Rob Picheta
@robpicheta
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I write about the UK, Europe and beyond for @CNN in London. Stories and abuse to: rob.picheta @cnn .com. Let’s get coffee! 🏳️🌈
London, England
Joined March 2009
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I went to Clacton, to talk to the voters who could send Nigel Farage to Parliament.
And I spoke to asylum seekers trapped in limbo, as they wait in Home Office-booked hotels a few miles down the coast.
It was like stepping into two different worlds. 🧵
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Evangelist preacher Franklin Graham has called Islam "evil," and told his millions of followers that the legalization of same-sex marriage was orchestrated by Satan.
Now, every venue booked by Graham as part of his big UK has dropped him.
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“The people who live here can’t get appointments, but if you come on a boat you’re immediately rushed off to hospital or the dentist. That’s how it seems,” said Bridget Tyril.
(People who enter the UK illegally can only access some care, and they’re not seen before UK citizens)
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Diane Abbott: “Meghan Markle talked about this, and she got roundly abused ... I think this incident shows that what Meghan Markle was trying to indicate is true.”
Some analysis & reaction from the latest Buckingham Palace race scandal here:
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“The Tories have effectively closed the asylum system. You arrive, (and) your claim will not be processed,” says migration expert
@ZoeJardiniere
“It’s so beneath us.”
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Clacton is statistically one of the oldest, Whitest and most deprived parts of the country, and it voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU.
“We seem to be a bit forgotten down here in Clacton,” a small business owner told me. “It’s a bit like God’s waiting room.”
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Jaywick is statistically England’s poorest neighborhood.
“We’ve not got the Brexit that we voted for,” Roy told me here. “Nothing’s changed.”
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But I didn’t expect to find so much Regrexit (or is it Bregret?) in Clacton.
“I know why a lot of people came out -- the foreigners, immigrants. But it hasn’t happened has it?” John said.
“What was the point of doing it all?”
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Other people stood by their vote for Brexit - while admitting it's made their lives harder.
Danny Botterell said shipping tools and equipment abroad for his job is more difficult now.
In terms of Brexit's benefits, he said he hasn’t “really noticed a great deal of difference.”
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Meanwhile, from a hotel room in Kent, Masood - who applied for asylum late last year - tells me his Home Office-booked hotel is at capacity, with most people sharing rooms and many experiencing mental health issues.
He’s one of about 100,000 people on the asylum backlog.
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@ZoeJardiniere
@jamesjohnson252
Not everyone in Clacton is enamoured with Farage. “It’s a lot of smoke,” restauranteur Dean told me.
Jehosh, a care worker, adds: "A lot of people say a lot of shit. When you ignore them, they become irrelevant."
"I don’t take him seriously. He can say all the shit he wants."
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Masood was born and raised in Afghanistan and first came to the UK on a student visa. He’s been critical of the Taliban online, and though he misses his family, he fears for his safety if he goes back to Afghanistan.
“They might arrest me in the airport," he says.
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It’s also the spiritual home of Brexit.
Ten years ago, Douglas Carswell’s defection to UKIP accelerated the Eurosceptic movement.
“There’s been more of a conversation about these profound questions of governance, and national identity, in that part of Essex,” Carswell told me.
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But more often, people in Clacton saw the strain on public services through the lens of migration.
Time after time, people told me about their wait to see a GP, or the state of their roads, or their kids' youth programmes being cut, and blamed the rise in net migration.
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Immigration is undoubtedly the top concern for Reform voters in Clacton, and it was expressed in two main ways.
Some of it was unsavoury. “All your mayors of the major cities are Muslim or Hindi," a couple told me. "We’re not racist, I just feel it’s in your face all the time."
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Many asylum seekers at his hotel fear that a letter will arrive, telling them they’re being relocated to a nearby army barracks or to the Bibby Stockholm barge off the south coast of England.
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It doesn’t take long to find a Reform voter.
Here’s Bob Brace, who went to Farage’s rally on Clacton pier last week, and has handed out leaflets for Reform.
"As you can tell from the T-shirt, I’m Britain first," he says.
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@ZoeJardiniere
@jamesjohnson252
But if Farage wins here, there’s no doubt he’ll insert himself into the post-mortem that takes place in the Tory party.
“(His) career is based on pushing things ever, ever, ever further,” says
@ZoeJardiniere
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Lib Dem MPs (lots more of them than before) pose for their team photo at Westminster Hall
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Just how violent are American police?
I poured through the data. US police officers shoot, kill, arrest and imprison more people than other developed countries. It's not even close.
And black Americans are worst affected.
Here's a short thread.
#BlackLivesMatter
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I went to Stoke-on-Trent, and spoke to its MPs, voters and community organisers.
This is the city that sums up the 14-year Tory project: austerity, Brexit, Levelling Up, all of it.
And it's been left broken.
🧵 (with incredible pictures by
@stilotta
)
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@ZoeJardiniere
Back in Clacton, there’s plenty of excitement about Farage. Even those on the fence about him often told me he “says it like it is.”
Among Reform voters, Farage is more well-liked than the Queen was by Brits as a whole,
@jamesjohnson252
told me.
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Buckingham Palace has hired an external law firm to investigate claims that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, bullied staff, CNN understands.
As for Meghan's claims of racism against a senior royal? That one's still being handled "privately."
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@ZoeJardiniere
@jamesjohnson252
Some of his voters see a global movement brewing, after the results of the European elections.
“I’ve seen their votes and they’re all starting to head towards (the) far right as well,” Karen French told me.
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🔵 TODAY IS NOT THE MOST DEPRESSING DAY OF THE YEAR 🔵
#BlueMonday
is not a thing. It’s pseudoscientific nonsense invented for a PR campaign in 2005, and mental health experts say it trivialises depression.
There is no “most depressing day” of the year.
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Darya Dugina ran a shady website that pushed Kremlin propaganda to English speakers.
She was of several influential women fronting Russia’s disinfo war, at home and abroad.
I dug into her output here:
(Ft thoughts from
@OlgaNYC1211
@r_osadchuk
@DFRLab
)
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She's an Erasmus-educated Francophile raised by migrants, who glorifies Brexit, hates wokeism and "dreams" of deporting asylum seekers.
Who is Suella Braverman, really?
Here's my
@CNN
profile on the "Trump tribute act" leading Britain's culture wars:
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I’ve slept for 12 hours and feel human again, after covering my second UK election for
@CNN
The night went by in a blur, but it’s a blast to do these events with the best team in news
It’s not a night for soundbites, but I felt the hand of history on my shoulder, I really did.
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Britain is reporting 3x more cases than France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined.
And Britain's booster rollout is stuttering ahead of the winter.
Here’s my full story on the situation in the UK:
With thanks to
@dgurdasani1
@martinmckee
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A majority of Black British people (58%) think the Conservatives are a racist party, finds an exclusive CNN/
@SavantaComRes
poll.
39% of White people agree.
And many don't trust the govt to prevent another Windrush scandal.
More:
#NationalWindrushDay
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I will never understand why this is always *a thing*. The Sun and the Scottish Sun are... different papers? With different audiences?
How Murdoch plays you.
Sun in Scotland.... depicts Johnson as a limp dicked loser. In England all the ire is aimed at Corbyn.
You're still falling for it Britain?
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Enjoying the irony of Russia having to cut two holes in their stadium and put half the seats outside in order to meet the minimum required capacity, and then having a few thousand empty seats anyway
#EGYURU
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Trump goes into the election more unpopular than any POTUS has been internationally for at least two decades, finds
@pewresearch
Gets resounding bad marks for his pandemic response and down to just 19% approval in the UK, 20% in Canada and 10% in Germany
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As per tradition, I've previewed Eurovision for
@CNN
.
This year is all about Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra. Their frontman tells us about the band’s journey from war zone to stage.
Plus all the weird stuff, fan faves, and lyrics about Meghan Markle's hair:
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Volodymyr Zelensky says he hasn't seen his family for three days.
He appeared tired and under duress, but was friendly with crews from CNN and Reuters inside his Kyiv bunker.
Asked what his days consist of, he said: "Work and sleep."
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EasyJet SLAMMED for allowing 30-50 feral hogs on board a plane, where they ripped the backs off 3-5 seats
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After one year of war, Putin’s grip on propaganda remains tight. But cracks are emerging, and some Russians aren’t buying it anymore.
Thanks to
@OlgaNYC1211
@levada_es
@NataliSaveliev
and the Russians who shared their thoughts with us.
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"Facts are the cornerstone of all public discourse. If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truth."
I spoke to
@rapplerdotcom
CEO and TIME Person of the Year
@mariaressa
about becoming the face of the fight to
#DefendMediaFreedom
. She's still optimistic:
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Boris Johnson now faces, by my count, five separate crises:
🥳 Christmas parties
🏠 Flat renovations
🐶 Evacuating dogs
😷 Plan B backlash
💰 Sleaze scandals
They’ve combined to sink him in the polls - and more bad news could be on its way.
My story:
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BREAKING: Kevin Spacey has been granted unconditional bail at a London court, after being charged with four counts of sexual assault.
A next hearing was set for 14 July.
Spacey's lawyer said he "strenuously denies" allegations.
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It’s actually quite impressive that they found time for one last sleaze scandal.
Conservative candidate being looked into over UK election timing bet is married to party's campaign director, BBC reveals
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The flat earth conspiracy is spreading around the globe (get it?) at a rapid pace.
I spoke to some leaders of the movement as they gather for a conference in Texas - and tried to understand why so many people are believing something so out of this world.
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Covid-19 (Omicron Version) (From The Vault)
At least 97 people who attended a Taylor Swift-themed party in Sydney last week have tested positive for the coronavirus, authorities said, adding that it’s likely some of the revelers were infected with the omicron variant.
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"Do I have Omicron, or is this just what it feels like to have a throat?"
- Me, approximately 12 times an hour
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This surely wins the World Cup of Covid rule breaches. Wildly irresponsible.
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Thousands of people in Clapham Common tonight to pay their respects to Sarah Everard
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Prynhawn Da!
Today's Royal newsletter from me and
@MaxFosterCNN
is about William, the new Prince of Wales, who's looking to build a relationship with the Welsh people as independence slowly but steadily grows in popularity 🏴
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“For the first time in my life I’m very, very scared.”
Hundreds of regions in Poland have declared themselves “LGBT-free zones” - shunning gay, bi and trans people in law as they battle a wave of homophobia.
We spoke to the people trapped inside (Thread)
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Police are evacuating a large part of Soho after an unexploded WW2 bomb was found just off Dean Street. Cordon is being expanded and several streets are closed off. Dozens of police around and thousands of people being told to leave work.
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And of those who are stopped or arrested by police, African Americans are undoubtedly treated more harshly than others.
US police are nearly four times more likely to use force against black people than whites, according to a study by
@PolicingEquity
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US police also shoot dead far more people than elsewhere.
About a thousand lives are ended every year by the firearm of an American police officer.
In the UK, it’s two or three a year. In Germany and Australia it’s around ten.
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@art_stapleton
He whipped his leg around as he was falling. Intentional & really dirty play - he should be ejected honestly
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Really excited to be nominated for the
#GLAADawards
for my story on Poland's LGBT-free zones with the great
@IvanaKottasova
and
@stilotta
!
The piece showed what it's like to be trapped inside Poland's anti-LGBTQ towns and cities. You can read it here:
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
I heard, time after time, how this impacts a city. When something goes wrong, people just don’t expect the relevant authority to help out.
The ambulance won’t arrive, the police won’t investigate, the council won’t look into it. We're on our own - that's the sentiment in Stoke.
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
@NEA_UKCharity
@jogideon
"The move to the right of the party, to please the newly won Red Wall seats, I fundamentally disagreed with," Jo Gideon said.
"I have served the people of Stoke-on-Trent Central without shouting ‘Stop the Boats!’ every five minutes. Because I talk about things that matter.”
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Of course, it’s easy to arrest people by the tens of millions when you lock up more of your citizens than any other country.
There are more prisoners in the US than anywhere else in the world, both in raw terms and per population.
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
@NEA_UKCharity
@jogideon
You can read my full story from Stoke, and see Sarah’s beautiful pictures, here:
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
@NEA_UKCharity
Everyone I spoke to remembered a better time in Stoke — or remembered their parents talking about one.
It is Britain in miniature; jaded but soldiering on, desperate for change but doubtful that anyone can deliver it.
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The true number of coronavirus deaths in England in the period up to April 3 was a staggering 52% HIGHER than the government reported at the time.
The gov first reported 3,939 deaths in ENG up to April 3
A newer ONS figure shows the # was actually 5,979
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"If Ukraine is admitted to NATO, it will perish as a state," one headline on its site declared.
Others push baseless claims that Russia invaded Ukraine in self-defence, and that Ukraine joining NATO would wipe Russia from the map.
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Dugina’s website, United World International (UWI), mimics the appearance of Western think tanks and bears few clues of its Russian origin.
But its articles - often written by fringe Western academics - assail the West and promote populist or anti-NATO politicians in Europe.
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
@NEA_UKCharity
On Hope Street, in Hanley, almost everything is shut.
This guitar store has been here since 1989, when it was surrounded by rivals and spoilt with customers.
"Hanley is not the same as it was," the owner said. "Exponentially, in the last ten years, it's gone downhill."
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
Then austerity came along, and it tore apart Stoke's foundations.
The council nearly went bankrupt this year.
Bus services have been slashed.
Homelessness has risen.
Community centers were closed.
Nearly 4 in 10 kids live in poverty.
Ambulances take hours to arrive.
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Donald Tusk did the impossible, beating Poland's populists in an election tilted against him.
Now, with Europe watching, he faces an even harder task: de-PiSifying Poland.
My analysis on Poland's new PM, with thoughts from
@jarasjarasy
@PiotrBuras1
@Mij_Europe
@ISPThinkTank
⬇️
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
@NEA_UKCharity
@jogideon
"The city center still looks run down," Gideon said.
And "shouting out slogans about how much money you’ve spent," she adds, doesn't land with voters when "they can’t get a doctor’s appointment, or the potholes haven’t been fixed, or the trains don’t run on time."
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I’m at the first dress rehearsal for Eurovision’s second semi-final! Here’s a bit of Armenia’s Brunette
#Eurovision
#ESC2023
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Virginia Giuffre's trial against Prince Andrew will take place approx late 2022, a judge announced today.
There may be 16-24 witnesses, some of them UK-based, their lawyers said.
And it could get ugly - Andrew's team is attempting to turn the narrative against Giuffre.
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The graphic above shows people who died during arrest or in US police custody, but it’s an estimate based on just *10 months* in 2015-16. No official database actually exists to document these deaths.
Elsewhere they *do* count & report how many die in this way and it’s far fewer
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UWI was banned by Facebook in 2020 after an FBI tip. Facebook found links to people previously involved with a notorious Russian troll farm.
Its original Twitter account was also banned, but it appears to have a new one that’s live:
@UW_Inter
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But the numbers are conclusive, and illustrate just some of the clear systemic injustices
#BlackLivesMatter
protesters are trying to overturn.
You can read the full article here, with all the data, here:
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I’ve just joined
@CNNi
permanently as a Trending Producer 🎉 I’ve spent nearly a year here as an intern and then a freelancer and I’ve loved every minute, plus I am already extremely trendy in every other aspect of my life, so I’m very excited to get started!
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
This is Roger Bairstow, 80, a third generation potter.
And this is a Rishi Sunak jug he made by hand. He's made hundreds of every PM, going back to Churchill.
Recently, the Tories have kept him busy. “It’s just been go, go, go," he grins. "One prime minister after another.”
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But again, there’s no official statistic documenting how many people are fatally shot by US officers. The FBI reports a wildly deflated # of ‘justifiable homicides’ annually.
We only know the true estimate because of news orgs and non-profits who painstakingly keep track.
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I cannot *believe* how poorly this has been shot for TV.
It’s a good concept on paper but the direction, camerawork and, unfortunately, the weather has really let it down.
#Olympics
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Much of this may be to do with a culture of arrests that doesn’t exist elsewhere.
10,310,960 arrests were made in the US in 2018 — that’s one for every 32 people. Other developed countries simply don’t detain their citizens at the same rate.
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I took a sauna with Finland’s Eurovision sensation Käärijä (pictured before and during the sweatiest interview of my career)
What has been your weirdest celebrity encounter this year?
Mine was chatting to Shaun Ryder about tree felling at 8 o’clock in the morning.
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
@NEA_UKCharity
@jogideon
Britain is broken. In cities like Stoke, you can see it everywhere.
The last 14 years have left this area poorer, wearier, and less trusting of institutions.
The Tory era may end on Thursday, but it will leave a painful legacy that won't easily be overcome.
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Dugina was one of a number of prominent Russian women who front the Kremlin’s disinfo effort on TV and online.
Read the full story here:
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I went to Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where I found the Tories in hiding, a camera-shy Labour, fondness and fury for Boris Johnson, and an electorate that is running out of patience.
A short 🧵 ahead of Thursday's pivotal by-election.
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
Stoke’s high streets are jarringly empty.
The city has Britain's highest rate of households living in fuel poverty, according to
@NEA_UKCharity
.
Incomes here grew just 0.7% per year between 2010 and 2021, far behind the 1.2% yearly growth they saw between 1998 and 2010.
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
@NEA_UKCharity
@jogideon
Gideon was meanwhile appalled by the Tory party's rightward lurch since she won election in 2019.
“Labour are getting rid of their extreme left ... the Conservatives are moving towards that,” she says.
"Why are Labour 20 points ahead? Because the country is centrist."
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
“The country’s screwed now, basically,” says Mark Gibney, 40, who once ran a baby clothing shop, but now works in a pub.
He walks home every day past his former storefront, now boarded-up.
He looked towards his daughter. “What’s it going to be like when they reach my age?”
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Who wants some good news?
Five parrots have been removed from public view at a British wildlife park because they wouldn’t stop telling customers to "Fuck off."
“I get called a fat twat every time I walk past,” the park's CEO also told me.
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Jeremy Hunt, who's expected to run if there's a leadership election, says he's voting against Boris Johnson tonight
Anyone who believes our country is stronger, fairer & more prosperous when led by Conservatives should reflect that the consequence of not changing will be to hand the country to others who do not share those values. Today’s decision is change or lose. I will be voting for change
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It goes well beyond small boat crossings.
Years of political neglect, underfunding and ministerial choices have broken Britain's asylum system.
And thousands are caught in the middle.
My
@CNN
analysis with thanks to
@MigObs
@ProfTimBale
@BenRamanauskas
:
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British clothing brand Timbuktu are under fire from
@Culturetreetv
and others for trademarking the word 'Yoruba'.
The brand is named after the city in Mali, but their website says: "Timbuktu literally means 'the middle of nowhere'."
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
Since austerity, Stoke has followed the promises of the Tory era.
It voted overwhelmingly for Brexit, and ended decades of Labour tradition to vote Conservative in 2019. It received tens of millions in Levelling Up money.
I wanted to find out how it feels now.
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The US prison population of 2.2m is higher than the COMBINED populations of Washington DC, Boston & Miami.
If every state were counted as a country, the 31 countries with the highest incarceration rates would ALL be in the United States, per
@PrisonPolicy
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
@NEA_UKCharity
@jogideon
This is June Cartwright, an 80-year-old community organiser, and the so-called Queen of Burslem.
Residents have lost faith in the council and the police, but there's always June: She’s the first port of call for many Burslem residents. “I’m always fighting,” she says.
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Dugina was sanctioned by the US and the UK for her involvement with UWI.
But the website remains live around the world and experts say even those with a middling reach, like hers, can cascade throughout the internet and seep Russian disinformation in seemingly innocuous ways.
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@stilotta
Stoke is a collection of six towns - the Potteries.
It came into being through a "remarkable geological combination of the clay and the coal,”
@TristramHuntVA
told me.
But the post-industrial era was tough; Pits n' Pots workers felt targeted by Thatcher and ignored by Blair.
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It’s not a red state/blue state thing. Prison rates are high across the US.
But Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi all have incarceration rates of over 1,000, meaning more than one in a hundred people in those states are prisoners. (Think about that).
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@stilotta
@TristramHuntVA
@NEA_UKCharity
The Levelling Up scheme put Stoke front of mind, and plenty of funding has come into the Red Wall city.
But I spoke to the city’s outgoing Tory MP,
@jogideon
, who was remarkably candid.
The Levelling Up promise, she admits, fell well short of what it promised.
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And, of course, black people are jailed at a disproportionately high rate. African Americans make up an eighth of the US population, but a third of its prison population.
This is a problem in many places, but on a particularly large scale in the US.
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