‘You’re trending on Twitter,’ said the Spectator books editor Sam Leith, who knows his social media. Am I? How exciting! What have I done? Sam explained: a young black man called Freddie Gray (ie not y) had been killed by cops in Baltimore, and a campaign for justice had begun online.
Labour is finally waking up to the benefits crisis
It’s funny when your namesake becomes a cause célèbre, even if the name is spelt differently and the story is as sad as poor Freddie’s. Lots of messages from friends start coming in: ‘Apparently people are rioting about your death’, ‘You’re causing real problems in Baltimore’, ‘Never knew you had so many American fans’, ‘You’re famous at last!’. And so on. One American, thinking, I think, that he was tweeting the dead Freddie, said ‘RIP’ to me. LOLs.
In the real world, the Freddie story just got bigger.
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On 29 March 2023, a retired social worker from Walthamstow, Trudi Warner, was arrested for standing outside Inner London Crown Court and holding up a banner saying: ‘Jurors you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.’ Inside, four Insulate Britain activists were on trial for causing a public nuisance. The
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