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Peter Geoghegan Profile picture
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9 Feb, 4 tweets, 4 min read
Today's big British media news:

Editors of Times, Guardian, Telegraph, FT, Mirror, Paul Dacre, and many others have all signed an @openDemocracy letter calling for 'urgent' investigation of Cabinet Office's secretive FOI 'Clearing House'.

opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocra… #saveourfoi
This show of Fleet Street unity follows directly from @openDemocracy 's reporting on how FOI requests are being stonewalled and requests from journalists and others are being vetted.

More on today's letter in @guardian theguardian.com/politics/2021/… and BBC bbc.com/news/uk-559882…
In a strongly-worded leader @thetimes calls for on "parliament to open an inquiry into the activities of the Clearing House to establish whether journalists are being blacklisted and monitored" thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ti…

The letter also featured on @BBCRadio4 's Today programme
Thanks to all our supporters in this. Personally it's very heartening to see so much support for our journalism on FOI.

Join the 40k+ people who have signed our petition to #saveourfoi opendemocracy.net/en/save-our-fo…

And do consider supporting @openDemocracy support.opendemocracy.net/project/home

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More from @PeterKGeoghegan

Peter Geoghegan Profile picture
3 Jan
Britain needs to deal with how, and why, a tiny group of newspaper columnists, backbench MPs, and anonymously funded thinktanks are able to warp public debate - with disastrous consequences.

My @guardian latest on the obsession with Sweden and Covid theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
All the talk of Sweden - like 'alternative arrangements' during Brexit - has made a real difference to what Boris Johnson has done and, crucially, not done.

In September, PM decided not act after meeting with three pro-herd immunity scientists including Sweden's Anders Tegnell
openDemocracy asked for details of Tegnell’s correspondence with PM, but was told any release could compromise the formulation of government policy....

Even today, British papers are full of arguments against more restrictions, which will almost certainly delay Johnson acting
Read 4 tweets
Peter Geoghegan Profile picture
8 Nov 20
I *really* shouldn't spend my Sunday mornings doing this but as a journalist whose job is to dig into things decided to take a look at these numbers... (v short thread)

So 840 people aged 101+. Sounds like a lot, yeah?
There were 13,170 centenarians in UK in 2018 according to ONS. Pennsylvania population is c12m, roughly 5 times UK's. So would expect around 2,500 people aged 101+ in PA. Is it a huge surprise that c. a third of these voted?
But 'lived through Civil war' and 'born in 1800s' is just 'wow', right?

Well no. It's is literally laid out in GOP link:

"The reason some birth dates will display as 1/1/1800 is due to confidentiality reasons"
data.pa.gov/Government-Eff…
Read 5 tweets
Peter Geoghegan Profile picture
28 Oct 20
The IEA is supremely well-connected in Westminster. Its director general is a trade advisor to Liz Truss. It doesn't declare its donors.

Now an IEA advisor says it's 'hiding' behind charity laws to act as a lobbying outfit.

New @openDemocracy exclusive

opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…
Anthony J Evans says the IEA prioritises “trolling” critics on social media while 'hiding' behind its charitable status to lobby.

Evans is listed as a member of the IEA’s shadow monetary policy committee – he says he stopped participating but “no one appeared to even notice”
“There's been a strategic choice to move away from being a serious, well respected representation of the best free market thinkers, towards being a provocative attention seeker," Evans says of IEA.

That's same IEA with ear of government and access to ministers.
Read 11 tweets
Peter Geoghegan Profile picture
28 Oct 20
Have starting to listen to loads of different morning radio shows to get a better handle on what's happening across the UK/int'l. Today @bbcradioulster. Plus: get great local coverage. Minus: have to listen to Sammy Wilson spread Covid misinfo, then blame rise on the GAA.
Sammy is like the comment pages of the Telegraph made flesh (and given a seat in Parliament)
He's now kicking at the BBC for not reading out figures of cancer deaths every day. I'd love to know what Facebook closed groups Sammy is a member of
Read 4 tweets
Peter Geoghegan Profile picture
17 Oct 20
This really is remarkable. A credit rating agency, Moody's, citing "weakening" of British democracy as factor in yesterday's UK downgrade
ft.com/content/117349…

And what does UK government intend to do about this? Well, Tories floated idea of abolishing Electoral Commission...
You'd think having written a book called 'Democracy for Sale' all about how British democracy has been degraded and undermined, I'd be inured to this sort of thing. But I'm still shocked to see a rating's agency say this and barely anyone bat an eyelid.
Like how do you dismiss this. "There is nothing wrong with British democracy. Of course those pinkos at, eh, Moody's would say this"?
Read 5 tweets
Peter Geoghegan Profile picture
24 Sep 20
Remember Lubov Chernukhin, top Tory donor whose husband was secretly given $8m by a Kremlin-friendly oligarch before Brexit ref in 2016? Well, turns out Electoral Commission has had concerns about her and other Tory Russian donors for a while (thread)

opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…
In internal emails, UK elections watchdog alerted staff to 'interesting donations' from Lubov Chernukhin, flagged Chernukhin in discussions around 'foreign interference' in Britain and queried other Tory donations from Russian-linked businesses. Ultimately, no action was taken
As well as Chernukhin, the Electoral Commission was concerned about a £10k donation from a company owned by ex-Tory MP James Wharton, who worked for Tory donor Alexander Temerko (and was recently made Lord Wharton by Boris Johnson) and donations from Temerko's firm Aquind
Read 7 tweets

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