Tag Archives: committee

Tories try to use Russell Brand to cancel dissenting political views on social media

Big Brother: do you really want the government to censor what you can see on the social media – or anywhere else on the internet?

“There is a war for your attention. Don’t give it to the wrong people.”

Those aren’t my words and, to be honest, I’m paraphrasing. They weren’t even spoken about the Russell Brand affair, which – in This Writer’s opinion – adds veracity to them.

You’ll be aware – who isn’t? – that Russell Brand has been accused of sex crimes, and the mainstream media have subsequently decided – without trial – that he’s guilty.

Now we learn that the chairperson of the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport committee, the Tory MP Dame Caroline Dinenage, has been writing to social media platforms, asking them to cut off any supply of funds to Brand.

To Dr Theo Bertram, TikTok’s Director of Government Relations, Europe, she wrote:

“While we recognise that TikTok is not the creator of the content published by Mr Brand, and his content may be within the community guidelines set out by the platform, we are concerned that he may be able to profit from his content on the platform.

“We would be grateful if you could confirm whether Mr Brand is able to monetise his TikTok posts, including his videos relating to the serious accusations against him, and what the platform is doing to ensure that creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behaviour.”

Here’s a copy of the letter, along with a response from ‘Viva Frei’ on ‘X’. Do you think the respondent makes good points?

“Acquire total control over dissenting voices on the internet”?

As one of those voices, This Writer might want to have a say about that!

To Chris Pavlovski, chief executive of Brand’s main platform, Rumble, the Culture, Media and Sport committee chair wrote:

“We would like to know whether Rumble intends to join YouTube in suspending Mr Brand’s ability to earn money on the platform.”

Mr Pavlovski’s response was not limited to MPs, though. Outraged, he has made it public. Reading it, you may agree with his points:

“Today we received an extremely disturbing letter from a committee chair in the UK Parliament.

“YouTube announced that, based solely on these media accusations, it was barring Mr Brand from monetizing his video content. Rumble stands for very different values. We have devoted ourselves to the vital cause of defending a free internet – meaning an internet where no one arbitrarily decides which ideas can or cannot be heard, or which citizens may or may not be entitled to a platform.

“We regard it as deeply inappropriate and dangerous that the UK Parliament would attempt to control who is allowed to speak on our platform or to earn a living from doing so. Singling out an individual and demanding his ban is even more disturbing given the absence of any connection between the allegations and his content on Rumble. We don’t agree with the behaviour of many Rumble creators, but we refuse to penalize them for actions that have nothing to do with our platform.

“Although it may be politically and socially easier for Rumble to join a cancel culture mob, doing so would be a violation of our company’s values and mission. We emphatically reject the UK Parliament’s demands.”

Here’s the response, plus the letter from the CMS committee:

As I mention above, This Site is one of the “dissenting voices” on the internet over which it seems the UK’s Tory government is trying to gain control – and by “control”, I think we all know I’m referring to censorship; restricting or blotting out altogether the ability of members of the general public to see content that I post to the social media.

I’m concerned that this censorship is already taking place.

Vox Political began at the very end of 2011, with just 11 readers on its first day. By March 2020, in a single day, the site was read 178,888 times. And then – with no change in content, or the way it was supplied – readership started slipping off. Yesterday (September 24), I had around 1,700 hits.

You may want to suggest that the mood of the public has changed and people don’t want to plough through hundreds of words on a screen any more.

But that doesn’t explain the multiplicity of responses, whenever I ask Facebook who has seen my links to articles published on any particular day, saying they haven’t. Many respond by saying my query is the first post they’ve seen in weeks or months.

It seems to me that Facebook (and possibly Twitter/X) have already implemented policies to restrict or silence the voices of people whose political beliefs differ from… someone.

Is it Facebook/X executives censoring their platforms, or the Tory government?

And should they not publish notices warning us that their platforms are politically biased, if this is what they are doing?

The big question, of course, is: how can we get an honest answer out of any of these people?


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Peer accused of trying to interfere with Partygate inquiry resigns. What about the others?

Zac Goldsmith: apparently he owes his peerage to Boris Johnson.

There’s almost as much murk in this as in a glass of drinking water from Thames Water.*

Lord Zac Goldsmith has resigned from his job as an environment minister, just one day after he was named by the House of Commons Privileges Committee as having tried to interfere with its determination on Boris Johnson and Partygate.

But his reason for resigning, if you read the article, is the Tory government’s failure to tackle climate change properly. He says prime minister Rishi Sunak is “simply uninterested” in the issue.

(And he has repeated this assertion – strenuously – after Sunak claimed the resignation came after he had asked Goldsmith to apologise for the apparent interference. He reckons his resignation had been coming for a long time – but that raises one obvious question: why submit it the day after being accused by the Privileges Committee if that had nothing to do with it?)

But who cares about Goldsmith? He’s yesterday’s man now.

What matters is, nine other MPs and peers have also been accused by the Privileges Committee:

The Privileges Committee has published the evidence on which it has based its claim:

Given all of the above, one has only one question left to ask:

What are the other nine named MPs and peers going to do?

*Joke. I don’t honestly think the quality of Thames Water’s product is quite so bad… yet.


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What did we learn from the big vote on Boris?

Theresa May: she used the Partygate Inquiry debate to lay into not just Boris Johnson, but current prime minister Rishi Sunak as well.

The big takeout from yesterday’s (Monday, June 18, 2023) vote on the Partygate report is that Rishi Sunak is a weaker leader than anyone thought he was.

As prime minister, it was his duty to support the report because it represents a duty of Parliament, duly done.

But he didn’t even bother to turn up, let alone vote in support of the Privileges Committee’s damning indictment of Boris Johnson’s Partygate lies – most probably because he didn’t want to anger Johnson’s remaining supporters.

Former prime minister Theresa May is widely believed to have criticised Sunak’s spinelessness in her speech:

The implication is that Sunak’s own claim to be restoring the integrity of the government were just a lot of hot air if he could not even bring himself to support a report giving just one example of how that integrity had been lost.

And how many supporters did Johnson have?

Some might say only seven – the Tory MPs who actually voted against the report’s findings. They were Desmond Swayne, Joy Morrisey, Karl McCartney, Adam Holloway, Heather Wheeler, Nick Fletcher and Bill Cash.

Already some net-based wags have been having fun at their – and Johnson’s – expense:

Some might say Johnson’s support base actually totalled 232 – as 225 Tories either abstained or stayed away altogether, like Sunak. But it is just as easy to say they were all cowards like Sunak.

We do know that 118 Tories voted to support the report and its one remaining recommendation – that Johnson be denied a “former member’s pass” to parts of the Parliamentary estate, essentially banishing him from the Palace of Westminster.

In all, 354 MPs voted to support the report – 54 per cent of the total number of MPs.

Wild claims that the Partygate Inquiry was somehow rigged, or carried out improperly, must now be laid to rest because Parliament has spoken and its voice is sovereign.

Johnson did lie, repeatedly and knowingly, and that’s all there is to it.

Now it seems likely the focus will alter, most likely moving on to examine Johnson’s resignation honours list and whether it has any validity, considering the prime minister who wrote it now stands disgraced and several of the people named in it are also facing allegations about their own behaviour.

Johnson himself may also linger in public life for some time to come – not least because his testimony to the Covid-19 Inquiry has yet to become public – and is already controversial.


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Boris Johnson’s supporters come out to trash Partygate report. But look at the state of them!

Michael Fabricant: in this image he appears to be clamping his mouth shut – to avoid putting his foot in it?

There’s a famous saying that you can tell a person’s quality by the quality of their enemies. It also applies to their friends.

So let’s look at the people who’ve come out in support of Boris Johnson after the Partygate Inquiry found him to have lied – habitually – to Parliament and the nation.

Who are these people?

Dorries should certainly face reprisals if her claim about one of the inquiry panel’s members cannot be supported with facts.

What else are Johnson’s supporters saying?

So Fabricant defended Johnson without even knowing what was in the report and the evidence that supported it.

It indicates a faith in Johnson that borders on the psychotic, in This Writer’s opinion.

Oh, and what does Boris Johnson think of Michael Fabricant?

Hmm.


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Getting his retaliation in first: Boris Johnson takes to the attack in resignation letter

Tantrum: Boris Johnson’s resignation letter makes him look like a petulant child. Where’s Nanny to tell him to take his medicine?

It was probably the best thing he could think of doing.

After receiving notification from the Commons Privileges Committee of its decision in the Partygate Inquiry, and realising that he was going to be suspended for the 10-day period required to trigger a recall petition and possible by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency, Boris Johnson decided to pre-empt it and resign immediately.

This gave him the opportunity to attack the decision, the committee that made it, and anybody else he felt like in what comes across as nothing less than an epistolary tantrum.

“The Privileges Committee… are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of Parliament,” he wrote. “They have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons.”

Of course, that would be a very hard thing to do, if Johnson himself wasn’t willing to admit it – and he clearly isn’t. Committee members would have had to weigh up what Johnson had said he knew, against what could be concluded from his actions at the times of the parties in Downing Street, his comments at those events, and his behaviour in Parliament thereafter.

Clearly they have decided that it is unreasonable to believe he did not know that they were parties when he attended them and when he discussed them in the Commons chamber. That is all the committee members needed to do.

In that light, much of the rest of Johnson’s letter comes across as the sulking of a spoilt boy who hasn’t been allowed to have his own way.

Also in that light, though, his comments about the Privileges Committee and its individual members may be taken very seriously indeed.

To say, “Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court,” is to call into question the honesty and integrity of the committee’s members – his then-fellow MPs. He has no right to do that.

His comment, “It was naïve and trusting of me to think that these proceedings could be remotely useful or fair,” falls into the same category.

… as does his attack on individual committee members and opponents in the Tory Party: “Most members of the Committee – especially the chair – had already expressed deeply prejudicial remarks about my guilt before they had even seen the evidence… there are currently some Tory MPs who share that view… there is a witch hunt under way.”

Already leading Parliamentarians – foremost among them Chris Bryant, the former Privileges Committee chair who recused himself from proceedings after passing comment on Johnson’s behaviour – are saying action may justifiably be taken against Johnson over these ill-chosen words.

But Johnson may face reprisals from other quarters as well. His letter also attacked Sue Gray, who chaired Johnson’s own inquiry into Downing Street parties and who is now set to become Labour leader Keir Starmer’s designated Chief of Staff, along with her chief counsel, Daniel Stilitz KC.

The letter went on to attack the Conservative Party in general, along with Rishi Sunak’s government. Remember: this was a resignation letter – there was no call for any of this material (it amounts to nothing less than a rant) to be included.

And he claims multiple successes that are either not his to claim, or are not successes. The Elizabeth Line was approved by Tony Blair and it was former London Mayor Ken Livingstone who made sure it happened.

Brexit has been a hugely costly failure for the vast majority of people in the UK. Johnson should not mention his conduct during the pandemic as it led to more than 200,000 unnecessary deaths. And while it is right that the UK should support Ukraine against invasion, did we really lead that support internationally?

Put it all together and Boris Johnson appears to have suffered some kind of breakdown. This letter seems, at best, deranged.

Does he honestly believe his statements? Well, yes he probably does – but that doesn’t make them true; it makes him unbalanced, as economist Richard Murphy argues in a Twitter thread today:

Then again, there were definitely some in the Conservative Party who supported Johnson all the way. In the interests of balance, let’s hear from one:

If you’re wondering why Ms Jenkyns would say that, see this:

One good thing about Johnson’s letter is that it means the Privileges Committee doesn’t have to wait two weeks before concluding the inquiry and publishing its report.

But that won’t be the end of the affair.

Many people – some of them in positions of considerable power and responsibility, will be taking this weekend to consider their response to Johnson’s rant.

He may find that his tirade has cost him not only his future in Parliament, but also any future at all.


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MP ‘speechless’ after hearing rape alarm excuse for ‘Night Stars’ Coronation arrest was false

Assumptions about a pre-Coronation decision to arrest volunteers who help vulnerable people on the streets of London at night were shattered when it was claimed the stated reason was nonsense.

The Commons Home Affairs Committee took evidence on the arrests today (May 17, 2023) – including from ‘Night Stars’ volunteer Suzie Melvin, whose comments left chair Diana Johnson “speechless”.

The reason? It had been stated that the ‘Night Stars’ volunteers were arrested for handing out rape alarms which police said could be used to frighten horses in the Coronation Day parade.

There’s just one problem with that: the ‘Night Stars’ weren’t handing out rape alarms at all.

Here‘s the BBC report of what Ms Melvin said [boldings mine]:

She explains to the select committee the work volunteers do and the equipment they use – mostly items to help people struggling to get home during a night out, from sick bags to flip flops.

She describes the night as quiet, with the volunteering team mainly helping people by directing them to taxis in central London.

But as the team – wearing hi-vis jackets and backpacks – approached Soho Square they were told by officers they would need to be stopped and searched.

Melvin says officers looked through their bags. But despite explaining to officers who they were, they were arrested and taken to police custody – where she was held from Friday night until Saturday afternoon.

“I am speechless,” the chair of the committee Diana Johnson says after hearing Melvin’s testimony.

Melvin says that when she was arrested, the police officer told her they were specifically looking for the Night Stars volunteers.

Longhi asks if it could be because they were giving out rape alarms, “which can cause a sudden occurrence to happen amongst the horses that were parading” and a risk to the public.

“None of us have ever handed out a rape alarm,” says Melvin. “I am not sure why we were arrested and detained.”

Suzie Melvin from the Night Star volunteers is asked if she had any dialogue with the police beforehand about the new laws and what it might mean for her operations.

“Not directly no,” she says, “but I am aware that city council members did have a dialogue and were not made aware of any suggestion we might be involved in plans to disrupt the Coronation.”

I’ve seen no comment from police who gave evidence at the hearing on any reason for the ‘Night Stars’ arrest. The claim was that they’d had information suggesting the group’s members were handing out rape alarms for the purpose of disrupting the Coronation celebrations but that does not appear to have been substantiated by any police representative.

So was that their excuse or not? Or are they changing it? I have contacted the Metropolitan Police to seek clarification.

ADDITIONAL: The Met Police responded at 2.12pm as follows:

Three people were stopped by officers and arrested in the Soho area on suspicion of conspiracy to commit public nuisance. Among items seized were a number of rape alarms.

The three people – a 37-year-old woman, a 59-year-old woman and a 47-year-old man – were taken to a south London police station, where they were questioned. The 47-year-old man was also further arrested on suspicion of handling stolen goods.

All three have since been released with no further action.

So neither side is giving an inch, it seems.

I await with eager anticipation the report of the Home Affairs Committee – and any responses to it.


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Islington North Labour – and others – react to Labour NEC’s Jeremy Corbyn decision

Jeremy Corbyn: we should forgive him if he takes a moment of quiet pride in the support he has received from his fellow Islington North Labour members, constituents, trade unionists, and both party members and voters across the UK.

There will be voices that support the Labour NEC decision to bar Jeremy Corbyn from seeking re-election as a party candidate in Islington North – but it seems clear that they are in the minority.

And they’re also irrelevant when one considers the response from the only group that really matters: Islington North Constituency Labour Party.

It seems the CLP is planning to select Mr Corbyn anyway, no matter what Keir Starmer’s NEC lapdogs say.

You can understand why, from this clip of reactions to Mr Corbyn’s suspension from the Parliamentary Labour Party, back in 2020:

Did you mark the comment that the constituency is “Corbyn country”?

It seems this is one place where the person has eclipsed the party, and won’t be easily unseated by a drone parachuted in by Head Office.

That’s not the limit of the Labour leadership’s troubles, though:

And what are the people in Unite doing..?

If Starmer manages to foil Islington North’s apparent plan to select Mr Corbyn anyway, people are already lining up to help him seek election as an independent:

I live a little way away and transport would be difficult, but I’d love to do a bit with the Absolute Boy.

And it goes on. It seems people are resigning from CLP executives…

Looking at the resignation letter above, it seems the treatment of Mr Corbyn isn’t the only bone of contention with the party leadership and there may be much that is being kept from us (unlike during the years when he was leader, and the right-wing media insisted on examining every piece of rubbish in the bins, looking for scandal).

If this snowballs, Keir Starmer will only have himself to blame – but don’t expect to hear about it from the right-wing media that support him!


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Labour Party democracy ended by ruling committee in landmark Corbyn vote

Facepalm: Jeremy Corbyn is now free to stand as an Independent candidate in Islington North, if he so chooses. He knows the Labour Party has harmed itself by blocking him.

Watch – if you can bear it – the video version of this article:

It’s done, then.

The Labour Party’s ruling National Executive Committee has voted to override the wishes of party members in Islington North, denying them the opportunity to re-select Jeremy Corbyn as their Parliamentary candidate in the next general election.

This will not be a big deal for Mr Corbyn. He’ll just stand as an independent and win his seat again anyway. He’s won it at the last 10 elections and he’ll probably be helped by many soon-to-be-former members of Islington North Constituency Labour Party.

But for the Labour Party it is massive.

It means that Starmer has reneged on a promise he made when he was trying to trick Labour members into making him party leader.

He stated: “The selections for Labour candidates needs [sic] to be more democratic and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local party members should select their candidates for every election.”

His motion to the NEC to ban Mr Corbyn from standing is a clear betrayal of this.

What is Labour Party democracy now? That local party members can select any candidate they want – as long as that person has been pre-selected and approved by Keir Starmer?

That is not democracy. That is dictatorship.

Picture the scene in the House of Commons after the next election: Keir Starmer sitting on the front bench, surrounded by his cabinet of red Tories. And behind them, row upon row of identical Starmtroopers, itching for their turn to stand up and regurgitate whatever words the Starmperor puts into their mouths.

Picture them performing a version of the Nazi salute as the lurch to their jackbooted feet, because they might as well.

And those feet will spend the following five years stamping on your face in true Orwellian tradition.

I’m not keen on that.

I’d rather give it a miss.

The trouble is, in a two-party monopoly where the only other popular choice is the Conservatives, I’ve been left with no choice at all.

It’s either one set of fascists – and I use the term advisedly – or another.

In a country that is predominantly left-wing – the only reason the Tories keep getting in is the First Past The Post system that allows candidates with the largest minority of the vote to take the seat – it means the vast majority of voters are disenfranchised. We have nobody left to vote for.

So we come back to Mr Corbyn’s option – to stand as an Independent candidate.

Is it time for others who have been pushed out of Labour for their popular views to band together with him? He already has an organisation – his Project for Peace and Justice. Perhaps it is time to make it a political party. Perhaps it could link up with other such groups that have sprung up over the last few years.

Perhaps they could offer us an alternative that we could all support.


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No honour in Labour: Ed Miliband backstabs the man who defended his late father

He’s got your back: Ed Miliband is pictured behind Jeremy Corbyn – presumably working out where to put his knife.

Ed Miliband, whose father was defended by Jeremy Corbyn when the Daily Mail said he “hated Britain”, has shown his true colours by stabbing Mr Corbyn in the back.

In October 2013, after the Mail ran an attack piece against the then-Labour leader (Ed Miliband) by accusing his father, Mr Corbyn appeared on BBC News to defend him – as you can see:

Note also that Mr Corbyn was the only Labour MP to defend Miliband’s father publicly.

Today (March 28, 2023), as Labour’s NEC considers a motion by current Labour leader Keir Starmer to ban Mr Corbyn from ever again standing for election as a candidate for that party, Miliband also made an appearance on the BBC – to trot out yet again his leader’s tired and ridiculous whinge about anti-Semitism.

He said:

It’s about one thing, which is about Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction to the EHRC report on antisemitism and his refusal to apologise for that reaction. That is the background of this. I don’t think there’s any mystery about that.

There’s one problem with that: Keir Starmer’s motion does not mention anti-Semitism at all.

It is, therefore, entirely inappropriate for Miliband to trot it out as a reason for denying the members of Islington North’s Constituency Labour Party their democratic right to choose their candidate for Parliament.

Remember: Keir Starmer is on the record as saying he wanted to end NEC interference in local selections of Parliamentary candidates:

The move to bar Mr Corbyn is a clear betrayal of that promise.

So we see an honourable man – Mr Corbyn – backstabbed by not just one but two betrayers who are members of the Labour Party leadership. Doesn’t that tell us that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is not worth your time? That it should be shunned, avoided, and vilified wherever possible?

Ironically, Miliband’s ill-intended comment about Mr Corbyn came the morning after his victim was outside Parliament, speaking at a rally against racism:

Finally: the reason that is actually given by Keir Starmer’s motion, for wanting Mr Corbyn’s candidacy to be blocked, is the fact that Labour lost an election under his leadership.

By that standard, Ed Miliband should also be barred. He was the leader in 2015 when Labour won a much smaller share of the national vote than in 2017 or 2019, when Mr Corbyn was in charge.

But he is a member of the Shadow Cabinet.

The double-standard could not be clearer.

Miliband’s treachery has certainly provoked a strong reaction from the public. I provide a selection below, for those of you who would appreciate further depth:

The facts are clear – and they mitigate against Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband, and all the other fetid liars infesting the corpse of a once-great political organisation.

I don’t think the NEC’s decision will even matter now. The damage has been done.

Starmer, Miliband and the others have shown that Labour will betray anybody.

If that party – in its current form – gets into government, that is exactly what it will do to you.


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Labour is pushing Jeremy Corbyn into standing for Parliament as an independent

Jeremy Corbyn: Keir Starmer is trying to push the former Labour leader out of the spotlight.

This could be a major development:

If true, it will be Mr Corbyn’s response to a move by current Labour leader Keir Starmer to block him from standing for re-election as the party’s candidate in Islington North at the next general election.

Starmer has put a motion to Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee, calling for such a block. It will be discussed at a meeting tomorrow (March 28).

The motion states that Labour’s standing in the UK will be “significantly diminished” if Mr Corbyn is endorsed as a party candidate in a future election:

It does not mention any reasons why Labour’s standing would be diminished.

The issue was discussed on the BBC’s Politics Live programme today (March 27), on which panellists told a shocking number of lies about the way a fabricated scandal about anti-Semitism was weaponised against the then-party leader between 2015 and 2020 in order to trash his reputation.

The claim was that Mr Corbyn presided over a huge explosion of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and did little about it. In fact, he was able to reduce anti-Semitism to the lowest level in any UK political party – once he managed to clear out the right-wing factionalists who had been dragging their heels about investigating it, in order to make him look bad.

Let’s look at, and listen to, what was said:

The attempt to manipulate the story – by two of the participants (and even by the host) should be clear.

The decision by Labour’s NEC should be made public by the evening of March 28 (tomorrow).


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