"The govt assured us that the #COVID datastore would be unwound at the end of the pandemic & the data destroyed. They also said any extension would go out to public tender.
2/. I’m not a body language expert, but @uksciencechief’s habit of adjusting his glasses, looking away & um-Ing & ah-ing whenever he’s asked a penetrating question is getting wearily familiar.
Here is Vallance being questioned by @Jeremy_Hunt in May.
3/. In July, Vallance claimed he couldn't remember which date SAGE called for lockdown!
1/. “If you’re with someone you love hold them close. If you can’t be with someone you love or you’ve lost someone you love, take a moment after reading this. Close your eyes. Breath. And on think them. Think of their laugh, their touch. their soul."
These ladybirds made me cry.
2/. I’d cycled to Totteridge ystdy & spotted the ladybirds on a gravestone
It was a beautiful day
Beside the grave was a 2,000 year old yew tree
The tree - thought to be the oldest living thing in London - got me thinking about mortality & all the grief that this year has seen
3/. “The world’s more full of weeping than he can understand” (Yeats)
There is a lot of grief at the moment
Grief is important. It’s the flip side of love.
The more you deeply you love, the more deeply you must grieve
“He postpones necessary but unpalatable decisions, like a child pushing vegetables around a plate. He wants to be liked. He has no qualm about betraying people behind their backs, but he has a horror of upsetting them to their faces.” @rafaelbehr on the PM theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2/. He loves to be upbeat
On 19/3 he said:
“We can turn the tide in 12 weeks. I’m absolutely confident that we can send coronavirus packing”
Earlier in the month, he boasted of shaking hands with #COVID patients
Days later, he was in hospital himself
3/. This interview shows is that the bumbling, tousled-hair comedy character, we’ve been watching for the last decade, is just that: a character
It also shows his approach to “politics & human nature”: that you can “make a good case for anything at all”.
“My ongoing imprisonment based on these strange accusations, so remote from the truth have become a kind of psychological torture. I hope this will be the last indictment of its kind.” #FreeOsmanKavala
“These allegations were made without any concrete evidence that I aimed at overthrowing the government that I knew of these events in advance. Without any material evidence, it was asserted that I had financed Gezi events.”
Summary of #OsmanKavala’s defence to absurd charges.👇
#BREAKING After many years of campaigning, MPs in Denmark have voted to finally recognise that sex without consent is rape
Incredibly, it is only the 12th country in Europe to recognise sex without consent as rape, but the momentum for change is building amnesty.org/en/latest/news…
This historic day didn't come about by chance
It's the result of years of campaigning by survivors who, by telling their painful stories, helped to ensure that other women don't have to go through what they endured