Twitter CENSORS Allison Pearson

While many will shrug and hunker down to life with a few more restrictions, as the second wave of Coronavirus infections threatens to get out of hand, there is a persistent and vocal fringe wanting to believe that it’s not really happening. And at the forefront of that fringe is the increasingly wayward Allison Pearson, still given a berth by the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph. She’s a pundit on a national title, so she’s right.

Her problem is that she is not just searching for anything that suits her agenda and then touting it as fact, she’s also appallingly inconsistent. Last week she was happy that her son, who is at University, had become infected with Covid-19, and that others he knew had also caught the virus. This was the way to achieve “community immunity”, she declared.

Now, she’s echoing Brexit Party chair Richard Tice, who has claimed “Uni Student anger rising sharply against aggressive lockdown measures imposed incl huge fines. Hearing shocking stories, students really angry at their Unis. They were encouraged to return by Unis who are desperate for their fees. So wrong, so unnecessary. Parents furious too”. Yes, “Very much this. Boy, are parents furious”. So she’s no longer happy.

Ms Pearson is also worryingly incautious, happily RTing more than one pronouncement from a Tweeter called “Wokeman”. Why is this incautious? Well, apart from the fringe #KBF (Keep Britain Free) hashtag - very Trafalgar Square demo, that one - this Tweeter also displays the racist ALM (All Lives Matter) badge. But has put forward a claim that counters the scientific narrative coming from the Government, so that’s all right, then.

So busy is Ms Pearson telling everyone it’s not happening, she has failed to read what her own paper is putting out. So those seeing her RTing Tice once more, this time claiming “Good news [Boris Johnson] [Matt Hancock] cases falling consistently in U.K. over last 4 days, over 40% down … [UK Science Chief] looking woefully pessimistic on his ‘7 day doubling horror’ chart … Why no Govt minister or MPs talking about this encouraging news?” then looking at today’s Tel front page may stop and think.

After all, the Tel is saying that the 7-day average for Covid-19 infections shows a +47% change. That’s not “falling consistently”, and it certainly isn’t “Good news”. Weekends always show smaller numbers, and have done since March. But Ms Pearson’s biggest worry is that her output has proved too batshit even for Twitter.

And, as a blue tick account, you’ve got to put out something seriously batshit to get it deleted. But as Alex Tiffin has discovered, her Tweet telling that she wanted students to become infected with Covid-19 has been canned: “Twitter actually removed Allison Pearson's tweet about WANTING students to catch COVID-19 so we can get ‘Community immunity’ … Oh she'll not be happy”. Will she take the hint? Probably not.

The reputation of the Tel takes another knock: a columnist so wacko that she’s RTing a racist bigot, and then having her Tweets removed for breaking the Ts and Cs.

There’s mileage in contrarianism. But not as much as some pundits would like.

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