Mathew Iredale PhD

Father of twins. Everything else about me is a footnote to this fact.

[Mathew Iredale PhD @MathewIredale]

@FondOfBeetles @FluffWingBirdie @lemonade524 On Emma! That's almost an unfollow. 😮

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

A zookeeper walks into the lion enclosure with a salad. The lion eats him.

A zookeeper walks into the giraffe enclosure with a steak. The giraffe is confused but politely declines.

A zookeeper walks into the panda enclosure with bamboo. The panda eats roughly twelve kilos of it and digests about two.

A zookeeper walks into the gorilla enclosure with twenty kilos of leaves and shoots. The gorilla spends nine hours eating it and produces an enormous, satisfied pile of waste.

A zookeeper walks into the wolf enclosure with raw meat. The wolf eats it. Nobody questions this.

A zookeeper walks into the chimp enclosure with fruit, with the understanding that the chimp will also occasionally hunt and eat smaller monkeys, and that this is normal.

Every species, in every zoo, in every country, is fed what its anatomy says it should eat.

Then we get to the human.

The human, who has a stomach acid pH of 1.5, a short carnivore gut, forward-facing predator eyes, a brain built on animal fat, and two million years of skeletal evidence of hunting and butchery behind him.

This animal, the registered nutritionist explains, should have a plate that is half vegetables, a quarter whole grains, and a small triangle of protein.

Why? Because.

The same logic that feeds a lion meat and a giraffe leaves stops dead at the door of the human enclosure.

A different rule applies to us, apparently. A rule written by people who have never observed our anatomy and have never seen what we actually evolved to eat.

The other animals get the truth about what their bodies need. The human gets the food pyramid, a glossy leaflet, and a polite suggestion to maybe cut back on red meat.

Strange, isn't it.

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

Immigration makes Britain brilliant.

[Mathew Iredale PhD @MathewIredale]

@LilyLilyMaynard @Sorelle_Arduino Hah, made me laugh out loud! 😆

[Lily Maynard @LilyLilyMaynard]

But it identifies as milk, bigots! What harm is it doing you? I bet you drink oat milk all the time and don’t even realise it.
Don’t you know Oatly threw the first brick at Stonewall?

continued page 94

[Mathew Iredale PhD @MathewIredale]

@LilyLilyMaynard Brilliant!😆

[Nick Newman @Ncknwmn]

Six years ago to the day, my toon for ⁦@thetimes⁩ …#Trump #Venezuela

[Will Hutton @williamnhutton]

Deserves a wide circulation.

[Private Eye Magazine @PrivateEyeNews]

Minority representation on TV causes outrage

From the new Private Eye, in shops now.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

Public officials will say they don’t know what a woman is because they’re not a scientist while simultaneously saying that men who claim to be women are women.

[Mathew Iredale PhD @MathewIredale]

@bendormiki Fascinating research.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I'm seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.

I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.

Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.

However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right - nay, obligation - to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.

When you've known people since they were ten years old it's hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn't managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I've repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn't want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.

The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma's 'all witches' speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence 'I'm so sorry for what you're going through' (she has my phone number). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family's safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.

Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is. She'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her 'public bathroom' is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who's identified into the women's prison?

I wasn't a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women's rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.

The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me - a change of tack I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was - I might never have been this honest.

Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public - but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.

[Mathew Iredale PhD @MathewIredale]

@FondOfBeetles Fixed it.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Never forget: women can't know for sure they're women unless they've had their chromosomes checked, but if a man says he's a woman he's definitely a woman and it is highly offensive to mention his chromosomes, which are entirely irrelevant to whether or not a person is a woman.

[Private Eye Magazine @PrivateEyeNews]

“I like the way Reform combines nationalism and socialism”

From the new Private Eye, in shops now.

[Mathew Iredale PhD @MathewIredale]

@SleepstoHRR I'm too old to understand that reference, but also too old to care.😁

[Mathew Iredale PhD @MathewIredale]

@LilyLilyMaynard "...and the sass." Ffs.🙄

[Omid Djalili @omid9]

Boris Johnson was Prime Minister for 3 years. People in the UK are familiar with the concept of a driverless car.

https://t.co/F1DcsW7YNc