Charlotte Osborne

Northerner and North Londoner. Lover of books and mountains.🇪🇺🦕🇺🇦

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

🔴URGENT🔴

THE REGIME IN IRAN IS GOING TO EXECUTE THIS 18 YEAR OLD FOR PROTESTING

STOP THEM!

END THIS BARBARISM!

FREE IRAN 🇮🇷🇮🇷!!

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

Look at him

Shervin Bagherian

He's just a boy

The savage regime in Iran are going to hang him because they couldn't tolerate him protesting against their tyranny

So they answer with even more brutality

They must go

Somehow

Anyhow

Iran must be freed

🇮🇷💔

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

The Islamic regime is preparing to hang 18-year-old Shervin Bagherian for participating in the January 2026 protests.

His family has just been called for a final visit. He has been moved into solitary confinement.

This kid is only 18.

DO NOT LOOK AWAY.

[Brian Cox @ProfBrianCox]

My view is that there is a fundamental confusion within government and UKRI about the relationship between scientific research, Universities and growth. A strong science base and strong Universities are necessary for growth, but they are not levers you can pull to generate it, at least over the typical lifetime of a parliament. Science is the curiosity led exploration of Nature. It delivered the modern world, but it was not invented to do that. If you try to conflate all these things together you’ll get neither economic growth nor transformative scientific progress, and you run a serious risk of destroying the Universities and the science base upon which future growth depends.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

It seems literally impossible for certain trans activists to grasp that not everything is about them.

The only rape crisis centre in Edinburgh prior to the opening of Beira’s Place was run by a trans-identified man who publicly told potential service-users they would be ‘challenged on their bigotry’ if they didn’t agree he was a woman. Meanwhile a ‘non-binary’ man subsequently convicted of rape, and found by the sentencing judge to harbour serious hostility towards women, was permitted to access the centre’s services.

Trans-identified men in Edinburgh were better served than women when it came to accessing support after rape or sexual assault. Beira’s Place, which I founded and fund in its entirety, gives women a choice. The female-led, female-centred model of support is provably preferred by most female survivors. We know for a fact that some of our service-users didn’t seek help before we opened, because they didn’t want a male providing their therapy, or for men to be accessing what they needed to feel was a completely safe space. However, if a woman was happy with a male support worker, or with males also using the service, she could of course choose the alternative rape crisis centre.

Some men, trans-identified and not, disagree that even the most vulnerable and traumatised women should be allowed to exclude men from rape crisis centres, yet many women see a male-free space and service as the last or only chance of putting their lives back together. It takes immense courage even to pick up the phone to access help after rape. Yet, even at their worst moment, these women told by activists like Willoughby that their priority should be centering his feelings, pandering to his ‘identity’ and pretending that they don’t recognise his narcissism and aggression as a quintessentially male response to not being given what he wants, by women.

The simple truth is that no decent male, however they identify, would ever seek to breach the boundaries of women whose sense of self and safety has been shattered by their experience of male violence or rape. 98% of sexual predators are male. 88% of sexual crime victims are female. Beira’s Place exists because I saw an unmet need and the fact that we’ve been so busy since we’ve opened proves, not that women hate trans-identified men, but that this is where women feel safe enough to deal with trauma they might otherwise have had to carry with them forever.

[James Dreyfus @DreyfusJames]

Having been born in ‘68, I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve been around people who’ve ‘disapproved’ of my sexuality or ‘lifestyle’, both at work & play.

There’ve also been numerous times when people’s minds have changed & they’ve openly admitted “I used to be prejudiced, but you’ve changed my mind.”

Bear in mind, that this happened predominantly in the 80/90’s, when we were not only loathed, but feared & shunned due to AIDS.

I don’t require other people’s validation, approval or acceptance to be able to get on with my life. All I want/wanted was not to be threatened & physically attacked in the streets.

If other people’s ‘disapproval’ is one of the main obstacles to getting on with your life, you’re in for a turbulent &, rather frustrating, existence.

[Brian Cox @ProfBrianCox]

‘Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer.’ Sir Humphrey Davey. 1810.

‘Overall, we will drive to be more entrepreneurial, to engage more with industry, to realize greater revenue and greater income into our program, which means there's less pressure on the public purse.’ Sir Ian Chapman. 2026.

If you want to understand why science in the UK is in such a mess ……..

[Shahrar Ali @ShahrarAli]

Polanski gave quite a clear interview this morning under robust questioning from @annaefoster around his proposal to track the movements of British citizens who recently served in IDF and whether this was, in words of @BoardofDeputies, "creating an atmosphere of intimidation against British Jews" or betrayed a double standard because we wouldn't track our own military like that?

He claimed we would do this for every service personnel where a genocide had "obviously" been committed and that the benchmark of proof was Amnesty International, the UN and "anyone paying the slightest attention" to livestreams on our phones, without need for a court judgment.

The problem with Zack's position is a) it hasn't been agreed by party conference that he claimed just minutes earlier to be where democratic policy decisions are made; b) he did not address the hostility to Jews concern, instead describing Board as "incredibly irresponsible", and c) if he genuinely was comparing service for Israel to service for Putin then surely he should also seek to track Russians living in this country, who had served there, in order to defeat the exceptionalism for Jews point?

Ps, may I suggest the logic of his following appeal to authority also didn't work: "I say this as a Jewish person, this has nothing to do with being Jewish." @BBCr4today

[Ian Austin @LordIanAustin]

There was yet another debate about Israel/Palestine in Parliament today, a subject discussed more than anything else over the last few years.

Most members of the public look at this obsession and can’t understand why many of their MPs spend more time talking about a conflict thousands of miles away which most of them know very little about and can do even less to solve, than issues in their own constituencies and our country like jobs, crime or the NHS, let alone the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster in Sudan, for example.

And next week there is to be a debate on antisemitism where they will tell us how worried they are about the explosion of anti-Jewish hatred which has seen our fellow citizens attacked and murdered on the streets of our country.

But do they not understand that this obsessive singling out of the world’s only Jewish state and the constant yet false claims about its conduct obviously drive hostility towards people who are identified with it, which is the vast majority of Jewish people?

[SaveOurChurchesUK @SaveukChurches]

For a church on the brink of closure, this must have felt like a miracle!

St Wilfrid's Church in Melling, Lancashire, was facing closure after its congregation was unable to raise the £750,000 needed for urgent repairs. Then, while preparing for morning prayers, the vicar made an astonishing discovery beneath the altar, a small box containing nine gold Britannia coins worth nearly £30,000.

The unexpected find has given the church a lifeline. While it won't cover the full cost of the restoration, it provides the funding needed to begin applying for grants and move forward with saving this remarkable 14th-century building.

Sometimes history really does have a way of surprising us.

[India's hairline @indiashairline]

Julie Buchill's 2013 rant about troons (the one that got her banned from writing for the Guardian) has re-emerged. It would be terrible if people today were to read such bigotry, so please don't share the link with anyone
https://t.co/vxmCctp8aP

[Dr Helen Ingram @drhingram]

Terrible news from Exeter. The axe is swinging all over the UK for the humanities and social sciences. If we lose these subjects then we will sever a vital link that passes our cultural and social heritage down to the next generation. https://t.co/1Uz4DC5Uo0

[KGH (Kalani Ghost Hunter) @kalanighost]

I tried to warn Americans about the British and their booze 😭😂

[Dennis Noel Kavanagh @Jebadoo2]

Absolute genius

[Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford]

Exclusive from @oliver_wright

Dartmoor ponies could be subject to mass culling to reduce the impact on biodiversity after a controversial ruling by the government’s environmental quango

Natural England has demanded that all livestock grazing on the moor is reduced by about 75 per cent to protect other habitats, plants and species

The move looks set to result in the culling of up to nine in ten of the semi-wild ponies as farmers prioritise their own cattle and sheep to remain within Natural England’s limit to minimise the impact on their own livelihoods

Natural England argued that the move was necessary to protect the diversity of Dartmoor, which is a designated site of special scientific interest

However, the plan goes against a government commissioned review into the future of Dartmoor, published two years ago, which concluded that Natural England “should not take actions likely to result in a reduction in pony numbers”, adding they were “invaluable for conservation grazing”

The move has led to claims that the quango is acting as judge, jury and executioner of the ponies — a species which is itself seen as endangered

Dartmoor ponies could be put to death under biodiversity plans

https://t.co/s8L8nBJwlk

[Karl Turner MP @KarlTurnerMP]

This is a mistake. It’s a flawed Bill. The whips ought not to be pushing this. If the government wants this in legislation it needs to be in a manifesto so that the electorate, which is just as divided on the issue, as Parliament have a say. It will of course be blocked again.

[Bev Jackson @BevJacksonAuth]

What a loss to the world is the death of David Hockney, who gave so much of himself in his art and in his passion for depicting gay desire when it was truly courageous to do so. He was much loved and will be sorely missed.

[Hannah Barnes @hannahsbee]

Concerns about Brighton's WellBN GP surgery were first raised with the NHS in 2020 and the GMC in 2021. Today, in 2026, an independent investigation delivered its highly critical verdict. Gender-distressed children have been failed by the NHS again 👇https://t.co/sbOWGGMzjO

[Cian McCarthy @arealmofwonder]

Peter Hitchens gloriously pushing back against the idea that 5-year-olds shouldn't be made to learn poetry by heart.

[David Wolfson @DXW_KC]

John Healey says the Prime Minister has been “unable” and the Treasury “unwilling” to provide “the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats”.
Welfare ✅
Net zero ✅
Defence ❌
A devastating verdict from Labour’s own Defence Secretary.