The collapse of Alex Belfield continues. I don’t mean this to sound homophobic, but I do find it funny considering the innuendo and sneers Belfield makes about various camp TV presenters and celebs. He describes them as being ‘light on their feet’, and the various remarks about his off-camera assistant, Tarquin. It seems to be based on some of the camp humour of the 1970s, and particularly Larry Grayson’s, and his jokes about Everard and Slack Alice and his punchline ‘seems like a nice boy’. There’s a big difference between him and Grayson though, quite apart from the fact that the humour itself is 40 or so years out of date. It’s that Grayson was genuinely funny and seemed to be a genuinely nice person. He never stalked or harassed anyone, did not con people out of money by claiming that he was going to sue the BBC or police, or that he needed it to pay a barrister and then defended himself. He was a gentlemanly host on the Generation Game, and my parents preferred him to his predecessor on the game show, Bruce Forsythe. And when Grayson made those camp jokes, it was genuinely meant in fun. Looking at Belfield’s sneers, it seems like a touch of real homophobia combined with jealousy that they have jobs with the Beeb and he doesn’t.
This is why this little snippet of news is quite ironic.
There is, apparently, a site on the net called ‘Gay or Straight’, where people go to vote about the sexuality of particular celebs. According to the utterly scurrilous Sir Jimmy Savile channel on YouTube, 77 people went on there to vote on the issue of Belfield’s sexual orientation. And they voted that Belfield, who will be sentenced tomorrow for his crimes, was 85 per cent gay. As the average percentage for people voted gay seems to be 69 per cent, this means that, by the standards of the site, he is very gay indeed.
And this is about a man who constantly criticised Pride parades and other gay stories, largely taken from the Daily Heil.
Well, as the genuinely nice and great Larry Grayson would say, ‘seems like a nice boy.’
This is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. But it’s not going to be covered in the media, and especially not the establishment Jewish media, like the Jewish Telegraph or Jewish Chronicle, because they’re only interested in it when it’s a stick to beat the left. Tom Pride, of the ‘Pride’s Purge Blog’, has posted that he and his family are leaving Blighty because of the threat of rising right-wing anti-Semitism. Pride’s a left-wing blogger, who has been attacking the Tories and the forces of the right for years with intelligence, facts and statistics, and a caustic wit. Last Monday, 30th December 2019, he posted that he and his father are both leaving Britain. He is Jewish, and his grandfather a survivor of the Holocaust. His father came to Britain from Austria to escape the Nazis’ mass murder of European Jews. However, his father, that man’s son, has told Pride that he is washing his hands of the UK and moving to another, European country, because of the rise of the far right in Britain. This gentleman is in his 80s, and has said that he is frightened and will not set foot in the UK again. Pride is also leaving Britain, but as he’s a Brit born and bred, he isn’t completely turning his back on our country.
Pride states that anti-Semitism in Britain comes almost exclusively from the right. He backs up this statement with a mass of evidence, from stats showing that Tories made rather more anti-Semitic comments than Labour members, to profiles over some real anti-Semites. They were right-wingers who supported the Daily Mail and Brexit, and who also hated Muslims. They’re the real face of anti-Semitism in the UK. As for the people that harassed Luciana Berger, they were also far right stormtroopers. Berger claimed that she was leaving the Labour party because of anti-Semitic harassment. However, the man jailed for harassing her was Joshua Bonehill-Paine. Bonehill-Paine is a bizarre individual, who poses as a Nazi in order to troll both Fascists and anti-Fascists. Or so he has said on his blog. He’s been arrested and convicted several times for harassing different women, breaking into a police station and defecating in the aisle of a supermarket. Pride also notes that over the Christmas and Hanukkah holiday this year, shops and supermarkets were scrawled with anti-Semitic graffiti. He also states very clearly that the anti-Semites whose odious activities he watches are right-wingers and loudly support Boris Johnson. One of the supporters of anti-Semitism is the loathsome Katie Hopkins, shown in a photograph posing with the anti-Semitic Peter Sweden, a Holocaust denier.
But although genuine anti-Semitism in the Labour party is minuscule, the Tories, Lib Dems and Labour ‘Centrists’ have done everything they can to convince the public that it all comes from the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn. They’ve done this to protect the interests of a handful of billionaires, which would have been under threat had the definitely not anti-Semitic Corbyn become Prime Minister. Pride says that while many ordinary people shared his information online, nobody in the establishment media did. Because it didn’t fit their agenda of smearing Corbyn and the Left.
I’m sorry Tom’s leaving Britain. It wouldn’t surprise me if other Jews leave too. A few years ago I read a newspaper report that British Jews of German descent were taking out German nationality as a safeguard against Brexit. I also got the impression that Brits of Irish descent were also taking out Irish nationality, even if they were only partly Irish, for the same reason. And Brexit certainly has embolden the real racists, islamophobes and anti-Semites on the far right.
But we won’t hear of this from the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Board of Deputies or the Chief Rabbi, because they’re not interested in protecting Jewish Brits from real anti-Semitism. They’re only interested to preventing criticism of Israel and, as Tories, supporting the rich and powerful. They are not remotely interested in doing anything for the poor, which obviously includes Jews. Indeed, they have vilified those Jews, who did support Labour and Corbyn, or who criticised Israel, as anti-Semites themselves.
They’re disgusting liars, who have helped a greedy, incompetent racist in 10 Downing.
And now, partly thanks to their efforts, ordinary Jews are at risk from the real anti-Semites of the Fascist Right.
Here’s someone else, who could soon be getting the banhammer from the relevant authorities, to use the parlance of a website that’s best not named. On Wednesday, Mike got back from a visit to the hospital with Mrs. Mike to find he had a tweet from one Mark Lewis, a lawyer claiming to be acting for Rachel Riley and Tracey Ann Oberman. He wanted Mike to get in contact with him, and was threatening to take out a Norwich Pharmacal Order to disclose his address. He also claimed he had screenshots of Mike’s tweets.
Mike went out and took consultation from m’learned friends, who told him not to respond. Shaun Lawson, whose article is at the centre of all this, posted up a series of tweets explaining what it was all about, and how Lewis was really trying it on.
Riley, Oberman and their legions of moronic squadristi were offended by an article Lawson posted about how they had bullied and smeared a 16 year old schoolgirl as an anti-Semite, and then did the same to her father. The girl suffers from anxiety, and her mass abuse on twitter naturally caused her immense distress. Riley, whose only claim to fame is that she’s the woman who puts the letters on the board on Countdown, and Oberman, a Z-list actress were annoyed that Lawson’s account of their trolling and bullying had been widely reblogged and spread across social media. So they started threatening libel action against anyone who did so.
This what their lawyer, Lewis, is threatening to do. However, Lawson points out in his tweets about this matter that legally Lewis doesn’t have a leg to stand on. The article consisted mostly of tweets made by Riley and Oberman themselves, and is not libelous. He’s just fishing, and cannot take out a Norwich pharmacal order. Although to me, from his deranged and threatening behaviour, it may be that he himself needs a few pharmaceutical orders. Also, threatening people over twitter is against the guidelines of the Solicitors’ Regulatory Authority. He already has form for this, having been fined £2,500 before for this. One Tweeter posted the internet address of his record and the 42-page judgement that the SRA issued against him.
And he may well get another one, as so far he’s tried to bully 76 people, some of whom know the law here as well as he does and have duly reported him.
Private Eye has a very sharp response from dodgy lawyers, who make baseless threats: Arkell vs Pressdram. It comes from a case in the 1970s when one of the parties sent a legal threat to the other, who responded succinctly: ‘F*** Off!’
The good peeps he threatened on twitter were not so crude, but they did tell him what he could do. They told him he should be ashamed of himself, particularly as he was now threatening to sue a 17 year old girl for blogging about the Riley and Oberman’s bullying. His actions were ‘heavy-handed’ and ‘churlish’ and showed Riley and Oberman in their true colours. He was also called an ambulance-chaser, with someone mockingly saying that they’d had an injury in the last three years, which wasn’t their fault. Would he mind acting for them? Which parodies the adverts for such ambulance-chasing firms on daytime television. Another Tweeter, Adam Vickers, asked him if he would stand up for a Palestinian friend of his, who had been attacked and harassed for supporting the victims of Israeli brutality. Others said it was all bullsh*t, and he was a creepy little weirdo.
As for Lewis himself, he and his partner fled the other year to Israel, claiming that they were doing so because of increasing anti-Semitism in Europe. This is true of continental Europe, perhaps, and especially eastern Europe. But the level of anti-Semitism in Britain, while rising, is certainly nowhere near an existential threat to Jews. Which means that Lewis is either another hysterical paranoid, very gullible, or he’s talking more Zionist propaganda.
Mike also took issue with a report in the Guardian, which said that Riley and Oberman were preparing to take legal action against 70 individuals in connection with their campaign against anti-Semitism in the Labour party, and that Lewis said that these tweets against them constituted harassment. Mike commented that it was really the other way round.
His article concluded
Perhaps this is a serious attempt at using the law to bully perfectly decent people, but it is clear that the people behind it cannot be taken seriously.
I’ll take it seriously when I see a reason to do so. Right now, I don’t.
If Lewis continues flagrantly continues to break the SRA’s regulations regarding such bullying, will it be long before we can expect him to be well and truly whacked with the banhammer and receive a visit from Mr. Struckoff?
Today’s I for 12th February 2019 also carried the news that J.K. Rowling, Rachel Riley and Tracey-Ann Oberman were in a meeting with former members of Blair’s staff to launch this new, Centrist party that has periodically been mooted for the past year or so.
The article by Jane Clinton, ‘Rowling and Riley ‘plotting Blairite party’, on page 26 of the paper, runs
Countdown’s Rachel Riley and former EastEnders actress Tracy Ann Oberman have joined forces with advisers from Tony Blair’s government and JK Rowling’s agent to create a centrist breakaway Labour party.
Riley and Oberman, who are both Jewish, have been attacked by Labour supporters for criticizing Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of the anti-Semitism row that has engulfed the party. Riley revealed last month that Channel 4 bosses ordered extra protection following her comments.
They met Blair’s former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, and his former speechwriter, Philip Collins, last Tuesday at the London offices of Ms Rowling’s agent, Neil Blair. There were 50 supporters present.
Details of the event, confirmed by I, include the creation of a pro-European centrist party which would appeal to the left of the Conservative party and the right of Labour.
Observers believe its creation would be the death knell for the Liberal Democrats.
At the meeting, during discussions as to who should be leader of the new party, Rowling’s name was shouted out to applause.
The Harry Potter author has been critical of Mr Corbyn, but leadership is not believed to be her ambition. Instead, it is thought shemay offer financial backing or fund a think-tank.
The good peeps over at Zelo Street have already critiqued this piece of Blairite aspiration, and pronounced the new party DOA. They note that such a party has been mooted several times, the names of various right-wing Labour MPs have been suggested in connection with it. And each time take-off has been aborted or not even attempted.
They point out that people have been proclaiming the death of the Lib Dems since the 1950s, but each time such predictions have been greatly exaggerated. The article goes on to mention the serious matter of Riley’s and Oberman’s conduct, which makes them totally unsuitable as leaders for any new party. Oberman threatened to sue blogger Shaun Lawson because he mentioned her in one of his tweets and in an article. Why? Because Riley, Oberman and their followers had viciously attacked and smeared a 16-year old schoolgirl and her father with false claims of anti-Semitism. The girl, who suffers from anxiety anyway, was threatened and harassed. Zelo Street concludes
Well-documented and cringe-inducing harassment, to boot. If that is the depth of the political talent pool available to the new Centrist party, it’s going to look more like a puddle.
Right now, it looks as though this new venture is DOA. No surprise there, then.
Mike was also on the receiving end of the wrath of Riley and her army of fanboys for a piece he did reporting Lawson’s article and Riley’s and Oberman’s bullying of the teenager. And yes, they tried smearing him as an anti-Semite. Rowling’s also tried attacking Mike over social media, and got her rear end handed to her as a result. If I remember correctly, Rowling, Riley and Oberman are part of a little circle with Z-list actress Frances Barber, Al Murray and David Baddiel, who believe that they are genuinely tackling racism. They’ve been quoted as joking with each other about whether this is 1936 or not. Of course it isn’t. If this really was anything like 1936 there’d be no question of it. Real anti-Semitic mobs wearing Fascist uniforms, like Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts would be goose-stepping into Jewish and working class areas trying to provoke fights and intimidate the people there. You would hear speech from bigots and Nazis telling everyone that Jews were an unassimilable threat, and that further Jewish immigration should be curbed. And the same Nazis would also talk openly about Jews being ‘the money power’ behind capitalism and communism and plotting to destroy the White race. And as for Germany, Jews would be progressively banned from getting jobs or entering the universities, their businesses closed, and themselves publicly beaten and humiliated. while trade unionists, socialists, communists, anarchists, recidivist criminals, neurotics, the long-term jobless, sex workers and other dissidents and individuals the Nazi state decided were undesirable and ‘dysgenic’ would be rounded up to be worked to death in the concentration camps. The Alternative Fuer Deutschland are a bunch of Nazi goons, and there is the spectre of read Fascism and Nazism in eastern Europe – in Poland, Hungary, the Baltic States and Ukraine. But here in Britain is very much not like 1936. Not yet.
Tony Greenstein has repeatedly pointed out that while there has been an increase in anti-Semitic incidents, Jews in Britain as a group are very comfortably middle class and most definitely do not suffer the real persecution of other ethnic minorities. For example, they are not being forcibly and unjustly deported, like the Windrush migrants. Other groups, such as Blacks, Asians and Muslims suffer far higher levels of violence and abuse. I haven’t heard any mainstream politician attacking the Jews or demanding that Jewish immigration be stopped. But there have been any number of Conservative and Kipper MPs making racist comments about Muslims and suggesting that they are incompatible with the British way of life.
As Riley’s and Rowling’s friends, Frances Barber also weighed in to accuse Mike and Owen Jones of being anti-Semites, while David Baddiel seems to have swallowed the Integrity Initiative black propaganda about Corbyn. I found a video on YouTube commenting on him declaring that Corbyn was an agent of Putin.
They’re spouting dangerous nonsense. The vast majority of the people accused of anti-Semitism in the Labour party were smeared because they were Corbyn’s supporters, members of the party’s left-wing, or critics of Israel. It was part of the campaign by the Blairites to hang on by attacking ordinary Labour party members. The Jewish establishment and the Zionists in the Labour party got involved because they support the Israeli state’s policy of ethnic cleansing and the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. That was clearly shown in the Al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby, when Joan Ryan attempted to get an ordinary Labour party member thrown out as an anti-Semite because she had the temerity to ask Ryan a question she couldn’t answer. She wondered what the Jewish Labour Movement was doing to promote the two-state solution, and what would be done about the illegal settlements in Palestine if the solution was successfully put into operation. As for this country’s Jewish establishment, the Board of Deputies declares itself in its constitution to be a Zionist organization, and the other year former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs led a party of British Jews to the March of the Flags. This is an annual event where the Israeli equivalent of skinhead boot-boys march through the Muslim quarter vandalizing homes and property and threatening its people. Liberal Jewish organisations urged Sachs not to go, but he ignored them. They were ‘the wrong kind’ of Jews, you see.
As for the rise of Fascism in eastern Europe, this is being assisted and defended by Israel, whose supporters, like Stephen Pollard, the far right editor of the Jewish Chronicle, declare them to be ‘good friends of Israel’ because they buy Israel arms. And so are the remaining Jews of eastern Europe put in danger through lack of support from Israel. All while Israel proclaims itself to be the protector of Jews worldwide.
As for this supposed Centrist party, I can remember it being touted last year, when it was supposed to have millions of pounds in funding ready for, along with legions of corporate donors. At one point Blair’s son, Euan, was discussed as a founding member and possible leader. Then it all collapsed again. It had no members, no policies, and one of the founders walked out after a disagreement with the others.
All this Centrist party represents is continuity Blairism. Which means more privatization, more NHS privatization, more attacks on the welfare state, meaning more homelessness and starvation, and more corporatism. Which means that in exchange for funding, private industry can have their chairmen and senior management appointed to positions in government and the civil service.
Rowling, Riley, Oberman and Barber are a disgrace. The Centrist party Rowling and her friends Riley and Oberman are expected to lead represents nothing but further corporate exploitation and misery. It has collapsed several times before, and will do so again. No matter how much it is puffed by the papers.
Yesterday, Christmas Day 2018, Mike also put up a piece and a short film, about ten minutes long, Targeting Protesters, produced by Gathering Place. The film-makers have been working on a long form documentary about fracking in the UK, during which time they have observed some features of this issue they found ‘surprising’.
They contacted Mike after he put up a piece last week about how the rozzers were reporting disabled people at anti-fracking protests in Lancashire to the DWP. The assumption seems to be that any disabled person out on protest is committing benefit fraud, as if their condition was genuine, they would be in no condition to attend. The DWP’s response to any allegation of fraud is to suspend benefits during the investigation, so that disabled people are automatically denied the money they need to live on before the Department has made a decision on whether or not they are guilty. Opponents of the police’s actions have called it ‘ableist’, and stated that it’s based on a very simplistic view of disability. Not all conditions, that mean someone is unable to work, are obvious, and the severity of many of them can vary from day to day. They have also argued very persuasively that the police seem to be doing this to intimidate disabled people as a deliberate strategy to prevent them going on these demonstrations.
Mike quotes the film’s publicity, which states
“The police have identified and targeted prominent anti-fracking campaigners, key protest organisers and invariably protesters with disabilities – in order to undermine or neutralise their effectiveness in challenging the interests of the shale oil and gas industry.”
The film has been posted on social media by Netpol, the Network for Police Monitoring, and features their coordinator, Kevin Blowe. Blowe explains that the police have a deliberate strategy of targeting particular individuals for arrest. These are people, who are respected by the other protesters. They are either in a position of leadership, or can make critical decisions and actions when the moment comes. They also stop people travelling to the protests. The film shows an example of this, in which a carload of people are stopped by the cops at the side of the road. A woman, one of the crew, asks why they have done this. The policeman states that they are stopping them because they have information that their car contains a tripod. It’s a trumped up charge, and the woman asks them if they really think a tripod can fit in her car. The cop doesn’t respond and simply walks away. Later in the video Raj Chada, a member of a firm of solicitors, states that the cops’ charge that a woman was using a car illegally was complete ridiculous. The police haven’t charged her, or applied to the courts about it. Their arrest is simply a way of stopping free speech, which is unacceptable. It’s against the culture the police should have, which should be about facilitating those, who want to protest. The video also shows Labour’s John McDonnell talking to a group of protesters about the way they’ve been harassed. The film shows another woman, who has been grabbed by the rozzers, just as they release her. She says that it’s the second time that day the police have grabbed her.
Blowe states that the police target particularly influential people. This may sometimes involve arresting them, and pushing that arrest right up to taking them to court, even though the accused person would normally get off in other circumstances. If the targeted individual is local, the cops may continually go round to their homes or disrupt their business, deliberately making it very clear to them that they are under scrutiny.
While many fracking protesters are local, some do come from outside the area. They are also deliberately targeted by the police, who will visit their camps and make it clear that they are being targeted for arrest. They will also claim that any public order offences are due to people from outside the area. One protester from elsewhere in the country states that not only do the police target them, they also target anyone who associates with them, and that they can’t go anywhere without having a police escort. McDonnell also states that he’s concerned about the level of physical force used by the police, and particularly the incident where the police tip a disabled man out of his wheelchair. The film shows this happening, and the man says that it has happened to him three times already. McDonnell explains that the people on these protests are locals concerned about fracking in their area, and that most of them have had no interaction with the police before. The cops’ actions have shocked them, just as they’ve shocked him. The video shows another disabled man, in an orange T-shirt, being seized by the police, who then appear to strap him down physically into his chair. Blowe explains that the police will target someone, who appears vulnerable, in order to show that they will do absolutely anything possible to stop this person being as effective as they could be. Another disabled man tells the camera how the police told him that they had informed Motability that he was using his car for illegal purposes. The same man appears a few minutes later telling John McDonnell that the police have tried to stop his benefits, and passed on to the DWP a years worth of footage of him and other protesters. McDonnel states that this is unacceptable, and that this person should take it up with their MP, so that it can be discussed in the House of Commons. It appears to be done to prevent disabled people protesting, when they should have the same rights and ability in society to protest as everyone else.
Blowe also explains how the police will try to create ‘a situation’ where they can start arresting people by picking on someone vulnerable, like someone in a wheelchair or an older person, so that the other protesters will react. This is done so that the fracking lorries can get through. Sometimes the police is reactive, such as when the police on the day arrest particularly influential people. But they will also target otherwise unlikely targets, like women. They also target the young in order to give them the message that they are vulnerable, and the police consider them to be at risk of getting sucked into extremism. But it’s also a way of letting that person know they’re on the cops’ radar, and they have identified them for harassment. Blowe’s comments are accompanied by footage of a tall, long-haired young man being seized by the police, and forced onto the ground with his head all but in the gutter, before being dragged off. The man then briefly explains in a piece clearly filmed later that he was frightened after this happened to him in the short term, but in the long term absolutely not. Blowe then continues, explaining that this is all about identifying the key people to disrupt and end the protests.
Keith Taylor, an MEP from the Green Party, appears, and makes the point that many people still remember Orgreave from the miner’s strike, and that when the police follow orders, heads get broken. This is not the future that either he nor the community groups want to see.
John McDonnell then appears in turn to say that some form of inquiry into the conduct of the police is needed, and the evidence he’s seen is deeply worrying, and he believes other people seeing it will feel the same. There’s a level of physical force that’s unacceptable, and that therefore needs to be addressed.
Blowe explains that it’s all done to reduce the level of protest in an area, to cut down their duration time of months or weeks, to cut the numbers of people on these protests down to numbers they can manage, and to stop the mass opposition to fracking.
The film ends with the young chap, who was arrested, stating that he knows it’s all done to put people off, and that knowledge itself completely overrides any fear they would try to put upon him or others.
Taylor’s right when he says that it will remind many people of the miner’s strike. It seems very similar to the way Thatcher used the police in the 1980s to break the miner’s union. This was very much a political strategy on the part of the Tories. They remembered and resented the way the miners had defeated Ted Heath’s government in the 1980s, and were determined not to let this happen again. I can remember going to a meeting of the Fabian Society in Bristol, where one of the speakers explained how the efforts of the police, the Tory government, and Tory local authorities were very carefully coordinated and planned, with the same Tory politicians and activists appearing again and again around the country to try to break the strikers and the picket lines.
As for targeting women, they tried doing it to one of the members of my family. One of my female relatives was amongst the people protesting against the poll tax in London, and the police tried to grab her and pull her away, but her friends managed to hold on to her and pull her back. And I can very well believe that this is done deliberately to provoke the crowd to violence, so that the police will have an excuse to crack heads and arrest people.
The police did very well under Margaret Thatcher. They were well paid and given a range of benefits, like cheap or subsidized housing. Since then many very senior police officers have made it plain that they regret how they were used, stating that they were used by Thatcher as her private army. Recently the police have been decimated under Cameron and May through cuts in funding, which have led to a drastic fall in the numbers of police officers. Because the Tories clearly don’t think ordinary people and their homes and property are worth protecting as much as the rich. And they still probably believe that twaddle about neighbourhoods funding their own policing through hiring private security guards.
It is clear, however, that the link between the Tory party, the police and private industry still remains strong, at least as regards the fracking industry. Such politicised policing is a threat to the environment and democracy. McDonnell is right. We need an inquiry. Now.
This is a rather long video of a livestream held by male feminist and left-wing, anti-Fascist YouTuber, Kevin Logan, and Mike Stuchberry on Kevin Logan’s channel. It’s part of a series entitled ‘Let Them Eat Kek’, which as it’s title suggests, is about attacking the Alt-Right, and is a special devoted mainly to Tommy Robinson. It’s just under 3/4 of an hour long, and about half of it is the two discussing Robinson and his fans intimidating one of his internet critics and their family. The rest deals with a rather underwhelming UKIP rally with Tommy Robinson, which illustrates the depths of the Kippers’ decline, and the British imitators of the Yellow Vest protesters across the Channel. I’m putting it up because the conversations describes one instance of thuggish behaviour from Robinson, and shows why people like him should not be allowed anywhere near any political movement aspiring to respectability. And this in turn shows why UKIP’s present leader, Gerard Batten, is a disgrace for taking him and the rest of the far right YouTubers on.
The video was posted on the 16th December 2018, and the events they discuss occurred earlier that Monday. Robinson was annoyed at a piece posted on the Net by a long-time critic, Luke, a university student. Luke had amassed a sizable collection of videos posted on the web by Robinson, and used to put these up to show how Robinson contradicted himself or otherwise managed to make himself look stupid. What particular angered Robinson was a piece by Luke, in which he argued very persuasively that Robinson was not quite the working class hero he claims to be. Logan and Stuchberry believe that Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has an income in millions of pounds coming from crowd-funded donations, as well as funding by right-wing American think tanks like the Middle East Forum. Robinson lives somewhere on the outskirts of Luton in Bedfordshire. Luke found a house similar to Robinson’s – but which wasn’t the well-known Islamophobes – and from their similarity suggested that Robinson’s was worthy 950,000 pounds.
Robinson decided to show how outraged he was at this by driving up to Luke’s parents in Cumbria that evening in the company of his cousin and former bodyguard Kevin Carroll and Avi Yemeni. Yemeni’s a really repulsive individual, an Israeli-Australian, who claims to have shot civilians simply for throwing stones when he was a member of the IDF. The video contains a clip from one of the video’s Robinson’s band of thugs made of Yemeni boasting to Ali Dawah, another Islamophobe, about this. The trio then turned up outside Luke’s parents’ home at 2.30 in the morning and began filming. They were, in turn, filmed by one of the parents’ neighbours. This film of Robinson and co. is also in the video. For some reason Robinson didn’t take kindly to being filmed in turn. Luke was told of Robinson’s arrival at his parents by others on the Net. He went up there to arrive the next day. He then made some kind of agreement with Tommy Robinson which resulted in Luke taking his videos down. All of them. Robinson then drove back home to Bedfordshire, and posted at four O’clock or so that day a piece on the Net telling his followers not to harass Luke. Logan and Stuchberry aren’t impressed by this, as by that time the damage had been done. Robinson’s followers – the Tommunists, as they call themselves – had already bombarded Luke with threats and put up information about him and his family.
Logan and Stuchberry state that Robinson and his friends behaved like gangsters intimidating their opponents. They also discuss a Zelo Street article about the incident, which also states very firmly that Robinson and his gang were trying to threaten Luke and his parents. They also state that it’s rather hypocritical of Robinson, as he very frequently doorstepped people himself when he was working for Rebel Media. As a result of Robinson’s tactics, Luke was forced to lock down his Facebook and change his phone number. The two also ask how it is that Robinson remains free and not in prison when he pulls stunts like that. Robinson has served time for various offences, but it seems that he has just enough knowledge of the law to allow him to avoid being sent to jail for a very long time. They also think that the vast amount of money Robinson receives from his fans allow him to afford some very good legal advice. They also refute some of the allegations about the affair in the mainstream media, by stating that Luke did not actually reveal Robinson’s address or show his house.
The two then move on to the ‘Brexit Betrayed’ protest rally by UKIP, which was also addressed by Robinson. Logan and Stuchberry state that this also shows how far UKIP has imploded. The organisers expected about 20-30,000 to attend, and instead the crowd only number 4-5,000, who were outnumber by the anti-racism protesters. The party’s decline has also been shown in the similar reduction in the number of its MEPs. At its height after 2014 election, the party had 24 MEPs. This number has been drastically cut to nine, mostly by MEPs having to resign in disgrace. They were, the pair argue, never really interested in attending except when it concerned their own expenses. Farage himself was an example of this. they also accuse the former Kipperfuhrer of hypocrisy, as while the rest of us will have trouble travelling to the continent after Brexit, his children will find it considerably easier as they have German nationality. As for Robinson, he wasn’t noticeably interested in Europe. It’s simply a bandwagon he’s jumped on. But he’s added his own particularly twist on it. He told the crowd that in order to resist the islamization of Britain the EU would also have to be tackled.
They also tackle the despicable views expressed by two of the marchers. One was a man, who turned up with a model gallows, complete with a noose, who declared that Tweezer should be executed. Logan states that he’s not particularly fond of May himself, but this is disgusting as it’s stating that Tweezer should be killed. He wonders how this man wasn’t arrested. He’s also not impressed with another man, who holds up a placard saying ‘Jo Cox False Flag’. This fellow obviously believes in the conspiracy theory that the assassination of the anti-racist Labour MP Jo Cox by the Nazi Thomas Mair was a ‘false flag’ incident staged by the authorities to discredit the ‘Leave’ campaign, because it occurred at the same time as the referendum on the EU. Logan concludes that the intolerance of these two men bears out what Richard Spencer, the leader of the Alt Right, had already said about the far right: they don’t really care about freedom of speech.
The video ends with Logan and Stuchberry talking about the attempts by a group of British protesters to copy the Yellow Vest protests in France. These succeeded in closing Westminster Bridge, Tower Bridge and London Bridge. This bunch were fellow travelers of Robinson’s, led by James Goddard and Tracey Blackwell, a pair who turn up at every far right-wing demonstration. They are very much unimpressed at these protest, which blocked the road, because one of the vehicles they obstructed was an ambulance. And they’re also not impressed with the way the mainstream media appears to have been fascinated with the protests.
In addition to the two talking, there are odd interruptions by people breaking into the livestream to heckle them. Such as by telling Logan to get a job.
Robinson’s deliberate intimidation of his opponent, Luke, is worrying. Logan and Stuchberry are right when they compare it to that of the mob. But it’s also the type of tactics used by the far right, which has always used violence and the threat of violence to silence their opponents ever since the days of the Nazis and Italian Fascists. And both those movements carried that lawlessness into power with them. This is a very strong argument for not voting for UKIP, quite apart from the racism and islamophobia that the party appears to be courting and encouraging through the recruitment of Robinson and various far right YouTube personalities, like Count Dankula and Sargon of Akkad. If Batten expected them to boost the party’s membership, he’s gravely disappointed. People are leaving instead because of them. I’ve already put up a video by one Kipper bitterly denouncing the party for recruiting the far right activists. One of the people, who has left because of them is Farage himself.
Robinson and those like him are an active menace to democracy, and UKIP is dying because it’s recruited him.
After all the false accusations of anti-Semitism made smear genuinely decent people, here’s a story about a real anti-Semite. Yes, it’s that old Nazi troll, Joshua Bonehill-Paine, the ‘Founder’ and wannabe fuehrer of legions of Fascist storm troopers that don’t actually exist. Today’s I newspaper (8 December 2016) carried a report by Emily Pennink, Anti-Semitic blogger guilty of harassing Jewish MP, that Bonehill has been found guilty of racially harassing Luciana Berger, a Jewish MP for one of the constituencies in Liverpool. The article states
A racist internet troll was found guilty yesterday of harassing the MP Luciana Berger in a series of anti-Jewish rants he sent after the jailing of a fellow far-right extremist.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine, 24, wrote five hate-filled blogs about the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree after Garron Helm was sent to prison for four weeks in October 2014. Bonehill-Paine denied racially aggravated harassment but was convicted by an Old Bailey jury.
Helm, 21, from Merseyside, had admitted posting a picture on Twitter which showed Ms Berger, 35, with holocaust-era Star of David on her forehead and the hashtag “Hitler was right”. Over the next four months, Bonehill-Paine posted articles online calling her a “dominatrix” and “an evil money-grabber” with a “deep-rooted hatred of men”. In one, he claimed the number of Jewish Labour MPs was a “problem”.
He illustrated his posts with offensive pictures. Throughout, Bonehill-Paine, of Yeovil, Somerset, was on bail awaiting sentence for claiming on Twitter that several people were paedophiles. Giving evidence in person, Ms Berger said she felt sickened by the blogs and “very much under attack”. (p. 21).
Bonehill’s a weird character, who’s been hauled before the beak several times for his bizarre, far-right antics. He’s been arrested for trying to steal police uniforms from a police station, threatening to defecate in a supermarket, falsely accusing a pub of not serving members of the armed forces so as not to upset Muslims, and harassing a young woman when she spurned his advances. This included him sending her an Iron Cross, which he claimed had belonged to Adolf Hitler.
He’s set himself up as the leader of a vast and growing Fascist party that doesn’t seem to exist except in his own imagination. He gave a public speech announcing the launch of one of these shadowy parties in one of the parks in his home town of Yeovil, to a handful of people comprising a couple of police officers and a journalist. Even so, the audience massively outnumbered his Fascist legions, which consisted of precisely one person: himself. He claimed that the real meeting was being held in an undisclosed pub elsewhere in the town.
It’s a moot point whether or not Bonehill himself believes the Nazi tripe he spouts. In a passage he wrote on his blog, which he has since denied, Bonehill claimed that he was only pretending to be a Nazi. It was, he claimed, an invented personality he created, inspired by David Bowie’s persona of Ziggy Stardust. It was intended to deceive and upset both Nazis and anti-Nazis.
Bowie himself did seem to come dangerously close to flirting with Fascism in the 1970s. There’s footage, which has been played by the Beeb on shows about the late pop idol’s life, in which he states that there could only be one real choice for prime minister, and so he was putting himself forward as the Fascist candidate. But Bowie very definitely wasn’t racist. His second wife, Iman, was, I believe, a Somali. The Nazis themselves hated Jazz, the ancestor of rock and roll, as Black music which corrupted Whites. And despite the homosexual undercurrent in Nazism, they hated gay men and sent them to the concentration camps. The ambiguous sexuality of the Ziggy Stardust persona would have been very definitely illegal in Nazi Germany.
It’d be good to think that if this is just a prank by Bonehill, that this time he just might take notice of where it’s getting him and drop it. Unlike Bowie and Stardust, there’s nothing clever or innovative about it. It’s just stupid, offensive and annoying. And it’s about time he realised this, and where it’s getting him, and stopped it.
I found a tiny piece on page two of today’s Mirror, reporting that Joshua Bonehill, Yeovil’s comedy caudillo, is up before the beak again in Taunton. Bonehill’s a notorious fantasist, who imagines himself as the ‘Founder’ and leader of a mighty Fascist legion, ready to take Britain back from the failures of democracy and multiculturalism. In reality, he’s like so many other past sawdust Caesars in that his awesome Fascist army consists of, er, just him actually. And it’s even debatable how seriously he takes his role as Britain’s Fuehrer in waiting. In a now deleted blog post, he declared that his stance as a Fascist leader was merely a carefully contrived post in order to troll the real Nazis and the rest of the British public.
According to EDL News, an anti-racist website set up to tackle the English Defence League, Bonehill had announced on his blog that he was planning to descend on Glastonbury to give out anti-Semitic pamphlets and challenge ‘Leftist tyranny’. See their article ‘Joshua Bonehill goes to Glastonbury Music Festival’. They declared that he’d probably be going with some imaginary friends, in other words, all the Fascist stormtroopers he claims he has following him, but who strangely don’t appear anywhere and seem to exist only in his head. They also forecast that, as it was a cool pop festival, Bonehill probably wouldn’t get very far before being turfed out.
The Mirror article made no mention of whether Bonehill had actually gone to Glastonbury. It merely reported that he was being charged with inciting racial hatred ahead of this Saturday’s proposed Neo-Nazi march on Golders Green. I’ve got a feeling that even if Bonehill hadn’t been charged, he still wouldn’t have been able to go to that noxious rally as there’s a court order against him, but I could be wrong.
Not that this is the first time Bonehill’s been in court. He’s got several convictions already for harassment. The last one was for his harassment of a woman in Hertfordshire, because she spurned his advances. Even after he sent her a Nazi swastika, which he claimed had been touched by Adolf. Well, who could resist a romantic gift like that? He’s also been guilty of hacking into people’s blogs to present them falsely as paedophiles, and spreading all manner of lies about the pubs out of which he’s been thrown. Quite apart from trying to break into a police station to steal uniforms and equipment, and being thrown out of a supermarket, in which he’d tried to defecate.
He really does appear to be quite a charmless thug.
He’d better be careful though. I think that some of the punishments meted out to him have been suspended sentences. In which case, if he’s broken one of these, he could find himself whisked off for a holiday at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, and one which he very definitely won’t enjoy.
I posted an article yesterday about the resignation from UKIP of Jonathan Stanley, a Scotland-based surgeon. Mr Stanley was their candidate for Westmoreland and Lonsdale. He resigned citing racism and sectarianism in the Scottish party as his reasons for leaving, along with the party’s failure to publish documents he had written about the deaths of eleven babies and a mother in the University Hospitals of the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust.
The Guardian today published an article reporting Mr Stanley’s resignation as one of three blows and scandals to hit the party. The other two were the investigation of Janice Atkinson for fiddling her expenses from the EU, and the suspension of Stephen Howd, a barrister, and their candidate for Scunthorpe, over allegations of harassment at his workplace.
The Guardian’s report says little about this. Most of the article is about Stanley’s resignation and Atkinson’s fraud, adding a few more details about why he resigned. In addition to the sectarianism and culture of bullying, he also strongly objected to the party’s use of ‘the language of English nationalism’. He felt it was damaging and corrosive to the Eurosceptic and Unionist cause.
He also took issue with part of Farage’s plan to exclude migrants from state support for five years after they came here. Along with his other reasons, he stated he could not support the exclusion of migrant children from state education and medical care.
Stanley’s absolutely right. It is totally unacceptable that migrant children, in particular, should be punished and left vulnerable because their parents came here in search of a better life. It’s also a move that is absolutely certain to do immense harm. If you exclude children from state education, and they cannot afford the immense fees of private tuition, then automatically you create an unskilled underclass, who will have no other recourse but crime. Especially if they cannot claim dole or other benefits.
I’ve similarly reblogged material from Vox Political, where Mike has produced the opinions of doctors and social workers that if migrants are excluded from the NHS, then it could lead to more infectious disease going untreated. You think of the chaos and suffering that could arise, if someone contracted Ebola, because they came from or visited West Africa, and were excluded from state medical treatment and couldn’t afford to go privately.
Or more prosaic problems and deaths that could arise from more ordinary problems going untreated, like meningitis or appendicitis. And does anyone really want to see women left to give birth without proper medical care, especially after the rave reviews of the Beeb’s Call The Midwife? That programme showed exactly the problems women faced bearing children in the East End slums in 1950s austerity Britain. No-one should want that privation and poverty to come back.
Except, it seems, Farage, and the rest of the Kipper, Tory and Lib Dem goons, who crave to see the NHS carved up and sold off.
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