Despite What Fraser Nelson and His Ilk Believe, the Sick and Disabled Are Still Expected to Look For Work

Earlier this afternoon I posted a piece about an article by Fraser Nelson, the editor of the Spectator, about how there were too many people off sick when they were tens of thousands of jobs going vacant. Some other politico, I don’t know if it was one of the Tories or Starmer’s crew, has also announced that they intend to retrain those currently off sick to fill those vacancies. I’m certain they were talking about the ill, rather than the unemployed, though the article revealed the same persecutory attitude the Tories have towards them. I’m afraid I really don’t know much about the current official processes governing the long term sick and disabled. I’m therefore grateful to Trev, one of the great commenters on this blog for the information he’s posted about the treatment of the sick and disabled wishing to claim benefits And one of the things that is very clear is that they are expected to look for suitable work. Which shows that, if Nelson really was talking about the sick rather than the unemployed, he’s talking massive nonsense. Even if Nelson was talking about the unemployed, some of my arguments against the policy still stands. And Trev’s comments still show the persecutory and vindictive nature of Tory policy towards the sick and disabled.

Trev writes

‘I didn’t know there still was any Sickness Benefits. There are no Sick Notes anymore because the Tories scrapped them. You have to get a Fit Note that says what you can do not what you can’t do, then apply for ESA (Employment Support Allowance) which replaced Income Support, then once in receipt of ESA you are still required to look for work if placed in the ESA Work Related Activity Group. People are routinely informed that their ESA has been stopped and the DWP have decided they are now fit for work. I have health problems but I think it better to stay on legacy JSA instead of bothering to apply for a Fit Note and ESA because once lost I can never get my JSA back again and the conditions on legacy JSA are more favourable than UC.

Many of the sick or disabled who are claiming Benefits are forced to look for work and apply for jobs, as well as attending Government schemes such as the Health and Work Programme run by Reed in Partnership aka “Better Working Futures”. I’m currently on that scheme and they are always texting you with “Hot Jobs”, which could be virtually anything, a part-time Cleaner 2 hours a week or a full-time factory/warehouse job involving shift work and heavy lifting. Everyone who is sent there is out of work but has some ailment, illness, health condition, physical or mental. One week they sat us down in a classroom and showed us a video of a man born without limbs, then we had to write a list of things in our lives that we feel grateful for. Last week I was in a class being taught how to write a cover letter for a job application. It lasts for 15 months and is compulsory if referred by the Jobcentre.

P. S.
If you have a health condition or disability that prevents you from leading a normal daily life such as needing help to get dressed, cook a meal or move around, for example, you can apply for PIP (Personal Independence Payments) of varying levels and amounts, and which replaced DLA (Disability Living Allowance). I don’t know about how that relates to work requirements or jobsearch, might depend on whether you’re also getting ESA and are in the WRAG or not.
And the Tories said their Welfare Reforms were intended to simplify the Benefits system! They lied.

Oh and I almost forgot, there’s also the much dreaded WCA (Work Capability Assessments) whereby a private company gets public money to find sick & disabled people capable of working. I’m not sure which particular group it applies to, ESA or PIP. WCA was introduced by New Labour.’

My best wishes to Trev and to everyone else struggling with this vile system designed to humiliate and degrade some of the poorest and most vulnerable in society.

Now The Tories Are Coming for Those on Sickness Benefits

Earlier this week the Spectator published a noxious piece by its noxious editor, Fraser Nelson. Nelson was complaining about the numbers receiving sickness benefit while businesses in Britain are struggling to recruit workers. This included, he said, army officers with a beginning salary of £35,000. From what I could gather, the thrust of his article was that the people on sick leave and benefits should be taken off them and then forced to go into one of these vacant jobs. This has been followed by various other right-wing politicians declaring that they intend to retrain the long-term sick to fill these vacancies. The implication here is the old Blairite assumption about people on disability benefits that a certain proportion of them, at least, must be malingerers. It’s why the work capability assessment was set up to find a certain percentage of claimants fit for work, whether they were or not, and the consequent scandals of genuinely critical disabled and terminally ill people being thrown off benefits and told to get a job. It’s the attitude behind the New Labour and the Tories’ wretched benefit reforms, which not only demands claimants look for work and have their searches checked by the staff, but also has them thrown off benefits and sanctioned on the slightest pretext. If they’re starting on the long term sick, it probably indicates that they’ve gone as far as they can demonising and humiliating the unemployed and have been forced to start demonising and humiliating the sick. It’s also based on the unsympathetic attitude that working is good for you and will get you back on your feet. This was the attitude a few years ago when Dave Cameron’s coalition government came to power, and disability campaigners tore into that, showing that this simply wasn’t the case. There seems to be no awareness that some people are sick because of their jobs and working conditions. As for the mental health crisis hitting Britain, it isn’t due to Gary Lineker spreading fears about climate change, as Richard Tice has declared. It’s far more to do with the cost of living crisis caused by rising inflation, stagnant wages kept below the rate of inflation, as well as job insecurity caused by zero hours contracts and the gig economy and the detrimental effects of Brexit. But Reform and the Conservatives can’t admit that, as they believe that this has all been a splendid success and will make us all wealthier and business more secure and prosperous in the long run.

Behind this, I suspect, is the need to get British workers to take the jobs that were originally filled by immigrants and migrant workers now that immigration has become such a hot topic and the Tories are announcing their intention to cut it. It’s basically a return to the calls for Brits to work a fruit pickers instead of migrant workers a few years. That was met by complaints from people who had tried, but were turned down as the farmers preferred to employ migrants.

As for retraining the unemployed to fill certain jobs, there are obvious problems with this. Not everyone has the strength or temperament, let alone the academic qualifications for certain jobs. Army officers are an example of this. Membership of the armed forces demands physical and mental toughness as well as the ability to kill while observing the laws of war. In the case of the officer corps, it also demands intelligence, the jokes about military intelligence being a contradiction in terms aside. Those are very exacting standards and not everyone is able to fill them. There are other problems matching people to jobs. I was given grief when I tried signing on after gaining my archaeology Ph.D. nearly ten years ago by the clerks at the Job Centre. They were annoyed that I spent my time looking for jobs as an archaeologist, particularly in academia. I was told at my last meeting with them, where the supervising girl basically told me not to bother signing on any more, that I should really have been looking for menial jobs like cleaning before trying to find the work I was qualified to do. It shows the way the Job Centre staff aren’t interesting in making sure the right people find the right jobs but simply getting people off their books. But the problem with this is that employers of such jobs probably aren’t interested in taking on graduates, who are obviously overqualified. And some of the jobs that need to be filled require years of training and experience. Our favourite internet non-historian the other day put up a piece asking why this country needed to import architects and archaeologists from overseas. With archaeologists I think he may have a point, as I think there may be surplus of qualified archaeologists compared to the number of jobs. The profession was expanding a decade ago, but that seems to have passed and the number of archaeology firms set up in the boom time may have shrunk. I don’t know about architects. Assuming that there is a shortage of British architects – and I’m not sure there is – the problem here is that it takes years of study and training to qualify as one. It’s not a profession where someone can be retrained and fit to work in a few weeks.

The demands for people on sickness benefit to be retrained to fill these job vacancies then is just more right-wing Tory ideology about benefit scroungers and malingerers, which ignores the real reasons behind their sickness and the problem the unemployed face finding jobs they can actually do. But as the government and business faces increased difficulty recruiting foreign workers because of Brexit and the controversy over immigration, we can expect these demands to get worse.

Spectator Article Claims Immigration Has Increased Since Brexit

Looking through Google earlier I found an article on the Speccie’s website claiming with that more or less as its title, authored by none other than its editor, Fraser Nelson. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read the article because you have to be a subscriber, and I’m not. But hold on! Weren’t all the right-wing, Tory anti-immigration types pushing Brexit as the solution too mass immigration and all those pesky people heading across the Channel to us on rubber dinghies?

And was this a pack of lies? Yes, yes, they did and it was. The anti-immigration Brexiteers – there were others on the Labour left who support Brexit, and who were definitely not racist or anti-immigration – told anybody who would listen that the migrants heading over here after passing through Europe had been able to do so because of the European constitution. That isn’t the case. The European constitution does call for freedom of movement across the Union for EU citizens, but from what I understand asylum seekers are required to settle in the first country they travel to. The Schengen Agreement allows immigrants from outside the EU to travel freely from one country to another, but that’s a separate treaty which only binds the specific countries that signed it. Quite simply, the Brexiteer right lied to people about this issue, just as they lied to people about oven-ready deals with the EU, using the money spent on our contribution to the EU on the NHS, the rest of the world flocking to us desperate for trade deals after we left, no traffic queues at Dover or extra bureaucracy and so on, and on, ad nauseam. And now it has dawned on them that, rather than stopping mass immigration, the number of immigrants entering the country has actually increased.

I’m not actually surprised. I was talking to a friend of mine about immigration a while ago, who’d been doing some reading on the issue. He told me that immigration also increased massively after Britain first passed legislation cutting down on it. Before then, it had been largely chain-immigration. Immigrants would arrive from south Asia or wherever and take up residence in a certain area, but would generally only live there for a short period of time before returning to India or Pakistan. They would then be replaced by another set of immigrants, who would also live there for a relatively short space of time before returning and being replaced by a newer set of migrants in their turn. But in the run-up to the date when the new anti-immigration legislation came into law there was a surge in the number of people immigrating to the country, presumably hoping to get in before the door shut. I wonder if something like that is happening now with the people coming here from Africa and the Middle East. Some of the rise in immigration that’s occurred over the past year has been caused Ukrainians seeking refuge in this country as a result of Putin’s invasion of their homeland. I’d say that this was something of an anomaly, as it’s the result of warfare in Europe itself while the pattern of migration that bothers the anti-immigration lobby is that of non-Whites from outside Europe. The exceptional circumstances of the war in Ukraine may mean that in subsequent years the level of immigration may well be lower.

The anti-immigration crew have been aware for some time that Brexit hasn’t been the solution to the issue they believed, or they told people. I’ve seen disturbing articles on various right-wing blogs and YouTube channels talking about this, and suggesting that what we need to do is get out of the 1950s United Nations treaty on refugees. The Nat Cons are taking their inspiration and ideology from the American ultra-Conservative right, and there has been a strain in extreme right-wing American thought that’s been critical of the UN for a very long time. There are very conspiracy theories about the United Nations, which see it very much as the beginning of the Satanic One World Communist dictatorship. Other, less bonkers views attack it for supposedly being anti-American and anti-Israel. My guess is that it may not be too long before we see similar attacks on the United Nations appearing on the right in Britain with the purpose of discrediting the Refugee Treaty. Not that this will be such a radical change for some of the papers. When the UN criticises us for the poverty and suffering Tory policies have inflicted on our citizens, papers like the Heil respond with shrill attacks on it for being anti-British. I think we can expect this hostility to increase and become louder and more vitriolic as the Tories and other right-wing parties like Reform try to stir up anti-immigrant feeling.

Spectator Promoting French Anti-Immigrant Writer

Zelo Street put up a piece yesterday reporting and commenting on the Spectator raving about a French anti-immigration author, Eric Zemmour, whose views could fairly be said to be far right. Zemmour has been prosecuted three times for racial hatred. He has described young male migrants from Africa and the Middle East as ‘killers and rapists’ and written a book, The Suicide of France, lamenting the abandonment of traditional French values to Islamism. He also laments the great replacement of the indigenous White French by Muslim immigrants, rails against the foreign powers he sees dominating France, from the EU to Germany, and defends the collaborationist leader of Vichy France, Marshal Petain. The ‘great replacement’ is the vile conspiracy theory that holds that the Jews are deliberately importing non-White immigrants to destroy the White race. If Zemmour was anyone else, he’d probably be denounced as an anti-Semite. But he’s of Algerian Jewish descent, and according to the Speccy a hatred of Muslims is ‘hardly unique’ among Algerian Jews, who were forced out of the country when it gained independence. This still doesn’t mean that a respectable magazine should be publishing him then.

Zelo Street concludes

“What Jonathan Miller means by comparing Zemmour to Tucker Carlson is the amplification of mere bigotry – in both cases, explicitly or implicitly against Muslims – into the Great Replacement theory. The only novel element of Zemmour’s take is that he is Jewish, and the child of immigrants – but still riding a trademark white supremacist bandwagon.

On being called out for promoting such bigotry, Andrew Neil will tell his critics that they should consult Nelson, as he’s the editor, and decides what goes in the magazine. Nelson, in turn, will snootily brush off any criticism as “just something on Twitter”.

Once more, the Spectator has been caught promoting bigotry. And that’s not good enough.”

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2021/09/spectator-promotes-foreign-criminal.html

All the French peeps with whom I’ve talked about Petain cordially and absolutely hate him and his vile regime. This was a regime that collaborated with the Nazis and their persecution of the Jews. There do seem to be problems with some immigrants and rape. Earlier this week Alex Belfield reported that the course immigrants are given on integrating into British culture includes training them against sexually assaulting and raping British women. But obviously that does not mean that all Muslim and African immigrants are such a threat.

Zelo Street describes the Spectator as ‘increasingly Alt Right’. I don’t think you can doubt it when it promotes someone like Zemmour, who is planning a ‘piratical’ challenge next year in the French presidency campaigns, and who would also like to be on GB News.

But we should also be asking where the Board of Deputies and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism are about this issue. They’re nowhere to be seen. With his views on the Great Replacement, Zemmour could be regarded as genuinely self-hating. But they’re silent. Yet when someone on the left criticises Israel, they fall over themselves screaming that they’re an anti-Semite, especially if they’re Jewish.

The Spectator is promoting people with extreme right-wing views, views which the Board of Deputies seems to feel is acceptable because he’s not attacking Israel. Which shows that the Board is not only biased, but completely unfit for purpose for defending Jews against real anti-Semitism.

‘I’ Report on Conviction of Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn as Criminal Gang

First a piece of good news. Yesterday’s I for 8th October 2020 reported that a Greek court had convicted the Golden Dawn of being a criminal organisation. This was the Golden Dawn that’s a neo-Nazi outfit responsible for violent attacks on immigrants, left-wing activists and the murder of rap singer, not the Golden Dawn, which was an early 20th century occult society. Although the latter did briefly have Aleister Crowley, the Beast 666 and the ‘wickedest man in the world’ as a member.

The ‘I’s report on page 25, by Derek Gatopoulos, runs

A Greek court has ruled that the far-right Golden Dawn party was operating as a criminal organisation, delivering a landmark verdict in a marathon five-year trial.

The court ruled that seven of the party’s 18 former legislators, including party leader Nikos Michaloliakos, were guilty of leading a criminal organisation, while the others were guilty of participating in one.

As news of the guilty verdicts broke, cheers and celebrations erupted among the crowd of more than 15,000 people gathered in an anti-fascist rally outside the Athens courthouse.

A small group among the crowd threw Molotov cocktails and stones and police responded with tear gas and water cannon.

The marathon trial had been assessing four cases rolled into one: the 2013 fatal stabbing of Greek rap singer Pavlos Fyssas, physical attacks on Egyptian fishermen in 2012, and on left-wing activists in 2013, and whether Golden Dawn was operating as a criminal organisation.

The 68 defendants included the 18 former legislators from the party that was founded in the 80s as a neo-Nazi organisation and rose to become Greece’s third-largest.

Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the verdict “ends a traumatic cycle” in the country’s public life.

The three-member panel of judges also delivered a guilty verdict against Giorgos Roupakias for the murder of Mr Fyssas. prompting applause in the courtroom and among the crowd.

Roupakios had been accused of being a party supporter who delivered the fatal stab wound to Mr Fyssas. Another 15 defendants – none of them former legislators – were convicted as accomplices.

Outside the courthouse, Mr Fyssas’s mother, Magda, who had attended every session over five years, raised her arms and shouted: “Pavlos did it. My son!” All five people accused of attempted murder against the fishermen were also found guilty, while the four accused of attempted murder in athe attacks against left-wing activists were found guilty of the lesser charge of causing bodily harm.

“Today marks a huge victory for justice and respect for Greece and the entire world,” said Eva Cosse of Human Rights Watch. “It sends a strong message that hate crimes are not and should not, be tolerated in a democratic society.”

There was never any real doubt that the Golden Dawn were a neo-Nazi organisation, although they denied it. They took as their symbol the angular design used in ancient Greek friezes which resembles a series of interlinked swastikas. Whenever they were asked about it and its similarity to the Nazi symbol, they claimed instead, quite rightly but disingenuously, that it was an ancient Greek design. They also celebrated the ancient Spartans. They were the ruling Herrenvolk of the Greek city state of Sparta, a society geared to war. Babies were examined after their birth to make sure that they had no physical defects or malformities. Those who failed the test were brutally disposed of by being thrown into a nearby cavern. Archaeologists have chillingly discovered the bones of a large number of infants, presumably the victims of this cruel custom. Beneath the Spartans themselves were the Helots, the state slave class, the descendants of the city’s original inhabitants whom the Spartans had conquered and enslaved. One day each year normal laws were suspended to allow the Spartans to treat the Helots however they liked, up to and including murder. In its militarism, enslavement, eugenics and racism it very much resembles the Nazis and their horrific Third Reich.

One of the internet news organisations a few years ago made a documentary about the Golden Dawn. They interviewed the Egyptian fishermen and other extra-European immigrants, who’d been attacked by them. I don’t doubt that the austerity imposed on Greece by the EU contributed to the organisation’s rise. We were taught at in Geography at school, when we studied the Third World as part of the ‘A’ Level course, that extreme poverty leads to political extremism and racial and ethnic conflict as different groups fight over resources. Apart from attacking immigrants themselves, the Golden Dawn also attacked and tore down their stalls in the local markets. They also gave out food parcels, but only to ethnic Greeks. It’s excellent that the organisation and the murderous thugs running it have been successfully prosecuted.

Zelo Street put up a very good piece about the Golden Dawn’s conviction, pointing out that it poses something of an embarrassment for the Spectator, its editor, Fraser Nelson, and board chairman Andrew Neil. Because the magazine, itself heading rapidly towards the far right, published a piece by Greek playboy and jailbird, Taki, praising the Nazis. Way back in 2013 Takis had written in his column that

“Golden Dawn came into being because of PC, poor Greeks at times getting fewer benefits than African illegal immigrants. Then GD became very popular with certain poor Greeks while it defended them from being mugged by Albanian criminals and drug dealers, and for safeguarding older folk after bank withdrawals”.

He also claimed that they weren’t Nazis, but just good, patriotic Greek boys who were just rough. No, I think it’s quite clear they really were Nazis. And murder and violent assault goes far beyond being a little rough.

When people complained about Taki’s article, Nelson responded by saying

“Our readers like diversity and well-written pieces that they disagree with. We have no party line”. This prompted Sunny Hundal to ask if they had any limits at all. Could they write pieces praising Hitler? Well, they haven’t so far, but Taki did write another piece stating that the real heroes of D-Day were the German soldiers, who fought to the death against overwhelming numbers. This is particularly remarkable considering the brutality and atrocities committed by the Italian Fascists and the Nazis during their occupation of Greece. Nelson defended this piece by arguing that “People like reading well-argued pieces with which they might disagree”. Well, you wonder. You wonder if the problem is that actually, at least part of the Speccie’s readership do agree.

The Street wondered how Nelson can defend publishing such stuff praising the Golden Dawn and excusing their violence, while claiming any complaints about it simply came from the PC brigade and invoking free speech. The Street concluded

‘After the verdicts were handed down in Athens today, Fraser Nelson should have stopped and thought. And then he should have resigned his post. But he won’t.

Because that would require principle. And he hasn’t got any. I’ll just leave that one there.’

Well, yes. It should at least have given Nelson pause. But it won’t stop him. He’s been publishing Taki for years, despite frequent complaints about his anti-Semitism. And doubtless Nelson will continue printing pieces by him. The Spectator’s a Tory magazines, and the publication of such pieces by Taki suggests that many of the rag’s readers have the same attitude towards Blacks, Muslims and Jews as those the blogger Jacobsmates found on internet sites for supporters of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson.

But remember, there’s supposed to be no problem with racism and anti-Semitism in the Tory party, who deal with it promptly, unlike Labour.

Spectator’s US Sister Giving Platform to Alt-Right Thug

The Spectator continues its goose-stepping to the beat of the Alt Right. Yesterday, Zelo Street put up a piece about the magazine’s American sister paper, Spectator USA, which had carried a piece by Douglas Murray attacking ‘cancel culture’. This is a term for the banning of an individual from the public sphere because of their views. My impression is that it’s usually done by the left against those they consider, rightly or wrongly, to be promoting intolerable racist, homophobic or misogynist views. Murray’s article was about how people could fight back against it. Murray told his readers that ”Cancel Culture’ was a horrible term because outside of a dictatorship nobody can be cancelled or otherwise ‘disappeared”. Many people, on the left as well as the right, object to the increasing climate of intolerance and the narrow limits now being imposed on what constitutes acceptable speech. However, instead of producing as an example of a victim of the Culture someone whose views, although controversial, could be justified, and whose silencing presented a wider threat to free speech everywhere, the magazine showed instead where its real political allegiances lay. They chose Gavin McInnes. That’s Gavin McInnes, as in the founder of the Proud Boys, a group of Alt Right thugs. McInnes gave his article the title “The mob and me: my life in the crosshairs”. He began it with “As someone who has been canceled, I can tell you this culture is far from over. Just because some millionaires were able to take a hit, it doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands of others annihilated by the mob rule of the radical left”, according to the Spectator USA’s twitter feed.

But it isn’t just the radical left that consider the Proud Boys a bunch of racist thugs. So does Wikipedia, whose article described them as a far right neo-Fascist organisation that was only open to White men and promoted political violence. Andy Campbell of Huffington Post USA tweeted that he was pretty sure McInnes got cancelled because he’s  running a Fascist street gang, many of whose members are in jail for assault, and got his career started by touting date rape for bros in the magazine Vice. Another tweeter, Jonathan Portes, quoted Campbell, adding that McInnes had also been canceled for putting up a video ’10 Things I Hate About Jews’, amongst other things. The Australian authorities also weren’t impressed with McInnes. He was due to tour the great island continent in the company of Stephen Yaxley Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, and Alt Right ‘virtuous troll’ Milo Yiannopoulos. But McInnes was too much for them, and he was refused entry.

But as Portes remarked in his tweet, the Speccie’s editor, Fraser Nelson, and the chairman of their board, Andrew Neil, are perfectly comfortable putting him in their pages. Zelo Street concluded

‘I’m sure Fraser Nelson and his boss Andrew Neil will plead FREEZE PEACH in their defence. But hiring Gavin McInnes is not a good look for any mainstream publication.

Unless, of course, normalising bigotry and hatred is the game. I’ll just leave that one there.’

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/01/spectator-promotes-racist-thug.html

Of course, this isn’t anywhere near the first time they’ve published and promoted someone with racist views, who supported violent far right thugs. The Spectator has been publishing the Greek playboy, Taki Theodorocopoulos since at least the 90s. Not only has Taki published anti-Semitic comments, a little while ago he also wrote an article defending the Greek Golden Dawn neo-Nazi outfit as a just a group of good, patriotic Greek young men. Despite their savage assaults on the left and immigrants, including the murder of a journalist. They also decided to promote Tommy Robinson. When Zelo Street dared to put up a piece criticising that, Robinson did what he often does with his critics: he turned up on Tim’s doorstep in the middle of the night demanding a word.

Despite David Cameron’s boast that he was going to clear all the racists out of the Tory party, the Spectator is proof that he manifestly didn’t. It also shows the hypocrisy of the Tory media in that it’s acceptable for a Tory magazine to promote real members of the far right, while hurling fake accusations at a genuine anti-racist, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Labour party of anti-Semitism. The Spectator undoubtedly represents just the tip of a very ugly iceberg of barely submerged Fascism and vicious racism in the Tory party. And while Cancel Culture is a threat to free speech, so is giving space to Fascists like McInnes. Because they themselves are viciously intolerant of it in their opponents.

And the Spectator is normalising this dangerous, violent intolerance.

Who Gave Tommy Robinson Zelo Street’s Address and Details?

One of Tommy Robinson’s grotty Fascist tactics is to try to intimidate his critics and opponents into silence by turning up at their doorstep unannounced, mob-handed, and demanding a word. The crusader against Islam has done it to Mike Stuchbery, a teacher and academic, and to an unnamed lad in Luton. This was a student, who had angered the self-professed defender of truth and free speech, by putting clips out on the web showing instances where Robinson contradicted himself or was otherwise made to look stupid. He also made the point that, whatever he claimed to the contrary, Robinson was no longer quite the working class hero he claimed to be. He was living in a very expensive house, thank you very much, paid for by his followers’ donations. The lad showed the type of house Robinson was living in, but did not show Robinson’s own. Nevertheless, the islamophobic thug and jailbird decided to drive 300 miles up to the lad’s parents’ house in Cumbria in the company of two of his storm troopers. One of these was an Australian-Israeli bruiser, who claims to have shot an unarmed Palestinian when he was in the IDF. They turned up on the couple’s doorstep in the middle of the night, where they demanded to see them and generally behaved in a threatening manner. They also did this to Tim Fenton, the Sage of Crewe, who runs the excellent Zelo Street blog. And now that Robinson is banged up on a charge of contempt of court, many people are starting to wonder where Robinson got his information. Including Tim, who has posted an article about it.

He notes that when Robinson began his ‘Troll Watch’ programme for the Canadian far-right outfit, Rebel Media, he was usually assisted by Caolan Robertson and George Llewellyn John. In one edition, he turned up at the address of a paper, which had run a story about him. As Tim says, it wouldn’t have been difficult for him to get the address of the paper. But he then turned up at Tim’s own because of a piece Tim had put on Zelo Street about the Spectator endorsing Robinson. And it would have been difficult for Robinson to get Tim’s address. Zelo Street doesn’t give out phone contact details, doesn’t appear on the electoral roll and doesn’t have a landline phone number look up. Someone would have had to have given Robinson Tim’s address. Tim believes that the prime suspect at the moment is Robertson, who might like to tell all about how Robinson selected his target now that he’s parted ways with the infamous bigot. Other suspects include Fraser Nelson, the Speccie’s editor, and the author of the article Tim blogged about, James Delingpole. Tim asks

So now that Caolan Robertson has split from Lennon, perhaps he would care to let everyone know how his former boss got hold of peoples’ addresses? Did Lennon, as I concluded at the time, get mine from a discredited former tabloid journalist who had managed to gain access to my NHS records? Or did the information come via those nice and highly principled people at the Spectator magazine?

He goes on to state that Robinson is right in one regard when he claims to be a journalist – he does use the same Dark Arts they do. It’s just a pity that his connection with our free and fearless press is an illegal one.

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/08/who-sent-tommy-robinson-to-my-house.html

If the Spectator, or someone associated with it, did give Tim’s details to Tommy Robinson, it shows how even more of a low rag it has become. And perhaps it wouldn’t be surprising if it did give Robinson Tim’s address. It does, after all, have a very strong racist, Alt Right slant, as shown by its continuing publication of articles by the horrendous anti-Semite, Taki.

‘Three Right Wing Dinosaurs’: Dutch Economist Rutger Bregman Attacks Poor Journalism of Beeb’s ‘This Week’

Ho Ho! More criticism of the Beeb’s late night politics show, This Week, hosted by Andrew ‘Brillo Pad’ Neil, former editor of the Economist and the Sunset Times. Neil has already found his career cut short as BBC bosses consider axing one of his politics shows after Owen Jones raised the issue of the increasingly extreme Right-wing slant of his magazine, the Spectator. This was during a debate on one of his shows about the role the media plays in boosting the rise of the Fascist Right. Neil is chairman of the board of the company that publishes the arch-Tory Spectator, one of whose contributors is the noxious Greek playboy, Taki Theodoracopulos, otherwise known to readers of Private Eye as ‘Taki Takealotofcokeupthenos’ because of his conviction for cocaine possession some time ago. Taki’s columns are often racist, with a real streak of anti-Semitism. And in once recent issue of the Speccie, he praised the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn as just patriotic young people, who are bit rough about the edges. Which is a lie. The Golden Dawn are outright Nazi thugs, who beat up illegal immigrants. One of their leading members was arrested for murdering a left-wing activist. An clearly agitated Neil told Jones that he wasn’t responsible for the magazine’s content, but Jones carried on and pointed out that he was responsible for the appointment of the editor, Fraser Nelson. Neil tried changing the subject and talking over him, but Jones carried on, even when an exasperated Neil asked him if he was trying to get him sacked. The announcement that the Beeb was cancelling one of his shows came a week or so later, and may not be unconnected, despite the Beeb’s statement about it coming with professions of effusive pride in Brillo and his journalistic performance.

Brillo’s professionalism as a journalist, and that of his co-presenters, was cast into severe doubt a few days ago by the Dutch author, Rutger Bregman. Bregman’s best known for a viral video telling the super-rich at Davos to pay their taxes. Bregman’s written a book on how Utopia may be attainable, Utopia for Realists, and was invited on to Brillo’s show to discuss it with Michael Portillo and Alan Johnson, who were presumably the three dinosaurs Bregman described in a devastating Twitter account of his experience on the show. Bregman was colossally unimpressed by Neil and co’s complete lack of interest in his book. He stated they hadn’t read it, and didn’t even have a copy. Before they went on air, he was asked if he could say something about the EU. He refused on the grounds that it wasn’t his area of expertise. So he was asked to say something about the terrorist outrage in Utrecht. He refused to comment on that either, for the same reason. So the produce returned to asking him to comment on Brexit again, and got the same reply as before. He was then asked to make a two-minute video summarising his ideas. This, badly edited, was then played on the programme. He then found the three right-wing dinosaurs, two of whom were from the Stone Age, ganging up on him. They blatantly made up facts, telling him that inequality hadn’t grown and that the economy had never been better, changed the subject every ten seconds and hardly let you finish a sentence before it’s over. Bregman said

This was the worst experience I’ve had with UK media, but after quite a few interviews in different countries, I think I can say that, on average, British journalists are the least curious of all. So often, being ‘critical’ is just a pose.

He contrasted this with an interview he gave to Trevor Noah in the US. He also said that the good news was that there were new media in the UK filling the gap. The sharpest questions he had that week came from Aaron Bastani of Novara Media.

This criticism clearly stung Brillo, who tweeted back about how discriminatory towards old people it was to call them dinosaurs, and compared it with talking about Black or gay people in the same context. He was just asking legitimate questions, and as for being a dinosaur, he accused Bregman of reviving policies from Eisenhower in the 1950s and Milton Friedman in the 1960s.

Zelo Street pointed out that ‘dinosaur’ referred to a state of mind, and that his disparagement of Milton Friedman seemed also dismissive of his former idol, Maggie Thatcher, who was also a fan of Friedman at one point. As for policies from the 1950s, this was America under Eisenhower, which suggested that Ike was a Keynsian or an secret economist.

Brillo then roped in a few others to support him, but Zelo Street remained unimpressed, concluding:

Kicking off like that and justifying his behaviour by Retweeting sympathetic voices from the right – David Jack and Iain Martin, for instance – is not going to help either the BBC, or those wanting the Corporation to somehow accommodate Brillo, rather than just bin his late night show. And it won’t help The Great Man himself.

The age of Andrew Neil at the BBC was for a time, but not for all time.

http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2019-03-23T09:29:00Z&max-results=20

Mike in his article concluded with the observation that Ofcom might find it informative to watch the show. He said

This Writer sincerely hopes that Ofcom, which is currently investigating whether the BBC is honouring its obligation to be impartial in its news reporting, has been paying attention. If not, I would encourage Mr Bregman to get in touch with that organisation.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/03/23/is-ofcom-reading-euro-economist-bregmans-twitter-takedown-of-this-week-is-a-revelation/

I’m not surprised that Brillo and his fellow presenters or guests and the production team behaved like that. Media monitoring organisations have said for years that the Beeb has a pronounced pro-Tory bias, which has become increasingly explicit. Question Time has become particularly notorious for Fiona Bruce’s biased treatment of Diane Abbott, by the fact that the audience for the show have been repeatedly packed by Tories and Kippers. From Bregman’s account of his experience, it seems very clear that neither Brillo nor any of the others were remotely interested in the book, only in talking about Brexit, the EU or terrorism, issues which they felt they knew about. And they clearly didn’t know anything and didn’t want to know anything about Bregman’s ideas. Shows like This Week often book more guests than they can use in case someone drops out. John Spencer, a UFO researcher, described a similar experience he had back in the 1990s in one of his books. Looking at Bregman’s description, it’s possible that the person Brillo really wanted on his show was unavailable, so they brought on Bregman instead. Or it may be that they felt they needed to tackle his book, but idleness and right-wing complacency made them utterly uninterested in reading it and seriously discussing his ideas.

Either way, not only does This Week seem biased, it also looks extremely shallow in expecting him to present his ideas in two minutes, and actually dishonest in making up facts to assert against him. If you believe the Beeb, Neil is a master broadcaster with a keen grasp of the facts and able to get to grips at the real heart of the issues he is discussing. This would suggest otherwise.

Zelo Street on the Mainstream Press and the New Zealand Mosque Shooting

We got the news today that, at lunch time New Zealand time, gun men shot the worshippers at two mosques over there, killing men, women and children. There are 49 dead, and many more wounded. Two men and a woman have been arrested. One of them is an Australian White supremacist. It’s particularly shocking as I understand that, while New Zealand has its problems with violent crime same as everywhere else, it’s largely quiet and peaceful compared with some other nations. I can remember talking to an elderly gentleman in my part of south Bristol, who was preparing to leave to join relatives out there. He said he was impressed with the humanity of the place. It’s still a country where neighbours greet and talk to each other, And now sadly racist, islamophobic violence has hit that nation too.

The good fellow at Crewe, who posts the Zelo Street blog, has put up a really good piece not only condemning the violence, and putting it in the context of the other massacres caused by Fascist maniacs – Anders Breivik at Utoya, the rabid anti-Semite who attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and the other bigots and racists who gun down and murder Jews, Muslims and gays, including children. He also points the finger at those, whose own politics and rhetoric of hate have helped to inspire such atrocities: the right-wing press. He makes the point that this hate long ago went beyond the extreme right-wing fringe, and discusses the extreme right-wing figures, from Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopolis and the Alt Right, to Tories like Boris Johnson. All of whom will claim that their venomous hatred of Muslims and minorities had nothing to do with these outrages. And he says very strongly that none of them can escape their responsibility for these events. He writes

It is an industry that does not exist in a vacuum: as with any malignant virus, once incubated, it has to spread if it is to have any effect. And here, our free and fearless press, and even our broadcast media, should hang their heads in shame, although they will not. They have published the hate merchants, given platforms to bigots, encouraged the demonisation of minorities, all for the momentary interest of profit and ratings.

Moreover, it is not just fringe media that has spread the virus of hatred. It long ago went beyond Breitbart, InfoWars and Rush Limbaugh. Now it has been transmitted by Fox News Channel, the Murdoch Sun, the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, the Express, the Spectator and others. Yet the management of those media outlets are not responsible for the end product of the hatred they enable. Nor are the figureheads of the hate movement.

So it is that Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Geert Wilders, Marine le Pen, Nigel Farage, Gerard Batten, Rod Liddle, Douglas Murray, Tony Gallagher, Paul Dacre, Trevor Kavanagh, Katie Hopkins, Stephen Yaxley Lennon, Paul Joseph Watson, Peter Imanuelsen, Martin Sellner, Brittany Pettibone, Lauren Southern, Milo Yiannopoulos, Taki Theororacopulos, Fraser Nelson, James Delingpole, Boris Johnson, and so many others will rest easy this morning, safe in the knowledge that It Wasn’t Them.

Well, I have news for this collective stain on humanity, this repellent convocation of amateur human beings, this vicious cohort of hate preachers. Don’t think any or all of you can duck responsibility for what happened in Christchurch. You cannot. This is where your ignorance, hatred and bigotry leads. This is the fruit of your ill thought out labours.

Damn you. Damn every last miserable, hate-filled, bigoted, snivelling, cowardly, intolerant, selfish, worthless, uncaring one of you. Damn you all to hell.

See: http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/03/mosque-shootings-this-is-where-hatred.html

Absolutely.

Tommy Robinson Turns Up to Threaten Mike Stuchbery, Free Speech Supporters Fall Silent

More Fascism, this time from the veteran islamophobe Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon, and his thugs. Robinson is the founder and former leader of the EDL and Pegida UK. He makes his living touring Europe and America whipping up hatred against Muslims, claiming that they are a threat to the British way of life, system of government and the welfare of its people. Four days ago, on Sunday 4th March 2019, Zelo Street reported that the bigot and racist had been served legal papers by Brother Neuro, the comedian and anti-racist campaigner Dick Coughlan. This was because Robinson had made a series of defamatory statements about a Syrian refugee, Jamal, who had been the victim of racist bullying at his school. As had Jamal’s sister. Robinson, however, decided that the person, who was really in the wrong was the Syrian lad, despite the bully actually having recorded himself attacking and pouring water over the Syrian lad. So m’learned friends were called, and Robinson found himself being served with legal papers instructing Lennon that he has 14 days either to settle the claim with Jamal or prepare defend himself. In which case, Jamal’s legal team will initiate proceedings against Lennon. Lennon’s receipt of the papers was livestreamed by the Heil, Resisting Hate, the Guardian and Channel 4.

http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2019-03-04T12:11:00Z&max-results=20

Lennon’s response to his critics is thuggish. He doxes them, revealing their identity and home address, and then turns up mob-handed with his goon squad to intimidate them, often in the middle the night. He did it to the good blogger behind Zelo Street a little while ago, when he dared to criticise an article about him in, I think, the Speccie. This time he decided he’d go after historian and anti-racist blogger Mike Stuchbery under the mistaken impression that Stuchbery was somehow involved in delivering the papers. Stuchbery has criticised Lennon before. A week or so ago he was in a livestream with Kevin Logan, another anti-racist activist, discussing how Lennon had doxed  another of his critics, and then driven up north to doorstep the poor fellow’s parents in the middle of the night. He had decided that Stuchbery was one of those involved in serving the legal papers against him, and so turned up in the middle of Monday night and then in the early hours of Tuesday morning, banging on his windows demanding to talk and accusing him of being a child abuser. For which Stuchbery is considering suing him. It shouldn’t be too hard, as one of Lennon’s moronic companions actually filmed the incident and the abuse.

Zelo Street has also written a piece about this disgraceful incident, attacking the various right-wing hacks and politicos, who have defended Robinson. Robinson, they claim, isn’t a vicious bigot spreading hate, but only standing up for free speech. So what do these proud defenders of freeze peach – Fraser Nelson and James Delingpole of the Spectator, Paul Joseph Watson of InfoWars, Brendan O’Neil and Mick Hume of SpikedOnline have to say about Robinson’s attempt to suppress someone else’s right to free speech? Not a thing! They are all strangely silent. Zelo Street quotes the Groaniad’s Peter Walker, who advises anyone, who really believe that Robinson stands for free speech, to take a look at Stuchbery’s twitter thread. Robinson’s actions are those of someone trying to shut down someone else’s free speech through intimidation.

Zelo Street concludes

That’s how much all those campaigners care about free speech. They don’t care at all.

http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/03/doorstepping-tommy-robinson-fans-silent.html