Today I took my parents for Afternoon Tea to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of them meeting; Christmas Eve, 1969.
When people talk of how racist the UK is today, they tell me that it really isn’t. It’s immeasurably better than when they met.
To me, they helped blaze the trail.
“This doesn’t represent diverse Britain, it’s all these blonde, blue-eyed girls”
@theblackfarmer
and
@rachshabi
criticising the Lionesses for a lack of diversity is as predictable as it is ignorant.
We don’t choose our sporting heroes because of the colour of their skin.
Really struggling to understand how we’ve reached a stage where kids running amok in Oxford Street, looting, harassing and going toe-to-toe with (largely ineffective) police has become an occurrence not even considered to be newsworthy in London.
This is what it’s like to be a constituent of David Lammy.
Asked why he hadn’t held a residents’ meeting on crime in the last 4yrs he blamed Brexit. Annoyed at being caught out, he became angry with the man who raised it.
“He’s unapproachable”
He doesn’t like to be challenged.
27 year old Labour MP whose only four years of employment post-university was as a parliamentary officer for MEND calls for more MPs with life experience...
“For now, the family are going to take a break and take a step back”
Interesting that seeing the police bodycam footage of Chris Kaba’s shooting has rapidly de-escalated the story. MPs and commentators who reacted so hysterically now conspicuously absent.
Rather than speak to the daughter of Joe McCann, an Official IRA commander, perhaps
@BBCr4today
should interview the parents, widows and children of the 722 British servicemen murdered by the IRA, or the 15 murders McCann was believed to have personally been involved in.
#r4today
On the anniversary of D-Day it angers me to see graffiti on the Cenotaph today.
As a Veteran, and a black Briton, I’ve fought to defend the right to peaceful protest, but desecrating a memorial to those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice is unacceptable.
#BlackLivesMatterUK
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Roger Williamson at the 1973 Zandvoort Grand Prix.
The incident will forever be remembered for the actions of fellow F1 driver David Purley who stopped his car mid-race to try, ultimately in vain, to rescue Williamson from the…
Changing the name of Black Boy Lane to La Rose Lane today has cost
@haringeycouncil
an estimated £186,000.
Labour Councillors don’t reply to emails about fly-tipping, illegal HMOs or LTNs but they’ll find time and money they don’t have on virtue-signalling for headlines.
#slowthai
wins ‘Hero Of The Year’ having held up a severed head effigy of the Prime Minister on stage last year.
At the
#NMEAwards
last night he gets drunk, gropes Katherine Ryan on stage, and then starts a fight with the audience.
Hero may be a stretch
The
@SkyNews
interview with Pastor Beryl St.James is one of the best responses I’ve heard as to how knife crime can be tackled.
Politicians in London would do well to heed her advice regarding a holistic approach to challenging the toxic culture that surrounds carrying a knife.
“I make no apologies”.
“You don’t want to apologise for racist comments made by your colleague?”
David Lammy, pressed by
@wizbates
on Sky News refusing to address the slur by Rupa Huq.
“Did you ask Nadia Whittome to delete her tweet?”
“Well let me be very clear…”…about not answering that question.
Keir Starmer twists himself in knots to avoid a simple question about the problem some Labour MPs, and others on the left, have with non-white Conservatives.
@SadiqKhan
Incredible that an altercation in Peckham Hair and Cosmetics warrants a tweet from the Mayor of London and rolling updates, but when a child is fatally stabbed you can never find the courage to condemn it.
Your reminder that this is the same Kate Osamor who didn’t lose the whip after she threatened a Times journalist with smashing his face “with a f*****g bat” as he questioned her about her son’s conviction for drug-dealing whilst he was a serving Labour councillor, living with her…
Children missing in London were kept by this gang 200 miles away in Hull, forced to live in a derelict house with no electricity or food and made to sell crack and heroin through the night.
A story that has received zero national news coverage.
Good to see the Daily Mirror kicking off it’s coverage of Black History Month with this they-all-look-the-same-don’t-they clanger.
You’d think, given the coverage he’s received this week, that most people in the press would know what Kwasi Kwarteng looked like…
TikTok “prankster” Mizzy has already been arrested for assaulting Orthodox Jews in Stamford Hill. There are videos of him walking into people’s houses, here he steals someone’s dog.
Given the police know exactly who he is, why is this allowed to continue?
“If we had a proper salary that fully covers our expenses and everything, we wouldn’t leave from there.”
@SkyNews
interviews an Albanian stockbroker seeking asylum in the UK because her life in Albania has become “intolerable”.
Surely this is a visa rather than an asylum claim?
The attack on two police officers in Frampton Park Road, Hackney is a prime example of the abuse our officers face.
Those who’ve demonstrated against the police this past week have been silent in condemning a group of men kicking a black female officer.
Lots of analysis today regarding Somerton and Frome will focus on the “historic swing” of 29%, but the Liberal Democrat vote here only increased by 4,170. The Labour vote, tellingly, decreased by 7,345.
There are 26,000 Conservative voters missing from this picture. It’s…
@Bloke_On_A_Bike
Part of the problem is people like yourself suggesting that this behaviour isn’t an issue. The fact that there are so few consequences is why they feel emboldened to do it.
That Rory Stewart can go from running to be Conservative Prime Minister, to issuing a come-and-get-me plea to become a Labour Minister, via a tilt at being the Independent Mayor of London, suggests a man who is easily seduced by any shiny new attention-seeking opportunity.
Only four years ago he was standing to become Tory PM, now
@RoryStewartUK
says he'd be interested in serving as a minister in a Starmer Labour govt. A look at a difficult year for
@RishiSunak
and how he hopes to turn it round in 2024
@DrProudman
The irony of this sanctimonious clickbait is that you happily play to the gallery, suggesting everybody who isn’t white is a victim, whilst oblivious to your own soft-bigotry of low expectation.
Next you’ll be patting me on the head and telling me how well I’ve done.
The list should really be called “100 ideologically acceptable Black Britons”.
Omitting heroes like Daley Thompson and John Barnes but includes individuals like Monroe Bergdorf, Kehinde Andrews and Dawn Butler. Apparently compiled by a panel of experts.
Keir Starmer refuses to remove the whip from Labour MP Apsana Begum for sharing a platform with a pro-Palestinian organisation just hours after Hamas launched its terrorist attack against Israel.
What sort of message is Labour sending with MPs like this?
@NadineDorries
Nadine, this isn’t helpful, we’re all on the same team. We criticise this coverage when it’s aimed at female politicians, we should do the same when it’s male politicians.
Good to see the PM challenging
@ChrisMasonBBC
over his banal question on Suella Braverman.
On Friday he asked the PM about Harry and Meghan’s car chase.
Why send the BBC Political Editor all the way to the G7 Summit in Japan for this level of reporting?
Happy first anniversary!
It’s a year to the day since Labour removed the whip from Nick Brown with no reason ever provided.
It doesn’t take a year to conduct an investigation, so when are journalists going to start asking Keir Starmer why he’s suspended?
I beg to differ Femi.
I’ve served alongside those who “have done more and risked more to be here than you ever have”.
There are those who have laid down their lives and made greater sacrifices to allow you the freedom you happily squander tweeting this ceaseless diatribe.
Never forget that the people being sent to Rwanda for coming to the UK in boats across the channel, have done more and risked more to be here than you ever have.
All you did was tumble out of someone who happened to be on UK soil.
“If you had a street called, y’know, ‘White Trash’ you might wanna rename it”
Note how
@MarinaPurkiss
immediately draws an equivalence between “Black Boy” and “White Trash”.
The smug superiority of the left shows how they’re so arrogant they can’t even temper their own bigotry.
It’s a damning indictment of our times that a 14 year old boy can be stabbed to death by two children and it barely make headline news; compare this to coverage of the incident in Peckham.
Where is the outrage that children are murdering other children?
@AnnelieseDodds
Anneliese, which structural racial inequalities are you referring to and how would Labour’s Race Equality Act tackle them?
You’ve been using the same soundbite for three years but it still isn’t clear what it actually means.
Dawn Butler is the only MP hawking her wares on “celebrity” greeting app Cameo.
Have we really reached a stage where a Labour MP is happy to charge £2.99 to send a video message?
Since when did MPs leverage their celebrity, rather than expertise, for financial gain?
@RachelReevesMP
If only Labour could do something about the American Candy Stores on Oxford Street under Labour-controlled Westminster Council in Labour-run London…
“When you told voters in 2017 and 2019 that Jeremy Corbyn, a man that called Hamas ‘friends’, should be Prime Minister, did you say that because you had to or did you actually believe it?”
Slippery Starmer, asked five times, doesn’t answer, giving the same rehearsed soundbite.
Purley (right) himself was a former Parachute Regiment Officer who had seen combat in Aden and had survived a parachute malfunction.
He died aged only 40 in an acrobatics accident over the English Channel in 1985.
@RupaHuq
Alongside your apology, perhaps you should explain what you meant by them, why they were misjudged and whether you no longer hold that view? Otherwise it’s just a glib Twitter apology that ticks a box in order to regain the Labour whip.
@implausibleblog
@MazzucatoM
These kids are in one of the most well-resourced cities in the world. They have more activities at their disposal than their parents did at their age.
The simple fact is that these kids are hugely influenced by social media, which is the factor driving this behaviour.
This is absolutely outrageous from
@KayBurley
as she accuses
@RobertJenrick
of “calling migrants sub-human”; he said nothing of the sort.
Given Robert Jenrick is Jewish this is a particularly crass and distasteful accusation for which Burley should unreservedly apologise.
Given reports across the media that the “NHS is on the brink of collapse” why have we not seen an interview with
@AmandaPritchard
as CEO of NHS England?
How do the leadership of the NHS and those responsible for day-to-day operations manage to consistently avoid media scrutiny?
Hundreds of people killed by an Israeli airstrike on the Anglican hospital in Gaza City.
How can anyone call this indiscriminate assault on doctors, patients, and sheltering civilians “self defence”? It’s barbarism.
If you’re going to fail to stop at 4am when a marked police car with blue lights on is behind you, then overtake it when it pulls in front of you, you shouldn’t be surprised when officers treat you robustly after you eventually stop.
Little sympathy for Ricardo Dos Santos here.
Not surprised I had to go through this again. Whilst driving home last night 7 armed
@metpoliceuk
officers stopped me because they thought I was on my phone whilst driving. At their request I pulled over when safe to do so. 1/3
@GavinBarwell
Our Armed Forces doesn’t need to be representative Gavin. Whether or not the person to your left or right looks like you is irrelevant, everybody wears the same uniform.
Day 1 of Haringey’s West Green LTN. Local residents perhaps a little miffed that there’s now a detour of nearly 2 miles to navigate a journey that yesterday was 100m.
Labour’s Cllr Hakata here explaining the scheme to a resident who now needs directions to leave his own home.
In 1884 Marks & Spencer was founded by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer. Michael Marks was Jewish.
139 years later and pro-Palestinian supporters feel emboldened to protest outside this store in Glasgow. Disingenuous to suggest these aren’t hate marches.
The constant need to prove how out-of-touch politicians are results in nonsense like this as
@BBCBreakfast
’s Charlie Stayt tries to “gotcha” Dominic Raab suggesting he doesn’t know how much petrol cost because he’s 1p off the price per litre Stayt most recently saw.
Hard to believe Keir Starmer wasn’t aware that he had to disclose the ownership of his 7-acre field in Surrey following a probe by the Commons Standards Commissioner, given this story was first widely published in 2020.
Did he really “forget” he owned it?
Strong
#VizTopTips
energy from Jack Monroe’s Thrifty Kitchen.
The ludicrous advice reads like it was written so middle-class socialists could have a voyeuristic glimpse of what they imagine poverty to be like, without needing to get too close.
@TheDadBods
As someone who didn’t have much when I was their age I neither stole, nor did I have an expensive Nike tracksuit, Jordan 1s and a smartphone.
Poverty is not the root cause, a culture that valorises and celebrates criminality is.
The next time Krishnan Guru-Murthy bleats that Conservative MPs won’t take his questions or be interviewed by him, perhaps he’d do well to think back to being caught on a hot mic dropping the c-bomb in reference to Steve Baker…
Like her or not Angela Rayner has achieved a great deal considering she left school at 16 with no qualifications.
But if her suggestion that private schools are a waste of money is true, why do so many Labour MPs hypocritically send their children to one?
How has Ed Davey managed to side-step robust scrutiny over his role as Postal Affairs Minister handling complaints regarding the Postmasters’ scandal, or his subsequent lucrative second job advising against them; a case the Post Office lost at a cost of £35m in legal fees alone.
Ed Davey was one of the Business ministers responsible for answering complaints on the postmasters' scandal. During the next election every interviewer has a duty to grill him at length about his responses at the time.
@darrengrimes_
The question should be why a teenage boy feels the need to carry a machete. Until we start addressing what has driven children to the point where they are prepared to murder other children we’re never going to get on top of this issue.
With nearly 60 abusive racist messages I’ve received this year currently under
@metpoliceuk
investigation, this is an issue that few people seem to be aware of, let alone prepared to tackle.
Happy to speak to
@Newsweek
and bring this issue to the fore.
I’ve long taken issue with Kehinde Andrews and his absurd race politics, and it comes as no surprise to see him break cover as a Diane Abbott apologist, happily downplaying antisemitism.
The fact this bigot is routinely platformed as a race expert on mainstream TV is laughable.
You know we're in dangerous times when
@HackneyAbbott
is suspended from
@LabourParty
for so-called 'racism'. The letter was badly worded but the sentiment was correct. There is a difference between prejudice, xenophobia and racism
#PsychosisofWhiteness
Jameela Jamil here referring to the Prime Minister and both current and former Home Secretaries as “coconuts”.
I’ve written before about how the use of this type of language by celebrities with huge platforms legitimises this abuse.
Why are so few prepared to call it out?
@JohnSimpsonNews
Yet the BBC seems to have no issue with referring to domestic terrorism. In fact, there are dozens of examples of the BBC using the word terrorist in the past few weeks alone. So what makes the actions of Hamas different?
Simon Pegg attended the c.£20k a year Kings School and his undergraduate thesis at University was titled "A Marxist overview of popular 1970s cinema and hegemonic discourses".
Not everybody has had a private education, a free degree or a leading role in two Hollywood franchises.
Marcus Rashford training in Dubai and hanging out with Wiley, a vile antisemite.
Hard to believe those sincere social media posts, full of emotional intelligence, are actually written by him, rather than tightly scripted by his PR agency.
The hypocrisy of still taking the knee.
“We need to be gathering the money from somewhere”.
Labour’s justification for putting 20% VAT on private school fees seems to simply be that it’s an easy source to target, with no consideration of the downstream impacts.
As a local resident I can assure those still furiously tweeting about Black Boy Lane that it isn’t anywhere near being the biggest issue in Tottenham or Haringey.
Gangs, violent crime, murders, drug-dealing, brothels, ASB, poverty, illegal HMOs.
Black Boy Lane is a distraction.
“A them-and-us narrative which tells black Britons that they are second-class citizens. That only ever seeks to frame success in the arenas of music or sport, as entertainers and jesters rather than politicians or leaders.”
My article in
@thetimes
today.
@metpoliceuk
This video appears to show the same individual climbing down of his own accord with no
@metpoliceuk
involvement.
Can you clarify what was meant by “engaged swiftly”?
As someone who was on the receiving end of the “coconut” racial slur as recently as last week I find it incredible that people believe they are within their rights to use it.
I suspect Marieha Mohsin Hussain won’t be a teacher once she’s been convicted.
It’s been nearly three months since I caught this man breaking into my car.
I see him several times a week, because we live on the same road.
@metpolice
know this and have done nothing.
Imagine if I were a vulnerable person, would it be acceptable to have to encounter him?…
This morning I caught this man trying to break into my car… whilst I was sat in it.
@MPSHaringey
@MPSNoelPark
is this individual known to you? I have reported it already.
I cannot believe that Labour’s cohort of BAME MP’s have had the audacity to send this letter to Priti Patel and to use the word ‘gaslight’ in their dismissal of someone else’s experience of racism.
Labour are walking a very dangerous path in sowing division between communities.
Sad to have just received this letter.
I will not be silenced by
@UKLabour
MPs who continue to dismiss the contributions of those who don't conform to their view of how ethnic minorities should behave.
Down in London today with the Dukes collecting at Fenchurch Street Station for
@PoppyLegion
on London Poppy Day.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Always amazing to see so many service personnel and veterans collecting across the capital. Thank you to everyone who gave so generously.
18 months ago Keir Starmer and 100+ Labour MPs signed a letter opposing the deportation of foreign national offenders, among whom was at least one convicted rapist.
Perhaps some lobby journalists would like to challenge him on this hypocritical stance?
Impose tougher sentences for rape, stalking and domestic murder, including a minimum sentence for rape of seven years and whole life tariffs for rape, abduction and murder. 1/3
“As a soldier he will have been trained to escape captivity”
The
@dailymirror
using an expert opinion on Daniel Khalife from
@prisonsorguk
Mark Leech that’s just completely made up.
Who knew Royal Signals Phase 2 training now had an escape and evasion phase?
Suella Braverman seems to be doing her best to outflank Enoch Powell.
It’s a poisonous attempt to drive a wedge between our communities and serve her own naked ambition.
Now, more than ever, we should be seeking to unite, not divide.
RIP Nichelle Nichols, whose trailblazing portrayal of Lt Nyota Uhuru in Star Trek was a breakthrough for a black woman on TV in the 1960s.
Her kiss with William Shatner was also the first interracial kiss on TV; from a personal perspective so hard to imagine it was once a taboo.
It’s a huge honour to have been selected as the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Huntingdon.
My thanks to the Association for putting their faith in me. I can’t wait to get started on the campaign.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and the Labour Party all received donations from the backer of Just Stop Oil and Xtinction Rebellion.
Do they expect people to believe that they oppose their tactics when they eagerly lap up the same money used to fund them?
The 10 hour antisemitic rant from Wiley is the most sustained racist attack seen on Twitter; hundreds of tweets, inciting race war, holocaust denial and, seen below, threats to shoot Jewish people.
Disgusting that someone with his platform should be permitted to air these views.
In the 12 years
@YvetteCooperMP
has been on Twitter, yesterday was the first time she’d ever mentioned grooming gangs in a tweet, despite having been Shadow Home Secretary for four years followed by Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee for five in that time.
2. Ministers have known about serious problems w grooming, abuse, organised gangs & institutional failures for years
Labour called for mandatory reporting a decade ago.
Conservative Govt dragged its feet. Even now it’s more consultation but no timetable
@SholaMos1
@AJEnglish
They aren’t so much pointed truths as your well-practiced contrarian drip-drip of invective against every institution we have. It’s almost as if your career depends on it…
It is horrific to think a life has been lost because Labour MPs, virtue-signalling celebrities and activist lawyers campaigned to keep a convicted criminal in the UK, who has now gone on to commit a brutal murder.
@theJeremyVine
@waitrose
@MetCycleCops
@RoadPeace
@AndyCoxDCS
So, what’s the excuse for the Officer then wobbling around in the middle of the road and straying into the other lane seconds after claiming the lorry driver would get “undue care and attention” for staying in his own lane?
If
@RachelReevesMP
expects to convince a sceptical public that she should be Chancellor under a Labour Government she might want to start by proving she pays the necessary attention to detail to realise this bill adds up to £3,480, not £3,500.
Tory failure has left working people facing soaring bills.
With a Labour Government we'd have
✅A proper windfall tax on oil and gas giants to fund a council tax freeze this year
✅Breakfast clubs for all primary school children
✅A clean energy sprint to keep energy bills low
@UKLabour
If Labour are going to end the use of asylum hotels, where are 150,000+ asylum seekers going to live?
Where are Labour going to conjure this accommodation from?
The only people obsessed with the ethnicity of the Conservative leadership candidates and their stance on diversity and inclusion are left-wing journalists who believe that skin colour should be a defining aspect of someone’s political beliefs.
With Rishi Sunak, Kemi Badenoch, and Suella Braverman all in the running, I am READY for the stupidest diversity and inclusion conversations you have ever heard. Trevor Phillips, Sunny Hundal, Ayesha Hazarika your time in the sun is now.
By indulging Just Stop Oil and not treating their protests robustly, we’ve now reached a stage where they feel emboldened enough to harass George Osborne at his wedding with impunity.
@alexvtunzelmann
Comparing your own St Trinians style behaviour at fee-paying Brighton and Hove High School with the type of disruptive behaviour that may see you excluded and sent to a PRU in an inner-city school does somewhat highlight a lack of understanding.
The coverage of Nicola Bulley’s disappearance, particularly Sky News sending a half dozen presenters to report from the riverside, has been grotesque.
For her family here to call out the unethical behaviour of their reporters directly is very troubling.
@Keir_Starmer
@UKLabour
I fully support our strikes against the Houthis, but before he was Labour leader Keir Starmer had a very different view on the topic.
Surely he wouldn’t have just said this to win the leadership contest would he?
No more illegal wars. Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice.
@AaronBastani
The flipside of that is that we shouldn’t recognise the front door of any celebrity or politician; doorstepping is an appallingly intrusive journalistic practice.
Great to hear that Shaun Bailey would drop Sadiq Khan’s pledge to implement a review of London’s statues, landmarks and place names.
London is one of the world’s great cities; to rewrite its past by virtue-signalling and sowing division is unnecessary.
Incredible that Keir Starmer has gaslit the public, demanding Labour MPs don’t attend the pro-Palestine marches over the last four weekends, when all along those marches were organised by Ben Soffa, Labour’s Head of Digital Organising.
@SholaMos1
To describe Munira Mirza as a “brown executioner” days after accusing Priti Patel of the same thing says more about your own prejudice towards Asian women than anything else.
As Dele Alli ponders a move to Beşiktaş in the Turkish SüperLig, a league ranked 20th in the UEFA coefficient, let go by Everton 6 months after moving there on a free transfer, Jose Mourinho’s disappointed dad pep-talk in Spurs All-or-Nothing looks even more evergreen.