Not backing down: donations to the RNLI increased by 2,000 per cent in a day after Nigel Farage tried to stop them rescuing refugees. It would be nice if the same happened because of this campaign by far-right bigots.
Britain First? Britain’s Farts, more like!
(And I’m sorry if you feel This Writer has coarsened Vox Political with my choice of language but it is entirely appropriate in the circumstances, I think. They leave a bad smell wherever they go.)
The far-right political organisation has started bombarding the Royal National Lifeboat Institution with thousands of emails purporting to be from “concerned citizens”, trying to get the charity to stop rescuing everybody in danger of drowning in UK coastal waters and instead to concentrate only on “saving British lives”:
RNLI vows to continue Channel rescues amid new hate campaign by Britain First https://t.co/1JGCZlFHEQ
This is of course a hate campaign against Johnny and Janey Foreigner, orchestrated by, as it happens, a pitiful gang of old, bald men with a chip on their collective shoulder:
This is what happens when cloning goes wrong, each replica more ugly, dense and cunty than the last
It’s said that Farage and Francois were the final clones of Operation Flagshag. Their kryptonite, milkshake and intelligence.
As an old, bald man myself, This Writer is angry that these old farts are giving us all a bad name.
They aren’t concerned citizens – they’re bigots.
Fortunately the RNLI isn’t the sort of group that is ever going to pander to this kind of racially-motivated hatred.
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This is a good question – triggered in This Writer’s mind by a reference to a different case.
Please read the following Twitter thread, which was prompted by a tweet referring to the death of DWP benefit claimant Philippa Day:
@NorwichChloe I have a petition with over 250,000 signatures and a group with over 3,500 ppl on Facebook who can tell you that THIS. IS NOT. AN. ISOLATED. CASE. My own daughter was bullied by an ATOS Inspector, who also tried to intimidate me. 1/ https://t.co/1IsCmDTAxq
3/ @NorwichChloe WHY, WHEN IT COSTS THE GOVERNMENT MORE MONEY TO CARRY OUT REASSESSMENTS are you still reassessing lifelong Disabled people and Terminally ill people??? All you're doing is PERSECUTING, DEMONISING AND DISCRIMINATING AGAINST THEM.
Yes, why does the DWP force people with incurable or terminal conditions to prove that they still have a lifelong disability or are still dying?
Reading those words, I thought about Jodey Whiting. She had a number of disabilities, including scoliosis which – as far as I can tell – is an incurable condition that requires constant treatment for the length of the sufferer’s life. If untreated, it could be life-threatening.
So it was pointless to demand that she attend a work capability assessment, because it was impossible for her condition to have improved. It could only worsen.
There is an argument that a WCA could take place to ascertain whether a claimant’s payments should increase – but that cannot be used as justification in Ms Whiting’s case because her benefits were stopped.
The DWP’s Green Paper on Disability, released in July this year (2021), acknowledges that it is pointless to keep reassessing people with lifelong and/or terminal conditions and proposes the creation of a Severe Disability Group (SDG). People put in this group would not have to face reassessment.
If the DWP is admitting that it is unreasonable for people with lifelong conditions to face constant reassessment now, then it would also be unreasonable to suggest that they should have faced constant reassessment in February 2017, when Ms Whiting took her own life.
Strangely, this does not seem to have been considered by the High Court when it rejected an appeal for a second inquest into Ms Whiting’s death, last month (October).
I wonder why the court did not consider that the absence of necessity for the assessment that led to Ms Whiting’s benefits being cut was a material consideration in her case.
There’s now a second appeal for another inquest. Perhaps the point could be made this time around?
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Boris Johnson: it seems we all think it’s time for him to go.
The media always sense that a Prime Minister’s time is up well before that PM does. And I think they now know Johnson’s days are well and truly numbered.
After a slew of car-crash media interviews since the start of the Tory conference, here’s one that I missed – but that illustrates Richard Murphy’s point very well:
In a Today programme interview, Nick Robinson – himself a staunch Conservative – told Boris Johnson to “stop talking”:
The Prime Minister was interrupted by Today programme presenter Nick Robinson as he answered questions about the acute shortage of lorry drivers driving the fuel crisis
The discussion turned tense when Mr Johnson gave a rambling answer about HGV drivers.
BBC Presenter Nick Robinson tried to interrupt the PM when he was arguing that the shortage of lorry drivers was due to failure to encourage workers to sign up for the job.
Mr Robinson: “You have made that point very clearly and I’m going to…
“Prime Minister – stop talking. We are going to have questions and answers, not where you merely talk, if you wouldn’t mind.”
At the end of the interview, Johnson sulked:
“It’s very kind of you to let me talk, I thought that was the point of inviting me on your show, but anyway, lovely to see you.”
Johnson has been the Establishment’s useful idiot for more than five years, pushing Brexit down our collective throats and delivering a landslide election victory for the Conservatives.
But he is a fool. His failure to cope with Covid-19 is the clearest possible indicator of that.
The sharks among his fellow Tories are smelling blood in the water. Rishi Sunak has already auditioned for the prime minister’s job in his own conference speech.
Foiled: Kathryn Johnson is led away by Labour’s ‘Southside Stasi’ (as recreated by actors).
Funny how, in trying to disassociate Labour from socialism, Keir Starmer’s cuckoos are acting increasingly like the former communists they claim to despise.
In the latest act of suppression, they prevented London Conference Arrangements Chairperson Kathryn Johnson’s speech from being heard – and then cancelled the whole online event.
Apparently she was going to criticise Keir Starmer’s leadership – and we can’t have that in the so-called Party of Free Speech, can we?
The conference had previously been brought forward from November to July, in order to ensure it could be held entirely online where it could be tightly controlled by the Southside Stasi.
Now, according to Skwawkbox,
The party’s apologists, in what appears to be a coordinated move, are now attempting to limit the damage by claiming she was cut off because she was being libellous – a claim attendees at the conference say is entirely untrue.
We can all find out the truth of that matter for ourselves by watching Socialist Telly today (July 26) at 8pm, when Ms Johnson will provide her speech, free of Starmer-style censorship, for all to hear.
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Police violence: it seems our law guardians are upset at being filmed attacking members of the public, with the images subsequently going on social media. Simple solution: don’t commit violent attacks on members of the public.
Apparently breaking the heads of members of the public isn’t such fun when you can be identified and shamed on the social media.
Of course that’s not what the Metropolitan Police Federation is saying. Its spokespeople call it “trial by social media” and say it should be banned.
They would, wouldn’t they?
They’re justifying their demand by pointing to verdicts of investigations into police conduct that have resulted in no action being taken.
But doesn’t that just raise questions about the way the police are policed?
Doesn’t it give us cause to question what police need to do before they are penalised for the outrageous behaviour they have been caught doing on camera?
This Writer has seen a woman being punched in the face by a policeman, her head snapping back almost into the camera taking the footage.
We all saw the police men practically stripping a female protester at a demonstration in Manchester. Why were they doing that and when will they be punished for it?
We’ve all seen footage of police harassing people from ethnic minorities, for no readily-apparent reason.
The MetFed wants those videos to be banned – and I don’t think it’s because there is no case to be answered.
I think it is because the MetFed doesn’t want to be embarrassed by the behaviour of its own people.
And what about this:
Many of incidents shared led to investigations against rogue officers otherwise there’d be no action- #GeorgeFloyd would have been just another black man dead if 🇺🇸 had done this. Maybe if your own officers stopped sharing footage of dead women, you’d have higher moral ground https://t.co/RhZbOGKcbl
— Aamer Anwar🎗✊🏽#BlackLivesMatter (@AamerAnwar) April 13, 2021
Two good points, don’t you think? For clarity, they are:
1. If nobody had taken footage of George Floyd being throttled under the knee of a US police officer, nothing would have been done about it.
2. It is hypocritical of the MetFed to complain about the sharing of images that shame the police when its own officers have shared images of them behaving inappropriately (to say the least) with the dead bodies of members of the public.
If the police did not behave inappropriately; if they weren’t prone to violence against the public they are meant to protect; and if we didn’t have reason to believe the system was corruptly supporting them, then nobody would be recording these images – they simply would not happen.
So, before these people demand what are frankly fascist measures to stop us from holding them to account – and remember, they can still record us (although I understand footage from cop cameras is likely to be restricted due to failings in policing by the officers involved) – it seems clear they should try cleaning up their act instead.
But I suppose that would take all the fun out of it.
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The government’s reaction to protests like that on Clapham Common last night (March 13), when male police officers arrested many women who had gathered to protest at the kidnap and murder of a woman, apparently by a male police officer, is simple: it will stop us from protesting.
Do you think that is reasonable?
Priti Patel is pushing through new legislation to ensure that police can step in to prevent any protests, rallies, or other public demonstrations tomorrow (March 15).
Her new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will expand on powers to restrict demonstrations in the Public Order Act 1986 that allowed them to be restricted if there was a risk of “serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community”.
The new Bill increases the scope to allow restrictions on the basis of noise: Patel means to literally silence protest in the UK.
If it is enacted as it stands, then police will be able to stop protests that “may result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation” – for instance by distracting employees in a nearby office.
This also applies if the event disturbs passers-by – if the noise of the protest could have “a relevant impact on persons in the vicinity of the procession”.
The threshold is minimal: if just one person could be caused “serious unease, alarm or distress”, the rozzers would be allowed to move in and get busy with their truncheons.
This is fascism – and it makes a mockery of the false hand-wringing the Bill’s author, Priti Patel, was exhibiting on Twitter yesterday:
Some of the footage circulating online from the vigil in Clapham is upsetting. I have asked the Metropolitan Police for a full report on what happened.
My thoughts remain with Sarah’s family and friends at this terrible time.
It seems the new Bill will contradict the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights, which enshrines our right to protest in law:
Protest is a human right. It is protected under the Human Rights Act. Right now the government have effectively banned it under the Coronavirus Act and it's not ending there – Priti Patel is attempting to make that permanent with the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
I am glad to report that there will indeed be such an event:
So there it is. If you want to protest against Priti Patel’s (and by extension, Boris Johnson’s) plan to silence protest against male violence on women* then be at Parliament Square in London from 5pm tomorrow – Monday, March 15.
*Yes, she wants to stop all forms of protest but this is what she is stopping right now, and people need to be aware of what it means. If you want to complain about my choice of words, your priorities are as wrong as if you wanted to complain about my characterisation of “male” violence in a previous article.
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If it is, it’s exactly the kick up the backside that the people of the UK need.
Admittedly, it uses an expletive for which I would prefer to see a less offensive word substituted; many people are put off by such language.
But it does confront us with the big failure of Boris Johnson’s tenure at 10 Downing Street: his decision to make it easy for people in the UK to catch Covid-19 (and it was a conscious decision, let’s not forget) has cost at least 120,000 lives.
I don’t know the prognosis for Lorna – the woman in the image – but the mere fact that Covid-19 has been allowed to infect her has clearly caused her huge discomfort (as it does to anybody who has it).
And the long-term effects – known as “long Covid” can be life-altering.
Millions of people are likely to be affected by the disease in the long term, and the blame for this can be attributed entirely to Johnson and his government of imbeciles.
And they would not have been allowed to inflict it on us if they had not been voted back in as the government in December 2019.
So this poster makes a good point, wouldn’t you agree?
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This is great news at a time when companies seem keen to ramp up the stress on employees who already have enough worry with Covid-19.
British Airways has agreed to end so-called “fire and rehire” employment practices.
The company came to the deal after nine days of strike action over the Christmas/New Year period which the union United said caused “overwhelming disruption to the company’s cargo services”.
Unite had proposed a urther nine days of strike action to start on January 22 but the first three days were called off at the last minute, after progress was made at the negotiations.
Another round of strikes due to begin this weekend has also been called off.
The deal is as follows:
End of “fire and rehire” (the last area of BA where this was a threat)
Workers will revert to previous contractual provisions subject to agreed changes
No compulsory redundancies
Improved pay protection for staff whose pay sits above the new agreed rates
An increase in pay for a significant proportion of staff
Members who did not sign the new contract and were dismissed will be offered their jobs back on the agreed terms.
Unite’s members will have to be balloted on the deal, and it is understood that they are likely to accept it.
It’s a great victory for Unite, but let’s not minimise the step that BA has taken at a time when other firms are opportunistically forcing employees to re-apply to do the same job they’re already doing, but for less money and with fewer work-related protections.
BA is setting an example, and even if nobody else follows it, let’s applaud that choice.
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I guess everybody who was clamouring for the identity of the Tory MP who was accused of rape earlier this year is happy that they didn’t get what they wanted.
But here’s a thing:
Police say the allegations against a former minister did not meet the “evidential test”.
Haven’t we heard that line too many times, in connection with rape investigations that should have been taken all the way?
And also, considering the time of year, is it possible that this has been cleared off the decks because nobody in authority wants it dragging on into a new year?
I know.
There’s no evidence to support those suggestions here.
I simply have a doubt about whether there’s a reason for that.
Betrayer: it seems an online campaign against left-wing news sites was launched by people close to current Labour leader Keir Starmer. Is he trying to be more Tory even than the Tories?
An organisation claiming to campaign against fake news – but actually targeting left-wing political websites – was set up by Labour Party employees, research has revealed.
It seems the ownership of the Campaign for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) were well-hidden but detective work by John McEvoy at The Canary (one of the organisation’s victims) has teased out the facts.
This is a clear attack on the freedom of press: The neoliberal right-wing of the Labour Party created a bogus campaign called "Stop Funding Fake News" to try to censor and shut down independent left-wing media outlets like @TheCanaryUK
And it seems the facts show that the CCDH was launched by none other than Labour leader Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, one Morgan McSweeney.
CCDH is a not-for-profit NGO which was initially registered on Companies House as Brixton Endeavours Limited. At the time of incorporation, 19 October 2018, the organisation’s only director was Morgan McSweeney – Labour leader Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. McSweeney was also the campaign manager for Liz Kendall’s leadership bid.
Brixton Endeavours Limited was officially renamed the Center for Countering Digital Hate on 30 August 2019, and McSweeney did not resign his directorship until 6 April 2020. The resignation was listed on Companies House on 4 May 2020, the day CCDH and SFFN’s relationship was formally acknowledged.
Although CCDH was first named on Companies House in August 2019, it has been in unofficial operation since December 2017.
SFFN was originally set up separately from CCDH, but it seems the founding chief executive of both was the same man – Imran Ahmed, who has also worked closely with Labour figures previously involved in the campaign to remove Jeremy Corbyn as party leader.
According to his Twitter profile, Ahmed is the “founding CEO of CCDH & SFFN” – suggesting he has been involved in SFFN since it was first launched in early 2019.
Ahmed has worked as special advisor to Hilary Benn, reported to have encouraged a vote of “no confidence” against Corbyn in 2016, and as head of communications for Angela Eagle, who launched a leadership challenge the same year. Both Benn and Eagle “consistentlyvoted” for the Iraq War.
He now also sits on the steering committee of the UK government’s Commission for Countering Extremism, where he advises on “conspiracist “news” sites”.
SFFN and CCDH’s websites were also registered on the same server, on 28 January 2019 and 24 April 2019, respectively.
CCDH also shares its address with “Blue Labour” campaign group Labour Together, formerly directed by McSweeney, and now co-directed by Labour shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy.
So we see that CCDH and SFFN are closely connected to Labour Together, to right-wing MPs Hilary Benn and Angela Eagle, and to the Labour leader Keir Starmer.
And what has it done?
Firstly it should be made clear that not everything done by these organisations has been bad. They have successfully campaigned for the removal of some genuinely poisonous individuals from the social media and raised the alarm over online misinformation about Covid-19.
But its most vicious campaigning has concentrated on the Left, it seems:
While posing as a neutral body concerned with “the rapid rise in Fake News”, operated by people who are supposedly “pro-truth, pro-balance and pro-responsible news”, SFFN in fact appears to be a highly politicised pressure group, and part of the wider onslaught against the British left.
A statistical analysis of SFFN’s lobbying efforts supports this assessment. Between its founding and the 2019 general election, SFFN targeted The Canary – which the campaign acknowledged was its largest target – more than any other website, with 176 individual posts on Twitter. The operation has been scaled down since the election, with 42 individual posts targeting The Canary in a greater amount of time.
Canary editor-in-chief Kerry-Anne Mendoza is currently suffering her second Twitter ban within a week in what seems clearly a co-ordinated campaign of harassment against her.
Apparently CCDH and SFFN have only one patron:
CCDH lists Countdown figure Rachel Riley as its only patron, adding that it receives additional funds from “philanthropic trusts and members of the public”.
It is not known whether Riley has also funded SFFN since 2019, at which time she celebratedThe Canary being “on its last legs” due to SFFN lobbying. Riley did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Hmm. I won’t comment too heavily onthis as This Writer is currently being sued for libel (on very tenuous grounds) by Riley. Suffice it to say that she has been fighting her own crusade against Jeremy Corbyn and left-wing politics for several years now.
There is strong evidence to show that CCDH and SFFN are fronts for an anti-left-wing propaganda campaign run by people within the very organisation that should be supporting lefty news endeavours.
Perhaps it is time these people were put on the spot and, rather than accepting their accusations without question, we put their own credentials to the test.
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