Katherine O'Donnell
@kathy__odonnell
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Journalist, parent to two grown-ups, LGBTI rights campaigner, board member Equality Network, former night editor of The Times, Scotland. she/her
Dordogne, Aquitaine
Joined February 2011
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Pinned Tweet
I've had enough of Musk and I'm in the process of moving my social media.
You can now find me on Blue Sky and with a placeholder account on Threads.
I'll continue posting here for a while, but I'd rather we were there! Kathy x
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The question is not whether Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak should resign after breaking the law and the Ministerial Code - of course they should.
The question is what can we do when they refuse and the PM is the only one with the power to police it?
We can't go on like this.
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French health workers who died in the pandemic to be awarded ‘died in service of the Republic’ status that guarantees state financial and moral obligations to their children. Health workers got a 10% pay rise.
The UK? 1%, the clap, debt.
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Here's some solid research.
What % of lesbians DON'T support trans rights?
75%?
50%?
25%?
You'd think from traditional and social media that it would be a high number.
But it isn't.
The real figure is 4%.
The public is being misled.
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It is four years since I worked for The Times. Sometimes I hear stuff ... but I don't know why this story on Carrie Johnson was cut after being published in early editions.
Yet cut it was. How are readers supposed to trust a paper that does this without explaining why?
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There is no greater honour than NOT being honoured by Johnson’s government.
Well done, John Bercow!
John Bercow becomes the first speaker in 230 years not to be offered an honour after stepping down
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Last year, in full knowledge of Johnson’s dishonesty and other terrible flaws, The Times urged readers to vote for him.
It was an act of breathtaking cynicism. Johnson was never fit to govern.
This isn’t a change of heart. It’s the prelude to a change of rider to Gove.
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Transphobia rots brains and leads to the most despicable behaviour possible.
How far removed from your humanity would you need to be to troll the mother of a murdered child?
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As a former night editor of the Times, allow me to explain what this morning's front means.
The biggest story anywhere is that the Govt has been caught red handed in a despicable lie to the public.
But what readers get is some anodyne vaccine story as the splash (or lead) ...
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A huge loss for Scotland. In my four decades in journalism, Nicola Sturgeon is one of the very few politicians who has consistently impressed me.
BREAKING: Nicola Sturgeon to resign as Scottish first minister
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Before she was murdered, Brianna Ghey, like all trans people in the UK, had to listen to politicians like Sunak mock and degrade trans people.
Her mum and dad heard it, too, and worried for their daughter's future.
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Many years ago I briefly worked with Ted Verity, apparently the new editor of the Daily Mail.
I recall him as one of the most wretched and inadequate people I’ve ever met. And in Fleet St journalism, that’s a high bar to clear.
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My old paper
@thetimes
in a obsequious swoon over Johnson while the deaths yesterday of 881 people (plus a thousand care home deaths missing from govt figures) aren’t mentioned until paragraph 8.
This isn’t journalism, it’s shameful propaganda.
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What the hell is wrong with editors at
@BBCNews
still leading on Johnson? He is NOT the story. The story is:
Huge death toll
Where are the resources?
Who’s in charge and with what powers?
What evidence of competence?
If none, who is competent and how to put them in charge?
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If the first president of an independent Scotland turns out to be a woman whose gut instinct is to tell fascists where to stick it, I shall be happy.
Well done
@NicolaSturgeon
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... it inside. And I'm sure that's right. But this is no accident. Weigh the stories for yourself - lies that should bring down a government or a so-what Cabinet spat. Which do think matters?
Times readers, you're being had. The editor thinks you're dimwits.
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Starmer’s statement that there’s no case for the UK rejoining the EU is going to stick with me.
Clearly there is a case and a good one.
How can this man be so utterly defeated by a lie?
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The claim that Johnson can't resign during a war is beyond ridiculous.
The UK is not at war.
Other PMs have resigned at times of far greater crisis.
He is obliged to go.
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I cannot see how, in these circumstances, the UK can be said to be a functioning democracy.
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If it surprises you that women's centres like this are trans inclusive and have been for decades, then I hope you can begin to see how thoroughly misleading and dishonest is much of our national media reporting on this subject.
We have been open to all women, including trans women, since 1998. Far from a ‘threat’ to our community, trans women have safely accessed our services and positively contributed to NWC for 22 years without issue. See our statement and some further reading:
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This should be read by all journalists, and in particular by my former colleagues.
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Shall we take a close look at today’s splash in the Times Scotland edition? I think there’s something very wrong with it and that readers aren’t being told the whole story. See what you think.
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The publisher of the study which invented ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ admits that the science was faulty, issues correction and apology.
Theories on trans ‘contagion’ are bunk - just like theories on gay/lesbian ‘contagion’.
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Fact is, the Johnson government recently granted Murdoch release from a binding agreement that kept him from exercising direct editorial control at The Times.
Now, if Murdoch were to order a story expunged because it embarrassed a political chum, expunged it would be.
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... of super-sense news judgement. It should be obvious to everyone that the public is really, really angry about this and the story is moving fast. What you are seeing is a bald attempt to manipulate readers. Doubtless someone will be along to say ah, but they've covered ...
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@DawnButlerBrent
saying what has long needed to be said in the House - Boris Johnson has repeatedly lied to MPs.
Bravo, Dawn.
Breaking:
Courageous Labour MP
@DawnButlerBrent
has just been told to leave the Chamber by Deputy Speaker for raising my film which public have sent to 27 MILLION VIEWS in protest at Prime Ministers rampant lying in Parliament & calling PM a lier
Thank you for your courage Dawn
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I’ll say it again and apologies for raising my voice but EVERY news organisation should be over this story like a rash.
NEW: Explosive new emails detail work Cambridge Analytica did for LeaveEU/UKIP. Brittany Kaiser, woman at centre of Netflix's
#TheGreatHack
has handed over a whole bunch of new emails to DCMS committee. Oh dear, Arron Banks. Looks like it's all coming home to roost...
🔥 🔥 🔥
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When Ted Verity was appointed editor of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, I tweeted that he was one of the most wretched, inadequate people I'd ever worked with in journalism. Now you can see why.
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That's how press freedom is eroded. Under John Witherow the Times has rattled on about free speech while spreading harmful lies about minorities. It has been feeble and partisan in its reporting on the greatest political scandals of modern times.
Now this. It's a disgrace.
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Thanks to my case against the Times I can share with you these emails.
Here News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks responds to my concerns over a 2016 Jeremy Clarkson article on the Sunday Times in which he characterised trans people as criminals, prostitutes and NHS swindlers.
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... and the PM and a dozen others caught lying to the country is downplayed to a picture of Allegra Stratton and a caption. The coded message to readers here is: 'This is a thing but it's just something to tut about. See inside if you can be bothered'.
This isn't some kind ...
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This is the consequence of the social media bile, the articles and the column inches and false ‘concern’ that turn trans lives into debate and seek to legitimise bigotry.
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As a journalist I’m glad I’m not covering the Salmond inquiry, because it allows me to observe that the flagrant hypocrisy of Scottish Tory MSPs and MPs on my timeline makes me want to puke.
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UK Govt has handed out £900 million in contracts to Tory donors (and that's just the £900 million we know about).
Nurses in England and Wales are told to expect a 1 per cent rise - £3.50 a week. This morning heath minister Nadine Dorries said it was "all the Govt could afford".
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A direct link between the anti-trans hate group LGB Alliance and the opaque far right wing lobbyist hive 55 Tufton Street. It appears that's LGBA's address.
Knock me down with a feather.
I trust that in future all hacks platforming the views of LGB Alliance will mention this.
Wonder why Ofcom would be writing to the LGB Alliance at 55 Tufton Street 🤔
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Unbearable, unbearable image - and the very reason we must look at it and hold it in our minds.
The path to genocide begins with words of hatred and othering.
A heart-breaking moment captured in an SS photograph of a group of Hungarian Jews near gas chamber IV at
#Auschwitz
II-Birkenau in or around May 1944.
A child found a flower & is giving or showing it to an older boy.
All the people in the picture were gassed moments later.
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Hello and welcome to the many new followers. I feel this is a good moment to tell you where I stand on Scottish independence, so bear with me as it may be a bit of a thread. I’ve never had any truck with the claim that Scotland couldn’t thrive as ...
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Good morning - and what a very good morning it is, with unquestionably crushing rejection of
@Conservatives
by voters in Tiverton & Honiton and Wakefield.
Even better, Oliver Dowden, the ‘culture wars’ stoker and Tory co-chair has quit.
Chef’s kisses to Lib Dems and Labour.
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You don’t need me to rehash the wretched history of Rupert Murdoch. But watch.
Watch as the Times puts its weight behind Gove. Like Johnson, he’s a man of low integrity and pitifully ability and utterly unfit to be PM. But he’s Murdoch’s man and the paper’s voice is Murdoch’s.
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A letter signed by 338 (utterly wonderful) members of staff
@guardian
is strongly critical of the paper’s transphobic editorial line and calls on editor
@KathViner
to change course.
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Lifting all restrictions in England — and especially the wearing of masks — before vaccination numbers are high enough is to condemn more people to long term suffering and others to death. It also helps the rise of more deadly variants.
This has to stop. Johnson must be removed.
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@UKLabour
@mcashmanCBE
I don't know a single trans person who believes that Labour in its current incarnation cares a jot or is listening at all. You have utterly failed us.
DO YOU HEAR US?
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Staff at The Stand have every right to withhold their labour. I find Joanna Cherry's views repellent. So, apparently, do they.
There's no sacred duty to do work that enables someone to spread ideas that you find repulsive.
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If you want evidence of just how low the Times has sunk, think on the mendacity of its latest about turn on Johnson.
They knew he wasn’t fit.
They knew he’d do us harm.
Tens of thousands have died needlessly because of his incompetence.
We’re facing ruin.
Yet they said nothing.
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@adamndsmith
Ditum’s facile arguments are easily exposed.
I’m a former senior Times journalist who has commissioned plenty of columns. I think it’s fair to say that this fails every test and shouldn’t have been published.
That it was, is evidence of the Times’ transphobic editorial policy.
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If you think gender comes down XX or XY or what’s observed between your legs at birth, you’re as ignorant as Trump, say 700 scientists, 100 geneticists and 9 Nobel laureates
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By any measure this is not good journalism. It should not be on a front page in this form and certainly not anywhere at all without a health warning to readers about its source, the Henry Jackson Society.
What a mess The Times has become.
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Thanks for the many interesting replies.
I agree we need fundamental constitutional change.
A republic with an elected, non-executive HoS.
A written constitution.
Proportional representation.
Elected houses only.
There’s loads more but this is a tweet not a manifesto!
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Essential reading.
The links between Gove, Trump and Murdoch are well established. Now, with Trump on the way out there will be frantic rowing back. Murdoch has already dumped him. Johnson is fatally exposed and Gove ...? He'll be rewriting his past and covering his tracks.
Michael Gove’s Lobbyists at the Heart of White Nationalist Trumpworld
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Sunak’s rules on who gets help are arbitrary and cruel and are driving people to take their own lives.
The government’s job in a crisis is to help everyone. They are failing us all.
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@Otto_English
From the 70s to the late-80s, Canterbury was pretty much on its arse. The post-war reconstruction was spent, the shops dying. You are right, it was tourism, and the French daytrippers, that turned it around. Damn Brexit and its stupidity.
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Michael Gove broke the law. That’s the ruling of the high court. It wasn’t a trivial matter, but he treats it as such and he refuses to resign.
When ministers are openly contemptuous of the law, our democracy is in big trouble.
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There is no more explicitly hateful act than Johnson deciding to ban 'conversion therapy' torture EXCEPT for trans people.
There are children and young trans people being put through hell by frightened and ignorant parents and the charlatans, cranks and bigots who prey on them.
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Tens of thousands marched in cities across France and Belgium to proclaim their solidarity with trans people and opposition to the far right.
[DIRECT] Plusieurs milliers de personnes à Paris pour les droits trans et contre l’offensive de la droite et de l'extrême-droite !
Une mobilisation portée, entre autres, par
@Pain_Et_Roses
qui se tient dans plus de 50 villes. À suivre ici ⤵️
#5mai
#RiposteTrans
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Why should internal shenanigans at a newspaper matter?
Because journalism conducted with integrity and vigour is our bulwark against government by criminals, rogues and despots.
When an editor answers to a proprietor rather than to their conscience and the readers we are lost.
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When transphobic trolls turn up in this thread, please just block them. Don't respond. That's what they crave.
Just block them into non-existence.
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The vast majority of Covid19 deaths in the UK could have been averted by swift and decisive action from the UK Govt.
‘Government Could Have Saved More Than 100,000 Lives During Pandemic’, Says Former Chief Scientist – Byline Times..
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Johnson puts a political chum in charge of the BBC who then cancels a popular show - The Mash Report - because it satirises the Government and doesn’t meet the political appointee’s desire for more conservative, patriotic TV.
Politicians are controlling what you watch. Scared?
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You can get your news from a billionaire’s mouthpiece where they think ethics is a county in southeast England ... or you can subscribe to
@BylineTimes
Fewer than 40 subscriptions to go to reach our goal of 15,000 so we can set up a research unit, investigate more & commission more journalism. Your support is amazing! Please RT & tell friends...
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That’s not serving our democracy.
That’s not serving the readers.
That’s not journalism.
I cared deeply about my work at the Times and had respect and affection for its many fine journalists.
Ceding editorial independence has made it just an instrument of its proprietor.
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Why Gove? Because he’s Murdoch’s man and because the government-guaranteed editorial independence of The Times from its owner was broken with the appointment of John Witherow as editor against the wishes of the paper’s own independent editorial board.
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As a journalist, I really don’t think that Piers Morgan should be sacked on the basis of a Twitter poll.
However, I do think that his abysmal track record of journalistic failures should have disqualified him from being hired in the first place.
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I’ve just spent a year renovating a French farmhouse. I dare say a benefactor has paid for it without me knowing, because this, according to the No10, is just how things work.
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The editor of the Daily Mail is Ted Verity. I worked with him many years ago. He is one of the least adequate people I've met in journalism (it's a low bar).
His paper has been hating on migrants for years. Yesterday, he thought he could erase that with a single front page.
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To be clear, the author of the Independent Press Standards Organisation
@IpsoNews
report into UK press coverage of trans issues is a trustee of the group LGB Alliance, which exists solely to attack trans people and rights.
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It wasn't just at PMQs. They could hear it on the BBC's Today program, Woman's Hour and Newsnight. It was on GB News, LBC, Talk Radio. They could read it in The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Telegraph, Express, Sun, Mirror, and even the Guardian and Observer.
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As is rightly pointed out, NHS workers in Scotland on the lowest grades get 4%.
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As predicted, no consequences for Clarkson at
@ITV
Imagine being a POC contestant having to sit in the chair opposite him knowing how he feels about women of colour?
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@MartinBarrow
Also ex-Times staff. I agree.
Baker is the ventriloquised voice of the proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, who signed an undertaking that forbids him any editorial influence in the Times. That undertaking, demanded by the UK Government as a condition of ownership, remains in force.
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Exceptionally ill-judged by
@scotlandinunion
Neither side should ever attempt to set tone like this.
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While we are on the subject of James Slack, shall we consider how journalistic ethics are compromised?
The job of a journalist is to get to the truth and report it without fear or favour to readers.
Slack knows every dirty secret of the government, including this party scandal...
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Calling all gender criticals and other transphobes!
Guess who’s on your team?
Guess who quotes JK Rowling?
Why it’s your favourite despot, President Putin of the Russian Federation.
Do you feel seen?
I think you do.
Vladimir Putin uses annual four-hour speech to attack trans people for no reason other than hate
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More on the behaviour of Dan Wootton while at NewsUK. It's no surprise to me that the HR dept didn't look out for his victims and helped cover up his behaviour or that promotions and pay rises kept flowing.
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Trans people then, yesterday Harry and Meghan Markle. Clarkson's views are vile. There's no imperative to publish them. But Brooks seems to find it funny.
Tell me, Rebekah, is it funny that Clarkson has called for a black woman to be stripped naked and pelted with excrement?
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Scottish Parliament has voted YES 88 to NO 33 (4 abstentions) to pass the first stage of an update to the Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
This is positive and long overdue progress for trans people. Thanks to all who have worked so hard and have endured so much to get us here.
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I won’t link to Catherine Bennett’s piece in the Guardian about defining what is and what is not transphobic. But I will say that it is people who are trans who get to decide - not her, not newspaper editors or ignorant judges or those who call themselves ‘gender critical’.
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I'm sorry to hear Peter Higgs has died. He was my neighbour and we chatted about this and that.
What I never told him was that seeing him pass by James Clerk Maxwell's house, shopping bag in hand was, for me, like watching Einstein walk past Newton's apple tree.
Peter Higgs, physicist who discovered Higgs boson, dies aged 94
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Word is that Tories have lost Edinburgh Central to SNP’s Angus Robertson.
Good.
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Friends, I give you Randy Rainbow, the greatest living American.
🎶Who can cheat like The Don, Who can eat like The Don, Who might start World War III with a tweet like The Don..🎶
#ThatDon
#IMPOTUS
#ImpeachmentHoax
#KeepAmericaDisney
🍻🌈🙄🇺🇸
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Ha! Right on cue. This is Times-speak for "Isn't it about time you made way for Michael...?"
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No bill passed by the Scottish Parliament has been so throughly scrutinised as the Gender Recognition Reform Act. It went through with a large majority as the will off the Scottish Parliament. Of course the UK Govt effort to block it should be resisted and challenged.
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@KennyFarq
But above all you are there on behalf of your readers and in the service of truth and objectivity. And when that is clouded or impeded by all of the other things then as a political journalist you have failed. That is the criticism directed at Kunessberg and in my view, fair.
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Tomorrow on Woman’s Hour we ask: No dogs, no Irish no coloureds - were we too hasty in letting them have rights? Jane speaks to a racist and somebody who isn’t a racist.
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Think you have a handle on the arguments about trans people in sport? The chances are you’ve been misled. If you want a better understanding, read this interview with cyclist Emily Bridges
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Kemi Badenoch caught in a lie. She claimed she was consulting with 'LGBT' groups when the record reveals she actually met only with two anti-trans hate groups.
In December, Kemi Badenoch said she had "engaged extensively with LGBT groups in my role as Minister for Women & Equalities".
I sent a FOI request to find out which groups. They've delayed responding as the information is subject to a "public interest test".
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*chef kiss*
French foreign minister says France didn't recall the British ambassador over the AUKUS row because France is familiar with the UK's "permanent opportunism" and said Boris Johnson was the "fifth wheel on the carriage".
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ear (and the chequebook) of UK ministers that claims Iran is trying to meddle in Scottish politics. The Times should be aware of all of this yet doesn’t mention a word of it to readers. Not a single caveat. Odd, don’t you think?
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Every single word of this.
And then every single word again.
There's nothing wrong with our young people.
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Putin here very animated over Britain pushing ahead with Brexit. I'd not seen this before. Fascinating. Wonder why it would seem so important to him, eh?
Well this is fascinating resurfaced video.
Putin was insistent that May completed on Brexit. He seems to really care about it.
He, of all people, citing the “democracy” imperative to remove public power to reevaluate it, is bemusing.
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The abuse heaped on
@LindaRiley8
for standing up publicly for trans people when she spoke on BBC Woman’s Hour is stark, undeniable evidence of how ignorance, bigotry and prejudice have been mobilised.
You may feel that trans people are the least of your worries right now...
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more tax and that individuals and business that seek to pay less than their fair share should be held to account. I want the arts to be valued and helped at least as much as commerce. We have lots to talk about. Hello.
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It was everywhere and quite reasonably they, like most parents, will have feared for her safety in a society where irrational hatred had taken such a violent hold.
I'll say it again: This all happened before she was murdered.
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Bravo Dame Kelly Holmes: “I totally support my Trans siblings. I have been ignorant in the past about the fight of the Trans community and I now want to see fair and conclusive outcome for those whose gender differs from that assigned at birth.”
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Salmond’s Alba Party members are propagating old and vile lies about LGBTIQ people.
Be in no doubt about what Alba is and what it is about. These are the worst of people. How they behave now is how they will behave if elected. Send them packing.
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@GMB
@adilray
@kategarraway
Why on earth are you giving Stanley Johnson a platform?
Have no lessons been learned? Johnson assaulted his first wife, breaking her nose. He repeats and amplifies his son's lies. What could viewers possibly learn from him?
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@ManMadeMoon
@Otto_English
@calvinrobinson
Fucking Beaker People.
Coming over here with their la-di-dah beakers.
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So, what is the source of this story? It’s a report by the Henry Jackson Society, a right-wing think tank and lobbying organisation and written by an academic employed by them called Dr Paul Stott. What are his credentials? Dr Stott is an academic and apparently an expert on
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Henry Jackson Society members past and present have links to the US far-right and to Trump and to anti-Islamic and white supremacy individuals and groups, including Steve Bannon and Breitbart, the Gatestone Institute and the Mercers.
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Well,
@grantshapps
this is embarrassing, wouldn’t you say?
With the
#RussiaReport
back in the news everyone should watch this shocking interview as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps misleads
#BBCBreakfast
viewers (unchallenged) on its findings
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@duncanda51
By the time of this article The Times and I had already parted company after I had repeatedly protested unethical, untrue and bigoted journalism in the paper to the editor and the CEO.
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