So dense he creates his own gravitational field, is Dan Hodges. Let me explain why in words so simple even he can understand them. 🧵

https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1778459890664513603

First, I am not a Government MP. This matters because the Government has also sorts of powers to bully and coerce that normal citizens do not. That's why its conduct is subject to special safeguards and scrutiny - not that Hodges' bottom rag would know anything about that.

A few points on the so-called tax gap, the difference between the tax HMRC actually collects and its estimate of the total tax due. 🧵 First, it does not even purport to calculate sums lost through what tax wonks call Base Erosion and Profit Shifting - broadly speaking, tax dodging by multinationals.

Eighteen months ago, with a group of MPs, we wrote to the @ChtyCommission about the so-called 'Global Warming Policy Foundation', a pro global heating organisation you are forced to match fund with tax subsidies because it is treated as a charity. 🧵goodlawproject.org/mps-call-for-i… GWPF has been described by the London School of Economics as "the UK’s main club for climate change deniers" which accused it of "peddling false claims." lse.ac.uk/granthaminstit…

If you want to know how power works in the UK contrast the press interest in (1) the £1,500 of capital gains tax Angela Rayner is said to have evaded with (2) the tens of millions Lord Ashcroft denies having evaded. 🧵 Lord Ashcroft set up the Bermuda based Punta Gordon trust. A financial statement in the leaked Paradise Papers reported it as holding assets of $450m. But the Paradise papers didn't just reveal the value of the trust.

The Charity Commission has, with extraordinary haste, dismissed our complaint about the Institute for Economic Affairs. It said: "the Commission... will rarely intervene when allegations of political bias are made, from whatever angle" - a troubling gloss on Charity law which we are considering with our lawyers. Imo, the Charity Commission cannot properly be understood as a regulator. Its purposes include the channelling of public money to organisations friendly to the Tory party. And the regulatory harassment of those whose activities are inconvenient to the Tory Party.

Found myself debating @benhabib6 on BBC on whether Reform is Far Right. He didn't repeat @TiceRichard's threat to sue those who said so. But he did intimate I might hear from Farage's lawyers for saying I thought he was anti-semitic (cited by me as a reason Reform is Far Right). The other reasons I gave: Reform's desire that the UK join Russia and Greece after a military coup in becoming only the third country ever to find intolerable the international human rights norms in the Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

In April the United Nations described the Public Order Bill as "deeply troubling legislation that is incompatible with the UK’s international human rights obligations regarding people’s rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association." shar.es/agpsHs Last month, the UN Rapporteur said the crackdown on environmental protest in Britain with “draconian” new laws, excessive restrictions on courtroom evidence and the use of civil injunctions is having a chilling impact on fundamental freedoms. theguardian.com/environment/20…

The Katharine Birbalsingh case is a great case study in the racism and hypocrisy of the right wing press.

Whilst it goes off the rails about a ban on *optional* prayers for Muslim schools...



Local Authority grant maintained schools remain formally *obliged* to hold daily acts of religious worship with a wholly or mainly Christian character...

"Posturing MPs are suddenly passionate about the Post Office" says The Times. And indeed they are - but not just MPs.

So what is the record of that self-appointed moral high-water of the Fourth Estate, The Times? 🧵 Well, it has been very quick to point the finger at senior Opposition figures. There are multiple articles about a junior Minister in the Coalition Government over ten years ago, Ed Davey.

On the last working day before Christmas - a good time to meet your legal obligations to publish things you don't want anyone to read - the Government published the contract award from the NHS to Palantir. 🧵

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1743587086177878130

The contract was, of course, heavily redacted to defeat the public interest in scrutinising a deal with Palantir, whose libertarian billionaire founder Peter Thiel once attacked the NHS as making people sick. theguardian.com/society/2023/n…

When James Cleverly claimed to Mishal Husain his colleagues "know his focus" on protecting women and girls I wonder what this colleague would say?

Via @AvaSantina. If anyone else would like to contact us with their experiences of the Home Secretary they can do so, confidentially, here. We always stand behind the stories we publish. goodlawproject.org/about/contact/

Back in 2017 @GoodLawProject forced @ElectoralCommUK to investigate Vote Leave for overspending in the Brexit Referendum. on.ft.com/3vmbu9C Vote Leave had broken the law exactly as this email, from Steve Baker MP, had said it would but still @ElectoralCommUK wouldn't investigate - until we sued.

When I came back from a run on Christmas morning there was an ambulance parked outside our house.🧵 The crew were talking to a young man who was very agitated. He had come across a friend of his, lying on a public footpath, and had called emergency services. He was asking them to be careful because she was HIV positive and had, his word, sharps.

This is quite a serious allegation - that I deliberately mislead people as to our prospects of success - from a prominent academic and I have @michaelpforan for his evidence for it...

https://twitter.com/michaelpforan/status/1738898169826603418

Here are the facts as I see them: (1) we always take advice from specialist leading Counsel before litigating and we never litigate if we are told the prospects are poor (2) we always publish our PAP letter when we crowdfund - I am aware of no other organisation that does...

I know it's very fashionable amongst certain, usually very privileged, commentators to sneer at @GoodLawProject. But whilst they sneer from the sidelines, here is some of the work we have done this year. THREAD We funded a case that established – and campaigned for – a new defence for women sued for defamation by men who sexually assaulted them. goodlawproject.org/update/win-nin…

I know this sounds dramatic, but we hold copies of a "confidential" plan run by the Tory attack agency Topham Guerin to pay influencers to attack @GoodLawProject over the Christmas period. Topham Guerin's client, on this occasion, is Palantir. Influencers are asked what their “fee expectations” are for agreeing to send two tweets, one a video and the other a follow-up written tweet about Good Law Project.

Some questions for
@DPJHodges. 🧵

(1) Why did we buy five years supply at 500% of pre pandemic prices. (2) Why were VIPs, selected by Tory Ministers, fourteen times more likely to win a PPE contract?

https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1736780176111947942

(3) Why did VIPs get paid 80% more than average? (4) Why did we buy from so many brand new, uncapitalized, companies with no experience of supplying PPE? (5) Why did we ignore offers from huge, established PPE suppliers who knew what they were doing, like Arco?

So, we have sent a formal letter before action to Rishi Sunak threatening to challenge his unilateral decision to ignore what Parliament has enacted about HS2, cancel the project, and salt the earth by selling all the land. 🧵 We haven't yet formed a view about whether we will sue - we want to know whether affected Mayors and MPs are serious about their opposition - and although our lawyers reckon its a runner we also wanna know what his lawyers say - and we don't yet have their *full* response.

It should surprise no one that Sir John Hayes MP of the misnamed Commonsense Group has been hopelessly misled by his own Solicitor General. 🧵 Even from a quick glance we can see that the total costs Central Government has paid us when Good Law Project has been Claimant are far more than the figure of £63,738.71 given by the Solicitor General Michael Tomlinson.

Brianna Ghey's killers exchanged transphobic slurs. This followed after, in the weeks leading up to her killing, an average of 38 articles a day about trans people, the vast majority with negative framing. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan… Source for the '38 articles a day about trans people, the vast majority with negative framing' stat. campaignlive.co.uk/article/adspen…

Dominic Cummings - the man who brought you Brexit and was organ grinder to Johnson's monkey - has (heroically, given the evidence) written the witness statement you would expect: everyone is stupid, all systems are buggered, if only people had followed his instructions... It's also as slippery as you might expect from the man who suggested leaving the EU would mean the NHS got an extra £350m a week. But let me pick up (for now) on one point.