Robyn Vinter [email protected]
@RobynVinter
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North of England correspondent @guardian, council estate dweller, injustice complainer, joke attempter. Fellow @risj_oxford 🏳️🌈
Leeds, England
Joined January 2010
For the pin: I'm not really using this hellsite currently. If you're that one person who reads my work (thank you), every depressing story is on the Guardian app. To contact me, robyn.vinter@theguardian.com. If you're after bants/japes, I'm doing my best over on insta 💪.
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Person at an event: oh hi, I know you from twitter.Me: . sorry remind me?.Person: *says his name, full job title, things we talked about*.Me: . er. ?.Person: my profile picture is a banana?.Me: Banana!!! How are you?! So great to meet in real life!.
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Weird how black people protesting are "rioters" but white people rioting are "protesters". English is such a quirky language.
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Do you remember when Gordon Brown wrote a handwritten letter to the mother of a dead soldier and his handwriting was bad because he's blind in one eye and it occupied a week's worth of headlines, with The Sun calling it "shameful"? Seems like a different world.
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Britain be like.Drive: 40 min.Public transport: 9 hrs 25 min.
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One of Enid Blyton's more adventurous stories.
Five arrested after 110mph police pursuit in North Yorkshire
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I recently learnt a fun fact: the reason the streets on the Monopoly board are a mix of well-known and obscure London locations is because the UK rights were bought by Waddingtons, based in Leeds, and they had no idea about London. They decided it all based on one research trip.
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Inspired by this BBC piece, I would like to see the last normal pic on your phone
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This guy sits unelected in the House of Lords.
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Sorry but this cannot be a new concept for Americans
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Oh hai, it's Camilla, the producer on a TV show. I'm casting a debate about the Premier League. Is there anyone who has never seen a football match, has never played football and who doesn't think football exists? You'll be up against a professional footballer and we need balance.
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The last 60-year-old ex-miner I met was a Corbynite who cycled round his ex-colliery town because he was passionate about climate change. Working class northerners are not the bigoted people you're looking for.
Tip for Labour: care a little less about the views of 19-year-old gender studies students and a little more about those of 60-year-old ex-miners.
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My mum and dad coming back from a weekend away in 2005: "why is the windowsill broken and this picture smashed?".Me: "I understand and share the anger but I have been assured there was no party and I apologise unreservedly for the impression given".
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BBC News seems to be in editorial crisis at the moment. Terrified to hold the government to account, desperately picking on vulnerable communities in an effort to do hard-hitting journalism. Just awful to watch it drag down the reputation of the entire organisation.
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I've become so addicted to Greggs vegan sausage rolls this year that I basically now think of pounds as sausage roll tokens.
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"children? why, there haven't been children in this house for seventy five years".
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My sister is a nurse and she accidentally printed her contract on the blood printer
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My friend just messaged to say London Pride this year is full of "straights who like attention" which I know can't possibly be true because I'm literally watching them all at glasto.
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As of today it's now too dark outside after work to do any of my normal running routes alone. This is peak "jealous of men" season.
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In my 20s I needed to sign something for the bank but my signature didn't match what they had on file. After a lot of back and forth, I eventually managed to find the original signature. It was from when I was 10 and instead of a dot over the i, I'd drawn a dolphin.
Passwords: every password must be completely unique, with fourteen characters all from different languages.Signatures: the one you came up with when you were nine is fine.
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The BBC seems to have this fabulous social media policy where it swoops in immediately to take control over the content of employees' tweets but appears to leave them completely alone in dealing with abuse and negativity.
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are they more likely to bring lightning home from school and accidentally kill their grandad with it though?.
Our Daily Telegraph splash today: School age children more likely to be hit by lightning than die of coronavirus
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Whoever wished on the monkey paw for politics to be "more interesting" please own up.
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I've now seen so many well-meaning but patronising responses from London-based people to this now. It's very tedious. If it's a surprise to you that an ordinary northern woman dares lay into the prime minister and is quite articulate, you're part of the problem.
"People have died because of austerity, and you’ve got the cheek to come here and tell us austerity's over and it's all good now.". That's what one woman told Boris Johnson during a visit to Doncaster, but he said his government was putting more money into public services.
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I think we've got to be honest here - it's not safe for working class women to question police or resist arrest. It's infuriating to hear them advise us to "shout to a passerby or run into a house", as if you wouldn't find yourself with additional charges.
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I can't help thinking the reason modern private members clubs are broken is because genuinely cool, creative, exciting people have no money and then eventually nobody wants to join a club full of grey-haired suits
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I really like Rosamund Pike but my eyes are rolling completely off my face that she (boarding school->Oxford) identifies with the working class character in the film because she didn't know the dress code for the races
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Me watching Have I Got News For You with my family: that's my story they're talking about. My family: oh right. Me: yeah I wrote those words there on the screen. Them: oh ok.
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There is something very worrying happening in journalism. Last year, 80% of journalists came from the top social classes (compared with 75% in 2020). That's an absolutely atrocious figure that we should be completely ashamed of. We simply do not represent the people we serve.
Our 2022 Diversity in Journalism report is published today. Our research programme, including reports like this, is vital to present the facts, highlight the real issues and measure progress. It is also important that we take action. Read more:
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Do you remember that time Gordon Brown called someone a bigoted woman and we were like "holy shit, could the news get any crazier than this?!".
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@nevali Even at the time the bacon sandwich reaction was beyond belief but it seems even more unhinged in the modern context.
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I still cannot get over the fact that Carrie Johnson is only 33. No amount of proximity to power or perception of influence is worth wasting the prime of your life on being married to a gross guy who kind of seems like he doesn't give a shit about you.
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Something I've noticed that nobody is saying. Local lockdowns in West Yorkshire have been royally fucked up and it's a sign of fucked up things to come for the rest of the UK. (A concise thread).
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I can't believe it's 2023 and TV channels are still commissioning shows where a privately educated presenter goes to live on a council estate to see what it's like.
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Just in case anyone thought I was exaggerating
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Every time research is done on this subject, it shows working class people are less homophobic, less racist, less xenophobic etc than the rest of the population. I'm so tired of the narrative that it's the opposite.
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I spoke to everyone who was involved in reporting the story of the little boy in the hospital, the Tory lies that became top journalists' tweets and the fake Facebook posts that undermined the truth
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I will never understand how people find the time for affairs.
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I feel like the abbreviations tbsp and tsp make baking unnecessarily stressful.
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Was going to read a book tonight but I didn't realise the season finale of the United States is on.
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Probably hard for the insurers to call this an act of God.
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Important Greggs news: my sources say the vegan steak bake is landing on Thursday.
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🎉 Delighted that the Guardian has finally put a ring on it after years of flirtation. I'll be on the northern desk for a year from July (based in Leeds) so if you have any stories or anything you'd like me to poke my nose into while I'm there, DM me (email and Signal to come) 🎉.
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Hello, I'm not looking for "solutions"!!! I've been doing this for many years and believe it or not I have thought of running clubs, chaperones, running at lunchtime, running along busy roads, etc. I don't want that. I simply want the freedom to do what men do.
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I know this goes against everything we've been raised to believe but I absolutely love it when people name drop. I wanna know who you know, who you've met.
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@EldenRay Yes! Sometimes I just decide someone is tall or short and it doesn't matter what they look like in real life.
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I think what depresses me most about Labour's failure to retain Hartlepool is how much we're going to have to hear about what went wrong from people in London who have no interest in the electorate except as numbers on a screen.
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I'm watching a man on the train read a story I wrote in the paper right now and he's reading the whole thing! Right to the end! I could not be more delighted.
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This is me in a charity shop, taking a picture of a mirror I thought I might go back for. I'm assuming it's still there
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“It became the bane of my life the last couple of years. It wasn’t really making any money.”. Boo fucking hoo.
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This is arguably the worst day in decades to be trying to negotiate a mortgage. Guess what I'm doing today.
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@IsabelleOC Tbh that's usually exactly how it goes for me. "omg Banana! I speak to him literally every day!".
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What's the stereotype for your name? On TV shows and in movies, Robyn/Robin is almost always a sexy tomboy. She's scrappy, does a tough job, some kind of hard upbringing or past trauma, etc etc.
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Never before have I covered a case where I personally have been contacted unsolicited by so many conspiracy theorists, armchair detectives and psychics wanting me to investigate something or pass it to police on their behalf
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A quick thread about pitches for newbie journalists (since I've got hundreds in my inbox that I'm currently sorting through). .
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If you enjoyed this tweet, you may also enjoy helping independent investigative journalists in the north of England
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Didn't think I'd have to say this but this isn't a tweet about football.
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The whiplash when you're celebrating the lovely talented nice footballers and then it cuts to the stands and you remember what people in England actually look like. Brings you back down to earth with a bump.
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Do people in the south know we can read up here? I only ask because everything I've read from a national newspaper about the north in the last few weeks has had very glaring factual errors and/or treated us as if we're some kind of untouched Amazonian tribe they've discovered.
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Not only is it cruel to moralise about people whose habits are often a coping mechanism for an otherwise quite shitty life but it's actually wrong to say they cost the NHS more. Those who die young cost a hell of a lot less over their lifetimes than those who live into old age :/.
My live fast, die young youth was fun, but I don’t expect the NHS to pick up the pieces | James Bethell
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The venn diagram of people who think media studies isn't a real subject and who share those "the mainstream media isn't covering this" posts is a circle.
7,557 A level students took French. 19,517 took media studies. This is a crisis.
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Clearly I've managed to offend people by calling Boris Johnson gross. Just to be clear, if I was referring solely to his looks, I would have called him a minger. This is about the whole package. There's literally nothing redeeming about him. He's horrible in every possible way.
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Either Barclays is doing some kind of weird joke or I ticked the wrong box on the bank account application form
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This is a remarkable chart from the Times. I haven't been following the property market closely enough but I had no idea house prices haven't gone up across the board (when accounting for inflation)
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Leeds crown court expectations vs reality
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Really chuffed to have grown a pineapple but not gonna lie I expected it to be bigger
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It's very interesting that a lot of Tory MPs today seem genuinely surprised that a man who has consistently treated politics as nothing more than his personal game is treating politics as nothing more than his personal game.
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It's irritating that London people are saying "Leeds Hospital" today, when there are multiple hospitals in Leeds and the LGI isn't even the biggest one. You'd never get someone saying "London Hospital" about St Thomas's. It's not exactly a big deal but like. pls try harder.
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What's the truth then mate if you've got all the answers because I've spent all day calling your colleagues and nobody denied it.
@JayMitchinson Nice headline. Unfortunately it is untrue. Never did I think the Yorkshire Post would ever come down to this. Never.
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Disingenuous considering private healthcare does not reduce waiting lists, it increases them. The NHS and private sector draw on the same pool of medics, which are in short supply, causing delays. Private patients are paying to skip the queue, not removing themselves
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A couple of years ago Nadhim Zahawi tried to bully me on twitter to take down a story I had written that he didn't like. The story was 100% accurate and fair and he couldn't point to a bit of the story that was wrong but he did his best to try to discredit it and me anyway.
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I guess the cat's out of the bag. .
We are thrilled to welcome our 14 new Journalist Fellows. 🇵🇸@habushkhaidem.🇧🇷@luizferteixeira.🇮🇩@nikenriwu.🇺🇾@Guilledraper.🇨🇴@dulcederomerooo.🇩🇰@MortenFrich.🇨🇱@paulamolinat.🇰🇪@moniango.🇳🇴@hannejakobsen.🇮🇳@priti_salian.🇷🇸@_shariceva.🇧🇩@ShuprovaTasneem.🇬🇧@RobynVinter.🇵🇸@Hibamyazbek
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I don't know if this decision was taken by a man, though it seems likely because it was almost certainly someone who has not suffered online abuse (or spent time consoling a friend). The Beeb should have reporting guidelines for producers with no experience of abuse imo.
Dear @bbc, I hope your daughter/wife/sister/female employees never have to deal with this. Because here's the thing. It's not very nice. I don't know whose idea it was to broadcast this to your global audience without talking to me or seeking comment but I really wish you hadn't
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Solidarity with my fellow normal people who live with someone who turns appliances off at the wall.
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A rare foray into opinion again for me, in which I lament how working class people (especially women) so rarely get to tell stories from our own communities on TV
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I promised concise, so here's the summary:. The West Yorkshire fuck-up is solid proof that we can't put the economy first and withstand the pandemic. It's painful but we have no choice other than to take an economic hit. The government is ignoring this and it will kill people.
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Apologies to any Camillas offended, there are just so many Camillas in TV. It's a very "TV" name. Also I acknowledge the people who ring you up are rarely the ones who actually make the decision to pit someone with lifelong experience of racism against a clueless racism-denier.
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What happened to Nick Watt is far from an isolated incident, as many news reporters will confirm. I was at a job only a few weeks ago where broadcasters were harassed by aggressive anti-lockdowners (though on a smaller scale). BBC journalists kindly shared their security with me.
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So this was yesterday and I did in fact win.
*whispers*. Chuffed to find out today that I've been shortlisted for the AOP Publishing Awards in the Local Hero category for the reporting I've done during the pandemic. It's been an emotionally draining few months speaking to people who are hurting, so this is a nice surprise.
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In sad news, I wanted to let everyone know that we've closed The Overtake. I've written a little thing about it here which hopefully sums everything up
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I know people don't want this link shared but it's important that people see this response. I've had a lot of conversations with people who are new to trans rights, who don't understand what's wrong with what Rowling has been saying and are taking her comments at face value.
Since JK Rowling has blocked any reply to this litany of half-truths and transphobic dogwhistles, I thought I'd catalogue them properly here:.
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I honestly assumed police already treated women like human beings with basic needs but apparently that's not the case.
EXC: Women will be offered period products while in police custody under changes to the law
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I can't remember a time when I've seen so many working-class women and girls on TV, thanks to the Euros. We're a demographic that's virtually invisible usually, especially when that platform is about success and ambition, which people don't associate with working-class women.
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A guy in front of me has fallen asleep on the train and I usually wake people up to make sure they don't miss their stop but he made a really loud annoying phone call without earphones earlier sooo.
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This is so shortsighted. Even if the BBC did believe Labour is the wrong choice for Britain, it's going to take decades to undo how much its reporting has undermined trust. Even I (someone who was defending the BBC last week) am struggling to explain this headline.
General election 2019: Corbyn admits lower earners face tax hike under Labour
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These have been some of the views that will be once again available in the spring
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Rarely tweet my Yorkshire Post stories but this one is a national one and an exclusive - "All the poor souls who have done walks and baked cakes think we've had the money but we haven't"
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I nearly forgot to mention that today is my last day at The Yorkshire Post!. I handed in my notice last month to focus on freelance work and take a step back from v intense pandemic reporting. I've got some work lined up but would be grateful for any contacts/commissions/shifts!.
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Absolutely nothing personal at all but that is the problem with the arts in the country being so overloaded with privileged people. Nobody has any sense of perspective whatsoever.
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🎉Some personal news🎉 I'm v excited to join the brilliant @yorkshirepost team later this month as social affairs correspondent. It's part-time (keeping @LindsayPantryYP's seat warm for a bit), so @theovertake will continue as normal. Please DM with anything I should cover :).
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Well @TheGreenParty have played a blinder. So many gains and lots of seats where they were a very close second. I suspect a lot of people who have felt politically homeless over the last couple of years have made their home with them.
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Something that makes journalists' jobs difficult is the hostility towards "the media" from members of the public, which comes from a perception that we're all the same. Even during basic reporting people can be incredibly mistrustful and accuse you of trying to stir up trouble.
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