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Tom Freeman Profile picture
Tom Freeman
@SnoozeInBrief
Cheap, and worth every penny. If this place goes down, find me as tomfreeman on BlueSky, or in the pub
Dec 11, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
This is an intriguing idea, but I think it may be a misinterpretation. First of all, only one of the OED’s early citations of the phrase ‘knocked up’ is related to slavery. The others, including the earliest recorded use, are not. 1/5 Second, the 1836 example which is about slavery – and which drips with racism (I’ve blotted out a certain word) – looks like wordplay rather than the explanation of a meaning. It joins together two otherwise unrelated ‘knock’-based phrases for the sake of a callous quip. 2/5
Sep 29, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Here are Liz Truss’s statements on the energy price guarantee in her radio interviews this morning. They are very consistently worded, and very misleading. First, her sentence structures are misleading. A “typical bill” will vary between households: homes differ in size, insulation, appliances and personal needs. “A typical family will not pay a bill of more than X” does not mean “No family will face a typical bill of more than X”.
Oct 5, 2021 • 16 tweets • 8 min read
If you like #GhostSigns or little crumbs of Cambridge history, you might like this thread. (If not, look away now…) On the corner of Mill Road and Hope Street in Cambridge, very near my childhood home (where my parents still live), is this building. I’ve walked past it many thousands of times. And running the full length of the wall is a #GhostSign so faint I’ve never noticed it before. ImageImage
Sep 30, 2021 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
After 16½ years of editing, writing and drinking coffee [poss ambiguity: were you editing and writing the coffee?] [shut up] at Wellcome, today is my last day. I’ll miss all my lovely colleagues who’ve made my time there such fun. I’m going to have a few months off the employment treadmill so that I can watch TV and tweet angry nonsense, or, as we middle-class graduates say, “take a sabbatical”. I might even try writing something a bit more substantial.
Apr 19, 2019 • 109 tweets • 34 min read
One out foraging, one at home resting (noisy geese permitting). The swans have been nesting for weeks, with one of them making trips out for food. Then yesterday I saw them both out on the canal – but no sign of any cygnets. They looked kind of downcast…
Feb 23, 2019 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Jeremy Corbyn, who didn’t notice the antisemitism in Holocaust denier Paul Eisen. Jeremy Corbyn, who didn’t notice the antisemitism in Holocaust denier Stephen Sizer.
Feb 14, 2019 • 26 tweets • 4 min read
A thread about the 1010-day period from 23 June 2016 to 29 March 2019: Day 1 of 1010: Referendum takes place. 52% vote to leave the EU.

Day 21 of 1010: Theresa May takes over from David Cameron as Prime Minister.
Jul 4, 2018 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
Let’s imagine, hypothetically – just for argument’s sake – that the Leave campaign did break electoral law. Apart from prosecutions and fines, what should happen as a consequence of that? 1/13 (yes, 13, sorry)
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi… If an MP breaks the law to get elected, the result can be annulled: they lose their seat and the voters get a by-election. But a referendum result isn’t a person, doesn’t hold an elected post, and can’t be held accountable. 2/13