Isn't this just bullying? She has 14 million followers. Lucy is a non-league football coach in the fifth division!

Of all the criticisms I get on here this is the one I find most bizarre (a) I'm a writer. I want to write for money!
(b) None of those publications make me change anything I'm saying
(c) I pitch to the liberal media too. Maybe it should be more pluralistic?

I do think we need to think sometimes just how mad it is that an animating force in British culture has been nostalgia for a war from people who didn't fight in it And here I'm not arguing against commemoration - I wear a poppy and lead historical tours about WWII. I mean nostalgia, a sense of that war being heroic and fun

Interesting, isn't it, that some forms of art (dance, visual arts) are in a universal language whereas others (literature, comedy) are in specific one. The latter only become universal by translating their localism Like Shakespeare is probably the 'universal' writer and yet 'Twelfth Night' contains a reference to 'The Great Bed of Ware', an extremely large four poster bed in Hertfordshire

This week's newsletter is about sex, masculinity and guinea pigs.

What more could you want frankly?

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The thing is Keir Starmer genuinely is a working-class boy done good. British politics is just so full of class cosplay that nobody can tell what that looks like I offer you the childhood homes of the last two Labour leaders. Guess which one Twitter thought was the authentic proletarian

I'd encourage people reflexively defending Caryl Churchill on issues around antisemitism to actually read her work 'Seven Jewish Children'. I won't link to it but it's still up on The Guardian A charitable interpretation of the last five years is that the British left has become more aware of antisemitic tropes. Not sure a play like that survives such heightened awareness

If we're talking about BBC balance on Brexit, from 2010-2019 Question Time featured 50 appearances from British MEPs. 45 were UKIP, two were Brexit Party, and the other was Daniel Hannan So let's not pretend that the BBC was a bastion of Europhillia pre-Brexit. I barely remember hearing explicitly pro-EU voices at all

I don't think it's wild to ask that the BBC, in addition to representing both sides of an argument, also provide context on the sectoral divides around an argument Without that context, viewers can form a false impression on the state of a debate - such as concluding scientific scepticism as to climate change was much higher than it is

The Tories: 'We can appeal to socially conservative voters who want more state protection' - Yes, and you have to do both parts The reason this government has failed is that it has been unable to deliver for these voters in practice, as that involves getting out of the Tory comfort zone

Surely we all recognize that, on some level, this is no way to live? Paralyzed and anxious due to the constant demand for all language to be inclusive - on a platform founded on brevity!

My overwhelming reaction to the Brexit news is sadness at the whole sorry affair, particularly in how the EU was caricatured in British public life. The unseriousness and small-timeness of that We never voted to leave the actual EU. We voted for Escape from Colditz

I'm about to knock off for Christmas so here's a brief recap of my writing this year.

At the start of the year I set myself a target of publishing six articles and I'm pleased to say I hit it. But firstly, thank you to you! I am not cool enough to pretend having a Twitter following doesn't matter to me, and though I've less than 3k followers, I treasure all of you.

Long thread about languages (1/24): One of the most frequent ambitions I've seen for people during the lockdown is to learn a foreign language. I'm something of an exception, an Anglophone person who's managed to do this as an adult, and I have some thoughts on the matter. First of all, it's absolutely worth it. Learning languages doesn't pay itself back as a precise dividend, but as a small, continual enrichment of your life, like when you can understand a clip of a foreign politician or a word in a text you're reading.