Tag Archives: politics

Something for the weekend: ‘honest’ government ad previewing next year’s election

We laugh because it’s funny and we laugh because it’s true.

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Cruel Britannia: Vox Political’s devastating new book is here

At last: Cruel Britannia joins the other Vox Political books and ebooks that are already available.

It took nearly 10 years, but the books are back!

The new Vox Political book – Cruel Britannia – was meant to be released in 2014. But life got in the way.

Yr Obdt Srvt (that’s me) got involved in a years-long struggle to get the then-Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government to release statistics showing how many sickness benefit claimants had died for no apparent reason after being thrown off the books.

Then I was accused of anti-Semitism (like practically everybody else who talks about politics in the UK, it seems) and had to spend a few years clearing my name.

And while that happened, I became embroiled in a court case with a bratty TV personality…

So the book collections had to be – shall we say… delayed.

This year, with no outside encumbrances, I was able to get back to putting together a collection of some of the best articles published between July and September 2013. That may seem a long time ago, but as the back cover states boldly: “The evidence shows that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“So: the Tory government was victimising sick and disabled benefit claimants – just as in 2023.

“Tory ministers were creating an immigration crisis and then moaning about it – just as in 2023.

“Energy prices were a scandal – just as in 2023.

“The economy was falling apart – just as in 2023.

“And the National Health Service was lurching from crisis to crisis as an increasing proportion of it was handed over to businesspeople, to make them a profit – just as in 2023.

“Are we caught in a spiral of doom? Is there a way out?

“NOW READ ON…”

Cruel Britannia is available in paperback, and may be ordered here, priced £14.99.

If you prefer to read your books electronically, the eBook version of Cruel Britannia may be ordered here – at the stunningly low price of just £5!

Order it in time for Christmas and you won’t be short of something to do during the Festive Season!

Cruel Britannia joins the two Vox Political collections that are already available:

Strong Words and Hard Times is available in print here, priced £17.50.

And the ebook version is available here, priced £5.

Health Warning: Government is available in print here, priced £17.50.

And the ebook version is available here, priced £5.

Each purchase helps This Site continue providing its influential coverage of UK politics – so please tell all your friends, or buy copies for them if you think they deserve a present!


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Are the Russell Brand allegations proving government is stifling social media businesses?

Russell Brand: after it was revealed that a UK Parliament committee had written to his social media platforms, calling for his income to be cut off – despite the fact that he has not been convicted of any crime – it has emerged that governments seem to be regularly exerting pressure on social media platforms to stifle political commentary that conflicts with their views.

This has escalated quickly – after the Commons Culture, Media and Sports chair wrote to online platforms in a bid to take Russell Brand’s income away from him, her fellow Tories are now clamouring to have GB News taken off-air because of Laurence Fox.

The charge appears to have been led by former Sky News mainstay Adam Boulton:

But he was quickly joined – on the same episode of the BBC’s Newsnight – by Tory MP Caroline Nokes:

Some might say, “Sauce for the goose” – at least GB News is attracting the same opinions as Russell Brand.

But now let’s look at some other reactions to those calls for GB News to close. Here’s Tim Montgomerie, founder of the Conservative Home blog – and therefore also a Tory:

And now Nile Gardiner, former aide to Margaret Thatcher and therefore also a Tory:

So countries that shut down news networks are authoritarian and tyrants?

What does that say about the CMS committee chair, Tory Dame Caroline Dinenage, trying to shut down Russell Brand’s channel?

You might suggest that there’s a bit of a difference between a network and a one-man show, but then, we know Brand isn’t the only social media commentator facing shutdown – don’t we?

Is this acceptable?

Twitter/X keeps trying to take followers away from Peter Stefanovic. Is it because he’s a left-wing commentator who publishes facts that the right wing headbangers don’t want you to know?

If you don’t think so, you need to come up with a reasonable alternative explanation. What is it?

Apparently, this is an international phenomenon. I noticed in a piece on the Brand controversy, a YouTube-hosted show called The Comments Section suggested that its parent organisation, The Daily Wire, had faced calls for it to be de-platformed by the US government.

“Guys, this has been happening – this isn’t new,” said host Brett Cooper.

“Literally a month and a half ago, the Daily Wire found out that the US Government had been writing the Facebook specifically … saying ‘Is there anything you can do to, you know, limit their posts a bit during the election cycle – it’s really not great for us, could you limit them?’ Asking a social media site to censor our posts.

“This is happening; it’s all politicised.”

If you’re a regular follower of Vox Political you’ll know that This Site’s readership has mysteriously plummeted, so I tend to believe that Facebook certainly does have the ability to restrict the readership of particular users/pages.

If this is happening internationally, and to organisations with as much clout as the Daily Wire (it’s quite big, you know), then I think it might be time for us all to get together, pool our information and take it to such authorities as may exist to police such matters.

In the UK, I don’t even know if there is an organisation with a duty to ensure that businesses relying on social media exposure don’t get censored for no reason.

I’ll let you know what happens. While the allegations against Russell Brand are vile, it seems something useful may come from them.


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Prime Minister’s Questions shows we can’t afford to let the Tories OR Labour retain power

This is fine: Rishi Sunak is destroying the UK and Keir Starmer won’t change anything. People like him often say ‘there is no alternative’ to their policies that have proved disastrous. Now, there really is no alternative other than to FIND an alternative – to them.

If you watch the weekly debacle that is Prime Minister’s Questions in despair every week, then you may enjoy and agree with the rant I just posted on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) after listening to Rishi Sunak deflecting and fudging answers to every question:

I think calling Labour and the Tories ‘status quo’ parties is a highly appropriate label.

The Tories are happy to turn the entire UK into an open cesspit while funnelling all our money into offshore tax havens and the foreign governments that own our privatised utilities – and Labour refuses to change that system.

If you want to live in a land free of disease, with cheap food, housing, energy, and water, then you have no choice but to avoid the ‘status quo’ parties as though they were plague carriers – because they might as well be.

Many people reading this may recoil at the thought of actually going out and discovering who is offering policies that might actually be worth your vote; it’s too much like hard work for lots of people and they would rather leave it to someone else.

There isn’t anybody else, folks; it’s your responsibility.

There is still plenty of time. And you can start with a simple web search on your computer or mobile phone. What are you waiting for?


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Is Tory government causing low fertility in the UK? [VIDEO]

England and Wales are suffering historically low fertility.

Is government responsible?

Here’s a video article:


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Labour’s ‘boil a frog’ tactic is pulling the party away from voters but towards rich donors

Many years ago, a right-wing cuckoo in the Labour Party called Peter Mandelson assured the party’s then-leaders that they could shift their policies as far to the political right as they fancied because Labour voters didn’t have anywhere else to go.

He was wrong; at every general election after the 1997 landslide, the party lost voters as socialists abandoned what they saw increasingly as a party of Tories in red ties. It took the arrival of Jeremy Corbyn as leader to reverse the trend, with the re-injection of genuinely transformative policies.

And we all know what happened to him: right-wingers he had allowed to remain in the party (in the belief that it should be a genuinely “broad church”, whatever that means?) stabbed him in the back and sabotaged the 2017 (and probably the 2019) general election, eventually forcing him out.

Now, under Mandelson acolyte Keir Starmer, Labour is once-again a hard-right party. He has abandoned any “continuity Corbyn” left-wing pledges in order to follow policies that are indistinguishable from those of Rishi Sunak’s current Conservative government.

Despite this, Starmer’s Substitute Tory Party (formerly Labour) is being tipped to win the next general election by a landslide. Why?

It could be because the Sunak government is now blatantly corrupt, with new evidence of ministers (including the prime minister) lining their own pockets and those of their cronies in big business emerging every day.

It could also be because Starmer has drip-fed his right-wing policies into Labour’s programme for government slowly – giving party members and tribal followers an opportunity to forget (or simply fail to notice) the cumulative lurch to the far right that they represent:

Look at the recent announcement that a Labour government will continue to inflict poverty on 1.1 million UK children in defiance of the party’s own reason for existing (lifting working and working-class people out of poverty).

After this announcement, polls showed no lessening of enthusiasm for a Labour government – and only 20 Labour MPs seem keen to remind their leaders of the party’s duty to its members and supporters:

Why the lurch rightwards?

Obviously this is where Starmer’s political loyalties lie. He was never interested in re-balancing the economy to stop rich employers from impoverishing their workers, or to stop the destruction of our environment for the sake of a quick profit, or to stop the privatisation of our national treasures like the NHS for another quick profit.

But there’s a financial necessity too. One clear detrimental result of his rightward lurch has been an exodus of members away from a Labour Party they now consider toxic. This, along with a series of poor financial decisions, mean Starmer’s party very quickly frittered away the more-than £12 million Jeremy Corbyn had put in its bank account.

It needed funds – and went looking in the same place as the Tories:

The result is clear: two parties – Labour and the Tories – with the same policies, because they have the same people bankrolling them.

And with Starmer’s Labour working for big business, another element of the UK’s broken political system is coming into clearer focus:

That’s right. It seems the UK has been controlled by the same tiny group of super-rich influencers for many decades, with the wishes of voters coming a distant second to their selfish desires.

Continuing to vote for Labour means continuing to let this tiny minority run the rest of us into the ground for their own profit and perverse enjoyment.

It makes no sense at all.

And yet the polls show that is exactly what the majority of people want.

If you know anybody who has been misled or is deluded in this way, then for the sake of the United Kingdom and everyone in it, please explain their mistake to them. It might take a while but it will be worth it in the long run.


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The Tory government is helping energy firms rip us off – and you’re STILL not interested in politics?

Bills, bills, bills: British Gas has made nearly £1bn in profits in the last six months because it is price-gouging its customers – charging them much more than they should be paying. Many of those customers are so stupid, they can’t be bothered to do anything about it.

The most eye-watering part of the energy firms’ announcement of eye-watering profits is the fact that so many people in the UK are so keen to say they are powerless to do anything about it.

Tell them that they’re being ripped off because of political decisions by their government and these absolute morons say that, well, they’re not interested in politics because it has nothing to do with them.

They’ve literally just been told that politics is what’s leeching away their ability to feed, clothe and house themselves and their response is that it’s nothing to do with them!

Perhaps it’s time to admit that people like the Tories and the energy firm bosses, who make the decisions to take all the cash away from us, are not the problem.

The problem is the people who prop them up – either by voting for the Tories like mindless drones or by refusing to vote for anyone who will make a difference.

That includes all the “tactical” idiots who would rather replace the Conservatives with a party that has identical policies because “we’ve got to get the Tories out” than even consider supporting anybody with a plan that will actually, you know, help.

It also includes everybody who insists that we should support Keir Starmer’s party, which has surely become the most untrustworthy organisation in the UK. It is currently promising to levy a windfall tax on energy firms’ profits, but the evidence of the recent past tells us that this will not happen if that party – which used to represent Labour – takes office again under its current leadership.

So we get this:

Here’s that increase in money terms:

Sadly, we won’t get what we need under the party that Richard Burgon represents – the Substitute Tory Party that used to be called Labour.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has the same idea – because it is the right one:

But of course he has been kicked out of the Parliamentary Labour Party for having ideas that are far too sensible to ever be considered by Starmer and his Blue Labour layabouts.

The only answer that will break the deadlock is to support alternative parties and independent candidates who actually have policies that will bring wealth back to the majority of the people, rather than siphon it off into the hands of people who already have too much.

Ah, but then we run into all those idiots who think Starmer’s identikit Tory policies are an alternative, the morons who reckon tactical voting in favour of whichever party came second last time will get the Tories out next time, and the lunatics who will still believe none of this affects them while their house is being repossessed.

These are the reason the UK is in such a hopeless position. What are you doing about it?


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Finally, an inquiry into DWP deaths! (The news in tweets: Tuesday, July 25, 2023)

As seen on Twitter, and you can imagine the caption: if she drowns, she was disabled. If she doesn’t, she’s fit and doesn’t deserve any benefit.

MPs launch inquiry into DWP’s failure to prevent deaths of thousands of disabled people

Don’t get your hopes up – this is only an inquiry by the House of Commons’ Work and Pensions Committee. The DWP will probably ignore anything it says.

But after a decade, it’s a start:

According to John Pring, over at Disability News Service:

The Commons work and pensions committee will investigate if DWP has a duty to safeguard “vulnerable people”, and if it does not, whether it should.

It is set to take evidence from coroners who have heard inquests into the deaths of claimants, lawyers who have taken legal cases against DWP, and the families of claimants who have died.

It is set to be the first serious public investigation into safeguarding at DWP since reports of deaths first began emerging in the early years of the 2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission promised to carry out an inquiry into links between DWP’s work capability assessment and the deaths of claimants, but it was heavily criticised after it dropped those plans.

Ministers have repeatedly refused to commission any kind of inquiry, or ignored calls to set one up, despite years of evidence that DWP’s actions have led to hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths.

This Site – Vox Political – played a huge role in publicising the deaths. I was the campaigner who got the unexplained deaths of 2,400 people onto the front pages of the national daily newspapers in August 2015.

Nothing was done about those deaths, of course.

And while I applaud Labour’s Debbie Abrahams and even Nigel Mills of the Tory Party for managing to secure even this limited inquiry, I won’t hold my breath waiting for anything useful to come of it.

The best chance, I think, is if as many family members of deceased disability benefit claimants contact the Work and Pensions Committee and demand to be heard as possible.

If you are one such person, please do so by following the link above.

Pro-Israel pressure group influenced Unite union boss to cancel screening of Jeremy Corbyn film and book talk in its buildings

This is very awkward for Unite and its general secretary Sharon Graham in particular.

It seems the union has bowed to pressure from the false “charity” calling itself the Campaign Against Antisemitism to ban showings of Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie and appearances by author Asa Winstanley to discuss his book, Weaponising Antisemitism.

On what grounds?

The claim in the CAA’s tweet – that the film is about “antisemitism-denial” – is false. We know that because lawyers for the Glastonbury Festival examined it and pronounced it safe to screen. The festival’s organisers still pulled it from their schedules – apparently because the CAA pressurised one of their sponsors to pressure them.

One has to question what this organisation does. Considering the way accusations of anti-Semitism have been weaponised beyond the point at which merely being accused is enough to harm anybody for life, This Writer is considered that Unite and its leaders may have been told to cancel the event or be smeared as anti-Semites themselves.

I wonder whether the facts of the matter will ever be known.

I certainly think the organisers of the Bristol event should be told. And then they should tell the rest of us, so we can judge for ourselves what kind of organisation the CAA is and whether it deserves to retain its charity status, considering the way its behaviour seems to be geared towards restricting free speech for political purposes.

Consider the content of the following tweet and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a reason to disagree:

Keir Starmer’s Shadow Chancellor is a liar: if she can’t tell the truth about Ken Loach’s expulsion from Labour, how can we trust her on the economy?

The reason Mr Loach was expelled from the Labour Party has never been divulged – even to Mr Loach himself, if This Writer recalls correctly. That’s probably because there wasn’t any reason for it at all.

On the other hand, Reeves famously reverse Nancy Astor, who really was an anti-Semite. James Foster is referring to that in his tweet.

So she’s a hypocrite as well as a liar.

British Gas profits to hit record levels after Ofgem raised the energy price cap

Both Labour and the Tories think this price-gouging by a privatised national utility firm is absolutely fine when millions of UK citizens are struggling to pay their gas bills.

Do you think it is?

The UK’s richest people are £438 billion richer than 10 years ago. Now you know where all your money went

The Tories’ greatest achievement: making you think you have to wait longer for a GP appointment because there’s no money for the NHS

Remember: the NHS in England is struggling due to lack of funding since 2010, and the richest people in the UK are £438 billion richer due to Conservative government policies over the last 10 years.

Do you think there might possibly be a connection?

As privatised rail firms cut ticket offices in the UK, the government give £680m for electric railway in Turkey

This is privatisation for you. Most of the money from the UK’s privatised rail system goes out of the country in profits for its foreign owners. And now the Tory government is using even more of our money to build a railway abroad:

There’s very little investment in UK rail, of course. And the public – that’s you and me – is subsidising this failure massively.

At last people are starting to speak out against UK politicians’ failures

Read this:

I draw your attention to it because both Jeremy Corbyn have been driven out of Keir Starmer’s political party (although admittedly, Mr Corbyn is still a member, he is not allowed to be in the Parliamentary Labour Party).

They have found their voices and are speaking out against the injustices they see – from both the Conservatives and their own former political homes.

So the question is: how long are you going to hang your head below the parapet? Just until it’s too late?


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Racist police assault black woman (the news in tweets, Monday, July 24, 2023)

It seems the Metropolitan Police have refused to reform after being found to be institutionally racist and sexist:

So, according to the police, the woman refused to comply and became abusive after being asked to prove she had paid her fare – but we’re seeing no evidence of that. Do the police have such evidence? Let’s see it.

Without any evidence, this is exactly what it appears to be: police physically assaulting a woman of colour for no reason (she had paid her fare).

Even if she did behave in the way the Met describes, we would need to hear her reasons for doing so. At the moment, any black woman has the perfect excuse in the fact that the Met Police have been found to be institutionally racist and sexist, anyway!

Independent MP Claudia Webbe described the incident as “Outrageous.

“The most disrespected person is the Black woman. The most unprotected person is the Black woman. The most neglected person is the Black woman.

“The Met Police is the boot of the state; they do not care about Black people and Black women in particular.”

Pamela Fitzpatrick added a political element: “This is disgusting. Handcuffing and arresting a mum in front of her very distressed child. Completely disproportionate. Police turned a blind eye to senior politicians partying at Downing street during COVID. But a mum they allege didn’t pay a bus fare is treated like this.”

And the following is directly to the point, being a direct comparison between a black woman who has not broken the law and a white woman who has:

You know what, though? More than anything else, the incident reminded me of this:

I have a terrible feeling that a blind eye will be turned to what happened to the woman from the bus, just as it is habitually turned towards the plight of Palestine.

I wonder also, what is Israel’s excuse for attacking Palestinians at worship?

Labour abandons the triple-lock on state pensions

There is no justification for this; it seems to be just another sign of Keir Stürmer doing the bidding of his right-wing, Establishment bosses:

The National Policy Forum of the STP (Substitute Tory Party – formerly known as Labour) also confirmed Stürmer’s rejection of free school meals and support of the two-child limit on Child Benefit, which means Labour will extend these Conservative government policies, if it ever gets into office under his leadership.

Also rejected is any return for Sure Start centres, one of Tony Blair’s most widely-praised policies.

The decisions have been widely condemned:

Why would a policy like the triple-lock be “uncosted”? It has been a part of government spending for many years now and the STP should have included it in its forecasts.

Rhodes evacuation highlights UK politicians’ extremism on migrants and climate change

This is extremely awkward for politicians in the UK who have outlawed the arrival in our country of people in small boats, fleeing disaster in their own countries – particularly those from Albania:

The most likely cause of the wildfires is climate change, with scientists predicting a 14 per cent increase in them by 2030, and a 30 per cent increase by 2050. All parts of the world apart from the Antarctic will be affected – including the Arctic.

But the denial machine has already swung into action:

British tourists have explained what happened on video – and the contrast between the way they have been treated and the way the UK government treats people coming to our country is huge:

Unite union cancels screening of movie about bad-faith attacks on socialists. Why?

The screening had been set to take place at Tony Benn House in Bristol, along with a talk by Electronic Intifada‘s Asa Winstanley on his book, Weaponising Antisemitism.

The statement by Unite Community says, “It is ironic that an event focussing on the suppression of legitimate political opinions should itself become the victim of censorship, and that this should happen in a building named in honour of one of Bristol’s greatest champions of free speech.”

There seems to be something poisonous eating away the heart of the UK’s largest trade union.


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The news in tweets: Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Is Jamie Driscoll’s crowdfund the dawn of a new model of politics?

Some seem to think so:

In fact it is more the continuation of a democratisation of politics that we’ve been seeing on the social media for several years.

Long-term followers of This Site will remember when I started the CrowdJustice fund to fight Rachel Riley’s lawsuit against me. I started by hoping for £5,000 by the end of the first month – and had it within a single day.

That was in 2019, and my public profile even then was much smaller than Jamie Driscoll’s is now.

The corporate bosses of the social media platforms have since tried to squash independent, left-wing news and politics sites out of public view but Mr Driscoll, being already highly-visible, has been able to avoid such censorship (so far).

It will be up to his supporters to keep it that way – and we can all expect a strong backlash from the Establishment that wants someone like Kim McGuinness (Labour’s just-announced candidate to be North East Mayor) to win:

Gosh. She loves the region and its people and wants to make the North East the home of real opportunity. For whom?

And hasn’t Mr Driscoll already done all of that? And isn’t he better-placed to continue all of that?

The only reason STP (Substitute Tory Party) leader Keir Starmer wanted to replace him is to change policies away from those that work for working-class people and towards something else.

In such circumstances, only a fool would support anyone but Jamie Driscoll.

Is Labour’s candidate selection process racist?

Read Mish Rahman’s statement and you will learn that, it seems, racism is alive and well in the STP (Keir Stürmer’s Substitute Tory Party), despite all the leader’s (false?) claims to have cleaned up the party’s act.

Mr Rahman says: “None of my fellow Bernie Grant Leadership Programme alumni have been selected. We were told the party would support us towards leadership positions as black and ethnic minority activists – yet after this longlisting process, nothing has changed.

“I was blocked for how I voted on the NEC in relation to the composition of party disciplinary structures, following the EHRC report… Being blocked for casting a vote in a democratic process should be a serious concern for all of us in the Labour Party.”

So: not only racism but also totalitarianism. Stürmer’s party hates democracy.

What else are we supposed to conclude from this?

Doubletalk and bafflegab over Labour’s child poverty betrayal

The pundits are out in force, trying to smooth over – or emphasise – the mistake Keir Stürmer’s STP (Substitute Tory Party) has made in refusing to promise to lift the two-child limit on Child Benefit claims.

Some (mostly representatives of the party leadership) are trying to support the decision on the grounds that changing the limit is unaffordable:

Others are attacking it – while still saying Stürmer’s party should get our vote in upcoming elections:

The debate reached ridiculous levels when STP right-winger John McTernan appeared on the BBC’s Newsnight to ask, if the two-child limit on Child Benefit is abolished, where will it end? Scrapping the punitive Benefit Cap? Abolishing Universal Credit and it’s five-week delay in paying claimants?

He said this as though those outcomes would be bad things; they’re not. Watch:

Oh, so the plan is to lift children out of poverty via an improved economy. But Stürmer has no economic policies that are intended to do that – or even like to achieve it by accident; no consequence of any mythical improved economic performance are set to be channelled into a better quality of life for working people under a Stürmer-run government.

In fact, we don’t know what such a government would do, because we are simply not being told.

We can only echo the words of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn – a man who explained very well exactly what he would have done if elected to form a government:

The simple fact is that Stürmer could find more than enough cash to support the proposed Child Benefit change, by reversing Conservative tax system tinkerings. For example:

Nobody should vote for any candidate – on Thursday (July 20, 2023) or at any other time – just because they have a Labour Party logo next to their name. Without knowing what the organisation behind that banner now intends to do, it would be foolish in the extreme.

Instead – if you want to elect someone with policies equivalent to those for which the Labour Party was originally formed – standing up for the people who do the work – you need to support the Independents who used to be Labour members but have left because their politics and those of Keir Stürmer and his cronies have diverged.

We all know about Jamie Driscoll, whose election for North East Mayor isn’t until next year.

But there’s also Rosie Mitchell, standing as an Independent in Somerton and Frome on Thursday.

And there are two other by-elections on the same day. Who are the candidates there who stand for what you need?

Sign the petition to end protection for climate-change polluters


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