The BBC seems to have this fabulous social media policy where it swoops in immediately to take control over the content of employees' tweets but appears to leave them completely alone in dealing with abuse and negativity I feel like there needs to be a whistleblowing account for people who work there to be able to publicly call out the kinds of things they've got in trouble for saying. I would kill to be able to share some of the stories I've heard but they're not mine to share

Something I've noticed that nobody is saying...

Local lockdowns in West Yorkshire have been royally fucked up and it's a sign of fucked up things to come for the rest of the UK.

(A concise thread) Yesterday, Rishi Sunak made some comments about no longer "putting life on hold". The gist was that we can't go on forever with severe restrictions that people feel limit their freedom

This morning I did something that I've never been able to do. I answered two vox-pop style questions into a camera pretty much first go. This is a laughably easy feat for most people but as someone who is absolutely inept at speaking, this is weirdly a huge achievement for me I think a lot of people think it's nerves but, at least for me, it's not. After lots of frustrating experiences where I literally couldn't get a whole sentence out because I knew I was being looked at (on camera, speaking in front of people, etc) I did some research and...

Since everyone is talking about him still, last year he agreed to sponsor The Overtake and never paid the invoice. The amount of time we spent jumping through hoops, putting together a pitch deck, chasing him and his staff, etc was enough to really cripple us as a small team

https://twitter.com/sophwilkinson/status/1288456775197491200

His company branding was on the site for months before we realised he was never going to pay. He later said he didn't want to pay it because we looked like we were really struggling financially and he didn't want to sponsor something that might close down

Asking people to donate to media in a broken system is perfectly fair. What's wrong for the Guardian is the optics - the reason most readers don't donate is the fancy London offices, the slick products, the middle-class comment pieces. It looks like they've got tonnes of money It takes a lot of money to do quality stuff! But if you're up in Leeds on a council estate reading about someone hiding from their cleaner, you're going to be like "nah, they're good"

These campaigners talk about the difference in weight and strength between trans women and cis women as if women's contact sports don't deal with this already. In roller derby, an 8 stone woman would regularly be hit by a 16 stone woman. That's the nature of the game

https://twitter.com/samcunningham/status/1280761649113305089

Any sport where there's a weight differential, safety measures are already in place! You'd never have a flyweight going up against a heavyweight in boxing. These aren't new problems!

I think a lot of white people are afraid of using the "wrong" terminology and offending someone so it's really about listening and, if you don't get it right, apologising for using words that people don't like, instead of digging in

https://twitter.com/krishgm/status/1270822785992978433

I still how horrified two of my friends were when I used the term "people of colour". They're Asian (Hindu and Muslim) but hadn't heard it before and equated it to "coloured people". Instead of listening and apologising, I tried to explain, which is absolutely not my role!

I feel so frustrated that the BBC should be about representing British people - which is true locally and outside news - but its future is being absolutely trashed by this notion of "impartiality", that in practice means it's unable to truly criticise the government I'm not saying this as a left-leaning journalist, just an outside observer. It's just quite clear that when the government does something wrong, the BBC is in a position where calling it out, even in the public interest, seems "political"

I am getting a lot of pitches for @theovertake at the moment and we have next-to-no commissioning budget so I thought I'd do a tiny little thread about what we're NOT looking for, in order to save freelancers' time @theovertake We're NOT looking for opinion. I know we publish it but we don't commission it from unsolicited pitches. That doesn't include personal essays about a part of your life or an experience, we still want those. I'd say half my inbox is opinion pitches and we've never asked for them

All I want in life is to be on Gogglebox Gonna try and marry a Siddiqui

In personal news, I look like this now Btw I don't want this to be taken as a slight on the mullet. The mullet will be back when hairdressers are open and my hair is long enough

I think a lot of people looked at these recommendations so I'm going to attempt to add a tweet to this thread about each one as I finish them...

https://twitter.com/RobynVinter/status/1243860133735694336

(I'm choosing them at random depending on which podcast I feel like starting at the time, not in any particular order. And I'm reviewing them after listening to the whole thing)

Just got back from a run where a guy ran past me and in the most patronising tone said "don't stop because there's a puddle!". Where does this entitlement come from I need to know There was A FLY IN MY EYE you little prick and even if there wasn't I can run however the fuck I want! If I want to stop running because of a puddle, I can! If I want to stop running because I can't be bothered, that's up to me! Me! Not you! You're not part of this!

A quick thread about pitches for newbie journalists (since I've got hundreds in my inbox that I'm currently sorting through)... Pitch one good idea a week, rather than sending me something not thought through every day. Of course, if you send lots of pitches you're more likely to get them commissioned but if I open a few emails from you and they're not great, I won't be in a rush to open the others

I think I offended some people yesterday and I don't think that was necessary so I'm sorry if anyone's feelings were hurt. I should have clarified that most people who write for us are newbies. If someone's been making a living as a freelancer, OF COURSE their work is good

https://twitter.com/RobynVinter/status/1092080910109937666

I get a lot of pitches and most of the people I commission are newbies (in many cases we're their first freelance commission). If the pitch is great, I'll always give them a try. If the pitch is okay but they've got three years at the Telegraph, I know it will be readable