been done to it.
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@bbcnickrobinson
@BorisJohnson
Not extraordinary at all... It was obvious at the time he was unfit for office. The BBC decided it wasn't its job to hold him to account, and you went along with it.
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Over the past couple of years I've been critical of the BBC and I've warned former colleagues about the consequences of their actions... which can be summarised as BEWARE OF FASCISM...
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