Category Archives: Violence

Detainees with weapons cause disturbance at immigration centre

The scene of the action: Harmondsworth immigration removal centre.

A power outage at a London immigration removal centre seems to have given detainees the opportunity to cause trouble.

According to the BBC,

a group of detainees left their rooms and went into the courtyard at the immigration centre armed with various weaponry.

Police officers arrived at 7.45am and Prison Service officers were also there. The detainees involved were returned to their rooms and nobody was injured.

But why did it happen?

Was the incident connected with complaints about the Manston immigrant processing centre, a concentration camp in Kent where conditions were compared with prison by one inmate who wrote a message in a bottle and managed to pass it to the press.

The chief inspector of prisons reported filthy cell toilets, problems with pests and dilapidated communal showers.

Other concerns raised included high levels of vulnerability among detainees, people assessed to be at risk of harm being held for too long and detainees being locked in their cells during lunch and overnight.

Diseases including diphtheria are also said to be present, but the sick – along with people who are pregnant – were said to be treated with nothing more than Paracetomol, according to the ‘message in a bottle’.

And this small disturbance kicked off, the instant the power went down.

Earlier this year, the UK was facing the threat of widespread power cuts due to low fuel supplies.

That threat seems to have subsided now, but what if it hadn’t? How many more such disturbances would we have been facing – and how bad would they have been?

The people involved in this one were said to have had weapons – what exactly were they and how did these people come to have them?

Even if we had the answers to these questions, it seems clear that there are many reasons for concern here.

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Mealy-mouthed response from Labour’s Streeting after Israelis shoot Palestinian reporter dead

Wes Streeting: it’s all jolly fun in Israel for him.

Apartheid-denier Wes Streeting has been caught in a cleft stick.

He’s currently in Israel on a paid junket, enjoying the hospitality of the right-wing government there that has been inflicting apartheid on the persecuted people of Palestine for many years.

Of course, there’s not a single word of criticism against this cruelty by Labour Friends of Israel member Streeting.

And then a Palestinian reporter was shot in the head by Israeli troops and died – and Streeting had nothing to say about it.

Condemnation has been widespread (where people have been made aware of what happened and of Streeting’s decision to ignore it). Here‘s Skwawkbox‘s take on it:

As the world reeled at horrific footage after [Shireen] Abu Akleh was shot in the head with what appeared to an exploding ‘butterfly’ bullet of the type used by Israeli soldiers, Streeting and LFI posted a string of images of him smiling with Israeli government officials – each of which prompted disgusted responses by Twitter users challenging the appropriateness of the visit and the apparent lack of interest on the part of either Streeting or LFI in condemning the country’s murder of journalists – over fifty in recent years – or reporting on any challenge to the government officials about the actions of their troops.

Visit that site’s story for tweets that are critical of Streeting’s – and Labour’s – response.

But worse was to follow.

At the journalist’s funeral, Israeli forces took it upon themselves to invade the procession and beat the casket-bearers:

This time, Streeting took it upon himself to tweet the sickeningly on-the-fence comment, “Absolutely awful and distressing.”

He didn’t say what was awful and distressing; his comment was carefully-worded to avoid any criticism of the Israeli authorities. Some may say this is because they are his hosts at the moment. Some may say it is because he tacitly supports the violence here. His equivocation lays him open to that.

And that means that Streeting and the Labour Party may now be slammed for failing to condemn this double atrocity – and they have been, as follows:

Labour leader Keir Starmer has had nothing to say for himself about the shocking events – although in fairness he did sum up the courage to retweet a comment by David Lammy:

But it doesn’t add up to the condemnation of Israeli government and armed brutality that the situation requires. Starmer can’t even muster up the courage to admit that Israel is an apartheid state.

The message for people in the UK should be clear.

If Labour can’t take a stand against persecution and brutality in a foreign country, there’s absolutely no way a Labour government will stand against persecution and brutality here in the UK.

Source: Streeting, LFI slammed for happy tweets from Israel with no mention of murdered journalist – SKWAWKBOX

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#BloodySunday hypocrisy by UK politicians who want murderers to go unpunished

Yesterday – January 30, 2022 – the UK commemorated the deaths of 13 people who were murdered by UK soldiers during a civil rights demonstration on what became known as Bloody Sunday.

But This Writer doubts the sincerity of some of those who have mouthed tributes – like Boris Johnson and his Labour Party counterpart, Keir Starmer.

Here’s the reason:

Agreed?

One of those who has consistently been on the right side of history in this respect is Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who would never have allowed the Tory amnesty Bill to go unopposed.

Here he is, speaking against it at a 50th anniversary commemoration event:

Shockingly, Mr Corbyn has been attacked by zealots who appear to be selective in their reading of history; they say he is choosing only to attack atrocities by supporters of the Union while supporting those of the nationalists.

This whataboutery is simply untrue. He has deplored all acts of violence – by both sides. As a pacifist, that is his position.

And we would not have had the lasting peace in Northern Ireland since 1998 without the work he did keeping lines of communication open between all political sides in the Troubles. Meanwhile, successive Tory governments were talking with terrorists, lying about it to the public, and getting nowhere.

But Mr Corbyn, who worked hard for peace and justice, is demonised while Johnson and Starmer’s desire for murderers to go unpunished goes unmentioned by the media.

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Lessons weren’t learned from #BabyP and they won’t be learned after #ArthurLabinjoHughes either

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes: if lesson’s had really been learned from the death of Peter Connelly – Baby P, Arthur would be alive today.

Did you hear Boris Johnson insincerely telling the nation, “What we’ve got to make sure now is that we learn the lessons” from the death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes?

It’s what they always say after a tragedy like this. And they never honour the pledge.

We know this because of Baby P.

Remember Peter Connelly? His death happened in strikingly similar circumstances to that of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes.

He died after suffering more than 50 injuries inflicted by his mother, her partner and his brother over an eight-month period during which he had been repeatedly seen by children’s services officers from his local council and by NHS health professionals.

After the killers were convicted, then-children’s minister Tim Loughton said children were safer than before: “It would be in everyone’s interest – the families and the professionals involved – if we can learn lessons, find closure and move on.”

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes suffered multiple injuries inflicted by his father and his partner over a period of months during which he also had been visited by social services officers from his local council.

And now Boris Johnson rocks up to say we all need to “learn the lessons”:

Either it isn’t going to happen or it isn’t going to make any difference.

Baby P’s death triggered three inquiries and a nationwide review of social services care, all of which provided lengthy and detailed reports on how children could be better safeguarded.

But here we are, 14 years later – a long enough period of time for those changes to become ingrained into these services – and a child has died for almost exactly the same reasons as Baby P.

Nothing was learned at all.

Johnson has ordered an inquiry from which nothing will be learned at all.

Just think for a moment about what former Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield had to say about it: “For anyone who looks at the serious case reviews, or hears about them, that come after a child’s death, you will see the same things coming up time and time again – missed opportunities, lack of co-ordination, lack of data-sharing – the things that professionals need to have at hand to be able to protect these children, which still aren’t in place.”

Why aren’t they in place?

This Writer has a feeling there’s a very simple answer: funding cuts.

The year after the last report on Baby P was published, the Conservatives came into government in coalition with the Liberal Democrats – and local authority budgets were slashed to the bone.

It must be extremely difficult for any social services department to integrate complicated new procedures into its staff when bosses don’t know how many staff members they’re likely to have from one year to the next, or personnel quit because they can’t make ends meet, or they are deprived of the tools they need to do the job – or because of other reasons This Writer is unlikely to know.

So I reckon Johnson must have been happy he was speaking behind a mask, so none of us could see his forked tongue.

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#Labour councillors crossed a #picket line they should have been joining. Here’s the shameful reason [VIDEO]

The Labour Party is supposed to represent workers and working-class people, especially if they are struggling for decent pay, in-work benefits and pensions, as part of its reason for existing – wouldn’t you agree?

Members of the University and College Union have been striking in a dispute that is partly over the management and financing of the University Superannuation Scheme (USS), which provides pensions to the UK’s older universities as well as research institutes and academic thinktanks, and partly over low pay and issues including insecure fixed-term contracts used to employ an increasing number of teaching staff.

So why did Labour councillors in Sheffield not only cross a picket line but, in one case, apparently assault a picketer?

It seems a meeting of Labour-led Sheffield City Council had been scheduled to take place in a university building – during the strike, which seems extremely insensitive of a Labour-run organisation.

These councillors were attending a pre-meeting, and it seems they crossed the picket line to do so, attracting cries of “Scab!” from some of the picketers. That’s how the incident came to take place.

Sheffield UCU subsequently released a statement:

For those who can’t read images, it says:

“Today, the majority of Labour councillors entered a University of Sheffield building for a pre-meeting, and in doing so, walked past striking members of Sheffield UCU. Along with UCU members from 57 other HE institutions across the UK, today is our first day of strike action in our dispute over rampant precarity, unhealthy workloads, equal pay, and substantial cuts to our pay and pensions. These are issues that we trust would be of particular importance to the Labour party.

“We do not condone the use of university buildings during strike action, and when we learned of this meeting, had worked with the Sheffield Students Union to find an alternative location in the Students Union next door, which is treated as neutral ground during industrial action.

“We are extremely disappointed that any member of the Labour party would choose to cross past striking union members, despite being given an opportunity to support our action by simply relocating their pre-meeting to a nearby building. We understand that at this pre-meeting, the Labour members took a vote and were determined to not attend the later, full council meeting. This decision does not negate their previous choice to do so, but we are pleased they made the correct choice in the end.

“We appreciate the solidarity of those Labour, Green, and Lib Dem council members who chose to not enter the building.”

Yes indeed. Apparently the alternative, Student Union, building was turned down by councillors because they thought it was too small for social distancing.

That doesn’t excuse the Labour Party from having scheduled a meeting to take place at the university during strike action, though.

What were they thinking?

And isn’t this typical of Labour Party policy at the moment – that the challenges faced by workers and working-class people are increasingly overlooked by career politicians who are more concerned with keeping their positions as members of the Establishment?

If that’s the political position occupied by Keir Starmer’s Labour, then it is worse than useless to the people for whom that party was originally formed.

Labour Exploitation Party. They climb to the heights by walking all over us.

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Javid’s vaccination coercion will increase NHS staff shortages

Covid Javid: he’s trying to force something into the bodies of frontline NHS staff. Many will see this as a form of attempted rape – which it is – and quit. And NHS staffing will worsen. Wouldn’t it be better simply to change their jobs so unvaccinated people aren’t on the front line?

We could all see this coming. For a party that insists it values choice above all things, the Tories love forcing people to accept what they don’t want.

So Sajid Javid is forcing all NHS frontline workers to have Covid-19 vaccination injections, whether they want them or not.

We have discussed this subject previously on This Site. I made it perfectly clear that I am double-jabbed – and I intend to have the booster injection when it is offered to me, even though I know it will make me feel very ill for several days.

Nevertheless, I was attacked as an anti-vaxxer by several ignorant souls after I stated that this has been my personal choice, and there is no possible argument strong enough to rob other people of their own choice.

Javid cannot force people to have the injection. That would be forcing them to have a foreign object inside their body against their will, which is analogous to rape. I do not use the comparison lightly and anybody who criticises another person for making it fails to understand the seriousness of the issue here.

The alternative to taking the injection, it seems, is expulsion from the National Health Service.

Who does that help?

It won’t help patients because there will be fewer staff available to treat them and waiting lists will become longer.

It will help those who want to privatise the NHS altogether because they’ll have a stronger (albeit as false as ever) argument that it cannot cope and private firms should be brought in to take up the slack.

Is that Javid’s ulterior motive? Probably.

A simpler solution would be to move staff who won’t accept the injection away from frontline duties. That would be the safer option for all concerned in any event and should have happened as soon as a vaccine became available. I wonder why nobody has bothered to implement it until now.

Other staff could have been trained up – or hired in (remember, the NHS currently has a shortage of many thousands of nurses and doctors).

If a solution isn’t found and people are forced to choose between the injection and the loss of their job, then that will be coercion and I would strongly encourage victims of such intimidation to take the Health Secretary to court for attempting the criminal activity named above.

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Is negative reporting from the right-wing press fueling assaults on Insulate Britain?

Ink today – what tomorrow? This 77-year-old ex-doctor is afraid of what the next member of the public will do to him and/or his colleagues – and papers like the Mail are egging on the attackers.

Yes, it’s annoying when your driving experience is disrupted by people who have superglued themselves to the road to draw attention to life-threatening issues including climate change – but that doesn’t justify assaulting them by throwing ink in their faces.

But here‘s the Daily Heil showing off its worst fascistic tendencies by venerating some music promoter for doing just that.

It seems

Andrew Dutton was filmed calmly walking along the line of the protestors sat in the middle of the road and spraying them with ink as they blocked traffic yesterday.

The 38-year-old from Harlow, Essex, who works with bands and arranges concerts, later told friends he lost his temper after asking the protestors to move from the A40 in North Acton, West London, to allow an emergency vehicle through – only for them to refuse and stay put.

I’m not buying that. Insulate Britain activists have a standing rule to let emergency vehicles through.

As Steve Gower said when This Writer interviewed him,

We’ve had accusations of not letting ambulances through. There’s footage – I’m in one of the clips actually, where we let an ambulance through. That is the policy of Insulate Britain – to let any blue light through our barricade.

The Mail‘s report shows footage of Dutton assaulting the protesters with the ink – with not a single emergency vehicle in sight. So I have a couple of doubts about the claim made about him (it turns out his friends told the right-wing rag about the alleged ambulance, not him).

The piece is highly supportive of the aggressor. Besides the ambulance allegation, it said his friends had hailed him as a “hero” and the protesters – who want better insulation for social housing, to stop people from dying of the cold in their own homes and to help tackle climate change – as an “eco mob”.

The result is that these people are scared. This tweet, and the embedded video, sums up the situation:

We’ve recently seen footage of a woman who tried to run over Insulate Britain activists in her Range Rover because she wanted to drive her son to school. Commenters have questioned why he couldn’t walk.

The hypocrisy is palpable. Only days ago, politicians were calling for “respect” and for people to stop fuelling the kind of “hatred” that led to the death of Tory MP Sir David Amess.

After Tory MPs were criticised for letting water companies pump raw human waste into our rivers and other waterways, they whinged – falsely – that they were being attacked with hate speech.

But when people are confronted by someone with a cause to promote, suddenly it’s okay to roll a Range Rover over them or spray ink into their eyes?

That is the message the Mail is putting out.

And the Tories must be delighted because once again, they have succeeded in getting people to squabble with others instead of casting a critical eye over the many faults of our (Tory) government.

The protesters involved are afraid – but they aren’t going to stop because they know people have already died because they lived in badly-insulated homes and they know that it will happen to others if they don’t succeed in prodding the government to act.

The – video – evidence shows they are right to be afraid.

What happens if one of them ends up suffering serious injury? What if, next time, it’s – well, I’m not going to put ideas in the heads of the irresponsible.

Will the reporter who penned the Mail piece turn himself in for possibly having incited it?

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Chris Packham’s house firebombed – because he campaigns for conservation?

Inferno: the exploding Land Rover damaged the gates beyond repair.

At a time of worldwide animal extinctions and potentially irreparable damage to the ecosystem, what kind of psychopath firebombs the house of a conservationist who campaigns to save our wildlife?

Shockingly, masked intruders parked a Land Rover outside a Hampshire house belonging to TV naturalist Chris Packham last weekend and set fire to it. This was the day before he was due to deliver a 100,000-signature petition to Buckingham Palace, calling for the Royal Family to conserve nature on Crown estates and to reintroduce species like beavers and wild boar.

Mr Packham himself has attributed the attack to online trolls:

He said: “These people are angry at some of the things that I campaign against.” He campaigns against the wilful destruction of our natural environment! How can anybody be angry about that?

Sadly, This Writer can understand and sympathise with much of his experience with online trolls.

It is very easy to whip up extreme hatred on (for example) Twitter. I’m currently fighting a court case against another TV personality, who claims that her own behaviour on that platform didn’t encourage her Twitter followers to bully and intimidate a teenage girl with mental health problems. My question is simple: if she didn’t focus her followers on that girl, who does she say did?

Mr Packham says the social media companies have done nothing to enable justice or prevent hatred from being whipped up, and I am (again) inclined to agree.

But the Tory government is (allegedly) putting legislation through Parliament to change that. The Online Harms Bill will propose penalties for such behaviour.

I am eagerly awaiting it. Depending on what measures are finally imposed, it may be the best thing this Tory government does.

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Duncan Smith is attacked with traffic cone – and gets no sympathy

Don’t play the victim, Iain: This is the man who inflicted Universal Credit and the Bedroom Tax on the UK, and whose other benefit policies caused thousands of deaths.

This Site does not approve of violence in any way shape of form; I must make that clear at the outset.

Because it is telling that reports of an assault in which former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith was hit on the head with a traffic cone have been met with applause and humour, rather than condemnation.

The former army officer, whose time as Work and Pensions Secretary led to the recorded – unnecessary – deaths of thousands of people (and, it is believed, the unrecorded deaths of hundreds of thousands more), was branded “RTU” by this site.

It refers to the mark of failure in officer training: “Return To Unit”.

Duncan Smith told the Spectator magazine: “I can’t tell you very much other than they just followed us, used abusive language, attacked us and used a cone.

“I have to say I would have very nearly been done for assault myself. I turned after them and they sort of backed off and I dropped the cone.

“They were shouting all along and then they smashed the cone on the back of my head, and so I turned and grabbed the cone and looked at them, and I took a pace towards them and they backed off.”

Yes, all right RTU, if you say so.

Meanwhile, on Twitter:

Oh, and for those who will insist that any of the above shows that left-wing politics is about abuse and violence, let’s just have a little reminder of something that happened a while ago…

… and that it seems Tory men are behaving in the same way now:

Source: Five arrested after Iain Duncan Smith ‘hit on head with traffic cone’ | UK news | The Guardian

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No justice for anybody as Tories announce blanket amnesty for crimes in NI ‘Troubles’

Northern Ireland: I’ve chosen not to publish a representative picture of the Troubles for reasons of taste.

Boris Johnson’s government has confirmed that it is planning to end all prosecutions relating to crimes committed during the so-called ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland.

The decision has been widely condemned. It seems the government has set out to upset everybody except the criminals among both the security forces and paramilitary groups.

Groups representing the victims, together with representatives of the executive parties at Northern Ireland’s Stormont government, have expressed their opposition.

It seems victims’ groups haven’t even been consulted.

Labour leader Keir Starmer raised the issue during Prime Minister’s Questions today (July 14): “I worked in Northern Ireland for six years with the Policing Board and the police and I have prosecuted terrorists as the Director of Public Prosecutions, so I know how difficult and sensitive the issue is. But a blanket amnesty, including for terrorists, is plain wrong.

“It is absolutely clear that the Government’s amnesty is not supported by the political parties in Northern Ireland and it is not supported by victims’ groups. Last Thursday, I spoke to victims of terrorism at the WAVE Trauma Centre in north Belfast; they have not even been properly consulted on the proposal.

“If things are to move forward in Northern Ireland, any discussion has to start with the victims. Politicians in London cannot simply draw a line under terrorism and other crimes and then force it on those most affected.”

He quoted Julie Hambleton, whose sister was among the 21 people killed in the Birmingham pub bombings, and who said: “Tell me Prime Minister, if one of your loved ones was blown up beyond recognition, where you were only able to identify your son or daughter by their fingernails…would you be so quick to grant their murderers an amnesty and propose such obscene legislation?”

Johnson had no comfort for Ms Hambleton – and admitted it: “Nothing I say or can do now can in any way mitigate her loss.”

But he said: “The people of Northern Ireland must, if we possibly can allow them to, move forwards now.

“There are many members of the armed services who continue to face the threat of vexatious prosecutions well into their 70s and 80s and later. We are finally bringing forward a solution to this problem to enable the Province of Northern Ireland to draw a line under the troubles.”

And he tried to turn the issue into an attack on Starmer by saying the plan had “a wide degree of support, if I may say so, from former Labour Prime Ministers and former Labour leaders who are of considerably more distinction than the right hon. and learned Gentleman”.

Is this true, fact checkers?

Johnson concluded: “Someone with greater statesmanship and clarity of vision would have seen that and given the proposals a fair wind.”

So, politicians who live and work in Northern Ireland – not to mention the victims of the crimes he is wiping off the record – lack statesmanship and clarity of vision, according to Johnson?

Forgive This Writer for putting forward an opinion on this matter, but it seems to me that Johnson is trying to put a stop to prosecutions – along with civil cases and inquests – because they seem too much like hard work and he can’t be bothered.

The BBC has reported that

Northern Ireland’s five main political parties, the Irish government and several victims’ groups have been highly critical of any suggested blanket ban on prosecutions for Troubles-era offences.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the “the proposals for an effective amnesty for Troubles-related crimes are totally unacceptable”.

Sinn Féin president Mary-Lou McDonald said … the move was “an act of absolute bad faith by the British government”.

Victims of the Ballymurphy shootings in 1971 also expressed anger over the reports.

[And] Amnesty International rejected the proposals as showing an “appalling and offensive disregard for victims”.

The only voice raised in support of the proposals was that of Lord Dannatt, a former Army chief, who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles – some of whose officers and men would have been under threat of prosecution if this amnesty does not happen.

And even he admitted that it “isn’t the solution to everyone’s problems”!

This is another back-of-a-fag-packet plan that reeks of Tory corruption. If they can’t make money out of a process, they simply aren’t interested.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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