Tortoise
@tortoise
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Slow news, without the noise 🐢 |✉️ Get our daily Sensemaker email https://t.co/EWoazCFnAl | Download our audio app https://t.co/spvldejDLU
Joined June 2012
This is Emanuel Gomes. He was a cleaner at the Ministry of Justice, working for £9.08 an hour, which was just above the legal minimum. He continued to come into work during the early days of the lockdown. He died on 23 April 2020.
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As the Conservative party begins the process of electing another leader – and therefore, a de facto election of the Prime Minister – here’s a summation of our application for judicial review on the way it elects its leader. 🧵⬇️.
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More than four months ago, we discussed the ‘mayhem’ that follows Dominic Cummings at a #TortoiseThinkIn. @jillongovt, senior fellow at @instituteforgov, diagnosed the underlying issue in an almost clairvoyant manner.
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To prove this, we registered Archie, our pet tortoise, as a member; a couple of foreign nationals; then Margaret Roberts, the maiden name of the late Lady Thatcher. The Conservative Party took the £25 membership fee. We got membership numbers and were invited to hustings.
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💷Introducing: The Westminster Accounts. @tortoise and @SkyNews have created a first-of-its-kind database showing the scale of money entering UK politics. Use our tool to search for your MP and find out who has given them money 👉 #westminsteraccounts
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You may remember the Syrian refugee Jamal – the video of him being attacked in a Huddersfield playground last year went viral. Having been chased out of town, he’s living in a new city and is still without a school to take his GCSEs.
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We don’t see it that way. We think that running the election, as the Conservative Party itself puts it, for the next prime minister of the United Kingdom is a public function.
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3️⃣We believe they’ve breached the common law principle of open government and human rights law guaranteeing information is made available to the public about the operation of our democracy.
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So, on 10 October 2022, Tortoise formally submitted an application for judicial review of the Conservative Party’s refusal to disclose information about the way it elects its leaders.
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"It's something of real concern that there may be a number of secret agreements between the royal family and News Group.". @pcaruanagalizia investigates Prince William's settlement with Rupert Murdoch's News Group in this week's Slow Newscast. 🎧
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Who did Boris Johnson go to Italy with when he visited Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev in 2018? . @pcaruanagalizia had some questions, and this was the response he got from Downing St’s Director of Communications, Guto Harri. Listen:
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2️⃣It is unsafe. We asked the Conservative Party to provide information about the demographics of the electorate, the efforts taken to validate party members and the process of securing the election from interference. They refused.
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Today we release our latest investigation. Author Neil Gaiman has been accused of sexual assault by two former partners in the first claims of misconduct against him, and is the subject of a police complaint in New Zealand. Listen: . 🧵1/6
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We spent some time this week in The Jacob Rees-Mogg Supporters’ Group. The group, which is not affiliated with @Jacob_Rees_Mogg or the Conservative party, is home to rampant Islamophobia and death threats.
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You can read our judicial review, as well as a full explanation of our process, here:
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In August, Liz Truss was elected by a handful of the population – Conservative party members. But nobody knows exactly who these people are – or how secure the process is. So we asked the Conservative Party to tell us.
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We argued the public has a right to know for the following reasons:. 1️⃣It is unrepresentative. The membership accounts for around 0.2% of the population and includes non-UK citizens and under-age voters. There seems to be minimal checks on new members.
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This morning on @BBCr4today Tortoise co-founder and editor James Harding asked: "By 6pm on Monday evening we could find ourselves where we go to another membership contest. How do we know that's secure?".
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EXC: Liberal Democrats are seeking to overturn Boris Johnson’s entire resignation honours list. 🖊️@CatNeilan.
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In August, they replied to us arguing that the election is "a private matter for its members under our Constitution" and that "it does not carry out any public functions".
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Like tens of thousands of families, @nazirafzal was not able to mourn his brother who died of Covid-19. At the same time, Dominic Cummings was travelling across the country. Now, Nazir is calling for a full investigation.
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Tortoise editor and co-founder James Harding appeared on @BBCr4today this morning explaining further our judicial review on how the Conservative party elects its leader. Listen here:
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“Honestly… how Lebedev is not permanently a huge story in our politics… Rory, it will make you even angrier about Boris Johnson than you already are.” @campbellclaret on The Rest is Politics podcast. Listen to the full series of Londongrad now:
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In Syria, “Christians and Muslims could co-exist happily”, said Jamal’s father. “I’ve only known racism here.”
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“How can @carolvorders be compelled to resign from the BBC… [the BBC] are frightened of the noise.”. Hear @mrjamesob on The News Meeting bonus episode. Listen:
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This morning, we sent a letter to the Conservative Party to seek a Judicial Review of its conduct of the election of Party leader and the UK's next prime minister. This is because we believe it is undemocratic and unlawful. THREAD ⬇️🧵.
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Hundreds of free movies, from documentaries to adverts, all presented as pins on a map of Britain. The link is here. We hope you enjoy:
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Emanuel and his colleagues had petitioned their employer for occupational sick pay. They pointed out that failing to guarantee workers a basic survival income if they fell ill would force potentially infectious people to leave home and endanger others. But they were refused.
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Jess Phillips made clear that “if a group of this sort existed in my name, I would demand it be immediately shut down, take legal action to ensure it was and seek for all hate crimes within it to be prosecuted.”.
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Many of Emanuel’s colleagues questioned why the people that he worked for were so casual about the risks he faced during the pandemic. The answers should matter to all of us, because Emanuel Gomes worked for the British government.
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"You don’t know what more you can do to prove that this is actually happening. I'm now hopeless.". Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza at @sirharrysummit, speaking about documenting the devastation of his homeland over the past seven months. Watch:
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It’s taken precisely 2 and a half months for world leaders to forget about the women of Afghanistan. In this #SlowView, @lynnekodonnell asks what’s going to be done about a regime that treats VAWG as official policy.
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Get it in the dictionary: “footballification”. Defined by @mrjamesob as “the end of judging actions by the actions, and instead judging it solely by the tribal loyalties of the protagonist.”
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“It was just a line in Prince Harry’s court filings…that Prince William had privately settled his own phone hacking claim with Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers for “a large sum of money”.”. The Palace didn’t deny it; nor did News Group. 🎧
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“It was just a line in Prince Harry’s court filings…that his brother, Prince William, had privately settled his own phone hacking claim with Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers for “a large sum of money”.”. The Palace didn’t deny it; nor did News Group.
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The big, simple victory we hoped for last night didn’t happen - but the England team are still heroes, and offer a glimpse of what post-populist patriotism looks like. 🖊 @MatthewdAncona .
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We got in contact with @Jacob_Rees_Mogg, who condemned those issuing death threats, but told Tortoise that “the vast majority of posts and comments are perfectly fine and abide by the rules of the group”. This is what we found. .
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Electoral laws were broken in the 2016 Brexit referendum campaigns. Now the private companies behind this are refusing to release the data behind this. @carolecadwalla spoke at our ThinkIn on Monday on the future of information.
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Tortoise editor and co-founder James Harding appeared on @BBCr4today this morning explaining further our judicial review on how the Conservative party elects its leader. Listen here:
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The day before Emanuel arrived for his shift, he had felt worse than ever; so unwell, in fact, that he could barely stand. “I took him home on public transport,” recalls Bio Fara, a fellow night shift cleaner. “When we got to Victoria station, he didn’t even know where he was.”.
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"The people of the world should be going crazy with anger."@davidnabarro is special envoy on Covid-19 to @WHO . He delivered this remarkable message last night in our digital ThinkIn with @ONECampaign
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In July 2020, @hackneylad and @geordiedav told Emanuel’s story. You can listen to it here: And read @hackneylad’s accompanying article here:
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We spoke to the family five months on, who want to keep their new home town a secret following death threats from Jamal’s bullies and far-right activist Tommy Robinson supporters.
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Emanuel was pronounced dead by paramedics at 10.30pm, one month exactly after the prime minister first ordered people to stay at home for their own protection. He was 43 years old.
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“It had been a while since something had come along and presented a case for why the racism conversation itself is rigged.”. @nikeshshukla on the enduring lessons of @renireni’s seminal book ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’.
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While researching this week’s audio essay on Boris Johnson’s brush with death @MatthewdAncona discovered another story: the institutional sickness at the heart of the British state. Listen here.Apple: Spotify:
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“The cleaners believe they are putting themselves and others in serious, imminent and unavoidable danger,” managers were warned in an email sent at midday on 23 April, and seen by Tortoise. No action was taken.
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Prince William has been basking in a little New York adulation. It’s as if he’s left the bad old days of the Cold War with the press behind him. So what’s the deal between him and Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids?. ✍️ @pcaruanagalizia.
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Did Prince William reach an out-of-court settlement for £1 million or more with Rupert Murdoch’s News Group over phone hacking?. @pcaruanagalizia and @KatieGunning2 investigate the terms of the secret deal and how much money may have changed hands. 🎧
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"It's something of real concern that there may be a number of secret agreements between the royal family and News Group.". @pcaruanagalizia investigates Prince William's settlement with Rupert Murdoch's News Group in this week's Slow Newscast. 🎧
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Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, learnt lessons too early or too late during the Covid pandemic… but there were warning signs that the country was headed for a second wave. Read this and more in today’s #Sensemaker:
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"It's something of real concern that there may be a number of secret agreements between the royal family and News Group.". @pcaruanagalizia investigates Prince William's settlement with Rupert Murdoch's News Group in this week's Slow Newscast. 🎧
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In the wake of the attack, Tommy Robinson used a common far-right tactic of pouncing on local stories to spread racial resentment, spreading lies that Jamal had attacked the white children himself alongside a sit-down video interview with the attacker, Bailey McLaren.
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What did Britain do to itself as it opened its doors to Russian money?. Londongrad is our new six-part investigative series telling the story of the Lebedevs, and how their story reveals so much about this country’s story as well.
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‘Time is running out on the viability of’ a form of British history that has excluded Black and Brown people from the main narrative. @DavidOlusoga at a #TortoiseThinkIn last night.
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“It was just a line in Prince Harry’s court filings…that Prince William had privately settled his own phone hacking claim with Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers for “a large sum of money”.”. The Palace didn’t deny it; nor did News Group. 🎧
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‘Time is running out on the viability of’ a form of British history that has excluded Black and Brown people from the main narrative. @DavidOlusoga at a #TortoiseThinkIn on Thursday. Watch the full replay at Tortoise. Become a member, free for 30 days:
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🎧 Out today – Who Trolled Amber?. Was Amber Heard targeted by an organised trolling campaign in her US trial against Johnny Depp? . If so… who was responsible for it?. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts: @AlexiMostrous | @XAMGreenwood.
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18 months ago Daphne Caruana Galizia, Malta’s most famous journalist, was assassinated. Her murder is still unsolved. In today’s edition, her son @pcaruanagalizia gives a very personal account of a public tragedy.
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How do we fix a world designed for men?. We’re delighted to announce that Tortoise will be producing @ccriadoperez’s first podcast – a series investigating how we close the gender data gap and design a world that works for everyone. 🧵👇
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“Losing family is like losing your sense of social gravity.”. In the space of a year, @anandMenon1 lost his father, mother, brother and sister. In becoming accustomed to grief, he lost his sense of who he was, and where he came from. 🔓 No paywall.
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Lies, fake news, “alternative facts”. Everyone's been telling untruths this election. We checked politicians’ whoppers against analysis carried out by @FullFact + @FactCheck, and discovered that of 95 claims that were fact-checked during the campaign, 77 turned out to be untrue.
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Jamal’s father installed CCTV cameras around the house. Jamal and his younger sister Farah didn’t go outside for days. “Shut your windows, close your doors,” police told them. “Don’t let anyone know you are inside.”
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NEW: Former minister Andrew Griffiths, who was found to have domestically abused and raped ex-wife Kate Kniveton MP, will not be allowed to see their child, after his application for contact was refused by a high court judge. ✍️ @louisetickle .
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Get it in the dictionary: “footballification”. Defined by @mrjamesob as “the end of judging actions by the actions, and instead judging it solely by the tribal loyalties of the protagonist.”
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Scared of the backlash, Jamal and his sister stopped attending school for months. The stress of life in the UK has triggered a combination of health problems in Jamal’s father that have made him disabled and unable to work.
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Another target, and friend of Jo Cox, @jessphillips has read some of the comments on the group. “It is hard to read people feasting over the idea of you being hurt, or even killed. It's harder still to read conspiracy theories and lies about the murder of someone you loved.”.
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“This is more than just a celebrity story. This is about how we all perceive reality online.”. Who Trolled Amber? is our new six-part podcast investigating social media manipulation during the trial of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Listen:
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"It's something of real concern that there may be a number of secret agreements between the royal family and News Group.". @pcaruanagalizia investigates Prince William's settlement with Rupert Murdoch's News Group in this week's Slow Newscast. 🎧
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.@CatNeilan this evening reporting that Conservative party members are 'already seeking to influence the outcome' of the leadership vote. More here:
Everyone is - understandably - focusing on what MPs are doing right now. But members are already seeking to influence the outcome, I'm told . I'm told associations are pushing for Boris - in some instances threatening deselection.
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We’ve been analysing Cummings’ conduct since last year, revealing a long-standing pattern of behaviour. This is how calm, clear analysis can uncover structural problems before they explode.
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Who does @mrjamesob identify as the people, and institutions, that broke Britain?. The LBC presenter joined us for a bonus episode of The News Meeting to discuss his new book. Listen: Watch:.
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"This week a key suspect in my mother’s murder was arrested. The conspiracy to protect her killers is finally beginning to crumble" - @pcaruanagalizia #DaphneCaruanaGalizia.
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Did Prince William reach an out-of-court settlement for £1 million or more with Rupert Murdoch’s News Group over phone hacking?. @pcaruanagalizia and @KatieGunning2 investigate the terms of the secret deal and how much money may have changed hands. 🎧
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Door after door in Britain has been opened for Evgeny Lebedev, all the way to the House of Lords. Who has opened them, and why?. This week's Slow Newscast is available now on all podcast providers. @pcaruanagalizia | @gemmanewby.
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Prince Harry’s fight with his family is merely a sideshow – his main fight is against the press. In this week’s Slow Newscast, @pcaruanagalizia looks into the documents submitted by Prince Harry to the High Court. Apple: Spotify:
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Bailey McLaren’s family was known by some locals as notoriously far-right. His mother Terri called a fish & chip shop owner a ‘Paki’ in 2017; his older brother Reece was convicted of violent disorder at a 2015 Britain First march, clashing with a group of British Asian men.
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Who does @mrjamesob identify as the people, and institutions, that broke Britain?. The LBC presenter joined us for a bonus episode of The News Meeting to discuss his new book. Listen: Watch:.
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#DaphneCaruanaGalizia was a journalist who investigated corruption amongst politicians and businesspeople in Malta. Many wanted her silenced. In October 2017, they got their way. Her son, @pcaruanagalizia, tells her story. Listen now to #MyMothersMurder
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The UK government has repeatedly promised a “world beating” test, track and trace system. Nine months on, it hasn’t arrived. It’s left many asking: who’s to blame?. @MatthewdAncona looks at what led to Britain's disastrous response.
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The group has become a space to dish out death threats towards MPs. A major recent target has been @Anna_Soubry, these comments are just a selection of what we found targeted at her.
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In 2015, the UK went from taking 750 refugees a year to taking 5,000. Crucial support networks often sit side by side with xenophobic sentiment, and with climate disaster on the horizon, the resettlement of refugees in the West this decade may be a mere preview of what's to come.
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The council resettled refugees themselves, rather than directly using a refugee charity, which can lead to problems. When the family appealed for help with the bullying, a council worker told them: “When you’ve been stabbed, then you’ll have a reason to move.”
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🧵This is John Williams Ntwali. He was one of the last critical journalists in Rwanda – until he died in suspicious circumstances in January this year. In this week’s Slow Newscast, we tell his story. (1/6)
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“We’re in a war situation, we have a national security crisis and we have one policy response to this and they can’t even get that right.”. @BillBrowder on the lax international response to cutting the flow of dirty money from Russia. Catch-up:
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Some blamed the school, some blamed the people of Almondbury, some the council. Over several months we spoke to people inside and outside the story, to work out how refugees should be protected in potentially resentful and hostile host communities.
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‘Time is running out on the viability of’ a form of British history that has excluded Black and Brown people from the main narrative. @DavidOlusoga at a #TortoiseThinkIn on Thursday. Watch the full replay at Tortoise. Become a member, free for 30 days:
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This research formed part of a piece by @XAMGreenwood looking at the effect of intersection between the internet and politics in public and private forums. You can read the story in full here.
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Little is known about Conservative Party members - who include foreign nationals and underage voters - or the security checks in place. In an open letter, after taking legal advice, we ask for more information under common law and ECHR Article 10. (1/2).
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Victory City is @SalmanRushdie’s first novel since the horrific attempt on his life in August. A virtuoso work of fiction that shows why the right to free expression must be defended much more robustly, writes @MatthewdAncona.
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This summer, a mass exodus of Hong Kongers to Britain is expected that will see thousands escaping Chinese authoritarianism on the island. Is Britain prepared? One south London suburb is setting a good example. @SarahSands100 writes:
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"David Cameron’s shadow is so long and so dark. His loss of the Brexit referendum will dominate his place in history – but the problems he has bequeathed to his successors go well beyond that." - @xtophercook .
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“If this sequence of events is true, it’s an arresting thought. “Prince William’s Earthshot Prize – which will host a major summit in New York during the 78th UNGA and Climate Action Week – received start-up funding from… climate-change sceptic Rupert Murdoch.”.
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All of us are living through the pandemic, yet our experiences are uniquely different. @campbellclaret reveals his own troubling journey, with the help of some well-known friends.
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Jo Cox's murder by a far-right terrorist in 2016 is used by some members as a threat, while others label the assassination a "false flag" attack - implying that the murder was orchestrated to influence the referendum.
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