my twitter mentions are currently overwhelmed by right-wing accounts who think a tweet about Lady Gaga being my president is me genuflecting at the feet of Joe Biden, lol
One of the reasons Britain has one of the worst death tolls on earth is that senior journalists not only actively defended our government's catastrophic strategy in March 2020 - they actively ridiculed anyone who challenged it.
The government only got away with its catastrophic handling of the pandemic because so much of our media is servile to power, and will swallow anything the government feeds it.
Genuinely painful to read.
COVID-19 is the most lethal example of what happens when you live in a country where so much of the media acts as the propaganda arm of the Conservative Party.
Here's a thread about how completely impossible it is to have a rational conversation about Brexit.
In the 2016 referendum, I campaigned for Remain. Here's a speech I gave 3 and a half weeks before the referendum. A clip of it appeared in TV drama 'Brexit: The Uncivil War'.
I'm now told that actually I'm not a Remainer, despite campaigning for Remain in the referendum campaign in rallies in, say, Wolverhampton, London and Greater Manchester, arguing for Remain on Question Time, and writing multiple columns supporting Remain.
Here's a viral video I made before the referendum result, warning about the consequences of Tory Brexit.
Diane Abbott was wrong to share an online platform with apologists for China's atrocities against Muslim Uighurs. But this saga again underlines the grotesque double standards applied to a) the left and b) a Black woman.
Tony Blair is a former Prime Minister - obviously far more influential than Diane Abbott - and is guilty of two things:
1) Direct apologism for Chinese atrocities in Xinjiang province
2) A relationship with China's regime
In 2014, in an interview with a mouthpiece of China's regime, Blair made common cause between the West and China's "counter-terrorism" drive in Xinjiang, and denounced "double standards" applied to China which "is facing the same problem as we are facing." globaltimes.cn/content/866551…
Private education is just one way the privileged are given their advantages. It starts from birth. Affluent parents have babies with higher birth weights. They have less cramped houses, meaning better well-being and more quiet places to study.
Better-off parents tend to have more formal education and more "cultural capital". A big gap in vocabulary between richer and poorer children opens up when they're very young. Their parents can afford private tutoring. Diets are better and their children never go hungry
Poverty can impose specific stresses on family life that the affluent tend not to have. Poorer children are more likely to suffer from mental distress and poorer physical health, all of which impact educational attainment.
Yet transphobes in powerful positions pretend they're courageous victims as they bait a marginalised minority.
There's nothing new about opponents of minorities pretending they're the real victims, hounded just for "speaking the truth"
It's still nauseating to watch transphobes in a country in which most of the media is on their side pretend they're the ones being silenced and persecuted
Courage is standing up for minorities against those who bait, ridicule and persecute them.
Courage is never adding your own personal contribution to a mountain of bigotry piled on the shoulders of trans people.
On my birthday last year, a far right extremist led an attack on me, driven by homophobia and hatred of my left-wing politics. Today, he has been handed a hefty prison sentence. theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/j…
As I wrote in my victim impact statement, prison is not a solution to far right extremism. He will go to a prison a violent far right extremist, and probably leave prison a violent far right extremist.
There is no judicial solution to the far right: it is a political problem.
The attack wasn't just driven by far right extremism, but was a homophobic hate crime.
Homophobic hate crimes have doubled over five years; transphobic hate crimes have trebled. We are desperately overdue a proper discussion about this.