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Shaun Lawson Profile picture
Shaun Lawson
@shaunjlawson
Liberal leftie; political and football chat. Author, 'How Britain Lost The Plot': https://t.co/VT8c5Di6hh English classes: https://t.co/GmORAyWmU5
25 subscribers
Jun 23 • 116 tweets • 19 min read
THREAD: Scotland's men's national football team.

Ireland have qualified for 6 major tournaments. They reached the knockout stages 4 times.

Wales have qualified for 4. They reached the KO stages 3 times.

Northern Ireland have qualified for 4. They reached the KO stages 3 times. (Technically, twice in their case - because of FIFA's daft format of four groups of three in the 1982 second phase - but Northern Ireland reached the last 12 and BEAT HOSTS SPAIN, so we'll ignore that).

Scotland have qualified for 12 major tournaments in their history.
May 25 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
Emily, of course, knows exactly why Newsnight is being deliberately run down. She's just too decent a human to spell it out.

So I'll spell it out instead. The reason why Newsnight, probably the best current affairs programme on the planet for decades, is being destroyed is: - The same reason as Emily was raked over the coals by her CBC (no typo) bosses for the crime of asking Rod Liddle whether he considered himself a racist and highlighting his never-ending racism.

For having depicted a racist as a racist, she had "failed to be even-handed".
May 22 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I don't think Sunak's chucked it exactly. He's not a complete idiot; he does, contrary to many appearances, know what reality is. It looks like this:

1. This election is unwinnable with any strategy or for any Tory leader. It's been that way since the mini-budget in 2022. 2. The Tory party is also completely unmanageable - especially under anyone who even vaguely tries to look for the centre ground. Just as it was between 1993 and 2005.

3. Waiting till the end of the year would've meant EVEN MORE public fury and disgust.
May 5 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
OK, let's deal with this. It's too easy and trite to dismiss it as antisemitism - it certainly comes up a lot.

Labour Friends of Israel was founded in 1957. Less than a decade after Israel's creation: which a Labour government had a HUGE amount to do with. I think the number 1 reason Israel-Palestine is such a constantly huge issue on the British left and in British politics generally is just that: our large historic role.

Yet back in 1957, Israel barely enjoyed any real US support. That didn't follow for another decade.
May 3 • 23 tweets • 5 min read
Yes, that claim was completely false. But:

1. No, it wasn't the primary claim or any kind of claim given it was completely debunked before the war

2. You don't seem aware of the history of Iraq annexing Kuwait, them being driven back out, or of the whole of the 1990s! The reason we know Iraq had WMD (including chemical weapons) is:

1. Saddam used those chemical weapons against the Kurds at Halabja and against the Iranians in the 1980-88 war

2. Ourselves, the US, France, West Germany and the Netherlands had sold them to him!
Apr 28 • 35 tweets • 6 min read
The thing that shocks me about @simon_schama, a fellow alumni of the same school incidentally, is he's not just a brilliant historian with a majestic ability to explain complex events in rivetingly engaging ways people can identify with.

He's always - until now - been so HUMANE. That was what echoed throughout so much of his work. His warmth, his humour, his empathy, his sheer humanity.

Now, it's completely gone missing. I would say I find it incomprehensible - but not quite. Here's why.
Apr 12 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
Another man without the first damn clue what he's talking about.

When an icon as great and heroic as @Martina speaks, I listen.

She knows that women's spaces and women's sports are under grave threat. She also knows how unbelievably homophobic the entire discourse has become. Martina = mensch. And all time legend.

Rothenberg = who?
Jan 6 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
You pathetic, odious, vile little plankton.

Gary Neville won 8 Premier League titles, 2 Champions Leagues and 85 England caps.

You got relegated with Newcastle, relegated twice with QPR, handed Man City the title by assaulting three of their players, and won 1 England cap. That one lousy England cap was as part of our worst team since 1993. The ONLY one not to qualify - and you weren't even good enough to be picked for it more than once.

In fact, you have MORE CONVICTIONS FOR VIOLENT CRIME than England caps, you absolute waste of skin.
Dec 30, 2023 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
Today, in the world of sensible centrist liberal media 🙄🙄🙄

1. Thomas L. Friedman is worried for the world and tries to explain what's happening to it. He explains what's happening to it by... saying THIS. Image Yes folks. The difference between Dubai and Gaza isn't that one is staggeringly rich in natural resources and the other is a rock. And it isn't that one is independent and the other has been illegally occupied and blockaded for so long.

It's 'visionary leadership'.
Nov 20, 2023 • 52 tweets • 8 min read
THREAD: Argentina. Why has this happened - and what's going to happen now?

The first thing to say about why this has happened is pretty simple. The options facing a desperate, frantic Argentinian public were APPALLING. All of them. In August, at the primaries, the mostly centre-right Juntos por Cambio (which governed, very badly, through Mauricio Macri between 2015 and 2019) voters made a dreadful, in my view indefensible blunder.

They selected Patricia Bullrich over Horacio Rodriguez Larreta.
Oct 28, 2023 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
When the provisional IRA tried to assassinate the entire British government, the British government did not respond by carpet bombing Belfast for weeks on end.

Nor did it impose a 16-year-long siege on the island of Ireland. Nor did it cut off electricity, water, food, fuel and communications.

In fact, much of the world - including, notably, the US - understood that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland had an entirely legitimate grievance. And were victims of an historic injustice.
Oct 14, 2023 • 24 tweets • 4 min read


"Research by the IJPR shows about 2% of the population of Great Britain can be characterised as “hardcore” antisemites - defined as those believing multiple anti-Jewish tropes simultaneously - whereas 70% is found to hold no anti-Jewish views at all".theguardian.com/world/2023/oct… "A 2021 survey by the institute, conducted two months after the last war in Gaza, found that almost three-quarters of Jewish adults in the UK felt that non-Jews held them responsible for the actions of the Israeli government during the conflict..."
Oct 8, 2023 • 31 tweets • 5 min read
Someone just asked me if I thought Gazans supported what Hamas are doing. I replied: "Mostly, yes".

But no, that's not because ordinary Palestinians are terrorists. It's because they have been left so completely bereft, they have nowhere else to turn. It cannot be overstated just how corrupt, how weak, how pathetic the Palestinian Authority now is.

Under the risible leadership of Mahmoud Abbas: who's both a vehement antisemite and traitor to his people, only interested in his own position and status.
Sep 28, 2023 • 33 tweets • 6 min read
Regarding what happened to @mlothianmclean yesterday - a discussion about misogyny in which a man denying the gender pay gap even exists was paid a ridiculous amount, while she wasn't - I bet that happens to far more women in media than men.

Far more. Here's my take on why. Below, the clip of her discovering that the man talking over her and spouting his usual mindless BS was being paid for the privilege.

Sep 18, 2023 • 32 tweets • 6 min read
Q: Why now?

A: Because an investigation of this detail and this complexity takes years.

It especially takes years when someone rich and powerful has a superinjunction against reports of this nature. THAT's why comedians referring to Brand were warned off doing so. If you wanted to know why just one comedian was willing to speak on camera about what was commonly known about Brand, there's your answer. Legal threats.

Q: How does a newspaper get around a superinjunction?

A: With irrefutable evidence.
Jun 1, 2023 • 55 tweets • 10 min read
If you're outside the UK, Channel 4's Gender Wars is available here.



I've just watched it. I thought it was very good: it handled the whole issue with balance and the utmost care. As a primer for a bewildered public, it does the job extremely well. From the coverage it's had, you might be labouring under the misapprehension that it's just about Kathleen Stock (@Docstockk)'s appalling experiences. It's not.

Many people on both sides of the debate are given a voice, and a fair hearing. It provoked many thoughts in me.
May 31, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Absolutely outrageous.

1. Guardian News and Media PAID OFF a sexual predator within its ranks.

2. Said sexual predator blames his 20-year-long serial sexual predation on alcohol.

3. Nobody in the UK media, including even Private Eye, will report on it.

nytimes.com/2023/05/30/wor… From the NY Times piece:

"British news media is smaller and cozier than its American counterpart, with journalists often coming from the same elite schools...

A half-dozen FT journalists said they saw it as part of a wider reluctance to expose bad behavior within its industry".
May 30, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Why don't we? BECAUSE of the campaign of recent times.

BECAUSE of how hard heroic women have had to push just to protect what is theirs. The rights of all women.

Stonewall demanded 'no debate' because the point was to usher self-ID through without people noticing. Meanwhile, we still have:

- Male-bodied people in women's prisons
- Male-bodied people in women's changing rooms
- Male-bodied people in women's toilets
- Male-bodied people in women's sports
- Male-bodied people in (even running!) women's rape crisis centres
May 30, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Best political interview I've read since I don't know when.

But the reason @faizashaheen is such a rarity, such a brilliant breath of fresh air? Others just like her were chased out by Starmer's Stalinist apparatchiks and their hatchet job media mates.

theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2… Read her life story. Powerful and compelling. Faiza is the absolute epitome of authenticity and has so, so much to offer.

I couldn't agree with her more about Oxford either.

And at the election, she'll beat Dunkin Shite like a drum.
May 29, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Dear oh dear. Not one, not two, but THREE top flight clubs all disappearing in the same season.

Meanwhile, the idiots who've overseen this disaster continue to deny Ealing promotion or the Championship anything at all.

theguardian.com/sport/2023/may… English (and Welsh) rugby is in the most massive crisis.

And please note: in England at least, it's a direct consequence of the same Thatcherite Greed Is Good model which has laid waste to society for decades on end.
May 11, 2023 • 28 tweets • 5 min read
You know, I'll say this for Trump. It's quite incredible just what the orange fascist piece of shit has exposed.

This is someone who until literally Tuesday, essentially had never faced any real consequences for anything at all. And why? Because he's white, male and rich. Not rich through his own hard work - don't be silly! Rich because he inherited it. And went on to become EXTREMELY well-connected.

And in America, very much including liberal New York, rich, well-connected white men have been able to do... whatever the heck they wanted.