Elon Musk sat down with BBC reporters last night in a Twitter Spaces interview to clear the air over his recent decision to label the Corporation as “government-funded” and discuss the prevalence of “hate speech” – however loosely defined – on the platform. It went about as smoothly as you’d expect. 

BBC tech reporter James Clayton claimed he’d seen more hate speech on the app since Musk took over, to which Musk inevitably asked for specific examples. For some reason, Clayton couldn’t quite recall any – instead claiming he’d seen “hateful content” on the new “For You” recommendation page, though he no longer uses that feature so isn’t exposed to it anymore. Right. Musk wasn’t having it:

“I say sir that you don’t know what you are talking about… because you cannot give me a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet. You claimed that hateful content is high. That is false, you just lied… that is absurd.”

Musk then went on the attack over the BBC’s coverage of the UK government’s Covid policies, to which Clayton was equally lost for words…

After news broke last night of further delays to HS2, one Labour MP couldn’t restrain his anger. Not content with posting one tweet condemning the project, Jon Trickett took to adding a supportive voice to his argument. In a now deleted quote tweet of himself, he began “couldn’t agree more Jon”…

It’s unclear if Jon simply forgot to switch to his burner account, or if a staff member confused their Tweetdeck settings.  The use of the same hashtag and deliberate typo would suggest Jon was imitating a supportive punter. Guido contacted Jon’s office for an explanation, to no response. Now wot?

Guido has previously complimented Wes Streeting on being one of the only Labour politicians who can successfully define a woman.  Since it is International Women’s Day, Guido has dug out some tweets from Labour’s Wes Streeting, which show the Shadow Home Secretary describing women in more eyebrow-raising language towards the fairer sex. The comments, which were tweeted by Streeting both during and after his presidency of the National Union of Students, include telling a woman to “go to work you lazy cow“, along with describing other women as “bitches“, “cows” and “tarts“. All have since been deleted…

In fact, Wes referred to women as “cows” at least eight times, used “bitch” three times, and called one woman a “tart“. In fairness to Streeting, he sent those between 2009 and 2011 – around the same time he also tweeted how he’d like to push journalist Jan Moir “under a train”. For which he later publicly apologised…

Of course this might make for awkward conversations around the Shadow Cabinet table. In 2019, Angela Rayner asked Sky News not to platform a man who’d previously called “women ‘bitches’ and said the former MP & Labour candidate should be hit around the head“. Likewise, Louise Haigh wasn’t too happy – who can blame her – when a Twitter user called her a “silly cow”…

As the battle to become Scotland’s next First Minister continues to be fought on trans grounds, it appears candidate Humza Yousaf has found support from some genderless and heartless social media accounts. The SNP MSP for Glasgow Pollok seems to be receiving support from social bots – an automatic program that simulates human behaviour on social networks – spouting the same phrase: 

The “other two” here refers to fellow candidates Finance Secretary Kate Forbes and former Community Safety Minister Ash Regan. At least four accounts that published the above phrase on Twitter have since been suspended. Another ineffectual drone has tweeted an endorsement of Humza Yousaf in the race to replace Nicola Sturgeon – “In this election, it has to be Humza” says Ian Blackford.

Hat-tip: Wings Over Scotland

A blue-on-blue row has broken out as Tory MP Simon Clarke slams fellow Tory MP Andrew Bridgen over his decision to take up the anti-vax mantle in parliament. Despite his Commons suspension this week, he’s continued tweeted about vaccines, this morning taking his attacks a step further and accusing the vaccine rollout of being the “biggest crime against humanity since the holocaust”.

This is disgraceful. https://t.co/Q983MZ8fVf

— Simon Clarke MP (@SimonClarkeMP) January 11, 2023

Former Tory MP Christian Wakeford also joined in, saying to make such a comparison during the month of Holocaust Memorial Day “is despicable” and asks “When is it enough for the Tories to withdraw the whip?”

No.10 tells Tom Harwood that the PM hasn’t seen the tweet in question, and “any disciplinary processes are a matter for the whips”. The Whips office are keeping schtum for the moment…

After the brutal hacking of Education Secretary Gillian Keegan over Christmas, which saw her account fire out dozens of spam crypto links before being wiped entirely, Twitter hackers scored another victory this morning as they managed to get into Chris Heaton-Harris’s account. And Anna Soubry’s for good measure…

Just after 7am, Chris posted a number of confusing tweets calling for the freeing of a person called “mizz”, as well as posting a selfie of a man captioned, “imran khan poor p*ki and minecraft roleplayer”. Soubry fell victim to the same scammer, calling someone a “n*g n*g”…

While it did appear Heaton-Harris had managed to wrestle back control of his account a lot quicker than his cabinet counterpart managed – tweeting a confirmation of the hacking – a subsequent tweet about forcing all trans and homosexuals to work behind a bar for 10 years implies that’s not the case.

You would hope the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland had better security procedures in place…