HOW often do you go on Twitter and what do you do on there?

Abuse someone who disagrees with you? Demand the sacking of someone whose politics differ from yours? These seem to be the main occupations of the Twitter mob.

That and celebs dropping themselves in the poo because they’ve said something they shouldn’t.

People are astonished when I tell them I’m not on Twitter. But it’s a poisonous, malevolent creation. It’s corrosive to our democracy and a deeply misleading indicator of public opinion.

More to the point, maybe, I would rather read my own death certificate than someone’s Twitter feed. Join in a slanging match between deranged obsessives and totalitarians? Nah, thanks.

People are at last beginning to wise up to Twitter. One of the BBC’s most senior bosses has said the corporation’s journos and presenters are gripped by a desire to see their Twitter feeds go viral — and that this undermines the BBC’s rules of impartiality.

We saw exactly that with Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis recently when she tweeted that the Government was trying to silence the media. No it isn’t, you dimbo.

Anyway, the boss in question, David Jordan, is worried BBC journos are now in a left-liberal group-think bubble. No kidding — and Twitter is partly to blame for this.

'In a bubble'

The same has happened at the New York Times — once a great newspaper, now an ultra-woke Stalinist rag.

One of its best writers has resigned because of the toxic, bullying, left-wing orthodoxy among colleagues — bolstered by Twitter. Bari Weiss compares the abuse she gets on Twitter to a new form of McCarthyism.

These people are all in a bubble. They all share the same views and these are replicated on their Twitter feeds. So they think they can never be wrong.

Trouble is, Twitter is a very poor barometer of public opinion and it’s time the Government, as well as the Labour Party, started to wise up to this.

There are 13.7million Twitter users in the UK but 80 per cent of tweets are written by just ten per cent of users.

They are the manically obsessive, perpetually jabbering minority. Twitter is also heavily skewed towards the young — 38 per cent of users are under the age of 30.

Yet when a Twitter storm erupts, people who should know better take it all seriously. They pay attention, when they should pay no attention whatsoever. It is just a minuscule proportion of the country getting itself terribly worked up.

Silent majority

The Labour Party found this out to its cost at the last general election.

They thought they were doing just great in the polls — and they thought that way because they were getting thousand upon thousand of tweets commending their policies and saying how awful Boris Johnson and the Conservatives were.

What happened? Labour went down to their worst defeat in 85 years.

That Twitter stuff was just the liberal bubble again, doing its work. It meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Twitter has become another instrument by which the silent majority are told they are always wrong. That their views should not be allowed.

It’s time we called Twitter’s bluff. As Shakespeare’s Macbeth might have put it — Twitter is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

COMMON SENSE

YOUNG kids are being pushed towards changing gender and their parents are too scared to object. Words of common sense from the American writer Abigail Shrier.

She said of children most likely to say they’re transgender: “I think this seems to be prominent in politically progressive communities, partly because their schools tend to be more aggressive on the gender ideology, so they’re getting pushed culturally.”

Yes, exactly right. We will look back at this right-on obsession with horror in years to come. What it did to the kids. And how their lives worked out.

Are they taking the Pisces?

NASA has discovered a new star sign – Ophiuchus.

Try saying that when you’re half-cut.

Anyway, this revelation means the astrological chart has changed somewhat. Yes, I know it’s all b*ks. But still, I’m proud to announce I am no longer, like Victoria Beckham, an Aries.

I am now a Pisces. Like two people I very closely identify with – Rihanna and Albert Einstein.

CREAM CRACKERS CHALLENGE

ANOTHER bulletin from the Really Useful Scientific Experiments people.

Apparently, the maximum number of hotdogs a human being can eat in ten minutes is 84. Which is only nine more than the current world record.

To do this I assume you have to be a) American b) Be called Bubba and c) Have a gut the size of Jupiter. A more British eating challenge is an old favourite. Can you eat just two cream crackers in one minute?

No water or other lubrication allowed, or butter, or cheese. Just the crackers. Bet you can’t.

GIVE ’EM STICK ON MASKS

THE Government seems utterly confused about Covid.

We are now all meant to wear masks in public. Four months ago we were told they were useless. Social-distancing has been reduced from two metres to “one metre- plus”. What does that even mean?

Schools remain shut but pubs are open. If people are forced to wear masks in shops from July 24, why is it OK not to wear them today?

Why are people being bribed ten quid per head by the Government to go out for a meal?

There seems to me no sense coming from the Government. It has badly lost its way. A mass of contradictions.

They will still tell you they are being “guided by science”. Guided by an inflated pig’s bladder on a stick, seems more like it to me.

MEANWHILE, I’ll be happy to do as I’m told and wear a mask on public transport. For a bit. I can see a certain limited sense in that. But not for long.

I don’t want us to become terrified, in perpetuity, of other human beings – and signalling distance from them with a mask.

There is always a risk in meeting other people. But it’s also the way humans have thrived.

Once we were sensible about those risks. But I’m not sure that common sense isn’t deserting us all right now.

WRONG WEI

ONE thing the Government has got right is getting tough with the Chinese.

Its hi-tech firm Huawei has been booted out of our 5G plans. The Chinese are screaming blue murder. But they have to understand that the way they conduct themselves has ramifications for their economy.

Big country it may be. But it won’t bully Britain.

A SIGN OF COVID LUNACY

THERE’S a cycle path near my house.

Runs through woodland and past a nature reserve. It’s very pretty but now barred to the public.You’re not allowed on it – because of Covid.

“Bridleway Ahead Closed – Strictly No Public Access”, it says, in the Hitlerish tones typical of a local council.

The sign says it’s been shut because the council cannot guarantee a social-distancing requirement of two metres for people using the path.

When I think of all the idiocies foisted upon us by the authorities on account of this wretched virus, this is one of the most truly stupid.

Of course, you cannot guarantee social-distancing will be observed. But you can’t in city streets, either.

Why not close all footpaths and all roads?

CANCEL CULTURE

WELL done again to Ricky Gervais. He’s been speaking on Times Radio about the dreaded “cancel culture”.

This is the silencing of people who happen to say something with which the woke legions disagree.

“Just because you’re offended, it doesn’t mean that you’re right,” he said. Quite.

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