ellispritchard (cyberplace.social/@ellispritchard)

The Green Geek is migrating to the better place:

[Philippe Lazzarini @UNLazzarini]

In my 35 years of work in complex emergencies, I never have expected to write such a letter, predicting the killing of my staff & the collapse of the mandate I am expected to fulfill #Gaza

[Byline Times @BylineTimes]

BACK IN THE NEWS 🔎

'If Our Government Turns on its Own People, We Will Need the ECHR to Protect Us'

The European Court of Human Rights is there to safeguard us against our own worst impulses, by @alexhallhall

https://t.co/gIiU1llibA

[Peter Stefanovic @PeterStefanovi2]

THIS IS SHOCKING

Imagine a country where a man has spent 18 years in jail for trying to steal a coat or imprisoned for 11 yrs for stealing a mobile phone - sentences described by the UN as egregious miscarriages of justice

it’s unthinkable & it’s happening in this country NOW

[Faith Spear FRSA @fmspear]

5.1M views, this film gives insight into the terrible #IPP sentence that has meant people are languishing in prison with no end date. Please sign and share the petition to force the government to rethink on resentencing. https://t.co/Cwh3HTNF2f
Lets get it to 2000 or more tonight

[Carol Vorderman @carolvorders]

NEW - THE VIP FILES 🔍🗄️📂

I'm working with @GoodLawProject on a trove of never-before-published material which reveals the staggering scale of the cronyism behind pandemic procurement and the PPE scandal.

Follow us as we open up THE VIP FILES 🔎🗄️📂

Please RT #TheVIPFiles

[Roger Harrabin @RHarrabin]

I’ve just been kicked out of this ‘private event’ - a lobby conference with @rishisunak about to start. I’ve been reporting on climate for 35 years so it’s possible I know more than most Pollcorrs. That’s why the environment corrs are left outside. ⁦@fionaharvey⁩ ⁦

[Paul Mason @paulmasonnews]

When I started at Newsnight, the interview was like a PhD viva, if your PhD was about every random aspect of business and economics. They asked me to bring 10x original story ideas and ruthlessly ripped every one of them to shreds - and then said: give us another one. I had a permanent job as an editorial manager at Reed Elsevier and they offered me a 3 month contract on less money. I took it because I knew I was joining the most accomplished team of broadcast journalists in Britain, and possibly the world. I am talking levels of excellence associated with the Berlin Phil in music, or certain Oxbridge/Imperial teams in science.

But the war on Newsnight's kind of journalism was already under way. And so was the technological change that ultimately allowed the disaggregation of what we were geared up to do.

The big divide at the BBC was between "programmes" tailored to a specific audience, making their own editorial calls and competing on stories, versus "newsgathering", which had been designed as a sausage machine of information into the programmes. Once they decided to empower Newsgathering and disempower Programmes, which was logical in a resource strained environment, the happy upside for the top management was that they could control the news agenda, and there were fewer alternative power centres to push back. This was never a left/right split: it was a "rocking the boat versus not rocking it" split.

It wasn't just NN that suffered - so did Today, so did the Ten. But NN survived because we had strong editors - and then came the Savile fiasco... there was a time, after the subsequent McAlpine disaster, when the bosses wanted to get rid of Newsnight - it survived, but only at the cost of further erosion of its autonomy and money.

I left because I could feel the management tentacles gripping tighter, whatever the team did to go on knocking it out of the park. Only when I joined C4 did I finally get to see what an adequately resourced news operation should look like, and what happens when there is no invisible presence above the editor trying to shape the output, and where they don't complain about having too many reporters.

But NN's demise is partly also to do with audience and technology. Once you don't have an appointment to view, there's no call for the 10-15minute reportage film; and as the rest of broadcasting has become a screaming match between extreme views, actual reason- and fact-based discussions look tame, and it suits politicians to avoid them - see their effective boycott of C4N.

Also, people in the AB social bracket kept telling us: it's on too late. Professionals go to bed earlier, and the news cycle wraps earlier, so the value of a 22:30 programme diminished. Ditto because Gen Z are simply not interested in TV News.

Apart from the demise of a single still excellent but struggling programme, the BBC is basically getting out of long form daily current affairs. There will be no market equivalent of NN because the market won't produce a programme like this - which was copied and emulated by every other major broadcaster.

I suppose the challenge now for BBC/ITN/Sky is to resist the final erosion of OFCOM standards to the point where broadcast news becomes a far right dominated blood sport. I cannot see how moving to a late night discussion programme is going to help, especially as the open secret about far right TV is that they are paying people to turn up and be performatively outraged.

At the very least they should institute a "no grifters" rule.

[Kevin Anderson @KevinClimate]

New post: "a habitable Earth can no longer afford the rich - and that could mean me & you". https://t.co/8TLXBrQchM

I was asked to write the piece by @ConversationUK, but as it was about to go live a senior editor had it pulled, so here it is now on the @Clim8Uncensored site.

[Adam Bienkov @AdamBienkov]

Matt Hancock admitting to covering up big spikes in Covid cases due to Rishi Sunak's Eat out to Help Out scheme.

[Peter Neville @peteneville65]

For those who don't fully understand what is up with the NHS, here is a thread for you that might help.

I'm a consultant physician working as a doctor in the NHS in Yorkshire and Wales for 32 years now. I have experienced the NHS at its best (2008) and its worst (2022).

[ellispritchard (cyberplace.social/@ellispritchard) @ellispritchard]

@AdamBienkov remindme! 1 year (or less)

[ellispritchard (cyberplace.social/@ellispritchard) @ellispritchard]

@snb19692 Nonsense! They had better pickles!

[Emily Darlington MP @emily4MK]

5 years ago Milton Keynes was dubbed ‘tent city’ by the media. Today, no one needs to sleep rough on our streets. How did we do it? A thread by the Cabinet Member responsible 👇

[Dr Dan Goyal @danielgoyal]

The level of destitution in the U.K. has more than doubled since 2017…Disgusting failure of duty by the Tory Govt.

[ellispritchard (cyberplace.social/@ellispritchard) @ellispritchard]

@computermuseum Yep! Remember inputting the data for that at school (and before that, going on walks to collect it), and at some point having the massive shiny video disks with our, and everyone else's data to explore...

[Simon Evans @DrSimEvans]

MEGA FACTCHECK

EVs are “likely crucial” for tackling transport CO2, says the IPCC – and sales are rocketing

But EVs still face relentless hostile media coverage

So, I spent the past few months debunking 21 (!) of the most common EV myths

Here it is 🧵

https://t.co/gfqcswgRvK

[ellispritchard (cyberplace.social/@ellispritchard) @ellispritchard]

@Valora I see you've removed the super-useful Swap function for users in the UK, citing UK regulations. Which regulation is this, as I thought that the recent regs that came into force only covered promotion of crypto assets? How is swapping promotion?

[Peter Stefanovic @PeterStefanovi2]

🚨How many times do I have to point this out! The European Convention on Human Rights protects our right to a fair trial, freedom of assembly & expression, the right to participate in free elections, freedom of religion, freedom from discrimination, the right to privacy, freedom from torture & degrading treatment & for all those saying we can just leave & create our own bill of rights remember that according to international Human Rights Watch the UK could soon make the list of countries that abuse rather than protect human rights thanks to this governments outright onslaught on the rights of its own citizens!

During the past twelve months we’ve had an anti strike law - designed to rob millions of workers of their democratic right to strike, an Elections Act has locked millions of people out of the electoral process - a blatant act of voter suppression by the Government & new laws will strip back our right to protest and limit our rights to judicial review!

The simple fact is this government cannot be trusted to protect our human rights. We cannot trust a Government with our human rights when it’s already trying to curtail our human rights under the existing convention we are already apart of!

[Danny Shaw @DannyShawNews]

NEW: 13 reasons why @MoJGovUK ran out of room in prisons:

* It closed 10,700 places - but opened only 11,000, since 2010

* It introduced tougher sentencing - ignoring impact on prisoner numbers

* It was slow to get prisons built - 20,000 places promised, only 5,200 delivered

[ellispritchard (cyberplace.social/@ellispritchard) @ellispritchard]

The Cons like to brand Starmer as "Mr. Flip-Flop", and even sold Starmer flip-flops at their conference, and yet they, in the last month, have flip-flopped on Net Zero, flip-flopped on HS2, and now flip-flopped on the retargeting of money 'saved' by scrapping HS2. 🤔