Matthew Sweet
@DrMatthewSweet
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Writer & broadcaster. @BBCRadio4 @BBCFreethinking @eagleeyedrama @HodderBooks @BBCRadio3 Sound of Cinema. Victorianist til I die.
London
Joined April 2011
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Pinned Tweet
Just pinning links for all ten parts as the
@BBCRadio3
and
@BBCRadio4
Modernism season comes to an end. It was an absolute pleasure to make this with
@ElianeGlaser
@julian_may
and all the contributors. And it felt right to be doing it on the radio - a properly Modernist medium.
Wanna do some modernism? 10 parts on
@BBCRadio4
from tomorrow: clean modernism, dirty modernism, occult modernism, Chinese modernism, fascist modernism. A barrage of brilliance from
@KarenLeeder1
@TheProfRog
@LisaMullen3
@XineYaoPhD
, Kevin Legendre,
@GaryLachman
& more.
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Elon Musk is like a Scooby Doo villain who dresses up as a ghost to scare everyone away from the theme park but forgets that his business is theme parks
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Hi Laurence. Thanks for the offer. I think the editorial standards at
@GBNews
are so low that appearing on it is a threat to a person’s reputation. No serious person should go near it. It’s like being asked to debate on the pages of Sunday Sport or Razzle.
Would you like to come on my show on Friday for an interview? It would be interesting to listen to your thoughts in longer form conversation.
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Hi Katharine I think you’ve misunderstood this article. It’s a history MA. This is one of the liveliest and richest areas of scholarship right now. It’s really impossible to understand large swathes of our past, some of it quite recent, without and understanding of the occult.
We have moved beyond the realms of lunacy. 😳😳😱
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My choice for BBC chair. Independent, trustworthy, unimpeachable, actually knows about television.
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Do doctors still ask people who've had a knock on the head to name the Prime Minister?
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She’s gone. Olivia de Havilland has gone. Showing, to the very end, the grit with which she took on the Hollywood studio system and won. I had one of the most perfect days of my life in her company. Sitting on that chaise, eating macaroons and gossiping about Errol Flynn.
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Shout out to the two white haired ladies on Sydenham high street who found themselves in the path of eight pavement-filling male joggers and yelled: go and do that in the park, shitheads!
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What I'd like to read: a story about owners of Kensington & Chelsea's 1,399 unoccupied homes lending their keys to
#GrenfellTower
survivors.
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Every time I hear the story of the wrongly convicted post office workers my blood boils. For the individual cases, and for what it says more broadly about the culture of management.
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I prefer “earned” .
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Hugh Grant being brilliant here. I once interviewed him and opened with some absurdly elaborate question and he said: "Look, you know I just do this for the money."
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I see someone capable of conducting an interview has finally got in a room with the President. Someone who asks follow-up questions, knows the data, who frowns and flicks his foot impatiently like a normal human being in the presence of someone so powerful and so underwhelming.
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So. This is a letter I sent today, via my agent, to
@marksteyneoline
and his producer
@danielhardaker4
at
@GBNews
. A Twitter thread version follows, to which I’ve attached some links.
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David Warner (1941-2022). I loved this beautiful man.
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I wonder if we could privatise the royal family to free them to compete with those actors on The Crown?
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Paddy Ashdown’s last few tweets were quite something.
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The statue was put up in 1895, 174 years after Colston’s death. The 1890s were a decade of imperial anxiety, self-doubt and pessimism, not confidence. I think its creation and its destruction may, paradoxically, express the same idea: the end of empire.
The statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston had been unceremoniously dragged to the dock and dumped into the river Avon
#BlackLivesMattters
#Bristol
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Mike Pence likes gay conversion therapy AND Broadway musicals. I think we can guess how this story ends.
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It’s that moment when your obscure research subject pops up in the news. Yesterday
@AOC
was confronted by a woman claiming to be a climate activist at a town hall meeting. Her proposal to solve the climate crisis - “eat the babies”.
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Right now anti-vax conspiracy theorist Neil Oliver is ranting on
@GBNews
about the rise of a disease called "turbo-cancer", which he implies is caused by the vaccine. This disease does not exist. It is a fiction invented by conspiracy theorists. This is pure misinformation.
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Giddy after an evening with
@ssrajamouli
- director of
@RRRMovie
- my favourite film of the year. Have offered my services as a cold-hearted imperial civil servant in the sequel.
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Alan Hawkshaw donated the royalties for this to pay fees for underprivileged music students. Every time it plays, someone gets a bit of time in college.
R.I.P. Alan Hawkshaw ….. a titan of TV music composition and a brilliant keyboard player for so many greats . too many to mention . I dont know a composer not in awe of his ability . Thanks for raising the bar x
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I was a cleaner a long time ago. And rather like that character in Citizen Kane who thinks of the girl on the ferry, I doubt that a month has gone by without me remembering the person who once looked me in the eye as he tapped his fag ash onto the floor I was mopping.
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So maybe you should just get the
@thecoastguy
in again to brood darkly about Bill Gates and the WEF, or book Right Said Fred to share their expertise in epidemiology.
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Good lord. He was saying goodbye and we never knew it.
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Well, I was booked to go on
@BBCRadio4
PM to challenge
@johannhari101
about assertions made in his new book. He has pulled out for "personal reasons", so I'll just leave a thread about my concerns about his use of sources. I hope someone else will raise these questions with him.
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I think secondary school education should include a module on conspiracy theories. How to spot them, how to resist the way they seduce with simple explanations for complex phenomena and their appeal to prejudice and confirmation bias.
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Odd that people are offended by an art-historical commonplace plus an idea about a male/female God that’s in Julian of Norwich and, er, the Bible. Still, those capital letters look good and scary.
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These “eminent scientists” include a viscount who claimed to have cured herpes and whose publications are mainly sudoku books and an "astro economist" who appears to exist only in this document.
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Hey Nick. I’m sorry if you don’t like scrutiny. I’m a cultural historian and journalist who’s been writing about conspiracy culture for years.
How lost do you have to be to wake up every morning and think ‘How will I attack GB News today?’
I think about GB less than this guy and I’m on it three nights a week.
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So who was this woman? Not a climate activist. Not even, perhaps, someone with a mental illness. She is a representative of the bizarre political cult once led by Lyndon LaRouche. Previous targets for this kind of stunt include
@Janefonda
Olof Palme & Michael Dukakis. Now
@AOC
.
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I’m afraid that this thread contains some distressing, unpleasant and antisemitic material. It also contains questions that I think the
@thecoastguy
,
@GBNews
and its CEO
@frangpolous
would be wise to address before Neil Oliver does his show tonight.
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Here’s one of the great dumb ironies of conspiracy culture. Conspiracy theorists hate Bill Gates because they fantasize he wants to chip people’s brains. They love Elon Musk and he’s bragging about it here.
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Well fancy that. The editor of Country Squire magazine filed for bankruptcy two days before a judge found him guilty of libelling Chris Packham. Guess some wildlife charities won’t be getting that 90k.
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O God this is a malapropism innit. He means piece de resistance
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Why am I seeing tweets by racist jerks who I don't follow?
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How extraordinary that food banks have to issue statements like this. Some people's desire to punish is so strong. Let them eat cake.
Some followers have raised concern about us putting certain items on our shopping lists (eg crisps & chocolate). Let me clarify - whilst we agree that they are of little nutritional value, we also believe in blessing our clients with a treat from time to time. (1 of 2)
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A decision from
@Ofcom
- it is permissible to tell viewers that vaccines cause a fictional condition called "turbo cancer".
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The great Beano cartoonist Leo Baxendale died yesterday. Tonight's dinner was a tribute to him.
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Hi guys. Think I can help here. The founding director of
@RestoreTrustNT
, Neil Record, is the chair of Global Warming Policy Forum, Institute of Economic Affairs; Former Advisor, Global Vision - all based at 55 Tufton St. Hope this helps! Maybe take this tweet down?
Unbelievable! The
@nationaltrust
's Communications Director
@CeliaRichards0n
, who spends much of her time on Twitter attacking
@RestoreTrustNT
without any basis, now claims (completely falsely) that we have links to Tufton St. We have reported this to Twitter for misinformation.
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Anyway, Tom Baker is 83 today. Here he is on the building site where he was working when he got the part of Dr Who.
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Please can
@BBCRadio4
give us a compilation of Tim Brooke-Taylor’s terrible high-pitched singing of pop songs massively inappropriate for a man of his age? It would warm my sad heart.
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.
@AOC
did not denounce this woman. She thought that she was suffering from some kind of mental illness, and treated her kindly. But all kinds of figures on the right and the alt-right have pounced on the story. Including the President.
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More conspiracist falsehoods on
@GBNews
–
@thecoastguy
declaring as fact the discredited Kremlin line that the US government had a network of bioweapons labs in Ukraine. This is materially misleading. Incredible that it was broadcast on British TV.
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Little thread that I think shows how the plenitude of the online world allows newspapers to create something out of nothing in order to push a certain line - in this case, dislike of Meghan Markle.
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O Doctor, my Doctor! The indomitable Tom Baker is 88 today.
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Ugly stuff here. And more evidence of the cosiness between
@GBNEWS
presenters and the racist far right. Because a bunch of them came to my neighbourhood yesterday to protest about a children's story time event with a drag queen, I saw a lot of this first-hand.
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The LaRouchies are pretty exotic. They believe that the Queen controls the drugs trade. They think Prince Philip wants to start WW3. They think Bertrand Russell used the Beatles as part of a secret British psy war against the USA. They are, to use a technical term, nuts.
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Just for clarity this means that none of the Restore Trust candidates or resolutions were successful.
Just released. Big turnout in
@nationaltrust
vote and upbeat statement here from the chairman.
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Looks more like democracy at work to me. If an MP is radicalised by conspiracy culture he is free to share his fantasies in the Commons but nobody is obliged to listen.
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Well. Older readers may recall that 12 days ago
@GBNews
posted this from its twitter account. Oddly it wasn't emailed to me or my agent. Even more oddly nobody seems to have been daring enough to sign it. It’s just signed “GB News”.
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Judith Kerr planted so many warm thoughts in our lives. The greatest of which is the idea of going out in your nightie to eat sausage and chips in a cafe. For me, that is as evocative as anything in Proust.
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Rather unusual tweet for an MP to make about a journalist currently under investigation by his former employers.
Brave, heartfelt & powerful speech by
@danwootton
The left will stop at nothing to try to destroy those who have different views. We have your back Dan. You and
@GBNEWS
are a light of common sense in the political cancel culture we all find ourselves facing. Keep going.
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The Carry Ons will be rightly prominent in the obits today, but I want to think of Barbara Windsor like this today, as key member of Joan Littlewood’s revolution in theatre. In 2014 I met with her at Stratford East to discuss her part in Oh What a Lovely War!
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I have just seen that Giles Coren tweet and really can’t let it pass. Dawn was a Catholic. She thought quite a lot about hell and its entry requirements. She also knew bodily suffering. That tweet is a sin that requires penance.
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And really, anyone who can tweet something like this - use vaccination status as an insult - can’t really expect to be taken seriously by anyone.
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Good proof this morning that in the digital age, local radio also serves the nation.
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Oh dear. The editor of Dan Wootton’s
@GBNEWS
show doesn’t know the laws of libel and defamation. McAlpine vs Newsnight anyone?
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Why are
@GBNEWS
presenters
@LozzaFox
@MartinDaubney
&
@calvinrobinson
itchy about suggestions they are connected with the far right? Here they are this morning on a tiny demo standing firm with one of its most notorious figures, recently arrested after sieg-heiling on the street
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Glad to see all this interest in the problem of
@GBNews
and its mainstreaming of conspiracy theorists. To retain its licence and raise its journalistic standards I'd suggest it requires thoroughgoing reform. They could call it the Great Reset.
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This is the
@RRRMovie
screening I’d like to attend
@airnewsalerts
@ianuragthakur
@tarak9999
@ssrajamouli
@TheNameIsYash
Ma Alluri sitha rama SHASTRI ekkada ra unga 🥵😝😹
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These Timpson initiatives don't get enough publicity. They remind me of c.19th industrialists who built parks, libraries & housing schemes because they felt stirred & shamed by the poverty around them.
Our uncollected duvets end up being very useful to those on our streets every night.
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I'm disturbed by the loose language in Number 10's denial of the
@guardian
story suggesting that Dominic Cummings is sitting on SAGE. They describe the story as "ludicrous" then say he observes and asks questions. This strikes me as sophistry. Like "present but not involved".
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1.3 bilingual British children. What a terrible burden to the nation.
1.3 million children do not speak English as a first language underlining strain immigration puts on schools
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There's that moment in Citizen Kane when Kane has two front pages made up: one reporting his victory, one that says, "Fraud at polls". It's as if Trump has published both simultaneously, when neither is true.
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I think winner of
#bbcqt
was that nice lady who seemed freaked out to discover she was in a room full of bald nuke-bothering Yorkshiremen.
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Very good to hear David Olusoga putting this so firmly. It’s not the job of historians to provide people with a cosy glow. Whisky and warm baths do that. The clearer our view of the past, the clearer our view of ourselves.
“History doesn’t really care about our feelings.”
Historian
@DavidOlusoga
tells
@jonsnowc4
why acknowledging the negative aspects of British history isn’t a threat to British culture, but is simply “history in action”.
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Amazing to think that in the 1970s two of the best known kids TV presenters were very active in radical politics without anyone batting an eyelid. (Except the anti-apartheid activists they went after with money thought to have come from the South African security services.)
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Hardly surprising. If you believe the world has been secretly controlled for centuries by bankers and shadowy figures then you invevitably start paraphrasing the Protocols. Neil Oliver has been doing this on
@GBNews
for months and months.
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I find these "last train out of Saigon references" rather ironic considering how effectively the virus has been controlled in Vietnam. 35 deaths.
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Rather surprised to read this,
@AlStewartOBE
If you can point to a single error in anything I have tweeted about
@GBNEWS
, then tell me and I will withdraw it. Otherwise it would be nice if you deleted your remark.
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Some say Darth Vader was the greatest leader of an evil space empire. But Jacqueline Pearce did it arms aloft, in high heels. Who didn't secretly yearn to be subjugated by her? Supreme Commander, we salute you.
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If a better and more respected channel asked me to appear with you - Sky or ITV or BBC News, that would be different. But I’d be really surprised if they thought it was worth their time.
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My Dad lighting the Christmas pudding like a crack addict
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At
@SlapstickFest
in 2012 Ian Lavender and Neil Innes lead us all in a singalong of the Dad’s Army theme. This is our little dressing room rehearsal. I always found this little clip very moving. Even more so now they’re both gone. The sweetest of men.
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@paulmasonnews
@politico
Oh Paul this is really patronising. Some great journalists in BBC local radio who are quite capable of being as alert as you at 8am. The problem is the brevity of the slots, not the broadcasters. Do me a favour and talk to some and ask them about their rate per show, too.
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Steve Bannon’s style is a weird mix of Serbian war criminal and Springwatch presenter.
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I wish critics of the
@nationaltrust
had a bit more knowledge of history. They're now attacking it for providing children's playgrounds - a concept more or less invented by the trust's founder, Octavia Hill.
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I asked Windsor what she’d say to the author if he walked into the room. She replied: “I’d say ‘fuck off’”
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Just
@GBNews
presenter Neil Oliver tweeting an image that seems to make mockery of the Holocaust by depicting Bill Gates as a Nazi experimenter with a swastika and IG Farben logo, which is presumably a reference to slave labour in Auschwitz.
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Wow. That Mike Graham tweet. Looks potentially quite expensive.
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The LaRouchies have been enemies of the green movement for decades. They used to carry signs that read “Feed Jane Fonda to the whales”. It’s linked with their conspiracy theory about the Queen’s “green fascism”. Piers Corbyn, by the way, was a member of their Facebook group.
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All day you'll hear stories about how lovely Barry Cryer was. If he saw or heard you on something, he'd ring up to tell you a joke or a story about a lost variety turn and laugh that bronchial laugh. If we all raise a glass to him tonight, Britain will run out of mid-price lager.
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Movember: movie edition. Which film stache reigns supreme?
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I think we could all learn something from Esther Ghey’s moral courage and decency.
"If she ever wants to speak to me, I'm here"
Esther Ghey, whose daughter Brianna Ghey was murdered by another teenager Scarlett Jenkinson, says that Scarlett's mother is "going through an absolutely horrific time"
#BBCLauraK
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It also shows, I suppose, the residual intellectualism of their little movement - the whole stunt is a call back to Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Thomas Malthus - along with Bertrand Russell and the Queen - is one of their gallery of villains.
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Spare a thought for the
@GBNEWS
reporter who filed this story today - based on one misspelled tweet by a man called Jeff, that was liked and retweeted by, er, nobody. Does this represent the channel's editorial line on the
@Lionesses
?
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Dread this moment. The loss of our principal living link with the postwar consensus. When the Queen dies, that world and its settlement will seem much further away from us. Perhaps its achievements will be more vulnerable.
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Some good news on the journalistic standards front. Mark Steyn will not be returning to
@GBNews
to spread anti-vax conspiracy theories. He's just released a video that calls
@GBNEWS
CEO
@frangopoulos
"a habitual liar" and another employee "Ofcom's bitch".
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Err, except when he began a concert in Birmingham in 1976 by saying "I think Enoch’s right, I think we should send them all back" and accidentally inspired the foundation of Rock Against Racism.
For 56 years, Eric Clapton never brought politics into his music.
But when covid struck, the guitarist took a forceful — and controversial — stand.
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Two men, one under investigation for sex-related misconduct, one a conspiracy theorist who tweets ill-considered views on rape, in a gross exchange which requires an apology. Also contains customary
@GBNEWS
misinfo: the gender pay gap doesn’t exist, apparently.
Laurence Fox just did a whole speech on GB News on why men apparently won’t shag me ?
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Being suckered by conspiracy culture leads some people beyond dignity and reason. Mary Williams OBE published this book for grieving families in 2009. Grim to see it incorporated into the fantasies of cranks.
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