In 2018, Sky News Australia sparked outcry after it broadcast an interview with a far-right #nationalist#extremist who has expressed his admiration for #Hitler.
Sky News Australia CEO Angelos Frangopoulos downplayed it as "an error of judgment".
Frangopoulos is GB "News" CEO.
GB News' creators clearly believe that US-style grievance politics can sustain at least a low-budget, tactically neutered version of Fox.
GB "News" is a right-wing TV "news" channel. Britain hasn’t had one of those before. The shift is real.
"Trying to find guests for “Uncancelled” who truly cannot get a hearing elsewhere would mean booking flat-earthers, extreme religious fundamentalists, or actual Nazis."
Many of the most listened to voices in British media try their hardest to get canceled. Think about that. 🤔
If GB News wants to “puncture the pomposity of our elites,” then it should acknowledge that no group fits that description more than the small number of shutdown skeptics employed by right-wing papers & GB News - 71% supported the delay in lifting the coronavirus restrictions.
"Political polarization in the US seems to have been turbocharged by a hermetic right-wing media universe built on paranoia, resentment, and mistrust of authority. As GB News matures, the channel may test how receptive Britain is to culture-war topics brought over from the US."
"Already, Brexit influencers have imported the vocabulary of the American right (snowflakes, triggered, woke) as well as the idea that “owning the libs” is a political goal in itself."
In a piece for ConservativeHome, hard-right crank Donal Blaney wrote: “As these triggered snowflakes wail uncontrollably in impotent fury into their kale, lentil, & chai lattes this morning, and for months to come, all at GB News need to channel their inner Churchill.”
"Perhaps GB News will bait @Ofcom the British television-news regulator - with ever more polarized content, and then pose as a cancel-culture victim if given an official rebuke. Little by little, the channel could chip away at the British principle of neutrality in broadcasting."
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
There was outrage when in 2020, the Tory Govt conceded a new bill to amend the UK's Brexit deal would "break international law" in a "specific & limited way".
But what is international law? What is the ICC?
And what were Margaret Thatcher's views on international law?
First, what is 'international law'?
Broadly (it's complicated!) it refers to the body of legal rules, norms, and standards that apply between sovereign states and other entities that are legally recognized as international actors.
The term was coined by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). According to Bentham’s classic definition, international law is a collection of rules governing relations between states. This original definition omits individuals and international organizations.
"Improving the quality of life for people of this country is perhaps the most important duty of Government."
John Prescott has died.
In September 2000, John - then Deputy Prime Minister - gave a speech at the @UKLabour Party Conference, introducing Nelson Mandela.
Nelson Mandela died in December 2013. Writing a tribute in the Daily Mirror, John reflected on his death, writing: “In my office at home I have a picture that is my most treasured possession. It’s of me shaking Nelson Mandela’s hand on stage at the @UKLabour conference in 2000."
At the Rivonia Trial, between 1963 & 1964, Mandela gave a dramatic speech from the dock.
John wrote in 2013 “When I read that, I knew that I wanted to enter politics. He was my inspiration. So when he walked free in 1990, we felt as if one of our own comrades had been freed.”
🧵
Allison Pearson posted then deleted disinformation, falsely accused three people of being "Jew haters", lied about where the photo was taken & what they were doing, then lied about what the Police said to her - and then moaned about being a victim! FFS
The Telegraph's divisive shit-stirrer Pearson falsely claimed she was told by the police who came to her home it was over a “non-crime hate incident”. Her lie was then dutifully amplified by every Reform UK MP & billionaire-owned right-wing "news" media, painting her as a victim.
Essex Police said “At no stage... was she informed that the report being investigated was being treated as a non-crime hate incident. To suggest otherwise is wholly inaccurate and misleading.”
Pearson, Farage, Musk, Young, Habib, & many other shit-stirrers who shamelessly try to normalize hateful, divisive, provocative & inflammatory rhetoric, often refer to George Orwell's 1984, but Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is much closer to the dystopia we inhabit...
Harassment, malicious communications, incitement, & threatening violence are all crimes in the UK, & have been for a long time.
Print & broadcast media, & online social media are simply platforms on which we behave or misbehave: it's not about the medium, it's about the offence.
The UK is signed up to Article 10 of the #ECHR: everyone has the right to free speech, which may only be qualified in limited circumstances, including: national security; public safety; the protection of morals & of the reputation or rights of others.
"Enoch Powell was a hero of the young Nigel, but at this point he could do without any association with the politician who made the notorious Rivers of Blood speech... the accusation of racism follows Farage & his party around like a bad smell." - Allison Pearson
"Farage has tried for years to shrug off the charge that his parties are more than “the BNP in blazers”... although I don’t think Farage is a racist, it’s a problem that racists attach themselves to Reform." - Allison Pearson
“We’re investigating a report which was passed to us by another force. The report relates to a social media post which was subsequently removed. An investigation is now being carried out under section 17 of the Public Order Act.” - Essex police spokesman
Not a lot of people know that Oxbridge alumni Fiona Bruce, presenter of 'Fake or (paid a) Fortune?', and since January 2019, the @BBC's interrupting Chair of #bbcqt, was born in Singapore.
One of her first episodes as Chair was the one that made Laurence Fox a household name.
In my widely read & reported February 2023 Open Letter to the @BBC about @bbcquestiontime, one of my concerns was about Bruce’s chairing of #bbcqt which I said was "at best, unacceptably poor."