Aditya

Market Reporter | Commodities Journalist | Alumnus @LSEIRDept

[Nigel Farage @Nigel_Farage]

Political parties in Britain should not be able to campaign in foreign languages.

British elections should be for the British people.

[Aditya @Aditya_Cholan]

@cinee_verse To think this moron is talented one must be retarded. And I understand there are loads of retarded's in present-day Tamil Nadu

[Isabel Oakeshott @IsabelOakeshott]

@campbellclaret Because Reform is leading in the polls; their policies aren’t “back of a fag packet” just because you don’t like them; and they are the only credible party proposing to do anything remotely radical-and meaning it. Bus fare cuts aren’t that exciting

[Isabel Oakeshott @IsabelOakeshott]

@stellacreasy So you think money is more emotionally important than the love and stability and positive influence of being brought up by both a mum and dad? I don’t care what any statistics say. Some things are just common sense.

[Gerry Allan @gerryallan1967]

Asylum applications for Apr 25 to Mar 26 show that Pakistan is the No 1 country of origin. These asylum seekers are not coming on small boats - they are entering on a visa and then claiming asylum after they get into the UK. It is also notable that we have virtually no returns to Pakistan. It looks like @ShabanaMahmood has a blind spot when it comes to Pakistan!

#TimeForReform

[Aditya @Aditya_Cholan]

@ArshiyaMahajan3 Well done, Arshiya! Did you live in London?
I can imagine what a tough decision it must have been. And I hope the move home brings you satisfaction and happiness.

[Jostein Hauge @haugejostein]

Daron Acemoglu blasts The Economist over their bizarre critique of him: “Your central verdict that I am 'oddly unconvincing' rests on unnamed economists revealing their true opinion of me over a few drinks. No persons who have been offered drinks to get to this truth are named. Would you publish a letter asserting that, over a few drinks, most people tell me that your newspaper is no longer worth subscribing to? The only person quoted with such views is a blogger, Noah Smith, a thin basis for judging a lifetime of academic work [...] If this is the best you can do with a body of work spanning 33 years, then it is your critique that is 'oddly unconvincing.'”

[Ricky Gervais @rickygervais]

This billboard wasn't allowed in public, so please don't look at it or retweet it. Thanks https://t.co/mRWHMOKn4F

[Kaveh Shahrooz کاوه شهروز @kshahrooz]

This is so terribly insulting to black people.

'Don't plagiarize' and 'don't make up wild lies about your life to get ahead' are not "impossible standards".

They are very basic standards and ones that 99.9% of black academics (and other honest people of every race) meet.

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

Weird how the people outraged by the "hounding" of Jason Arday delight in and encourage the actual hounding of the person who exposed him.

Arday was not fired from his job or denied employment opportunities. On the contrary, he was given and retained jobs for which he was not qualified and was rightly criticised for lying.

Cofnas, on the other hand, is actually being denied jobs and fired from them for bring Arday's lying to light.

[Peter Bleksley @PeterBleksley]

If you have to be educated about these things, you really are not suitable to enter the UK.

[Steven Edginton @StevenEdginton]

A media witch hunt, partly led by the BBC, has succeeded in getting Nathan Cofnas suspended. He was the whistleblower who exposed Cambridge and Jason Arday when no journalist was brave enough to do so.

This is an attack on academic freedom and freedom of speech by some of the press.

[Katie Lam @Katie_Lam_MP]

If people don't already know that:

- It's wrong to rape
- ⁠It's wrong to have sex with children
- ⁠Men and women are equal

The answer isn't to tell them when they come here, and hope for the best.

It's to never let them into our country in the first place.

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

Jason Arday’s death is tragic. But please spare us the sanctimonious complaints that he was merely an ‘obscure’ academic who was the victim of a racist witch-hunt. The probing and questioning and exposure were entirely legitimate.

Arday was plainly guilty of plagiarism. He had also made a series of fantastical claims about his life and career. He ended up being appointed as a professor at one of the world’s most august seats of learning – where his students, who had worked extremely hard to get there, were paying large fees for the privilege of being taught by him.

Far from being obscure, Arday had happily engaged with the media over many years, often repeating his false claims. He appeared on numerous TV shows and guest edited Radio 4’s flagship Today programme. He even carried the Olympic torch.

Moreover, he had secured a major publishing deal for his autobiography, which was set to be released in Britain and the US just as the scandal broke. By no measure was this man ‘obscure’.

When a fellow academic in Plymouth began to question his credentials, Arday (or someone close to him) made a complaint to the police. When a journalist from Times Higher Education started investigating, he was subjected to a police inquiry and also received a threatening letter from the leading libel solicitors, Carter Ruck.

Arday and those around him were clearly not averse to hounding others when they felt like it.

It’s very possible that Arday did not have sufficient support measures in place when he was finally exposed – but that’s on others. The investigation and questions amounted to legitimate journalistic inquiry.

This was never just about Arday’s fabulism. It was also about the increasingly controversial philosophy of DEI, the obsession of our political, corporate and educational institutions with pushing that philosophy, and how it might have led to someone with Arday’s subpar credentials being appointed in the first place.

These are all valid questions to ask – and, by asking them, journalists are simply doing their jobs.

[The Brevis @Ben10Brevis]

Indian Fans got fooled in the name of - TRANSITION PHASE. 😭😭🙏

[Patrick Christys @PatrickChristys]

A tiny Welsh village woke up to find illegal immigrants, who have not even been processed, have been moved into their old village hall - which had just been turned into brand new flats. The full story is absolutely INSANE - I’ll bring it to you at 10pm @GBNEWS

[Charlie Walsham @CharlieWalsham_]

I’m a British journalist who’s spent more than 20 years working inside mainstream media.

Over the past decade, I’ve become increasingly concerned by something happening inside journalism and other institutions: opinions once considered perfectly ordinary are becoming unsayable, while fashionable assumptions are increasingly treated as established fact.

I’m interested in how that happened - and what it means for all of us.

I write about media, politics, free speech, sex and gender, Covid, immigration and institutional groupthink.

Most of my perspective is British because that’s where I live and work. But increasingly, the same arguments are playing out across the Western world - often at exactly the same time.

I don’t claim to have all the answers. I do believe we should be able to ask the questions.

If that interests you, stick around.

[Donna-Louise @NoLongerTheFuzz]

Jason Arday opened the floodgates.
I wrote the full story about him.
My DMs are now full of names, universities, CV inflation, plagiarism, and appointments that don’t add up.
Too much to keep in my head. Building a proper database.
I’ll move carefully due to health, but every credible tip gets logged.
Send receipts — quietly or publicly.
This is bigger than one man. 😬🙏

[Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson]

Well said, Sonya.

Jason Arday is not the victim here. He took huge advantage of a bunch of gullible leftist fools who were thrilled to give one of Cambridge’s glittering prizes to a semi-literate fantasist with a messiah complex.

They brought shame on a great university.

[Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson]

Since Jason Arday, I’ve been thinking about getting into Cambridge, and what it meant.

The culmination of years of headbanging hard work. Being a “swot” at school because I handed in homework instead of being popular. Yes, in a comprehensive the choice was that stark.

Carrying Tesco’s bags full of books home from the library on the bus for weeks. Piling the books high to create a rampart around my single bed.
Telling myself, “If you read all those books you’ll be good enough to get in.”

Some of the books I read - all of Graham Greene - were not considered “literature”. Not of the first rank, dear. I didn’t know.

As much Shakespeare as I could pack in - the big 4 Tragedies, all of the comedies. All of Austen, Forster (even Maurice FFS), lots of Dickens, Anna Karenina (devastating, wonderful).

I stopped going to school because I needed to read more, much much more. To be good enough to get in.

The Head of Sixth Form summoned me and said, “If you carry on like this you’ll fail your A levels.”

Ha! She hadn’t got a clue. I was working so far beyond A levels. Besides, I had to finish all the books in the rampart. Time was running out.

So hard, the entrance papers. Translating Proust into English. How?

Then, a passage of George Eliot I recognised - thank you God! Then pretending that I’d read Oliver Twist when I’d only seen the film. I called it Oliver! in my essay. With an exclamation mark - how crass. But the dons didn’t know the musical, maybe. I don’t know.

The only lie I told to get into Cambridge. Oliver! “All we ever get is groo-ell!” A really small, forgivable lie, I think, because the work of becoming good enough was so immense, so lonely.

But the surge of pride when I made it. Good enough to get into that unattainable place.

And now, we know that same Cambridge let in someone with two GCSEs - PE and textiles. A man who lied and lied and lied.

They didn’t just let Jason Arday in, they made him a Professor, one of those scholars kids like me revered. We were in awe - imagine being taught by those great minds.

Christ, Cambridge. What a betrayal of all of us who strove so hard to be good enough to deserve you. Who put you on a pedestal, who really truly thought reading hundreds of books was the price of admission, a price you willingly paid.

So much for the brightest and the best. It’s so disgusting on every level, waving in someone utterly unworthy, barely literate for crying out loud. A man at the mercy of the English language, not its master and commander.

A know-nothing Professor, a vacuous, fashionable fraudster hired to give lectures to kids like me.

So Cambridge could look “diverse” and, in so doing, renounced its ancient power which made so many like me strive to be good enough.