https://www.waterstones.com/author/robert-cook/435753/pageJuly
July 10th 2024
| Justice system |
| Why Starmer is stuck in Blair’s prison Left utopianism won’t fix our justice problem |
NATO war summit prepares direct entry into Ukraine war
This week’s NATO summit heralds a new phase in the war with Russia, in which the NATO military alliance will openly take charge of arming, funding and directing the Ukrainian military.
Tony Blair admits UK will need ‘a little persuading’ to embrace digital ID
The former prime minister’s suggestion is already causing a headache for the new Labour government.
By Vincent Manancourt and Laurie Clarke
LONDON — Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has doubled down on his call for Britain to embrace digital IDs — while acknowledging that public skepticism would have to be overcome first.
Speaking at a conference hosted by his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) in central London on Tuesday, Blair said introducing digital IDs could improve citizens’ access to public services while clamping down on benefit fraud and illegal migration.
But he admitted that there would be “a little work in persuading to do here, it must be said.”
July 9th 2024
Piglets: ‘Disgusting’ title of new ITV comedy criticised by Police …
Police leaders have criticised the title of new ITV comedy Piglets, calling it “highly offensive” and “a disgusting choice of language”. Set in a fictional police training college, the programme’s name is an apparent reference to the term “pig” which has long been used as a derogatory slang word for police officers.
1 hour ago — Comedy is set in police training school but staff association take issue with ‘disgusting choice of language’ using derogatory term ‘pig‘
That system makes honest coppers lives unpleasant and drives many to quit. If your face doesn’t fit, line managers offer little back up. I served 22 years in public service, not counting my time as a senior local politician and school governor. These hierarchies need debunking, especially their leadership. It is nonsense to assert that the average officer puts their life on the line to save liives. Exceptional ones do. Others have mishaps because they are idiots, thugs. criminal liars, sex abusers and bullies. I often got abuse as a public servant, getting job security, well paid and a pension in the process. This Police Federation rant over a TV Comedy, is yet more evidence of the tightening grip, claws and handcuffs of the U.K Poilice State.
We can expect even worse now that Starmer, former head of the corrupt Crown Prosecution Service ( CPS ) is in charge of a new Labour Government. Blair’s New Labour regime previously established the precedent that it was better for police to jail an innocent man than let a guilty man go free. So we can expect many more miscarriages of justice. Men need to be very careful how they interact with women inside and outside the house. This should be the end of casual sex in feminist culture where women are judged incapable of lies. This is a particular danger for lower class white men who are presented as privileged and potential rapists, even if they have had gender reassignmenet surgery. Meanwhile, blacks and women are viewed as underdogs always worthy of excuses due to being historic victims of white male abuse. This makes them perfect voting fodder and crucial to Labour’s restorded political hegemony.
R J Cook.
Human rights groups give Starmer blueprint for asylum overhaul
Hundreds of refugee and human rights organisations have written to Keir Starmer with a blueprint for asylum policy which urges him to change course from the policies of the previous government.
LONDON: Hundreds of refugee and human rights organizations have written to Keir Starmer, the newly elected UK prime minister, presenting a comprehensive …
Harry Potter author called past comments made by Anneliese Dodds on gender ‘nonsensical’
Privileged Edinburgh author J.K. Rowling, who claims to speak for all women, is believed to be the world’s wealthiest author, with a current fortune of around $1 billion. It would take a person on the average U.K wage of £38,500 – which is averaged out from counting the highest to the lowest paid – 27,000 years to earn £1 Billion .Wealth is power, so maybe transsexual women should just give up and seek compensation from the NHS for wrongful diagnosis of a condition that does not exist, because Rowling, who is married to a doctor,says that it doesn’t. She has informed the new Labour Government Womens’ Minister accordingly. Rowling has threatened to withdraw financial support if they do not do as she tells them.
This is yet another wonderful demonstration of U.K Democracy at work. R J Cook.
24 Jun 2024 — Harry Potter author said at the weekend that the party had ‘abandoned’ women and she would ‘struggle to support them’
Top Immigration Civil Servant Condemns Detention Centre Conditions As Liberals Press Labour Government For Amnesty.
| The end of an era: how immigration came to haunt the Conservatives For the sake of the British people, we can only wish Sir Keir Starmer’s government, and particularly Yvette Cooper, the new Home Secretary, luck and success in their new roles. There is so much that can be said about the result of the election – much has been. As we and others forecast, the 2024 general election proved catastrophic for the Conservatives. For Labour, it was a historic triumph. The LibDems – we suspect to even to their surprise – won more seats than took them into the 2010 coalition government. And, of course, there was Reform UK, with more votes than the LibDems but in return for 66 fewer seats. Five seats may not seem a lot, but it could prove to be the wedge that allows the Farage-led quintet (including Lee Anderson, a recent Conservative backbencher) to march into the decimated Tory ranks. Foxy-Farage in a hencoop full of headless chickens wreaking havoc. He must be licking his lips in anticipation. All this brought about by 14 years of broken promises and failure to control and reduce immigration, stop the boats and sort out the shattered asylum system. We accept that they messed up on other issues too but for millions of people who voted Conservative in 2019 (many for the first time) this was the paramount issue and what helped Boris Johnson secure his 80-seat majority. We respectfully suggest that the lamentable Tory record on immigration should serve as a salutary lesson to Sir Keir and Ms Cooper, of what can happen when governments go against the wishes of the people or betray their trust. Labour have a gargantuan majority and can pretty much do whatever they damn well please. And, as Sir Keir and Ms Cooper reminded fellow MPs in the heated post-Brexit exchanges in the Commons, Parliament is supreme. Mess up, and the voters can vote you out of office as easily as they have just voted you in. The British people want immigration cut. They won’t tolerate net migration adding another 2 million plus people to the population in the life of this parliament. You have to do more than tinker with the points-based system and set up a new “Border Security Command” (BSC), Home Secretary. Net migration of around 700,000 per year, what we have now, will rapidly add millions of people to our population. That is totally unacceptable to the British people. As for illegal Channel crossings, how long will it take for the BSC to have any effect? Indeed, how much impact will it have? We believe it will make little difference and it will take years for this to become apparent. Why won’t you even give the Rwanda scheme even a chance, Sir Keir? We have to say, the photo below from a few years ago does not inspire confidence in our new Home Secretary. Will she or the Prime Minister have the courage and political will to do whatever is necessary to stop the boats? |
| Donate to Migration Watch Migration Watch relies entirely on the generosity of our supporters who fund our work. If you would like to help us with our efforts, pleaseclick here to donate. |
| Luca Watson, The Critic – “Safe and legal routes” is a dangerous cliché “Establishing safe and legal routes for refugees to settle in Britain will not deter those who are planning on crossing the Channel from doing so, and we know as much given that such routes already exist. Since 2015, the UK has resettled around half a million refugees into Britain using established safe and legal routes. These routes are intended to help those most at risk, and have therefore prioritised resettling those from areas of intense conflict such as Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Syria. Yet despite the existence of these routes, irregular crossings across the Channel have consistently increased throughout this period, reaching almost 50,000 people in 2022 alone.” We also liked: Brendan O’Neill, Spiked – Glastonbury has exposed the fake virtue of the elites |
| MIGRATION WATCH IN THE MEDIA |
| Dr. Mike Jones, Executive Director of Migration Watch UK, was interviewed by Lee Hall of British Thought Leaders on the politics, economics, and social impact of migration. This wide-ranging discussion covered numerous topics. Mike explained how immigration distorts the economy, how its benefits are often exaggerated, and how higher diversity can undermine a productive, high-trust society. Be sure to watch the full interview: |
| Finally, in an article for the Mail on Sunday, Migration Watch UK Chairman Alp Mehmet criticised Banksy’s migrant boat publicity stunt at the Glastonbury music festival, calling it an act of extremely bad taste: “‘How childish. Illegal immigration, from which hard criminals make millions, is neither cool nor edgy.'” |
| MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD |
| We have a cost-of-living crisis, a cost-of-government crisis, and, a cost-of-immigration crisis. A new political era is upon us, but the immigration issue isn’t going away anytime soon. Labour may be popping champagne corks in Islington, Hampstead, and St. Pancras. We can’t deny them a celebratory glass of bubbly but let them be in no doubt that the British public, with our help, will hold their feet to the fire and scrutinise their record at every opportunity. And if they fail us, we will do to them what we did to the Conservatives on Thursday; we will vote you out of office. It’s how democracy works. Do write to your new MP today. |
| We wouldn’t be able to continue this work without the help of our supporters. If you would like to donate, please click the button below. Our supporters are all as concerned about the future of our country as we are. Some have been kind enough to remember us in their will. If you wish to consider leaving a bequest to Migration Watch UK, or wish to discuss anything else, do please get in touch. Our email is: admin@migrationwatchuk.org |
Build the socialist opposition to Starmer’s right-wing government!
Keir Starmer owes his “landslide” victory entirely to the hatred of the Tories, the thoroughly undemocratic first-past-the-post system, and the fact that widespread left-wing sentiment has found no organised socialist expression.
Labour takes power with the lowest share of the popular vote of any incoming government in British history.
July 8th 2024
To claim success for its strategy, the rally featured former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who was elected as an independent in Islington North after thrashing his Labour opponent.
“They didn’t do it because they were Muslim, they did it because they were idiots.” A still emotional Jess Phillips reflects on an emerging …
Jess Phillips said Thursday’s general election was “the worst election I have ever stood in” as she was booed and jeered by pro-Palestinian …
Comment
Those of us still capable of independent thought know that these men did do it because they were Muslims. For every Reform MP there are 800,000 voters. For every Labour MP there are 30,000. Proportional Representation would have given Reform U.K 97 MPs.
When a white man, including pervert PC Wayne Couzens offends against women, it is all white men who are suspects – but not all policemen. Feminist politicians just know that because they are the new deity.
When non white ethnics offend, as with the gang responsible for killing the white teenager at Primrose Hill New Years Eve Celebrations or of the young white footballer and P.E instructor in Birmingham, it was deemed racist to call the black gang backed killings racist. This is the road to ruin. Labour are already busy making that road a super highway.
R J Cook
July 7th 2024
Tony Blair warns Keir Starmer he needs plan to control …
Former Labour Prime Minister and Middle East Peace Envoy ( Such Irony ) Tony Blair has urged Keir Starmer to formulate a “plan to control immigration”, warning of the threat from the UKs right-wing parties. Mr Starmer was on Sunday marking his third day as Prime Minister with a tour of Scotland after Labour’s landslide victory.
Ex UK PM Tony Blair’s Advice To Keir StarmerNDTVhttps://www.ndtv.com › World News
12 hours ago — Former Labour prime minister Tony Blair made an early intervention in British politics on Sunday after Keir Starmer’s landslide election …
Ukraine announcements came after David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, said UK military, economic, political and diplomatic support for Ukraine will “remain iron clad” under the Labour Government
The new British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, said this in an article published on the website of the UK government on Sunday,
9 May 2024 — Armed Forces minister has met with defence leaders and military chiefs in Romania and Bulgaria. This follows the UK government announcing a .
11 Apr 2023 — They contain updates about military operations, logistics, weapons deliveries and training of Ukrainian forces by the US and its Nato allies.
1 hour ago — John Healey has also announced a new package of military assistance to Ukraine as it responds to Russia’s invasion.
Why is the UK one of the most supportive countries …Reddit · r/ukpolitics220+ comments · 1 year ago
The UK broadly speaking has the means and the will to offer assistance to Ukraine, to assist their resistance against the fascist Russian thugs.
48 answers · Top answer: Because the UK is the only major European power that has no benefit fro
Comment This is the perfect insight into what the British masses are supposed to believe. Obviously I do not.
R J Cook
If feminist Linda Bellos is seen as a risk, progressive politics has lost its way
This article is more than 6 years old – but even more relevant in the age of government legitimated transphobia and trans hate crimes. R J Cook.
Women and trans people alike are the targets of male violence – but gender issues are now so fraught that we’re losing sight of what we have in common
Progressive politics has seriously lost its way. When feminists who have spent decades challenging sexism, racism, and homophobia are viewed as a risk to the wellbeing of students, something has gone very wrong indeed. Linda Bellos became the most recent feminist whose invitation to speak was withdrawn for raising questions about the direction in which modern-day gender politics is heading. Bellos, who is responsible for establishing Black History Month in Britain, was uninvited by the Beard Society, a “gender and feminist group” within Cambridge University.
During her address to Peterhouse College, Bellos told organisers she planned to publicly question “some of the trans politics … which seems to assert the power of those who were previously designated male to tell lesbians, and especially lesbian feminists, what to say and what to think”. In response, a representative of the Beard Society responded: “I’m sorry but we’ve decided not to host you. I too believe in freedom of expression, however Peterhouse is as much a home as it is a college. The welfare of our students in this instance has to come first.”
The tension between radical feminists and queer activists stems from two contradictory ways of defining gender. Queer politics positions gender as an innately held identity. The radical feminist understanding is that gender exists as a political system, not an identity. Recognising gender as innately held, a factor that should be enshrined as a protected characteristic, totally contradicts radical feminist principles. The politics of gender is deeply personal, but that isn’t a reason to shy away from exploring it – quite the opposite.
Like Bellos, I am a radical feminist. There are women within the movement who have seriously overstepped the mark by directing cruelty towards trans people, which I condemn without hesitation. But, like every other radical feminist I know, I want trans people to live lives that are free from abuse, discrimination, and persecution. Irrespective of the difference in how we conceptualise gender, radical feminists want all trans people to be safe from male violence.
2 days ago — The prescribing of testosterone for middle–aged women is “out of control” and may have long-term implications for their health, experts have …
‘Yes, we were bloody angry’
“Men don’t need to be obliterated. Changed, yes. What I see in this generation of younger men is much more thoughtfulness, much less macho.”
This article is more than 18 years old
Black, Jewish and lesbian, activist Linda Bellos embodied the radical anger of the 70s and 80s. But what happened next? By Andrew Anthony
Wed 15 Feb 2006 00.01 GMT
Back in the days when women were angry and lesbians were really angry, perhaps the angriest woman of all was the lesbian feminist Linda Bellos. Throughout the 70s and 80s, when she went from organising protests to running Lambeth council, she seemed to wear a permanent scowl of indignation that threatened to explode, at the slightest provocation, into incandescent rage.
When it came to grievance, she appeared to have it all, being black, African, Jewish, working class, lesbian and Marxist. She was angry at economic injustice, racial discrimination, sexual inequality, the oppression of the male gaze, pornography, violence against women and much else besides. “Yes,” she admits in Angry Wimmin – a documentary about revolutionary feminism being aired as part of the current BBC4 series Lefties – “we were bloody angry.” Most of all, of course, she was angry with men.
When she left her husband, she explains in the film, she also left her children because she moved into an all-female environment. The way she puts it is that she could not have taken her daughter and left her son behind.
The viewer is left wondering why another option was not explored. Why didn’t she abandon separatist feminism and take both children instead? “I’m a student,” she tells me, slipping into the live action of the present tense. “I’ve got no money. My husband has the house, he loves the children. In those circumstances do you remove your children from their home, from their father, to take them where? To live on the street? I wanted him to leave the house, and then he could have seen the children.”
She says it’s still a painful topic more than 25 years later. “I remember we had agreed I would come and see the children every day and put them to bed. After about a week, he stopped it. So the terms on which I went were changed.”
There was a divorce and she fought for custody but gave up when the tussle became too bitter. “I could not bear it. I would not have my children used as pawns to the hurt between us so I withdrew my claim and got some limited access. I got ulcers for the first time. But over the years my relationship with my children strengthened.” Now, she says, she’s on great terms with both her son and daughter, and she sees her daughter’s three children all the time. She also sees her ex-husband. “I wouldn’t say we’re close, but we are parents to our children and we are grandparents.”
She had a brief but eventful career in mainstream politics. In 1986, she became leader of Lambeth council, in an extremely competitive field quite possibly the looniest of all loony left boroughs. She only lasted two years before she resigned in a rates dispute. I wondered if she thought that the great hate figure of that period, Margaret Thatcher, had in some ways also represented a triumph for feminism. “Bollocks, no!” she shouts, and I almost instinctively duck. “Absolutely not.” She launches into a long tirade, and I try to explain that I merely meant that Thatcher showed that women could rival men for power. “Let’s not worship power for power’s sake. There are many people who do good by being quiet, loving, helpful, generous. I happen to think that is more important than powerful and loud,” she says, powerfully and loudly.
She was rejected by the Labour party for the safe seat of Vauxhall, though she says she was the popular local candidate. “It does not bode well for the Labour party if you won’t let black radical people represent the communities they came from. It was at that point I tore up my membership.” But Bellos is a natural campaigner rather than a politician. She doesn’t listen so much as lecture. And much of what she has lectured down the years has become standard policy. On matters such as rape, policing and diversity, opinion has come round to her way of thinking.
But some of her attitudes have changed. She has got in touch with her Judaism and she now believes in a kind of earth-based deity – “There’s no man in the sky with a white fucking beard” – which is the sum of the good that we do. She has also softened towards men. To my relief, she tells me: “Men don’t need to be obliterated. Changed, yes. What I see in this generation of younger men is much more thoughtfulness, much less macho.”
The new cabinet: Who is in Sir Keir Starmer’s top team
The Labour leader opts for little change when appointing his new cabinet, with ministers largely sticking with the briefs they were given before the election.
Saturday 6 July 2024 13:20, UK
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has announced much of his new cabinet – hours after taking power in a landslide victory.
July 6th 2024
Female MPs call harassment an assault on democracyBBChttps://www.bbc.co.uk › news › articles
“This election has been the worst election I have ever stood in,” Labour’s Jess Phillips tells the count.
Jess Phillips heckled by anti-Israel activists after narrow victory and ‘worst campaign’ of her career
The Birmingham Yardley MP asked officials to ‘throw out’ disruptive campaigners from the count
Jess Phillips was heckled by pro-Palestine activists after narrowly defeating a far-left candidate who has accused Labour of backing Israeli “genocide”.
The re-elected MP for Birmingham Yardley beat Workers Party candidate Jody McIntyre by just 700 votes on Thursday night.
After being declared the winner, Phillips’s attempt to give a victory speech was interrupted by chants of “free Palestine”.
She told the audience at the count: “I see we’re going to continue with the class we had during the campaign.”
The Labour MP continued: “I will carry on with my speech. I understand that a strong woman standing up to you is met with such reticance.”
Faced by more chanting, she asked officials to throw those heckling her out of the venue.
The Birmingham Yardley MP asked officials to ‘throw out’ disruptive campaigners from the count.
Labour’s Jess Phillips wins seat by less than 700 votes …Xhttps://x.com › LBC › status
Labour’s Jess Phillips wins seat by less than 700 votes against candidate who said trans people are ‘danger to society‘ …
31 Jan 2023 — I fear for my trans daughter’s future in the UK · Transgender · Parents and parenting · Children · Health · NHS · letters.
The fears of Transgender People and the rise of Transphobia …
mikkitiamo.comhttps://mikkitiamo.com › Blog
21 May 2023 — This increase in transphobia has had a significant impact on the lives of transgender people in the UK. They are more likely to experience …
Comment
It is interesting that fake liberal U.K Mainstream media smeared Vladimir Putin as a transphobe hate criminal. Now the U.K’s new Prime Minsister, Sir Kier Starmer, has wasted no time making a statement that transsexual women have no right to use female toilets, pressumably agreeing with major Labour Party donor, the wealthy fantasy writer J K Rowling. Has he any ideas where such people might relieve themselves and touch up their make up?
Seasoned lawyer and Blairite, Starmer gained his knighthood for heading his country’s corrupt Crown Prosecution Service which was more interested in targets, regardless of evidence,, and appeasing feminists than a man’s innocence.
Starmer’s friend , warmongering fellow lawyer and former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, of the illegal second Gulf War fame, has recently advised Starmer to revive the Identity Card scheme.
Rich man Blair once said that Britain needed all the migrants it could get and should become the Hong Kong of Europe. But he thinks the government needs to know who has a right to be in the United Kingdom ( sic ).
Starmer only had his elevation to Prime Minister, of the most over rated island on earth, yesterday. He and his feminist upper echelons have wasted no time planning an intensified police state. This is even less of a good time for male to female transsexuals to live in Police State Britain.
R J Cook
U.K Elite Calls Itself A Democracy !!!!
Biggest-ever gap between number of votes and MPs hits Reform and Greens
Ben Chu
BBC Verify
The gap between the share of total votes won by the winning party in the 2024 general election and the share of Parliamentary seats won is the largest on record, BBC Verify has found.
This disparity has prompted renewed calls for reform of the electoral system, with Richard Tice of Reform UK complaining on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday of the “injustice” that his party had received millions of votes but only five seats in Parliament.
He said: “That is blatantly not a properly functioning democratic system – that is a flawed system. The demands for change will grow and grow.”
The Green Party’s co-leader Adrian Ramsay said he wanted to see a “fairer system” to ensure that “every vote counts equally”.
The Electoral Reform Society claimed it was “the most disproportional in British electoral history”.
The UK’s first-past-the-post system has a tendency to generate disproportionate results compared with systems in some other countries. So are these latest complaints justified?
Reform’s roughly four million votes translates into a 14% share of the total votes cast in the election, but only 1% of all the seats in the House of Commons.
By contrast, Labour won 34% of total votes cast, but about 64% of the 650 seats.
https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/18520109/embed?auto=1
The Green Party also had a considerably larger vote share than seat share, with 7% of the total vote but, like Reform, about 1% of total seats, or four MPs.
Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats, who have often in previous elections had a larger vote share than seat share, this time saw the two come out roughly equal.
Sir Ed Davey’s party won 12% of total votes cast and 11% of seats in Parliament.
BBC Verify has examined the vote shares of major parties in all elections going back to 1918 and also the share of total Parliamentary seats won by the party with the most seats.
On this measure Labour’s result in 2024 – with the gap between the share of votes won and the share of seats won of around 30 percentage points – is the most disproportionate on record.
The second most disproportionate election result on this metric was 2001, when Tony Blair’s Labour party won 41% of votes but 63% of total seats – a gap of 22 percentage points.
However, it’s important to note that political parties have to campaign within the voting system as it is.
First-past-the-post means the person with the largest number of votes in each constituency gets elected and candidates from other parties get nothing for their votes in that area.
Labour grandee Lord Mandelson told the BBC on Friday morning that his party had put its campaigning resources into certain seats in order to maximise its chances of winning a large number of seats, rather than boosting its overall vote share.
A purely proportional system – where national vote share translated exactly into the number of seats – in 2024 would have given Labour about 195 seats and no majority. The Tories would have had 156 seats, Reform 91, the Liberal Democrats 78 and the Greens 45.
However, it’s also important to recognise that voters might well vote differently if the voting system was more proportional.
Alternative vote system rejected
The UK held a national referendum on reform of the voting system in 2011 after the 2010 election delivered a hung parliament and the Conservatives entered a formal coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
The proposal to replace the current first-past-the post system with an “Alternative Vote”, which advocates said would make results more proportional to the national share of votes cast, was rejected by the public, by 68% to 32%.
The referendum was the price exacted by the Lib Dems for entering coalition with the Conservatives.
Despite his party doing better under the current system than in previous elections, the Lib Dem leader Sir Ed said on Friday morning that he felt the British political system was “still broken” and would continue to support electoral reform.
Though this is the most extreme difference between vote and seat shares seen across the whole of the UK and in England for over a century, other nations of the UK have seen more extreme cases in recent history.
In the 2015 general election, the Scottish National Party took half of the votes and 95% of the seats in Scotland – a gap of 45 points between the vote and seat share.
The highest gap recorded in Wales was in the 2001 general election when Labour won just under half of the votes and 85% of Welsh seats in Westminster.
The Electoral Reform Society used more complex statistical scoring systems to compare the 2024 election result to others in UK history, but also concluded it was the most disproportionate on record.
Additional reporting by Robert Cuffe and the data journalism team.
Comment
Basically Starmer and his Neo Con Labour Party got 30% of the 60% who bothered to vote. The British Public, in so far as they know anything about politics, have been taught that proportional representation is how Hitler became German Chancellor in 1933. It was actually a bit more complicated than that, but you can’t talk sense to nonsense.
R J Cook
July 5th 2024
Hecklers disrupt Reform UK event as Nigel Farage vows to ‘come after’ Labour
Party leader and newly elected MP claims ‘political establishment are in fear’ after election results
Anti-racism protesters heckled Nigel Farage at his first event in London since his election as an MP, where he said he would “professionalise” Reform UK and displace the Conservatives as the voice of opposition.
Several men and women were thrown out by security as they took it in turns to stand up and disrupt the event featuring Farage and three fellow MPs from the hard-right party. Reform added a fifth MP on Friday evening after a recount in Essex went its way.
“The political establishment are in fear about what happened last night in the election,” Farage claimed after trading barbs with activists, asking one of them where he was from. “Glasgow,” said the man as he was being manhandled away, to which Farage replied: “Well that explains it.”
The campaign group Stand Up to Racism claimed it was behind the disruption and said: “We are speaking to the millions of people who will be appalled at the advances made by Reform UK, exposed as a racist party, and the divisive hate spewed by Farage.”
Farage, elected in Clacton, was appearing near Westminster with his fellow MPs Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness), Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth) and Lee Anderson (Ashfield). After a recount in Basildon South and East Thurrock, James McMurdock won that seat with a majority of 98 votes.
A heckler at the Reform UK press conference near Westminster. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
Anderson, a former Labour member who became a Tory MP and then switched again, was introduced by Farage as someone who had been “on a journey that millions of other people have been on”.
July 4th 2024
An obsessive loner’s plot to kill Holly Willoughby
Lewis Adams
BBC News, Essex
Laura Foster
BBC News, Essex
Amid the packed inbox of Holly Willoughby’s Instagram account, Gavin Plumb waited for his message to be answered. “I wanted to see if you are aware that there is some very real looking images of you online?” he wrote.
His watchful eye was not a caring one, however. In the background, Plumb was planning to kidnap, rape and ultimately murder the TV presenter. How was he caught?
During a forensic search of Gavin Plumb’s flat in Harlow, Essex, a handwritten note was found.
Scribbled across a side and a half of paper, a list of the names of 136 female celebrities had been laid out. Top of the pile was Holly Willoughby.
Ten years on from the conclusion of his fantastical relationship, Plumb’s reality is a prison cell.
The 37-year-old has been found guilty of soliciting murder, inciting kidnap and inciting rape after his plot against Ms Willoughby was uncovered.
“I’ve got no doubt that Gavin Plumb could’ve gone on to commit some really horrific crimes,” says Det Ch Insp Greg Wood, of Essex Police.
‘My ultimate fantasy’
By his own admission, Plumb was a loner who rarely left his house and had developed an “obsession” with the presenter, best known for co-hosting ITV’s This Morning alongside Philip Schofield.
Plumb searched online for other people who found Ms Willoughby attractive and his desires started to spiral.
Speaking online to a man only known as Marc, the pair began to devise a plot that would see her abducted from her home by force and taken to a “dungeon”.
“I’m going to be living out my ultimate fantasy,” Plumb wrote. “I’m now at the point that fantasy isn’t enough anymore. I want the real thing.”
Gavin Plumb told an online associate that he no longer wanted to fantasise about Ms Willoughby – he wanted the “real thing”
Comment Not surprisingly minor celebrity Holly Willoughy voided her right to anonymity in this case. She has taken the opportunity to announce that this conviction was a victory for all women who need more protection from men. This attitude is bad news for male to female transsexuals who wealthy fantasy writer J K Rowling has labelled rapists disguised to enter female safe spaces.
There is no doubt that Gary Plumb is deranged and harboured nasty sexual fantasies triggered and developed to the point of obsession by the sight of Ms Holly Willoughby. The U.K is perfect breeding ground for feral youths and other weird people, some being serving police officers as killer pervert cop Wayne Couzens demonstrated. This phenomenon is made more dangerous because over 50% of marriages end in divorce. In these circumstances men always take the blame, many labelled domestic abusers with no need of evidence. A woman’s tears say more than real evidence ever could.
These social facts ignore the reality of ‘funny mummies’ who produce men like Gary Plumb. I know one case where a woman shut her son away from age 15 with the lie that he was being home schooled – though he was in a rather peculiar way that I cannot mention here. He was a big lad with normal male impulses who ended up sectioned aged 32. His best hope is to live and die in a mental hospital because he could never survive by himself. It’s a very serious case but I cannot say more for legal reasons.
Minor celebrity Holly Willougby, like J K Rowling, looks for more laws and protections rather than accept that women as rampant feminists interact very badly with men outside of the professional classes. Many years ago, as a school boy in 1965, I was in a GCE O Level English class discussion about human behaviour. I offered the comment : “We have to remember that we are all animals.” There was an immediate reponse from the tallest girl in the class, condescension in her voice. She snapped : “You might be an animal Cook, but I am not.” Ironically she was a local farmer’s daughter, and also a dreadful snob.
However, her attitude was ahead of its time. When women do bad things it is always a man’s fault. This is particularly so for working class men without education to argue back. Men are officially told and through mainstream media, that they ask for it when women are violent – women are schooled in this defence. Otherwise, they are just laughed at as weaklings.The fact that women are statistically more likely to harm and even kill children is played down, often put down to hormones. This is a toxic environment for young and all all males up to their 50s. I saw it developing during my 18 years in front line education.
Strident feminism, ‘me too’, positive discrimination, demanding a male curfew in the wake of Sarah Everard’s rape and murder by a pervert policeman – while she was violating the lockdown curfew – transphobia and trans haterather than wonder why so many young and even older men want to change sex, are serious issues. Feminists have decided that women have the right to change as feminists leaders decree, but men have no rights and must follow orders. Dissident conservative women are villified and marginalised.hate
I studied post graduate psychology when I returned to university in the late 1970s. My conclusion was that I lacked the resolve to judge others’ mental state, so abandoned plans to be an educational psychologist. But I learned a little on the way, especially in the educational front line with an appalling hierarchical increasingly bureaucratic target driven tick box politically correct system. That system is geared up to teach boys their place. Once again, it is no wonder that many young boys want to be little girls.
So place Gary Plumb in this social context. He obviously has an eating disorder and was probably fed an awful fattening diet by his single mother. Looking like that, he was probably bullied at school. PE would have been a nightmare for him. I taught PE for 3 years in a rough secondary modern school. It can be hell for fat kids, creating unpleasant psychological damage. I had students who looked like Gary. They were hopeless. The cool boys and girls laughed at them. Gary Plumb’s social development would have been warped into what he became. Minor Celebrity Holly Willoughby wants to make this sad fantasist about all women. It isn’t. It is about a sick corrupt elitist corrupt wealth dominated hypocritical seismically U.K fractured society with a very unhealthy attitude across the board.
R J Cook
When former nurse Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering babies last year, news channels rolled on the story, and her mugshot was splashed across front pages and websites around the world.
The scale of Letby’s crimes, the extreme vulnerability of her victims, and unanswered questions about the nurse all combined to stoke interest in the case.
But this was a saga that was still unfolding. Hospital consultants who’d suspected Letby spoke of the struggles they’d had to be heard. Public outcry quickly led to the announcement of a public inquiry.
Meanwhile, police said they were reviewing the cases of 4,000 admissions of babies into neonatal units at hospitals where Letby worked or trained, and were launching an investigation to establish whether the Countess of Chester Hospital should face criminal charges.
There was blanket coverage. Then the news cycle moved on, and Lucy Letby fell out of the headlines.
But that wasn’t the only reason things went quiet. We can now explain why coverage of Letby’s story has been restricted over the last 10 months – and what we haven’t been able to report, until now.
A month after Britain’s most notorious nurse was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced it was seeking a fresh trial.
Letby had been convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder another six at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neo-natal unit between June 2015 and June 2016. She was acquitted of two counts of attempted murder.
But there were six further charges on which jurors couldn’t decide. Now the CPS said it was intending to run a retrial to put one of those undecided charges before a new jury. The judge quickly imposed a court order prohibiting the reporting of anything that could prejudice the upcoming trial. The result was a virtual news blackout, at least temporarily.
In the background, Letby’s defence team applied for permission to appeal against her convictions. There was no public hearing, and journalists weren’t told about Letby’s grounds for appeal – or the judge’s reasons when they decided to deny her request.
Read More https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c727jgdm7r4o
July 3rd 2024
Political Reality U.K By R J Cook
R J Cook
R J Cook
R J Cook
July 1st 2024
U.K Can Only Get Worse – This is turd world.
| Since Migration Watch UK (MW) was founded 22 years ago by Lord (then, Sir Andrew) Green and Professor (Emeritus) David Coleman, there have been five general elections and the Brexit referendum and 12 Home Secretaries. In all those elections, we have made a point of not suggesting to the electorate how they should vote. We have remained non-partisan and independent throughout; it is a stance we do not intend to change for this election. While unequivocally accepting that immigration is a natural part of an open economy and society, we have also been clear that it has to be both sustainable and with the assent of the British people. Our central concern from the outset has been, and remains, the massive level of immigration. For over 25 years it has been neither sustainable nor has it accorded with the wishes of the people. Their concerns have invariably been given short shrift or treated with contempt. This must change, whichever party forms the next government (it will be Labour). |
| Legal migration Over the past five weeks, we have written about the main parties’ proposals on how they intend to deal with both legal and illegal migration. The manifestos contained few surprises. The bulk of proposals had been aired in the weeks and months before a rain-sodden Rishi Sunak called the election on 22 May. Given what the polls are telling us, it would be perverse to pretend now that we can expect anyone other than Sir Keir Starmer to step through the door of 10 Downing Street this time next week. So, what can we expect from a Starmer government? On legal migration there’s not a lot of difference between Labour and the Conservatives. They both accept that immigration is too high and should be reduced. But neither is clear or convincing about how it is to be done. The Tories are promising a cap, to be recommended by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) and voted on by Parliament, on work and family visas (but not student visas). Labour will not have a cap but will retain the points-based system (PBS) as well as the constraining measures introduced earlier this year (denial of visas for student and care worker dependants and increased earnings thresholds for family visas and skilled jobs). There was, of course, no change to qualification levels for higher-skill jobs, which had come down from degree level to ‘A’ Level on the introduction of the PBS. Labour promises to improve the way the PBS works in practice and encourage more training of the workforce to reduce demand for overseas workers. (How long will this take?) But don’t be surprised if special schemes for, say, the Palestinians or some sub-Saharan Africans start to pop up and what about more Afghans? Beyond accepting that immigration is too high, Labour have refused to indicate what the level of immigration/net migration should be or how to get it there. Like the Tories, their default ‘guru’ is the MAC. This is a cop-out. Nor do we believe that net migration will come down significantly during the next Parliament with the policies being proposed by Sir Keir. Moreover, we do not expect net migration to fall sharply after 2024 without Labour doing anything, as some are suggesting. We also counsel caution in taking the apparent 10% reduction of net migration in 2023 from 2022 (down to 685,000 from 764,000) as signalling a rapid decline of net migration in the course of the next Parliament. Overseas students are not going to be leaving in droves while student and work visa numbers will go on increasing for so long as universities and employers have a free hand to bring in as many students and workers as they like. Net migration added 2.2 million people to our population during the last Parliament. How many will it add in the next Parliament? Laxer Labour policies will add at least this number and very likely considerably more (3.5-4 million?). We are already 4.3 million houses short. Labour are promising to build 1.5 million houses over the next five years. We are sceptical that this will happen but even if, miraculously, Sir Keir Starmer succeeded, it will just about provide housing for new arrivals. To sum up Labour’s legal migration policies: There will be no cap to legal migration. There will be no limits on student visas, family visas, humanitarian visas, or worker visas. They won’t abolish the graduate visa route. They have no plans to abolish the Shortage Occupation List and They will not restore the requirement that employers look to recruit locally first. In short, we do not see net migration going below 500,000 any time soon under Labour. Catastrophically high immigration will continue. So, What will Labour’s policies achieve? In our judgment, not much. |
| Illegal immigration We have looked at Labour’s likely illegal immigration and asylum policies several times. They will abandon the Rwanda plan, but they have no alternative. Their plan to ‘clear the asylum backlog quickly’ amounts to an amnesty in all but name, as we have repeatedly warned. Their aim to negotiate a returns agreement with the EU will lock us into the EU’s shambolic asylum process that will require us to take our share of those pouring in through the EU’s porous external borders. Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, says every UK borough will take their “fair share” of successful asylum seekers. We wonder how many applicants will get spots (i.e., social housing) in the 1.5 million new homes. We expect an out-of-control asylum system to continue and get worse. |
| Generation Rent and the immigration crisis Nigel Farage has said, “immigration is the real reason for the housing crisis,” claiming Britain needs “a new house every two minutes” for legal migrants. Labour has promised to build more houses and cut immigration but hasn’t offered any detail on how it will be done. We are obviously not building enough homes, and our planning system is outdated. But if reforming the planning system is politically tough and time-consuming, you need to control demand. By continuing mass immigration, the government increases demand, worsening the housing crisis. So cut immigration! It’s not rocket-science. As we have already said, Britain has a deficit of 4.3 million compared to the average European country. Rapid population growth exacerbates it. The government set a housing target of 300,000 homes a year, assuming net migration of 170,500 annually. We now have an annual inflow of well over a million and net migration of around three quarters of a million. To keep pace with such levels of immigration and catch up with the shortfall, we require closer to half a million homes a year to be built. Moreover, immigration is adding to the problems of the rental market. Immigrants are more likely to rent than those born in the UK. Only 47% of migrants own their own property, compared to 70% of British-born people (foreign-born residents are almost three times as likely to rent, and at least 80% of new arrivals rent for the first few years). Capital Economics found that immigration added 430,000 households wanting to rent privately, pushing rents 11% higher than they would have been. On Farage, we might add that he is the only leader who gets it on legal immigration. While Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak skirt around the issue and slug it out on small boats (net migration is nearly 20 times the current rate of illegal Channel-crossers) and what they will or won’t do, Mr Farage has been talking about the horrendous levels of legal migration and its impact on our economy and the nature of our society. His voice in the next Parliament, should he be elected, will be critically important. |
| Donate to Migration Watch Migration Watch relies entirely on the generosity of our supporters who fund our work. If you would like to help us with our efforts, pleaseclick here to donate. |
| Eliot Wilson, CapX – Labour won’t tell us what they think about immigration “How many new migrants does Labour think the UK should accept? We have no idea. Questions are batted away with promises to refer issues to the Migration Advisory Committee, an independent, advisory non-departmental body. This is a familiar part of the Starmer doctrine: give away power to the Office for Budget Responsibility, an Office for Value for Money, Great British Energy, a Fair Work Agency, a consultation on the House of Lords. If you don’t take the decisions, you can’t be blamed for the outcomes.” We also liked: Jonathan Thomas, ConHome – Will Europe copy the Rwanda plan? |
| MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD |
| July 4 will be one of the most significant days in British political history. The Conservative party’s 14-year rule will end abruptly and dramatically. Their legacy will haunt them – catastrophically high legal migration, out of control illegal Channel-crossers, chaotic asylum system, record house prices, record rental prices, stagnant wages, , Human Rights lawyers running amok, and foreign criminals staying in Britain. What comes next could be just as bad, if not worse. At Migration Watch, we have our work cut out, and so do you, the British public. If you share our concerns about the future of our nation, contact your prospective parliamentary candidate today. |
| We wouldn’t be able to continue this work without the help of our supporters. If you would like to donate, please click the button below. Our supporters are all as concerned about the future of our country as we are. Some have been kind enough to remember us in their will. If you wish to consider leaving a bequest to Migration Watch UK, or wish to discuss anything else, do please get in touch. Our email is: admin@migrationwatchuk.org |
“In Poland we call the British the great bureaucrats of Europe.” by R J Cook
Wandering around Aylesbury this morning I saw a sixty something woman, her face expressionless while she pushed her well presented beribboned poodle dog in a infants push chair. From her dress and worn out face, I sensed she had little in this world except for her tiny dog. Guessing, from the proud upturned self satisfied face of her surrogate child, that it must have been female. I wondered what she was called. Perhaps it was ‘Princess’.
My camera was in hand as usual when I am out and about, but I did not want the woman to think that I was regarding her as a subject for mockery. Although officially a freelance photographic journalist, I have always been lacking in the professional requirement to humiliate the lower orders and esteem their betters. The picture I saw, was very sad because the happy little animal didn’t know what horrors would come to her if her ‘mother’ figure died. If there was any emotion on the sad woman’s face it was fear and memories of a disappointing life of hardship.
Riding into Aylesbury on the bus, I picked up my free copy of the Metro newspaper. This politically correct news sheet is no more than anyone should expect from a big business news source. Within its pages there was drooling coverage of female headliners at Glastonbury. Respects were paid to Parkinson’s sufferer Michael J Fox who appeared on stage with Coldplay. In spite of his disability, he looked as if he still had more wits about him than President Biden
On the subject of Biden, the ‘liberal press’ are blaming his advisers for giving him scripts too long for his failing memory. According to these desperate warmongering liberals, it is those people’s fault that Biden’s head to head with Trump, made him look like an imbecile who was confused, showing a tendency to stare into space and say nothing. Meanwhile, Britain’s media and political elite are backing him up because they love the Ukraine War and mass immigration. Feminism has bombed the white birth rate, so the ruling classes needs some rapid amenable imports.
Here this class will protect and elevate them, denigrating the white working classes and convincing descendants of British West Indians that they have more in common with Africans than their fellow working class White British because of their skin. It is the same story in the U.S. The elite appease Muslim immigrants by telling them that they are also a downtrodden black race rather than a religion demanding others accept their rules and faith because they are never going to assimilate with other cultural values. Those who object to this are called Islamophobes. This is the essence of the political and media elite campaign against Nigel Farage and U.K Reform.
This whole U.S Presidential fiasco started in 2016 when Hilary Clinton told her supporters that the election was rigged and not to accept the result. The Democrats, in the name of democracy, spent the entirety of Trumps period of Presidential office, scheming to undermine, smeer and impeach him. Recent trumped up prosecutions have been more of the same because Democrats represent a vital interest in the Ukraine Proxy War on Russia.
Over here in the U.K the BBC et al are warning voters that the Russians are out to steal their votes to undermine British Democracy. They are aiming at Nigel Farage and U.K Reform. Their basic methodology and tactic is sloganeering and using comfortable upper middle class news presenters and journalists, with many females and non white ethnics, to slag off anyone outside of the consensus.
I was drawn to watch these two men playing such wonderful and warming accordion harmonies this morning in Aylesbury High Street. I have enjoyed the performances of many buskers over many years all over the country, but these are among the best and made my day. They told me their names are, left to right, Vasily and Robert Street.
R J Cook
Continuing my travels around Aylesbury today, I met a postman in the High Street who had been a pupil at Aylesbury’s Grange School when I taught there from late 1979 to 1996. He was there in the good old 1980s before Thatcher wrecked the country and my job was more than brain washing. His thoughts on the Post Office were not surprising. I was an Aylesbury postman back in the late 1960s. The postman laughed when I said it used to be a civilised job. I spent five years working for City Link so had a good idea of what he was talking about.
I pressed on down to my bus stop by the old Royal Bucks Hospital. While I waited, I noticed an elderly couple walking down the hill towards me, hand in hand. Both had walking sticks. I thought how sweet and romantic it was to see that their love had survived. They were in their 80s. I can never stop interviewing people when I get the chance. I became involved in collecting oral history while working for the Aylesbury Plus Newspaper.
So I was glad my bus was running late. The man told me his name and number, for future reference because he gave me an idea for a new book proposal. He had been a London Bus Driver in the 1950s in the days when the Trolley Buses gave way to the disel AEC Routemaster. I told him how upset I was when my father told me the trolley buses were going in 1959. I was 8 years old and loved watching and travelling on buses. We had just left the Dalston Woolworth shopin North London., where I had bought a toy bus, when he gave me the bad news. I told him that it was just another example of Britain’s short term profiteering and political expediency.
As I have said many times, I used to be so passionate about politics that I was invited to stand as a Liberal Democrat candidate in the 1997 Parliamentary election. This was on the basis of my career as senior member of my council and school governor. When the Liberal Democrats started sending me invitations for courses on how to talk to the voters, I decided that Parliament was not for me.
However, this memory supports my view that Andrew Parker was not on the UK Reform message. He was an actor working with a production company employed by the U.K’s junior State Broadcaster Channel 4, loudly uttering vile racist statements, including callin Prime Minister Sunak “ a fu-king Paki.” Now BBC Radio and TV News are broadcasting programmes designed to ‘help’ first time voting, telling them about all the issues that matter.
My new found bus driver friend and his wife had no interest in politics. He told me he quit London Transport because of ever more rules and regulations enforced by petty minded management. His story sounded rather like what the Postman had told me.
One time, in the run up to Brexit, I was teamed up with a Polish Driver on an 18 ton lorry. Talking was always good on long runs. I learned a lot from my many East European colleagues. On this occasion, I discussed Britain’s quest to escape all the European bureaucracy. He laughed, then said: “In Poland we call Britain the great bureaucrats of Europe.”
R J Cook July 1st 2024
June 30th 2024
LIVE: Nigel Farage hosts Reform UK rally in Birmingham
RJ Cook.
June 29th 2024
Labour and Conservatives are two sides of the same grubby coin – By R. J Cook.
What I saw on last night’s Question Time Debate with BBC Favourite Fiona Bruce, was a rattled establishment figure desperately trying to smear Reform UK Reform leader Nigel Farage with the toxic racist label. She allowed multiple versions of the same question. They were all about the party’s attractiveness to racists. Bruce was particularly interested in an apparent UK Reform campaigner, Andrew Parker, who had been ‘secretly filmed and recorded uttering the most appalling racist abuse, even targeting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and upsetting his children. The recording then being broadcast on Channel 4 before all the other channels and press picked it up.
Upper Class Privileged Fiona Bruce has had very rewarding career with the BBC, starting as a researcher for Panorama, the 59 year old has since presented popular shows like Crimewatch, Question Time, Fake Or Fortune, Antiques Roadshow and the news bulletins. In 2023, she was listed as one of the sixth highest paid stars at the BBC, earning between £395,000 and £399,999 a year. This had fallen from 2021/2022 when she was paid between £410,000 and £414,999 and 2020/2021 when she was paid between £405,000 and £409,999. According to Celebritynetworth.com, her net worth is around $3 million (£2.3 million). Does she really have the right to edit and cast judgement on the nation’s lower orders and desperate denied and decried UK Reform Party Voters.
The U.K elite does not care, beyond lip service, about any of its people. It is not racist to question to question the capacity of such a small country to absorb a net influx of one million mainly Third World legal and illegal migrants a year, amounting to a city the size of Manchester, particularly when its’ wealthy elite are not interested in supporting the existing native population.
Andrew Parker turned out to be an actor, describing himself as such on his website. Logically there should be a police investigation because it was him, not UK Reform that was inciting racial hatred and violence. At the moment Parker is in hiding and Channel 4 are obviously denying all knowledge of him.
How convenient that he was there with an undercover Channel 4 media outfit in tow. When Farage pointed this out , adding that his new start up party had paid a company to vet all campaign workers, but they had not done so.
Clearly this was all part of a smear campaign by the elite and their cosseted overpaid cloistered media puppets and lackeys who fear the consequences of their selfish hypocritical narcissistic greed may be upon them if any political voice in tune with and from the bottom, is ever heard in so called U.K Democracy. This is a threat across the western world, which is why the NATO Ukraine Proxy War on Russia and demonising Vladimir Putin is such and important distraction and investment for the wealthy investor classes.
A Western Elite defeat would have massive negative impact on the World Economy. This so called war for freedom and democracy has already had devastating impact on the masses, but the elite have always conned and forced the lower orders into the kind of sacrifices war demands. From their patronising upper class perspective, the masses need culling every now and again. Their time is now. Bruce and her husband have a background in advertising, so know how to spin and sell whatever needs selling.
Bruce had previously given the Green Party leader a very easy ride to display his parties wishy washy carbon zero and feminist anti trans policies. She even ignored his parties own examples of dubious candidates. He was allowed free reign to smugly disparage Farage, calling him the man who would be coming on later.
When Farage appeared, there was no way Bruce would give him space to discuss UK Reform’s very clear social contract and sound economic thinking. This was and is because, the U.K Political Agenda is set in stone, as befits the new Stone Age that will follow decades of Post Nuclear War fallout. The U.K Election, as across the whole western world, is about choosing, with elite media guidance, the best contractor to keep up provision of the same, papering over the cracks, using plausible deniability and all the other tricks to keep their power, privileges and presumptions.
Image R J Cook Appledene Photographics.
Meanwhile, the masses will still be divided along gender and racial lines, because if the elite are going to keep using racism and sexism for votes from the lowest common denominator, they must keep up the fear feeding basic divisions. They need this for votes just as much as they need migrants to keep wages down, prices of every necessity high and make up for white feminist negative influence on the white birth rates. Bruce knows the conflict between motherhood and career building. That is why she has admitted to feeling guilty about not spending enough time with her children due to her work commitments.
Smug opinionated women, ethnic and modern young white uni men dominated Farage’s Question Time audience, opinionated because they are women of the modern world – strong confident and assertive. Farage’s words fell on deaf ears, but he held his ground. He noted that 9.2 million of working age people are not working because they would lose their meagre benefits. He said there had been a 10 million increase in population since 1993, all down to net immigration.
As a former income tax officer, I know that the lower classes have always paid the bulk of the taxes, and that the likes of very highly paid Bruce and her wealthy husband have ways of avoiding tax. Before the usual people tell me that I don’t know what I am talking about, I am trained in economics and worked as a tax adviser to a Central London Accountant before moving on to a job in the rapacious City of London.
Britain now has highest basic taxes since 1945, compounded by the fact that tax bands have been frozen all of this century and for twenty years of the last. The increasing tax burden for poorest. Third World migrants are great for the ruling tax avoiding elite because the arey relatively better off than they were in Dark Ages Africa and the rest of the Muslim World.
One stupid women in Farage’s audience wailed that, ‘ the greens are full of hope, you are full of fear.’ One young smirking ‘uni boy’ asked Farage how he was going to pay for tax cuts. This promising young man would never dream of asking how the U.K is paying for its monstrous contribution to war in corrupt Ukraine.
There was more outrage when Farage talked of waste, describing HS2 as out of date, the cost having risen from £38 billion up to £102 billion. He struggled to counter the very green greens, arguing wisely that the only carbon free energy is via small modular nuclear reactors. His reasoned view on Ukraine, with evidence that Boris Johnson had blamed EU for war mongering in 2015, was similarly dismissed. He was never going to gain any traction under the cold blue eyed stare of perfectly poised Fiona Bruce and the BBC’s carefully vetted audience. That is life in authoritarian Police State Britain.
Baroness Bennet, for the Green Party, described the Question Time session as ‘ The Green Party offering a positive message, was followed by a torrent of nastiness. Farage offers a stark future. He is demonising immigrants.’
Nigel Farage summed up this whole sham cut and dried so called Democratic process with the line :
“Labour and Conservatives are two sides of the same grubby coin”
R J Cook
June 28th 2024
No other European league participating in the Euros generates anywhere near the £9.2bn revenue that the Premier League brings in every year. None of them come close.
The 26-man England squad’s combined “resale value” is £1.2bn. That’s more than the German and Belgium squad combined.
Jude Bellingham is the highest valued player in the entire tournament, and the England team has four players worth more than £100m.
Nigel Farage hits back at ‘hypocrisy’ of Boris Johnson over Ukraine comments
The Reform UK leader brandished a newspaper front page from 2016 with the headline: “Boris blames EU for war in Ukraine”. Mr Farage had previously told the BBC EU and NATO expansion had given Vladimir Putin a reason to tell the Russian people “they’re coming for us again” and go to war.
Tuesday 25 June 2024 08:57, UK
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.647.0_en.html#goog_1126551662 Nigel Farage told supporters in Maidstone that Boris Johnson betrayed Brexit voters while ‘he pretended to be a conservative’.
Nigel Farage has hit back at Boris Johnson after the former prime minister labelled him “morally repugnant” over comments he made about the war in Ukraine.
The Reform UK leader accused Mr Johnson of “hypocrisy” as he brandished a copy of a newspaper front page from 2016 that read: “Boris blames EU for war in Ukraine”.
Appearing on top of a campaign bus in Maidstone, Kent, Mr Farage pointed out that the former London mayor once blamed Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 on policies in Brussels.
The Reform leader was speaking after comments he made last week – when he claimed the West and NATO “provoked” the Ukraine conflict that began more than two years ago – generated a strong backlash.
Election latest: Sunak says he’s not being investigated over betting scandal
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.647.0_en.html#goog_636879507 Farage: NATO expansion ‘provoked’ Ukraine war
Mr Farage told the BBC that he had been saying since the fall of the Berlin Wall there would be a war in Ukraine due to the “ever-eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union”.
He said those actions had given Vladimir Putin a reason to tell the Russian people “they’re coming for us again” and go to war.
Mr Farage was also challenged in the interview about his previous comments about the Russian president, whom he said he “admired” as a political operator – although he said the war was “of course” Mr Putin’s “fault”.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky NewsTap here
Following the interview, Mr Johnson, who approved hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of financial assistance to Ukraine while he was prime minister, accused Mr Farage of “parroting Putin’s lies”.
Mr Johnson was responding to an article Mr Farage wrote in The Telegraph in which he stuck to the comments he made in the BBC interview.
Sharing the article on X, Mr Johnson wrote: “This is nauseating ahistorical drivel and more Kremlin propaganda. Nobody provoked Putin. Nobody ‘poked the bear with a stick’.
“The people of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly in 1991 to be a sovereign and independent country. They were perfectly entitled to seek both NATO and EU membership.
“There is only one person responsible for Russian aggression against Ukraine – both in 2014 and 2022 – and that is Putin. To try to spread the blame is morally repugnant and parroting Putin’s lies.”
This is nauseating ahistorical drivel and more Kremlin propaganda. Nobody provoked Putin. Nobody “poked the bear with a stick”. The people of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly in 1991 to be a sovereign and independent country. They were perfectly entitled to seek both NATO and EU…— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) June 23, 2024
Comment The Pro Russian Government was toppled by an Anglo U.S MI6 CIA conspiracy with ethnic Russians in the Dinbas paying the price of western backed genocide.
R J Cook
June 27th 2024
| The Guardian – Transgender |
| Starmer accuses Sunak of using trans vrissues as ‘political football’ Labour leader said he would treat trans people with ‘dignity and respect’ and accused prime minister of seeking to ‘d… − Nadeem Badshah • |
I have an affinity for films that include crossdressing in their plot. The crossdressing may be incidental to the plo…
− Stana •
Comment The Tories need to go forever. Reform U.K should be the future or there will be no U.K. Rule by monarchs and billionaires is not democracy. Wealthy fantasy writer J K Rowling said it all when she said she would stop funding the Labour Party if they did not do her bidding for her campaign to marginalise male to female transsexuals. TERF feminist, like Islamists, are intolerant and a major obstacle to social and econonomic progress. They are a threat to the planet, peace and harmony.
R J Cook
June 25th 2024
This city is worried about immigration, but who has the solution?
Ed Thomas
UK Editor
Reporting from Peterborough
Mike and Graham have been collecting bins for four decades between them. Their patch includes Peterborough’s Lincoln Road, where Lithuanian restaurants vie for space with job agencies advertising new positions in Polish.
“It seems like every nationality lives here,” says Graham. “I don’t see much integration, they keep themselves to themselves.”
“They don’t respect our country,” he says.
Over a quarter of Peterborough’s population is foreign-born, well above the almost 17% average for England and Wales. A sense of disquiet over the change that can accompany immigration is hardly new, but it is what Graham says next that is perhaps more revealing. I ask if he’d stop further immigration.
“You can’t stop it,” says Graham. “You’d have an empty hospital.” If Graham is struggling to live with immigration, he’s also of the view that the country currently depends on it.
The BBC’s Your Vote, Your Voice project has heard from thousands of you about concerns over immigration. We spent several days in Peterborough talking to people about it, and again and again I heard concerns about social cohesion and pressure on public services caused by immigration – and not just from those who were born in the UK.
Net migration to the UK rose significantly after Brexit, peaking at 764,000 in 2022, and was an estimated 685,000 in 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics. An Ipsos survey of 3,000 people in February found 52% of people wanted immigration to be reduced.
Migration has been a high-profile issue in the campaign and there have been bad-tempered clashes between politicians offering very different visions of an issue that regularly tracks as one of the most important for voters., external
On the outskirts of Peterborough we visited the Ortons Shopping Centre, a busy place where discount stores mix with independent shops.
Sarah works for the NHS. She was born in the city and raised her children here. Immigration, she says, has made the city grow very quickly. “We don’t have the resources for everybody,” she tells me.
She reels off a list of pressure points: “The hospital, it’s hard to get accommodation in the city now, especially social housing and school places.” Her grandchildren, she says, have struggled to get a place in the schools closest to them.
These sound like common issues in most towns. “I don’t think it’s all down to immigration,” Sarah admits, “but I think it has had a major impact on them.”
We found Emma waiting with her son and toddler daughter buying fish and chips. Immigration is a big issue for her in this election.
She is on the council house waiting list, and gets housing benefit, but because of high private rental prices she has to top it up by hundreds of pounds every month.
“The new houses that were built were given to all the foreigners that were coming in,” she says.
In the past year, Peterborough council has bought 40 homes to be used by Afghan and Ukrainian refugees.
“It’s not fair, I’ve always worked my life,” she says. “I don’t like it, it makes me angry.”
Peterborough council says the demand for social housing exceeds supply, and that is prioritising those with the highest needs. The homes were bought for legal refugees, it points out, who have the right to live and work in the country.
These are hard choices for councils. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent economics research institute, says Peterborough receives less funding for local services (that’s bin collections and adult and children’s care) and public health (drug and alcohol abuse) than it should do according to need. Places with growing populations can often find themselves falling victim to funding formulas from central government that do not take account of their recent growth.
Haji moved here as child about 50 years ago from Pakistan, and we met him in a traditional Pakistani sweet shop, where for £7 you can get a box full of treats.
“We worked hard,” he says reflecting on his and his family’s contribution to Britain. “We paid our taxes, National Insurance contributions, the hospital, education system.” He pauses before adding “everything was brilliant”, with the emphasis on the was.
He says he is concerned about migration. “I think it is too much, to be honest, the country has too much on its plate.”
“People who don’t contribute towards the system, I think they don’t have the right to live here.”
The ONS says the increase in net migration is mostly down to non-EU citizens coming on work and study visas.
This is a key challenge for the Conservative and Labour parties who say they will bring down net migration: many of the people who come to the UK come to work.
That Ipsos research on attitudes to migration also showed little appetite for reducing the numbers of medics, care workers, fruit pickers, teachers, labourers or lorry drivers coming to the UK to work.
Significant numbers of people settle in London and the South East, but Peterborough is attractive because it is well connected by road and rail, and newcomers work in food packing and logistics jobs – the city is part of a transport, logistics and warehousing triangle that’s grown significantly in the past decade or so, mostly down to online shopping.
Care is also a sector with big demand for workers. PJ Care, which provides specialist neurological care for adults, says it has hired more than 32 people from overseas, and its recruitment manager tells me they would struggle without them.
One of their employees is Rejoice, from Malawi. She says she’s thriving, excelling at her job – but still, she’s worried about her future, “When you look at the news, it makes you feel scared. What will become of me?”
She’s watching the general election debate closely, as all parties pitch their plans on immigration. They have very different approaches.
- The Conservatives want to reduce the number of economic migrants and introduce a cap, and want to press ahead with their policy of sending people who arrive on small boats to Rwanda.
- Labour would scrap the Rwanda scheme and divert £75m pounds to a new border and security command. It has pledged to cut net migration and reduce the number of foreign born workers in sectors including construction, IT, social care, health and engineering.
- The Liberal Democrats manifesto does not mention reducing immigration numbers. The party would abolish the current salary threshold for migrant workers in favour of what it calls a “merit-based” system. They would also end the recently introduced ban on foreign care workers bringing dependents to the UK and reverse the increase in income thresholds for family visas. The party says it would scrap the Rwanda scheme, and “provide safe and legal routes” for asylum seekers.
- In their “contract” Reform UK say they would freeze non-essential immigration, but they concede that there would be exceptions and that healthcare workers count as essential. They say they would return small boat arrivals to France, but they don’t explain how they would persuade France to accept that.
- The Greens say they would replace the Home Office with a new Department of Migration, end immigration detention for migrants unless they are a danger to public safety, and would allow those seeking asylum to work while their application is being processed. They would also end end the minimum income requirements for spouses of those holding work visas.
Rejoice is here on a work visa, with her husband and two children. She is one of 70,000 carers who came to work in England from abroad in 2022-2023, up from 10,000 in 2020-2021, according to industry body Skills for Care. It says about a third of the care workforce in Peterborough comes from abroad, and the demand for workers is expected to continue as the population ages.
She works full-time and pays taxes, but is keen to point out that she can’t claim some benefits, like free childcare. But Rejoice says she feels vital: “This country needs people like me, someone that can put their heart out there and help someone from the heart, giving their all.
“If we were to remove every migrant worker from this country, I think there would be a collapse in the health care system in this country.”
Set against this picture is a very public debate about small boats and illegal migration. Home Office figures show that in the 12 months until March, 38,000 people entered the UK illegally, the vast majority on small boats from France.
In conversations on the streets, there is not much distinction made between legal and illegal migration.
Just off Lincoln Road we are welcomed inside Peterborough Asylum and Refugee Community Association (Parca), which has been running for three decades. Asylum seekers Adil and Mohammed are having English lessons, and their English is very good.
Both fled war in Sudan and describe a desperate journey to reach the UK, taking a small boat from Libya to Italy. Adil says 300 people left on the boat, but only 200 people arrived. “One hundred people dead,” he says quietly. “Women, children, young boys.” It’s hard to even imagine what that was like.
Why make another risky journey from Calais to the UK? Adil says it was because he believed he would not get any support in France.
Parca was set up by Moez Nathu, who was a refugee before finding sanctuary in Peterborough. He says migrants believe that when they get to the UK, “you get five-star hotels to sleep, you’ll get feeding by Home Office”.
While he wants refugees to be supported, he says it creates an impression that people arriving here will have an easy life. The answer, he believes, is to allow asylum seekers to work almost as soon as they arrive, sending a message that if you come to the UK, you will be expected to work.
There were 69,298 asylum applications for the year ending March 2024, relating to relating to 86,719 people. But the number of asylum cases awaiting an initial decision is higher – 86,460 cases, relating to 118,329 people.
And government figures from the same time said there were 104,517 individuals in receipt of asylum support, of which 34% were in hotel accommodation.
Just outside Parca, we find Irena delivering parcels. She’s originally from Latvia and says she works up to 60 hours a week. I jokingly ask what she would do if she were the next prime minister. “I would close the borders!” she says. It’s not the answer we expected.
Irena arrived here 15 years ago, when the UK was part of the EU, and she’s now a British citizen and planning to vote in the general election.
It becomes clear her issue is illegal immigration. “I don’t understand why France doesn’t close the borders, why they let people risk their lives and cross the channel. If they say the first safe country is OK, why do you pass several safe countries and then England in the end. Why?”
Does she see any conflict between her own journey and her views now? “I’m working. I’m all the time working,” she says, adding that she never asked the state for anything.
Close by we speak to two men inside an eastern European cafe, they are from Peterborough and believe the change here has been for the better. They both point enthusiastically at the restaurants that line Lincoln Road. All of this, they say, would not have happened without immigration.
Rania Alia cofounded Helping Empower Lives in Peterborough. She’s originally from Egypt and is passionate about supporting the most vulnerable here and helping them settle in Britain.
She points to wider forces: “If you don’t want the refugee to come to this country, stop the war, make peace.”
And what of the argument that the country cannot cope with so many people arriving here? “I do not think the asylum, or refugee, is the reason for the crisis we are having,” before adding: “We have this because of Covid, the cost of living is getting very high – refugees don’t cause these problems.”
Rania is a reminder that by no means everyone in Peterborough feels the same about immigration, and what we did hear again and again were questions of what people saw as fairness – be it from Emma, who can’t get a council house, or from Rejoice who works, pays taxes but doesn’t always feel appreciated.
And for many who we spoke to in the city, who were uneasy about the surge in net migration, there was also a widespread understanding that the services they rely on, from health to having parcels delivered, were dependent on the very same people coming from abroad.
The challenge for the parties is to convince voters that after long periods of large-scale migration, they have a credible plan to address the issues and concerns of voters.
And then for whoever wins the keys to No 10, the next challenge will be to deliver that vision.
BBC InDepth is the new home on the website and app for the best analysis and expertise from our top journalists.
Government destroys £1.4bn of PPE from one Covid deal
Jon Ironmonger
BBC Investigations, Northamptonshire
Updated 1 hour ago
About £1.4bn worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) has been destroyed or written off in what is understood to be the most wasteful government deal of the pandemic.
Figures obtained by the BBC reveal that at least 1.57 billion items of PPE provided by the NHS supplier, Full Support Healthcare, will never be used, despite being manufactured to the proper standard.
The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), which was responsible for purchasing and delivering Covid PPE, said: “We do not recognise the £1.4bn quoted. Our position on PPE stock is set out in the department’s annual accounts as audited by the National Audit Office.”
The Labour Party described the contract as a “staggering waste” while the Liberal Democrats said it was a “colossal misuse of public funds”.
Full Support Healthcare agreed a £1.78bn deal in April 2020 to deliver face masks, respirators, eye protection and aprons – the largest Covid PPE order from a single supplier, accounting for 13% of the government’s total spend.
Before the pandemic, the Northamptonshire-based company, which was already a specialist manufacturer of PPE, had 25 employees and annual profits of £800,000, external.
Any profits since the contract was fulfilled are not known because in 2021 the co-directors, Sarah Stoute, 50, and her husband Richard, 53, based the business offshore in Jersey for privacy reasons.
They and the company continue to pay all UK tax. Neither Full Support Healthcare nor the Stoutes have done anything improper.
BBC Investigations made a series of requests over a six-month period under the Freedom of Information Act to NHS Supply Chain, which manages the delivery of healthcare products.
The responses reveal that about £1.4bn worth of Full Support Healthcare’s PPE will not be used.
The figure includes some 749 million items that have already been burned or destroyed, “including by energy from waste”, and a further 825 million that are classified as excess stock “where disposal and recycling are possible outcomes”.
Full Support provided 2.02 billion items of PPE, however, only 232 million items have been dispatched to the NHS or other care settings.
The deal is almost certain to be the most wasteful of the Covid pandemic. Data compiled by data firm Tussell, external, shows only one contract was more costly and it was awarded to a range of suppliers providing mixed services.
The government previously estimated that £85m worth of PPE secured under the contract would not be used, which is approximately 6% of the true total.
We have asked the DHSC to explain this disparity and why so much of the PPE was never used.
The BBC understands that at least £100m of public money has additionally been spent on storing and incinerating the excess stock since its purchase.
‘Staggering waste’
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said the money lost “could have been used to pay the salaries of 37,000 nurses”.
“We all know that billions of pounds was wasted during the pandemic on corruption and incompetence, but what the BBC has uncovered is the worst example I have ever seen – £1.4bn on one contract, paying for PPE that was never used.
“It is staggering waste and I think we need a full and frank account as to how so much public money was thrown down the toilet,” he said.
The BBC contacted the DHSC and the Conservative Party several times with no reply to set out our findings and ask a number of questions.
In an earlier statement the government said it had “acted swiftly to procure PPE at the height of the pandemic, competing in an overheated global market where demand massively outstripped supply”.
The Liberal Democrats said it would “take steps to ensure such a colossal misuse of public funds never happened again”.
According to Peter Smith, a former government procurement adviser and author, the initial forecasts for how much PPE was going to be needed, “were far higher than they should have been… with enormous targets of tens of billions of items”.
“I think the procurement people did what many of us would have done and slightly panicked to get the stuff in, or at least get the contracts in and hope the stuff arrived later – it was almost as though price didn’t matter.
“It meant opportunists and middlemen in entirely unrelated industries could make extortionate margins by organising supply from China or wherever, sometimes literally doubling their purchase price,” he said.
Sarah Stoute, a former nurse, set up Full Support Healthcare in 2001 in Wellingborough and her husband became a director three years later.
As experienced providers of PPE during previous pandemics, they moved quickly in late 2019 to boost supply as Coronavirus broke out.
Under an existing arrangement with the NHS, their company won two DHSC purchase orders, including one for £1.78bn, for face masks and other items.
Speaking at the time, external, Mrs Stoute said volumes of their product, shipped from China, increased from “eight sea freight containers every month to 800”.
In a post on X, then known as Twitter, in October 2020 she wrote that her “team of 25 people” supplied “one fifth of the PPE national stockpile”.
She added: “I’ve paid a few people’s mortgages off this last few weeks.”
Afterwards, Mrs Stoute and her husband bought a £30m seafront villa in Barbados; a yacht; a £6m house in the south of England and an international equestrian centre in Bedfordshire.
Giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee in 2021, she said they “risked everything as a company and went into mass production with no security at all”.
There is no suggestion the Stoutes or their company did anything wrong.
‘Repeated press intrusion’
Lawyers representing the Stoutes said: “Full Support Healthcare stock arrived quickly by summer 2020, much earlier than most and in larger quantities.
“It had either a two- or three-year shelf life. This means the PPE products are more likely to have passed their use-by date.”
On the issue of the couple offshoring their business, their lawyers said: “The choice to have the group company resident in Jersey was solely to maintain privacy for our clients and their family, especially given the repeated press intrusion.”
The couple and their company remain registered in the UK for tax.
The Stoutes unsuccessfully brought legal action against News Group Newspapers in 2023 after the Sun on Sunday published images of them on a beach in Barbados.
A judge ruled, external the couple, who were photographed after taking jet skis from their boat to a nearby restaurant, did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Last summer the Environment Agency took enforcement action to clear a stockpile of thousands of boxes of waste plastic medical aprons supplied by Full Support Healthcare.
Documents obtained by the BBC in April show the dump on a farm near Calmore, Hampshire, ran to some 1,550 pallets and was considered to present a fire risk.
The government had sold the pallets to a third-party private company while in the process of auctioning off excess PPE.
Full Support was in no way responsible for the stockpile.
The company’s lawyers said the Stoutes were only made aware of the volume of unused stock when the BBC told them.
They said it was a matter for the government who had not contacted them at any stage about it.
Four years since the first national lockdown in England and Wales, the DHSC continues to store and dispose of billions of items of excess PPE at a cost of millions of pounds a week.
At a press conference on Tuesday morning, the Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said the £1.4bn figure was “not accepted” but the DHSC has not specified a different one.
Ms Atkins said on the wider point “the whole country wanted us to get the PPE that our front-line staff needed both in healthcare and in social care, and we managed to procure billions of pieces of PPE equipment”.
“That was absolutely the right thing to do at the time,” she added.
A DHSC spokesperson said: “We do not recognise the £1.4 billion quoted. Our position on PPE stock is set out in the department’s annual accounts as audited by the National Audit Office.
“PPE was secured at the height of the pandemic, competing in an overheated global market where demand massively outstripped supply.
“Nearly half of all the remaining stock was sold, recycled, or donated by the department. In line with our reduction of storage and disposal strategy unused items will be turned into energy from waste which will see the department recoup further costs.”
Do you have a similar story to share with Jon? You can get in touch with him confidentially at jon.ironmonger@bbc.co.uk
Farage said Andrew Tate was ‘important voice’ for men in podcast interview
Reform UK leader has also argued against diversity quotas
Nigel Farage has praised the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate for being an “important voice” for the “emasculated” and giving boys “perhaps a bit of confidence at school” in online interviews that appear to be aimed at young men over the past year.
The Reform UK leader spoke in favour of Tate for defending “male culture” in a Strike It Big podcast that aired in February, while acknowledging that the influencer had gone “over the top” and elsewhere that he had said some “pretty horrible” things.
Since December 2022, Tate has been facing charges in Romania of human trafficking, rape, and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, which he denies.
Many politicians and teachers have spoken out against Tate’s influence on young boys in the UK, after the self-proclaimed misogynist said women belonged in the home and were a man’s property. “There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist,” Tate said in one video.
He has ranged from arguing against diversity quotas for BAME people, saying “the idea we should give people jobs according to how suntanned they are, the colour of their skin” was nonsense, to suggesting that some people on benefits are “too fat … too stupid, too lazy” to work.
In his Strike It Big podcast appearance in February, Farage said Tate had been “an important voice” for men, who were being told that male culture should be looked down on.
“Tate was a very important voice for an emasculated … you three guys, you are all 25, you are all kind of being told you can’t be blokes, you can’t do laddish, fun, bloke things … That’s almost what you’re being told. That masculinity is something we should look down upon, something we should frown upon. It’s like the men are becoming feminine and the women are becoming masculine and it’s a bit difficult to tell these days who’s what.
Lonely people are more likely to get heart disease, strokes, anxiety, depression, dementia … Add it all up, and they’re 26% more likely to die early. How do you avoid joining the unhappy millions?
By Phil DaoustSun 16 Jun 2024 14.00 BSTLast modified on Mon 17 Jun 2024 14.53 BST212
I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about a lonely old age. Closing in on my 61st birthday, eight years into a very happy marriage, I’ve got a wife, two teenage stepkids, an older daughter by an ex, a grandson and four siblings. Most of them at least tolerate me; a few even tell me that they love me. But maybe I’m taking too much for granted. People die, drift apart, fall out – and anyone who knows me will tell you that I can be very irritating.
Fifteen or 20 years from now it’s not inconceivable that none of my family will want to have much to do with me.
As for my close friends, some of whom I have known for more than 40 years, well, a) they’re obviously getting on a bit, and b) I’ve done a terrible job of keeping in touch with them. What with the lockdowns, and giving up booze, I have almost forgotten how to socialise. Almost four years after I stopped drinking, I’m not afraid of relapsing, but the sober me finds it just a little harder to enjoy pubs or wine bars, and has just a little less to say for himself. When I’m feeling charitable, I remind myself he’s also less likely to end the evening spouting bollocks.
What with the lockdowns and giving up booze, I have almost forgotten how to socialise
Maybe I’ll just be left with a dog or two. That might not be so bad. I’m a late convert to the waggy-and-licky cause, but for the past six years I’ve been lucky enough to look after two Romanian rescues. Sienna, a fatheaded staffie-dalmatian, and Stevie, a bogbrush-tailed quarter-alsatian, are always glad to see me, always good company. I talk to them more than you might think healthy. Is it wrong to call a dog darling?
Just out of curiosity (I talk to dogs!), I decided to see how I rank right now on the UCLA loneliness scale, introduced in 1978 and, after several revisions, still one of the most popular measures. How often do I feel alone, asks the online test. Never, rarely, sometimes, often? How often do I feel my interests and ideas are not shared by those around me? Never, rarely, sometimes, often? Twenty questions like this and I score 37 out of a possible 80. This represents a “moderate” degree of loneliness, as opposed to “low”, “moderately high” or “high”. That’s a little worse than I expected. Stevie, Sienna, you’re not pulling your weight.
We should probably pin down what we mean by loneliness, as opposed to solitude, aloneness, social isolation, disconnectedness etc. For Henry Rollins, the former Black Flag frontman turned writer, it’s something that “adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.” I’m going to file that under Poetic Nonsense. The Campaign to End Loneliness (CEL), more usefully, defines it as “a subjective, unwelcome feeling of lack or loss of companionship. It happens when there is a mismatch between the quantity and quality of the social relationships that we have, and those that we want.”
June 24th 2024
Politicslabour partyconservative partygeneral election
The Immigration Election
| In last week’s letter, we covered the Labour and Conservative manifestos and concluded that neither harboured policy proposals that were remotely up to the task of tackling runaway (legal) immigration or dealing with the reinvigorated illegal flow of Channel migrants and small boats. Indeed, our fear is that the likely next government’s policies will add fuel to the fire. As if to underline this, on Tuesday, over 800 migrants crossed the Channel, hitting the highest daily total in 18 months and bringing this year’s number to 12,313 – a staggering 18% jump from last year – with peak months still to come. |
| Reform’s manifesto This week it was the turn of Reform UK to unveil their manifesto. While prompting a number of questions, the proposals on immigration certainly showed intent and determination. The main proposals were: Freeze all non-essential immigration Return immigrants arriving in small boats to France and leave the ECHR Bar student dependants End immediate access to benefits Raise the National Insurance to 20% for foreign workers The ban on student dependants and the dependants of care workers is, of course, already in place. And unlikely to be reversed by a future Labour government (if they have any sense). The proposed ‘freeze’ on non-essential immigration and zero net migration is a stronger stance from Reform (we believe necessarily so) than either of the two main parties. It is the sort of firm policy commitment that is essential if the catastrophic (a word we use regularly and advisedly) levels of immigration. However, we are also mindful of future migration from Hong Kong if China were to embark on another crack-down should Hong Kongers stir again. Remember, there are 3-5 million British National Overseas (BNOs) passport holders. Meanwhile, there is also Ukraine. What will happen once the fighting stops? How likely is it that the c200,000 who have come here will return to their homeland? Or, as we have said before, are they just as likely to be joined by those they left behind? |
| 4th July, then what? As things stand, Sir Keir Starmer will walk across the threshold of 10 Downing Street on 5th July, bar something beyond our imagination happening between now and 4th July. The reins of power will be wrested from Rishi Sunak already tenuous grip with a ground-shattering Commons majority that will allow him to do pretty much whatever he wants. Britain’s border policy will be for him to shape as he pleases, or the Party dictates. As we have already said, Labour has no realistic plan to fix the almighty mess. Legal immigration will continue at stratospheric levels and the cross-Channel people traffickers will laugh uncontrollably as their bank accounts fill to bursting point with easy money. The proposal to speed up the processing of applications (do you mean amnesty or something like it, Sir Keir?) and bring illegal immigrants into the asylum system, beggars belief, – it is simply an open invitation to yet more chaos. |
| And finally… the Tories The Tory party leaves us at a loss for words. It feels like flogging a dead horse at this point. Their manifesto promises are vague or lack credibility for the simple reason that the public have heard it all before. We readily believed what we were told, only to be let down and left feeling betrayed. Promises of an immigration cap and sticking with the Rwanda plan are brushed aside. People are either not listening or if they are, just not believing. Perhaps, Mr Sunak will one day explain in his memoirs what really prompted him to call the election when he did. We can only speculate, and feel as baffled as Conservative politicians and activists. |
| Donate to Migration Watch Migration Watch relies entirely on the generosity of our supporters who fund our work. If you would like to help us with our efforts, pleaseclick here to donate. |
| Suella Braverman, The Telegraph – We’re set to be the illegal immigrant capital of Europe ““[Labour’s] proposed method of stopping illegal arrivals consists of scrapping the Rwanda scheme (so removing the only deterrent), setting up a new “cross-border police unit” to get real-time intelligence with partners in Europe (replicating the very thing I set up but with a different name), clearing the asylum backlog (for which, read “amnesty”), and helping poorer countries to prevent people leaving them in the first place (because billions of pounds in international aid over the years has been so successful in solving the global migration crisis).” We also liked: Allister Health, The Telegraph – France is about to bring the EU to the brink of collapse |
| MIGRATION WATCH IN THE MEDIA |
| Writing for GB News, Migration Watch Chairman Alp Mehmet discussed Mr. Sunak’s impending electoral catastrophe and how the Labour party will do little to halt the flow of mass legal and illegal immigration: “Between now and 4 July, I wager Rishi Sunak will thresh about in ever greater desperation, Sir Keir Starmer will do his utmost to say as little as possible, Sir Ed Davey will struggle to attract attention, and the Greens will be praying they can hold onto Caroline Lucas’s seat and perhaps win another. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage will be the nuisance he has promised to be and invigorate an otherwise lifeless campaign. He will also be the only party leader talking about the issue so many of the electorate want discussed – immigration and how to get it down from its current catastrophic levels.” |
| MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD |
| The election is nearly upon us, and the political parties have made their pitches to the public. On immigration, the Tories have promised to cap visas in their manifesto, but their track record in office, including lies and broken promises, makes everything they say ring hollow. Labour’s manifesto is the weakest of the lot, with no proposed cap on immigration and a plan for illegal migration that essentially amounts to an amnesty. Reform has some interesting policies and clearly means business. Having a few Reform MPs in the House of Commons, and especially Nigel Farage, will help to hold Labour accountable for the havoc that continuing unrestrained immigration will wreak on the British people. The disastrous immigration policies of a succession of Conservative governments, their abject failure to keep promises and the squandering of golden opportunities delivered by Brexit have all contributed to the likely dismembering of the Conservative party on 4th July. Let’s hope that Labour will heed the lesson of this spectacular fall, and not engage in hubris. What is about to happen to the Conservatives could easily be the lot of Labour in five years’ time, should they also mess up as spectacularly as the Conservatives have in the past five years. Please write to your prospective parliamentary candidate today and tell them what you expect on immigration control in the lifetime of the next parliament. |
| We wouldn’t be able to continue this work without the help of our supporters. If you would like to donate, please click the button below. Our supporters are all as concerned about the future of our country as we are. Some have been kind enough to remember us in their will. If you wish to consider leaving a bequest to Migration Watch UK, or wish to discuss anything else, do please get in touch. Our email is: admin@migrationwatchuk.org |
Exclusive: Nearly 40 Per Cent Of Young People Do Not Plan To Vote In The Election
Fears politics is failing to engage those aged under 35.
22/06/2024 06:00pm BST
Nearly 40% of young people do not intend to vote in the general election, according to a shock poll.
The Techne survey for Independent Media revealed that a quarter of 18 to 34-year-olds say they have not even registered to vote less than two weeks before the country goes to the polls.
The findings have led to fears that the main political parties are failing to do enough to engage with young people.
According to the poll, just 57% of 18 to 34-year-olds say they are registered and will vote on July 4.
That compares with more than 80% of those aged between 35 and 64.
A further 17% of young people say they are registered but will not vote, while 22% are not registered and have no plans to do so.
That means a total of 39% of young people say they will not vote in the election.
By contrast, only 17% of 35 to 44-year-olds, 16% of 45 to 54-year-olds and 15% of 55 to 64-year-olds say they won’t vote.
Leading pollster and Tory peer Lord Hayward described the figure of younger people not wanting to vote as “very high” for this stage of an election campaign.
He said: “That is what we would expect for a normal turnout in terms of people not voting. But you have to remember that among the 59% who say they will vote a sizeable number of them will also not vote.”
He added: “The problem is that 18 to 34-year-olds do not identify with any of the political parties or are particularly taken by the agenda.
“Another poll the other day by Savanta showed how young voters are abandoning the Labour Party.”
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Verifying technology to keep an eye on ‘far right’ supporters –
R J Cook.
Comment I used to be passionate about politics. In 1987, as member of my local council rising to become chairman of the planning committee and chair of the North Bucks Town & Parish Council Consortium, I scorned the cynicism of the old men and apathy of voters. It was the height of Thatcher’s power with her authoritian regime which has become the hallmark and epitome of British Politics. I had also joined the Labour Party because as a schoolmaster at the time, I found processing young people for a nation of rising unemployment, de industrialisation, rabid feminism and consequent broken homes, rather depressing.
The Labour Party kicked me out because I criticised Arthur Scargill and their obsession with nuclear disarmament to the exclusion of more pressing underlying issues, giving Thatcher’s and her successors Tories a free run to wreck the country. So afterwards, on my record as an independent and senior member of council, I was asked to join the Liberal Democrats who wanted me as a Parliamentary candate. The selection process was at their substantial Westminster HQ. After that I was sent leaflet invitations on how to talk to the voters and decided to drop out.
Post the vile Margaret Thatcher war mongering regime, this world of politics was very different to when my Uncle Charlie and Aunt Florence ran the Labour Party General Election Committe Rooms on one side of our house while the Tories Committe Rooms were on the other side.
In those days it was about ‘Us and Them.’ I had the pleasure of meeting Labour General Election candidate Robert Maxwell in Aunt Flo’s front room when I was 8 years old in 1959. Now its all about ‘diversity’, mass immigration, women’s rights, national service and sending more young men off to fight in another rich man’s war to finally slay what is left of Russia’s Socialism and consolidate the global elite’s planet eating mind numbing hypocritical elite hegemony.
So if I were a schoolmaster today, I would tell the students not to bother voting to endorse this corrupt system. They should not give credibility to the likes of Starmer, former head of the corrupt Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) which still routinely withholds evidence to help corrupt police convict innocent men.
As for Slippery Sunak, I must be careful what I say. I would simply advise young voters not to give him the endorsement of a vote. However, these police state days, that kind of honest advice would get any U.K teacher dismissed. It will soon be a crime not to vote, with verifying technology to keep an eye on ‘far right’ supporters.
R J Cook
June 23rd 2024
Farage is infected with the Putin Virus.’ by R J Cook
The Anglo U.S War for worldwide regime change is well into its penultimate stage. The consequences are already dire and will become very much worse. In the world leading U.K fake democracy there are only these choices, Labour, or Conservative, two competing service providers guided by financial vested interests, the rampant TERF feminist movement and cash rich powerful elite mass media. At the moment, England’s masses are preoccupied with their dreadful football team and the money spinning EUROS. It is, pardon the pun, Goal Displacement.
U.K Mainstream Media, either global corporate like Sky or State Broadcaster the BBC, have trotted out every simplistic cliché and false analogy in the book, to ward off the threat of Nigel Farage and U.K Reform.
Their favourite analogy is that Putin is a modern day Hitler. Hitler has long been presented as the personification of evil, a black force from nowhere in the fake white virginal world of 1930s innocence. That is the way it is taught. There is never any mention of how falsely blaming the German people for causing the 1914 – 18 clash of empires caused the bitteness and anger of Herr Hitler. He twice won the Iron Cross, returning to a humiliated homeland which Britain and France wanted ground down in the dirt to protect and enhance their own empires.
That was until they saw him and his industrialist backers as a useful bulwark agaiust Stalin’s Russian Communism. Britain had already given rise to Stalin, plotting to assassinate the idealist revolutionary Lenin. The masses are not supposed to know that. when what became known as World War One, ‘the war to end wars’ started, the Russian, German and British Monarchs were all first cousins and grandchildren of Queen Victoria .
The war was about the rich in fighting because their greed was and still is insatiable. That is why the Russian starving working people, supported revolution in 1917. It is why the western ruling elites have been at war with Russia ever since. Western elites have feared revolution ever since.
The Russian Revolution was inspired by the writings of a wealthy Prussian Jew, Karl Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto’ written in the wake of the 1848 European uprisngs against the corrupt oppressive Austrian Empire. Marx had to escape to Britain where his friend Friedrich Engels, son of a Manchester factory owner, fed him data regarding the brutality and class exploitation of the British led Industrial Revolution.
That class exploitation has continued ever since,world wide. Ignorant and or moronic Tory and Labour leaders Sunak and Starmer are not clever.They are politicians. They do not understand history, or therefore why the much maligned and terminally ill Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain could not rush into war. Disgraced Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a wannabe Churchill, putting his name to a psychophantic and dreadful book on the subject of his hero – a man every bit as racist as Hitler, but upper class. So Churchill patronised and hated the lower orders.
Hence his role in a counter revolution to undermine the outcome of the Russian Revolution which included assassinating Lenin. Though wounded Lenin lingered on, the way was cleared for the brutal Stalin. So Britain supported Hitler until he appeared a bigger threat than Stalin., This was what Chamberlain was dealing with. Churchill, absurdly labelled ‘ the greatest living English man ( he was half American ) was a bombastic theatrical irresponsible drunken war monger who gave Britain Gallopoli and the Norway campaign. These disaters were because he was an arrogant idiot who enjoyed slaughtering the lower orders. He relished the outbreak of was as ‘his finest hour.’
The British elite and their lackey well paid media have dredged up all the D Day rubbish which would have counted for nothing but for the Russians on the terrible eastern front. Britain’s masses are being offered the myth of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain. If Germany’s wealthy industrialisst had not backed lunatics like Hitler, with his anti Jewish racist henchman Himmler, Germany would have destroyed and or enchanted the British masses, so devoid of hope and humanity during the 1930s
If Britain’s elite are not going to do it all again and worse in the nuclear age, then the oppressed working people of Europe, Britain and the United States need to wake up before these imbeciles who are genetically identical to the morons who gave us the last two world wars. They are about distracting us with their own absurd self centred war over the transsexual threat to women’s rights, safe spaces and the need to prosecute and jail more rapists who just cannot resist insulting, coercing, controlling, beating up and raping modern women. To me it is incredible that Eastern European masses believe that Britain is the epitome of freedom and democracy. But that is the power of democracy to propagadise, mislead and delude.
So pathetic little super rich Rishi Sunak with his £7.5 million California mansion, like Starmer has nailed his colours to the anti trans mast because this will distract stupid women from foreign policies that threaten Nuclear Armagedon. This moron moves from the issue of UK Reform leader Nigel Farage’s statement of what should be obvious, that Anglo U.S led NATO set Russia up for their proxy war in Ukraine, to sneering that Putin is so evil that ‘he uses nerve agents to kill people on the streets of Britain.’ The question and facts regarding Farage’s claim was completely igmored.
The BBC and Sky News courted Labour and Tory leaders for their responses. They made repeated references to Farage not respecting the U.K’s political consensus.Once more these insider parasites made a mockery of their free speech and democracy mantra. The Tory Daily Mail newspaper today carries a front page headline quoting Zelensky asserting that ‘Farage is infected with the Putin Virus.’
So inevitably the western capitalist and state media vested interests, who are afraid of Reform U.K, are busy muck raking to discredit as many Reform General Elections candidates as they can find. Here is what the BBC has to say about them becaue the last thing they want is reform – so they are relyng on the sensibilities of large ethnic minorities and gullible women to help them because this war on Russia is vital to a system that will only be enhanced. It will never be reformed.
R J Cook June 23rd 2024
Reform candidates’ offensive remarks seen by BBC
Presenter of Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg
- Published 22 June 2024
Eight Reform UK candidates have made a wide range of offensive remarks online about women in the past, the BBC can reveal.
The remarks include disparaging comments about the murdered MP Jo Cox, former Prime Minister Theresa May, and a black reality TV contestant.
The comments were posted between 2011 and 2023. Reform UK and the candidates involved have all been approached for comment.
Earlier this week, the party said it planned to sue a company it hired to vet potential MPs.
This article contains strong language.
Among the candidates whose comments the BBC has uncovered is Simon Moorehead, standing in Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West, who wrote on X: “[Jo] Cox was a dreadful woman, with bad ideas”.
He then added: “No-one wanted her dead though”.
- You can see a full list of candidates for the Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West constituency here.
Mark Cole, the candidate in Harwich and North Essex, said in a Facebook post: “Accidently switched on to X-Factory. The only thing worth watching is the black bint…. whoever she is.”
Mr Cole deleted this comment after being approached by the BBC.
- You can see a full list of candidates for the Harwich and North Essex constituency here.
Andrew Banwell, the candidate for Thornbury and Yate, referred to Ms May on X as “Merkels Bitch”.
Angela Merkel formerly served as German chancellor, with her tenure overlapping with Mrs May’s time in Downing Street.
- You can see a full list of candidates for the Thornbury and Yate constituency here.
Malcolm Culpis, the candidate for Melksham and Devizes, accused women dancing in a video of “behaving like a gutter slut” and referred to one woman as a “malignant old hag”.
- You can see a full list of candidates for the Melksham and Devizes constituency here.
John Edwards, the candidate for Southampton Test, referred to women appearing on ITV2’s Love Island as “thick tarts” and the former leader of the Liberal Democrats Jo Swinson as a “gobby bird”.
- You can see a full list of candidates for the Southampton Test constituency here.
Sam Woods-Brass, the candidate for Houghton and Sunderland South, shared a photo of a raw chicken and said it reminded him of an erotic image of his girlfriend.
He then deleted the post after being approached by the BBC.
- You can see a full list of candidates for the Houghton and Sunderland South constituency here.
Ian Gribbin, the candidate for Bexhill and Battle, who we previously revealed had written that the UK should have stayed neutral in World War Two, posted a series of comments on the UnHerd website which included saying: “Right now all men pay for all women: we pay 80% of tax and you take out 80%. The fact you’re able to write on a technological device is all down to us.
“The cultural feminisation of the west is a disaster of epic proportions. We have elevated female characteristics – especially neuroticism, to the highest levels. Hysteria is now common place. The evidence from repeated psychologically testing is that women are appalling at taking criticism.
“Modern feminism belongs in the sewer of self hate from which it came: you say it yourself, you’re all jealous of the perceived freedoms of men.”
- You can see a full list of candidate for the Bexhill an
- d Battle constituency here.
- Emmett Jenner, the candidate for Ynys Mon, who shared a post from Conservative Party
- Headquarters which read: “PM: I want girls who are growing up today to know that they can achieve anything they want.”
- Mr Jenner commented on the post: “Like fertilising eggs & providing Y chromosomes.”
- In response to a request for comment, Mr Jenner told the BBC: “That is/was a parody account and you can see it is taking the Michael out of the Conservatives.
- “I wouldn’t take anything on there at face value, it’s all deliberately provocative windups meant to elicit embarrassing responses.”
- You can see a full list of candidates for the Ynys Mon constituency here.
- Reform UK has already faced criticism about social media posts by some of its candidates that have emerged since the start of the campaign.
- This week, the party
- threatened to take legal action against Vetting.com – a company it hired in April at a cost of £144,000 to vet hundreds of would-be candidates.
- Party chairman Richard Tice accused the firm of having “promised a deep dive” but delivering “absolutely nothing”.
- Vetting.com said in a statement it had expected the election to be in autumn and that it would have had all summer to complete the work.
- It also said its automated systems needed the consent of the candidates involved to carry out the necessary checks.
- Asked about the vetting issues in a BBC Panorama interview which aired on Friday, Mr Farage said: “Frankly, they [Reform UK] were so desperate for people to stand that people stood, and then we employed a big vetting company who didn’t do the job.
- “I can assure you that when the Labour Party go through those that apply, when the Conservative Party go through those that apply, they have to reject many.”
- He also said the party had had “an awful lot of candidates being stitched up in the most extraordinary way, with quotes taken out of context”.
Comment Leading women routinely make offensive remarks about men. Most notably there is wealthy fantasy writer J K Rowling doubling down on her eagerly publicised assertions that there is no such thing as transsexuals because biology defined them as men. Therefore they are likely to be loitering in women’s safe spaces to indecently assault and rape them. This is particularly insensitive in the wake of trans school girl Brianna Ghey being brutally stabbed to death by a girl and boy from her school. Other routine insults, perfectly acceptable to British Society, are privileged white males and mansplainers.
Men are also accused of being incapable of multi tasking, potential rapists and domestic abusers. As Harriet Harman said, when she was New Labour’s Attorney General, the top law officer :”Better send an innocent man ( talking about rape ) to jail than let a guilty man go free.
Ironically, as the International Capitalist West prepares to intensify the current World War III, it demands as of right that young men submit to the elite’s call up, or draft, to full forntline military service where they will all be expected to utilise their alleged universal and natural tendency to extreme violence. No doubt the women will be out again proferring their white feathers to any man who refuses to go to defend their hallowed safe spaces because they are special.
Sky News
https://news.sky.com › story › sarah-everard-baroness-…
12 Mar 2021 — … Everard’s murder. Campaigner Patsy Stevenson. ‘There’s other Wayne … The greens are thinking about a curfew for men after 6pm at night. Interestingly, the reality of Everard breaking an actual curfew when the pervert policeman picked her up, is never mentioned. There was no interest in the reality that the police are well staffed with liars, wife beaters and sex offenders like Wayne Couzens, Everard’s killer. There have been no calls for curfews on all blacks since a black gang killed an innocent school boy reveller on London’s Primrose Hill New Year Celebrations, because he was just another ‘privileged white male’ asking for trouble. These crimes are never racist. His name will not be remembered like Stephen Lawrence or the killer’s gang villified by State or local media.
Their upper middle class leadership is not fighting for equality or any precisely defined rights. It is fighting to extend and consolidate the supreme social, economic, political and legal power that it already has over men. It is an authoritarian outlook. All authoritarian political systems are extremely prone to paranoia. Hence Rowling’s elite corps of Trans Exclusionart Radical Feminists ( TERFS ) cannot tolerate anything associated with masculinity, even if it has lost its penis and grown breasts. To them, men are fundamentally beasts to be patronised, controlled, contained trained, and mocked – all just to serve them.
R J Cook
June 22nd 2024
Farage defends Ukraine war remarks after backlash
Brian Wheeler
Political reporter
Nigel Farage has defended his claim that the West provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, following condemnation from leaders across the political spectrum.
Writing in the Telegraph, the Reform UK leader said he had never been an “apologist or supporter of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin” but that “if you poke the Russian bear with a stick, don’t be surprised if he responds”.
In an earlier BBC Panorama interview, Mr Farage said the war was “of course” Mr Putin’s fault but that the expansion of the EU and Nato had given him a reason to tell the Russian people “they’re coming for us again”.
Responding to the interview, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the comment was “completely wrong and only plays into Putin’s hands,” accusing Mr Farage of “appeasement” that was “dangerous for Britain’s security”.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer described the comments as “disgraceful”, while Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey called Mr Farage “an apologist for Putin”. The SNP said it was “an insult to all Ukrainians who have suffered.”
June 21st 2024
A police disciplinary panel has found allegations of gross misconduct proven against Northamptonshire Chief Constable Nick Adderley today (Friday) and has dismissed him without notice, following an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
8 hours ago — The IOPC’s criminal and misconduct investigations followed a referral from the Office of the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for Northamptonshire.
Northamptonshire chief constable dismissed for gross …
Independent Office for Police Conducthttps://www.policeconduct.gov.uk › News
The IOPC’s criminal and misconduct investigations followed a referral from the Office of the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for …
He will now be barred from holding a job in the police and may face criminal charges related to fraud. The CPS has yet to make a decision …
Comment Due to personal involvement with the police at very senior level, I must choose my words carefully. I will comment fully later on. Meanwhile, readers should understand that the U.K Police are institutionally corrupt and the wrong, and some very dangerous people get promoted. Meanwhile, the facts of this case should speak for it all in Police State Britain.
R J Cook
Young people who refuse to do National Service could lose their “access to finance”, Rishi Sunak has said. The prime minister also suggested they could have their driving licenses removed. Sunak revealed the draconian measures during an election Question Time special on BBC1.
Rishi Sunak National Service Opposers Risk Losing Financial …
Comment That is life in Police State Britain. This country’s ruling elite are pushing hard for NATO Membership next month as part of Fascist NATO’s 75th Birthday Celebrations, These people have made an art form of bouncing the U.S into stupid ideas.
Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K party is now being attacked by State and Capitalist media for stating the obvious, that NATO bounced Russia into invading Ukraine. U.K Media and their establishment are warning that Farage is effectively a Russian agent. Channel Four are running a programe warning the goodly masses that Russia is plotting to steal their votes.
R J Cook
UK’s richest family convicted of exploiting servants
Imogen Foulkes
Geneva correspondent
- Published21 June 2024, 18:37 BST
Updated 20 minutes ago
Four members of the UK’s richest family have received prison sentences for exploiting staff brought in from India to work at their Geneva villa.
Prakash and Kamal Hinduja, as well as their son Ajay and his wife Namrata, were found guilty of exploitation and illegal employment by a Swiss court and handed sentences ranging from four to four-and-a-half years.
They were acquitted on the more serious charge of human trafficking.
Lawyers representing the defendants said they intend to appeal the ruling.
Speaking outside the court, Robert Assael, the lawyer for the defendants, said: “I’m shocked. We’re going to fight it to the bitter end.”
Three workers who were brought over from their native India alleged the family paid them as little as £7 ($8) to work 18-hour days, less than a tenth of the amount required under Swiss law, and confiscated their passports.
They also claimed the family – whose fortune is estimated at around £37bn – rarely allowed them to leave the house, which is in Geneva’s wealthy neighbourhood of Cologny.
During the trial, prosecutors alleged the family spent more on their dog than on their servants.
The defence argued that the employees received ample benefits, were not kept in isolation and were free to leave the villa.
The employees “were grateful to the Hindujas for offering them a better life”, Mr Assael argued.
The elder Hindujas, both over 70, did not attend court proceedings, pleading ill health. Ajay and Namrata did attend court but were not there to hear the verdict.
It is not the first time that Geneva, a hub for international organisations as well as the world’s wealthy, has been in the spotlight over the alleged mistreatment of servants.
Last year, four domestic workers from the Philippines launched a case against one of Geneva’s diplomatic missions to the United Nations, claiming they had not been paid for years.
The Hinduja family own Hinduja Group, a multinational group with interests in oil, gas, and banking.
The family also own Raffles hotel in London.
Related Topics
June 20th 2024
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of …
More From The Great British Democracy – aka Aircraft Carrier No.1
23 hours ago — Andy Brown is said to have posted links to an article from state-run RT suggesting the novichok used to poison former spy Sergei Skripal and .
13 hours ago — A Scottish Labour candidate has been dropped after he was accused of having written “unacceptable” pro-Russian posts on social media.
14 hours ago — Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said his party had taken “swift action” to suspend a candidate accused of “unacceptable” pro-Russian …
4 Jun 2024 — India Willoughby has blasted Waterstones for promoting a book comprised of ‘gender-critical’ essays, including one by author JK Rowling, …
You Would Not Believe There Is A War On In Open Door U.K.
Nearly 900 migrants arrive in small boats in a dayBBChttps://www.bbc.co.uk › news › articles
20 hours ago — More than 880 people have arrived in the UK in a single day after crossing the English Channel – a new record for the year so far.
A quick Navionics route shows that the whole trip, is around 80NM with the longest leg, from The Needles to Cherbourg being around 60NM. Assuming a boat speed of 5 or 6 knots this will mean a total journey time of around 15 hours. In all likelihood this will mean that some of the trip will be in darkness hours.
June 18th 2024
UK millionaires are fleeing Britain in their thousands – CNN
As well as the millionaires, there are seven whole billionaires somewhere in Manchester. On a completely unrelated note, it would take someone earning the average wage in the city, £37,000 a year, 27,000 years to earn £1 billion. See what a piss take democracy is. Vote Reform U.K.
The continuing exodus from the UK — 16,500 millionaires left between 2017 and 2023 — is part of a global mass migration of the rich that appears to be accelerating. The Henley Private Wealth Migration report found that 128,000 millionaires are set to relocate this year, beating last year’s record by 8,000.
The streets of London may not be paved with gold, but there’s still clearly plenty of it around. One in 39 Londoners—or 227,000 people in a population of 8.8 million—have at least $1 million of liquid, investable wealth, according to the World’s Wealthiest Cities Report 2024.
Two of the World’s Richest Cities Are Officially in the UK – TimeOut
I’m a police officer in London. Here’s why we’ve lost control of the streets
Anonymous
I’ve faced the aftermath of knife crime and seen colleagues stabbed. Cuts mean we can’t keep ourselves or the public safeThu 2 May 2019 12.58 BSTLast modified on Thu 16 Apr 2020 10.43 BST705
There’s a saying in the police. It’s not sophisticated or clever, really, and it’s been passed down from generation to generation of coppers; it’s not new. “The job is fucked,” they say. Only now, it doesn’t feel as flippant as it used to.
I’m a police officer in the Metropolitan police, and have been since 2014. I have anxiety and PTSD. I am – and I cannot say this strongly enough – exhausted. I do not feel safe policing London’s streets and, moreover, increasingly I do not feel that people in London are safe. Just last night, there was another double stabbing in east London, resulting in the death of a 15-year-old boy.
It’s all well and good vaguely debating “cuts”, but on the frontline of service, those things have real meaning. In the borough I am stationed in – much like other boroughs – where there is a population of about 250,000 people, there are on average 10 police officers for the entire area to respond to emergency calls per shift. Only two or three of them can drive on blue lights. Crucially, very few staff carry Tasers. With a big incident, such as a stabbing, it’s not unusual to have all of those 10 officers at one crime scene, meaning there is no one else to attend further 999 calls.
I can expect, at the very least, to respond to at least two to three crimes involving knives a month, and that is being generous. Attackers have pulled knives on me. My colleagues – friends – have been stabbed in front of me. I’ve found myself many times kneeling on the pavement holding parts of bodies together. We are simply not equipped: most of the time when a violent crime comes in, it’s only hope that we can depend on. That somehow we can verbally talk a person down from further attacks, or that we can physically overpower them. Or that, miraculously, an officer with a Taser turns up.
There has been, as evidenced by the recent and continuing knife-crime debate, a steep upturn in the amount of calls we attend that involve a blade or even a gun. I don’t mind admitting I’m scared going out on these jobs. I realise it’s part of my duty as a police officer, but the trouble is, I no longer feel we’re in control.
The 20,000 frontline cuts don’t even begin to cover the reality. Theresa May also sanctioned cuts to civilian staff, ambulance services, crisis teams, call handlers and the people we rely on for intelligence – such as knowing if someone has committed previous crimes, whether they involved a weapon and therefore how prepared we should be. Our duties are being stretched beyond our capabilities to include non-criminal matters regarding mental health and social services, because cuts have debilitated those sectors too.
While on-foot patrols are dangerously diminished, police officers are sent to help the mentally ill, often sitting for hours with people who are a danger to themselves. Should we try to section them, it can take even longer to locate a single bed, so we often end up at the other side of London, away from our borough. Frequently the person is then released an hour later, deemed to be fit, and we get another call from them the following night, at the same address, to deal with the same issue all over again. The system is broken.
As for our own mental health, there isn’t really time to recover. You’re expected to go straight out on to the next job, sometimes on the same night, even if a situation is debilitating. If you’re lucky, you’ll get an inspector or a sergeant who’s half decent, and asks how you are. Often you think you’re all right for a while. But it takes its toll eventually. I have PTSD from particular jobs – I get panicky, and I’ve had periods of intense flashbacks – but when I asked my GP about being referred for help, he said I had to go through occupational health. I’ve been waiting for more than six months.
On top of all this, numbers are dwindling because police officers no longer have faith. People who have been in the force for 20 years – just 10 years before they qualify for a pension – are leaving. We feel ignored and maltreated by the government, pushed to the brink of exhaustion and our mental capacities.
When I first joined the force, stop and search was something that we were told to avoid unless we were absolutely certain there was a proper and solid reason to conduct it. For example, smelling weed being smoked wouldn’t be enough of a reason to search someone. Now, unofficial targets mean that if an officer hasn’t performed a stop and search for, say, two weeks, they are being hauled in front of chief inspectors and bollocked. This change – pressure being put on us to meet certain numbers – is not about safety: it’s about politics. And policing should never be politicised like that.
It feels like the organisation just doesn’t care about the officers, the pressure they are being put under or, as a result, the public. Our normal shift pattern is six days on, four days off. Often that would be seven days, so that we can do training or follow up on crimes. We don’t get that day now to follow up – instead we’re making up teams in other boroughs. So the service that we’re actually able to provide to the public, in terms of reporting your crime, is shocking. We have no faith in the government. Not many people have had the balls to stand up for the police and say that this is wrong; this is unacceptable; this is dangerous. That’s what needs to happen now. But it won’t, because of Brexit. Our annual leave is in lockdown because of the anticipation of a rise in violence after we leave the EU. For years, people inside and outside the force have been saying that policing is on the brink of collapse. The mood now is that we are no longer on the brink. We have gone over the edge. The job is fucked.
The anonymous writer is a police officer in the Metropolitan police
Don’t Mention Inmmigration Or You Will Be Called A Far Right Racist – R.J Cook
| The immigration election: it seems that the Conservatives and Labour haven’t heard This week, the Labour party released their manifesto, and as we expected, there was much of what we have been hearing for some time about illegal Channel crossings – ‘go after the criminal gangs’ and ‘create a new Border Security Command’, and ‘smash the gangs’. They will also, ‘fast-track removals to safe countries people who do not have the right to stay here…… and negotiate additional returns arrangements to speed up returns and increase the number of safe countries that failed asylum seekers can swiftly be sent back to.’ Really? Are these safe countries that we already have agreements with or are the agreements yet to be negotiated? They are of course also going to dismantle the Rwanda plan. Having come this far with it and after millions of taxpayers’ money on the scheme, one would have thought it at least worth a try to see if it works. Surely, the taxpayer is owed that at least. So much of what Labour are proposing is either already being done or will have the effect of drawing in more migrants – like swifter clearance, which will amount to asylum or leave to remain on the nod for those from areas of the world they can’t be sent back to. And asylum in all but name for those in the queue, now around 35,000. As for legal immigration – the much bigger problem, (we heard just three weeks ago that the provisional figure for the whole of 2023 was a colossal (net) 685,000) – there was little of substance on how it would be reduced, beyond ‘reforming the points-based immigration system so that it is fair and properly managed, with appropriate restrictions on visas, and by linking immigration and skills policy. They will also, ‘not tolerate employers or recruitment agencies abusing the visa system.’ Or, ‘stand for breaches of employment law.’ We do not believe that any of this will have much impact on the present scale of immigration. Moreover, any limited impact will be slow in coming. We do not see net migration falling below half a million during the next parliament. While net migration of 600,000 will be adding the equivalent of a city the size of Birmingham every two years. One thing that struck us about what was in Labour’s manifesto was its similarity in what was in the 2019 Tory manifesto: ‘Only by establishing immigration controls and ending freedom of movement will we be able to attract the high-skilled workers we need to contribute to our economy, our communities and our public services. There will be fewer lower-skilled migrants and overall numbers will come down.’ Look where that got us. The Conservatives, who appear to have accepted that they are in for a drubbing on 4th July, published their manifesto two days earlier. It included the commitment ‘to stop the boats’ by persevering with their Rwanda plan, and to reduce legal migration by introducing a cap, something we at MW have been calling for, for at least four years – as we mentioned in last week’s newsletter. As Mike Jones, our executive director, said on first reading the manifesto, “too little, too late.” Here’s our press release and comment. Forgive us if we gloss over the LibDems on immigration – little point. Same with the SNP, Greens or Plaid Cymru. But what about Reform, who, it seems, have overtaken the Tories in the polls? They are, after all, now claiming they will be the real opposition to the next government. Be that as it may, what one can say is that they do appear to be alone in capturing the mood of the majority on the issue of immigration and how to reduce it. They propose to cut it by applying a cap that will be equal to the number of people leaving the country. As already mentioned, we believe a cap is essential for immigration to be reduced. What we are not sure about is how ‘one in one out’, as Reform are suggesting, would work in practice. However, what we do go along with is that without a cap, there is little chance of reducing net migration (what determines population growth) to the sort of levels that will lead to our population settling at manageable levels. We have another three weeks of debates, claims and counterclaims. Will we hear anything convincing or workable from Labour or the Tories on how the current catastrophic levels of immigration will be reduced? We doubt it. |
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| Allison Pearson, The Telegraph – Nigel Farage is already the leader of the Conservatives “This massive demographic shift is this century’s most momentous development, yet it’s barely ever discussed. Right on Europe’s doorstep is a fast-rising population of poorly educated, unemployed young people with lousy prospects. The more these desperate people make it to the prosperous West, the more friends and relatives will also be incentivised to try. They all have smartphones, whose pictures of glistening martinis, fast cars and glamorous advertising models are beamed to dusty villages and urban slums. ‘What’s there for us here?’ asked a young Senegalese man trying to convince his parents to let him go to Europe in last weekend’s New York Times. ‘We all have migration in mind.'” We also liked: Ben Sixsmith, The Critic – The day #FBPE delusions died |
| MIGRATION WATCH IN THE MEDIA |
| In an interview with Tom Harwood and Emily carver on GB News, Migration Watch Executive Director Dr. Mike Jones discussed Mr. Sunak’s proposed cap on legal migration. He felt it was too little, too late, arguing that the Prime Minister missed the opportunity to implement the cap on migrant visas while parliament was still in session: |
| Speaking to Camilla Tominey on GB News, Migration Watch Chairman Alp Mehmet discussed the Prime Minister’s pledge to ‘halve migration’ and impose a cap on migrant visas if re-elected. Alp also addressed Yvette Cooper’s pledge to scrap the Rwanda plan and how this could increase the pull factor: |
| Alp was quoted by The Daily Express on Rishi Sunak’s promise to deport 100,000 illegal migrants under the Rwanda plan: “Migration Watch Chairman Alp Mehmet said even net migration of 350,000 will mean our population growing by a million people every three years. He added: “It is impossible to provide for such growth or integrate migrants. It will leave Britain unrecognisable within a generation.”” The Express also quoted Alp in a story about campaigners’ calls for transparency on how asylum seekers are entering the country, revealing that only a third had crossed the Channel in small boats in the last year: “This is an all too frequent occurrence that does a disservice to the public and stymies democracy. The obduracy and stonewalling of the Home Office when it comes to releasing data that we have a right to know is frustrating. Perhaps we should expect it from a once great department of state that’s become dysfunctional, inefficient and ineffective. The common travel area is an obvious gap that has been found by both traffickers and migrants. We used to work closely with the Irish even before we joined the EU. Since Brexit, and the Windsor agreement it has clearly got worse. Unless it’s plugged it will become worse still. Perhaps that’s why the HO is reluctant to reveal the data.” Finally, Alp wrote an article for The Conservative Woman discussing Nigel Farage’s re-emergence into the forefront of British politics and how this might shake up the political establishment: “Mr Farage argues that these issues are exacerbated by unchecked immigration. We at Migration Watch agree. If you don’t have control of your borders, you don’t have control of population growth. And if you don’t have control of this, you don’t have control of your country. It’s as simple as that. You can’t ‘integrate’ people with a few strokes of the Whitehall pen. It takes years and it’s a two-way street. New arrivals must show willing and be ready to accept the ways and values of the country they or their parents have chosen to live in.” |
| MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD |
| The Conservatives and Labour, particularly their two respective leaders, are completely out of touch with the British public. We’ve been misled, lied to and betrayed repeatedly about legal and illegal migration for 14 years and for 13 years before that. Will anything change? Will Sir Keir Starmer, most likely our next Prime Minister, or Mr Sunak finally see the light and get a grip of what is required? We can but hope. Let the surge in support for Mr Farage and Reform UK be a warning to them. It is what happens when politicians ignore the wishes of the electorate or make promises that they have no intention of keeping. Whichever one of them moves into 10 Downing Street on 5th July, must not repeat the border failures of the past or brush aside the calamitous effects of the continuing immigration tsunami. Let’s keep up the pressure. When your prospective MP comes knocking on your door to ask for your vote, tell them what you really think and want to be done about mass, uncontrolled immigration. Tell them that we will be holding them to account in five years’ time. That is after all the essence of democracy. |
| We wouldn’t be able to continue this work without the help of our supporters. If you would like to donate, please click the button below. Our supporters are all as concerned about the future of our country as we are. Some have been kind enough to remember us in their will. If you wish to consider leaving a bequest to Migration Watch UK, or wish to discuss anything else, do please get in touch. Our email is: admin@migrationwatchuk.org |
June 17th 2024
London becomes Europe’s largest stock market again
Mitchell Labiak
The UK’s main stock market retook its crown as Europe’s most valuable for the first time in nearly two years, data shows.
The total value of companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) hit $3.18tn on Monday, overtaking the $3.13tn total value of companies listed in Paris, according to Bloomberg data.
Both valuations have shifted since and remain close, but analysts describe it as a milestone.
They say the French market has slumped because of the uncertainty around its election, while the UK market is recovering after several years of underperformance.
The LSE had been Europe’s largest stock market for many years before November 2022 when it was overtaken.
Analysts at the time blamed LSE’s performance on the fallout from former Prime Minister Liz Truss’ mini-Budget, a weak pound, recession fears and Brexit.
The LSE was worth about $1.4tn more than its Parisian rival in 2016.
Analysts say that market investors generally dislike uncertainty – and there are many questions about what the French snap election called by the president will mean.
Comment Tory Brexit was all about money for the elite. Planned EU reforms to financial practices and taxes were the reason the City of London had to remain outside the rules. Britain and London in partcular is all about money for the global rich . That is why Russian asset strippers, pleasantly called oligarchs, were so welcome to the Tory and New Labour Governments.
It all went sour when Vladimir Putin got tired of Russia being prostituted to the west and stopped playing ball. NATO is the western elite’s protection racket. They can’t let go of Ukraine. Investors are getting nervous because, unless NATO comes into the open with full scale war, Russia looks like winning.
They are demanding interest on what is already a massive investment. Jens Stoltenberg has called for more sanctions on China until they cease trading totally. Russia must not be allowed any friends because Stoltenberg has repeated the mantra that Russia is the centre of an axis of evil. The D Day revelry in past carnage, is the opium for the masses to accept, in a drugged haze, the glory of doing it all again.
R J Cook
Is Farage right about deportations under Labour ?
Speaking earlier at the Reform UK launch, party leader Nigel Farage claimed: “In the last years of the Labour government, we were deporting up to 40,000 people a year who’d come illegally”.
In 2010, a total of 45,690 people were returned from the UK, according to Home Office figures.
However, less than a third (13,928) were so-called “enforced returns” – people who refused to leave the UK voluntarily and whose departure was enforced by the Home Office. And we don’t know how many have them had arrived illegally in the first place.
Returns were fairly constant – at about 40,000 a year between 2010 and 2015 but have declined since 2016.
What is Reform UK pledging?
Sean Curran
Parliamentary correspondent
Let’s now go back to looking at what Nigel Farage’s party is promising voters.
Reform UK’s election document opens with five “core pledges”:
- Freeze all non-essential immigration to “boost wages, protect public services, end the housing crisis and cut crime”
- Tackle the small boats crisis with a promise that illegal immigrants will be detained and deported, and “if needed” migrants in small boats taken back to France
- Raise the income tax threshold to £20,000 – the party says this will take seven million out of income tax
- Scrap energy levies and net zero. It says this will save each household £500 a year. The party also says it will “unlock Britain’s vast oil and gas reserves”
- On NHS waiting lists, Reform says it will cut “back office waste” in order to spend more on frontline services. It’s also promising tax breaks for doctors and nurses to tackle the staffing crisis
On how this might be paid for, Reform UK promises to save £150bn a year, with policies including:
- Stopping the Bank of England paying interest to commercial banks on quantitative easing reserves, saving £35 billion a year
- Cutting bureaucracy and improving efficiency – Reform says it will save £5 in every £100, worth £50 billion a year
- Cutting the foreign aid budget by 50% – that’s £6 billion from the £12.8 billion budget
- Collecting billions in unpaid taxes
- Summary
- Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has launched the party’s election pledges in Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales
- The party calls the pledges a “contract” with the voters – arguing the word “manifesto” has been devalued
- The pledges include no income tax for people earning less than £20,000, and leaving the European Convention on Human Rights
- Labour is today campaigning on the economy – saying its plans would create 650,000 jobs
- At a meeting in London, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves tells business leaders their “fingers are all over” the Labour manifesto
- Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who’s campaigning around Yorkshire and the East Midlands, insists the Conservatives can still win the election
Driver of police car who hit cow removed from duty
https://emp.bbc.co.uk/emp/SMPj/2.52.1/iframe.htmlMedia caption,
Watch: Cow hit by police car gets to its feet
Bob Dale
BBC News, South East
- Published16 June 2024, 13:23 BST
The police driver of a response vehicle who hit an escaped cow on a suburban street has been removed from frontline duties.
Surrey Police has started an internal investigation to the incident and has referred itself to the police complaints watchdog.
Deputy Chief Constable Nev Kemp said: “At this time, the officer who was driving the police car has been removed from frontline duties pending the outcome of these investigations.”
The owner of the 10-month-old calf said the social media footage of the incident on Friday “was painful viewing and it should have been handled in a different manner”, but that the animal was recovering.
Surrey Police has faced criticism over its handling of the incident after the cow, called Beau Lucy, escaped from Staines Moor and was hit twice by a police car on Raleigh Road, Feltham.
The force has said the decision to use a car to stop the animal was made because of concerns over public safety.
The animal’s owner, Rob, who did not wish to give his surname, said: “I think the video speaks for itself. It was quite horrific.
June 16th 2024
2 days ago — BBC Breakfast fans couldn’t help but note how ‘uncomfortable’ Naga Munchetty looked while talking to Nigel Farage on this morning’s show.
BBC Breakfast fans spot sign Naga Munchetty ‘couldn’t hide disdain‘ for Nigel Farage.
BBC accused of bias AGAIN as Naga Munchetty probes …
GB Newshttps://www.gbnews.com › news › bbc-bias-naga-munc…
2 days ago — One simply said: “Biased lot,” while Angela Gwinnett added: “Naga finds it difficult to hide her dislike of Nigel.” WHAT DO YOU THINK? WAS THE …
Comment
Although obviously from a prileged backgtound, I suspect this woman’s ethnicity is uppermost in her BBC politically correct outlook. This favours open door immigration – as long as highly paid BBC presenters don’t have to pay their fair share of the taxes to pay for the accommodation and benefits.
In that connection, it seems likely that Munchetty would find Nigel Farage repellent due to his attitude to immigration and ‘liberal feminist fascist consensus.’.
That is British Democracy. Here the right to vote is the right to vote for elite pre selected consensus poltical parties, chosen by the elite and promoted by that elite’s media.
I find the BBC News and documentaries repellent serving the needs of the authoritarian police state – which is why Anglo U.S Iraq War Crimes whistle blower Julian Assange.
R J Cook
J K Rowling has achieved almost total victory over the …
J K Rowling’s victory over the trans lobby has been almost total. A story about her courage, and how she won out despite the way the stars she made abandoned her, might have had better luck.
Internet troll threatened to kill JK Rowling and MPBBChttps://www.bbc.co.uk › news › articles
4 Jun 2024 — Internet troll threatened to kill JK Rowling and MP … An internet troll who posted “chilling” online messages threatening to kill Harry Potter .
In addition to facing criticism, J.K. Rowling has encountered legal battles and setbacks throughout her career. From copyright disputes to allegations of plagiarism, she has navigated a complex legal landscape while fiercely protecting her intellectual property rights.4 Jun 2024
7 Jul 2019 — Rowling sets down in book one the premise that an evil guy who is not the Evil Emperor but rather merely an evil Dark Lord WHO wants to kill Harry.
Cliches · 1. Harry Potter’s twin sister. · 2. Snape is Harry/Hermione’s father. · 3. The Fifth Marauder. · 4. The Golden Quadruple. · 5. The Backward Character(s).
1 May 2024 — Harry Potter star doubles down on support for transgender people after author suggested she would not forgive actors over their stance.
12 Apr 2024 — He added: “Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all ..
12 Apr 2024 — He added: “Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all ..
6 Jan 2020 — She maintained that she has nothing against transgender people per se, singling out those “activists” who disagree with her, while still …
2 Feb 2024 — The 16-year-old was lured from her home in the “ultimate betrayal” before being stabbed 28 times in Linear Park in Culcheth, near Warrington.
2 Feb 2024 — Sixteen-year-old Brianna, who was transgender, was stabbed 28 times in broad daylight after being lured to Culcheth Linear Park in Warrington, …
It finally described Brianna’s murder as a “brutal and planned murder, which was sadistic in nature, where a secondary motive was hostility …
June 15th 2024
Death of The British Working Class
The Battle of Orgreave
In June 1984, striking coal miners from across Britain descended on South Yorkshire’s Orgreave coking plant in an attempt to disrupt deliveries and were met with force by thousands of police officers.
What became known as the Battle of Orgreave was a pivotal moment in the year-long miners’ strike and one of the most violent episodes in British industrial history.
Forty years on, many of those involved say they still need answers about what happened and why.
‘It was about survival‘
In March 1984, the National Coal Board (NCB) announced controversial plans to shut 20 UK collieries – which they said were unprofitable – with the loss of at least 20,000 jobs.
In response, more than three-quarters of the country’s 187,000 miners went on strike. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) sent protesters – known as flying pickets – to put pressure on the miners who kept working. Margaret Thatcher’s government had previously introduced anti-strike laws which restricted picketing to employees’ places of work.
Robert Plant, miner at Ireland colliery, Derbyshire: “We were fighting for our jobs. We’d got no careers, we’d got nothing else. We needed, as a community, to stick together. It weren’t about wages, it was about survival. If there’s no jobs, there’s no money, there’s nothing.”
Steve Brunt, miner at Arkwright colliery, Derbyshire and former Labour Councillor: “We’d have about 200, 250 people – sometimes as many as 350 – who came to our strike centre [to go picketing]. We used to make sure every car were full and we had a couple who drove minivans. We’d tell them where they were going and we’d give the driver petrol money and each picket received £4 a day in the early days. After about three weeks the attitude of police changed overnight. Early doors, we used to share sandwiches with them. Then all of a sudden, it was like they’d been instructed they’re not going to help us at all. Then of course road blocks started occurring.”
Lord Heseltine, minister in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet: “A significant number of miners wanted to work and were prevented from doing so by the flying pickets… And that’s a powerful argument as why the government had to make sure this sort of activity stopped.”
Don Keating, miner at Cortonwood colliery, South Yorkshire: “[My wife] Jackie says to me, ‘Don, you’re 6ft 4, you’re going to get nabbed, you’re going to get caught.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ So I started going flying picketing for a couple of weeks and there was a big one at Orgreave on 18 June.”
‘Scargill’s Waterloo‘
Read More https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/t5q216ohjy/the-battle-of-orgreave
June 14th 2024
Who said politicians are out of touch ? From F.S, West Country Correspondent.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tries to reassure the people that he is like they are. When asked if he had ever gone without something as a child, he answered “Sky TV” (additional channels accessed via satellite).
Next multi-millionaire Sunak will be telling us that he is basically working-class because he had to use the stainless steel cutlery once, when the housemaid was washing the silverware.
Another PR disaster for Sunak, indicating that he is trying his very hardest to purposefully lose the election because he won’t be able to get a refund on his one-way tickets to California.
Starmer is no better, having recently told an interviewer that his parents were so poor, they had to choose whether of not to pay the telephone bill or not. His other great boast is that before entering elite politics, he headed the corrupt Crown Prosecution Service ( CPS ) which then as now routinely withheld key evidence to protect police and ensure convictions. That little act got him his knighthood while making him an expert on law, order and public services.
As for Sunak, he recently answered a question from an outraged white female GP, concerning the importing of not so cheap Third World inferior poorly trained doctors, by simply avoiding the question the telling us, in an oily voice, that his father was a GP, his mother was a pharmacist and therefore he knew all about the NHS problems, which his government was working on.
It is all very reminiscent of the 1960s ‘Monty Python’ TV Comedy Sketch about who was the poorest, one man complaining that he was born and grew up in a shoe boss. Then another out underprivileged him by saying that, so did he, but his shoe box was in the middle of the road. The complainers all had Northern English working class accents but were obviously posh.
Four Yorkshiremen- Monty PythonYouTubehttps://www.youtube.com › watch
From F.S
Reform in Second Poll Position
Sir John Curtice
Professor of politics at University of Strathclyde
After showing little movement in the first two weeks of the campaign, the opinion polls are now showing some clear shifts.
In seven polls conducted so far this week, support for the Conservatives stands on average at just 20% – that’s four points down on where they were at the beginning of the election campaign.
However, support for Labour has also fallen. They are averaging 41% in this week’s polls, three points down over the course of the campaign.
But, because both parties are down by similar amounts, Labour still enjoy a lead of 20 points or so.
So who has been gaining support?
One party that undoubtedly has done so is Reform UK. On average they are at 16% in this week’s polls – five points up on where they were when the election was called.
True, so far there have been rather more polls this week from companies that have tended to record relatively high figures for Reform, but they are probably at least on 15%.
One poll in particular has caught people’s attention.
A YouGov survey of more than 2,200 adults, external, conducted between 12 and 13 June, puts Reform at one point ahead of the Tories for the first time on 19%.
However, this is just one poll. We have had four others published in the last 24 hours, none of which have had Reform ahead and not even all of which had the party gaining ground.
On average, Reform is still four or five points behind the Conservatives.
But this is still bad news for the Tories.
June 13th 2024
‘Perfectly lawful’ to stir up racial and religious hatred, Met Police chief says
Sir Mark Rowley highlighted the loophole as an example of an ‘outrageous’ gap in hate crime law when discussing policing of protests in London.
The country’s most senior police officer has called for “outrageous” gaps in hate crime law, which he said allows people to lawfully stir up racial and religious hatred, to be closed.
Sir Mark Rowley, who leads the Metropolitan Police, said it was “outrageous” that people could stir hatred if they “avoid being threatening or abusive”.
The Met has faced controversy over its policing of hate crimes and protests in London surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict, with Sir Mark facing calls to resign.
If you are setting out with an intent to stir up racial and religious hatred full stop, if we can prove the intent, that ought to be illegal. It’s not, unless you can prove some other things, at the moment
Sir Mark Rowley
The force has come under pressure from senior Conservatives, including former home secretary Suella Braverman, and campaign groups to ban large pro-Palestinian demonstrations – something the police chief said was not possible as the legal threshold for a ban had not been met.
Sir Mark, who was discussing the challenges of policing the protests on the latest episode of the A Muslim and a Jew Go There podcast, was asked by co-host Baroness Sayeeda Warsi how police would respond if “a Jewish person used the Y-word, or if I use the P-word, or a black person used the N-word, or if an Asian person used the C-word, coconut”.
The police chief said that he was “quite struck with some of the sort of gaps in hate crime laws” when he worked on an extremism report before rejoining the Met as Commissioner.
He said: “There are some things that are quite startling.
“It is perfectly lawful at the moment to intentionally stir up racial and religious hatred as long as you avoid being threatening or abusive.”
Co-host, comedian and screenwriter David Baddiel said: “But that seems impossible?”
To which Sir Mark responded: “It’s outrageous isn’t it.”
When asked for an example, he said: “Some of the sort of faux-intellectual arguments that go to global Jewish conspiracies, grand (great) replacement theory, if you look at someone who’s churning that stuff out – it’s hard to come to any conclusion other than their intent but actually because it’s not done in a threatening or abusive context they sort of somehow side-step it.”
The great replacement theory is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that alleges Jews are leading efforts to replace white people in majority white countries with people of other ethnicities.
He added: “I think there are, like I said, some gaps in extremism, in hate crime legislation, in terrorism legislation that create some cracks for this behaviour to exist when it ought to be illegal.
“If you are setting out with an intent to stir up racial and religious hatred full stop, if we can prove the intent, that ought to be illegal.
“It’s not, unless you can prove some other things, at the moment.”
The Met Police website currently defines a hate crime as: “Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person’s race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.”
Sir Mark has previously said he would support a review into the legal definition of extremism and how it should be policed following criticism over the force’s handling of recent pro-Palestinian protests in London.
Explaining the legislation surrounding demonstrations, the Commissioner told the podcast: “So, basically a gathering, there is no power to ban a protest gathering whatsoever.
“A march, so a moving gathering, there is a power in extremis to ban but we’re nowhere near that threshold.
He continued: “If you listen to public rhetoric, you’d think we have the power to vanish this away, even if that was a good idea, which we don’t.”
More about
PA ReadyMark RowleyLondonSuella BravermanBaroness Sayeeda WarsiConservativesIsraelHamasDavid BaddielJewishAsian
Comment Rowley may well be reacting to unfair political and public criticism of policing Pro Palestinian protests where there was clear utterances of abuse and threats to Jews. A similar display would not be tolerated from the far right, as in the old days of crushing the EDL, as I witnessed as a journalist in 2010. There the police were out in heavy numbers looking for the slightest excuse to pounce – and they did.
That is really where Rowley is coming from and no doubt acting on a political brief. Rowley’s force certainly acted outside of the law when they arrested anti monarchy protestors at Kings Charles III Coronation last year, before they had even unloaded their placards. But they were few in number and limited in power. Muslims are not.
But the real reason for Rowley’s statement is a call to tighten laws as the U.K and Europe braces for a far right uprising against what many white people consider anti white male racism from an out of touch war mongering pro mass immigration choice of goverments.
We are already hearing barrel scarping politicians like Sunak panderting for the fascist feminist vote for trans exclusionary safer spaces and more rights. Divide and fool is the rule, which is why the liberal mindset needs racism. That way they have a thick smog to cover the real issues, and what they intend to do with them, making it all up as they go along.
That is why both main parties are offering more police officers, ostensibly to protect the public but really to protect themselves. Nigel Farage is their big fear. So the police need tough laws to discredit any wrong words from his supporters. His Reform Party must fail, Russia must be blamed for any wrong outcomes in a typically rigged western style election being orchestrated by the BBC and other plutocratic elite media.
R J Cook
Crime here is hurting, whatever the statistics say
Ed Thomas
UK Editor
Reporting from
Middlesbrough
On a terraced street in Middlesbrough, a teenager in a mask takes out a long kitchen knife from his trousers and says he’s prepared to use it. “It’s brutal round here, you have to be prepared, if you don’t stab them, they will stab you.”
He is part of a group of young drug dealers, and I have no reason to doubt him. One of them says he was 14 when he started. Why? Money – they talk openly about how much they can make from selling heroin and crack cocaine.
As if to emphasise the point, another in the group holds up small bags of white rocks, which he says are crack cocaine. They charge £10 a bag and say they can sell hundreds of bags every week.
“No-one is going to change it, the bobbies can’t change it,” one of the dealers says.
Wherever we went in Middlesbrough, people wanted to talk about the impact of drugs. On the Netherfields estate, we met Tony, proud to be from the town.
“I’ll show you something, we call it the penthouse,” he says excitedly. He shows me a small block of flats where nearly every window has been smashed out or boarded up.
And it’s not just the one – many more homes here have been vandalised and smashed. Tony is incandescent: “It’s degrading, we feel like a waste of space, like we’re non-existent.”
The demand for drugs is high. In 2022, the government estimated that there were more than 300,000 people dependent on heroin and crack cocaine in England. And between them, they were responsible for nearly half of all burglaries, robberies, and other acquisitive crime, like shoplifting.
The statistics show that both the number of crimes recorded and the rate of crime has increased since before the pandemic, even if police say recorded crime (excluding fraud) fell by 1% in 2023 in England and Wales compared with the year before. Separately, the Crime Survey for England and Wales suggests that excluding fraud and computer misuse, crime has been steadily dropping since 2010.
It’s a complex picture, but contributions to the BBC’s Your Voice, Your Vote project told us that for many people, crime is a major issue that they want the politicians to fix. So we came to Middlesbrough to hear people’s experience of it here.
To many people who live in Middlesbrough, it certainly doesn’t feel like crime is falling. Last year, Cleveland police recorded the highest overall crime rate out of all forces in England and Wales, affecting 137 out of every 1,000 people.
I spent three days here, and found that crime numbers don’t tell the full story of what’s happening in communities like North Ormesby, who are desperate for help.
Aidan is in his 20s and has a young family to support. He works hard in a restaurant, grabbing every hour offered and he’s also set up his own business as a handyman. He says he sometimes works over 70 hours a week.
As we walk and talk, someone shouts “welcome to Beirut!“ Aidan says he’s desperate to succeed but admits to being scared in the place he calls home. He takes us to one street with about 50 homes, and we walk past smashed windows, boarded up windows, and homes with obscenities sprayed on the walls in red paint. He reckons that on this one street, about 20 homes have been burgled over the past four years.
Officially, fewer people are being burgled. The Crime Survey for England and Wales suggests that there are less than a fifth of the number of burglaries that there were back in 1995. But in 2023, Cleveland police recorded the second highest rate of theft and the second highest rate of violence against a person.
What Aidan says next explains a lot of the despair that people feel. “We’ve been burgled, the police never came out, all I got was a crime reference number.
“I’m paying more council tax, energy bills and rent than ever before but the services I’m getting back have decreased.”
The most recent annual Home Office data says that in the year to March 2023, fewer than 4% of burglary offences in England and Wales resulted in a charge, albeit this was up on the previous year. In North Ormesby, the part of Middlesbrough where Aidan lives, around 95 in every 100 crimes last year went unsolved.
Cleveland police say they’ve taken a proactive approach in Netherfields, imposing five dispersal orders and have arrested children as young as 12. CCTV now covers the estate and people here say the anti-social behaviour issues with teenagers is calming down. In North Ormesby and across the region, police say they are working closely with people in the community and working with multiple local agencies.
But in late 2022, the UK’s then lead for neighbourhood policing said officers were spending too much time taking care of social problems, and not enough on tackling crime. Chief Constable Olivia Pinkney, now retired, said officers could spend half their shifts working on behalf of other services.
She said it meant that victims were being failed and the criminal justice system was in crisis.
In North Ormesby we came across a classic example – a police van attending what we thought was an emergency call, only to realise it was a welfare check for a vulnerable woman called Kimberley.
“They’re not just here to help, they’re helping with the mental health. I’m ADHD, bipolar and emotional stability disorder,” she told us. “They’re really nice and they’ll sit with you and make you feel good.”
Less than half a mile away, on Kings Road, there is a parade of shops where locals told us there were thefts most days. It’s got so bad that the Candy Corner shop at the end of the road has started naming and shaming those accused of shoplifting, hanging a large canvas poster with their faces on it outside the shop. Under the faces it reads: “Steal from the shop and you will be our advert outside the shop for six months like these idiots.”
While we were on Kings Road, a group of five men stormed the supermarket, some with their faces covered. They were in and out in seconds and what did they steal? Chocolate bars.
Facing them behind the till was Ellie. “It was scary them coming in. I thought they were gonna take money,” she said. “It’s just the usual, every day,” she adds.
Ellie said the police usually only turn up if it happens a few times in a day. Speaking to her, it’s hard to believe anyone can be so accustomed to crime.
Shoplifting is up, especially in deprived areas. Offences recorded by police in England and Wales have risen to their highest level in 20 years.
More than 430,000 offences were recorded last year – up by more than a third compared with the previous 12 months to December 2022, according to the police figures.
Nearby we met a business owner who said they had started slapping thieves who tried to steal from their shop. They wanted to remain anonymous, but showed me CCTV of one incident. They said they feared that they couldn’t rely on police, so preferred to take matters in their own hands. When I asked about the risk of arrest, they said it was a risk worth taking to protect their livelihood.
Others are taking desperate measures too. Sarah, who runs Legends Bar in the town, says the bar has been targeted five times in two years, and shows us CCTV from the last break in. “You can see where they pulled the shutters, they tipped over a fruit machine worth thousands of pounds. They’ve done a lot of damage, it makes you feel sick.”
Comment This sounds like a job for Super Woman aka J K Rowling and her TERF feminist army to sort out.
R J Cook
What’s the real distance between Sunak and Starmer on climate?
Justin Rowlatt BBC Climate Editor
One of the starkest dividing lines between the two main parties at Westminster is over climate – or at least that’s what both sides would have you believe.
Remember when rain-soaked Rishi Sunak fired the starting gun on the election standing outside No 10? He boasted about how his government had “prioritised energy security and your family finances over environmental dogma and our approach to net zero”.
Sir Keir Starmer, by contrast, talked about “harnessing Great British Energy to cut your bills for good” with the “largest investment in clean energy in our history”.
The smaller parties lay claim to having serious green credentials – the Lib Dems say tackling climate change is at the heart of a new industrial strategy, and the SNP says it is “proud to have the most ambitious legal framework for emissions reduction in the world”. The Greens and Plaid Cymru say climate is at the centre of their proposals and have promised to hold Labour to account if it wins the election.
Net-zero agendas
Labour has built much of its vision for the future around its energy plans. It claims the initial £8bn of public cash over five years it has pledged to its Great British Energy company will kick-start a process of industrial renewal, reviving the economy in the loosely termed Red Wall constituencies to deliver jobs as well as secure supplies of energy and lower bills.
The Tories have been attempting to characterise this as a return to state control. It is the job of entrepreneurs to take risks and pick winners, they say; when politicians try, it ends up costing ordinary people dear.
You can trust us to keep your energy bills low and protect the country from the whims of tyrants like Putin with new oil and gas from the North Sea, is the message from the Conservatives.
It sounds like there is an ocean of difference between the two main parties. But dig down into the detail of their policies and it’s a different story.
The core agenda on climate – getting the UK to net zero emissions by 2050 – has always been very much a cross-party project.
Labour introduced the Climate Change Bill in 2008 to make it a legal obligation for future governments to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. Both parties wholeheartedly supported the proposal – just five MPs voted against it.
It was Theresa May’s government in 2019 that upped the target to 100% of emissions – net zero – supported again by a whopping cross-party majority. That is something that Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho must have forgotten when she warned against Labour’s “reckless net zero targets, external” in recent days. She was not yet an MP at the time of that 2019 vote.
Climate Sophistry – By R J Cook
Comment This is all sophistry, given the U.K accounts for under 1% of carbon emissions – which, by the way vegetable matter requires and recycles as oxygen – and that U.K’s progressive post Thatcher de industrialisation strategy to destroy the traditional male working class, opening up Britain to crooked finance and cheap migrant service industry labour and promote feminism with all of its denied consequences.
So we get soppy politically correct feminist journalism and editorial. This mentality will never permit discussion of rolling wars and the reality of NATO’s proxy Ukraine War on Russia. Here the carbon daily fall out is incredible. A recent study revealed that the Ukraine War has created more carbon emissions in one year, than Netherlands has achieved during the same period, Hence the awful weather. The Western elite G7 group have announced that they plan to bill Russia for $32 billion for damage being unfairly blamed on them for a war NATO contrived, and for damage that cannot be undone.
These idiots should read two inter World War Two books that I read as a teenager, both by the world renowned economist John Maynard Keynes, my boyhood hero. They were : ‘Economic Consequences of The Peace and ”The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill’. There was also his other great work, also enjoyed by my youthful self : ‘The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money.’ If European politicians had listened to Professor Keynes, there would have been no World War II.
Given the way western elections are rigged and the extraordinary power of plutocratic elite media, the truth will always be twisted or suppressed.
The masses will believe what they are supposed to believe. In reality it doesn’t matter what Sunak and Stramer believe or the distance between them. They are simply consensus rivals in the sport of virtue signalling in pursuit of votes from the ethnic margins and women. What looks like an inevitable nuclear war will make all of this irrelevant. But that is something else the ruling elite and their consensus politicians don’t want to talk about.
R J Cook
‘What pushed me to run was Gaza, to be honest’
Vashti speaks with Andrew Feinstein, the independent parliamentary candidate running for Keir Starmer’s seat
After many months of speculation, late on Wednesday afternoon in the pouring rain, Rishi Sunak stood outside 10 Downing Street and announced the date of the next general election. With 4 July only six weeks away, the campaigning has begun in earnest, and in a sign of what is to come, the leaders of the two main parties have set to work outdoing one another over their anti-migrant credentials.
At Prime Minister’s Questions earlier on Wednesday, while hinting that a national poll was forthcoming, Sunak told the House of Commons that “the British people will in fact see the truth about [Keir Starmer], because that will be the choice at the next election.” For those who belong to Starmer’s own constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, the choice of voting directly for the Labour party leader is a very real one. Among those challenging him for the seat is the activist, author, filmmaker, and former South African MP Andrew Feinstein, who launched his campaign on Tuesday. Like Starmer’s neighbouring MP and predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, who this morning announced his intention to remain as the representative for Islington North, Feinstein will be running as an independent left-wing parliamentary candidate.
In an interview conducted last week, Vashti editors Evan Robins and Eli Machover spoke to Feinstein about the intentions behind his campaign, and how his politics have been shaped by decades of anti-apartheid and anti-corruption struggles in South Africa and beyond, as well his Jewish heritage as the son of a Holocaust survivor.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is it that has led you to run as a candidate in Holborn and St Pancras at the general election?
I’ve lived in the constituency since I’ve been in the UK, which is almost 23 years. It’s been home to me and my family. I love the area. But there are a number of political reasons. The first is that our democracy is in crisis. I think what we’ve seen over the last seven and a half months is our political leadership feeling more distant from the majority of people in the country than I can ever remember in all the years that I’ve lived here.
I think that in many ways Keir Starmer, who is my MP, is emblematic of that, and he’s emblematic of a lot of what is wrong with our politics, where deceit and mendacity are just accepted. You can say whatever you need to say to get elected, and within months just go back on everything you pledge to do as leader of the Labour party, and it seems like there are no consequences.
Were you involved in the Labour party while Jeremy Corbyn was leader?
I joined [the Labour party] because it’s supposed to be a democratic socialist party, which is now neither democratic nor socialist. I think in this upcoming election, people don’t have a real choice. So one of the reasons that I’m standing is to give people choice. I think that the people of Holborn and St Pancras really need to have that choice.
There are real issues with the cost of living crisis, housing and homelessness. We have a scarcity of social housing, where people are living now is often overcrowded, repairs seem to take a remarkably long time, if they do happen. We had one incident, where law enforcement authorities, probably on the instructions of the council, removed tents from people living on the street on one of the coldest nights of the year. The council is also quite emblematic of Starmerite politics. It feels very out of touch with a lot of residents of the area.
And were there issues beyond the local ones that drove you to stand?
I suppose what pushed me to run was Gaza, to be quite honest with you. The Labour party’s appalling response to what I believe is a genocide being committed in Gaza. I don’t say that lightly. I’ve actually written for the Auschwitz Institute on Genocide Prevention and lectured at Auschwitz. When I look at what is happening and what is being said, the intent and the conduct, I’m in no doubt that it is a genocide.
And the fact that the Labour party has not been willing to call for an immediate and unqualified ceasefire, that it has been unwilling to call for a ban on arm sales to Israel. That Keir Starmer, my own MP, whom I have voted for in the past, who claims to have been a human rights lawyer, has not said one single word about the ICJ ruling, I find indefensible, inexplicable, and completely unacceptable. And it speaks to a mindset that is a type of politics that I find repugnant.
There is another thing: the role of money in politics. I’ve seen it in South Africa, I’ve seen it here, I’ve obviously seen it in the US. I’ve seen in a lot of the countries where I do research around the arms trade, because corruption in the arms trade is often a way of getting money into our political system, and it oils the wheels of that system.
If I ended up in parliament I would work against the influence of money in politics. And that is about transparency and accountability, not to billionaire donors, not to private companies, but to the people in the communities that you represent and that pay your salary. Unfortunately, my sense is that Keir Starmer represents his billionaire donors far more than he’s ever represented as his constituents.
How do you feel your experience as an MP in South Africa translates to the politics that you want to develop here?
I think that my experience of politics in South Africa was in three phases. The first was the liberation struggle. As a privileged white South African, to be able to play any role in that was extraordinary and an honour. I regarded that as what one owes a society when one has grown up with such privilege because of the colour of one’s skin. That period included the transition where I worked as a facilitator in the constitutional process.
Then there were the Mandela years. I was in a provincial legislature for about a year, and then the president moved me to the national parliament. This was four years of everything happening in the national interest. It wasn’t about Mandela wanting to ensure he was in power for the rest of his life. It wasn’t about doing whatever was in the best interests of the ANC politically. It was about really doing what was in the best interests of the country. I think that was fairly remarkable and unique.
The tragedy of a democratic South Africa is how quickly we adopted the really tawdry global norms of politics and economics, and particularly the intertwining of money and politics. I fought against that, and I resigned on a matter of principle when my committee wasn’t allowed to conduct an unaffected investigation into a massively corrupt $10 billion arms deal for weapons that we didn’t need and then barely used until today. And as a consequence of that, I thought a lot about the nature of politics and about accountability and transparency.
You’ve identified many different issues that are the responsibility not only of the Tories in Westminster, but also the local Labour Camden council, and the Labour Mayor of London. So is it a structure that you are running against?
It is. It’s a structural politics, effectively, that I’m running against. I do think that both our MP and our council are emblematic of the way in which that structure is not working for many people.
We’ve had the experience where we’ve been trying to hold community meetings in the constituency. Since it became fairly apparent in the last few weeks that I am going to stand, the council has been putting pressure on venues to ensure that they won’t enable us to do events.
What it says to me is that those who run politics in Camden don’t want to have a free and fair democratic election. The person who wants to be the next prime minister of this country doesn’t want to have opposition in his own constituency.
This is the reality if you look at Keir Starmer’s professional life and his political life since he’s been in our constituency. For instance, he went to extraordinary lengths when he first arrived with various outriders in the constituency, ensuring that anybody who was vaguely left-wing, anybody who had been overtly supportive of Jeremy Corbyn was removed from leadership positions in any of our branches.
So I have a real fear that his natural instincts are quite undemocratic and authoritarian. Our experience in the past few weeks is only reinforcing that. I’m not in any way saying that he personally has been instructing people not to allow us to use venues. But the reality is that the council is very close to Keir Starmer, they’re very close ideologically and politically. They’re very close personally. And this is not democratic politics.
When it comes to those Starmer has been kicking out of the Labour party, there are a lot of people who are supportive of Palestinian liberation who also happen to be Jewish.
The vast, vast majority of them, certainly all of them that I know, are anti-racist Jews, lifelong anti-racist Jews. He has expelled more Jews from the party than in the entire previous history of the party. And this is in order to combat antisemitism?
Antisemitism is something I understand incredibly well. I first experienced it when I was probably eight or nine years old, and that was the first time my mum ever spoke to me about her own personal history of being a Holocaust survivor, of surviving the war in Nazi-occupied Vienna, hidden in a coal cellar. She’d have to be rolled up into a carpet, and the carpet pushed up against the wall. And how terrifying that was for her. She was seven, I think, when the war started. And the fact that she lost dozens of her family, predominantly at Auschwitz. A few of them died in Theresienstadt as well. And how, when she came to South Africa, she understood the notion of “never again” as being not just about Jews, but about all humanity. And she felt that the majority of South Africans who were black were being treated by the apartheid state like the Jews of Europe had been treated during the Second World War. So she got involved with an anti-apartheid group called the Black Sash. She was a puppeteer by profession, and she worked as a puppeteer at something called The People’s Space, which was an illegal non-racial theatre. I started going to townships and then to the theatre and meeting people in the political community from a very young age.
So the way in which antisemitism has been weaponised by Keir Starmer and the Labour party, I must be honest with you, actually, I find quite repelling and extremely difficult to cope with.
I’m sure I’m going to be called an antisemite, a self-hating Jew, and everything else. I look forward to the first time that somebody calls me that in this campaign because I feel these issues incredibly strongly and passionately. I feel they’re incredibly important to the real fight against real racism in all its forms.
There were a few lines in your chapter “On Being Jewish” in After the Party [Feinstein’s 2007 book] that stood out. You wrote: “the almost ubiquitous Zionism of the South African Jewish community creates an environment in which criticism of Israel is sometimes fallaciously and dangerously equated with antisemitism.” Then you said, “As a consequence, I never felt able to discuss these matters openly with my Jewish constituents.” There are quite a lot of parallels with the British Jewish community. Will this be the case for your Holborn and St. Pancras campaign?
I should say that it was unfair of me to say “my Jewish constituents” as though it was all of them, because of course, I had some Jewish constituents who wanted to discuss nothing but that! We had a few very committed people, but they were a tiny minority, so that was a bit sweeping. I still find it difficult to talk about Israel to what I would describe as moderate, or maybe in some instances, even right-wing Jews. I find it very difficult to talk about Israel, sometimes.
But as I got older, I found it much easier to disagree with people in some ways. And I wish that my 60-year-old self could go back to my 29- and 30-year-old self when I was the MP for that constituency, and feel able to speak more freely about that.
I have friends who avoid me at the moment. We don’t talk across different opinions, especially on such fundamental issues, nearly enough. I think not just social media, but even legacy media in this country, has some responsibility for that. Because I think at a time like this, when, in my opinion, genocide is being committed – whether we like it or not – as taxpayers in Britain, with our tax pounds, and therefore, to some extent in our names, there is very little space to have meaningful dialogue about it. I think that’s very problematic. Maybe that’s one of the reasons now that I find it a little less difficult to talk about this to whoever.
How do you see your own role and the role of your campaign beyond this election?
To be honest with you, it’s not for me to decide what my role should be, and it’s irrelevant what my role is or isn’t. I think politics are much bigger than individuals. I have a very different perception of politics, and that is that politics is about all of us as ordinary people.
One of the things that we would like, after this campaign, is for there to be a sense of a strong progressive movement, again, in Camden. [Different groups] might have different approaches, different issues that are most important to them, but that there is a consolidated left in Camden. We would like to play a facilitating role in that process if people feel it’s appropriate.
Mandela once said to me, “I never campaign for any position. When I became President of the ANC they didn’t even tell me that the voting was happening.”
What comes out of that mindset is a sense that if there is a need for a certain type of leadership at a certain time in a particular context, it does emerge. And that was the basis of the People’s Forums that the ANC did in 1994. I understand it’s a very different political context. But we want to recapture just some of the core principles of that, of communities effectively empowering themselves. And sometimes it needs something to ignite it. If the campaign does that, we will feel that it was worthwhile.▼
Evan Robins is an editor at Vashti.
Eli Machover is a PhD candidate in politics at the University of Oxford and an editor at Vashti.
He’s flashy, pro-Gaza and winning over Labour’s once-loyal Muslim vote.
Akhmed Yakoob, a solicitor with a love for cars and jewellery, is angry over Labour’s stance on the war — and he’s standing for parliament …
We work in the NHS – this is why it’s broken and how to fix it
In a special series, as the country prepares to vote for a new government, the i speaks to those on the front lines of healthcare, about what needs to change
June 11, 2024 6:00 am(Updated June 12, 2024 11:08 am)
On Thursday 4 July, the UK will go to the polls for the first general election since 2019, with the state of public services high on the agenda. In a special series, as the country prepares to vote for a new government, theispeaks to those on the front lines of healthcare, education, housing and finance about what a new government needs to change to improve the state of their sector. This week, we are looking at the NHS.
Len Hockey, 63, hospital porter, London
I’ve worked for the NHS as a hospital porter for more than 35 years. You ensure the patient is taken to their appointment or procedures, move equipment, pick up and deposit specimens and deliver units of blood to places such as cancer care or the maternity unit. Hospital porters are a vital link in the chain of care for every patient who comes into the hospital.
We’ve been dealing with an ever-reducing real-term funding of the NHS over a protracted period of time. There aren’t as many porters as there were when I started. With the staff numbers down and cost pressures, it can feel like a production line.
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There’s also been a real-terms reduction in pay. We are paid 1p above the national minimum wage. That results in people leaving. You might get paid more working in retail than portering. It’s not good for attracting and retaining the dedication you need in the health service.
I’d like to see a huge increase in the level of resourcing to bring it back to what it was more than a decade ago, a review of staff levels and an investment in wages.
I don’t think anyone would disagree that we need to cut NHS waiting lists, but I haven’t heard a meaningful plan from any politician about how to resource that. It can’t happen without a commitment to resource staff. People are leaving and there’s a desperate need to stem that outflow of staff to the private sector or elsewhere. That needs to be urgently addressed. I don’t think you can do that by tinkering around the edges.
The encroachment of the private sector in the NHS also needs to be stopped. I would like to see the NHS expanded, and resourced to do that. There’s a lack of accountability and democracy in the NHS. That’s something I’d like to see addressed after the general election.
Politicians tend to focus on doctors and nurses, which are key occupational roles in health. But they don’t talk about the integral role of support service workers, whether that’s an admin person, pathology worker, cleaner or a porter. They are indispensable and must be listened to.
Jane Kelly, 56, mental health nurse, London
I started working in the NHS as a mental health nurse in 1992. My role is a mix of strategy, managing frontline services and clinical work where I see patients.
Things like the cost of living crisis have had a huge impact on people – they can’t cope anymore. Our education system is broken, too. Young people are getting into a mental health crisis that they wouldn’t have before. People not being able to see their GP is also an issue, as we know chronic long-term pain leads to mental health difficulties. There’s a lack of opportunities, and people are working two or three jobs just to pay rent. There’s a lack of housing. I think 14 years of a Tory government has had a massive impact on the mental health of our country. It’s led to a mental health pandemic, and the NHS has not been resourced to manage it.
The main issue is staffing, particularly since student nurses can now only get a grant, not a bursary. A lot of people qualify to be a nurse and they leave because they’ve had enough. The staff shortages aren’t the fault of any trust. It’s about government policy, and the impact government policy has on the NHS.
The government relies on goodwill from nurses. When we voted to go on strike, people said: nurses will never strike. We’re seen as somehow angelic – that it’s a vocation and we’ll just put up and shut up. The tides have changed and goodwill has been pushed.
We need a more joined-up approach between health services, social care, education and employment. It’s about having a more holistic approach to how we support people.
I’d also like to see a proper, funded workforce strategy for the NHS. Labour says it’s going to employ 8,500 new mental health staff, but that’s not going to fill the vacancies we’ve got. And who are these mental health staff – are they qualified nurses or therapists?
Waiting lists are probably easier to tackle, but after people have been seen and assessed, where do they go? I think it’s more complex than the politicians are saying. It’s just soundbites.
At the moment, I don’t feel hopeful. When voting, I think about the impact a political party will have on the most vulnerable in our society, which are generally people with long-term mental health conditions. From what I’ve seen, the parties aren’t addressing that. That’s sad because the most vulnerable don’t always vote, so the politicians don’t have to placate them. I’m not convinced things will change for the most vulnerable.
I’d also like to tell the party leaders not to view people with mental health difficulties as a burden but to see them as people with great resilience and strength and offer them the opportunity for a better life. We don’t celebrate all the times that somebody comes out the other side. I think more work needs to be done to break down stigma.
We can’t look at mental health in a silo – it’s connected to what’s going on within the wider community. While we have policies in place that aren’t supportive of the wider community, that’s going to have a massive impact on mental health.
Ray Chapman, 56, specialist paramedic, Hull
I’m a specialist paramedic, which means I can give antibiotics and do advanced assessments.
I’ve been in the ambulance service for 26 years. The intensity of the work has definitely gone up. Now, if you call for backup, you don’t always get it – if you’ve got 25 ambulances queuing outside the hospital, you’re on your own.
Somebody might be having a heart attack or a stroke and they call for an ambulance but it can’t get there quick enough. It’s quicker to get a taxi than it is an ambulance nowadays. It never used to be that way.
The worst thing is when you’ve stabilised your patient, and the radio is going off [with another patient needing you] but you’re waiting for backup, so you can’t move. It’s frustrating and heartbreaking when you know that somebody desperately needs your help and you can’t get there.
In Hull, we used to have these cottage hospitals, which were mini-hospitals in addition to Hull Royal Infirmary. But the government shut them down, so everything congregates at Hull Royal Infirmary and you end up queuing outside. We’re working at maximum capacity.
I see hospital corridors jam-packed with patients, and people in wheelchairs waiting for beds. It’s one in, one out. It’s definitely gotten worse in the years I’ve been working, and that’s because of the capacity of the hospitals. We’re overstretched and we need to expand, not downsize.
There’s also the issue of staff retention. People are coming out of university with £54,000 debt before they even become paramedics, and then they have this intense workload. They leave the ambulance sector and go into doctor’s surgeries instead.
In Hull, I’d like to see the cottage hospitals reopened to relieve the pressure. I also feel that the management structure has become top-heavy. We need a review of how the service is running. I’d like to see a cross-party group address these issues.
I’m not hopeful that things will improve. I think the Tories have wanted to privatise the NHS for a long time. It’s being privatised by the back door. I think we’ll have a two-tier structure. It’ll be very much like America, where people are going bankrupt because they can’t pay for healthcare, which saddens me. I don’t think the NHS should be a political football. It’s a national jewel and something we should be proud of.
Helen Wall, 41, GP partner, Bolton
I’m a senior GP partner at a practice in Bolton. As well as seeing patients, I run the practice and train other GPs. As a GP partner, there’s an increasing amount of paperwork and regulations. Costs have gone up and staff expect pay rises. All of that becomes more challenging to balance as a business, even before you get into the patient side of things.
Despite its challenges, I enjoy the variety of general practice. You never know what’s coming to you from one day to the next. We’re definitely seeing the health impact of the cost of living crisis. It’s hard to keep people well if they’re struggling to put on the heating in winter, feed their families or pay their rent.
The big challenge for GPs right now is demand. We can’t move patients on through the system because of the waiting lists. Millions of patients are waiting for referrals, operations or specialist assessments. Going to your GP is more accessible than some parts of the healthcare system and that has impacted demand.
People are experiencing daily pain and they’re struggling to work. We are the point of contact to try to support them through that, and that adds to the demand. Patients get frustrated that they can’t get through the system quick enough and we bear the brunt of that. The system is bottlenecked and that’s hard for patients.
It’s more difficult than it ever has been to retain and recruit staff. Morale is low. Nobody goes into healthcare to frustrate people. We want our patients to be happy and well.
Comment These people are in denial about the real issues. U.K Reform and Nigel Farage are villified for telling the truth. The essence of the problem is in a wider society where the elite own and control media, and where migration, anti racism and feminism are costly and fragmenting sacred cows. The absurd Boris Johnson’s rubbish, during the harmful and nonsensical politically motivated lockdown, about clapping the NHS made a bad situation worse. Hence all the doctors and nurses reducing the whole NHS horror show to being about their pay rises. Cheap migrant labour may fill some of the lower level job vacancies, but they will soon want pay rises.
R J Cook
All the Green Party’s general election manifesto pledges
Explained
The party promises to stop ‘all new fossil fuel projects’ and overhaul the tax system
By Cathy Chen
The Green Party has launched its manifesto, with promises to stop “all new fossil fuel projects”, overhaul the tax system and give “rights to nature itself”.
The party’s manifesto was launched on Wednesday in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex by co-leaders Adrian Ramsay and Carla Denyer, who pledged to “mend broken Britain”.
Mr Ramsay said the party is “realistic” that it does “not expect to form the next government”.
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He said: “When the Conservatives are booted out of Number 10 on 4 July and Labour take over, we plan to be there in parliament in greater numbers to speak up for you on the issues that you care about – like a revitalised NHS, bold action on the climate and a fair economy.”
Here are the Green Party’s headline proposals featured in their manifesto:
Housing
The party has vowed to provide “fairer, greener homes for all”, signalling that it wants to make the UK’s housing crisis one of its key priorities for the next Parliament.
Under their plans, housebuilders would have to include solar panels and heat pumps on all new homes where appropriate and £33bn would be invested in insulating homes and other buildings in the next five years.
The party also promised to provide 150,000 new social homes every year and a “fair deal for renters” by giving powers to local authorities to introduce rent control measures.
Ms Denyer described housing problem as an “unaddressed crisis”, adding that their manifesto includes providing “affordable housing through our right homes, right place, right price charter”.
Education
The Greens said the current education system “operates like a production line rather than valuing their individual qualities”.
The manifesto said elected MPs will champion an increase in school funding of £8bn, ending tuition fees for higher education students, stopping high-stakes testing at schools and abolishing Ofsted.
Ms Denyer said: “Young people in particular know just how broken Britain’s frontline services are. The economy is not working for them.
“They have been priced out of the housing market and are struggling to fund their education.”
Energy
The Green Party said it will “accelerate clean energy investment and delivery” by cancelling recent oil and gas licences such as those for the Rosebank oil and gas field, removing all oil and gas subsidies and stopping all new fossil fuel extraction projects in the UK.
The party also said it wants to see “the phase-out of all nuclear energy” and will push for wind power to provide 70 per cent of UK energy by 2030.
Ms Denyer said the Greens would invest £30bn in insulating homes over the next five years. “Warm, secure, affordable homes are something that millions of people in this country don’t have,” she added.
Environment
On nature and the environment, the party has outlined extensive plans to protect and restore the UK’s environment by “giving rights to nature itself”.
The party will work to end the sewage scandal, extend people’s access to nature with a new English Right to Roam Act, and end the emergency authorisation of bee-killing pesticides.
On protecting animals and habitats, elected MPs will call for an end to all blood sports, badger culling, factory farming, routine use of antibiotics in farm animals and close confinement in cages.
The party also aims to halt all fossil fuel projects and cancel existing licences.
Mr Ramsay said the Greens aim to achieve net zero “years ahead” of the current timetable.
“Protecting our climate and nature lies at the heart of our policies,” he said.
Health and social care
On health, the Greens said they want to ensure a “fully public, properly funded health and social care system”, promising to spend £50bn per year by 2030.
The manifesto said elected MPs will push for a year-on-year reduction in waiting lists, guaranteed access to an NHS dentist, guaranteed rapid access to a GP, and an immediate boost to the pay of NHS staff.
Other areas the party will focus on include increasing funding for mental health care and support a change in the law to legalise assisted dying for those with terminal diseases.
On social care, the party has pledged to introduce free personal care, increase carer pay rates and introduce a career structure for the sector.
Welfare
In the manifesto’s section on social support, the party pledges to “tackle the cost-of-living crisis for the poorest in our society”.
Measures include increasing universal credit and legacy benefits by £40 a week, abolishing the two-child benefit cap, introducing a universal basic income and giving disability benefits an immediate 5 per cent uplift.
Tax, spending and economy
The Green Party has pledged to raise taxes for the wealthiest in society and mend “broken Britain” in its election manifesto.
A tax on multimillionaires and billionaires will be used to raise additional revenue of between £30bn-70bn to help fund improvements to health, housing, transport and the green economy, the party said.
In its manifesto, the Greens also said “privatisation has failed” and promised to bring water companies, railways and the five big retail energy companies into state ownership.
Other measures include a pledge to invest £40bn a year to shift to a green economy, a £12.4bn investment pledge in green skills and training, and a carbon tax to drive down emissions – all during the next parliament.
Mr Ramsay said they hope to create a fairer tax system. “There is a conspiracy of silence between the main Westminster parties at this election,” he said.
“Labour and the Conservatives would rather hide their plans for cuts to public services than confront the need for a fairer tax system that asks those with the broadest shoulders to pay more – including the very wealthiest in society, who have grown even wealthier over the last 14 years.
“We will push them to be braver, to be more ambitious, and to actually do what’s necessary to fix our broken country and get us back on track.”
Farming
For more on agriculture, the Greens have pledged to “work with farmers and other stakeholders to transform our food and farming system”.
Their manifesto includes measures such as almost tripling financial support for farmers to transition to nature-friendly farming, improving biodiversity and soil health, and linking farm payments to reduced use of pesticides.
Workers’ rights
In the manifesto, the party said it plans to “defend and extend workers’ rights” as it outlined measures such as repealing “anti-union” legislation and introducing a maximum 10:1 pay ratio.
The party will also push to increase the minimum wage to £15 an hour no matter the age – up from its current rate of £11.44 an hour for those aged 21 or over – and will move to introduce a four-day working week.
Transport
The Greens’ plans to cut carbon emissions include championing “better, cheaper public transport” by increasing annual public subsidies for rail and bus travel to £10bn and investing an additional £19bn to improve public transport by the end of the next Parliament.
Other measures include a focus on active travel, with the party pledging to invest £2.5bn a year in new cycleways and footpaths, and reducing traffic in residential areas to boost community use.
On aviation, elected MPs will push for a frequent-flyer levy, a ban on domestic flights for journeys that would take less than three hours by train and a halt to the expansion of new airport capacity.
Arts and culture
Green MPs will push for a £5bn investment to support community sports, arts and culture, the manifesto said.
The party also backs efforts to keep local sports facilities, museums, theatres, libraries and art galleries open and thriving as well as ending VAT on cultural activities.
Media reform
The manifesto said the current media landscape is “skewed by the dominance of billionaire and big-tech ownership” with the aim of maximising profits.
The party said it will push for a change in the law so that no single individual or company can own more than 20 per cent of any media market and introduce all reforms proposed in the second part of the 2012 Leveson Report.
Foreign policy
The Green Party said it will seek to rejoin the European Union “as soon as the political conditions are right” as it unveiled its foreign policy objectives.
In the manifesto, the party said UK foreign policy “should be based on shared commitments to democracy, peace, global solidarity and the protection of human rights” as it pledged continued support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
On Israel and Palestine, the party said it will push for an immediate bilateral ceasefire as well as a “durable political solution”.
On nuclear weapons, the party said it would see the UK begin the process of dismantling its nuclear weapons, cancel the Trident programme and remove all foreign nuclear weapons from UK soil.
And on supporting Global South countries to tackle the climate crisis, the Greens back an increase to international aid to 1 per cent of gross national income (GNI) and an increase to climate finance to 1.5 per cent by 2033.
Rights and freedoms
The manifesto said the party will “defend the Human Rights Act, the UK’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights and continued direct access to convention rights in the domestic courts”.
On political reform, the party will replace the first past the post system for parliamentary elections with a fair and proportional voting system, replace the House of Lords with an elected second chamber and provide votes for 16-year-olds.
The party said it will also campaign to end violence against women and girls, scrap legislation that erodes the right to protest and free expression, and campaign for the right of self-identification for trans and non-binary people.
Other headline pledges including working to renew England’s crumbling court system with a £2.5bn investment and giving Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the choice to make their “own decisions about their relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom”.
Immigration
In its manifesto, the Green Party said it welcomes “the contributions that migrants and refugees make to British society” and would support safe routes to sanctuary for those fleeing persecution.
The party also said it will replace a “dysfunctional Home Office” with a new Department of Migration, end immigration detention, and allow asylum seekers to work while their applications are decided.
Comment I am sure this bourgeoise drivel will appeal to the new 16 year old brainwahed voters Starmer’s Labour are planning.
R J Cook
| Election |
| Nigel Farage’s post-democratic revolt He is pioneering a new sectarianism |
June 12th 2024
30 May 2024 — City of Edinburgh Council attributed their inability to provide hotel-style temporary accommodation to the upcoming Taylor Swift concerts at …
29 May 2024 — Edinburgh City Council said it was “absolutely not” moving tenants out of temporary accommodation to make way for Taylor Swift fans but added …
Edinburgh council criticised for ‘removing’ rough sleepers for Taylor Swift fans ahead of Eras Tour stop
Competition for accommodation has been fierce ahead of Taylor Swift’s UK concerts
Taylor Swift performs during her Eras Tour in Stockholm, Sweden on May 17
Maryam Kara30 May 2024
Several homeless people have reportedly been taxied out of Edinburgh to Aberdeen and Glasgow to make room for tourists ahead of Taylor Swift’s performances next month.
Shelter Scotland told the BBC that homeless individuals it supports were sent via taxi to Aberdeen and Glasgow amid a housing emergency – while one person was offered temporary accommodation as far away as Newcastle.
There was no evidence that homeless people were being removed from accommodation they were already staying at.
The housing charity wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Homeless families and tourists being forced to compete for the same accommodation is further evidence of The City of Edinburgh Council and indeed most of Scotland’s housing emergency.”
Speaking to the BBC, Shelter Scotland director Alison Watson said it was “a blatant injustice” for rough sleepers who are now “in direct competition” with the mass of Swifties heading to the city. She told the broadcaster: “In Edinburgh that emergency now places people experiencing homelessness in direct competition with tourists; a blatant injustice.”
The charity director added that families are already hearing they have to leave the city if they require temporary accommodation, even though the concerts are still a week away.
Watson also highlighted that the fault lies not with the tourists but with the Scottish government for failing to provide a solid solution. Similar disruptions for rough sleepers are expected to happen again in August when the city welcomes the Edinburgh Fringe festival.
Some 200,000 fans are set to descend on the Scottish capital over three days between June 7 and 9. Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium will host what is expected to be the biggest of Scotland’s stadium shows in its history.
Fans arriving for Swift’s Eras tour concerts have been met with eye-watering prices for hotel rooms in Edinburgh, as competition over accommodation has taken flight ahead of the performances.
Postal workers discuss strategy to oppose Royal Mail takeover by private equity firm EP Group
Anne, from a large mail centre in west London, told Sunday’s Zoom meeting: “Starmer’s Labour and the CWU are both behind Kretinsky. The CWU are not working for the members.”
Housing convenor Councillor Jane Meagher, said: “It is a symptom of the housing emergency we face in Edinburgh that at times we must use tourist accommodation to house homeless households.
“We know it won’t be available year-round, particularly over the busy summer months, so we use it reluctantly as a last resort.
“We’re aware of the situation and are working with the affected households to find appropriate, alternative accommodation.”
Edinburgh City Council insisted, however, it is absolutely not “moving tenants out of temporary tourist accommodation to make way for Taylor Swift fans”.
Hotels are reserved for homeless individuals on a weekly basis and are considered a “last resort” solution, providing only short-term accommodation.
After Edinburgh, Swift is to peform in Liverpool, Cardiff, London and Dublin throughout June.
Her tour is expected to boost UK spending by £1billion.
For the 15-day UK leg alone, approximately 1.2 million tickets had gone up for sale.
Taylor Swift – A privileged white female with a life full of choices.
Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in Reading, Pennsylvania, to Andrea (Finlay), a one-time marketing executive, and Scott Kingsley Swift, a financial adviser. Her ancestry includes German and English, as well as some Scottish, Irish, Welsh and 1/16th Italian. She was named after James Taylor, and her mother believed that if she had a gender neutral name it would help her forge a business career. Taylor spent most of her childhood on an 11-acre Christmas tree farm in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
When she was nine years old the family moved to Wyomissing, PA, where she attended West Reading Elementary Center and Wyomissing Area Junior/Senior High School. Taylor spent her summers at her parents’ vacation home at the Jersey shore. Her first hobby was English horse riding. Her mother put her in a saddle when she was nine months old and Swift later competed in horse shows. At the age of nine she turned her attention to musical theatre and performed in Berks Youth Theatre Academy productions of “Grease”, “Annie”, “Bye Bye Birdie” and “The Sound of Music”. She traveled regularly to New York City for vocal and acting lessons. However, after a few years of auditioning in New York and not getting anything, she became interested in country music.
Comment U.K is a hideous and institutionally corrupt country. This is another devloved matter which the SNP is not dealing with.
R J Cook
UK Labour Party’s pro-business austerity agenda heralds escalation in class struggle
Party leader Sir Keir Starmer and his shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have insisted over the last four years that Labour will be the most pro-business government in history, which means it will be dedicated to attacking the working class and slashing public spending.
Northamptonshire Chief Constable Nick Adderley’s legal challenge to get gross misconduct hearing panel dismissed rejected after ‘careful consideration’
Published 6th Jun 2024, 13:38 BS
A challenge that could have seen the panel deciding the fate of Northamptonshire Chief Constable Nick Adderley dismissed has been rejected.
The three-man panel led by legally qualified chairman Callum Cowx had been accused of bias and pre-concluding evidence that had been put before the misconduct hearing.
Mr Cowx and panel colleagues tasked with deciding whether Northamptonshire’s Chief Constable Nick Adderley is guilty of gross misconduct had to listen back to proceedings to see if they should ‘recuse’ themselves after accusations of ‘bias’
Today, the independent panel – Callum Cowx, former Chief Constable of Merseyside Police Andy Cooke and member James Maund announced their findings.
A spokesman for the Office of the Police Fire and Crime Commissioner said: “On Friday, May 31, the defence in the Nick Adderley gross misconduct hearing lodged an application for the chair and panel members to recuse themselves from the process.
“The chair and panel members have decided to reject the application and continue with the misconduct hearing, after careful consideration.”
The misconduct hearing is looking into the allegations Chief Constable Nick Adderley exaggerated his rank and length of service in the Royal Navy including asserting he served during the Falklands War – when he would have been 15-years-old.
Mr Adderley continues to receive his full salary – £176,550 a year – while he is suspended from his job as Northamptonshire’s top cop.
Yesterday it was revealed taxpayers have footed the bill of nearly £200,000 for the hearing that has so far sat for four days.
Panel members will reconvene on Thursday, June 20, in Northampton when the gross misconduct hearing resumes.
Comment Liars and fantasists are not unusual in the U.K Police. It is a high level and rewarding skill for them and therefore extant at high level. The fact that this man was able to fake an extraordinary careeer history says rather a lot about the people who interviewed and employed him. Sadly, politicians need the police to control our hideously fragmented excuse for society.
There will be no reform or truly independent oversight and accountability. So these things and worse will happen again and again. Criminal liars entrenched in our so called justice system says it all about this U.K excuse for a democracy. Police officers who lie should face jail time, with senior officers losing their pensions and facing a minimum of five years detention. These people are in a powerful position to destroy lives.
R J Cook
| Nigel Farage’s post-democratic revolt He is pioneering a new sectarianism |
Nigel Farage appears to have had objects thrown at him while on the campaign trail in South Yorkshire.
The Reform UK leader posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, which appeared to show objects being thrown at him while he was on top of a bus in Barnsley on Tuesday.
It is not clear what exactly the objects are. One of them appears to be a takeaway cup.
Another video of the incident, from a different angle, appears to show two objects missing Mr Farage, with one hitting the side of the bus.
South Yorkshire Police says it has arrested a 28-year-old man on suspicion of public order offences.
“It is believed that the man threw objects from a nearby construction area,” police said in a statement.
“I will not be bullied or cowed by a violent left-wing mob who hate our country,” Mr Farage wrote about the incident on X.
“These people want to stop my election campaign. That’s never going to happen,” he added.
The video posted on his X account showed a man in a red jacket throwing objects from a building site before being stopped by what appears to be construction workers.
He was later detained by police, who said the man remains in custody.
The incident happened as a crowd of Stand Up to Racism protestors interrupted Mr Farage as he spoke from the vehicle.
Reform UK supporters and Stand Up to Racism protesters both chanted against each other as crowds formed around the bus in the town centre.
Mr Farage had been warned by police not to get off the bus.
He had been touring Barnsley and had just left Hoyland, where he had had a warmer welcome. He called in at a beauticians and posed with staff while joking about having his nails painted.
Comment This is further evidence that Britain is not democratic. Consensus politics panders to the lowest common denominator. ‘Say no to racism’ is an acceptable pressure goup because it oozes kindness toward illegal immigrants. It is a blanket form of obsession used to cover up uncomfortable truths. Pressure groups are one issue tunnel vision organisations. The subtleties of languid smiling Nigel Farage are wasted across this excuse for a nation. ‘Say no to racism’ is about virtue signalling not discussing the appalling state of Britain in the age of consensus politics.
Morons will, if they bother to vote, choose Labour because their beloved Conservatives lied about Brexit, with things getting so bad that we face Nuclear World War III. No one mentions that, because the U.S is expected to sort it out.
Taxes have levelled out at the highest level since 1945. The elite welcome migrants for cheap labour to push wages down and all the other prices up. NATO’s proxy war on Russia is making it worse. Public services, like the banks, are wasteful and corrupt. So along comes an angry 28 year old moron throwing junk at Nigel Farage, then everything is good because he is a ‘freedom fighter.’ The young woman who threw a milkshake over Farage has earned £40,000 from her U Tube fans.
Farage has always been a target for the virtue signallers. Loveable feminist and BBC celebrity comedian Jo Brand responded to the man who threw water over Farage, with the comment “Pity it wasn’t acid”. A black male political pundit on last night’s BBC Newsnight, said that Farage provoked these situations because he preached the politics of far right hate.
R J Cook
June 11th 2024
https://www.waterstones.com/author/robert-cook/435753/page
| Exclusive polling |
| Britain doesn’t want to go to war Eighty years after D-Day, the nation’s mood has changed |
They said it’s the immigration election. It is now.
| They said it’s the immigration election. It is now. So, Mr. Brexit has returned. Nigel Farage is back in charge of Reform UK after a lengthy hiatus, succeeding Richard Tice. He is not only going to lead the party but also going to stand in Clacton – a seat once held by Douglas Carswell, who defected to UKIP from the Conservatives, resigned his seat, stood in the by-election and was returned as UKIP’s first elected MP. According to Farage, it’s the “dullest’ and “most boring” election he’s ever seen. Few people would argue with him. His flash-flood arrival on the election stage has certainly invigorated a campaign laced with tedium and mediocrity, capped on Tuesday night by a vacuous TV debate replete with puerile jibes. Mr. Farage has of course stood before (seven times) but we do believe he is going to do it this time. So his sudden decision to run wasn’t a shock, indeed, we saw it coming. But this time around, his impact on a convulsing Conservative Party, led by a Prime Minister who has shown himself to be out of his depth, is what’s really grabbing attention. It’s all very well to grab a few headlines, with vows to “clamp down” on immigration or “to stop the boats” but where were the robust policies and long-term strategy? As ever, chickens do eventually come home to roost, as we warned would happen when the loose points-based system was being devised some six years ago. Farage has put his finger on what is fuelling so much of the frustration and cynicism towards politicians. They are fed to the back teeth with promises made at election time only for them to be reneged upon once politicians are elected and and behind the iron gates of the Palace of Westminster. Yes, sky-high immigration – both legal and illegal is what’s aggravating prospective voters. They experience daily the immense strains on our public services, the housing market, national security and national unity. Speaking to the press, Mr. Farage framed this as an “immigration election,” backed by recent polling data and the broken promises of successive Tory governments. As we at Migration Watch have said over so many years, we simply don’t have enough homes, enough infrastructure, or enough money to deal with the government’s policy of Infinity Migrants. Moreover, we’re losing a sense of who we are as a nation, and immigration is making everything worse – like pouring petrol on a fire or salt on an open, bloody wound. A week earlier, Mr. Farage stirred controversy and attracted opprobrium from the usual quarters when he told Sir Trevor Phillips (who had himself made remarks along similar lines some years before) on Sky-News that a “growing number” of young Muslims in the UK don’t align with British values. He cited an April poll by the Henry Jackson Society showing only a quarter of Muslims believed Hamas had committed murder and rape in its October 7 attack on Israel. Other polls, not mentioned by Farage, reveal concerning attitudes among British Muslims about free speech, the Holocaust, Sharia law, and even sympathies with terrorists. Farage argues that these issues are exacerbated by unchecked immigration. We agree. If you don’t have control of your borders, you don’t have control of population growth. And if you don’t have control of this, you don’t have control of your country. It’s as simple as that. You can’t ‘integrate’ people with a few strokes of the Whitehall pen. It takes years and it’s a two-way street. New arrivals must show willing and be ready to accept the ways and values of the country they or their parents have chosen to live in. |
| Capping immigration Right at the last minute, after parliament has been dissolved and no new policies can be formulated, the Tories have had a road-to-Damascus conversion to the policy of capping visas. Funny that! Under new plans, MPs will get a vote on annual government proposals aimed at steadily reducing numbers, based on recommendations from the expert Migration Advisory Committee (MAC). They are of course right to tackle out-of-control mass immigration with a cap. But shoving the onus on the MAC is a cop-out. Net migration well-below 100,000 (Farage is calling for net-zero) is absolutely the right approach. Such a policy objective will allow the planners and strategists to devise the necessary rules and measures. We warned some years ago that without a cap on numbers, the points-based system will likely fall apart and lead to historic levels of legal migration. As Migration Watch chairman Alp Mehmet pointed out in a 2020 article for The Conservative Woman: “Without a cap in place – at least until the economic situation is clearer – the numbers could increase very rapidly indeed and be very difficult to bring back under control. No cap on work permits and no requirement for advertising of jobs in the UK is a gamble that poses a huge threat to the prospects of British workers, at the worst possible time. They have every right to feel betrayed.” We’re glad the Tories are changing their tune, but it makes you wonder: why not sooner? Mr. Sunak sat on his hands for a year and a half, while also clashing with cabinet colleagues like Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, who were pushing for a cap all along. And why is he outsourcing this policy to the MAC, who will doubtless be encouraged to consult ‘stakeholders’ on what the numbers should be – NGOs, business groups, public sector lobbyists, and members of the higher education establishment. This happened with Sir Sajid Javid’s White Paper consultation in 2018, which led to the appallingly loose points-based system. The stakeholders consulted were from groups, organisations and vested interests overwhelmingly in favour of more immigration. |
| What about Labour? We haven’t heard much from Labour on legal migration. What they have said so far has largely focused illegal migration with some asides, mostly in reaction to Tory policy pronouncements. They won’t stop the boats and they won’t smash the gangs. Their intention to speed up the processing of those already here will simply encourage more to come take the risk of crossing the Channel illegally to get here. Responding to Sunak’s proposed cap, Labour MP Yvette Cooper criticised it, saying, “All they are doing now is rehashing failed announcements from David Cameron and Theresa May, while doing nothing to tackle the skills shortages and their failures in the economy and immigration system which have pushed net migration up.” Theresa May’s cap on non-EU workers was a successful policy, maintaining high-skill numbers at around 20,000. The only reason we didn’t hit the ‘tens of thousands’ target promised by David Cameron was EU free movement, a stance Sir Keir has long supported. Secondly, Ms. Cooper’s remark about job vacancies shows a misunderstanding of economics and immigration’s role in filling skills gaps, as highlighted by Executive Director Dr Mike Jones in a recent Migration Watch paper: “Encouraging immigration in response to shortages might hinder the natural adjustments that can occur in the labour market. For instance, economic theory suggests that when employers face labour shortages, they might choose to increase wages, enhance job conditions to attract more workers, or adjust their production methods to rely less on scarce workers (such as through automation or changing what they produce).” Ultimately, immigration will not effectively solve job shortages because it often creates more job openings. Immigrants both work and consume goods in the economy, which boosts demand for things like food and housing and public services. So, if you bring in 1 million immigrants to fill 1 million job vacancies, you might end up with just as many vacancies again! And that’s precisely what has happened. The tried-and-tested way to fill a job ‘vacancy’, as discussed by Mike, is to raise wages, improve job conditions or adopt new production techniques to rely less on low-skill labour. |
| Donate to Migration Watch Migration Watch relies entirely on the generosity of our supporters who fund our work. If you would like to help us with our efforts, pleaseclick here to donate. |
| We particularly liked this article by the fabulous Lionel Shriver in The Spectator – What will Europe look like in the future? If you read nothing else this weekend, do read this: “This massive demographic shift is this century’s most momentous development, yet it’s barely ever discussed. Right on Europe’s doorstep is a fast-rising population of poorly educated, unemployed young people with lousy prospects. The more these desperate people make it to the prosperous West, the more friends and relatives will also be incentivised to try. They all have smartphones, whose pictures of glistening martinis, fast cars and glamorous advertising models are beamed to dusty villages and urban slums. ‘What’s there for us here?’ asked a young Senegalese man trying to convince his parents to let him go to Europe in last weekend’s New York Times. ‘We all have migration in mind.'” We also liked: Ben Sixsmith, The Critic – No one will believe the Conservatives on immigration |
| MIGRATION WATCH IN THE MEDIA |
| In an interview with Sky News, Mike discussed Mr. Sunak’s proposed cap on legal migration. He felt it was too little, too late, arguing that the Prime Minister missed the opportunity to implement the cap on migrant visas while parliament was still in session: |
| MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD |
| The election has been rather dull so far, but Nigel Farage’s return promises to spice things up. We’re hearing a lot about policies to stop mass immigration, but as always, the devil’s in the detail. It’s crucial to hold parliamentary candidates accountable, so we encourage you to reach out to those after your vote in your constituency and ask them where they stand on the immigration issue. Ask them if they understand the risks that come with uncontrolled, mass and rapid migration? Next week, the manifestos. You might also like to be aware that we have added Tik-Tok to our social media platforms. You can access it here. |
| We wouldn’t be able to continue this work without the help of our supporters. If you would like to donate, please click the button below. Our supporters are all as concerned about the future of our country as we are. Some have been kind enough to remember us in their will. If you wish to consider leaving a bequest to Migration Watch UK, or wish to discuss anything else, do please get in touch. Our email is: admin@migrationwatchuk.org |
| UnHerd Britain Where is Britain’s grand strategy? ARIS ROUSSINOS |
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