george ramakin

[Lara Lewington @LaraLewington]

A special guest on this week’s Your Body of Evidence. Step lover, Moneysavingexpert, and MY HUSBAND, reveals what he learnt from his tracker (and a cardiologist makes sense of it). We don’t normally do work things together, but this week, and exception!
YouTube https://t.co/XirAKtRCJn
Apple: https://t.co/6HiG3Fhboi
or wherever you get your pods.

[Campaign Against Antisemitism @antisemitism]

We welcome the London Assembly passing a motion to condemn the Green Party’s “Zionism is racism” policy.

The motion text reads “This Assembly strongly condemns the recent Green Party motion” and that “This Assembly reaffirms that antisemitism must be challenged wherever it appears”.

Assembly Members from across the political spectrum spoke out, including Labour’s Marina Ahmed @LabourMarina, who outlined the devastating impact that hate against Jews has in London.

[Susan Hall AM @Councillorsuzie]

The motion from the Greens ‘Zionism is Racism’ was a damn disgrace and I told Zack Polanski and the Green members on the London Assembly what I thought.

[Lara Lewington @LaraLewington]

What's climate change doing to women's cycles, how period blood could be the biomarker we've missed, and how to know what's 'normal'. If you haven't heard this week's Your Body of Evidence, @DrNighatArif and I can be found chatting in all the usual pod places. 👇

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

Rotem Gafinovitz reveals in a new interview that her British cycling team kicked her out due to her being Israeli.

Gafinovitz made headlines on October 14th, 2023, as she raced with tears running down her cheeks and her Star of David proudly displayed. She had wanted to skip the race and return to Israel, but was convinced to stay and cycle for all those who died on October 7th. It is also the race that helped qualify her for the Paris Olympics.

Despite being an Olympian-level cyclist, her British team didn't want her anymore, specifically because she has an Israeli passport.

I'm sure Free Palestine supporters will read this post and pat themselves on the back like they did anything. But all they are doing is harassing a woman who has done more for Palestinians than they ever have. Gafinovitz returned to Israel recently to vote, and she also participated in a charity cycling event for a hospital that regularly admits Palestinian children from Gaza and the West Bank.

That is support. Trying to ruin someone's life because of where they were born isn't.

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

London is hosting “The Thinking Muslim Conference” this weekend.

One speaker said he would be willing to carry out a suicide bombing.

Another was described as a member of Al-Qaeda, and met the Taliban.

I have written to the Home Secretary about the obvious security concerns.

[Never Again @Never_Again2020]

Former Attorney General Sir Michael Ellis has called for a full investigation into Jeremy Bowen after he publicly accused Israel of “genocide”. A Jewish BBC staffer has also claimed that Bowen is “feared and untouchable” and “getting away it”.

https://t.co/jP9tpWX4pd

[Nicole Lampert @nicolelampert]

Very moving from @BoyGeorge on the way he’s been dropped by friends and the whole experience has made him ‘grow up’.
Because he dared to write the line ‘I stand with the Jews’ in a song he wrote ‘on a whim’.

[Lucie Kon @imluciekon]

Yesterday I wrote about the impact of what happened at work on my mental health. It felt like work didn't believe me, or understand how seriously unwell I was. Perhaps they didn't want to understand.

The way they handed me my final redundancy notice sums it up.

In August 2025, HR called asking me to come into the office the next day to be given my notice in person. I explained that I wasn't strong enough to walk down the street, let alone travel on the Tube, just to face the humiliation of being handed a notice letter. When I said my consultant had advised I go into hospital, I was asked: "So you want to be in hospital?"

After the call, I remembered the reasonable adjustment we had agreed, that I would be given seven days' notice of any meeting, and emailed HR to politely remind them. A while later, I had an email saying we could meet in person the following week.

As agreed, seven days later I went in, by cab, at my own expense. I can't have been looking my best. I was severely underweight, and I can only guess that someone higher up the food chain could see that. I was told they wouldn't hand me my notice that day, and that I would need an occupational health assessment first. When it came, I learned the only question the clinical psychologist had been asked was whether I was physically fit enough to be handed my notice in person.

That was a light-bulb moment. For months I had been desperately trying to prove I was good enough to do my job, only to be told I wasn't. Now it was clear that all HR wanted to know was whether they could justify making me come in and open the envelope in front of them, so they could see the whites of my eyes as I read my notice letter. Naively, I had thought someone might give a damn about my health, that there might be some acknowledgement of a duty of care. There wasn't. HR didn't seem to care whether I lived or died. They just wanted to make sure it wasn't on the BBC's time. Getting me out of the job was what this whole process had been about. I had become a difficult Jew, a problem, and redundancy was a way to solve it.

The psychologist advised that I wasn't fit for a face-to-face meeting and that the notice should be given to someone on my behalf. I suggested my lawyer, but HR told me they didn't deal with lawyers. My consultant said she would write to them to say that, on health grounds, it had to go to my lawyer.

Then, on 3 October 2025, a phone call to say the notice would be sent that afternoon. I explained my consultant's advice that, on health grounds, it must go to my lawyer. It was brushed aside. I was told the whole thing had gone on too long.

The notice landed in my inbox within the hour. I couldn't face opening it, and sent it straight to my lawyer.

Eleven days later I was admitted to hospital for the third time that year.

I'm not saying this to be told I'm brave. I'm not. Anyone who has lived with mental illness will know it can feel shameful and embarrassing. With anorexia in particular, it can feel like something someone my age shouldn't have. But it isn't a choice. It's an illness.

In the past week I have heard from former BBC colleagues about the toll their own experiences at work are taking, and from people in other organisations who are trying to live, and work, with mental health problems that are the result of the way they have been treated by colleagues. I'm too old and too ugly to hide from the truth, and I'm done with pretending.

The BBC can, and must, do better. So must the other organisations those people work for. If speaking out makes even the smallest contribution to change, then the pain won't have been for nothing.

If you are struggling, @beatED's helpline is free on 0808 801 0677.
#MentalHealthAtWork #DutyOfCare #Anorexia #BBC #Antisemitism

[GnasherJew®גנאשר @GnasherJew]

"I don’t condemn Hamas.”
“Israel deserves a lot worse.”

Meet Suzanne Williams, an English lecturer at City of Bristol College. Our investigation documents antisemitic posts, Nazi comparisons, conspiracy claims, and support for Hamas.

Read more 👇

https://t.co/EZ1Hq9nX1K

[Sarah Deech ☕️ @londonette]

How did I miss this jaw-dropping anecdote from Lucie Kon @imluciekon last week.

Apparently a BBC diversity officer told a Jewish staff member, who’d been trying to set up a Jewish BBC support group a few years ago, that it wasn’t needed “because Jews run the media”.

A ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ officer.
This is just dystopian now.

(@DailyTPodcast int here: https://t.co/MuMQT3Gdlb)

[Lucie Kon @imluciekon]

Telling the story of what happened in my last years at the BBC has meant being honest about something I have found even harder to talk about.
After I raised a grievance about antisemitism, I was gradually isolated and denied more and more of the job I loved so much. The loneliness of that took a serious toll on my mental health. I became ill with anorexia, a recurrence of an illness I had when I was younger, but this time it came back with a vengeance. Each time I thought I was taking a step or two forward, something would happen at work that knocked me back.
I was ashamed, and at times I am not sure I was believed. I kept trying to explain that I was struggling. More than once I was told I wasn’t the only one. I felt like colleagues thought I was making it up.
Since February last year I have been admitted to hospital four times. The most recent admission, and I hope the last, was for three months over the summer. The NHS staff on that ward saved me.
I’m sharing this because if I was going to tell my story honestly, I had to tell all of it. Shame keeps people silent. Anorexia is an illness, not a choice and not a weakness, and no one who is this unwell should have to prove it.
Swipe for some of what I was told along the way.
@HadleyFreeman has also struggled with anorexia, and in her brilliant piece in The Sunday Times she writes about our shared experience. Thank you, Hadley.
If you are struggling, or worried about someone, @beatedsupport
helpline is free on 0808 801 0677.
https://t.co/xrQzywOUbm

#Anorexia #EatingDisorders #EatingDisorderRecovery #MentalHealth #mentalhealthatwork

[Lara Lewington @LaraLewington]

No.1 in Health and Fitness! THANK YOU so much for your support. In the coming weeks Your Body of Evidence will have more brilliant guests guiding you as to what’s worth measuring and what isn’t - can’t wait to share with you (next week is @DrNighatArif on women’s health). 🎉

[Michael Dickson @michaeldickson]

Boy George has touched down in Israel, ready to play to huge sold-out concerts in Tel Aviv! 💙🤍

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

You may remember Patrick O'Brien, an Irish man who approached two visibly Jewish people in a French 🇫🇷 market, making threatening remarks and saying he was sorry Hitler didn't "finish the job".

A French court has now handed Patrick a 6-month suspended sentence. He was also ordered to pay the woman and her husband €500 each.

On the day of the incident, Patrick tried to run away from his hateful act. Now, it has caught up to him with a harsh life lesson.

[The Telegraph @Telegraph]

The BBC has admitted it should not have invited an influencer who has been accused in the past of making remarks that were anti-Semitic and in support of the Iranian regime to be a guest on a live television show.

🔗: https://t.co/SoXXRocZBI

[Lucie Kon @imluciekon]

It was good to see @newswatchbbc cover my story this morning and thank you @SamiraAhmedUK for presenting it. The piece focused in particular on the headline the BBC News website put on its report of my settlement, which appeared to question its size.
Watching, though, I was surprised to hear the BBC's statement that BBC News "cannot independently verify" the amount of the payment to "Ms Kon" (that's me).
If BBC News wanted to verify the size of the settlement, or any of its other terms, all it needed to do was ask. That includes the non-financial remedies, such as the agreement to restore my name to the end credits of the Oscar and BAFTA-winning @MrNobodyAgainstPutin and the other films it had been removed from. I would have been happy to share the relevant sections of the agreement. The BBC lawyer who signed it, as I did, might also have been able to help.
On Monday, an hour or two before the report was published, a senior BBC journalist called me about the story and the overall settlement. He asked if he could record the call, I agreed, and my recollection is that we discussed the details.
I don't want to dwell on this. I don't want to spend the rest of my life arguing with a former employer I still believe it was a privilege to work for. My focus now is to take what I've learned from all this, move on, find a new role and rebuild my life.
As I do that, I hope the BBC will heed this week's calls to do the same: to learn from my experience; to acknowledge the need for, and set up, an independent inquiry into not only how it treats its Jewish staff but how it reflects its Jewish audiences; and to move into a new Charter with commitments that are kept, so that in its second century the BBC is truly for everyone, its staff and its audiences alike.
#BBC #Antisemitism

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

Tan Ikram is the Deputy Chief Magistrate.

He is linked to an organisation that dismissed the rape gangs as “so-called grooming gangs”.

I do not make a habit of criticising judges, but his conduct outside the courtroom raises serious questions.

So I asked the Justice Secretary for an investigation.

His response was to tell me to stop my "dangerous public criticism".

I will not be silenced.

[Daily Mail @DailyMail]

Apologist for Hamas who praised October 7 massacre as 'beautiful act of liberation' given platform on BBC Today programme https://t.co/L8HQ3hcJ3d

[george ramakin @soilentstar]

RT @LaraLewington: YOUR BODY OF EVIDENCE launches now! 🚀

What’s your body trying to tell you? It’s a treasure trove of data, but what’…