Peter Walker
@peterwalker99
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Guardian senior political correspondent. DMs open. Email: [email protected] Secure email if needed: [email protected]
London, UK
Joined June 2008
A round of applause, please, for the Guardian colleague who wrote the headline to this story of mine.
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I know Just Stop Oil aren't everyone's cup of tea these days, but should we be worried that people are being jailed for five and four years because of an entirely non-violent protest? I think we probably should.
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Hang on - why is the official Treasury account being used for party political slogans?.
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🧵 Nigel Farage makes his I'm A Celebrity debut tonight, where he will be presented as a purveyor of robust but mainstream rightwing views. A pre-show reminder that he's not: he has regularly aired conspiracy theories linked to antisemitism & far right beliefs. Here's a sample 1/.
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Fantastic line in Mark Drakeford's speech to the Labour conference.
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Rishi Sunak was in Dorset yesterday afternoon and Cornwall today. But rather than stay overnight, he took a helicopter back to London and a jet to Cornwall this morning. Man doesn’t like trains.
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Without wishing to be a bore about this subject, a serving home secretary describing asylum seekers as “an invasion of our southern coast”, and in the Commons, is really striking. It’s the sort of language that a decade or so ago would have been the preserve of the far right.
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Parliament today is 50% first day of school, 50% collapse of Lehman Brothers. Within two minutes I saw groups of new Labour MPs hugging in mutual congratulations, and Therese Coffey wheeling out a pair of gigantic suitcases.
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Whatever your views on the monarchy, these pictures should chill you.
Republican protesters being arrested and their placards confiscated ahead of the coronation.
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Kwasi Kwarteng refuses to discuss the plunge in the pound, saying that as chancellor he cannot discuss "market movements". Really?.
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Rarely in human history has a protest which involved maybe 250 people maximum attracted such media attention (in some quarters).
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I was about to listen to Therese Coffey discuss health & social care policy at the Tory conference… but she’s suddenly not appearing, nor is any other health minister. Not the smoothest day so far for the government.
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I didn't properly clock till just now that Kit Malthouse is the fifth UK education secretary *in the last year*. That's really quite something.
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You know you’re at Conservative conference when the posh French Champagne doesn’t come by the bottle, or the case, but by the trolley-load.
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On the new Kuenssberg BBC1 show, Emily Thornberry is asked what she felt was Liz Truss's strong point when she faced her over international trade. Long pause. Thornberry: "She's very thick skinned.".
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As a quick correction to Richard Tice's comments on ITV, Reform have *not* as yet provided details to prove the identities of some candidates. We emailed them yesterday at 11am with three names (not mentioned in the story) asking for evidence. We are yet to get a reply.
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NEW: Remember this photo of the apparent party in Tory HQ amid lockdown in Dec 2020? Met police say the investigation is over and *no* action was taken against anyone, including mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey - who is now in line for a peerage.
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Among the many questions this raises, why *is* a London-based drinks mixer company co-sponsoring the Republican National Convention?. @FeverTreeMixers.
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Claire Fox says she can’t remember a democratic choice for net zero. Well, apart from the fact that every single major UK party had it in their manifesto in 2019.
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Notable that neither Downing Street or the local Tory MP* have condemned the attack on a Ulez camera with an improvised bomb. Look at these pics (via @BexBitchley ) - someone could easily have been killed. A de facto terror attack in a London suburb would normally merit comment.
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That Jeremy Hunt statement was, basically, a very polite coup. He might as well have delivered it after disembarking from a Chinook in the No 10 garden. Liz Truss is no longer the prime minister.
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New: in a slightly unexpected twist, Reform UK is facing pressure to prove all their election candidates were real people. Reform insist they were, but some stood with no pic, bio, contact or seeming digital footprint - but still got votes.
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Look who turned up at the Lords yesterday evening to make their oath to the King, a full year and two days after their last formal involvement in House of Lords business.
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This ban was introduced in 2012, when Boris Johnson was mayor. This is a dog whistle so loud that even Zac Goldsmith might flinch at it.
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Yet another curiosity of the 45pm U-turn – it was done *after* Liz Truss did a round of ITV regional interviews, but *before* the embargo on the interviews, meaning we now get to watch a series of TV clips of the PM defending a policy she has abandoned.
"NO" - what the PM @trussliz told me just hours ahead of u-turn on the 45p tax rate when I asked her if she would change the plan @itvanglia
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Ed Miliband making mincemeat of Jacob Rees-Mogg's lifting of the fracking pause in the Commons. Calls it a "charter for earthquakes" and a breach of the Tories' 2019 manifesto.
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All these endless, 'Who's in the right?' cycling videos, like the current fuss about the 5yo lad getting close-passed, miss the key point: it doesn't matter. Even if a pedestrian/cyclist is acting illegally or with *utter* stupidity, your first duty in a car is to not harm them.
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I know there’s a lot of news around today - and a lot of sports news - but this is one of the greatest achievements by a British athlete, ever. I’m so happy he’s done it.
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More libel news: Tory peer Jacqueline Foster pays "substantial" damages to a University Challenge contestant for claiming her team's octopus soft toy mascot was chosen as an antisemitic symbol.
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Islington is famous for the fact that *no one* from an immigrant background has ever lived there.
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Interesting in PMQs as Rishi Sunak launches into a pre-scripted jibe about Keir Starmer 'not knowing what a woman is', when Brianna Ghey's mother is in the Commons gallery. A clearly furious Starmer responds: "Of all the weeks to say that - shame. Parading as a man of integrity.".
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I’m in Eastbourne. There is a bungee jump crane. Ed Davey is here. Welcome to the last week of the election campaign.
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I've just read – officially skim-read – 733 pages of Boris Johnson's memoir, Unleashed. Here's a mini-thread of a few thoughts. But as a tl;dr – it's long, often rambling, packed with filler, and shows a complete lack of self-awareness or self-reflection. 1/.
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Exclusive: review of LTNs ordered by Rishi Sunak last year in a seeming attempt to block new ones has actually concluded they are generally popular and effective - so officials discussed burying it.
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Wes Streeting’s reaction to Chris Philp having to ask a Question Time audience member if DRC is a different country to Rwanda is a level of side-eye I’ve not seen since Harry Hill was last on TV.
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After hearing and then writing down those comments, I'm not sure how else you could describe them except as fairly openly racist.
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NEW: Labour conference has voted overwhelmingly for the party to replace first past the post voting with a form of proportional representation. Huge cheers in the hall as it is passed.
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It is quite something to make £750,000 in a single month from speaking engagements and *also* continue to accept free accommodation worth £3,500 a month from a rich mate.
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NEW: Commons standards committee recommends Tory MP Andrew Bridgen is suspended for five sitting days over a “careless and cavalier attitude" towards rules on lobbying.
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That was quite an interesting #PMQs in that every question from Keir Starmer was trying to get Rishi Sunak to concede something that the entire public knows it true but that the PM can never admit: that the NHS/ambulance services are in crisis. Was effective.
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I'm strongly in favour of politicians' family members giving us the real story behind reshuffles.
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NEW: it seems that *taxpayers* covered the cost of Michelle Donelan's false accusations. Her department says a "nominal" sum was paid, "subject to all the usual cross-govet processes, & aims to reduce overall costs to the taxpayer that could result from protracted legal action.".
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I was in Wellingborough earlier this week - story has yet to run - and if you want a visual metaphor for the Tories’ lacklustre campaign, directly outside their candidates’ town centre HQ is this long-abandoned car, all four tyres flat, the interior filled with rubbish.
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James Cleverly makes it plain that Steve Barclay will not meet nursing unions to discuss pay, despite unions' offer to pause strikes if he does. Cleverly indicates the government can't overrule the independent pay review body (which is nonsense, as they just make recommendations).
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What a visual metaphor for the ongoing war-for-the-motorist: a Conservative advertising truck protesting against 20mph limits which is completely blocking a pavement.
@AndrewRTDavies You might want to tell them to stop blocking the pavement Andy. Have some thought for the visually impaired and those using wheelchairs and pushchairs.
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The Grenfell report is even more damning than you might expect. If it doesn't lead to corporate manslaughter charges, then you have to wonder if that law is fit for purpose at all.
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I genuinely think the Telegraph reporting that a cyclist averaged 52mph on a 600m stretch of flat road in central London is my absolute favourite anti-cycling news story of all time.
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Slight echoes of this still-remembered 2005 Guardian headline.
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On Radio 2, a slightly tetchy Rishi Sunak is refusing to accept some of the post-HS2 list of projects he listed to happen with the money were mistaken/old/already done. The list was “a range of illustrative funding” to give people a sense of what was happening, he says. Hmmmm.
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I would fully support mandatory national service with one small tweak: every young person who does it gets to inherit the house of an older person who advocates the idea.
I had lunch with Minette Batters, former president of the NFU. She called for Britain to introduce national service to end the shortage of workers in farms and care homes
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Downing Street are so far declining to say when and how this legal opinion from Lord Pannick on the standards committee report into Boris Johnson will be published, or who commissioned it, or why. Yet somehow it was briefed to two friendly newspapers overnight.
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Rachel Reeves: “The mess we are in is a result of 12 weeks of Conservative chaos, but also 12 years of Conservative economic failure.”. This will be the message for the next two years, and it's quite a resonant one.
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Nigel Farage - and there’s no other way to phrase this - leaning very heavily into far right conspiracy theories over the Southport attack.
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Here he is. Ed Davey bungee jumping while yelling, “Do something you’ve never done before - vote Liberal Democrat!”
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You could argue it's a slightly cynical tactic, but Keir Starmer using his last #PMQs question to ask about the Strep A outbreak meant Rishi Sunak had to be serious and mournful, and not use any of his final pre-prepared jibes and attack lines.
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I've only seen Joe Biden speak in person once, when Rishi Sunak was in Washington a year ago. And for all the understandable focus on his verbal dexterity, that day he was one of the best political communicators I've ever witnessed. (Very) mini thread:.
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Welcome to the National.Conservatism conference - aka NatCon London 2023. Despite speakers including Suella Braverman and Jacob Rees-Mogg, this isn’t a Tory party event. It’s a moveable annual gathering of low tax populist nationalism run by a US think tank.
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Lee Anderson has arrived for #PMQs and has sat comfortably on the Tory benches, next to Andrea Jenkyns. It’s like his loss of the Tory whip was a Dallas plot twist-like shower dream.
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Tory MP Lee Anderson discussing Sadiq Khan on GB News:. “He’s given our capital city away to his mates”:. “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan, and they’ve got control of London."
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The government has published a list of new peers at about 6.30pm on a Friday in recess. It’s almost like people are a bit ashamed of the way the House of Lords works.
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Comments from Kemi Badenoch and particularly Robert Jenrick on developments in the Southport case will doubtless prompt condemnation. But treated dispassionately, they’re fascinating as examples of what you might call the Farage-isation of the modern Conservatives. (mini-thread).
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This is billed as a "landmark study", but it is not published or peer reviewed. It is a report for the IEA written by three economists, all of whom have been very publicly critical of lockdowns. Lockdowns may or may not have been a good idea, but this report tells us nothing.
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This is a much-made argument, but worth noting that post offices accept as ID:. bank cards.cheque books.bank statements.utility bills. and lots of other commonly-held items which will *not* allow you to vote.
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That distant sound you can hear is Lib Dem candidates in tough-to-win Blue Wall seats cheering at the sight of Boris Johnson joining the Conservative campaign.
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NEW: unprecedented letter to Suella Braverman from 60+ organisations & experts, including NSPCC, warns that “inaccurate or divisive claims” about child sexual abuse & grooming gangs undermine tackling the crime & almost certainly make children less safe.
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One of my minor but heartfelt journalistic peeves is the use of "middle class" to describe very well-off people. The median household income pre-tax is £35,000. If you send just one child to a private school, on average that's about 50% of it gone.
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Junior minister Rachel Maclean tells the Commons that voter ID is required because of the "absolute fiasco" in places like Tower Hamlets. But that was *postal voting*, not in-person voting. Sounds like she doesn't understand the basics of her own policy.
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I keep seeing *loads* of those @forduk Ranger pick-ups around London, the hideous US-style trucks. You might just as well get, "I'm a wanker" tattooed on your forehead than drive one in a city. Two tonnes, massively high bonnet. If it hit a kid – or me – they'd be toast.
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Farage has been repeatedly condemned by leading Jewish groups, eg Board of Deputies, for using antisemitic-linked tropes, eg about a 'new world order' and the threat of a 'globalist' government. He has often singled out Goldman Sachs and George Soros as threats 2/.
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Once again: much as @MarinaHyde is brilliant when she's being funny, she is perhaps better still when she's being serious.
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NEW: The Department for Transport shifted to prioritising driving over cycling and walking in part due to worries about ‘15-minute cities’ based on conspiracy theories, documents seen by the Guardian show.
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Worth listening to Evan Davis grilling junior minister Andrew Bowie on R4 on this bit of Mark Harper's speech on 15-minute cities. Bowie was asked to name a council proposing what Harper vowed to oppose. He could not, but said such things are “coming up in discussions online”.
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Of all the arguments against inheritance tax, the "it's a double tax" one seems most baffling. If a bit later I go and buy a coffee, I'll be paying VAT on a purchase financed by money already subject to income tax and NI. What's so special about IHT?
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Shown a chart illustrating the way the NI reduction will benefit the richest people by £1,800 a year, and lowest-earners by £7 a year, Liz Truss is asked if this is fair. She says: "Yes, it is fair.". Another line for the Labour attack books.
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Farage has been happy to associate with highly prejudiced far right conspiracists, not least Alex Jones, whose web radio show he appeared on six times. Jones is the man successfully sued by bereaved parents for saying the Sandy Hook infant school massacre was a government hoax 7/.
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In response to civil service commissioner announcing inquiry into alleged cronyism in some Labour civil service appointments, a Labour MP write backs to ask if this will also look into the large number of similar appointments under previous Tory governments, and if not why not.
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When you hate lockdown so much you decide it’s worth making deeply insulting and vastly ignorant slurs about people with autism/Asperger’s to make a point. Utterly grim.
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Interestingly, Rees Mogg calls the imposition of mandatory voter ID a gerrymandering scheme that backfired for the Conservatives as it largely affected older people, who are more likely to vote Tory.
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This would potentially feel like an unconvincing explanation, but luckily for James Cleverly, the words "hole" and "MP" sound very similar and are very often mistaken for each other in noisy situations.
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Really?
"I paid my own air fare" Farage says, when asked about his own visit to the States. Says he has always paid his own travel costs if he is campaigning with Trump. I am very conscious of American electoral law, he tells @TimesRadio.
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One thing that is perhaps not discussed or remarked on as much as it could be is the way that some mainstream newspaper columnists have completely, utterly, lost any semblance of the plot.
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A dastardly conspiracy to try and prevent people being killed or maimed.
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The rate at which London’s teenagers are “borrowing” locked Lime bikes at the end of the school day, some of my local secondaries are heading for near-Dutch levels of cycling modal share.
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@imacelebrity Farage's more extreme views are one of my niche subjects, and I'd be very surprised if he was challenged on them while in the jungle. But it's always useful to know who someone actually is, not who they are pretending to be. 12/ends.
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After what I can only describe as a very confusing phone call from a government press person, I have added this paragraph to a story. I don't understand the argument either.
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Lesson: do your research before accusing someone of sympathising with Hamas.
My statement on recent correspondence relating to Research England’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Expert Advisory Group.
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Brief, slightly nerdy mini-thread on Sunak's BBC interview, where he talked about the 'plan for motorists'. Sunak said he acted because "people wanted to stop making life easy for people to use their cars". Well, yes - because (to an extent) that's been policy for years. 1/.
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*Sighs*
Reminder: there are no "steps" in Downing Street on which prime ministers make statements.
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Yes, apparently, it's *cyclists* who are turning UK roads into death traps, by being responsible for around 0.1% of all road fatalities on average.
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Cycling near home a bit ago I had an Audi 4WD wait patiently behind me for ages till it was safe to pass, and then overtake really slowly and carefully. Should I report it as stolen?.
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Robert Buckland currently giving a gold-standard example of how to make a losers' speech in Swindon South. He's at pains to praise Labour's Heidi Alexander, who beat him, saying she will be a good MP.
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Farage has never disowned these antisemtic-tinged tropes. The only formal response ever given to the complaints from Jewish groups and coverage of this was to (via a spokesperson) call them “pathetic” and “a manufactured story”. 3/.
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This is no more a war on motorists than police targeting burglars is a war on people who use ladders.
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Wetherspoons pubs also act as a de facto social centre (with beer) for lots of older people, & a low-cost dining option for many families. The chain has also won lots of awards for how it treats it staff. I’m not saying they’re without fault, but they’re successful for a reason.
Tim Martin’s business offers low prices for consumers and preserves historic buildings for the community. As such he’s probably more deserving of a gong than most other recipients.
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But if you work on the basis of judging someone by who they tell you they are, then @imacelebrity is hosting a a contestant who regularly espouses conspiracy theories linked to the far right and antisemitism, and has never apologised for doing so. Curious. 11/.
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Fascinating and very thorough study into three years of 20mph zones in Edinburgh, which concludes they "significantly" reduce the number of crashes and casualties. Something of a rebuff for those who argue they are pointless. Full BMJ paper in link.
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