Tag Archives: child

Children have a right to a clean environment, says UN report. What’s happening here?

Young people protesting over the environment: it’s a good image but sadly it was probably taken in Canada.

This is from the BBC:

Children have the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and governments must urgently act to ensure this, the United Nations says.

In a new report, the UN Child Rights Committee says that climate change is affecting children’s rights to life, survival and development.

It says young children are among the most vulnerable, yet their voices are rarely heard in climate change debates.

Tuesday’s report outlines new guidance for governments to follow.

Drawn up with the help of young people, it includes phasing out fossil fuels and switching to renewable energy.

UN countries will also be required to take measures to protect children from the harmful effects of climate change, such as monitoring air quality, regulating food safety and tackling emissions and toxic lead exposure.

Countries should also address the “clear emerging link” between climate change and children’s mental health, identifying eco-anxiety and depression as conditions that are on the rise.

And the UN says that young people must be included when drawing up new guidance.

None of this will happen in the UK, of course. Remember what happened when a UN rapporteur found that the government of this nation institutionally discriminates against disabled people? (Hint: nothing came of it apart from a stream of abuse directed at the rapporteur concerned, from the UK government.)

Meanwhile, what’s going on here in the UK?

And let’s be fair: attempts to improve the environment have been aimed in the wrong direction – at people who have little choice about whether to use polluting systems, rather than the 100 or so corporations that cause 70 per cent of the pollution in the world:

We can see which way the smog is blowing, can’t we?

The UN can tell every country in the world what needs to be done, and governments will tell private citizens that they need to clean up all the pollution, while allowing the culprit corporations to continue stinking up the land, waterways and skies – and possibly taking donations from those big businesses while doing so.

Tough luck, kids. Reach into your pockets or your wallets and take out some paper money, if you have it. Take a good look at it because it is more important to the people who shape the future than you are.

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Politics: the latest lies from Westminister (the news in tweets, Wednesday, July 26, 2023)

Rishi Sunak: another UK prime minister has been caught lying to the public.

Outrage as Sunak’s claims about the Labour Party and lawyers ‘undermine the rule of law’

Rishi Sunak has disgraced himself and his government again, with a false claim that the Labour Party and “a subset of lawyers” are supporting alleged criminal gangs who are said to be bringing people into the UK from abroad for illegal purposes.

Here’s his claim:

It isn’t true and it has provoked a storm of outrage – particularly as previous falsehoods by Sunak have led to an attempt on one solicitor’s life.

Pamela Fitzpatrick, who is director of Harrow Law Centre, tweeted: “This is completely irresponsible of Sunak. Solicitors are officers of the Court subject to a professional code of conduct. This type of misinformation by Sunak has already led to a far right extremist trying to kill a Harrow immigration Solicitor. It must stop.”

This appears to be a reference to alleged far-right extremist Cavan Medlock, who was accused of trying to murder Harrow immigration solicitor Toufique Hossain because “he objected to the solicitor Hossain’s involvement in preventing the Government from deporting immigrants”.

The alleged attack took place on September 7, 2020. It seems likely to have been provoked by claims such as this, from Sunak’s Tory colleague, then-Home Secretary Priti Patel:

The trial was last reported to be taking place on June 26 this year – but This Writer can find no report of it. News blackout?

Going back to Sunak’s allegation, there is no evidence that the Labour Party – even in its current incarnation as a Substitute Tory Party (STP) – has ever supported people-trafficking by criminal gangs.

And shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock has called for the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority to launch an inquiry into any attempt to help people get into the UK under false pretences, according to the Mirror.

Fellow Labour MP Chris Bryant also condemned Sunak’s claim: “In his desperation he has plumbed a new depth… He debases his office and forgets act as PM of the United Kingdom not seek to sow division.”

And shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry tweeted: “Usually, I try and maintain some sense of respect for the office of the Prime Minister, but it’s just impossible when the man doing the job is willing to demean it like this. What a desperate attempt to deflect from his own dismal failures. Utterly pathetic.”

The Bar Council – the organisation representing all barristers in England and Wales – stated: “The comments by the Prime Minister… are clearly an attempt to play politics with the legal profession. This damaging rhetoric undermines the rule of law, trust in lawyers and confidence in the UK legal system and is to be deplored.”

For the sake of accuracy, the organisation had to also state: “Lawyers are not beyond reproach, and all professions have individuals who commit misconduct and are dishonest. Regulators are there to discipline them.” Sunak is likely to point to this as evidence to support his wafer-thin claim.

It’s not likely to sway thinking members of the public. For example:

“Sunak did not get into politics to make a better world for the people of Britain – only to make more money for himself and his rich friends – and now his grubby inhumanity is exposed for all to see. Better he had never been PM and that his inadequacy had remained his secret,” tweeted science journalist Marcus Chown.

Finally, there is a question over whether Sunak’s government colluded with the Daily Mail on the article, in order to have some kind of “fig leaf” with which to cover its draconian and internationally-illegal new measures against people fleeing persecution in foreign countries.

Here’s another member of the law-practising community that Sunak has attacked:

Zionist origins of BBC reporter who challenged politician on anti-Semitism raise serious question about BBC impartiality

Strange. When This Writer was trained as a journalist, I was taught to be fair and impartial – that is, not to colour my reporting of events with falsehoods.

Now it seems the BBC – the biggest news organisation in the world, if I recall correctly – is employing people with an ideological bias towards the exact opposite.

Samantha Simmonds, the interviewer who reeled off false claims of anti-Semitism against the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, was a member of a Zionist group and may have had an interest in discrediting the former leader and his supporters.

If she allowed her own personal politics to slant her on-air reporting, the BBC should be considering this to be a very serious matter indeed.

Watch her interview again and see how she presented falsehoods as facts and, when countered by former Uxbridge and South Ruislip Labour chair David Williams with the truth, cut him off:

The BBC relies heavily on its reputation as a factual news reporter – and its dominance of the news media means a majority of the public relies on it too.

When one of its representatives is found to be regurgitating untrue propaganda for political ends (Jeremy Corbyn sought a peaceful solution for the Israel/Palestine question, including freedom for Palestine and Zionism demands that all Palestinian territory must become part of Israel, with its inhabitants thrown out), it brings the integrity of the BBC as a whole into question.

Knowing what has happened here, will you be ready to believe BBC reporting on the next big controversy?

If you want to complain, the BBC has a web page telling you how to do so. Feel free to use it.

Keir Starmer claims he’ll give every child ‘the best opportunities’ – after condemning hundreds of thousands to poverty

The propaganda piece accompanying Starmer’s tweet seems to have been created to head off criticism of his decision to keep a quarter of a million children in poverty – and a further 850,000 in deep poverty – by extending the Tory child benefit cap into any Parliament run by a party led by him.

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The news in tweets: Sunday, July 23, 2023

‘No more Green New Deal’ is what we can see on the banner – and that is exactly what Keir Starmer is offering as he panders to the fossil fuel firms in his relentlessly grubby bid for power.

Tories AND Labour throw green policies into the fire – but who is most responsible?

Let’s make a few connections.

Energy minister Grant Shapps has unilaterally decided that the environment can burn, and to this end has announced that he’ll extract all the remaining fossil fuels from the North Sea in the name of “energy security”:

If we’ve learned anything from the state of the environment lately, it is that there is no security in energy generated from fossil fuels. As Richard Murphy states, the planet is burning and the Tory response is to stoke the fire.

Now let’s go over to the party formerly known as Labour, where leader Keir Stürmer is trying to dictate to London Mayor Sadiq Khan that he should “reflect on” (ditch) the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone that keeps more heavily-polluting traffic out of the centre of the capital because it was the issue that lost their party the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election.

This is idiotic for several reasons. Firstly, Stürmer’s STP (Substitute Tory Party) should not have lost because of ULEZ, which is a Conservative policy. It was imposed by Boris Johnson – the former MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, whose resignation triggered the election – so all Stürmer’s candidate had to do to counter criticisms of his party and mayor was point this out.

Secondly, we know this didn’t happen because people with non-polluting cars, who would not have paid the charge, were complaining about it on the doorstep. Perhaps they didn’t like being told it was nothing to do with them, but it’s more likely that they simply weren’t told that at all.

Thirdly, the ULEZ is not something Khan can unilaterally change; it was imposed on London by the Department for Transport when it was being run by… oh yes! Grant Shapps.

So Shapps is magically facing in two different directions at once.

And Stürmer is apparently being dishonest about the reason his party lost the election.

It’s all very well saying, “We lost because of the ULEZ”, but if his people didn’t actually defend themselves on it, that’s their fault.

Doesn’t it seem more likely that it is an excuse that is being inflated to hide a different reason for the loss.

What could that reason be?

That’s not his only blunder…

Also:

Call me a scaremonger if you like, but it seems to This Writer that the most logical reason his party lost in Uxbridge and South Ruislip is Keir Starmer himself.

Keir Mather: fact and fiction about the new, Starmerite MP for Selby and Ainsty

And on that subject…

Apparently he was a researcher for former Tory MP Matthew Parris.

Forgive me, but I question whether that’s the right sort of grounding for a person who now represents the party that is supposed to support working people.

The Tory government has decided that saving the lives of disabled people who have to live in high-rise tower blocks is too expensive

How many hundreds of billions of pounds have they given to their friends and donors in return for absolutely nothing at all?

Sunak’s doublespeak: he wants you to think his theft of your rights is something you have demanded

Standing ovation for Mick Lynch after speech about the ‘stench of corruption’ in Tory government

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The news in tweets: Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Falling energy prices are not being passed on to customers and the government is doing nothing. Why?

Tory energy security minister Grant Shapps was grilled over the government’s failure to support cash-strapped households, by Martin Lewis on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. His answers were revealing:

So: we will receive no more money to help with energy bills, even though the energy companies are charging us far more than the cost of the energy itself. The government is supporting these firms as they rip us off.

Shapps’s comments about standing charges are also useful. He said these charges are for “all of the network costs, the maintenance costs and the things which happen before you get the live supply of energy to the household”. He said these costs were “not for nothing”.

This Writer certainly hopes that is true.

But let’s have a look at another privatised utility that forces you to pay standing charges: water. If standing charges on water are said to be for the same purpose as for energy – network costs, maintenance etc – then the water companies are guilty of fraud because we have learned that none of our money is being spent on infrastructure (maintenance). The pipe system still dates back to the Victorian era and some of it is made of lead, which is poison.

The water firms also borrow heavily to cover day-to-day costs. That leaves me asking what the standing charge supports. Is it just feeding into the profits of shareholders? If so, then these firms are lying to us about its purpose and should be prosecuted, forced to return that money to us and the charge abolished.

In fairness, I have read that the charge is for the cost of reading meters and sending out bills – but with smart meters installed that tell firms what you’ve used without anyone having to come to your home, and with the facility for people to receive bills by a new-fangled device called email, those costs now must be very low compared with times in even the recent past. Why are the standing charges not being reduced, then?

Taking the subject back to energy, if standing charges on water are a rip-off, how do we know that the energy firms aren’t also charging us far more than is reasonable?

Answer: we don’t.

One rule for them: MPs get up to £16,305 per year for up to three children, but restrict your child benefit to two kids and £2,080

Yes indeed.

Current salary for a backbench MP is around £84-5,000. They get expenses to pay for food, rent and bills (on the second homes they need in London, if I recall correctly), and they also receive £5,435 per year to pay bills related to their children, for a maximum of three children. That’s around £104.23 per week, per child, up to £312.69 – let’s round it up to £312.70.

If you have three children, you won’t receive any child benefit for one of them. You then get £24 per week for the eldest and £15.90 for the second child: £39.90 per week or around £2,080 per year.

Your MP thinks this is fair – even those in the Labour Party who should be demanding equality for everybody (possibly with a few exceptions).

This is why we need to think very carefully about who we allow into Parliament and what they should be elected to do.

Meanwhile, Substitute Tory (formerly Labour) Rachel Reeves can’t see how a UK government can fund free school meals for children who need them, so members of the public have been offering helpful suggestions:

Howard Beckett pointed out: “In Norway the sovereign fund stands at over $1.3trillion. Norway tax[es] fossil fuel Corporate giants at 78 per cent.”

She could also reverse some of the massive tax cuts that the Tories have handed to the richest members of UK society since 2010. There are plenty of ways to fund a better future.

One can only conclude that Pamela Fitzpatrick is right: “Reeves really cannot see where the moneys going to come from because she simply does not have the skills, talent or vision for the role she is in.”

There is a lighter side to this – if you have a certain sense of humour:

Keir Starmer was ‘consciously dishonest’ when he campaigned for the Labour leadership. Shouldn’t he be given the boot?

We may conclude from the information available to us that when Keir Starmer was telling Labour Party members that he would respect and continue the policies of his immediate forerunner Jeremy Corbyn, he was actually planning to throw away all the popular policies that Mr Corbyn had formed, as soon as possible.

He lied in order to be elected.

That is not acceptable.

He should be removed.

He won’t be – because Labour disciplinary procedures are a bad joke at the expense of rank-and-file party members. But voters should – and will – remember his betrayal, and the cynical, calculated way in which he planned it.

Defence spending rises by nearly one-third of what it was in 2019 – while all other spending falls. Why?

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has announced that the UK government will spend £50 billion on “defence”, for the first time in its history – more than £12 billion more than in 2019.

Jeremy Corbyn asked him about his priorities:

In response, Wallace said: “I am not out looking for war. We are all out here trying to defend our nation by avoiding war, but we do not avoid war by not investing in deterrence. Sometimes we have to invest in hard power, to complement soft power. We do not want to use it and we do not go looking for it. I know the right hon. Gentleman mixes with some people who always think this is about warmongering; it is not. But if countries are not taken seriously by their adversaries, that is one of the quickest ways to provoke a war.”

So he wants to avoid wars by rattling the sabre. This Writer isn’t sure that works – and I am encouraged to doubt him by his own prediction that the UK will be at war within seven years.

Mr Corbyn’s question was an opportunity for him to explain how his spending plan would prevent the UK from being at war within seven years. He did not answer that question.

What are these Tories planning to drag the rest of us into?

£500 million public money bribe to get Jaguar Land Rover owner to build electric car battery factory in Somerset

The Tory government is paying £500 million towards the creation of a £4 billion factory by Jaguar Land Rover owner Tata, building batteries for electric cars.

Is it really great news?

As migrant-housing barge arrives in Portland: how was the contract awarded and was it carried out corruptly?

Two tweets on this:

Is the illegal Tory “VIP lane” still operating, then?

Why is the government repeating consultation on wet wipe ban? Is it looking for a different response?

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The news in tweets: Monday, July 17, 2023

Ruling-class privilege: there’s no ‘class ceiling’ for grotesqueries like Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer – they are laughing at you when they say they can’t do anything to help you. Remember: it is political choice that has dumped the UK in its current crisis.

Backlash against Starmer’s Substitute Tory Party grows as he insists he’ll do nothing for ordinary people

It’s a good question. Jeremy Corbyn promised to provide dentistry on the National Health Service but Keir Stürmer is promising to deny it to more people (although he hasn’t said it in as many words).

He’s also planning to inject much more privatisation into the NHS, probably to complete the transformation of the service into nothing more than a banner under which public money may be passed to private companies that perpetuate illness and refuse to provide cover where it is not profitable, making healthcare a postcode lottery:

More privatisation?

Read this:

There’s the problem with more privatisation in a nutshell. Once these private health bloodsuckers get a monopoly on the provision of care, they’ll push prices through the roof – knowing that you and I will have to pay for it, no matter what.

By supporting increased private involvement in healthcare, Starmer supports this plan to drain the public purse of its funds and effectively put you into debt to grotesquely rich corporate fatcats – forever.

He’s being nicknamed #SirKidStarver because he won’t end the two-child limit on child benefit and is therefore continuing to impose poverty on millions of children, nor will he provide free school meals for everybody who needs them.

Stürmer’s ‘Right-hand Liar’, Yvette Cooper, was pressed to justify the policy that will deliberately keep a quarter of a million children in poverty and 850,000 more in increased poverty, on the morning media round. Judge her failure by this clip:

Labour’s answer to criticism is apparently to say we should vote for the Substitute Tory Party because its members have ancestors who were working class:

It seems Stürmer and all his little stürmtroopers need a lesson on how a Labour Party governs a nation. Here’s one:

The consensus opinion is increasingly that Stürmer is lying:

Thankfully not everyone, even in the Parliamentary Labour Party, supports the wholesale betrayal of Labour Party values that Stürmer is preparing:

And outside the party, some of us are already agitating for direct action:

The article states that Stürmer is actively planning to fail the nation on many levels:

– Climate change
– Renewables
– Transport reform
– The economy
– Public sector pay
– The NHS
– Social care
– Education
– Law and order
– Housing
– Trade unions
– Reversing Tory policy
– Support for local government
– Electoral reform
– Europe
– Interest rates
– Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
– Defence
– Inequality
– Taxing the rich

It calls for us to make Stürmer as uncomfortable as possible, for as long as possible, on all those issues until the pressure on him to reform becomes unsurmountable and he is forced to change.

How to do this?

– Inform yourself
– Join groups
– Talk to people
– Write to MPs, councillors and anyone else
– Phone in to the radio (you are likely to get on)
– Consider peaceful protest
– Join a union if it is appropriate for you
– Write a blog
– Comment here
– Tweet, Thread, use Mastodon, create a YouTube, TikTok or Instagram post.

But just don’t suffer in silence. Starmer has to know he is failing, already. Only then might he change, or be forced to. Things are far too serious to accept the dire policy options as those Starmer is now proposing. We all have to demand better.

And in the short term there is only one option: anyone who understands how bad the situation is at the moment must vote for anybody but Labour or the Conservatives. Who the other party to support may be will only be apparent locally.

The best places to start are at Somerton and Frome, Selby and Ainsty, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip on Thursday (July 20, 2023).

Where is the evidence that the Tories are ‘transforming’ the economy?

It seems that the only evidence of any such action by the Conservatives is a plan to close down what Rishi Sunak calls “rip-off” degrees that don’t guarantee a job to graduates.

It seems a strange demand – that degree courses guarantee a job to the people taking them. By that standard, shouldn’t they all be shut down and a multi-billion pound education industry destroyed overnight?

You see, the point of most degrees isn’t to fit people into a job; it is to teach people how to think. That way, they can work out how to get, for themselves, the job that best suits them. This policy reveals Tory ideology: they don’t want people who can think – they just want livestock who can be slotted into jobs that will make money for their friends and funders:

But it’s hard to tell, because it seems the Tories are doing their utmost to hide what they are doing – probably because the only people they are helping are themselves.

Example:

How about the way government departments under the Tories have been blacklisting media organisations that publish information that is critical of them? Here’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace apologising for such treatment of Declassified UK:

What else do they not want us to know?

Perhaps the fact that yet another Tory MP has been arrested – for sexual impropriety and misconduct in public office?

Perhaps the fact that 2022 was the worst year for real wage growth in nearly half a century since the early 1970s, meaning their fairy story that increases in your wages are fuelling inflation is a lie?

Perhaps the fact that they spent more than one-and-a-half times as much money on duff Covid-related contracts through their illegal “VIP lane” as they have allocated to the building of new NHS hospitals?

People are being stopped from renting homes because they have children. Sign the petition to stop this

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The news in tweets: Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Who thought we could see this again? It perfectly sums up Boris Johnson’s behaviour towards the Covid Inquiry over his mobile phone and the WhatsApp messages therein.

Boris Johnson refuses to hand over mobile phone containing Covid WhatsApps by inquiry deadline

This is more complicated than it seems. If you were to take Carol Vorderman’s tweet at face value…

… you might think she was saying he hasn’t handed over any of the WhatsApp messages he received and sent at that time. This is not true.

The story is about “Phone 1” – the telephone he used up until April 2021, but (allegedly) switched off amid claims that it could have been hacked by a foreign power.

Johnson himself reckons he is trying to comply with the Covid Inquiry’s demand for the information but is working with government security officials on a way to turn on the old phone without creating a security emergency.

But here’s the thing: the security breach happened long ago – he switched the phone off (he says) because it emerged that his phone number had been public knowledge for 15 years. Apparently this means it could have been hacked.

In that case, it seems to sane people, he should have left it on and handed it to the security people two years ago, so they could work out what possibly compromising information could have been lifted from it by hostile foreign governments (or even teenage hackers living down the road).

He didn’t do that, so…

Yes. When will that happen?

Oh, and it should be possible to retrieve the WhatsApp messages by other means anyway. Why haven’t these “experts” tried that already?

Government response to ‘Kindertransport’ lord on removal of mural at child refugee centre is shockingly insensitive

Lord Alf Dubs, who was himself once a refugee from a foreign country (Germany before World War II – he was a Jewish child who arrived on the Kindertransport) asked the government why it cruelly ordered that a welcoming mural at a child refugee centre in Kent should be over-painted. Here’s the response:

Jessica Simor is right: it is incredibly insensitive of this Tory lord to tell a fellow peer – who was welcomed into the UK as a child – that national policy is now to make the country as unwelcoming as possible.

It seems the government has regressed – de-civilised – during the last 13 years of Tory misrule.

The big Tory wage lie

Read:

Why would the Tories say wages are rising at record rates?

Could it be to justify their demand that they need to be held down in order to slow inflation?

If so, it’s a false argument – as Richard Burgon makes clear:

Here’s some proof about the corporate profits:

Sainsbury’s wouldn’t be paying its chief executive so much if he wasn’t raking in the Long Green.

So it’s definitely the big profits that are pushing up inflation. And what is the Tory government doing about it?

Look:

And here’s a pertinent comment on that choice:

He’s joined in his crackdown on your livelihood by fellow millionaire Andrew Bailey, head honcho at the Bank of England:

Is this the reason Ed Balls tried to dominate the discussion of George Osborne’s wedding on Monday?

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Painting over a child’s mural shows just a part of the Tories’ cruelty to children

Robert Jenrick: thanks to his actions – and those of his colleagues, someone should refer the Tory government to the NSPCC.

This should never have happened:

After saying there’s no money for anything, the Conservatives hired workers and sent them to a refugee detention centre for children – to paint over murals showing a smiling Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and other characters, because they didn’t want the kids there to feel comforted.

The minister responsible was Robert Jenrick, who overspent on his first campaign to be an MP, charged the public £100,000 for a third home he rarely used, and has given tens of millions of pounds worth of help to Tory donors.

The decision has been roundly condemned:

But when she was challenged on it, the Tory Financial Secretary to the Treasury – Victoria Atkins – actually had the front to tell Sophy Ridge her government wants to look after children “well”.

Here’s an example of how well the Tories look after children:

That’s right. Tories look after children in their care so well that they send them alone to hotels from which they know others have been taken. And what is the purpose of taking them? People trafficking? Dare I suggest sex trafficking?

Tories know what happens to these kids when the send them to places like that – but they send them anyway.

Would you call that looking after children well? Or would you call it something else?

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BBC apologises after presenter CORRECTLY identifies Israel Defence Force murders of children

Do Israeli armed forces murder children? Well, here’s Muhammad Tamimi. His two-year-old life was ended after a member of the Israel Defence Forces raided his village and shot this defenceless toddler in the head.

There’s a meme going the rounds on the social media about the British Broadcasting Corporation.

It says when one person says it’s raining and another says it is sunny, it isn’t the BBC’s job to present a balance of the two viewpoints; the BBC’s job is to look out the window and see which of them is right.

Let’s apply this to a complaint made by the far-right, Israeli-government-supporting Board of Deputies of British Jews, that made a complaint to the BBC about this Newsnight sequence in which the attack on the refugee campaign in the Palestinian city of Jenin by the Israel Defence Force was questioned:

(I have no idea why Jimmy Hill’s face kept appearing in the clip; presumably it’s a comment by whoever made it about the veracity of Mr Bennett’s claims.)

The Board of Deputies made a complaint, which you can read below. And below that, you can find evidence refuting its claim:

Only last month, an IDF trooper shot two-year-old toddler Muhammad Tamimi in the head, in what is believed to have been a deliberate act of aggression against the child:

He died of his injury a short while later.

It therefore seems unsupportable that the Board of Deputies of British Jews can claim that it is “disgraceful” to say the IDF forces seem happy to kill children. The evidence is there, for all to see.

Sadly, it seems the BBC has not looked out of the window to check what the weather is actually doing.

In fairness, the BBC apology said the line of questioning was appropriate – it was just the language that was used that caused offence.

But that was enough for the Board of Deputies to crow about it.

Considering the way both organisations have responded to this incident, perhaps the BBC should look into the subject more deeply.

Perhaps Panorama could run a film examining the number of children the IDF have murdered and the frequency of these killings, alongside the after-the-event excuses for them, with analysis of whether the claims of the Israeli government actually stand up to scrutiny.

This Writer has a feeling the results would be illuminating – but I don’t think the BBC, under its shrinking-violet director general Tim Davie, would have the nerve.

For now, it seems the best advice possible for both parties in this dispute is to say that, if the Board of Deputies doesn’t want to see reports saying Israeli armed forces murder children…

Perhaps it should call on the Israeli armed forces to stop murdering children.

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Angela Rayner caught lying (?) about Labour’s attack ad on Rishi Sunak

Angela Rayner: her blink rate means her comments about the Labour ‘child sex’ attack advert on Rishi Sunak are not credible.

Angela Rayner is the latest Labour bigwig to come out in support of that vile attack advert that claims Rishi Sunak doesn’t want child sex criminals to go to prison.

Party leader Keir Starmer has said he supported it, after initially saying he had not been informed of it and what it contained. He was a member of the sentencing panel that approved the current guidelines for child sex offences, back in 2012 – so in fact the current situation is more his doing than Sunak’s.

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has also spoken up in support.

And now Angela Rayner. But we have a doubt about the wholeheartedness of her comments:

Yes – the blink rate gives her away.

I did an article about this after seeing James Cleverly being interviewed on Laura Kuennsberg’s Sunday morning show. Here‘s what I said then (and don’t worry – the relevant part is quite early in the clip):

“The normal blink rate is around 16 times per minutes but Cleverly is going 19 to the dozen, all the way through,” I say on the clip.

“When we’re really interested in something, our blink rate slows down because we’re trying to take in more information – but when we’re stressed or anxious, which is normal if we’re trying to deceive someone, the blink rate goes up.”

Now go back to the Rayner clip, in which she blinks 13 times in 16 seconds.

If she had been in a television studio, she might have had an excuse – because studio lights may be harsh on the eyes. But from the background, it looks as though she was at home or in an office.

So there seems no other explanation for her blink rate but stress.

Is she lying about the advert? Or is she just unhappy to be having to support it? You be the judge.

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Rachel Reeves adds her support to attack ad saying Sunak is soft on child sex offenders

Like minds: but do Rachel Reeves or Keir Starmer realise how grotesque they look?

It’s as though someone is asking who’ll be the next to support the unsupportable and they’re all leaping up, shouting, “Me! Me!” Isn’t it?

Rachel Reeves has followed Keir Starmer in voicing her approval of the Labour attack advert that accuses Rishi Sunak of wanting child sex abusers to escape prison.

This Writer can only echo the words of Phil Gould in his tweet below…

… and ask: with ghouls like this leading the Labour Party, who would possibly want to vote for it?

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