‘Stella Creasy’s bird-brained parrot alert,’ ran a Steerpike headline yesterday. The Labour MP for Walthamstow had posted a video of herself in a London park. The video showed a parakeet, with the MP explaining it was definitely not a parakeet. 

‘Walthamstow has anyone lost a parrot?’ she wrote. ‘There’s one in Lloyd park right now! Please share to help reunite it with its owner!’

For centuries Londoners made fun of country bumpkins by saying they hadn’t even seen the lions – meaning those at the Tower. The lions are long gone, but somehow it is now possible to be a country bumpkin in Walthamstow 

For centuries Londoners made fun of country bumpkins by saying they hadn’t even seen the lions – meaning those at the Tower. The lions are long gone, but somehow it is now possible to be a country bumpkin in Walthamstow 

The MP has faced some serious abuse on social media in her time. In 2014 Peter Nunn, of Bristol, was jailed for 18 weeks and made the subject of a restraining order for a campaign of menacing messages towards her that included retweeted threats of rape. Creasy had offended him by supporting a campaign to put Jane Austen on £10 notes. Some of the responses to Creasy’s avian error were repulsive. Most were simply a joyous and richly deserved torrent of ridicule. Steerpike highlighted a picture of a stag, beneath which someone had........

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