Dear Editor, One after the other, political commentators have been lining up to express solidarity with Gary Lineker … “but”, they add, “I wouldn’t have used that language”. Why not? There is enough evidence out there to justify his choice of words, it’s just that it has been drip fed to us so slowly we […]
We all think we’re rational human beings. So let’s put that to a test in a little thread, with sources. This is for those who are in a terrible tizz right now, and think Gary Lineker is actual Satan. “We are taking too many immigrants” There are 281 million migrants globally. https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/wmr-2020-interactive/ We took 90,000. […]
Cancelling Sir David Attenborough, Gary Lineker and the BBC Singers and reducing BBC orchestra numbers all in a single week does seem like a bit of an orchestrated PR campaign to get the BBC to self sabotage. To quote Ian Fleming: ‘Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.’ There has been a long-running campaign […]
Once again, the Conservatives are threatening to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. But they’ve been threatening that for many years – and never for good reasons, only spurious ones. Always. Today, the Tories seem ready to jettison our 70-year alignment with the European Convention if that gets in the way of their despicable […]
Traditional Conservative politics, as the name suggests, amongst other things, places a significant emphasis on the conservation of the tried and tested, the reliable, the traditional, and so on. Traditional conservativism prioritizes practical experience over abstract theorizing, and prefers gradual changes, organically developing and emerging from the local community, to sweeping changes imposed from above. For a […]
There was a moment recently when journalist Lewis Goodall made me cry. “The kind of crushing thing”, he said, “is what pulls them, like so many before them, to Britain. It’s the esteem they hold us in. They think Britain is different. They think Britain will treat them better”. It's poignant to think that, even […]
This is the horrible email Suella Braverman is sending to the Tory faithful. Make no mistake, this othering and demonisation of asylum seekers and those who defend their rights is a classic indicator of this country’s descent into fascism. Resist! Here is the email in full with my annotations. “We tried to stop the small […]
From today, the government has announced, “anyone crossing the Channel will be detained and removed to a safe country within weeks.” To be clear, Home Secretary, Suella Braverman MP, is not talking about those travelling from Calais to Dover with P&O, DFDS, or Irish Ferries. No, she is talking about desperate people, mostly genuine asylum […]
For a few weeks in 2009, when I worked for DFID and it looked as if the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic might be of a similar scale to what we’ve seen with Covid-19, I attended official-level cross-Whitehall coordination meetings. The meetings were huge, drawing on civil servants from across Whitehall, often multiple people from one […]
A man walks into a greengrocer and asks for a kilo of tomatoes. The greengrocer tells him, “That’s £50, please, mate”. The man is shocked. ‘£50? Last week these tomatoes only cost me £2!’ ‘Well, today it is £50.’ ‘But why £50? You’re having a laugh!’ The greengrocer says, ‘I’ll explain it: – £2 for […]
As readers will no doubt be aware, Shamima Begum’s quest to have her British citizenship returned to her has failed yet again. I’m not going to get into the details of why, and of what sort of threat she poses to our national security. Nor am I concerned with why she went to join ISIS […]
In John Grisham’s 1989 novel A Time to Kill, ten-year-old Black girl Tonya Hailey is viciously raped, abused and left for dead by two White drunken men in 1980s Mississippi. Defence lawyer Jake Brigance, played by Matthew McConaughey in a film of the same name, takes on the defence of the little girl’s father, Carl […]
New Year resolutions have been made and broken, Valentine’s Day has come and gone and now we are about to be bombarded with Easter consumables, most of which are encased in single-use plastic! It is estimated that the UK will spend a mind-boggling £800m at Easter; £381m on eggs (ouch that’s a lorra, lorra calories!) […]
Just 24-hours after the EU referendum on 23 June 2016, I posted this on my blog: ‘Just over half of those who voted bought manky lies dressed up as a better life after Brexit. They were told they’d get their country back. Their lives would be transformed. ‘More jobs, homes, schools and hospitals. Fewer migrants. […]
Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, admitted today that Northern Ireland is in a better position than the rest of the UK by having unique access to both the EU Single Market and the UK market. He excitedly told workers at the Coca-Cola plant in Co Antrim that this made Northern Ireland, ‘The world’s most exciting economic […]
Dear Editor, Selecting the chair of the BBC is almost Britain’s equivalent of finding the next Pope. He or she must be immaculate and must be an unassailable tightrope-walker in terms of political /social/religious balance. Why? Because the BBC is OUR BBC and we insist, indeed the BBC Charter insists, on political, social and religious […]
Dear Editor I couldn’t agree more with Jon Danzig’s latest article on Brexit/Putin. I took this image on a placard, on the ‘National Rejoin March’ in October 2022. Putin acts like an old-fashioned Tsar and has even built a Louis XIV-style palace on the Black Sea coast, but he’s also a competent strategist. With the […]
The main beneficiary of Brexit? Vladimir Putin, argues Jon Danzig. A vote for Brexit, was a vote for Putin Putin’s fingerprints are all over Brexit. There have been suspicions of this for some time, but the evidence is now compelling and urgently needs proper investigation. Motive is the key incentive for any crime. There have […]
Some comments on social media around migrants are so vile – I’m venting in a take down of the top anti migrant ‘gotchas’… God help me. 1. We need security checks!/people in the asylum system are criminals, drug dealers, terrorists, blah blah The asylum system takes years. You the think government aren’t doing background checks […]
In fairness, it’s not an exceptionally observant point to make: anywhere you look, pundits are noting the unshakeable air of malaise around Westminster. It’s nothing compared to the death spiral of Johnson’s regime, or the barely-controlled hysteria of Truss’s brief reign of economic terror, but it’s there. The waters may be calm, but there are […]
All this past week, Jon Danzig has been posting videos reminding us of the fatal flaws in the Brexit referendum and demonstrating that it was a sham. Nobody wants to rub the noses of deceived voters in this mess. The blame rests firmly with the politicians, the media and those shadowy proponents of this monumental […]
Thom Brooks, Professor of Law and Government at Durham Law School, has written a report spelling out the truth about the appalling mismanagement of Brexit by this government in the context of the small boats crisis. Set aside for a moment that Brexit is intrinsically disastrous, you could be forgiven for expecting its slavish, zealous […]
All this week, Jon Danzig is posting videos reminding us of the fatal flaws in the Brexit referendum and demonstrating that it was a sham. Nobody wants to rub the noses of deceived voters in this mess. The blame rests firmly with the politicians, the media and those shadowy proponents of this monumental act of […]
It was not a good weekend for English politics. There was a neo-fascist, racist inspired riot near Liverpool. The Mail blamed the headteacher who was murdered recently, along with her daughter, for her own death because she had overshadowed her husband’s achievements. Meanwhile, Lee Anderson, the former Labour councillor who had been Tory MP for […]
In the space of 24 hours I have read one article about a cross-party meeting on limiting Brexit damage and another about Rishi Sunak wanting to “rebuild UK’s relations with the EU”. Why now, all of a sudden? Bloomberg says: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” I don’t buy it. Surely we heard about the invasion 12 […]
With thanks to Care4Calais for their kind permission to reproduce this account. It is impossible to imagine how terrifying this must have been for them and for the unfortunate people who had been put in that hotel. This government, forever looking for others on whom to pile the blame for the effects of their policies, […]
Nobody gave ‘informed consent’ for Brexit. That’s because, in the 2016 referendum, the electorate was not sufficiently informed. On the contrary, we were grossly misinformed. Legally, informed consent means that consent has been given with full knowledge of: ▪ the risks involved,▪ the probable consequences,▪ and the alternatives. – During the referendum, we were not fully aware of all […]
Dear West Country Voices, The Titanic was advertised as being unsinkable. Its owners, the White Star Line, were facing great competition from Cunard in the burgeoning market to transport folk to the USA. Not just business men and rich people, but also those leaving for a new life. The Titanic had to be built as […]
𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘 𝗙𝗘𝗕𝗥𝗨𝗔𝗥𝗬 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟲: Here’s a question for you, I wrote in my report of February 2016: ‘𝗪𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲?’ No, me neither. But that’s what those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU were expecting voters to do – vote to end our membership of the […]
Farming from the ground up – George Monbiot’s latest book puts food production under the microscope. It’s time to harvest the last of the main crop potatoes, but I have a dilemma. How do I get them out of the ground without disturbing the soil? I have been reading George Monbiot’s book: Regenesis. He devotes […]