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23 Oct, 5 tweets, 2 min read
1/ My Observer column: The Government is getting away with giving itself unprecedented political power to police online debate.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2/ Its Online Safety bill turns the broadcast regulator Ofcom into a Web enforcer. It might be an admirable idea were the government not rigging the system so that the job of Ofcom chair goes to Paul Dacre. See Jim Waterston’s piece on the fix here
theguardian.com/media/2021/aug…
3/ The quaint idea of an ex-Daily Mail editor fighting hate is not the end of it. The bill breaks the principle that regulation should be at arm’s length from politics by giving Nadine Dorries the ability to dictate to Ofcom. Carnegie UK has the details
carnegieuktrust.org.uk/blog-posts/sec…
4/ The govt promised in 2019 to promote trusted news The attack on misinformation has gone from the 2021 bill, perhaps because the oligarchical wealth the Tories receive allow them to bulk buy political advertising. Here’s UCL’s dissection of the evidence
constitution-unit.com/2021/10/21/the…
5/ It might be an idea if opposition politicians and the media asked a few hard questions. Just a thought.

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More from @NickCohen4

Nick Cohen Profile picture
28 Sep
Rosie Duffield appears at Labour Women's rights rally in Brighton to huge applause. Party refused to allow organisers to appear on the official fringe.
"Here we are in 2021 and we have to form a group called Lesbian Labour just to be heard "
Warns Starmer he is taking women in the Labour movement for granted.
Read 5 tweets
Nick Cohen Profile picture
12 Jan
Robert Paxton, the most authoritative thinker about fascism, says he no longer disputes that Trump is a fascist.

newsweek.com/robert-paxton-…
"Trump's incitement of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2020 removes my objection to the fascist label. His open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line. The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary."
I wrote a piece on Trump and the far right in 2017 and the great @RichardEvans36 warned about the dangers of seeing the past in the present
google.com/amp/s/amp.theg…
Read 5 tweets
Nick Cohen Profile picture
12 Jan
Patel keeps dodging the question "if the new strain is more infectious, why aren't the rules as tough as they were in the spring?"
BBC asking the question again. Patel still won't answer. Just keeps saying "the rules are clear".
ITV giving it a go now Patel dodges. ITV comes back. Patel dodges again and says "the rules are clear" "the rules are tough enough". Fine but why aren't they as clear and tough as they were in March?
Read 4 tweets
Nick Cohen Profile picture
12 Jan
Johnson fans say that ‘He's nothing like Trump’, says @peterkyle But ask yourself why aren’t friends of Angela Merkel or Emanuel Macron saying they’re nothing like Trump? The answer is simple, they don’t need to point out the obvious. With Boris Johnson it isn't so obvious.
As evidence of Trumpism in the Tory party he cites
1/ Trump and Johnson, are dismissed as frivolous jokers, lightweights, until they actually get elected. We didn’t take them seriously or read enough importance into the early warning signs.
2/ We need to think carefully when judges are called ‘enemies of the people’; when key jobs across government are handed out to friends, donors and incompetents; and when government acts unlawfully.
Read 10 tweets
Nick Cohen Profile picture
9 Jan
I am shocked to discover courtesy of @PrivateEyeNews that those nice Liberal Democrats could teach Dominic Cummings a few tricks
How on earth did they expect to get away with it? The local press has reports of Lib Dem councillors pandering to David Icke levels of paranoid fantasy amd saying 5G would make Bath residents "guinea pigs" in a sinister experiment somersetlive.co.uk/news/local-new…
And here is the LibDem propaganda sheet Lib Dem Voice slyly implying I am an enemy of the party and then saying I didn't check my story. In fact I tried to talk to the local MP and councillors as did @ruskin147 of the BBC but they refused to answer questions.
Read 7 tweets
Nick Cohen Profile picture
17 Dec 20
One of the worst examples of wishful thinking masquerading as news I've seen was the right wing claim that the 'Swedish model' could deal with virus. There was no need for lockdowns, no need to take extreme action to protect the vulnerable, all we had to do was follow the Swedes.
Today the Swedish king said: ""I think we have failed. We have a large number who have died and that is terrible. The people of Sweden have suffered tremendously."
bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur…
Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, prediction that letting the viurs move through the population would create herd immunity has proved to be the height of folly
washingtonpost.com/world/2020/11/…
Read 7 tweets

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