Hat tip to Mark Pattie, when of the great commenters to this blog, for pointing me in the direction of this post from Zelo Street. It was put up in April four years ago in response to Farage proclaiming himself to be a threat to the political establishment. The Sage of Crewe points out that Farage himself is very establishment as an MEP, along with his fellow Kipper Annunziata Rees-Mogg, Bill Etheridge, Farage’s successor Richard Tice. One of the party’s candidates also re-tweeted a message from Active Patriot UK, a far-right account that seems to have the same view of Islam as Tommy Robinson.
‘He wants democracy. Providing it gives him the result he wants.
But this is so much tired tosh. Look, for a moment, at the kinds of “Outsiders” (ho ho ho) flocking to Nige’s standard. Let’s start with the man himself. Nigel Farage, claiming to be an anti-politician, but who has been a career politician for decades. He’s been an MEP for 20 years. And he’s a Euro-expenses cheat. A congenital liar. A spiv. A charlatan. A bigot. With one of the worst attendance and voting records in the European Parliament.
Who else is there? Ah look, Annunziata Rees Mogg! High TIRRIBLY ordinary that sounds! Sadly, Annunziata couldn’t go to Eton, as they only allow Cheps in there. Mere Gels don’t feature. So she had to go to Godolphin and Latymer, a Sloane factory if ever there was one. As well as being part of the establishment, she’s a career politician, albeit so far a failed one. Who else wants to join Nige and Nancy?
Well, there’s Bill “Viagra Golliwog” Etheridge, who just happens to already be an MEP. Another career politician. Except he found the new-look UKIP of Adolf von Batten too extreme. So now he’s joined Nige in the hope of staying on the gravy train.
Oh hang on, look who’s also turned up. “I had the privilege of meeting Annunziata several times many years ago. I was impressed then. And I’m delighted to see her now standing for The Brexit Party. Well done that lady”. Who is this grovelling gammon? Yes, it’s Roger “sleeping bigot” Helmer. Just 18 years as an MEP. Another career politician.
And the chair of this new party? Perma-tan and perma-smile artiste Richard Tice, another establishment multi-millionaire who won’t be affected by Britain leaving the EU. Also, as the Guardianhas observed, “Tice was a co-chair of Leave EU, which was fined £60,000 by the Electoral Commission in February for campaign violations in conjunction with Arron Banks’s firm Eldon Insurance”. Same taint of spivvery as before.
Then to round it all off, the Guardian has made a predictable discovery about another of those Brexit Party candidates. “[June] Mummery, has re-tweeted a message from a far-right account on Twitter. Her timeline showed that last week Mummery forwarded a message about the EU from an account called Active Patriot UK … The account strongly backs the anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson”. Same old bigotry.’
More on the infighting breaking out in the Tory ranks as their popularity continues to crumble. The right-wing mouthpiece dubbed by Zelo Street as the Blues musician ‘Whinging Dan Hodges’, according to a video put up this morning by That Preston Journalist, has said that it’s only a matter of time now before Johnson tries to get back into power and oust Sunak. This will probably happen after the Tories take a kicking in the council elections in May. That Preston Journalist felt that even if Johnson was able to improve the Tories’ popularity a little bit, it wouldn’t be enough and they should spend some time in opposition in order to rebuild.
I agree, but with one difference. They should go into opposition and never come out.
Hat tip to Gillyflowerblog, one of this blog’s many great commenters, for alerting me to a Zelo Street article on this, ahem, ‘person’. Earlier today I put up a piece about Correct, Not Political, a right-wing group who protest Pride Marches, Drag Queen Story Hours and Climate Change demonstrations, posting that teachers are being incentivised to tell the government if their pupils believe in any conspiracy theories, what they are, and how they are combating these beliefs. Well, it seems that GB News, much touted as the antidote to the ‘woke, wet BBC’ has been platforming one of the worst of the conspiracy crew: Peter Sweden. Sweden was invited onto Neil Oliver’s little programme to talk about declining birth rates. Apparently there was a massive decline in them last year, so that the programme asked if we were facing population collapse.
I think I saw the title to the video posted of this on YouTube, but didn’t watch it. According to some scientists, birth rates all over the world are declining to such an extent that there will be a population collapse in the middle of this century. This means that there’s going to be a shortage of people everywhere on Earth. I assumed they were going to talk about this, and so didn’t watch it. Unfortunately I was wrong. Apparently they were talking about a massive drop in British fertility that occurred last year. Peter Sweden, real name Imanuelsen, reckoned it may have been due to Covid vaccinations.
As General Jack D. Ripper says in Stanley Kubrick’s cold war black comedy, Dr Strangelove, ‘We must keep our bodily fluids pure’.
If such a drop did occur last year, I can think of a number of reasons for it which have zilch to do with the Covid vaccination. As I understand it, when animals are under stress they don’t breed. This is one reason why zoos are keen to look after critically endangered animals and make sure they are well and happy. Humans are animals, and an increasing number of us are stressed and very unhappy. The Covid lockdown, necessary as it was, meant that people couldn’t go to work and many businesses had to close for the duration. People therefore lost at least a portion of their income. Add to this Tory cuts and the problems they’ve inflicted on the Health Service and I am honestly not surprised people aren’t having so many babies.
But that isn’t all. While Sweden hails from that country originally, he currently lives in Northallerton on this side of the North Sea. He’s also appeared on Paul Joseph Watson’s YouTube videos, which is an indication of how far to the right he is. That the same Paul Joseph Watson who was Alex Jones’ British buddy on Infowars, although to be fair he was never as raving nuts as Jones.
Worse, Imanuelsen has some extremely unpleasant views about Jews and gays. He is apparently a Holocaust denier and that the concentration camps had swimming pools, theatres and cinemas. Which is very obvious grotty, horrible nonsense. He’s also said admiring things about the Third Reich and Hitler. And as well as having negative views of the Jews, he has also said that LGBT people should be put in concentration camps. Which is what the Nazis did to gay men. They didn’t imprison lesbians, apparently, because they thought they could or would eventually turn straight. Which is prejudiced, but fortunately it served to protect people rather than lead to their persecution.
Looking at this, Imanuelsen should never be allowed anywhere near a TV studio to give his views whatsoever. And Neil Oliver should never have invited him. As one of the commenters here has said, it’s a pit what has happened to Oliver as he was good on Coast. He was. And now he’s become a spokesman for the far right and bonkers conspiracy theorists.
I’ve already written a long piece about the acquittal of the four people responsible for the attack on the statue of Edward Colston. They were accused of criminal damage, but successfully defended themselves on the grounds that the attack was justified as the statue constituted a hate crime. The 12 good men and women true agreed, or the majority did, and so they were found not guilty. The right has been outraged, fearing that this defence leaves other controversial monuments at risk of destruction by the woke. I don’t believe that this is necessarily the case, and think that the threat to Britain’s heritage is probably exaggerated. As for the case of the Colston statue itself, there were campaigns to have it taken down going back thirty years or so. The people of Bristol voted for it to stay when they were polled, but now that it’s been torn down I think probably most people in the city are sick and tired of hearing about it.
But not, it seems, the Conservatives. Suella Braverman, our wretched attorney-general has apparently appealed against the decision. Mike and Zelo Street have both put up excellent articles stating what this appeal actually means. It’s another attack on British justice. Braverman and the Tories have no evidence and don’t allege that there was a mistrial, and so there is no real justification for an appeal. It’s just the Tories trying to revoke a decision they don’t like. This is an attack on the independence of the judiciary, which is one of the fundamental constitutional checks against government power. And the Tories aren’t just doing it with the verdict for the Colston Four. They’re also trying to pass legislation that would allow them to set aside judicial decisions against the government and its policies. It’s another step towards the right-wing dictatorship Johnson and co seemingly want for this country. It’s not too far from the way judges in the 17th century would send juries back to reconsider their verdict, and even imprison them, if they gave one they disagreed with. That power was undermined and discredited in a historic trial in Bristol in the late 17th century when William Penn, a Quaker and the founder of Pennsylvania and a group of his co-religionists were put on trial for seditious preaching. The jury repeatedly refused to convict them, and so the beak kept sending them back until he had them imprisoned until they came in line with his views. Which they didn’t. As a result, Brits not only have the freedom to be tried by their peers, but their peers have the freedom to deliver verdicts which accord with their consciences, not the authorities. Braverman’s appeal isn’t going to restore this unjust practice exactly, but it is doing something similar.
But it may also be a case of ‘be careful what you wish for. You might just get it’. Zelo Street’s article gives the learned opinion of lawyer Adam Wagner, who tweeted “there is a basic issue which will be becoming clear to ministers – a jury verdict sets no precedent, so the law is as it was, but a Court of Appeal decision would set an important precedent, which may not be the one the govt want”.
The Sage of Crewe also gives the opinion of those other internet legal gents, the Secret Barrister and and Jolyon Maugham. The Barrister said: “Not a single high profile criminal case can now pass without the Attorney General – a person with no experience of criminal law – exploiting it for political gain. It is difficult to think of an AG who has more enthusiastically abused their office”.
And the foxhunting lawyer gave his opinion on how much Braverman’s and the Tories’ determination to attack the verdict showed they really cared about British tradition and liberty: “By attacking the jury verdict in the Colston case Braverman tells a simple truth about how much Government really cares … about ‘British traditions’ … Theirs is a government without principles, without substance, of empty nationalistic signalling”.
But you wouldn’t know that by the way the right keeps banging on about our ancient constitutional liberties and the philosophers and lawyers who contributed to and guarded them. Like Sargon of Gasbag and the other Lotus Eaters raving about John Locke against the threat of the woke. Locke is one of the country’s great constitutional theorists. His Two Treatises of Government attacked autocratic theories of absolute monarchical power and instead provided powerful justification for the people exercising their sovereignty through elected representatives. He wasn’t a democrat. Indeed, the constitution he worked out for Virginia is based very much on the contemporary British social hierarchy and the power of the landlords. But it was a vital step towards modern, liberal theories of democratic government.
The Tories’ attack on the verdict represent another attack on these vital traditions and liberties in favour of restoring the power of a ruling class threatened by any indication of dissenting popular opinion.
This week the Tories once again took away more of the British people’s hard-won freedoms with the Nationality and Borders bill, proposed by Dominic Raab and the noxious Priti ‘Vacant’ Patel. This allows the government to strip a naturalised Brit of their citizenship, without giving notice to the person concerned. It follows the 2002 act that allowed the government to strip someone of British nationality so long as they had another. Then there’s the 2014 Immigration Act, pushed through by Tweezer when she was home secretary, that allows the government to strip someone of their citizenship, even if it left them stateless, so long as they could apply to another country for theirs. The Home Office decided that notifying the person affected could be done simply by putting it in their file if their whereabouts were unknown. The High Court ruled that this was insufficient, and so Patel has including legislation exempting the process from judicial review. Which has been described by Ian Dunt at inews as retrospective legislation denying people their right to appeal. It doesn’t matter how long the naturalised person has been here. They could have been here their entire lives, Patel and Raab can still strip them of their British nationality. This has been excused on the pretext that it would stop foreign criminals using human rights legislation to avoid deportation, particularly under the legislation protecting ‘the right to family life’. This is another Tory lie. Mike has pointed out that no foreign criminal has ever dodged deportation using that clause. The effect of the act is to turn immigrants into second-class citizens. This has chilling implications for the rest of us, because what Tony Benn said was true: the Tories start their attacks on people’s rights with immigrants before moving on to the settled population. But as this appears to target Blacks, Asians and channel migrants, it will inevitably be supported by racists.
It’s alarmed very many people. The increased restrictions on immigration have been criticised by a number of Jewish organisation, including Reform Judaism. They have stated that Jews who fled to Britain in the 1930s were not protected in 2021. According to Zelo Street, the Board of Deputies has expressed similar concerns. But Zelo Street has also pointed out that Patel’s and Raab’s wretched legislation particularly affects Jews because of Israel’s ‘Right of Return’. According to this, all Jews everywhere have the right to settle in Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu went further, and declared that every Jew around the world automatically had Israeli citizenship. This didn’t impress the growing number of Jews critical of Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians. One Jewish American said on the Net how ridiculous it was that he, who came from Anchorage in Alaska and had never been to Israel, had the right to settle their, while his friend, a Palestinian, was banned from entering his homeland. And the Israeli state certainly seems to share this sentiment when it comes to The Wrong Kind of Jews. There have been a number of instances where Jews, who have voiced criticisms of Israel, have been very quickly rounded up by the Israeli authorities and put on the next flight home when they’ve tried to enter the country. It’s obviously a case of all Jews being citizens of Israel, except for those that aren’t.
But the effect of Netanyahu’s wretched piece of legislation combined with Patel’s and Raab’s is that any Jew, who gained their British citizenship through naturalisation can now be stripped of it, as there is somewhere else they can go. The Street notes that despite all the screams about Corbyn and anti-Semitism, in reality genuine anti-Semitism comes from the far right. And this is the direction in which this government is moving. The Street concludes
‘That may not be the current intention of Ms Patel and her pals. But, with the certainty of night following day, after they come for the Muslims, the far-right come for the Jews.
And the far-right have now been quietly emboldened. Be afraid. Be very afraid.’
Absolutely. But one other thing may be said about this vile piece of legislation and Britain’sJ ewish community:
It would never have been passed by a Corbyn government and Jews would have been protected.
Corbyn was never an anti-Semite. Indeed, he is one of the most anti-racist MPs and has spoken up in the House and elsewhere in support of the Jewish community. He was simply critical of Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians. But the militant Zionists, who denounced him and his supporters as Jew-haters don’t distinguish between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. As a result, Britain has been denied a government, which would have actively defended the rights of Jews alongside other ethnic groups. Instead we have an increasingly extreme right-wing Tory government, which is taking those rights away, alongside those of the mainstream, White, gentile population.
And unfortunately, this is a government that has the support of those who claim to represent Britain’s Jews. When Tweezer got in, she was congratulated by the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis. Who was one of those pushing the anti-Semitism smears against Labour. Now, partly thanks to this smear campaign, British Jews are left vulnerable to real anti-Semitic persecution. All done perfectly legally by the next racist, who fancies his or her chances as the new Oswald Mosley.
The BUF also had women members, who used to go out goose-stepping to defend Britain from Communism. I wonder if Patel’s wardrobe contains the odd black shirt and jackboots?
Heaven help us, I can’t believe I’m actually agreeing with something Claire Fox has done. Fox is a thoroughly loathsome piece of work. She was in one of the Communist sects led by Frank Furedi, which published Living Marxism. As a genuine, paid-up member of the far left, she and the rest of the LM crew were fully behind the IRA’s right to armed struggle and their consequent bombing and murder of civilians. This continued right up to either the Omagh or Warrington bombing in the 1990s, which did much to discredit the IRA. Among the victims of the Warrington bomb were two small boys. While supporters of terrorism would naturally consider soldiers and politicians fair targets, I think severely normal people, British, Irish or whatever, hate the murder of innocent civilians and positively loathe that of children. The bombings were widely condemned, except by Fox, who defended it. She has never retracted or apologised for her comments.
Then, when Communism fell, she and the rest of the Living Marxism crew decided to abandon it as well. They crossed the floor to become right-wing Libertarian Tory contrarians. Living Marxism was rebranded as the Last Magazine, ’cause the Fall of Communism marked the end of history according to Francis Fukuyama. This went down the tubes, but Furedi and the rest went on to found Spiked. Which, as Zelo Street has so wittily put it, is so called because it should be. The other year the ghastly Fox was then taken up by the Tories for her work on their behalf, and is now a peer in the House of Lords. Ugh!
But this time she has done something right. One of the issues facing gender-critical feminists and anyone concerned with women’s safety is the move to house transwomen in women’s prisons. Unfortunately, this does not just mean the kind of people most us would naturally think of as a transwoman. I think most people, when they think of them have in mind gentle souls, whose identification with born women has led them to transition surgically. If this was the case, and all transwomen were like that, then I think there would be much less opposition to transwomen being placed in women’s prisons.
Sadly this is not the case. The trans category has been expanded so that it includes biological men, who identify as women but retain their male anatomy. Furthermore, the traditional rigorous medical examinations to confirm trans status have been, or are planning to be, scrapped in place of self-recognition. A male prisoner may therefore claim to be a really a woman only on his own say-so, and therefore demand to be placed in a women’s prison. This is a real problem for the safety of the women already there, as many of them are violent rapists and sex offenders. There has already been a series of rapes and sexual assaults in California’s women’s prisons, thanks to the legislation demanding that trans identified men be housed in them, to the point where the prison authorities are actually handing out condoms.
I realise this is a controversial issue, and people have been cancelled and thrown off university campuses for stating that there are only two sexes and other challenges to the trans ideology. I will state again that I am not anti-trans, and do not wish to see anyone persecuted, beaten, discriminated against or denied educational or employment opportunities because of their sexuality or gender identification. But I do believe there is an imperative need to keep women safe from dangerous predators.
I’ve blogged about this issue before. Gillyflowerblog, one of the respected commenters on this blog, has said in a previous comment about a post I made on Sargon of Gasbag and Posy Parker on the dangers of radical trans extremists on the dangers of involving the medical profession. She said: “Lastly, if a medical certificate is required to transition then do you expect the same for gay people. After all, the biology suggests heterosexuality. It is a very dangerous step to invole the medical profession”. I take her point. I’ve no doubt it is, and have every sympathy in this regard as once upon a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence people did seek medical intervention to correct it. However, while I recognise the dangers of medical intervention, you can do much to help women’s safety by removing biologically male rapists and predators from them. I understand the British government is doing so by building separate trans wings for them.
Belfield, the mad right-wing internet radio host, put up this video of Fox making her speech on his blog yesterday, with a comment about how loved her. Well, he would, as he’s as right-wing as she is. Nevertheless, Fox makes very good points, though this doesn’t alter the fact that she and her fellow Spiked crowd are still scumbags.
The world’s great, if not good, have gathered in Scotland to discuss the climate crisis and so far the conduct of our shambolic excuse for a prime minister has been of his usual standard: abysmal. As Mike and Zelo Street have pointed out, Bozo fell asleep at one of the talks, while sat between David Attenborough and the UN Secretary General. Our free and fearless broadcasters, both Beeb and ITN, did not show the footage. This suggests that they’re becoming the British equivalents of the official news services in dictatorships like Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia or Fascist Italy, where nothing that would possibly show the dictator in an unflattering light could ever be published. This even extended to the Gorbachev era. Although Gorbachev opened up a new era of democracy, openness, ‘glaznost’, and friendship with the West, the state media still acted to preserve the great man’s vanity. Gorby was born with a birthmark on his forehead, but this was carefully airbrushed out in the official pictures. Mussolini literally used to stand on a soapbox when he delivered his rants to the unfortunate Italian public, but this too was carefully airbrushed out of the photos. And then there’s that notoriously doctored photograph showing Stalin sat cosily next to Lenin on a bench. Now we have British television showing it’s quite prepared to do the same in order to spare Bozo’s blushes.
Bozo also didn’t wear the required facemask to protect everyone else from Covid as he was slumbering next to Attenborough. David Attenborough is 95, and therefore particularly vulnerable to the disease. Unlike Bozo, he was also wide-awake and alert, or at least he appeared to be. Nobody could blame him at his age if he had dozed off. But Attenborough generally appears far more intelligent than Boris generally, and much more popular. Also more accomplished in cross-species communication. After all, Attenborough found himself accepted into a family of gorillas in Africa during his blockbusting wildlife series, Life on Earth way back in 1979. It was one of the truly great pieces of natural history broadcasting. For all his background as a journalist, Boris has done nothing remotely similar, nor behaved with the grace, dignity and gravitas one would expect of someone who aspires to be a grand statesman. Boris is colossally graceless and inept, and when faced with difficult or not so difficult questions, his only recourse is to bluster incoherently.
And he did exactly this when questioned on CNN about why he didn’t wear the facemask and so risked Attenborough coming down with the potentially lethal disease. Alex Belfield posted this video yesterday, which shows the buffoon squirming in embarrassment. Of course, the mad right-wing internet radio host has his own reasons for posting the video. He vehemently opposes the lockdown, viewing it as doing more harm than good. It’s an attitude shared by much of the right. He early posted a video showing what he considered to be the hypocrisy of the world leaders in Scotland over the issue of facemasks. This showed them all posing for a photoshoot wearing them. As soon as the photographers had taken their pics, off the masks came. I don’t agree with Belfield about facemasks. I do think they are helping to protect the vulnerable. But I’ve got no problem sharing this video about Bozo’s hypocrisy and stupidity.
Last week LBC’s right-wing mouthpiece, Mike Graham, provided the British public with some unintentional hilarity when he solemnly informed the world that concrete grows. Graham was interviewing a young man from Insulate Britain. He started off with a barbed comment, asking the chap what he was glued to. The man calmly replied that it was just his screen at the moment. Graham then asked him what he did for a living. As Zelo Street has already commented, Graham was clearly hoping the man was unemployed so he could give him a rant about getting off his backside and getting a job. This failed, because the chap did have a job: he was a carpenter, which uses wood, a sustainable material. Graham claimed that it wasn’t, because the trees were cut down. The carpenter replied that people planted more trees, which grew. Unlike other materials like concrete. It was at this point that common sense finally abandoned Graham’s skull, and he declared that concrete did, indeed, grow. This ended the interview, as the Insulate Britain man remained silent except for a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of the head. Graham then abruptly ended the interview, saying goodbye to him.
I realise that this bizarre incident has been covered several times elsewhere, such as on Zelo Street, but I thought my esteemed readers would want to see it for themselves. Here it is being discussed by Novara Media’s Michael Walker and Dalia Gebreal, whose minds are well and truly boggled by Graham’s ignorance. So boggled, in fact, that they play the clip of the short interview twice. Even more astonishing, LBC put the clip up on their Twitter page as an example of an Insulate Britain fail. Graham and LBC made monumental fools of themselves, and didn’t realise it! In fact, Zelo Street reported that Graham had gone on to another show to make the same stupid claim about concrete growing.
Now I’ve read SF stories in which buildings are grown using self-replicating nanomachines, but that’s far beyond our abilities at the moment. Not that I think Graham reads much SF. And concrete doesn’t grow at all.
But I think the main take-awaylesson from this is what it shows about the level of knowledge of the people telling you that climate change isn’t happening.
Hat tip once again to Tim Fenton for his excellent article on yet another grotty point on GB News’ downward trajectory. As he points out, the channel must be really desperate if one of its presenters, Patrick Christys, has far-right activist Jack Buckby as a guest, and even boasts about it on Twitter. The wretched station even called Buckby a ‘counter-extremism researcher’ and proudly boasted of his praise for Christys, tweeting “‘People on the right are so scared of being smeared as being far-right extremists to the point where they say the far-right doesn’t exist’ … [Jack Buckby], counter-extremism researcher, praises Patrick Christys for talking about extremism”. Well, the real counter-extremism researchers over at Hope Not Hate have been following Buckby for years along with the Islamists Buckby is claimed to be an expert on. Because Buckby may himself be justly described as a far-right extremist. Citing pieces from the Liverpool Tab and Examiner Live, Zelo Street then proceeds to give a brief precis of Buckby’s career.
Buckby is a former member of the BNP, getting mixed up with them when he was at school and then going on to study briefly at Liverpool University before he was thrown out for his views. Buckby said, “I initially got involved with the BNP in high school. I wasn’t very political, but I had my opinions, as everyone does. I saw Nick Griffin and the real bias that he was facing on the television and I thought, ‘That can’t be right.’ I did my own research and thought, ‘Shit, I agree with him. He actually seems like a good bloke.’ I started supporting it and went through college being the notorious BNP guy. It was later that I met Nick and started talking about these culturist ideas”. He was expelled eight years ago in 2013, and went on from the BNP to Liberty GB, which describes itself as an anti-Islamisation party and a radical patriotic conservative organisation. Following the murder of MP Jo Cox, Buckby stood for Liberty GB against Labour in the Batley and Spen by-election, stating that Labour could not go unchallenged. He also claimed that Labour had duped working class people and were walking into the election with smug little grins on their faces. He also issued tweet stating that if Jo Cox’s murder was true, it was either a case of the ‘moronic’ Britain First damaging the cause of the far right, or a false flag attack by the Remain campaign. He was also strongly criticised for a rant on Channel 4 News in which he said to Barbara Ntumy, ‘Take in a Syrian refugee, I hope you don’t get raped’”. The good peeps of Batley and Spen weren’t impressed, and Buckby got 1.1 per cent of the vote and lost his deposit. Tim’s article also quotes tweets from Dr. Louise Raw and anti-racism campaigner Mike Stuchbery. Dr. Raw was horrified at the platforming of Buckby, because he had called for terror attacks in the Netherlands and was in the BNP, as was David Copeland, the man who radicalised Jo Cox’s assassin. Stuchbery has also been a victim of fanatics claiming to fight Islamisation. He was targeted for harassment by the noxious Tommy Robinson. Stuchbery also wondered why GB News was platforming him, ending his tweet with“Disgraceful from [GB News] … A known fascist with despicable views on the murder of Jo Cox & much more that should shame [GB News], who clearly did no background checks here”.
Tim, on the other hand, ends his piece with the conclusion that GB News knew exactly what they were doing, and should hang their heads in shame. But they won’t, because they don’t have any.
I’m afraid Tim’s precisely right. A quick search on Google reveals this article on For Britain, its leader Anne-Marie Waters, and Jack Buckby. https://hopenothate.org.uk/research-old/investigations/undercover-inside-britains-far-right/for-britain/. I realise that neither Buckby nor Hope Not Hate are exactly household names, but the researchers at GB News would have known of them and who Buckby was when gathering information for the show. Even if they didn’t come across Hope Not Hate, they would have been able to get the facts about Buckby. It looks very much like the broadcaster wanted someone controversial to talk about Islamisation in the aftermath of David Amess’ murder, and weren’t particular about who they were inviting.
As for describing Buckby as an anti-Islamisation expert, this strikes me as nonsense. I think it’s a mistake to underestimate the Islamophobic far right, as from my own reading of their web pages there are people there who do have a deep knowledge of Islam. This is apart from the football hooligans and other thugs who simply want to beat up brown people. There are issues with Islam in Britain. I think some sections of it are very alienated from mainstream British society and there is a danger of the creation of parallel societies. But the vast majority of British Muslims aren’t terrorists and have very publicly condemned it.The problem is that Fascists and Islamophobes like Buckby don’t distinguish between Islam and Islamism.
From what I’ve read and watched, many of the Islamist activists and terrorists have a similar background. Apart from those radicalised abroad, they seem to be individuals, who’ve been radicalised over the Web or from particular hate preachers. A number had connections to Anjem Chaudhury, a grotty individual who’s spent time in the slammer for supporting terrorism. I don’t know if this the case with Amess’ alleged killer, but quite often they’ve spent their lives drinking, taking drugs and having sex before their conversion to radical Islam. Chaudhury, if I’m correct, is a case in point. Some of them, like those responsible for attacks in France, seem to have been violent criminals. Quite often they’ve precious little connection to their local mosque, the congregation of which haven’t seen them in years.
As for the political motivations behind the attacks, some of it simply seems to be rage at the west’s repeated invasions and attacks on Muslim nations, such as the invasion of Iraq. While there’s more to the ideology than simply this – it also seems to be coupled to stupid conspiracy theories about the Jews plotting against Islam and Mohammed from the foundation of the religion in the 7th century onward, cultural shock and dislocation caused by the massive changes in Middle Eastern and broader Islamic society, as well as an idealisation of pre-modern, traditional Islam – that seems to be the primary motive.
This is a tense time. Our Muslim brothers and sisters are naturally afraid of increased prejudice and abuse following Mr. Amess’ horrendous murder. I saw a piece on the internet news page yesterday stating that Muslim organisations were giving them advice on handling this increased suspicion and hate. We need informed, sane experts, who can properly explain the issues, drawing people together to dispel such prejudice and unite against violence and hatred.
This means real experts, not bigots and Nazis like Buckby.
GB News risk increasing tension simply by platforming him. It seems to be a publicity stunt, though I also wonder if the broadcaster couldn’t get anyone who really knew about Islamist terror and radicalisation on.
Either way, it shows how low it really is going on its way to being eventually wound up.
Great piece today by Tim Fenton, the sage of Crewe, demolishing some of the massive untruths told by Nadine Dorries, our new Culture Secretary. He starts off by reminding us all the Nads is no stranger to telling porkies. In 2006 she wrote a piece for Conservative Home containing the remarkable fact that every member of Liverpool council in 1955 was Tory. Did I say fact just then? Well, it was in the sense of Donald Trumps ‘alternative facts’. The real composition of Liverpool council at that year’s elections was 53 Tories to 65 Labour. She also said that there were eight MPs for the city at the time, all of whom were Tory. This is another falsehood. Liverpool had nine MPs, three of whom were Labour.
Now she is telling falsehoods about the BBC. The Corporation, she insists, must take action over breaches of impartiality. But former Groan editor Alan Rusbridger points out that Ofcom have found zero breaches of impartiality. He then says he has too much respect for her to accuse her of lying, and hopes she will produce some hard evidence to back up her assertions.
Steve Barnett of the University of Westminster also put the correct figures for the proportion of Beeb staff who went to private school. Nads has said that it’s 50 per cent. The actual figure is 11.5 per cent of all staff, and 17.5 per cent of the leadership
Zelo Street also quotes Peter Walker, again of the Groan, who said that Nads complained that those criticising her appointment as culture secretary were mainly people who benefited from nepotism. She also believes that the ‘groupthink’ at the Beeb excludes northerners and people from the working class. As the Street points out, this is a bit rich coming from the woman who employed two of her daughters at taxpayers’ expense. He also compares the Tory cabinet with the backgrounds of two of the Beeb’s favourite personalities:
“Meanwhile, the Tory cabinet is two-thirds privately educated, the BBC’s leading news anchor (Huw Edwards) was state-educated and his parents weren’t employed by the Corporation, and its leading sports presenter (Gary Lineker) began his working life helping his late Dad Barry – who ran a fruit and veg stall on Leicester Market.”
In actual fact, I think the Beeb is biased. The Kushners pointed out in their great book, Who Needs the Cuts?, that the Beeb uncritically assumed that Austerity was justified and gave ample space to those economists and politicians who supported it. Dissenting voices, especially from the trade unions and other groups, were excluded or, if they did appear, shouted down. Analysis from the media monitoring groups at Edinburgh and Glasgow unis found that Conservative ministers and figures from industry and the City were far more likely to appear on the news than Labour politicos and trade unionists. And the Beeb showed massive bias in its treatment of Jeremy Corbyn, in which it supported the actions of the Thatcherite plotters and staunchly pushed the lie that the party was institutionally anti-Semitic. As, of course, did the rest of the media. If Ofcom didn’t find any breaches of impartiality there, then it probably doesn’t say much about the organisation’s own lack of bias. But whatever, the watchdog hasn’t found any bias against the Tories.
These figures also undermine mad right-wing YouTuber Alex Belfield’s own attacks on the Beeb. Belfield claims he was forced out of the Beeb through a mixture of jealousy – certain star broadcasters were envious he got more listeners than they did – and contempt for his background. Belfield says he’s a working class lad from a pit village. As opposed to his former colleagues at the Beeb, who were all middle class and university educated. Well, they may have been. Not having gone to private school doesn’t necessarily mean that you are working class. Many of the peeps who are state educated are lower middle class. And possessing a university education doesn’t necessarily exclude members of the working class. Way back in the early 80s the student grant was still around to support students from poorer backgrounds. That’s been ended, but higher education has been massively expanded to include 45 per cent plus of the population. Which must surely include members of the working class.
But since before the days of David Cameron the Tories have been trying to pose as the real representatives of the working class, as against the university educated, left-wing elites. Tweezer opened her first cabinet meeting by saying that none of them were members of the elite. In fact, damn near every single one of them was a millionaire. As for attacks on university education, there’s a massive streak of anti-intellectualism amidst the parties of the right. The attacks on university education are there to inspire prejudice against anything a university group might say criticising Tory policy. But it ain’t just universities that the Tories hate. Some of us also remember the remark of a Tory MP about opera: ‘What’s opera? A fat Italian, singing in Italian, dressed as a woman.’ Well yes, a fair number of the great operas were written by Italians in Italian. But not all are exclusively sung by Italians of a certain weight, despite Pavarotti. And I don’t think all of them involve crossdressing. But it shows the prejudice of a certain type of Tory towards high art.
But once again, the Tories have been caught lying again. And unfortunately, once again it’s no surprise.It’s a pity Keef Stalin is trying to copy them in his leadership of Labour.
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