Since 2012 Sunder Katwala and Guido have been promoting the idea of the last Friday in August being one day of positive exchanges on Twitter. Next Friday will be the ninth annual #PositiveTwitterDay, where we all try to be a bit nicer on the internet’s favourite pressure cooker website. Guido’s Editor-in-Chief explained to the viewers of Sky News what it’s all about…
The political Twittersphere in particular can be a horribly nasty place. None of us is immune from negativity, Guido is a repeat offender. The Brexit battles made even usually reasonable people bad-tempered; that is now largely behind us. Wouldn’t it be pleasantly calming if, for at least one day, we all tried to be nice and civil in our tweets? We sorely need to try again…
Help spread a bit of civility in these polarised times. Twitter can be a place for the exchange of information rather than the abuse of political opponents. To tweet your support just click this link: #PositiveTwitterDay…
It’s only two weeks until #PositiveTwitterDay on Friday, August 27, so this tale of trolling Twitter accounts HatfieldHandball and EnfieldVoice is timely. They were originally created to advertise the now-failed Hatfield Handball club, yet are now being used to troll Ilford South MP Sam Tarry’s political enemies. Guido wonders if keen handball player Ben Maloney – who happens to work as Sam Tarry’s Chief of Staff – might know who is behind these anonymous accounts…
In 2021 the HatfieldHandball account accused Sam Tarry’s opponent, in the Ilford South selection, Jas Athwal, of corruption:
.@Jas_Athwal must have sweaty palms after reading this, given this was his right-hand crony.
— HatfieldHandball (@HertsHandball) January 4, 2021
They were even caught handing out fake Labour Party membership cards together during the 2019 parliamentary candidate selection.
Will you be visiting him in the clink, Jas?
Grace Blakeley returns for yet another Twitter Bitch Fight bout, this time facing off against The Sunday Times‘s Hannah Al-Othman.
The opening bell rang when Blakeley quipped “rules are dumb. I got expelled twice and my life is great” in response to a thread on school discipline. Tongue-in-cheek, apparently – although it’s hard to tell with Grace, who once declared class has nothing to do with family, education, or background…
Al-Othman was having none of it. Insisting “it isn’t funny“, joke or not, Al-Othman took the first swing:
And that’s privilege for you. If you’re working class & are expelled, it’s likely to change the course of your life forever.
— Hannah Al-Othman ⚽️➡️🏠 (@HannahAlOthman) July 4, 2021
PRU — groomed by older, badder kids — criminality — prison etc. https://t.co/FYHnhAWHki
Never one to back down from a fight over class and privilege, Blakeley immediately pushed back:
Wow it’s almost like the course of your life is determined much more by your class upbringing than ‘discipline’ in school
— Grace Blakeley (@graceblakeley) July 4, 2021
Fortunately, Al-Othman decided not to get dragged into the weeds over what Blakeley understands class and privilege to actually mean. Instead, she simply said:
Parklife!
— Hannah Al-Othman ⚽️➡️🏠 (@HannahAlOthman) July 4, 2021
This apparently pushed the fight straight into the gutter, with both combatants going back and forth over who’s the more competent journalist (“Mate if you can’t understand any of the words I’ve used in that tweet you really shouldn’t be a journalist”, claims Blakeley) and who’s surrendered the moral high ground:
Grace, I wasn’t going to respond, but you kept going with your salty quote tweets.
— Hannah Al-Othman ⚽️➡️🏠 (@HannahAlOthman) July 4, 2021
I understand all the words, they just don’t sound as clever together as you they think they do. https://t.co/R1dzf6zv2P
Clearly Al-Othman hasn’t learnt from her betters that the longer the words, the cleverer your interlocutor. As ever, we’ll let co-conspirators decide the victor…
Twitter has been missing the erudite dry wit of Patrick O’Flynn – the former Express political editor turned UKIP MEP who now writes for the Spectator – for some days now. Guido has got the tale of his Twitter tribulations from him directly. Paddy fell for a phishing ruse and the hackers changed his password and email address. They had control of it for a while before Twitter alerted Paddy to the suspicious activity. Such are the benefits you might think of being a blue tick. Twitter restored the account to the rightful owner and all was well. For 4 hours…
Paddy then found his account had been suspended, and so it has stayed this week despite emails to Twitter HQ in San Francisco. Whatever the hackers did presumably triggered a belated ban. Paddy is famously polite and gentlemanly on Twitter so surely it could not be a violation by him for perhaps gently mocking Lord Adonis? Guido and thousands of his followers would like to see him restored to his pomp and our timelines…
The Cabinet Office is refusing to release the findings of an investigation it’s concluded into which senior civil servant – with access to their official Twitter account – posted an anti-Dominic Cummings Tweet on the day of his post-Barnard Castle Rose Garden press appearance. Ironically exactly the sort of biased, left-wing civil service culture Cummings was desperate to reform…
An FoI request asking for an update to their investigation has revealed the information regarding the internal investigation, launched in May 2020, does now exist and is held by the department, however they are refusing to release it on grounds that disclosure:
“would be likely, to prejudice the exercise of the Cabinet Office’s functions”
They won’t even say whether the person who Tweeted that the PM’s office were “truth twisters”, and that his defence of Cummings was “arrogant and offensive”, falls below the standards of “proper conduct”.
Unsurprisingly the legal request for information also failed to yield the name of the person responsible, refusing even to say whether that information is held by the Cabinet Office. The release goes on to imply the department’s head of FoI’s believes that releasing the name of the anti-Cummings civil servant would undermine their ability to investigate future acts of improper conduct. Desperate, self-serving obfuscation…
Guido knew Corbyn wasn’t on top of his game in the lead-up to last year’s election, though it seems his struggles with the job continue getting worse. A slip up by his wife Laura this evening revealed the glorious leader has delegated his social media responsibilities to his wife. Despite having three members of paid staff in his parliamentary office…
After an austerity decade in which the real value of civil service pay has fallen, many face hardship.
— Laura Alvarez (@LauraAlvarezJC) November 25, 2020
I asked the Chancellor when he will start to restore the real value of their pay#SpendingReview https://t.co/1YklJwDFKb
It also seems Jeremy’s struggling to get out of bed in the morning. During a Zoom briefing for MPs at 08.30 yesterday morning, it looked like the recent weeks have taken their toll on the absolute boy.
Perhaps it’s time our favourite Steptoe-look-a-like considered handing over MP responsibilities to someone more youthful…
