S Ennis

@ColborneMichael @tristan__lee He was being bigged up on NTV's Itogi Nedeli on Sunday ntv.ru/peredacha/Itog… - at 40:50

@SpecCoffeeHouse UK used to one of the strongest chess nations, now not a single player in top 50 and only 2 in top 100, one of whom is over 50 years old. Perhaps game could do with a little government-backed boost.

'There’s something embarrassing about Rishi Sunak’s plan to revive chess in Britain.' ✍️ Zoe Strimpel spectator.co.uk/article/chess-…

This is the main story on the front page of the BBC News website right now

This is quite beautiful. Eloquent. Please watch this.

@AndrewPRLevi @PaulNiland More apologies here bbc.co.uk/news/entertain…

@SEEnnis @PaulNiland For what, exactly? Not for “exiting” him. Not for the commercial decision upon which that was based. And not for refusing to take him back at Coutts - they (NWG) are, after all, offering him a NatWest account. Not even for the wider assessment made of him. Interesting apology.

We all know that Farage is an utter bastard. Of course this was down to legitimate reasons. The question I have is... How was the story of this entitled lying git losing his premium banking a divisive national story for two bloody weeks?

“I don’t think it is better to live under a dictatorship than to die!” 🇮🇹🔥🔥

@francis_scarr @BWallaceMP True. And your original observation is correct, I'd say.

@SEEnnis @BWallaceMP Vovan and Lexus have even pranked Merkel and Erdogan though

Russian state TV's Kiselyov tonight, a day after @BWallaceMP said he would step down as Def Sec at the next reshuffle: "It's known that Wallace is the main architect of the UK's position of such active support for Ukraine & perhaps Kyiv's main lobbyist among its Western allies"

@francis_scarr @BWallaceMP He was "pranked", though.

@BWallaceMP Wallace is one of the very few senior Western politicians I've never seen ridiculed on Russian state TV. Most are viewed as lightweight charlatans, but he seems to be respected and feared by them.

Here’s a blatant mistruth from @iocmedia. They admit they used the CrisisWatch database to get that 70 figure - but that’s an early warning tool for risks of conflict that happens to monitor 70 countries. I was too kind to them in earlier tweets when I said the IOC was relying on others to drop the reference to ‘crises’ so it seemed like 70 other wars. It’s actually the IOC itself - as shown here - outright pretending it’s a list of 70 wars and armed conflicts. Remember, ‘sanctions against Russia’ is one of those 70 ‘wars’ the IOC is citing as equivalent to Russia’s genocidal war of aggression against Ukraine! Alongside things like ‘Hondurus appoints new Supreme Court judges’, ‘Venezuela to hold elections’, and ‘China engaged in dialogue with Japan’. Unlike for Ukraine facing a genocidal war of extermination, these other countries “are not requesting the exclusion of the other party,” points out the IOC. No shit. How would that make any sense in those contexts? Those don’t sound like wars because Crisis Group - which made that CrisisWatch database - categorically states that it “does not count the number of wars/conflicts worldwide” and that its tool is to help policymakers understand risk trends in the monitored countries. The IOC blatantly just Googled ‘how many wars in the world’, found the CrisisWatch database, and thought the total figure for the number of countries monitored by this tool would work for their whataboutism. The IOC chose to make this ‘70 wars and conflicts’ figure central to its argument about why it won’t uphold its own values - putting even more emphasis into it yesterday. All it shows is how desperately the IOC is resorting to whataboutism - based on really bad research - to downplay the fact that one of its members is attempting to annihilate another of its members through a genocidal war of aggression, which is unprecedented since the last time the Games had to be cancelled entirely. The least that the IOC can do is keep the sanctions and exclude athletes from the aggressor nation - who are exploited for war propaganda even when they are supposedly ‘neutral’. If the IOC chooses to help normalise aggression instead then there will be a hell of a lot more future conflicts worldwide to count.

@barabanch It was, of course, your colleagues at @BBCMonitoring who originally spotted Gurulyov's comment.

bbc.com/russian/articl… - еще один из интересных итогов дня: "Медуза" и "Дождь" честно сослались, РБК с Коммерсом переписали новость, сделав вид, что сами посмотрели. У меня претензий нет, просто замечаем, коллеги

Russian state TV appears to confirm General Tsokov's death. Ex-general Andrei Gurulyov said he "died heroically"

@IainDale A visiting professor who describes himself as an "alumni". Oh dear.

This is a crying shame. I say this as an alumni and Visiting Professor. When the languages school, EUR, was shut in 2004 I spoke at a protest as it was an act of educational and cultural vandalism. As is this.

All very much in keeping with his behaviour in the Carl Beech affair twitter.com/wallaceme/stat…

What a heavy price we are paying for Obama's 8 ineffectual years in the White House. twitter.com/LenerdoDicrapi…

@antelava @CodaStory @carolecadwalla @OliverBullough I don't think this is what Oliver Bullough is saying here. He's saying that the system is faulty because contestants in a case are liable to such large legal fees. As he notes, even Banks is considerably out of pocket. He does not say that Banks abused the libel laws.

Abuse of UK’s libel laws means the game is rigged and all journalists are vulnerable “I hope everyone can look at what has happened to @carolecadwalla and recognize this is a sign of a system that is broken.” Says @OliverBullough

This article from Meduza argues inter alia that "harsh international sanctions" harm the prospects of the Russian opposition. It's bylined to "Fielding Mellish", name of the hapless revolutionary in Woody Allen's "Bananas". Is this some sort of joke? meduza.io/en/feature/202…

Agree twitter.com/albats/status/…

Another darling of the left turns out to be a Kremlin-friendly moron twitter.com/unherd/status/…

As Putin’s dictatorship became increasingly fascist and imperialist, it celebrated even more the USSR’s war against imperialist fascism. (After first allying with it, of course.) It took 80 years, but the fascists finally conquered Moscow–from within.