Sarah Vine

'Wednesday Witch'. ‘Superannuated’ (@guardian). Worse than sex with a dead pig (also @guardian). Retweets are not endorsements. I block twats.

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

This Thursday sees the publication of my paperback. It's pink!! Slightly reminiscent of Pepto Bismol, but perhaps that's appropriate given the visceral reaction of certain protagonists. For most readers it will only cause mild hiccups.

https://t.co/VmMxJQGsn9

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

ALL THIS MAN DOES IS VIRTUE SIGNAL
Meanwhile, London is a cesspit.

[Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan @MayorofLondon]

1972. 2012. 2032?

London's first Pride march. WorldPride in our city. Now I'm backing a bid to bring the world back to London in 2032, marking 60 years of Pride and inviting LGBTQIA+ creatives to help shape it from day one.

https://t.co/DmFY1tGWbd

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

I love this account

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

My car battery died in a grocery store parking lot at 8:00 PM.

I was standing there staring into the hood like a man trying to read a broken clock.

A faded pickup truck pulled up. A guy in grease-stained overalls stepped out, took one look at my open hood, and nodded once without asking a single question.

He reached into his truck bed and pulled out a pair of jumper cables so absurdly thick they looked like python snakes.

He clipped red to red, black to black, gave my engine a small, reassuring tap, and said, "Turn it over, brother."

It roared to life on the first try.

I pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and offered it to him.

He looked at the money, then at me with gentle confusion, as if I had just offered to buy his favorite hat.

"I don't want your cash, man," he said, wrapping the heavy cables around his arm. "Buy your own set and keep them in the trunk. Someday it's your turn."

That night, I went to Walmart and bought a set of cables so thick they take up a third of my trunk.

Last Thursday, a young driver was standing helplessly near a dead car outside a gas station.

I pulled up, rolled down my window, and didn't even ask what was wrong.

"Pop the latch, my friend," I said.

He tried to give me ten dollars afterward.

I held up my hand, smiled, and told him what had been told to me: "Buy your own set, man. It's your turn next."

America has no government department for dead batteries. It just has two hundred million working men waiting in the dark to hand off a pair of heavy copper cables.

[Andrew Pierce @toryboypierce]

And we are talking about the book at the @edfringe on Monday with @IainDale . Come and join us. 4pm

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

https://t.co/NIh5oiSvLN

[Iain Dale 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧 ⚒️ @IainDale]

About to leave Cork to drive west to chair a panel on my TAOISEACH book at the @westcorkhisfest at Inish Beg. Taoiseach @MichealMartinTD is opening it. Then a frantic drive to Cork Airport to get the 8.20pm flight to Edinburgh as my Fringe shows start tomorrow at 12pm!

[Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah]

The latest Hitchens and Vine podcast, in which .@westminsterwag and I respond to listeners' letters. We think it's jolly good
https://t.co/XSjspDuoip

https://t.co/SkPcJNPmzJ

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

Stunning and brave https://t.co/cvMrSAELTS

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

Superb https://t.co/r2V2HhRRS3

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

I think she may have had one too many glasses of rose at lunch...

[Sonia Sodha @soniasodha]

This MP really needs to learn about the basics of equalities law.

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

Good question

[Rawan Osman روان عثمان @RawaneOsmane]

Every day, for years now, someone asks me the same question: "How much are the Israelis paying you?" As if the only explanation for defending Jews and Israel is a paycheck. The idea that I might simply see this conflict differently doesn't compute for them. What I do is, to me, entirely normal. It only looks strange in a world where hating Jews has become the default setting of the crowd, and staying silent, or joining in, is what passes for sanity.

Many are familiar with this photograph from the Lviv pogrom, 1941. Locals — including a child and an adolescent — chase a woman stripped of her clothes, bleeding, terrified, humiliated. The Nazis had spent years demonizing the Jews before this moment. They didn't need to pull the trigger themselves. They just needed to make the target "legitimate," and ordinary people did the rest, voluntarily. Something otherwise suppressed in them came out, and they let it.

On October 7, I woke up to the videos. One of them was of Naama Levy, arms zip-tied behind her back, dragged by her dusty hair out of a black jeep. As she was moved to the front of the car, she looked straight into the camera of the man filming her. The back of her trousers was soaked in blood. I saw the cuts on her arms, her bare feet, and I watched a crowd film her while cursing her, spitting on her, hitting her. I wished I did not have an imagination. I wished I could delete what I'd seen before her mother saw it.

Weeks later, I flew to Israel for the first time, burning every bridge to a world that was celebrating what I'd watched. I went to Ra'anana and met Naama's mother, Ayelet. We made the first post from Israel asking the world to listen, asking the universe to bring her back alive. I promised her that what Hamas did would haunt them in their graves.

Arendt called it the banality of evil, and people needed mental gymnastics to accept what she meant. It's easier to believe monsters do monstrous things than to believe your neighbor might. But human beings are built for both good and evil. What we become is a choice, shaped by the moral compass we build or fail to build.

Just like an ordinary person joins a mob to taunt a scapegoat, an ordinary person is capable of standing against it. For some of us, peer pressure is minuscule in comparison with a nagging conscience.

That's why the photo above matters, still, 85 years later. The Nazis were defeated in Europe but their legacy is rampant in large parts of the Arab world, especially in Palestinian culture. Fused with a dash of communism and a splash of Jihadism, that legacy morphed into global Antizionism.

#October7

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

For Rod Liddle.

Witty and rude. Crass but kind. Thoughtful yet cavalier. Irreverent, generous, fearless and completely impossible.

Grossly offensive and joyously miserable, he was a misanthrope with a love of life and a deep understanding of the human condition. Gone too soon.

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

https://t.co/BHvKBgPh05
Tagged or not, this men will still be dangerous - and in any case, how will the police cope with the extra workload?

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

@carolynchild191 @toryboypierce Read the piece

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

Be afraid, be very afraid! @toryboypierce and I will be on the loose in Edinburgh with Iain Dale. Come and throw tomatoes at us (well, not literally)
All Talk with Sarah Vine and Andrew Pierce | Pleasance Theatre Trust https://t.co/b5X3moE26t

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

@pigreen1 @DailyMail I did. Read the piece.

[Iain Dale 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧 ⚒️ @IainDale]

Great news. Tickets for the @KemiBadenoch
show at the Edinburgh Fringe have sold out, so we've moved it to a bigger hall.

Sat 22 August 12 noon EICC

Buy tickets
https://t.co/2N6CtLtXOI

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

RIP Rod Liddle. One of the greats: outspoken, outrageous, fearless and always fun. He will be sadly missed. Although not by the newspaper lawyers, I suspect.

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

On 3 August 2014, the terror militia “Islamic State” attacked Schingal, the ancestral home of the Yazidis in Iraq. At least 5,000 Yazidis were killed on the spot during the assault. The actual number is likely much higher. This was a genocide to exterminate the Yazidis.

The men were murdered. Around 7,000 women and children were abducted. The boys were indoctrinated and trained as child soldiers, while the women and girls were sold and forced into sexual slavery.

It is essential to remember this genocide. Many Yazidis inc women and girls are still missing.

The history is told in part in my new book The Cauldron the Making of the Modern Middle East

[Sarah Vine @WestminsterWAG]

Always illuminating, my colleague @ClarkeMicah

[Peter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah]

From my book ‘ Short Breaks in Mordor’ a report of my visit to Ceuta in September 2002.