Anoosh Chakelian
@Anoosh_C
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Britain editor, @NewStatesman . Lead host, @NewStatesman Podcast (Publisher Podcast Award winner '21-23) & co-host Westminster Reimagined with Armando Iannucci.
London
Joined July 2011
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Pinned Tweet
Just as I hit a decade(!) at the
@NewStatesman
I'm now off on maternity leave - trusting my colleagues to continue giving Britain a heavy edit while I'm away. See you when I'm back!
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Scoop! Lee Anderson has the 7th highest staff turnover of all MPs...
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Exclusive: Children's commissioner Rachel de Souza reveals she's sent a 2nd letter to Suella Braverman about the Illegal Migration Bill.
She's using her statutory powers to demand info about who the children are on small boats - & what happens to them:
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“I counted 72 tins of identical tomato soup, the same brand, same flavour, every single week”:
Why did the government’s outsourced food boxes worth £26 in Tesco cost £44?
My investigation into the Covid-19 emergency shielding scheme:
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📣 Very excited to start my new job as the
@NewStatesman
's Britain Editor today (and boy does Britain need some editing...). Get in touch with any tips - anoosh[dot]chakelian[at]newstatesman[dot]co[dot]uk
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NEW: You're *23 times* more likely to be prosecuted for benefit fraud than tax crimes - even though the latter costs the economy NINE times more (£20bn in 2018/19!!):
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"It wasn’t created for the Westminster bubble, or the chattering classes, but for ordinary, working-class women across the UK." Fantastic tribute to the Victoria Derbyshire Show by
@BootstrapCook
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Exclusive polling for the
@NewStatesman
by
@RedfieldWilton
shows -
- Majority of Brits want Boris Johnson to resign
- Two-thirds of voters say his response to the war has not changed their view of him:
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NEW! 60% of British voters on £80,000-£100,000 say they are "about average" on the income scale.
@michaelgoodier
and my latest on income perceptions (1)...
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It's December, we're on track for record food bank use, and Universal Credit's five-week delay will deprive claimants of money over Christmas. So why isn't this the "Food bank election"?
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Latest findings in our class attitudes poll!
- A quarter of Brits on £100,000+ identify as working class, as do a fifth of Brits on £75,000+
- Half of Brits who own their house outright say they're working class, as do 48% of those with mortgages
...
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my piece on cruel early noughties comedy, racist humour, and Britain's reckoning with Little Britain:
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career peak - reached
Meet the Judges! ⚖️
@Anoosh_C
is Britain Editor at the New Statesman. She co-presents the New Statesman weekly politics podcast, and runs the “Crumbling Britain” series on the impact of austerity. She was previously Deputy Editor of Total Politics
🥙
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Detectives looked at all material sent in re the 18 Dec 2020 "cheese and wine" Christmas gathering but decided not to investigate.
The Met is being sued over this decision by the
@GoodLawProject
...
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Main thing is that only welcoming "people of talent" is a divisive message in itself - making migrants feel they have to be "exceptional" to be accepted, ignoring the appalling pay and conditions of care work, gig economy contracts, etc, by only valuing "skilled" jobs...
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Something I think about when doing this job is a point
@MartinSLewis
made to me in an interview last year (which I couldn't fit all of into the final piece) - the weirdness of political journalism being detached from consumer affairs:
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"The difficult truth is that both Raab and Johnson may as well have stayed on the beach for all the influence that they, or any British minister, wield over events in Afghanistan."
Excellent column by
@stephenkb
:
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Fascinating new findings from our latest British class attitudes survey:
A quarter of Britons paid £100,000 or more identify as “working class”:
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That scenario risks “a real crisis in public confidence in policing” -
@JolyonMaugham
even says it's "plausible" that the decision not to investigate is "politically driven" and the Met is "following instructions" (a claim the Met wouldn't respond to)..
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In 1976 at the age of 21, my dad smuggled himself onto a small boat carrying watermelons to Cyprus from Beirut, to escape the Lebanese civil war.
Here's why and how he made it to Britain, and what it taught me about migrants trying to cross the channel:
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Accounting for job changes and office size reductions, we ranked MPs by staff turnover rate - with a lot of help last year from my ace ex-colleague
@michaelgoodier
...
Lee Anderson, who has just tweeted about paying his staffer Katy under £30k, came 7th:
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NEW! Universal Credit creator tells me "technical problems" are no obstacle to raising UC or helping legacy benefit claimants through living standards crisis - rebutting Rishi Sunak's excuse:
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My piece on the other story of the Nine Elms sky pool:
The same developer of the architecturally "crackers" pool has been leaving residents waiting *nearly 4 years* to have Grenfell-style cladding removed from another building - it caught fire in May:
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“There are a lot of Labour votes, people are angry about Brexit and they know where IDS stands.” My report on the battle for Chingford, Iain Duncan Smith's seat:
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In the early 30s, John Maynard Keynes and Bertrand Russell wrote of Britain's future as a leisure society, where we'd work 3- or 4-hour days and focus on the “happiness and joy of life”.
Data from public "time diaries" reveals we're doing the opposite...
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Although it won't publish the Met's response to its legal letter, the
@GoodLawProject
says its justification is that it is “relying on the government’s assurances that no rules were broken”...
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Could we get to a point where Boris Johnson is questioned by the police over the No 10 party?
Here's what I've found out:
Two people will be questioned by the Met over the 14 Dec 2020 Tory HQ Christmas gathering in relation to alleged Covid breaches...
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UK perceptions of wealth levels are fascinating - this year sees the first ever study on what it means to be rich and if there should be a limit (focus groups based in London):
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.
@JolyonMaugham
is “pretty bullish about our prospects in this case”, which means the court could rule the Met's decision not to investigate "unlawful".
This doesn't mean it would *have* to investigate but it would be instructed to reconsider:
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My piece on the death of disposable income - how in this economy, low-paid families are having to "redefine what luxury is":
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First the Edenred vouchers that left pupils hungry..
..then Bidfood & Brakes' poor shielding boxes that appear to cost double what they should..
..and now Chartwells et al's free school meal "hampers"..
My report on the constant failure to feed people:
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"I've been accused of being a misogynist Tory shill and a Labour puppet."
Great piece by tax expert
@DanNeidle
showing his workings on the Angela Rayner council house capital gains tax story:
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The
@NewStatesman
Podcast is now out for subscribers -
@stephenkb
,
@PronouncedAlva
and I discuss Tony Blair's intervention & You Ask Us: Will the Greens replace the Lib Dems?
It was also our first recording back in the studio (look at how happy we are!)
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“They were probably missing their prawn crackers or something.”
A Deliveroo driver collapsed outside his destination in London last week - the customers simply stepped over him and queried their incomplete order.
My report on what happened, and why:
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How Brexit Britain lost a vital asset: space.
My report into one of the most striking aspects of so-called left behind Britain - that locals want "places to meet" over anything else, including jobs and transport:
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Finally, the Met has decided to investigate No 10 parties - what took them so long and why have they changed their mind?
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Over the past month, we've been looking into Don't Pay: the movement to go on "energy bill strike" come 1 October.
Here's a little thread of what
@emmahaslett
,
@philclarkehill
and I found...
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“The Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick’s done a shocking job – he's just been asleep on this.”
Stephen McPartland, Tory MP for Stevenage and leading cladding crisis rebel signals rebellion ahead on the Building Safety Bill - “this is not stopping”:
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Exclusive from
@_BvdM
! New powers sought by the government to strip British citizenship have been deemed “exorbitant, ill-defined and unconstitutional”:
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The better-off also tend to ignore nepotistic (or non-meritocratic) narratives of success:
While 17% of Brits on £0-£24,999 say family or personal ties are central to career success, 0% of those earning £100k or more choose this explanation:
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It's official - we are living in the myth of the Molly-Mae meritocracy.
Exclusive polling for the
@NewStatesman
by
@RedfieldWilton
shows the younger and richer you are, the more likely you are to believe Britain is a meritocracy:
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The scariest part of this budget is that we haven't yet seen the other half - the spending cuts. Kwarteng has called himself a "balanced budget Conservative" in the past, and we know they believe in a smaller state. So could this whole thing end up as a deposit on austerity 2.0?
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In exclusive polling for
@NewStatesman
by
@RedfieldWilton
, the British public tell us what they think are high and low incomes, and which jobs and lifestyles dictate our social class.
With data by the excellent
@michaelgoodier
!
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Exclusive new poll:
- Most Brits (54%) say Johnson should resign
- Two-thirds (66%) say his war response hasn't changed their view of him
- 84% didn't go to a party under restrictions
- 88% didn't socialise at work with colleagues under restrictions
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“I don’t want to contaminate anyone, as that is the purpose of my job: kill the germs, and health and safety. But I'm scared of taking time off.”
Cleaners fighting coronavirus in hospitals, offices and shops are compromised by exploitation and poor pay:
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"As Truss will never concede, there are numerous countries that are not only more equal than the UK but richer too: France, Germany, the Nordic states, Australia and New Zealand."
Brilliant snap verdict on Liz Truss's speech by
@georgeeaton
:
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Tinderbox Britain: my report on people living in dangerous blocks of flats, four years on from the Grenfell Tower fire:
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So proud of this special
@NewStatesman
issue on the culture of the Uyghurs, and how it's under attack:
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Delighted to win best in-depth print feature at
@BASW_UK
's journalism awards, for my
@NewStatesman
magazine piece Britain's Lost Children.
Honoured and rather intimidated to be in such amazing company!
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Brick Lane's iconic curry houses could be gone in six months - my report on curry and Covid-19:
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From speaking to cleaners:
- Statutory sick pay not enough to stop them going into work (including hospitals).
- Some told they won't get paid at all, their shifts taken off them.
- Equipment lacking, one said she had to find her own pair of gloves
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Dale Vince, owner of Ecotricity, says it could easily cause companies to go bankrupt:
“If it [Don’t Pay] became a mass movement and enough people did it, it wouldn’t take very long to bankrupt some energy companies if enough customers just didn’t pay.”
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This special issue of the
@NewStatesman
guest-edited by
@michaelsheen
is out today - and it's brilliant:
A Dream of Britain: a special issue of the NS guest edited by
@michaelsheen
.
With a cover by Jeremy Deller, an interview with Sheen and Tony Blair, new fiction by Ali Smith, and pieces by Gary Younge, Bernardine Evaristo, Anna Burns, Charlotte Church, Mark Gatiss and many more.
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John Curtice says economic conditions are "terrible" for the government:
“We’re back to the 70s: industrial unrest, high inflation, fiscal crisis, a dramatic fall in living standards – oh, and even with record taxation, public service levels are crap.”
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"In reporting on this story, I have come to understand far better what happened with the Windrush scandal, for in spirit, if not in substance, this episode had many of its hallmarks"
Fantastic piece on the grades row and technocracy by
@lewis_goodall
:
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Brits believe the main indicator of class is salary - yet a quarter earning £100k and more say they're still "working class".
With data vis and analysis by the brilliant
@michaelgoodier
:
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We didn't discuss Molly Mae on the
@NewStatesman
podcast - BUT if we had I would've made the point that the more we earn, the more likely we are to think our success is down to "hard work" (and other meritocratic narratives) - graph from
@suttontrust
:
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My dad used to tell me: "When Russia sneezes, Armenia catches cold". Now I know what he means.
My piece on the latest attack by Azerbaijan:
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@emmahaslett
@philclarkehill
It's inspired by the mass non-payment of poll tax in 1990 - when 17m refused to pay.
An energy industry insider warns:
“We ended up with riots, and the fall of a prime minister. You’ve got a precedent, and there’s nothing to stop it happening again.”
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Ministers are being threatened with legal action over “inadequate” food boxes for shielders - which appeared to boost private “profit margins at the expense of the health of vulnerable groups”.
My report:
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A sad week at the
@NewStatesman
and thanks to the brilliant
@nsmg_union
reps for their dedicated representation of talented colleagues:
A statement from the NS and NSMG Union regarding yesterday's announcement of redundancies.
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Umunna’s comment exemplified something I’ve noticed a lot in Westminster - dismissing austerity as a passé buzzword rather than a real-life crisis
Austerity is not a fleeting economic agenda that’s over when the chancellor claims it’s over.
It’s an era-defining, fundamental reshaping of the state and community, says
@Anoosh_C
.
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Since 2010, 1,416 Sure Start centres in England have closed – not even including linked children’s centre sites.
Today, Rishi Sunak's boasting about launching 75 "family hubs" by 2025.
My piece on the cheap knock-offs of post-austerity politics:
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@michaelgoodier
Over half of Brits on significantly more than the average household income (£31,400) say they are “about average” for UK households...
So over 50% of people with £40,001 and above incomes consider their earnings “about average”:
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My two cents on the ideological allergy to using Universal Credit for what it's there for:
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Thanks
@jane__bradley
for highlighting the
@GoodLawProject
's great work - this campaign stems from our original investigation at the
@NewStatesman
, which you can read here:
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"In 2019, I voted Conservative for the first time - and it will be the last. How can they let these companies treat us like this?"
Dispatches from the topsy-turvy world of leasehold, politicising people across the country:
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Exclusive! 60% of British voters on £80,000-£100,000 say they are "about average" on the income scale.
Over half of Brits on significantly more than the average household income (£31,400) say they are “about average” for UK households:
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Heartbreak at the
@NewStatesman
but huge congrats to my long-time colleague and comrade
@stephenkb
who is a fantastic hire for the
@FT
!
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“They need to help us instead of pushing us into poverty. We are UK citizens, why are we now living in what feels like a developing country?”
Inside Liz Truss's "reverse Robin Hood" Britain:
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I'd say this is so much more than *just* Corbyn or *just* Brexit changing the electoral map. Labour was slipping like this already under Ed Miliband (remember Ed Balls losing marginal Morley and Outwood after a big Ukip surge in 2015?)
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"The letter stated that Gary owed the Revenue £300,000."
Gripping, terrifying read on the next great injustice by
@willydunn
who reveals the human story of the HMRC loan charge scandal:
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So much to unpick in
@REWearmouth
's brilliant scoop:
- Sunak says funding for deprived urban areas "needed to be undone" (wonder what his backer Ben Houchen makes of that)
- Admits to pork barrel politics of channelling gov money into Tory heartlands:
EXC:
@RishiSunak
told Tories in Tunbridge Wells that as Chancellor he tried to reverse Treasury formulas "that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas" so areas like theirs could benefit
@NewStatesman
story:
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@NewStatesman
@michaelsheen
So many amazing writers and fascinating pieces but I'm particularly proud of
@yorkshiretam
- my mentee through the A Writing Chance scheme co-founded by
@michaelsheen
- for her piece exploring her conflicted relationship with Bradford:
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The public has long wildly over-estimated the extent of benefit fraud (they think it's 27%, whereas it's just 1.2% of benefit expenditure)...
It suits the government to talk that up - when tax fraud is far costlier, and people are getting away with it:
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I know it's naive to be shocked by this but these figures - £20.5bn for NHS and £4.3bn for schools in England - are *so much* lower than what Boris Johnson is saying
Fact checking the spending claims from the PM - £34bn for the NHS and £14bn for schools
#politicslive
producer Joel Massey looks at ‘double counting’, ‘cash terms’, inflation and ‘real terms’
#politicslive
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Good thread here on what the damning 41-page legal opinion (on *just one clause* of the controversial bill) means:
NEW: Clause 9 of the
#BordersBill
would give Priti Patel "exorbitant, ill-defined and unconstitutional” powers to strip Britons of their citizenship.
That's according to a detailed analysis by leading international law firm
@LeighDay_Law
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“We have a responsibility towards Armenia. Many of us feel survivors’ guilt.”
Great report on the Armenian diaspora rallying in the face of war by
@idvck
, who's been following the conflict closely for the
@NewStatesman
:
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Really proud of this special issue of the
@NewStatesman
we've been working on for a while - an "Anatomy of a Crisis", full of original data, polling and human stories about the UK's coronavirus response:
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The story behind the story!
@michaelgoodier
and
@_BvdM
reveal how levelling-up funding was channelled to Tory seats.
So proud of our talented
@NewStatesman
team today!
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Launching Britain's Lost Spaces today - a new
@NewStatesman
series following on from Crumbling Britain, tracking the decline in public space:
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“Very few in the 1 per cent are saying we’re comfortable.”
My report on the "uncomfortably off" - and why they matter - with thanks to
@GerryMitchell2
and
@MarcosGHernando
's fascinating research:
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@pollybindman
More people think benefits are "too low" rather than "too high" for the first time in 20 years:
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Exclusive: London polling by
@RedfieldWilton
for the
@NewStatesman
reveals Londoners *support* Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (44% support v 21% oppose):
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Looking forward to interviewing
@RhonddaBryant
MP about his book Code of Conduct in the Cambridge Union chamber at
@camlitfest
this afternoon. The room is booked out but you can still get tickets to watch online!
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Forensic and damning piece on the government's "food parcels first" approach here by the
@GoodLawProject
:
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"If your account isn’t £10,000 higher now than it was three years ago, then somebody else has your share."
Great, enraging piece by
@garyseconomics
:
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Meet the intimacy coordinator behind the groundbreaking scenes from last night's I May Destroy You finale, the excruciating "clock" fingering technique in Sex Education - and Ireland's longest ever sex scene in Normal People:
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If you want to read more about the HMRC Loan Charge scandal, follow my colleague
@willydunn
's excellent reporting:
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Exclusive polling by
@RedfieldWilton
for
@NewStatesman
reveals just 2% of voters think leaseholders should shoulder the costs of fixing cladding and other fire safety defects - and it's the same percentage among *Tory voters* specifically.
More here:
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My report from the rather retro Covid inquiry so far - a rather deluded David Cameron and George Osborne still talking about "fixing the roof when the sun is shining" and running the public finances "like a household budget":
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The key point from
@jamesfarrar
, who used to be an Uber driver and now campaigns for gig economy app workers' rights:
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why did the Question Time man think an £80k salary didn't make him rich? My piece on perception of inequality, and its policy challenges:
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“I need to get paid, coronavirus or not - it won’t stop me from going to work each day.”
My report on the exploitation of cleaners in hospitals, doctor's surgeries, shops and offices - some of the most vulnerable, and most vital, workers in this pandemic:
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New! BBC journalists face changes to their economy coverage within 2 months - as economists fear a return of the austerity narrative.
My report:
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There were more outbreaks in offices in the second half of 2020 than in supermarkets, construction sites, warehouses, restaurants & cafes combined
The clearest demonstration yet that the problem isn't people popping to the shops too much:
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My report on the death of disposable income - how in this economy, low-income families are having to "redefine what luxury is":
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Fascinating exclusive polling from
@RedfieldWilton
for the
@NewStatesman
show voters are now thinking about the economy differently...
It's no longer about debt/deficit - it's now about jobs and prices - a shift in Labour's favour, writes
@bnhwalker
:
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my personal story in the
@NewStatesman
summer issue is about a piece of Armenian graffiti I found on Ellis Island (here's a pic, which I wish I could've sent my dad) - and what it told me about my family:
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