“There were two clear drop points. One of them was in May when we had the announcement of early easing of lockdown & the other one was when the news broke about #DominicCummings’ trip to Durham. And confidence never recovered.” (H/T @theonlypeterkay)
Also, reports today suggest that the Cummings scandal has made the British public more divided
ONS figures found the proportion of people who believed the nation would be united after the pandemic halved in three months
“Before you judge a man, you should drive 60 miles in his Range Rover Discovery.”
#MichaelGove defends #DominicCummings decision to find out whether his eyesight was good enough to drive by driving to Barnard Castle with his wife & children.
The victory of Cummings against those who felt he should go (pretty much all of us!) was a turning point for the UK.
The BBC made a public apology for @maitlis’ blistering monologue about Cummings.
Journalism was softened.
Satire all but disappeared.
Here’s a thread about that @BBCNewsnight episode (from May) & how the aftermath that quickly followed triggered a shift within the British media when reporting the #COVID19 pandemic.
Julian Assange is scheduled to appear in a federal court in Saipan, a US commonwealth in the Pacific, where he’s expected to plead guilty to one charge under the Espionage Act & be sentenced to 5yrs
Given he’s already served this time, he should walk free
The public have a right to know what their govts do in their name
Julian #Assange’s prosecution represented a grave threat to press freedom, undermining the key role of journalists & publishers in scrutinizing govts misdeeds & creating a chilling effect
2/. From the start of the pandemic the govt had given #Palantir, a US spyware company with reported links to #CambridgeAnalytica, access to NHS health data
3/. Palantir worked on the NHS data store with #FacultyAI - a company with ties to Cummings
In 2020, @amnesty warned that Big Tech firms might use the COVID crisis to hoover up genomic data, obliterating the last frontier of privacy: our biological selves
1/. “It is the greatest mass-killing in recorded history; & it goes on daily, hourly, as regularly as the ticking of your watch”
Arthur Koestler’s 1944 essay expressing frustration at the failure of the world to acknowledge Nazi atrocities resonates today wethescreamers.com
2/ “There are a few of us…yelling at you in newspapers…Now & then we reach your ear…But it only lasts a minute. You shake yourself like puppies who’ve got their fur wet; then the screen again descends & you walk on, protected by the dream-barrier which stifles all sound”
#Gaza
3/ Koestler notes maniacs lose contact with reality so “perhaps it’s we, the screamers, who react in a sound & healthy way to the reality which surrounds us, whereas you are the neurotics who totter about in a screened fantasy world because you lack the faculty to face the facts”
“They got me!” Liz Truss tells far-right kingpin, Steve Bannon, before going on to explain that, to have effectively tackled “the deep state” that runs Britain & its institutions, she would have “needed a bigger bazooka”! #LizTruss #BritanniaUnchained
"I was just saying it like it is & that’s what people respect me for"(!)
Liz Truss’ compares her premiership to a one night stand & says she was just “fattening the pig” for slaughter & that she should have gaslit the public like Rishi Sunak is doing (!)
"I faced the most almighty backlash...from the usual suspects in the media” Liz Truss
“Truss's decline is simultaneously tragic & horrifying but the claim that the media conspired against her can't go unchallenged. There are front pages praising her to the rafters” @mrjamesob
2/. It’s clear that the bomb blasts in Kerman on the 4th anniversary of #Soleimani's assassination by the US, could lead to a quick ratcheting up of dangerous tensions
After Oct 7, the US sent two aircraft carrier groups to the region
3/. Three US soldiers were killed & two dozen injured in an unmanned aerial drone attack on US forces stationed in northeastern #Jordan near the Syrian border, President @JoeBiden said