Fern

Socialism, feminism, neurodiversity & psychology (she/her)

[Dr_Rebecca @Dr_Bekka_UK]

Not only is Helen Whately under investigation for lying about welfare and claimants, but she also wants to strip a £29.20/week benefit from people like the woman who was sexually assaulted and left with severe anxiety and agoraphobia. Oh, and Whately lied in this video too. 🙂

[Michaela Axford @AxfordMichaela]

She made her name tearfully describing her experiences of coercive control, and now eulogises a man who assaulted his pregnant partner. Really?

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

@RobertJenrick Cat check: Liddle was given a caution by the police for assaulting his pregnant girlfriend in 2005

[Zoe Gardner @ZoeJardiniere]

Anyway, in case anyone was wondering why Reform are re-announcing their dumb Channel policy today…

[Congolesa Rice @judeinlondon]

He hit his pregnant girlfriend you hypocrite

[Zoe Gardner @ZoeJardiniere]

It’s actually mind blowing how little importance is being given to the conversation about the heat & the drought by all political leaders bar the greens this summer

[Tom London @TomLondon6]

This is not journalism @nicholaswatt

This is an embarrassment

[Kyle 🌹🏳️‍🌈 @KyleLabour2112]

The hi vis is killing me

[Shane Brown @shanebrown74]

One has to wonder why @PolitlcsUK are saying these untruths. The facts are these: a 16 or 17 year old working 35 hours at minimum wage gets £280 a week. The most anyone can get from PIP is £194.50 a week. What's more, people with PIP can also work as well, it is not an unemployment benefit. But the facts are clear: a teenager can earn £100 more than the maximum PIP - and the maximum PIP is given to VERY few people.

[Tom Hatfield @WordMercenary]

I don't remember newsnight having an emergency debate when Neil Coyle, a sexual harasser who drunkenly racially abused a journalist, was re-admitted to the party.

[Paul Holden @pauleholden]

We need to talk about @BBCNewsnight.

It seems the majority of last night's episode centred on the re-admission of Diane Abbott to the Labour Party, presented in a heavily-slanted and biased tone. The questioning and comments put words into Abbott's mouth and adopted the most negative interpretation of her version of events.

Yet Newsnight has repeatedly refused to report on stories about abuse and misconduct towards Diane Abbott.

In August last year I approached Newsnight with copies of messages exchanged on Labour's internal Party messaging system by Paul Ovenden in 2015. At the time I approached Newsnight, Ovenden was the Head of Strategy at Starmer's Number 10.

Only a few months before, Starmer had delivered his racist "Islands of Strangers" speech after losing the Runcorn by-election to Reform. Abbott had also been recently re-suspended following comments she made on the BBC (that the BBC then clipped for socials devoid of key context, and again appeared to misrepresent last night).

The messages I presented to Newsnight were damning of Ovenden. They show him making deeply unpleasant, offensive and sexualised jokes about Diane Abbott.

Yet Newsnight refused to cover the messages. After I was told they had interested Newsnight, I was then told for weeks that they were embroiled in interminable editorial discussions. After six weeks I took the hint: the BBC, without saying it explicitly, weren't going to touch them.

It was plainly in the public interest for them to be reported. Indeed, I took the same messages to the great @ShehabKhan at ITV and they leapt on them after I proved their legal provenance and authenticity. ITV's reporting led Ovenden to resign and helped expose the rot in Starmer's "boys club" that would help catalyse his downfall.

There was simply no good reason for Newsnight not to report the Ovenden messages, not least because they had previously given extensive coverage to Abbott's suspension and the despicable comments made by Frank Hester. I believe that they chose not to do so because they didn't want to be seen to be attacking the government; or perhaps, it's because too many BBC people had had shared drinks with Ovenden (who had so be in Labour comms) over the years and thought he was a "lad" with protecting?

It was because of this background that I was astonished by Newsnight's interview with Zack Polanski this week - another episode where Newsnight was aggressively tone-policing comments made by left-wing figures in odd terms. During a segment in which Polanski was asked to comment on a collaboration on Instagram, Nick Watts interrupted Polanski to read him rebuttal messages sent by an unnamed Reform source live on air.

This was astonishing for all sorts of reasons. There was simply no good reason why the Reform (source) was unnamed. But I was genuinely amazed at how rapidly and without any seeming editorial discussion, Newsnight was airing texts in the moment when it sat for weeks twiddling it's thumbs over the Ovenden material.

I've seen how the BBC exercises its editorial judgment, how cautious it's many diligent reporters are about due process, fact-checking and impartiality. Yet when it comes to Newsnight, it's all over the place.

This past week has been further evidence that Newsnight is a pale shadow of what it once was.

[Seb Wassell @SebWassell]

If only it rained half the year and we could store that rain for when it doesn't rain the other half.

A rain reserve. A reserver. Or something.

Oh well.

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

Everywhere I look today I keep seeing:

1) deadly wildfires ripping through our communities
2) people desperately trying to get by as energy costs soar
3) record oil & gas profits

When will we see that these three things are connected?

https://t.co/MDP9Hqc4jB

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

Polite request to @BBCPolitics. Is this fair? To allow people I’ve been investigating like Banks & Phillips, below, a platform to slag me off on air? Without revealing she worked for Cambridge Analytica - who I exposed. Or asking her anything about it?

[Dr Mariana Claire Marinovic 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇮🇲 @DrMarianaClaire]

For somebody who is standing to be London's next Mayor, you would surely know the Port of London Authority, Canal & River Trust and Thames Water are in control of London's waterways, not Sadiq Khan.

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

While the cost of living crisis continues to spiral, with food and fuel prices soaring, so do global oil and gas companies profits. Shell has today announced it's profits have more than doubled. This is obscene.
https://t.co/XMZiIFxpX6

[Dr Rahmeh Aladwan @doctor_rahmeh]

UK schools typically allow up to 3 days absence for religious observation.

The number of days children from each religious group require:

Muslim: 2
Sikh: 2
Christian: 3
Jehovah's Witnesses: Up to 4
Hindu: Up to 5
Jewish: 13

Rupert Lowe wants to give all parents 5 days of cheap holiday leave to bypass peak travel prices. Good idea. But why frame it as a 'fix' for a Muslim privilege? Muslim kids only take up to 2 days for Eid. If he used jews, he would have to double his offer for 'fairness'.

The math doesn't add up.

Lowe is an anti-Islam slop zionist.

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

Yet never a Cobra meeting.

[Daniel Lismore @daniellismore]

In Thatchers own words “privatisation of the energy industry will make us the envy of Europe” Thanks Margaret, you made a few people very rich and the rest of us much poorer.

[Frances 'Cassandra' Coppola @Frances_Coppola]

The psychiatric hospital is Broadmoor, you disingenous little toad. It's a high-security facility used for dangerous mentally ill criminals such as Moors murderer Ian Brady. Prisoners serve their full sentences there. Ian Brady died in Broadmoor.

We know you know this. You and your toadies are spreading lies and disinformation as usual.