Former history teacher, counsellor. 20 years in recovery. No such thing as an illegal person. All tweets personal etc. For counselling enquiries see link below
I haven’t really promoted my podcast on Twitter before, I get slightly cringed about self promotion but after well over 1,000 episodes (some now lost in the mists of the internet) I thought why not? You can hear the full episode at
#history
#historyteacher
David Lammy defends Keir Starmer accepting bribes, justifying it by saying there isn't a budget in this country for the PMs clothes of his wifes clothes
#TrevorPhillips
Call me naive, but I assumed this was his default setting when he got up in the morning. From the tone of this article I’m meant to impressed, but my reading is ‘man does thing he’s paid for and that everyone thought he’d actually been doing already’.
#borisvoteofnoconfidence
@GeorgeMonbiot
Years ago I attended a triple murder scene as a reporter. A rather posh hack from the Evening Standard was doing the rounds and confirmed to his news desk the victims were ‘low lives’ (they were just ordinary people). That was my unforgettable x-ray moment.
@OWS1892
Tate
#1
is blissfully unaware that Tate
#2
is about to rat him out for a deal. Don’t think Romania has any of those nice white collar prisons that rich people in America get to go to though.
I remember Arudhati Roy after 9/11 saying that the mining of grief to further political ends was a brutal, savage thing to do. This is a brutal, savage man, proposing brutal, savage measures for brutal, savage reasons.
@DuncanWeldon
It just so happens that by crashing Sterling they have helped hedge funds who bankroll their party, have private dinners with them and who used to employ Kwarteng. Literally nothing more to it than that.
@GarethDennis
“….it will be your (The Labour Party’s) fault for offering policy positions that are so morally repellent and intellectually bankrupt.” There, fixed it for them.
@Otto_English
I suppose the curse of being an aristocrat is that by definition you’re not very good at anything (you don’t have to be, your ancestors were and they left you the loot and the silly titles). That absence of ability or talent dissuaded her from holding forth on sewer TV.
@GeorgeMonbiot
It has had the quite extraordinary effect of turning myself, ordinarily a BBC defender, into someone who is apathetic at best about its continued existence. By feting Farage and his ilk endlessly (I presume they imagined that we oiks like it) they have lost their natural support
@GeorgeMonbiot
There is this extraordinary idea among billionaires (no doubt the ones that own newspapers) that their wealth will save them. Their wealth is only a fiction based on the civilisation they’re working hard to destroy. Without food, wealth evaporates and security guards quit.
@mafevema
@olga_chyzh
@GerardAraud
Britain is still going through this process, it’s been about seventy years, and Brexit showed there is still no end in sight
Robert Peston really isn’t up to the task of examining something like this. His default position of ‘how could this well functioning, equitable and otherwise decent system have produced something so awful, it’s a head scratcher I gotta tell you’ misses every point, every time.
Could it be because there are rarely any serious consequences for the guilty men Robert, and any that do miraculously arise usually come long after said guilty men are retired, after careers of having their drivel repeated to the public by - say - ITV News politics correspondents
@JolyonMaugham
@MattHancock
@SophyRidgeSky
It is simply staggering that a man responsible for a level of corruption we’d normally associate with gold plated Roll Royces in the Congo can swan into TV stations for petulant exchanges and isn’t currently on remand.
@sarahchurchwell
@fascinatorfun
There was a period of time from the late 1990s to the mid 2000s where things vaguely worked in Britain and there was the tantalising suggestion that they might continue to improve. The county rebelled against this, fearing some essential part of its soul was at risk.
In the coming election
@UKLabour
do not come to my door. You idiot, moronic, lowest common denominator, clueless lazy class traitor piece of shit party. Never fucking voting for you again.
@agirlcalledlina
Yes, incredibly the ‘throw Meghan under the bus to distract the public from an affair’ strategy has played very badly with large numbers of non white people. And to think they pay for advisors to think these things through for them.
@PippaCrerar
Years ago, my wife’s grandmother, on learning I was a history teacher said: “It’s good that Michael Gove is putting history back on the syllabus isn’t it?” The job of right wing newspapers to confuse and enrage people has a direct political outcome…
@GeorgeMonbiot
Things ‘moderates’ have done in the past 20 years (a non exhaustive list):
• Destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
• Sold arms to Saudi Arabia to facilitate a genocidal famine in Yemen
• Voted for the mass impoverishment of Britain via austerity
@IanDunt
At some point Leave voters will realise that this applies to them, permanently. Some will shrug, others will be angry, lots will be surprised and others will realise that being British doesn’t exempt one from the rules. That bit will be a shock.
@simon_schama
Well they don’t appear to be marching for Hamas. Solidarity with the Palestinian people and support for Hamas are not one and the same thing. My feelings of Solidarity with Israeli people doesn’t make me a supporter of the corrupt and brutal Netanyahu.
@Otto_English
What dark satanic mills? This was a line from a poem written 220 years ago anticipating the effects of industrialisation. We’ve done that and actually de-industrialised since, the stupid fucking berk.
@danwootton
His revolution so far has left me without freedom of movement, stuck on an impoverished island that is on its way to global nonentity status. He’ s also played a pivotal role in the covid deaths of 70k.
@Peston
And why? Because the entire print media and most broadcasters have declared war on Corbyn and Labour for the past three years while constantly giving Theresa May a free pass over the awkward matter of the 120k. To react with surprise that you’re not too welcome is disingenuous
@AkanKwaku
It’s a tactic fascists have been employing for a while. Articulate some relatively left, anti imperialist positions and get follows from the slightly dopier ends of our movement, then gradually drip feed anti semitism (of the real, not confected variety) and Islamophobia too.
@soapachu
I would love to have been at the branding meeting. “Let’s call it Ring, it reminds people of functionality and it’s got a day-to-day familiarity to it, y’know doorbell ringing etc....also it’ll remind people wondering who’s at the door of that terrifying Japanese horror film.”
@Peston
@jeremycorbyn
Would it not be more apt to point out that the Telegraph has utterly misrepresented what has been said, ignored entirely workable ideas and spun some lazy class war narrative?
@Otto_English
Nadine Dorries career is a case study for future historians in the decline of Britain. That this absurd person became a government minister suggests a deep, possibly terminal malaise.
@youwouldknow
People who say “Sorry, I just speak my mind”. It’s now actually legal to grab them by the lapels and shout “well fucking don’t!” directly into their face.
@alexbellars
I always thought that it would be at this level that the penny would drop and people would directly experience life outside the EU. At least they’ve begun to notice they are receiving different treatment, it might take a while for them to join the dots.
@KayBurley
Kay, after many years in the business isn’t it about time you stopped asking ridiculous, reductive questions like this? A very well paid staff member should still walk out on strike to support the not very well paid ones because it’s called solidarity.
@AlexBuxton
For what’s coming, absolutely. An entire region has been tricked into setting itself on fire in the interests of a pack of racist tax dodgers. Our only hope is to reach out to them, not to humiliate them even more and to welcome them back when they realise how much they’ll lose
@DrFrancisYoung
British people love this sort of thing. Other countries focus more on celebrating their deadly technologies but British people ask: “Ooh, did we manage to do something adorably eccentric?”
@PippaCrerar
The endless drip feeding of anti EU madness, in this instance about weights and measurements has worked in the same way. Elderly people who imagine (wrongly as it happens) that the EU has made their lives more complex and confusing gain a deeper sense of certainty by returning…
@GeorgeMonbiot
Yes, it’s not actually a government in that regard (ie put there with the intention of governing) at all. Rather it’s a device for causing highly publicised anarchy while looting happens secretly. As a vehicle for oligarchs it’s been an amazing success.
@brokenbottleboy
What marvellous fun you must be able to have with her:
“Yeah Mary, there’s now a Megatron child who demands to be folded up, and apparently there’s a Fry’s Turkish Delight child, yep, that’s right, you write it down…yes, it lives it a foil package.”
@Otto_English
@Yeah_ThatBloke
I’ve worked in state and private schools both good and not so good. The key advantage private ones have (the only distinguishing feature) is small class sizes. It’s basically what parents pay for and could be easily fixed in the state sector if the government ever chose to.
BREAKING: We just disrupted
@Keir_Starmer
's speech to say, 'No more u-turns, we need a Green New Deal now!'
We need politicians who will take our futures seriously and tackle the climate and economic crisis facing us all.
It's time for Labour to be bold.
@christopherhope
@Jacob_Rees_Mogg
I have absolutely no idea what’s meant to be happening here. Mogg communicates that he doesn’t operate in the 21st, or even the last third of the 20th Century, and the Telegraph reporting this like it’s an amazing coup. I’m guessing Telegraph readers love this sort of nonsense.
@RichardGyseman
I’m starting to think that reshaping the country to suit fishermen isn’t working out. Can we put school dinner ladies in charge next time we do something big?
@KatyFBrand
@Winskillfull
How did we reach a point where those of no discernible talent are empowered to torment those with so much talent we only ever get to glimpse a fraction of it. Points to a rot at the heart of our society.
@GregHands
I will mention this to my five year old son and hen he’s older and also explain how a pack of lying careerists hitched to a racist fantasy took the opportunity to live and work in 27 different countries from him and his friends. May they damn your party forever.
@Isaac_Ricca
My socialism was found in Crown Court as a reporter. I generally saw wealthy people deciding the fate of poor, desperate, alienated people without judging the circumstances that had created their desperation. It was a way of bludgeoning them and everyone else to accept injustice
@DavidLammy
I notice that for the other 364 days of the year you say nothing about the assassinations, house demolitions and confiscations, the settler colonialism, the raids, bombings or the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people. Could that be part of a wider context here?
@rtredgett24
@Peston
When I retreat into fascist ethnic nationalism you can make that claim but until then it’s a nonsense. Trump’s attacks on the press are designed to keep him out of prison, Labour’s issue with the press is that it’s often owned by Trump’s billionaire friends. Think before posting.
@brokenbottleboy
I interviewed him once about a book of daringly misanthropic views he’d banged out. Other than Bill Oddie, genuinely the rudest and most boorish person I’ve sat in front of with a notepad.
@TSubtext
@GeorgeMonbiot
Well yes. At the time as a naive 24 year old I was shocked. Then I understood that it was code for ‘if it didn’t happen to wealthy people it isn’t a story’, which speaks volumes about the rotten anti democratic nature of much of the press.
@JeremyVineOn5
@AvaSantina
@mikeparry8
@theJeremyVine
Is an end to habeus corpus a step too far? Is internment a step too far? Is giving the Met powers of arbitrary arrest a step too far? Is putting our civil liberties in the hands of the most corrupt institution of the state a bit much? Ooh it’s a proper head scratcher today.
@TanyaGold1
I will say, as a recovering alcoholic, that nobody gets to walk away from the consequences of their drinking like that. I didn’t stay sober for 19 years by shrugging off past transgressions because I was drunk. He will have to own it like everyone else.
@SimonJonesNews
And are they ok? It’s a really dangerous crossing. Oh and they almost never simply migrants, they’re asylum seekers, which is perfectly legal in international law. Do you choose the framing or is it an editorial line handed downwards?
@SoVeryBritish
Getting your foot caught in an escalator even though it seems impossible. This fear was placed in the minds of the British people by the Sandman of micro worries - Esther Rantzen
@orridge_anna
Thanks Anna, I am grateful for your words, it’s the intelligence and eloquence of the young woman being interviewed that made me think again
@guardian
Why? Why report this? ‘Self publicist who knows how to effectively market her own provocateur brand says thing she knows won’t ever happen but will make people angry’ - that’s the actual headline. It’s a non story with a person who periodically appears on Question Time.
@mrjamesob
@FabBosco
@tonygallagher
I would like to report the editorial staff of the Sun over the last three decades for losing their collective shit over bendy bananas and imaginary fears that Eurocrats will ban fry ups and Cornish pasties
@GeorgeMonbiot
When people ask ‘why are they soincompetent’ it’s by design. This is the first government ever that means to break things and intends to leave us poor and desperate. Toryism has reached the end of its road and this is about ensuring the perpetuation of class rule.
#Brexiters
@Otto_English
She has that look that people get in about season four of Twin Peaks when the plot finally gets too confusing for anyone and we just start guessing.
Hancock to George Osborne on his affair/rule breaking: “I’m thinking of going human, apologising for letting people down and then the PM backs me hard.”
@GeorgeMonbiot
@ExtinctionR
The idea that you can’t have progressive ideas until you’re so poor that you can’t engage in politics anyway because every day is a desperate battle for survival has a surprising longevity.
@Layo_FH
I mean what if, and this is only a what if, the policies on offer are genuinely unconvincing and the reason for that is that Labour is trying to pass off the fantasy that a few reforms of planning will counter 14 years of austerity?
@LMalloy
A friend had a can of Safeway tomato soup he’d bought in 1993 and never opened. He came to treasure it and gifted it to me in 2001, and I kept it until 2009. My girlfriend (now wife) moved in and got rid of it. I sometimes think about that can.
@Paul__Craven
Yes, and he can afford basically anything he needs. Accepting gifts or payments in kind is him setting the tone for how corrupt the next five years will be.
@brokenbottleboy
Fucking hell. I don’t know why so am shocked by this twerp, but this is properly depraved. Some of the most damaged, lost, broken men I’ve done counselling work with have been former boarders.
@Otto_English
@OliverDowden
Reginald Maudling left it as a note for Wilson’s incoming government in 1964 and it’s been a standing joke between Chancellors ever since and the reason everyone knows it’s a joke is that STATES WITH SOVEREIGN CURRENCIES DON’T RUN OUT OF MONEY!
@bbclaurak
It seems odd that Putin would have assisted the only party that proposed to flush his dirty money out of the City of London. I’m sure this has probably occurred to you too, but to discuss it would be straying into the mysterious realms of ‘journalism’.