The #bbcqt audience in Bexhill last night were majority Tory voters, by a country mile. And when government minister Helen Whately praised their local Tory MP, they laughed in outright disdain.

This is the kind of thing which should have the Conservatives very, very worried. Before the show goes live, there's a practice question (to get warmed up, check mics etc). This week, it was about potholes. And while the mood was good-natured, people in the audience were genuinely angry at the government about it. Potholes were a symbol of neglect and decline.

It's not just the Labour Party that operates a hierarchy of racism: it's the media. Every time I've tried to talk about Islamophobia or antiblackness in the context of a discussion about antisemitism in Labour, I've been shouted down. Which would be fine, if there was ever a chance to speak just about Islamophobia and antiblackness in Labour.

I'd rather live in a place where I sometimes got annoyed by noise than a place where neighbours were waiting to call the cops on one another at the faintest hint of nuisance.

https://twitter.com/_jestingpilate_/status/1640688596301611009

Genuinely, I think this impulse to ban whatever you find annoying/call the police for low level nuisance speaks more to the breakdown of community than kids in hoodies.

Crime Survey of England and Wales shows that overall levels of crime have trended downwards over the decades.

You can say that about anything in the name of crime prevention (if police had access to all our phones, all the time, wouldn't it be worth it if it stopped just one murder?). Ultimately, you've got to take a wider view of risks and rewards, and that includes civil liberties.

https://twitter.com/peetdog69/status/1640638796298428418

The other thing to bear in mind is what are the knock-on effects. So widespread use of stop and search means you pull a lot of people into the criminal justice system, not for weapons, but because you find small quantities of weed. That has all kinds of negative repercussions...

2 years ago, when people were calling him boring, Keir Starmer impishly implied that he had tried drugs as a young man ("I had a good time").

In 2020, he said he supported decriminalising cannabis.

But now? He wants police to crack down on smoking weed.

What a joke! Politicians admit to taking drugs, or do the nudge-nudge wink-wink about it, because it's socially acceptable for middle class people to 'experiment'. In fact, if you haven't tried something at least once at university, you must be a bit of a square.

People will yell, but the fact is that there are some very troubling parallels between media transphobia and media racism, and this ought to make everyone a lot more sceptical about how the issue is framed and narrated in the press. The starting point for almost every discussion about trans people in newspapers and broadcast is a focus on edge cases – the tiny percentage of individuals who pose a threat to others.

GHANA ZINDABAD The powers of Europe ganging up against my non-aligned brothers I see.

I got the pill at 14, making the trip to the clinic behind the Big Tesco rather optimistically after having kissed a boy.

It would be a couple more years before I actually had sex, but I could get contraception because of Gillick competence.

gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/artic… Gillick competence is a super important legal ruling, which means that if under-16s demonstrate sufficient understanding and maturity, they can consent to medical treatments like abortion, or accessing contraceptives. Parents don’t have to give permission. gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/artic…

Chances are, most of us have at least one grandmother who had children that she didn’t want, or before she really wanted to have them.

And anti-choice campaigners would like to turn back the clock on women's rights here in the UK.

Me for British GQ:

gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/artic… Despite decriminalisation in Northern Ireland three years ago, the NI govt still haven't commissioned abortion services. Women are still forced to travel in order to terminate after 10 weeks.

If you’re looking for an abortion desert, there are ones closer to home than America.

Men make up just 20% of the audience for literary fiction. Please, I beg you, get over yourselves and into novelistic chitter chatter! trib.al/C8VtEcZ The caucasian Big Dogs of prestige lit can’t present themselves as the universal perspective anymore. No one needs Jonathan Franzen or Martin Amis to speak on behalf of humanity.

So who are men when they don’t get to claim the status of godlike narrator? gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/articl…

This is so unrepresentative of the private rental sector that it may as well be fake news lmao. theguardian.com/money/2022/apr… This is just factually not true. According to Shelter, 45% of tenants in England have been victims of illegal behaviour from landlords.

"10 city chapters issued a public statement rebuking the global network for its opacity, [and] families of some Black victims of police violence have complained that they have seen little of the funds that have flowed to the movement’s most visible facet." nymag.com/intelligencer/… There's so much in this story to think critically about, but one thing that sticks out is what happens when grassroots movements become flooded with money and achieve a degree of mainstream legitimacy. The gap between leadership and activists on the ground grows...

Tomorrow is my grandmother's funeral. Losing a loved one is always hard, but North London Hospice were incredible in those painful last weeks. If you're able, and you feel like it, chip in a donation here: northlondonhospice.org/support-us/don… The North London Hospice did so much for us, I couldn't possibly convey it all properly. They provided the set-up and support for my grandma to live her last weeks with us at home, surrounded by her family, rather than being taken somewhere she didn't know. And more than that...

The fact is that transgender people – trans men, trans women, and non-binary people – are underrepresented in sport. They face barriers to participating in sports in schools, at gyms, and in their communities. They're underrepresented in sport at the elite competitive level. And rather than looking at the problems of access and inclusion, politicians and the press are making as much noise as possible to ensure transgender individuals feel unwelcome in sports.

The Ukrainian National Guard sharing explicitly racist propaganda from the Azov movement is deeply worrying.

As others have said, Russia exaggerates the role of the far right in Ukraine. But Western media coverage mostly ignores it so as to avoid copying Kremlin talking points. I talked about the Azov movement a few weeks ago on Radio 4 – not to delegitimise Ukrainian resistance to a war of aggression, but to make the point that war almost always involves empowering the most regressive and fascistic elements in any society.

Astonishing lack of interest amongst UK journalists about questions raised by The Trojan Horse Affair, and even less desire to put those questions to @michaelgove. I wonder why that is. I don’t get a lot of one-on-one time with @michaelgove, but he does follow me. So with that in mind…

1) Is it true that you were made aware by Birmingham City Council and counter-terrorism police that the anonymous letter was a hoax before you launched the Clarke inquiry?

Oh, Bentancur 😩 WHAT IS LLORIS DOING

The far-right to mainstream conspiracy conveyor belt has been in operation for a long time. It targeted and smeared British Muslims (Trojan Horse, Christian foster care), and later, the Corbynite left (terrorist sympathisers, Czech spy etc). And it's been enabled by 'respectable' media outlets, politicians and commentators. Those same organisations and individuals can't complain when Keir Starmer is the target of the same dirty tactics that were used against Corbyn, Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown.

Still gasping that a woman went on national radio to tell the country she returned her adopted son to care after 8 years, separating him from the brother that she kept, but it’s not entirely negative because now her handbag is safe. The way this story has been framed in both The Times and by the BBC is, from top to bottom, suffused with the very worst of this country’s fucked up attitudes to class and deprivation.

Children can be challenging, difficult, traumatised and criminal. But if you wouldn’t put your biological child in the care system, you shouldn’t an adopted one - after 8 years!

That poor kid.

https://twitter.com/BBCWomansHour/status/1465577334585450498

She’s not wrong about there needing to be more support for parents who adopt. But there’s something gross in framing what happened as a relationship breakdown between equals, and the focus on the parent’s ‘heartbreak’ over the child’s trauma of being sent back into care.

And I'm saying that if we're applying the same standard, you too are a rank hypocrite for decrying bigotry from Rafiq when - like him - you've had to apologise for past comments.

https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/1461658092270145536

The facts are that Azeem Rafiq was subject to racist bullying over a period of years, which nearly broke him as a man. When that bullying was uncovered by investigators, the YCCC board chose to excuse it as 'banter' in order to cover up the wider cultural problem under its watch.