Russell Balkind

Cats/Dogs/Cricket/MUFC. Not necessarily in that order. Dad/TV Producer of #LateNightMash on @davechannel and @8outof10Cats on @e4tweets

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

My terribly clever wife Claire started this group last Friday to help parents/carers who are self-isolating with kids and need some ideas/support. https://t.co/qKOZgVXY1r #covidー19uk #QuarantineLife #SelfIsolation @SkyNewsBreak @BBCNews

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

Red card for you. Red card for you. #México #worldcup

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

They should make Endurance Umbrella Holding an Olympic Sport #OpeningCeremony

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

@Ivorbaddiel Wow.

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

@damprice @verypopularname Gareth Southgate

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

@AlbionJake Also I think he's going to have to disclose his finances now.

[Danny Baker @prodnose]

I do not seek to influence. Just to remind. These are the venal crumbs we have been governed by.
The nastiest lousiest gang of looters it has been the misfortune to be in power in my lifetime.
Vote accordingly tomorrow.

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

Vote Labour. Because they're the only people promising to turn @AngelaRayner into Super Mario.

[Conservatives @Conservatives]

Angela Rayner’s Britain? 🇫🇷

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

Is ‘Do not surrender your XXX’ a pitch to pensioners? If not it’s a weird choice. #bbcdebate

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

@MrMichaelSpicer “Shitshow without an interval” is tremendous. Bravo.

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

Amazing that @BethRigby keeps calling Rishi Sunak “PM”. #skydebate

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

Returning home from the D-Day commemorations for an interview will be Rishi Sunak’s ‘bigoted woman’. #GeneralElection24

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

July is in the second half of the year. #GeneralElection

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

This has a real air of dropped still from ‘Ten O’Clock Live’.

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

Recent months of the Hamas kill-&-rape attack against Israeli civilians & Israel's war against Hamas have been marked by so much tragic killing and suffering of civilians, Palestinian & Israeli and the suffering of both populations must be told, all crimes exposed ....
but this time has also been marked by towering displays of moronic almost comical ignorance of history & of even the most recent and well known events in the very same region by the inane, the self-righteous & the bigoted 'expert' hacks and activists online and in the media...
Here yet another example in the great @guardian claims there is no precedent for what is happening in Gaza and ignores the multiple examples of towns and cities in Syria at the hands of #Assad #Russia where civilians ate grass, epidemics raged as Assad and Russians dropped barrel bombs and chemical weaponry while noone wrote such articles in the Guardian. And then there was Darfur in Sudan. There was Congo. There was Anfal by Saddam in Iraq. There was Homs in 1982 when around 40,000 civilians were butchered in two weeks by the Assads in the biggest atrocity in the Middle East. And there is what is happening right now in Sudan - a vast humanitarian crisis, 8 million people displaced, 30,000 killed in a colonial-cultural ethnic war - and as even the UN & BBC have commented completely neglected.
All events in the very same region in recent times. This is v far from denying the coverage of war killing starvation happening in Gaza / Israel; it is about treating people the same, whoever they are, giving equal coverage to people because they are equal. And as for the history, fake history like this from the Guardian is meaningless. It is worth doing a bit of reading about the Middle East.
For now the urgency is to get plentiful aid to the people of Gaza, to get the Israeli hostages back home, to negotiate a ceasefire from both sides, remove Hamas from the equation, end the war and start negotiations to create the truth for the pathway to Two Nations, Two Republics, a safe Israel next door to a Safe Palestine.

[Chris Bryant @RhonddaBryant]

This

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

@iamhamesh It leans to the right. She’s nothing if not consistent.

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

@MrDavidConnolly Hi David, I'm a Development Producer at Fulwell 73. I'd love to talk to you about these tapes and see whether there's the potential to build a brilliant documentary around them. If you follow me back, we can DM and/or I can share my contact details. All best, Russell

[Rachel Riley MBE 💙 @RachelRileyRR]

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, where we remember the 6 million Jewish men, women and children, the thousands of Roma and Sinti, black, gay, disabled and other groups, systematically murdered in the Holocaust, as well as in subsequent genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia and Darfur, where people were persecuted and killed in masses, with the purposeful intent of their total annihilation.

Currently in China, between 1-3 million Uyghur Muslims are in concentration camps, in the first genocide recognised by the British government while it is happening.

27th January is the date chosen to mark this, as the date of the liberation of Auschwitz, a death camp where Jews had to pay for their own travel in cattle trucks for days, from as far as Greece and Norway, to Poland to be killed. Approx 1.1m people were murdered there alone.

This morning, I’ve already seen Holocaust charities, messages from survivors, and mourners, trolled online in their pain and remembrance, with taunts of being ‘the new nazis’ and cries of ‘genocide’ in Gaza.

Let me be clear, the humanitarian disaster in Gaza is awful. The loss of innocent civilian life is devastating, and every decent person wants an end to the suffering of innocent people, whoever they are and wherever they come from, as soon as possible. But however much pain this situation is causing, it is not genocide, and it is not comparable to the Holocaust.

This is a new form of Holocaust denial, which distorts the nature of genocide, and minimises the intentional dehumanisation, planning and scale of evil it takes to reduce individuals to members of an group deserving of mass torture and killing.

War is horrific by nature, and the pain and suffering it causes I hope never to experience myself, or for my family, and I can’t claim to know how that feels. I empathise with all those suffering due to the accident of where they were born in the world, in the hands of violent and extremist regimes.

In other conflicts, just in and around that region, 377,000+ Yemenis, 236,000+ Afghans, 5,400,000+ Congolese, 500,000+ Sudanese, 500,000+ Syrians, 500,000+ Somalis, 300,000+ Iraqis, 50,000+ Libyans have been killed. None were labelled genocides, none were compared to the Holocaust, perpetrators weren’t called nazis. These victims are barely spoken of.

This call of genocide is saved for Jews, and for Israel alone, because of the pain this accusation specifically causes them. It has been shouted maliciously for decades, yet is particularly painful in the wake of the Oct 7th pogrom, with 136 hostages still captive, and nearly 1,300 brutally murdered in cruel and celebratory style, in the single biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust.

Latest Hamas figures say around 24,000 have been killed in Gaza. Israel says 9,000 are combatants. Reducing this to a numbers game is uncomfortable when it comes to the suffering of real people, and I repeat, every innocent death - every innocent man, woman and child suffering is a tragedy. But ignoring or inverting the truth of the situation and its cause, does nothing to help those suffering now, and will only encourage other rogue groups around the world to do the same in the future, should it be globally sanctioned or ignored.

Hamas has designed and planned for this style of war, spending years and stealing literally billions of aid money to protect its terrorist organisation and weaponry by building tunnels up to twice the length of the London Underground system underneath hospitals, schools, mosques and civilian infrastructure with its specific aim of using human shields to protect itself after provoking its neighbours.

Genocidal antisemitism whether from the nazis or Hamas, brings only death and destruction to both Jews, and those under living under these regimes. For the sake of everyone wanting only to raise their families, have careers, build, move forward and live, this needs to be acknowledged and tackled by all of us.

Never again is now. #HMD2024

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

@iammrgoodios @michaeldhaliwal @PlayStation @AskPlayStation Been resolved now. Without any explanation or promise that it won't happen again.

[Russell Balkind @russellbalkind]

@iammrgoodios @michaeldhaliwal @PlayStation @AskPlayStation I also have this problem. Any ideas?