Category Archives: Protest

Protesters take to bathing spots across the UK to highlight water firms’ sewage dumping

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You’ll agree with Feargal Sharkey in a moment:

Channel 4 News reported:

Demonstrations are taking place at bathing spots around the country in protest against the dumping of sewage into the country’s seas and rivers.

Campaigners say mismanagement by water companies has led to more than 300-thousand sewage discharges last year.

Earlier this week, the water industry apologised and promised it would invest 10 billion pounds to prevent more spills – but warned water bills would have to go up to cover the costs.

Here’s the video clip:

For This Writer, the most revealing moment was the interview with a swimmer who had been very ill as a result of swimming in polluted water. It acts as a counterpoint – and a reality check – after former Cabinet minister Damian Green said he swam in sewage as a youngster:

Suppose – just suppose – that Green’s words are true and he swam in sewage with no ill effects. He’s effectively saying that the amount and toxicity of the sewage being dumped in our rivers now is far worse than in his day and his words should be used in support of demands for our waterways to be cleaned.

Ah, but our waterways are going to be cleaned anyway, we’re told – but at our expense, meaning the privatisation of water was pointless in terms of service provision:

So the only point of privatisation is to funnel your money to rich shareholders.

Believe it or not, water industry spokesperson Ruth Kelly – a former Labour government minister – has tried to justify privatisation and attack re-nationalisation:

Convincing any of us will be uphill work; look at what’s been happening while her shareholders have been guzzling billions of pounds of our cash every year and doing nothing to make the sewage system able to handle the current load:

Will the protests have any effect? Probably not.

As Tony Benn once said (and I’m paraphrasing), people with any power over you don’t care what you do unless you’re actually able to get rid of them.

And much government activity since 1979 has been about making sure we, the public, can’t get rid of them.

If you want to do anything about it, demonstrating in bathing spots is a good way to raise awareness, sure…

But if you want to make a difference, you need to motivate the people lounging around on their sofas, watching you on TV.

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After police abused the new Public Order Act, above-the-law politicians won’t change it

A reminder: here’s Republic chief executive Graham Smith being arrested for not breaking any laws, by at least eight police officers.

There can’t be any doubt now that the big story of the Coronation weekend is the abuse of the new Public Order Act by police, to arrest and detain people who had every right to protest against a monarchy they do not want.

Graham Smith, chief executive of the anti-monarch group Republic, was jailed early on Saturday morning, on suspicion of conspiring to cause a public nuisance by disrupting the celebrations on London’s streets.

He has made it clear that neither he nor anybody else in his group had any intention to break the law.

Indeed, Republic has made it clear that it co-operated fully with the Metropolitan Police before the event even started:

Graham Smith, speaking for Republic on 3 May, said: “We have had two meetings with the Met police, and numerous phone conversations. They have repeatedly said they have no concerns about Republic’s plans.”

Mr Smith was released on Saturday but police retained his phone and luggage straps that they had claimed could have been used for “locking on” – attaching protesters to street furniture to cause disruption.

These items were returned on Monday evening, when officers admitted they were not able to find any reason to charge Mr Smith with a crime. Here are his comments:

Do you believe the claim of regret by the police? Richard Murphy, of Funding the Future, doesn’t:

I do not believe the police. Politely, they are asking us to believe in yet more fairytales if they expect us to think that these arrests were a mistake.

They announced zero tolerance of protest in advance of the coronation.

They got new powers enacted days in advance of the coronation to arrest without reason.

Republic had been completely open and honest about their intentions, I know. I get their emails. And so there was no new “intelligence” for the police to act on to justify their actions, as they and those seeking to excuse them (Ed Balls, I am looking at you) claimed. There was just a police conspiracy to appease Suella Braverman by showing zero tolerance that backfired spectacularly in both the UK and around the world.

And now they have not only had to eat humble pie, because their actions were so obviously unjustified and unjustifiable –  because not only was the protest peaceful but there was never a conspiracy that it should be anything else  – but they have now paved the way for rightful demands that use of this law be restricted until such time as it can be repealed.

The only impediment to that happening is Labour’s support for these laws – which looks most especially crass now.

I fear Mr Murphy’s hope for Labour may be forlorn. More on this below.

This morning (Tuesday, May 9), Mr Smith was interviewed by Kay Burley of Sky News, who did her level best to undermine his assertions – and he made mincemeat of her. Fair play to her for posting the clip, though!

This Writer cannot understand why Burley kept harping on about the cost of the Coronation. I had heard the £250m line too – and whether it cost that much or the more modest £100m figure that has been more widely-quoted, it’s still money that could have been put to better use in a country whose people are struggling financially because the government has sucked all the money out of it.

And she was unable to stop Mr Smith from making his point that “there was no evidence of any intent or capacity to commit any offence” and “no suggestion of wrongdoing… at all”.

While Burley was putting forward a pro-Establishment view, other journalists went very strongly the other way. Here’s Michael Crick – and I know he’s problematic too, but his words are worth hearing – on LBC:

Sadly, it doesn’t matter what the commenterati say about it; the political elite in Westminster have closed ranks to deny that anything untoward happened at all – and they certainly won’t consider revising or repealing the vague law that allowed this scandal to happen.

Here’s prime minister Rishi Sunak. First he said he supported what the police did:

“The police are operationally independent of Government, they’ll make these decisions based on what they think is best,” he told broadcasters in Hertfordshire.

“Actually I’m grateful to the police and everyone who played a part in ensuring that this weekend has gone so well, so successfully and so safely, that was an extraordinary effort by so many people and I’m grateful to them for all their hard work.”

Then he repeated his assertions to TV reporters:

It’s interesting that Sunak claimed the arrests were “operational decisions made by the police at the time”. I wonder if we can have that confirmed? I’ll try to contact the Met and see what response I get.

Meanwhile, here’s Tory MP Peter Bone, who supports his prime ministers point of view, having his derriere turned into burger meat and handed back to him by Marina Purkiss:

So much for the Tory point of view.

And what about Labour?

Lisa Nandy, on the morning media round, made it clear that her party sides with the Tories and repeated the assertion (although not in as many words) that Labour wants to be able to clamp down on protesters just as hard as the Tories appear to have done:

Even Barry Gardiner, usually excellent at presenting his party in a reasonable light, struggled in a discussion of the scandal on the BBC’s Politics Live:

And what does Labour think of Republic, and the right of anti-monarchists to be able to present their point of view?

Admittedly, party MPs have protested:

John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, questioned the rules this week, saying: “I can’t see that allowing local parties to participate in groups like these is going to bring down civilisation as we know it.

“A form of institutional paranoia has emerged in the higher echelons of the party’s bureaucracy which has led to a level of control-freakery in relation to the activities of local CLPs which borders on farce.”

Another MP and former shadow frontbencher, Clive Lewis, who will address anti-monarchy protesters staging a demonstration against the coronation in London on Saturday, said he had “serious misgivings” about the rule preventing affiliation with Republic, adding there was a long history of branches having relationships with democratic campaigning organisations.

Lewis said: “It feels wrong, and sits uncomfortably with me. I think a lot of people will find it problematic, even people who are going to be supportive of the coronation and the king. Many of them will also be people who believe in freedom of speech, freedom of expression and having an open, honest political debate about the future of this country.

“If you join the Labour party, you often joined because you want to make a difference to make your country better, and those are the kind of people who will want to ask questions about the kind of democracy we have.”

But Starmer seems to feel he has to act this way because it might win him some votes – despite the fact that it makes him (yet again) a hypocrite:

Labour under Keir Starmer’s leadership has attempted to underline its patriotism in order to reconnect with voters in “red wall” seats. In the past, Starmer had advocated abolishing the monarchy.

Meanwhile…

Yes, littering is indeed a crime, but it seems nobody has been punished for it.

Instead, the police concentrated their resources on persecuting people who had not broken the law at all.

It really is the big story of the weekend: supporters of the monarchy attacked, arrested, and imprisoned dozens of people on the day their icon was crowned – not for any crime, but simply for having a different point of view.

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Starmer’s party has joined the fascists – it WON’T end Tory anti-protest law

David Lammy: he won’t stand up for your freedom and neither will Keir Starmer’s Labour.

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party will not reverse the Tory law that allowed police to arrest 64 people on the day of King Charles’s coronation – on suspicion that they might express anti-monarchist views in a way that other people might see.

That was the extent of their crime – if it can even be described as such. The police thought they might express a viewpoint that the State did not support, and that other people might notice.

Yes, there are claims that people were found equipped to glue themselves to street furniture in order to disrupt street activities – but this is the Metropolitan Police; it has lost all public trust or belief in its statements due to previous activities by its personnel which I do not believe I need to discuss here.

These are the police officers who arrested a group of people who are affiliated to them for handing out rape alarms to vulnerable women in Soho in the dead of night – on the pretence that they were going to set those alarms off and throw them at police horses. That shows how ridiculous their claims were.

There has been a public outcry against these draconian acts of suppression – quite rightly, because they are an expression of a fascist police state’s intent to crush any opposition to it. I put the argument in the strongest terms possible because I defy anybody to prove me wrong.

And the Starmer Party has gone full-fascist by supporting the new law.

David Lammy – who is the Shadow Foreign Secretary, bear in mind – said Starmer’s Labour would not repeal the Public Order Act, apparently because it doesn’t have time for it:

How strange. The Conservatives had time to pick apart any laws enacted by the previous Labour administration that actually helped people, during a five-year term in which they imposed unnecessary austerity on the UK that crippled the economy and invited unwanted private firms into the NHS, all while in an uneasy alliance with the Liberal Democrats.

But StarmerLabour doesn’t have time to halt the jackbooted march of fascism into this country – this nation that fought the totalitarianism that Lammy is welcoming now?

What a damning betrayal of the United Kingdom.

The Shadow Cabinet seems united in this betrayal: Shadow Minister for Public Health Andrew Gwynne told Andrew Castle on LBC that he was “all for freedom of speech” – except during the coronation, which he described as a “celebration”, “promoting British values across the world”.

So Gwynne’s idea of “British values” equates to suppression of free speech – never mind his claim that he’s “all for” freedom of speech later in the interview; he later added “but the coronation is a celebration,” and we all know that everything before the “but” is irrelevant.

Gwynne couldn’t care less about your right to oppose the coronation if you want to; his view is that it is a celebration of British values that include clamping down hard on free speech and arresting anybody who tries to express a dissenting opinion.

“Let’s wait and see what happens in the future as to whether this new law has properly curtailed people’s rights,” he said. So he considers it is “proper” for your rights to be “curtailed”.

These people give themselves away. See – and hear – for yourself:

And it’s not just protest that will get you arrested; journalists like myself could be detained for recording or filming it. Watch this, and take note of Labour Lord (yes, it seems there are still some voices of reason in that party) Prem Sikka’s comments:

In another tweet, Lord Sikka added: “Our rights were secured by protests/disobedience. Labour risks alienating its traditional voters. The country needs to jettison the toxic Tory policies, not perpetuate them.”

Also commenting on the clip, Richard Murphy of Funding the Future stated: “And Labour say they will not repeal the laws that allow our structurally racist and misogynistic (and so politically biased) police from doing this. What is happening to our democracy?”

On his website, Mr Murphy expanded on Labour’s betrayal of your universally-held human rights: “With a golden opportunity presented to him to make the news agenda and stand up for the inviolability rather than the conditionality of human rights, Lammy ducked it.

“What, after all, would a party born in the basis of protest want to do supporting the right of those who do so?

“And what, incidentally, is the “positive agenda” Labour will promote? Apparently it is growth, the cost of living and inflation. But inflation will go away anyway as it always does; Labour can do nothing about the cost of living unless it redistributes and it is already staying it will not; whilst on growth, we all know that the benefit of this will all go to those already wealthy.

“So, what is Labour for, now? I keep asking the question and still I can find no answer.”

It’s not for the unions any more – as seems clear from the following:

‘Tom London’ on Twitter also commented on the video clip: “‘Conspiracy to commit a public nuisance’ is an Orwellian phrase which can be used to cynically “justify” almost any arrest. The Tory Govt put this on the Statute Book knowing this. Starmer’s Party barely opposed. BBC and most of the rest of the media feebly nodded – or clapped.”

Other commentators, discussing the Starmer Party’s position, have universally opposed it. This is just one example:

We are left with a simple question: If Labour refuses to represent us, why should we vote for that party? Here’s Sue Jones:

There are still people in what’s left of the Labour Party who still support its founding values – like Prem Sikka (above) and Richard Burgon…

… but they are few and far between, and they are not in charge of party policy.

So there is no reason to support Keir Starmer and his cronies. Their only interest seems to be their own personal gain and their attitude to anyone who wants a country that works for everyone is that there’s nobody else to whom you can give your vote.

But is that right?

The results of last week’s local elections in England show that the electorate is becoming increasingly willing to vote with its feet, taking support away from traditional – tribal – options and handing it to parties that offer better options – or people they know they can trust.

There’s nothing to stop that happening in Westminster – especially when both StarmerLabour and the Conservatives present themselves as equally poor options.

And look what MPs can say when they’re released from the tyranny of the party whip. Here’s Claudia Webbe, who was thrown out of the Labour Party by the Starmer crowd:

It’s time for voters across the UK to take a hard look around and, if necessary, find an alternative to the elites in Westminster from among ourselves.

The corruption of the party in office – and its main rival – has gone too far for reasoned argument to halt it. The coronation day arrests and the way they were supported by Lammy and Gwynne make that perfectly clear.

So we have to find a better way.

Nobody ever achieved change by cowering at home and kowtowing to the thug with the truncheon.

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Was Keir Starmer complicit in removing our right to protest?

Keir Starmer: how does he feel about the UK monarchy? The flags might be a bit of a giveaway…

Once a pillar of the Establishment, always a pillar of the Establishment?

It seems that Keir Starmer could have stopped the Public Order Act that allowed the police to stop peaceful protests against the coronation of Charles III before they even happened – or at least delayed it.

But the evidence suggests that he decided not to:

If that’s right, then I can only agree with Richard Murphy’s comment on it:

The right to say, peacefully, that Charles was not a person’s chosen head of state was denied. And I hold Keir Starmer amongst those responsible for that. It might have been Tory legislation, but in the end Labour enabled it. We saw the consequence yesterday.

Source: The Tories might have removed the right to protest but Labour let it do so

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Anti-Monarchists should quit UK says Leeanderthal, after police target potential rape victims

Despicable: as the person who posted this image stated: “This will be the photo that goes around the world today. A peaceful protester handcuffed and arrested in Britain.”

Where would he send them – Rwanda?

Not happy with the arrests of 52 peaceful protesters, Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson thinks they should leave the UK of their own accord, presumably so forelock-tugging, kowtowing toadies like him can carry on bullying the rest of us with impunity.

He tweeted: “Not My King? If you do not wish to live in a country that has a monarchy the solution is not to turn up with your silly boards. The solution is to emigrate.”

Anderson’s complaint – essentially that anti-monarchists hate the UK and should therefore leave – is largely nonsense. Anti-monarchists mostly don’t even hate the members of the Royal Family (although there are one or two notable exceptions…).

Meanwhile, of course, we’re learning more about the behaviour of the police – who worked hard to protect the new King from people brandishing magazine covers, wearing t-shirts and holding placards…

… and, in the middle of the night before the coronation, the Metropolitan Police protected the King from a group of people who hand out rape alarms to women walking in Soho in the dark:

The police responded to the outcry the following day – but it is very easy to condemn the spokesperson’s words as nonsense:

It’s not believable, really, is it? The police heard that people being handed rape alarms were going to disrupt the Coronation procession at two o’clock in the morning when it wasn’t even happening, and this would scare their horses that weren’t even there?

There’s no point in checking whether any such intelligence really was received, of course. The Metropolitan Police Service has lost public trust to such a degree that nobody would believe the reality of any documentation it produces.

This Site reported yesterday that Republic’s chief executive, Graham Smith, was arrested before the coronation events began. He has since been released, and had this to say:

According to the BBC,

Scotland Yard said those arrested had been held on suspicion of affray, public order offences, breach of the peace and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance around the Coronation.

No doubt many Monarchists have applauded what they consider to be proportionate police action against dangerous subversives. But here’s an inconvenient truth:

The fear of this is already being instilled – in young people.

The implication is clear: our youngsters are being told that they are not important; their views do not count and if they try to express those views in any way they will be arrested and punished for a criminal offence.

They’re being told to accept their lot as drones working for the elites in Parliament and big business; that they must keep their heads down and do as they’re told.

And if they don’t like it, they can (try to) move to another country.

Would you accept that from your government, your monarchy, your police?

There is a ray of hope; some MPs take an alternative view to that of the Leeanderthal and are demanding an explanation of what happened:

Hopefully this will stimulate a debate.

But under Rishi Sunak’s fetid, corrupt government, do any of you seriously believe any statement we get will be worth the time we’ll have to waste listening to it?

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Coronation of King Charles is marred by anti-democratic PRE-arrests of protesters

Shame of the nation: police arrested opponents of the Monarchy before they even had a chance to protest the coronation of Charles III. Here, they were arresting Graham Smith, chief executive of the anti-Monarchist group Republic – and look how many of them were apparently needed to do it!

UK citizens who oppose the Monarchy were arrested before the coronation ceremony in shocking scenes that have made a mockery of democracy in this country and indicate that King Charles is truly the head of a fascist state.

This Writer sits vindicated. I warned this would happen and others denied it. Now it has come to pass.

Police used powers under the newly-passed Public Order Act, that were specially rushed into operation for the coronation, to suppress any opposition to the event.

Democratic nations do not lock up dissenters before they have even had a chance to voice their complaint.

But – well, see for yourself – and take note of the comments by the social media users posting about this:

Yes, the Home Secretary is responsible for this:

Listen to the vagueness of the warnings issued by police (and remember that they are “just following orders” as the saying goes:

Do you think that man’s words actually meant anything, considering what was to follow?

I tend to disagree with Dr Galsworthy. This is what Britain is, and what British police are. I’ve seen them used as political tools, ever since I was old enough to be aware of national events.

So I tend to side with Kerry-Anne, below:

We did indeed warn you. We’ve been warning you for more than a decade (in my case alone). Some of us have been warning you for much longer than that.

It is some comfort, at least, that some politicians are on the right side of history here:

Only 25 per cent? This draconian display has undoubtedly turned more of us against the status quo:

It is as Russ Jones (whose The Week In Tory has been a highlight of Twitter) states:

The arrests have backfired on those who arranged them because all they have achieved is more – and hopefully larger – protest:

Jeremy Corbyn – as ever – makes the most insightful point about this – the fact that the arrests show the majority of us are, by law, at the mercy of a tiny minority who have all the wealth, status and power, and that those who made the law that allows the arrests, together with those who are enforcing it, are not acting out of patriotism but despotism:

This Writer, staring in shock at the photographic evidence, briefly considered whether the newly-crowned King could smooth matters over with a statement deploring the heavy-handed treatment of UK citizens who had not committed a crime.

Sadly, even if he was inclined to do so, that would probably be considered unconstitutional. He’s not supposed to interfere in political matters – even if they are directly related to him.

In this, he is as much a puppet of the politicians in power as the rest of us. 

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The Coronation is bringing out the worst in SOME Britons

King Charles: does he really think people should be forced to seem happy, under threat of arrest if they display … alternative viewpoints?

I don’t know about you, but I’m already fed up with having jolliness forced on me because of the Coronation.

It isn’t because I’m an anti-monarchist; my attitude to the Monarchy is primarily indifference.

No, it’s because the occasion has brought out all the officious types who want to tell us what to do and how to feel.

So I agree with the sentiment below – although, like Wolfie, I’ve no idea who crystallised it.

For those who can’t read images, it states: “”Dear rest of the world.

“Don’t be fooled by any propaganda you see coming out of the UK this weekend. The mood here is not jubilant, it is sour. England is a fascist nightmare, where there are more food banks than branches of McDonalds. We don’t want pageantry, we want affordable food, and rent, and bills. The timing of this coronation, with all its gold and bejewelled opulence, couldn’t be more distasteful and sickening. It’s unjustifiable and it’s unwanted. If we’re asking God to save anyone it should be the 14.4 million people living in poverty, not the King.”

Needless to say, the comment has been disputed – by people who want to impose a happy mood on the rest of us.

I don’t think anyone should bother protesting against the coronation, though. There’s no point, with the fascist Public Order Act now in force and police empowered to arrest anyone expressing a dissenting point of view in public. Here’s an example of them using their new powers to do just that:

The Metropolitan Police have already said they are running a “multi-layered” security operation that includes “managing crowds” and “carrying out searches”, with “low” “tolerance” for “disruption”:

And they have the full support of some highly dubious public figures.

Here’s one:

I mean, wow.

Last I heard, even after the Public Order Act, here in the UK it is a principle of justice that someone has to actually commit a crime before they can be jailed.

And here’s another: prime minister Rishi Sunak once criticised the Chinese government for refusing to listen to protesters in that country, but apparently he thinks only people in foreign countries should pay any attention to protest; anyone taking issue with whatever’s going on in the UK now clearly needs to suffer a “clampdown”.

So, even though most of us have been driven into poverty by the Establishment that is propping up the Monarch, even though there will be “low tolerance” for anyone pointing this out and the police will be on hand to make sure we do as we’re told, and even though the money being spent on this event would be better-used helping the long-suffering people of the UK to survive…

We’re all supposed to be happy? Or else?

I’m not sure I can manage that.

Public Order Act: are you really happy for people to be arrested for walking slowly?

Police: mind how fast you walk, otherwise you’re nicked!

This Writer is not a massive fan of Just Stop Oil – some of that group have committed acts of vandalism that I can’t condone.

That being said, is there really a good reason for arresting these people because they’ve been walking slowly down a street?

Here’s what a vote for the Conservatives has achieved:

Who benefits?

The police don’t. They look like tinpot tyrants.

Any drivers who were held up by the slow walking? They don’t. They’ll have been stopped by the cops to give witness statements so that’s more time out of their day.

Suella Braverman? No. She comes across as a fascist.

The Tory government? Possibly – because more people know about the Public Order Act than have (so far) experienced how it works, and a proportion of them will approve of the idea of punishing protesters.

Then again, it is also possible to dissuade the Tory government from believing that. You just vote for somebody else in today’s (May 4, 2023) local elections (if you’re in England or Northern Ireland) and hope that enough other people have done the same.

The trouble with that is, it’s like one of those ‘trust’ exercises. Or the “prisoner’s dilemma” in game theory – people bank on everyone acting for personal gain rather than voting in everybody’s interest.

So now you have another reason to vote against the Tories.

Or have you?

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Even Conservatives are worried their party is sliding into extremism

Baroness Warsi: She’s been a voice in the Tory wilderness for years.

Former Tory bigwigs have noticed the party is slipping into fascism, it seems.

Former party co-chair Sayeeda Warsi has said the party’s rhetoric on asylum seekers is dangerous. One has to wonder whether she’s okay with the way her colleagues talk about peaceful protesters.

Here she is:

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi told the FT that some of the “generalisations” that Conservative politicians had made were creating a “really dangerous space”.

Her remarks come after immigration minister Robert Jenrick said in a speech last month that refugee numbers needed to be controlled because those seeking asylum had “completely different lifestyles and values” from people in the UK.

He was supported by home secretary Suella Braverman, who added that asylum seekers showed “heightened levels of criminality”, including prostitution and drug dealing.

Earlier comments by Braverman about immigration prompted former footballer Gary Lineker to write on Twitter that the ministers’ language was “not dissimilar to that used in Germany in the 1930s”.

Warsi said Lineker was right about her party’s rhetoric and warned that it risked sliding into the same rightwing extremism as the Republican party in the US.

“There are only a few steps from there where then we end up demonising whole groups of communities,” Warsi said. “

You know, Gary Lineker was right when he said this is rhetoric from 1930s Germany.”

So if you know anybody who’s voting Tory on May 4, ask them why they support fascism and remind them that we fought a world war against it.

Source: Former Tory co-chair warns of party’s slide towards extremism | Financial Times

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UN human rights chief wants UK to reverse ‘deeply troubling’ Public Order Bill

Volker Turk: this international lawyer is saying the UK’s Tory government is stamping on its own citizens’ human rights and must reverse the Public Order Act.

Suella Braverman might think her fascist Public Order Bill protects “our way of life” but the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights clearly feels otherwise.

That organisation has released the following statement:

The Public Order Bill, which has now been passed by Parliament in the United Kingdom, is deeply troubling legislation that is incompatible with the UK’s international human rights obligations regarding people’s rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned.

I think this means any arrests, convictions, sentences for breaching the Act may be challenged on grounds that it impinges on our human rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.

“This new law imposes serious and undue restrictions on these rights that are neither  necessary nor proportionate to achieve a legitimate purpose as defined under international law. This law is wholly unnecessary as UK police already have the powers to act against violent and disruptive demonstrations,” Türk said.

“It is especially worrying that the law expands the powers of the police to stop and search individuals, including without suspicion; defines some of the new criminal offences in a vague and overly broad manner; and imposes unnecessary and disproportionate criminal sanctions on people organizing or taking part in peaceful protests,” he added.

The High Commissioner drew particular attention to Serious Disruption Prevention Orders introduced by the law that allow UK courts to ban affected individuals from being in certain places at certain times; being with particular people; or using the internet in certain ways, and could lead to the individual in question being electronically monitored to ensure compliance. It is especially concerning that such orders can be made against people who have never been convicted of any criminal offence.

“Governments are obliged to facilitate peaceful protests, while, of course, protecting the public from serious and sustained disruption. But the grave risk here is that these orders pre-emptively limit someone’s future legitimate exercise of their rights,” the High Commissioner said.

“I am also concerned that the law appears to target in particular peaceful actions used by those protesting about human rights and environmental issues. As the world faces the triple planetary crises of climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution, governments should be protecting and facilitating peaceful protests on such existential topics, not hindering and blocking them,” Türk stressed.

“The passage of this Bill regrettably weakens human rights obligations, which the country has long championed in international fora. I call on the UK Government to reverse this legislation as soon as feasible,” he said.

To sum up: the UN reckons that, by passing the Public Order Act, the UK is now a renegade, criminal state because it has passed a law that overrules international agreements on human rights.

Worse, the UK has prioritised polluting industry above the survival of our planetary ecosystem, which means our government is not only facilitating harm to the human race as a species, but persecuting people who want us all to survive.

That is an insane position for a national government to take.

Worse still is that This Writer sees no government-in-waiting that is likely to agree with the United Nations and reverse the situation; Keir Starmer is a corporate yes-man who won’t do anything to upset his real bosses.

Still… perhaps it’s our fault that this has gone as far as it has.

I mean, have you contacted your MP to express opposition to this despotism?

Source: UN Human Rights Chief urges UK to reverse ‘deeply troubling’ Public Order Bill | OHCHR

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