Hadley Freeman

Lamentation (flipped, detail), by Gerard David, 1515-23, 📸 by Roberto Schmidt

Oh this is so sad. 68 is no age to die. I've been watching Murnaghan on the news for as long as I've lived in London and always admired his serious, intelligent suavity. Fancied him rotten, too. Most of all, he seemed like such a decent chap. Condolences to his family

Good on her! 👏🏼 He wasn’t used to a woman standing up to him. A few years after this, narcissistic scumbag abuser of women, Mick Philpot burned his 6 children alive by setting the house on fire. #RIPAnneWiddecombe

Amnesty has managed to discredit itself over gender insanity even more than the ACLU and Stonewall, and that really is saying something

@helenlewis The multimillionaire who has been a politician for 30 years isn't establishment, it's the comedian in a costume who is "BBC comedy establishment"

The joke isn't the bin. The joke is populists not being able to deal with people laughing at them.

Unbelievable. This government is openly appointing Baroness Ruth Hunt (former Stonewall CEO one of the key architects who rammed Stonewalls ideology through every public body, single-handedly helping dismantle women’s sex-based rights and safeguards... as a Civil Service Commissioner! While women are STILL battling TQ+ capture in tribunals, they reward the very people who caused it. Shameful!

Two very ancient phenotypes will be at play this Saturday

In response to the amusing if bewildering accusation I’m a Labour stooge, please do pass this on to the following comrades: — Keir Starmer and Waheed Alli, whose gifts of suits and spectacles to the PM was a story I broke — Jeremy Corbyn, who furiously denounced a book I cowrote as “tittle tattle” — Matthew Doyle, whose association with a convicted paedophile I exposed — Tulip Siddiq, whose housing deals I examined and formed part of the inquiry leading to her resignation — Keir Starmer (again), who said the thesis of a second book I wrote was “bollocks” — Morgan McSweeney, whose group’s £750,000 of unlawfully undeclared donations I exposed — Labour Together, which paid a US lobbying firm tens of thousands to investigate my work — Ann Limb, who had her Labour peerage deferred after I revealed she made up part of her CV — Joe Docherty, who was suspended as a Labour peer after I revealed his workplace sexting — Angela Rayner, whose trip to New York alongside her boyfriend I revealed was funded by Waheed Alli I recall many Reform figures vigorously agreeing about the public interest in those stories. Some have even referred to them in order to highlight the wrongdoing of the left since yesterday. But also, it isn’t “my” story, it’s the Sunday Times investigation team, Insight’s story. It could not, would not have happened, without the whole paper, especially @ManuMidolo @venetiamenzies @GeorgeGreenwood whose revelations were indispensable and who have not to my knowledge (yet) been accused of being Labour activists. Moreover the Sunday Times isn’t a Labour paper, or paper which exists to serve anyone or any party other than its readers and, to the best of our abilities, the public interest.

“Sir, can U.S. Soccer appeal the red card?” “No, they cannot.” “So how is Folarin Balogun cleared to play?” “Nobody knows.”

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@roseveniceallan She was supposed to come in and talk to Guardian journalists the day it came out that she'd said that. She cancelled coming in at the last minute

Lisa Nandy told her staff that Julia and I had edited this film of her saying child rapists should be able to choose to go to a women’s prison. That’s not just misinformation, it’s a lie youtu.be/oUon9j1zJ_E?is…

@RowanPelling Unless you were advocating for 'normal birth' whatever the cost to mother and baby, you were not one of the weirdo commentators x

I guess I'm one of those weirdo commentators. One of my boys almost died in hospital, the second was born safely at home. I made a doc for Channel 4 on childbirth and midwife shortages in 2004 and predicted things were going to get a LOT worse because of: underfunding, a divisive culture (midwives and consultants at war), staff shortages, poor training (midwives now requiring no general nursing skills), understaffing at weekends (why? There are no fewer emergencies), poor attitude (midwives AND doctors who seemed to scorn mothers). It's a giant mess. Putting huge emphasis on natural birth culture can stop us looking at the scandal in the round. I bumped into Susie Orbach in the green room on Woman's Hour when I was talking about the doc. She said she'd been campaigning 20 years previously, to no avail. It's a long, deeply embedded, gradually deteriorating scandal and pretty much every other European country puts us to shame, even those with high rates of "normal birth" like Holland. God, I feel sorry for younger women

It is outrageous and entirely unsurprising that so many working in maternity care still vaginal birth as more important than giving birth safely. I wrote about this almost a decade ago in reference to the RCM and various weirdo commentators theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2…

From Kirkup's 2015 investigation into Furness general hospital: "a determination among midwives to pursue normal childbirth at any cost”. theguardian.com/society/2015/m… Plus ça change etc etc

Every now and then I just remember Mel Brooks’ reaction to the One Show.

These Wiener videos are so chilling. I don’t like WW2 analogies, but I think all of us who grew up hearing about how our grandparents were shouted at and shunned in 1930s Europe cannot help but see echoes here

Today’s @thetimes’ COLUMN is my last for a few weeks etc etc Leaving on a typo ffs

Today’s @thetimes is my last one for a few weeks because I’m off on book leave now, excitingly / terrifyingly. Here are some goodbye thoughts on Frida Kahlo and Tracey Emin at the Tate Modern Why do women have to spill their guts for art? thetimes.com/article/ecc007…

@pandaemoniumnow Thank you, Andrew! x

Another fine piece by @HadleyFreeman - and at the end there’s the bonus news of reading a new book is on the way. Looking forward to this. thetimes.com/article/ecc007…