Zelo Street

Tuesday, 27 June 2023

Brendan Clarke Smith - A Total Shit

When the less than totally august figure now known as “Lord” John Mann decided not to stand for re-election in 2019, some might have thought that his replacement would be, shall we say, a little less unpleasant. But that was to reckon without the new and virulent strain of sheer nastiness that has infected the modern Tory Party. So Bassetlaw’s voters got Brendan Clarke Smith.

Brendan Clarke Smith. Alleged to be an MP

Like his fellow Blue Team stalwarts from that part of the world, Ben “Cultural Marxism” Bradley and “30p” Lee Anderson, Clarke Smith is an indescribably nasty piece of work. He has been, like the equally unpleasant Jonathan Gullis, a teacher, although setting an example to his flock appears to have been forgotten along the way, as was demonstrated yesterday.

A Tweeter who uses the Nom De Plume Supertanskiii had been at this year’s Glastonbury festival. While there, she had experienced a mental health episode. Her subsequent mistake was being open about this. “On a personal level I’d like to say a huge thank you to the lovely man volunteering for [the samaritans] near the Pyramid stage. He noticed that I’d paused near their truck after Lizzo and asked if I was ok. I wasn’t, it meant the world to me. That chat made such a difference”. Enter Brendan Clarke Smith.

“Vile Internet troll in personal issues shock. Cares little for the welfare of others however when spouting her foul-mouthed bile on twitter. Excuse me for playing the world’s smallest violin”. Er, WHAT?!? What the merry fuck is an MP doing kicking someone when they’re down? Nothing better to do, Bren?

So back came Supertanskiii. “Here we have a Tory MP mocking a person with poor mental health. It’s not trolling to call a c*** a c***, Brendan. I built my anti Tory platforms after my friend took his own life due to Tory covid negligence and NHS cuts. You’re the reason people want to twat Tories”.

POINT. Would Sir care to tone it down a little and say sorry? Ah, but today’s Tories, like their hero, disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, don’t say sorry. That shows weakness. So, ignoring Healey’s Dictum, Bren dug himself in deeper. “Why not try deleting your twitter account? You’ll be a lot less angry and feel a lot better about yourself”.

Yes, reader, he said it, he went there. A sitting MP. Severely adverse comment was not long in arriving. LBC host Ben Kentish mused “I have no idea who the original tweeter is or what they have/haven’t tweeted previously, but this is never, ever how you should respond to someone talking about their struggles with mental health. Especially if you’re an MP”.

Author Emma Kennedy didn’t quite believe she’d read that. “Tory MP berates woman thanking The Samaritans for help when she needed it. I’m speechless”. Peter Jukes of Byline Media added “Just pure cruelty. Hard to imagine this Conservative MP was once a teacher. I pity former pupils”.

To which one Tweeter warned “If I was a Tory MP I'd be trying to tone it down, any potential future employer's social media checks will be a nightmare. I think Brendan is going to be informed he is not the right person for this position many times”. So what do those in the education business reckon?

We soon got a handle on that one after Carol Vorderman (for it was she) picked up on Ms Kennedy’s response. “Tory MP [Brendan Clarke Smith] (fed baked beans by spoon by Lee Anderson last wk [don’t ask]) berating [Supertanskiii] for asking [the Samaritans] for help this wkend. Given that he will be a FORMER MP soon & likely go back to teaching, should he be banned from being with children [Mary Bousted of the NEU]?

What say Ms Bousted? Clearly, she had to be diplomatic in her choice of words, but it wasn’t looking good for Bren. “Teachers would never behave like this. Teachers support and help young people with mental health issues. They do not demean or belittle them”. Clarke Smith will find out, as will Jonathan Gullis, that actions have consequences. And their future employment prospects will suffer significantly as a result. But there is a silver lining.

They can always go blubbering to the press and join in the post-election confected culture war, telling anyone who will listen how the Woke Blob has conspired to Cancel them. The Rotten Lefties™ done it! It was someone else’s fault. It was nothing to do with them loosing off in public or on social media like a load of boorish thugs. They will be victims. For money.

But Clarke Smith will still be a total shit. No change there, then.

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Monday, 26 June 2023

Press Cat Uses Up Ninth Life

The central premise of the 70s crime caper Silver Bears - well, apart from everyone conning everyone else - is the presence of a silver mine. Except there is no silver mine: financial guru “Doc” Fletcher is shown what he is told is a silver mine, he wants to believe there is a silver mine, and so, ergo, there is a silver mine. Even though there is no silver mine.

What we are witnessing is falsehood and misinformation

It is an idea that those in and around the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press are most reluctant to take on board right now, when the premise on which so much of their recent copy has been based is one which they wanted to believe, but is in fact false. Worse, it has been demonstrated repeatedly to be false. But sales, clicks, and culture war bullying, eh?

What has happened can be put directly: two school pupils recorded a conversation with a teacher into which they deliberately introduced the idea of a fellow pupil identifying as a cat. The recording was then, not by accident you understand, made available to the Mail titles, where the underlings of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre went off without checking their facts.

No matter that the school concerned repeatedly told anyone prepared to listen that the story was not true, and that there was no pupil identifying as a cat, the right-wing press wanted to believe that children were allowed to identify as cats, they had a recording apparently backing up their belief, it served their culture war paranoia, and listening to mere facts was out.

This belief spread to the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, which amplified the Mail’s Trans-bashing line while still having no factual evidence. At this point, Mic Wright published a post calling out the Tel (read it HERE) and it might have been thought that the farce could not get worse. But that thought would have been sadly misplaced. It got worse. A lot worse.

The following day, the Tel quoted “Britain’s strictest head” Katharine Birbalsingh, who also had no factual evidence. But Sideshow Birb had an opinion, and that was all that mattered. “‘I know of a child who identifies as a hologram’ [ho yus] … [she] says children allowed to self-identify as animals and moons should be moved to a different school by their parents”.

Could it get worse still? Don’t ask: SNP MP John Nicolson brought the bad news on Friday. “The Tory Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch has asked Ofsted to carry out a snap inspection of a school because, apparently, she believes a spoof story that a child at the school identifies as a cat. This MP has risen to Cabinet rank”. And then, yes, it got even worse than that.

In waded the Mail on Sunday and alleged journalist Mary Harrington to howl “Pupils identifying as cats. Teachers too scared to speak out. And a bid to smash every rule and boundary … What we are witnessing is an all-out war on parental authority - but the ultimate victims are our children”. No, what we are witnessing is an orgy of bad faith lying and bullying.

A pile-on under a totally false pretext. Joined by the likes of Helen Carroll, who also claims to be a journalist, Tweeting “Looking to speak to a mum whose secondary school age child identifies as an animal. Can be anonymous and fee paid on publication”. She has now deleted the Tweet. The ridicule raining down on her may have had something to do with it.

But the damage may have already been done: hard-up parents see the opportunity to pay for that much-needed new washing machine, sofa, bed, wardrobe, TV, or just to clear accumulated debt, and cobble up yet more false claims that the press can then feed into their hatred generating War on Trans. Meanwhile, few are thinking of the children caught in the crossfire.

Those for whom gender dysphoria is part of the everyday challenge of getting through life. Those who are already marginalised, othered, vulnerable, fearful and often lonely. The filth in and among the press doesn’t give a rat’s arse about that. So there may be the occasional fatality? They should care. They didn’t care about Lucy Meadows; they won’t care about the next victim.

Why is trust in the UK’s press so low? You may ask that. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Sunday, 25 June 2023

Labour Grovels To Murdoch

Getting Don Rupioni on side has been achieved by just one Labour leader in recent times, and it needed all of Tony Blair’s charm, together with Murdoch losing faith in John Major, to achieve this. More recently, party leaders have paid fealty to Creepy Uncle Rupe: Ed Miliband went to his 2011 summer party, and look how far that got him. Thus the lesson for today’s leaders.

So the Murdoch summer party has come around again, and the usual suspects from the Government rocked up: Rishi Sunak, Akshata Murty, Oliver Dowden, Suella Braverman, Simon Hart, Penny Mordaunt, Grant Shapps, James Cleverly, Chris Heaton Harris, Michael Gove, Kemi Badenoch, they all featured. So did ex-leaders William ‘Ague, Liz Truss and Iain Duncan Cough.

So far, so predictable, but then came the roll of shame as a host of senior figures from the Labour Party were also seen attending the gathering around the head of the Cosa Rupra. Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting, Sadiq Khan and Anas Sarwar were among their number, and then came party leader Keir Starmer, but not his wife. She is clearly a woman of sound judgment.

Sarwar may have concluded that having the Scottish Sun on his side (the paper has recently backed the SNP) is a distinct possibility, and, given the SNP’s recent problems, a likely one. Why Sadiq Khan turned up is less clear: the Murdoch press hates anyone who is not white, and anyone to the left of Attila The Hun. They also don’t like Khan’s ULEZ proposals.

He may have thought Rupe’s troops will give him an easier ride if he makes the right noises, but that’s a doubtful one. For Streeting and Ms Reeves, their attendance is very obvious: they want to at least stand a chance of succeeding Starmer if the latter were for some reason to become indisposed. This will not be news to the Labour leader: he’ll know who wants his job.

But why, why, why did Starmer himself feel the need to grace the proceedings? Attending gatherings like the Spectator summer party, alongside the racist bigots, the occasional anti-Semite, climate change deniers, media C-list has beens and never weres, is bad enough. But paying homage to the interfering foreigner who has screwed over the UK?

He's not listening to you, Labour people

Yes, screwed over the UK: the Murdoch press was in the vanguard for the 2016 EU referendum campaign, with the Sun splashing front page packs of lies after front page packs of lies, competing only with the Daily Mail, then as now under the jackboot of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, to see who could invent the biggest whoppers about the European Union.

The Murdoch hatred generater also includes publishing falsehood and misinformation about Scary Muslims™ (including in the Times, as with the “Muslim fostering” story, which was mainly untrue when not being highly selective in its deployment of facts), and Rupe’s personal swerve across the anti-Semitism line, before someone prevailed on him to stop Tweeting.

But what should concern Starmer above all this is the illegal activity that the Murdoch empire has either encouraged or commissioned, or in which it has participated. Phone hacking was initially about the late and not at all lamented Screws: only later did the Sun, the Mirror titles, and perhaps others arouse suspicion. Then there were the activities of the Fake Sheikh.

Mazher Mahmood entrapped unwary media people for fun, ruining careers for kicks until the Tulisa Contostavlos case brought his undoing. Maz also wasted considerable amounts of Police time with the fictitious Victoria Beckham kidnapping plot (there wasn’t one), and the “Dirty Bomb” plot (there wasn’t one of those either). Mahmood went to jail. Not for long enough.

And there has never been a convincing explanation to the apparent involvement of Rupe’s troops in the aftermath of Daniel Morgan’s murder in a south London car park. Rather a lot of reasons not to go anywhere near any gathering hosted by Don Rupioni, and it seems Keir Starmer has discounted every one of them - if he bothered to consider them in the first place.

Meanwhile, Labour loses more members. Why d’you think that might be?

Saturday, 24 June 2023

Bozo, Bullshit, And Plagiarism

What the unfortunate five souls aboard the OceanGate submersible Titan would have experienced when their craft suffered a catastrophic implosion of its hull during a dive to view the wreck of RMS Titanic last Sunday was described in an article posted on the BBC website: put directly, they would not have known anything about it, such would have been the brevity of events.

Whose ideas in his latest column?

“When a submarine hull collapses, it moves inward at about 1,500mph (2,414km/h) - that's 2,200ft (671m) per second, says Dave Corley, a former US nuclear submarine officer. The time required for complete collapse is about one millisecond, or one thousandth of a second. A human brain responds instinctually to a stimulus at about 25 milliseconds, Mr Corley says”.

Do go on. “The air inside a sub has a fairly high concentration of hydrocarbon vapours. When the hull collapses, the air auto-ignites and an explosion follows the initial rapid implosion, Mr Corley says. Human bodies incinerate and are turned to ash and dust instantly”. Instant death by crushing, then compression ignition brings cremation of what remains. Efficient and grim.

None of this has deterred the usual suspects in and around our free and fearless press from reimagining the final moments of the dive, not least disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who has just given readers of the Daily Mail the dubious benefit of his thoughts on the tragedy. By talking well, but lying badly.

“I know there will be many who will say that Harding and his fellow adventurers were foolish, and that we need regulation against such experimental technology. Even before the news of the implosion, the Leftie Twittersphere was awash with criticism”. Bullshit. But, sadly, there is more.

“The reason so few people have done it is because it takes such nerve; and it is precisely because the market is so small, and undeveloped, and populated only by risk-hungry billionaires, that the machines are still a bit experimental”. So why have other submersibles made the descent without problem?

“That is why this mission was so important, and should be valued by Left-wingers as well as everyone else. Yes, there were risks, and warnings. But every great advance must inevitably involve experiment, and equipment that can seem, in retrospect, dangerously inadequate”. Retrospect my arse. The warnings about Titan’s use of carbon fibre had been made for years before that fateful final dive. As had warnings about its lack of certification.

He's desperate, Dan

Nevertheless, Bozo concludes “Harding and his friends died in a cause - pushing out the frontiers of human knowledge and experience - that is typically British, and that fills me with pride … I think they are heroes”. OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was such a hero that he threatened to set his lawyers on anyone who passed adverse comment on his approach.

And there is one other part of this grimly tedious article: the attempt to politicise it, to somehow “blame the lefties”. The headline includes the flat-out lie “Lefties sneer”. And Bozo has a kick at Ash Sarkar of Novara Media - which is where any claim to originality comes sadly unstuck.

Because, 22 hours earlier, and published at the same site, Mail Online, was this drivel from the deeply unpleasant Dan “four takes” Wootton: “The new Titanic disaster united the world in equal horror and admiration. But it's a new low for the hate-filled left to use the tragedy to say explorers should be taxed more to stop these pioneering adventures”. Do go on, O desperate one.

“Like millions across the globe, I can't shake from my mind the unimaginable terror the passengers of Titan must have been feeling in their likely last moments”. They wouldn’t, Dumbo - see above. Have another go. “For centuries, the world's greatest explorers and adventurers have put their own lives at risk over and over again to drive forward humanity”.

Bozo dressed that one up to talk about Captain Scott. Same idea. And, like the later Bozo diatribe, there is a dig at Ms Sarkar. “For the hate-filled left to politicise the traumatic events of this week, largely because of Harding's presence on the sub, to suggest explorers should be taxed more to stop these pioneering adventures altogether is a new low”.

This from the pundit who knows all about where the hate comes from. Like the hate that did for Caroline Flack. And it didn’t come from the left. Ms Sarkar said the rich weren’t being taxed enough. Wootton has to re-translate that into “her Corbynite political philosophy that the west should stop all private innovation”. She’s quite high up his table of creepy obsession.

While Dan Wootton looks to be quite high up Bozo’s table of plagiarism. Or perhaps The Great Man had the same ideas and it took 22 further hours to burnish them into a coherent whole to give us his superior insights.

Bozo may have got £20,000 for that crap. I wouldn’t pay the SOB in washers.

Friday, 23 June 2023

BBC Fails To Call Out Lying

Under the less than benign influence of former pop salesman Tim Davie, and pal of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance Robbie Gibb, the BBC’s coverage of the fallout from Brexit continues to veer between exasperating and downright dire. This was typified by a special edition of formerly flagship politics show Question Time last night, before a special all-Brexiteer audience.

But while the programme did show, once again, the Beeb’s inability to deal with facts as facts, and not merely something else with which to play “both sides”, it provided superb examples of the diehard Brexiteer mindset and the lack of reality-based information that fuels it. From there it was possible to see how the visceral anti-European hatred could be maintained.

Not all of the panel covered themselves in glory: John Redwood, that well known speaker of Not Welsh, claimed not to have said the UK would get a trade deal with the USA. He lied. Ben Habib asserted “Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney weaponised the border and threatened violence” which was desperate as well as a complete pack of lies. Then came the audience.

There was a predictably white and older look to them, and, we soon learned, a serious lack of informed opinion. An older woman declared that when the UK had to implement safety regulations for working above the ground floor of buildings, the French and Germans did not. This, though, apart from being totally untrue, was a mere hors d’oeuvres for a much more bigoted entrée.

Which came from an elderly man in a white shirt, who said this: “When I voted to Leave … one of the reasons I voted to Leave was to manage our own borders, and stop people coming into this country as and when they felt like it. I’ve seen people entering this country and going straight down to the benefits office. That’s what I have seen in the course of my employment”.

Where does one start with that? We already managed our own borders, and anyone entitled to enter the country could, and still can, do so “as and when they feel like it”. And he has not, repeat not, repeat NOT, seen anyone entering the UK and going straight down to the benefits office. Because it is not possible to rock up in the UK and avail oneself of benefits.

You have to have right to remain in the country. Asylum seekers do not have that right. Also, as one Tweeter pointed out, “Benefits Offices don't exist. There are Jobcentres. To get into a JC you have to have appointments. All sort of bio & identity checks have to be completed then an interview before benefit can be awarded, & it's not by the JC. The process takes weeks”.

As for the idea of going straight to the “benefits office”, Simon Harris has helpfully provided a map showing the most popular landing points on the south east coast for all those small boats, from Camber Sands to Dungeness and on to New Romney and Hythe, together with each nearby branch of JobCentre Plus. Except there are no such branches.

Or, as Mike Bealing from Deal put it this morning, “My watch ends at the Noon Day Gun, so I’ll be brief. I’ve spotted no European Roofers this morning and no-one has yet walked up the beach from the Channel and asked for directions to the Benefits Office”. Because the Question Time bigot was lying. Whether he and his fellow bigots believe this drivel or not.

Perhaps host Fiona Bruce would have felt duty bound to “both sides” any pushing back against the whoppers, given Gibb is still on board and is known to be a rabid Brexiteer. In any case, the BBC has failed to call out lying in its politics strand, and not for the first time. Or stressed enough that 30% of Brexit voters admit their mistake and would not vote that way again.

The Beeb failed to cover itself in glory last night. But you knew that already.

Priorities, Priorities

Last Sunday, the submersible OceanGate Titan was less than two hours into a dive to view the wreck of RMS Titanic when contact was lost. A major search and rescue effort began: five souls were aboard the craft, and it was assumed by most observers that they would still be alive. Hence the reports telling of how long the sub’s oxygen reserves would hold out.

For our free and fearless press, this provided the ideal cover for stories they would rather not run, for fear of embarrassing themselves. So when the Privileges Committee report on whether disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson misled Parliament, which he did, and repeatedly, dropped on Monday morning, his press pals had cover.

And did they need cover: Bozo, for whom so many on the right had been shamelessly shilling, was found to have lied to the House knowingly and repeatedly. Worse, he had been using that same press to smear members of the Committee. Had he not resigned his seat, a suspension of 90 days would have been recommended. Withdrawal of his Parliamentary pass was urged.

All this could be safely shuffled to an inside page, if the details were reported at all. So readers need not be told that a 90 day suspension was instant recall petition and by-election territory; hence Bozo jumping before he was pushed. The Commons debate on the report saw only six Tories vote against the report, with more than 100 of Bozo’s formerly fellow MPs voting for it.

So it was that we were treated to wall to wall deep sea drama. Look at the adventurers and the very rich, not at the UK’s rotten and corrupt politics, which enabled a moral vacuum like Johnson to rise to the top of the pile, to become Prime Minister, a position for which it was well known beforehand that he was not fit to hold. And then another thought entered.

Late last week, the BBC reported that “At least 78 people have died and more than 100 have been rescued after their fishing boat sank off southern Greece. But survivors have suggested as many as 750 people may have been packed on to the boat, with reports of 100 children in the hold”. There have been accusations that the Greek authorities did not help the overloaded vessel.

Those on board were refugees. Yes, they were migrants, they were not white, and most would have been Scary Muslims™. It is the kind of story that many in and around our media establishment would rather not report, especially as so few of them can muster the slightest shred of empathy. The press knows its readers, and many of them are racist bigots of the worst kind.

What deeply unpleasant former Sun editor Kelvin McFilth said so many years ago - “You just don't understand the readers, do you, eh? He's the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist, wants to send the w**s back, buy his poxy council house, he's afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers and the weirdos and drug dealers. He doesn't want to hear about that stuff (serious news)” - still drives so much of what gets published.

So more than 650 of those people McFilth’s ideal Sun reader would like to “send back” got drowned somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea? The press knows it happened, that there are hundreds of families grieving, but they are in one of those very difficult positions. They backed the idea of “stopping the boats”, and the idea of “pushing them back”. The result? They’re not so keen.

Much easier to ignore the catastrophic loss of life in the Med while shouting support for pushing boats back and sending desperate refugees to places like Rwanda. And keep readers and clickers focused on the North Atlantic, although the sad news from yesterday may shorten the story’s shelf life.

A remotely controlled exploration vehicle from the Canadian ship Horizon Arctic has located a debris field on the ocean floor close to the Titanic wreck. Some of that debris has been reported to be from the Titan. As the carcass of the sunken liner lies some 3,800 metres below the surface, the pressures involved would be immense. And any failure would be deadly.

It is looking like Titan’s loss of contact signalled a catastrophic hull implosion. So all aboard would have died more or less instantly, and on Sunday afternoon. It may have been a “cyclical failure” - one pressure cycle too many, shades of the Comet I. The press will now try in their usual inimitable fashion to string out the why-oh-why potential of the saga.

For them, this beats covering the horrors of sea disasters nearer to home. It trumps covering the cost of living crisis. They prefer it to owning up about the slow puncture to the UK economy that is Brexit. And it certainly outranks any attention given to Bozo The Liar. An absolute SOB. But he’s their SOB.

Falsehood and misinformation. Bozo did it. His pals say Look Over There.

Saturday, 10 June 2023

Boris Johnson - End Of An Error

When (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries suggested yesterday that she was not going to resign as an MP, only to do just that five hours later, she explained that “something significant did happen to change my mind”. We did not have to wait long for the “something significant” to reveal itself as the Privileges Committee report into her Bestest Commons Pal.

This is total shite ...

Because formerly very occasional Mayor of London, and disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson soon followed Ms Dorries out the door. All signs were that the Privileges Committee, which has a Tory majority, was about to recommend a suspension of more than ten days for Bozo, which meant a by-election. He jumped before being pushed.

There was a resignation statement. He was being “forced out of Parliament” over Partygate. The Privileges Committee was a “kangaroo court” whose intention “has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts”. Its report was “riddled with inaccuracies and reeks of prejudice … They have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons … I did not lie”. He didn’t? Why change the habit of a lifetime?

This was total crap, as was his claim that a committee made up of democratically elected MPs was “anti-democratic”. He was finished. But his pals in the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press were still prepared to publish his lies as if they were fact - especially the Sun and Mail.

At the former title, the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, who claims to be a real journalist, told readers “A RAGING Boris Johnson last night sensationally quit as an MP after learning the findings of a ‘kangaroo court’ inquiry into Partygate … The ex-PM said he was ‘bewildered and appalled’ at the anti-democratic way he had been forced out”. The Mail was worse.

“Ex-PM quits as MP with blast at ‘kangaroo court’ … He says his ousting sets a ‘dangerous an unsettling precedent’ … Claims ‘political hitjob’ is revenge for Brexit … And attacks Tories for ‘endlessly’ putting up tax”. The freezing of tax thresholds took place when he was PM. His successor is a Brexiteer. The press is not reporting fact. It is printing the legend. And it’s complete shite.

He was sacked from his first job in journalism for lying. He was made editor of the Spectator on condition that he would not run for Parliament. He then ran for Parliament. He was sacked from the Tory front bench - for lying. His supposedly stellar time as London’s very occasional Mayor was nothing of the sort, with Sadiq Khan being left to clear up the mess.

... and this is even more totally shite

He claimed that “driverless trains” would be introduced on the Tube. He and anyone listening was told it wasn’t going to happen. His useful idiots in the press published his lies anyway. It didn’t happen. More millions were spaffed up the wall, to use his happy phrase, on a study for an airport in the Thames estuary. It had no change of happening. It didn’t happen.

There was the vanity cable car across the river, now with no regular users. As well as the New Bus For London, not a Routemaster, overweight, overpriced and of which a thousand had to be acquired before TfL could secure the intellectual property rights on it. The NB4L’s air cooling was inadequate and all 1,000 have had to be modified with opening windows.

He bought water cannons. They were never used. We now know that his on-off mistress Jennifer Arcuri secured significant loans while Bozo was Mayor. He lied about his relationship with her. He lied when promising not to close any Tube ticket offices, then closed every one of them. He courted the Taxi trade, then sold them out to Uber. And screwed TfL’s finances.

George Osborne persuaded Bozo to give up TfL’s subsidy. Sadiq Khan got the blame for trying to sort it out. As Prime Minister he kept on lying, and his press pals kept on printing the legend. He lied about the cost of EU membership. He lied to the Northern Ireland business community about his Brexit deal. And he lied about what he oversaw during the pandemic.

The UK locked down too late. Many tens of thousands most likely died as a consequence. Bozo lied about Covid’s severity. And while We The People stuck to social distancing rules, delayed family visits, put off travel plans, and even obeyed the diktat not to visit elderly relatives in hospitals and care homes, he turned 10 Downing Street into Party Central. And lied about it.

Still the right-wing press defended him, as it defends him still. He may have been an SOB, but he was their SOB. Instead, the Mail thunders “THERE will be sanctimonious crowing today from Boris’s enemies, that unholy alliance of Leftist loudmouths, hand-wringing liberals and embittered Remainers. But he can hold his head high. His everyman vision was genuinely inspiring”.

Yeah, right: billions sprayed up the wall on PPE contracts for his pals, a country progressively more impoverished as Brexit bites, the UK’s influence in the wider world shredded, the NHS on the verge of collapse, and it’s all someone else’s fault, nothing to do with Bozo the lying narcissist, the monumentally lazy, sexually incontinent, national wrecking ball.

He should never have been allowed anywhere near power. That is all.

Friday, 9 June 2023

Dorries Walks - Lib Dems Mobilise

News overnight is that while the resignation honours list proposed by disgraced formerly occasional Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has been passed by his successor Rishi Sunak, some of the names therein have been removed. Of those removed, some may return later, while at least one should not be coming back at all. So what’s happening?

And it's goodbye from her

Bozo had apparently proposed a knighthood for his father Stanley, but here a serious problem entered: quite apart from accusations of nepotism - his brother Jo already got a peerage - Johnson père is known as a wife-beater, a skill he supposedly practiced even when young Bozo was in the vicinity and able to see his dad’s handiwork. So his name may not be coming back.

But two names which probably will return are Alok Sharma, at present MP for Reading West, and (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries, still MP for Mid-Bedfordshire despite hosting a regular show for Murdoch noise floor occupant TalkTV. Both were, it seems, slated to go to the Lords, which would have triggered by-elections in their constituencies. So what’s the problem?

Sharma’s seat presents an obvious vulnerability for the Tories: his majority in 2019 was just over 4,100, with Labour in second place. The Tories had already lost Reading East in 2017, when Rob Wilson lost the seat. Labour increased their 2017 majority two years later. A by-election in Reading West would be the equivalent of a gimme for Labour. But Mid-Bedfordshire?

The fragrant Nadine is sitting on a majority of 24,600. Are the Tories frightened of losing a seat that safe? Well, in a word, yes. And it isn’t Labour that is frightening them. It’s the Liberal Democrats, despite Labour having been runners-up in 2015, 2017 and 2019. That’s because before the ill-advised Tory-Lib Dem coalition, the latter ran Ms Dorries the closest.

The Lib Dems got within 11,550 votes in 2005, and 15,150 five years after that. Which may seem a long way short, but, as the saying goes, that was then, but this is now. As in, after November 2021, which is when the Lib Dems won a by-election victory in North Shropshire: Helen Morgan had placed third, behind Labour, in 2019. The Tories were sitting on a 23,000 majority.

Ms Morgan turned that into a 5,900 majority for her party. On that kind of swing, whoever the Tories put up to succeed The Fragrant Nadine would almost certainly lose. Also, North Shropshire was not an isolated example: as with Owen Paterson having to step down in the former seat, the disgraced Neil Parish had to do likewise in Tiverton and Honiton last year.

Parish’s majority was 24,200. Once again, the Lib Dems advanced from third place to overturn that majority and create a 6,100 majority of their own. On those kinds of numbers, the Tories would lose Mid Bedfordshire, which they have held continuously since 1931. Moreover, there are two more reasons why the Tories would rather not face a by-election there any time soon.

One, in this year’s round of local elections, the Tories lost their majority on Central Bedfordshire Council, losing 21 of their 41 seats. The party had held a majority of seats since the council’s creation in 2009. And Two, Mid Bedfordshire is just down the road from the City of St Albans, held since 2019 by Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper, a formidable campaigner.

So this morning, Ms Dorries told TalkTV “The last thing I would want to do would be to cause a by-election in my constituency” and many observers took her at her word. But five hours later, all had changed: the BBC has now told that The Fragrant Nadine is standing down as an MP “with immediate effect”. “It means there will be a by-election in her Mid Bedfordshire constituency, where she has a majority of 24,664”. The Lib Dems are already mobilising.

Ms Dorries’ pals, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, suggest a Tory hold, but this is disingenuous claptrap: that was a General Election scenario, not a one-off by-election. North Shropshire, Tiverton and Honiton … and Mid Bedfordshire.

Is she doing it to spite Sunak? Who cares? More excellent spectator sport.

Thursday, 8 June 2023

Chris Packham Gets Tommied

After winning his legal battle against Country Squire magazine’s editor, fantasist, shyster, abuse peddler and con artist Dominic Wightman, this blog warned naturalist Chris Packham “in his moment of victory [he] cannot rest: he has to make sure Wightman pays up … This is, after all, someone who has previously been declared bankrupt”. But it was already too late.

Dominic Wightman (photo (c) Bob Todd)

The BBC had reported the news of Packham’s victory on May 25, but those involved would have known the outcome before then. Wightman, whose previous bankruptcy was initiated by a creditor, had, by the time his defeat became public knowledge, already followed the example of Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, and declared himself bankrupt.

Lennon had done his deed in order to avoid paying up for another libel loss, in his case an action brought on behalf of Jamal Hijazi, a young Syrian refugee about whom Lennon had made a number of highly imaginative - and defamatory - claims. The Great Man then made matters worse for himself by not attending a hearing to be examined about his finances.

That meant Lennon was summoned to attend the High Court on pain of arrest for contempt (again). But Wightman has no problem with following in the former’s footsteps. Unless Packham’s lawyers had already moved to seize the loser’s assets, such as they be, they will have trouble getting paid, and their client will as a result be seriously out of pocket.

So let’s have a look at that bankruptcy notice: it describes him as “Dominic Martin Wightman, Currently not working [no change there, then], of 4 Swan Yard, High Street, Honiton, Devon, EX14 1LN, formerly of 58 Keyberry Road, Newton Abbot, Devon, TQ12 1BX, formerly of New Wells, North Back Lane, Terrington, North Yorkshire, YO60 6NS”. Moves around a bit, doesn’t he?

It also confirms that Wightman has initiated the bankruptcy process himself - it is a debtor’s, and not a creditor’s, petition - and that he started the ball rolling on May 23, when he would have known the result of that lawsuit, but before the news was made public. He’s done a Tommy. For Packham and his lawyers, if they want to get paid, it’s going to be a long slog.

If not a fruitless one: Lennon’s loss was confirmed in June 2021, but attempts to prove that he was concealing assets merely to avoid paying up had only got as far as an examination hearing by the following May - the one where Lennon failed to turn up. Wightman may not have anything significant in the way of assets - so what do the winners do then? What can they do?

Country Squire magazine continues to publish material - so who is in charge there? If it’s not Wightman’s asset, has it changed ownership or control recently? Staggeringly, the mag has told its readers “The defendants are yet to discuss the implications of an appeal with their legal advisers”. Wightman is one of those defendants. He’s not going to appeal any time soon.

Nor is any legal advisor worth their reputation going to have anything to do with him. Nor should any credence be given to Wightman playing the victim: “the Editor ‘had been the victim of inappropriate and offensive communications (including highly distressing trolling)’”. Accuse someone else of doing what is known to be your speciality. Away with you, Dom.

Forget the distraction tactics: Chris Packham just got Tommied. That is all.

Wednesday, 7 June 2023

Telegraph Gets Instant Karma

You have to be of A Certain Age to remember John Lennon’s early solo single Instant Karma! The idea behind the title and lyric was that Karma might happen more or less immediately. It is a concept with which the editorial staff at the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph may not yet be familiar, but that is all about to change. As may their presence at the paper.

Now then, what am bid? Chris Evans, claims to be a newspaper editor ... now come on Sir, this is not a fire sale ... oh hang on a minute, actually, it is

While most of our free and fearless press were sneering dismissively at the Duke of Sussex having his day in court, news had already been broken by the Murdoch Times that “Lloyds Banking Group has threatened to put the owner of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph into administration after the breakdown of talks with the Barclay family, the owner of the newspapers”.

Do go on. “Lloyds inherited a series of loans to the Barclay family after the takeover of Bank of Scotland in the midst of the financial crisis. It is understood that the bank has written down the value of the loans in recent years. A source said that after years of negotiations the bank felt it was reaching ‘the end of the road’ in the relationship”. There was more.

“Alongside the Telegraph Media Group and the Spectator magazine, the Barclay family own Very, the online retail business”. So is it a bundle? Not just the Telegraph titles, but also the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine? Along with a little jeopardy on the side for former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil, the mag’s chairman? It seems it is. And today, the Guardian had yet more.

“The Daily and Sunday Telegraph are to be put up for sale in an auction after the Barclay family lost control of their crown jewel media assets in a bitter row with the newspaper group’s lender … Lloyds Banking Group is understood to have appointed AlixPartners as the official receiver to seize the shares owned by the Barclay family in the holding company that ultimately controls the national newspapers and the Spectator magazine”. Tell us more.

“According to multiple sources the bank, which has taken the action after becoming frustrated at the repayment of a loan amounting to hundreds of millions of pounds, intends to remove Barclay family-appointed board members and move to auction off the Telegraph titles and Spectator”.

Whatever anyone is prepared to pay for the Tel and Speccy, the sad reality about the former is that, over the 19 years since the Barclays bought it, the former paper of record has been first turned into a broadsheet Mail (hence the Private Eye jibe of Maily Telegraph) and later nothing better than a broadsheet Express. The content and staff have been hollowed out.

All this has occurred as profits continue to be chased and the Tel increasingly trades on its brand and past reputation. The old demarcation between news and comment vanished long ago, and thus conditions were ripe for the kind of alleged “story” for which the Instant Karma so swiftly emerged.

“Exactly how much of your salary bankrolls the welfare state … Britain isn’t working - calculate what it’s costing you” was the headline last Thursday, as a supposedly reputable newspaper exhumed the Nazi-era idea of the idle and disabled weighing down on all those decent and hardworking people. The article enjoyed the endorsement of the Tel’s editor Chris Evans, thereby confirming that he was, and remains, a total and absolute shit.

“Of the 5.2 million people claiming out-of-work benefits, roughly 3.7 million have been granted indefinite exemptions from finding a job, following a surge in claims of mental health issues and joint pain during the pandemic, it emerged last week” readers were told. So whose press release is this?

As if you need to ask. “On top of this, the controversial decision to maintain the state pension triple lock is estimated to cost taxpayers £1,000 each over the next four years, according to calculations by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a think tank”. Think tank my arse. The so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance is an Astroturf lobby group. And this is just plain old-fashioned hate speech.

That is confirmed by the line “It raises the question, just how much of our hard-won salaries are spent on the benefits of those who do not work? With the calculator below, Telegraph Money can now reveal how much of your salary goes towards bankrolling the welfare state”. And then Instant Karma hit Evans, his Sunday editor Allister Heath, Spectator chairman Andrew Neil, and the magazine’s supremely disingenuous editor Fraser Nelson.

They are also up for sale. It would be a terrible pity if nobody wanted to buy.

Tuesday, 6 June 2023

Why Megs Blanked Morgan

No senior member of the Royal Family had testified in court for more than 130 years. But extraordinary times bring extraordinary actions, and thus the appearance this morning of Prince Harry at the High Court. The action taken by himself, and some others, was against the Mirror titles, who stand accused of illegal information gathering, including phone hacking.

He's still utterly unpersuasive

As the BBC has reported, “Unlawful information-gathering ‘acted like a web’ around Prince Harry, a court has heard during his trial against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) … His barrister told London's High Court no aspect of his youth was safe from press intrusion - citing stories about his relationship with Chelsy Davy appearing in the Mirror”. David Sherborne had more.

“These methods acted like a web around the prince in the hope it would catch the valuable information that they sought through these unlawful means … The ups and downs and ins and outs of their relationship, the beginning, the break-ups and finally the split between them were all revealed and picked apart by the three Mirror Group titles … It was as if they were never alone”.

That perceived level of intrusion would be enough to turn any individual paranoid, and Harry has admitted thus, as Dan Evans notes in Byline Times. As to his past relationships with girlfriends and then his wife, “Unfortunately, they are not just in a relationship with me but with the entire tabloid press as the third party … [the newspapers were always] ultimately trying to ruin it using whatever unlawful means at their disposal”. There was more.

“I don’t understand (and never have) how the inner, private details of my relationships, for example, could have anything to do with the wellbeing of society or the running of the country and therefore be in the public interest or, indeed, how the use of voicemail interception and other unlawful information gathering techniques to uncover such private information could be either”.

So we can now see why he and Megs left the UK: the destructive effect of so much personal, insensitive, intrusive and indeed abusive coverage on their wellbeing, and that of their son, is obvious. And then we arrive at the presence in all of this of former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan.

Piers who?

Morgan, a deeply immodest individual with much to be modest about, has demonstrated, and continues to demonstrate, an unhealthy and indeed creepy obsession towards Megs. This is, in part, because he got to know her moderately well before she became engaged to Haz. Then she blanked him. Harry’s witness statement tells you why she might have done that.

Haz quotes Morgan’s book The Insider: “TV comic [Michael Barrymore] has recently been treated in a clinic for booze and drug addiction, and I’d heard rumours that Diana had been secretly comforting him”. HOWEVER “Morgan’s Mirror wrote about six private Sunday evening meetings between Diana and Barrymore, the exposure of which ‘devastated’ the princess, according to Harry’s statement”. Private meetings. What say Haz?

“I can only assume that this information had been obtained via voicemail interception and/or other unlawful information gathering such as live land line tapping”. And that is part of what he is alleging, as well as naming a long line of those also affected by unlawful information gathering, from The King all the way to his former nanny … and the late Caroline Flack.

About whom, and Diana, he said in court: “People have died as a result, and people will continue to kill themselves by suicide when they can’t see any other way out. How much more blood will stain their typing fingers before someone can put a stop to this madness?” Who had blood on their hands?

“Some of these editors and journalists responsible for causing pain, upset, and in some cases inadvertently, death”. Having already said “The thought of Piers Morgan and his band of journalists earwigging into my mother’s private and sensitive messages (in the same way as they have me) and then having given her a ‘nightmare time’ three months prior to her death in Paris, makes me feel physically sick”. All of which answers that initial question.

Why did Megs blank Morgan so suddenly? That has now been revealed.

Sunday, 4 June 2023

Mail Lies - Starmer Can’t Stop It

The Labour leadership and its assorted Gauleiters continue their attempt to expunge anything remotely left-leaning, with the latest casualty of this local attack on democracy being North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll, who told last Friday that “I’ve been barred from standing as North East Mayor by [the Labour party]. No explanation has been given”. There was more.

“I’m proud to have created thousands of jobs, fought child poverty, built affordable homes and delivered our Green New Deal. I believe in democracy. Share if you do too. More to follow”. What was telling was that the positive responses to Driscoll included some from those in other parties who had worked with him in the past. So what is Keir Starmer hoping to achieve?

He need look no further than the experience of Tony Blair: although the main man of New Labour won round the Murdoch mafiosi - after considerable grovelling to Creepy Uncle Rupe - the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker, then as now under the jackboot of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, remained immune to his charm. The Mail kept on kicking Labour.

It is a lesson Starmer and his gofers appear to have difficulty taking on board. Perhaps, after perusing the lead story in today’s Mail on Sunday, they will appreciate the scale of the challenge before them: “Secret plan by Starmer to hit the well-off by cutting their access to GPs, libraries and bin collections … LABOUR’S CLASS WAR ON MIDDLE BRITAIN” thunders the headline.

Is there a “secret plan”? Is there buggery. The MoS lead story is a flat-out pack of lies from start to finish. Consider some of the claims. “Labour was last night accused of declaring 'class war on Middle Britain' over shock plans to slash public services in affluent areas”. THERE ARE NO PLANS. “[Starmer] faced claims he was plotting a 'hard-Left attack' on the wealthy”. Claims.

This would involve “diverting resources from rich areas to poorer postcodes - affecting access to GPs, school places and even bin collection”. Which is also made up. The logic here? “The radical plans, included among draft proposals for Labour's Election manifesto, would extend equality laws covering race, age, gender, disability and sexuality to include 'the inequality of social class’”.

Do go on. “It means public bodies could make spending decisions that penalise middle-class areas to divert funds to poorer neighbourhoods”. Except it could equally not do so. Logic leaps and false assumptions aplenty, and no amount of schmoozing will stop the Mail titles, with their significant online reach, from hurting Labour all the way to polling day.

All the MoS has to go on is this: “The far-reaching proposal being circulated to party members and trade unions is concealed in dry jargon that pledges to enact 'the socioeconomic duty under section 1 of the Equality Act' and 'conduct equality impact assessments of major announcements’”. And the former minister prepared to act as MoS talking head is Jacob Rees Mogg.

That would be the same Jacob Rees Mogg who would have no idea how the average Mail reader lives, or indeed, what a cost of living crisis looks like. He is obscenely rich, not through anything so demeaning as manual work, but by playing the markets over recent decades, in person or as a manager or partner of a variety of investment and fund management vehicles.

But he does have a high public profile. There will no doubt be others. And the point is a straightforward one: Today’s MoS article, packed with falsehood and misinformation, will be repeated several times a week - when there aren’t any Slebs to monster - until the General Election. Starmer can do as much left-bashing as he wants: it will make no impression, and no difference.

If the Mail titles can stop Starmer getting into Downing Street, they will do whatever it takes. They can’t trust him to do their bidding in the way the Tories do. And today’s slice of rank dishonesty shows just how little factual material that need to go off on one. Even when Labour leaders have been on good terms with the likes of Dacre - pace Gordon Brown - it made no difference.

Stop pandering to the right-wing press. It’s like smacking yerself in the mouth.

Saturday, 3 June 2023

Schofield Pile-On - Stop It. NOW

And so we have reached the weekend, and the more downmarket right-leaning part of our free and fearless press is still laying into now former ITV host Phillip Schofield, in one case in a manner which is highly likely to increase the chances of his being accosted, or worse, if he dares venture out in the street. The public interest in this story is long gone. So why continue?

Do the Murdoch mafiosi want a body count?

Some in and around social media will respond that it’s all about safeguarding children, but to stand that one up, there needs to be exaggeration and/or flat out lying about the age of the much younger man with whom Schofield had a relationship. The young man started at ITV after he turned 18; the affair happened some time after that. The press knows that. It’s still on the attack.

Over at the Northcliffe House bunker, yesterday brought “Schofield’s wife ‘furious’ at his lies about lover”. Why the quote marks? She wasn’t furious. The Murdoch Sun, though, had secured an allegedly exclusive interview, which generated the kind of headline suggesting his choice of paper was unwise. “I’m broken and ashamed … but NOT a groomer”.

Which gives the green light to every righteous thug in the country to conclude that he really IS a groomer. Building on this mound of hatred, today’s Mail has run a column from Amanda Platell, another of those economic migrants whose presence the UK could well do without. “No, Phillip Schofield didn't groom his lover - but he did groom his This Morning audience”. Bullshit.

There is more. “And yet I do believe Schofield is guilty of grooming. I'm not saying he groomed his former lover”. Not much you’re not, nudge nudge, wink wink, nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat. Ms Platell then lets us know that “he started following the man on Twitter when he was just 15”. This is one step from incitement. Nothing happened until the man was over 18.

But do go on. “I had the same experience with Rolf Harris. Now I am not for one moment suggesting Schofield broke the law like Harris, as he clearly did not [You just equated Schofield to a convicted paedophile] A relationship between two consenting adults of whatever sexuality is completely legal [so what’s with the nudging and winking?]. But during my long friendship with Harris, the Aussie doodler was always cheery and full of charm [big deal]".

So, with Sun and Mail giving every sign that they won’t stop until they have a body count, some in and around the media are indicating their disquiet with the pile-on, not that the senior editorial staff at the Mail and Sun will care. They do, after all, have significant previous in this area.

Looks like they do want a body count

One pushing back was former prosecutor Nazir Afzal, who revealed “I’ve been asked to write about Philip Schofield by a national newspaper. If Schofield has committed a crime then it’s a police matter.He is not a person ‘in power’ whom we need to hold to account. I’ve seen people targeted in a ‘pile on’ who have harmed themselves - it’s a No from me”. There was more.

Derren Brown was another putting his head above the parapet. “I must be morally dim - I don’t see why a TV presenter’s intimate business should lead to public persecution. Makes me so uncomfortable. Having to ask friends why anything terrible has happened, why it warrants such shaming, and why it’s supposed to be endlessly my business”. Others were concerned.

Concerned for Schofield’s wellbeing. Like Benjamin Butterworth: “The Philip Schofield debacle has gone too far. An adult having a workplace affair with another adult is inappropriate, but it is hardly illegal. Obliterating their life and career in front of millions is deeply cruel, and I fear for Schofield’s wellbeing”. And for anyone who thinks his response is OTT, I give you Christine Flack.

That surname may be familiar, because as the BBC has reported, “Caroline Flack's mother has criticised ITV over its handling of the departure of presenter Phillip Schofield, saying the broadcaster had failed to learn lessons from the death of her daughter … Presenters are not always protected, Christine Flack, whose daughter fronted ITV's Love Island, told Newsnight”.

“Christine believes ITV ‘haven't learned anything’ since the death of her daughter … Christine told the BBC that Schofield ‘knew Caroline’ and when she died, ‘he was very upset’ … ‘I think he's now realising even more what she went through,’ Christine said. ‘But until it happens to you, you feel sad but you don't understand.’” She had more to say on the two former presenters.

“Schofield told the BBC that the fallout in the media had been ‘relentless’, which Christine said was ‘exactly’ how her daughter Caroline had felt. ‘Every day she would try to be a bit stronger, which I should imagine Phillip is [doing],’ she said. The problem is, she continued: ‘You get more and more thrown at you’”. An apparently infinite roster of bad faith “journalism”.

If those so-called journalists don’t back off - you know they don’t care.

Friday, 2 June 2023

Covid Inquiry - Tories Still Bent

When Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister unopposed - maybe his party thought this the best course of action after Tory members had previously chosen Liz Truss - we were told that his appointment would herald a new era of openness and transparency. Some were foolish enough to believe this tosh. Because we are getting nothing of the sort, as the Covid inquiry shows.

Cross-bench peer Baroness Hallett was appointed to head the Covid inquiry, and this week the moment of reality emanating from that appointment has arrived. She has demanded information be handed over to the inquiry; Sunak is digging his heels in, resisting to the extent of applying for Judicial Review in an effort to prevent the release of a trove of WhatsApp messages.

And much of that trove is, it seems, down to disgraced former occasional Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, despite Bozo claiming that he had handed all his WhatsApps over in unredacted form. As so often, he talked well, but lied badly: his messages from February 2020 to April 2021 were not handed over. They have still not ALL been handed over.

Bozo changed phones in April 2021: perhaps we will be told that Dilyn ate the old one. Then writer and historian Philip Stephens mused “Unavoidable question now is whether cabinet secretary Simon Case has his own reasons for withholding information from Covid inquiry”. And, after the 31st May deadline passed, Dan Bloom at Politico London confirmed that. And more.

Several people had been asked for their WhatsApps, and by late April those not yet complying included Bozo, Liz Truss, Penny Mordaunt, Dominic Raab, Michael Gove and Kemi Badenoch, and also Munira Mirza, James “Enemies of the People” Slack, Dan Rosenfield, and … Simon Case.

Have he and the others since complied? We are not told. But we are told that a list of questions has been prepared by the good Baroness for Bozo’s perusal and reply. George Grylls has said “some of them are pretty savage”, but I disagree: these are the questions that many who lost friends and family to Covid want answering - by the person who was in charge at the time.

Questions like “did you have any concerns regarding the performance of any Cabinet Minister between January 2022 - February 2022? … did you receive advice from the then Cabinet Secretary that Matt Hancock MP, should be removed from his position? … To what extent did you believe that coronavirus was akin to influenza? Did you hold and express the initial view in early 2020 that Covid-19 was not a serious threat and was akin to swine flu?”

There was more. A lot more. "Why did you not attend any COBR meetings in relation to Covid-19 prior to 2 March 2020, given the seriousness of the emergency? … Were you advised or requested to attend any of the previous meetings on 24 January, 29 January, 4 February, 12 February, and 18 February? Why did you attend a personal/social meeting on the evening of 19 March, after you had called on the UK on 16 March to stop all non-essential contact with others?” Ooh interesting! Back to the Baroness’ questions.

“Why did the UK Government not advise the public in February or March 2020 to wear face coverings on a precautionary basis? … Did you inform the then Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, during a phone call on or around 13 March 2020 that you ‘wanted herd immunity’, or words to that effect?”

“Please confirm whether in March 2020 (or around that period), you suggested to senior civil servants and advisors that you be injected with Covid-19 on television to demonstrate to the public that it did not pose a threat?” If he did suggest that, he’s off his head. Do go on.

“In or around Autumn 2020, did you state that you would rather 'let the bodies pile high' than order another lockdown, or words to that effect? … Please explain what impact, if any, you consider alleged breaches of social restriction and lockdown rules by Ministers, officials and advisers ... had on public confidence and the maintenance of observance of those rules by the public?”

And all of that is before we get to the Covid contract largesse of Johnson’s Government. Tens, hundreds of millions spaffed up the wall, to use Bozo’s happy phrase, on useless PPE purchased through companies which had been placed in the administration’s “VIP lane”. The public wants answers.

The public would also like those involved to take the inquiry seriously, and one intervention from Fionna O’Leary suggests they are not doing so: “In the interests of completeness … the actual S21 notice specific to these evidence sources was issued by Hallett on 28 April. So they all sat on them for a full month … albeit the Cab Office tried to argue on 15 May that Hallett’s order was ultra vires (outside the scope)”. Time for the Tories to listen up.

People want answers. If that means shame and humiliation for those in power at the time, and makes the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press look even worse than it does now, so be it. If the inquiry’s revelations cause the scales to fall from a few more pairs of eyes, even better. Give the inquiry the information it has demanded. Let it follow the evidence.

Anyone might think the Tories have something to hide. No change there.

Thursday, 1 June 2023

Tommy Robinson’s Chicken Run

And so it came to pass that Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, returned briefly to the spotlight from well-deserved obscurity as a result of another of his Not Very Whizzo schemes which may well prove to be a campaign that develops not necessarily to his advantage. The good news is that he’s left the country. The bad news, for him, is why.

Lennon’s useful idiot, amateur kidnapper Danny Tommo, brought the world the news that his pal had arrived in Cuba, an odd choice of destination for one who hates Commies. “[Tommy Robinson] lands in Cuba after leaving the UK due to threat of being arrested and jailed for 2 years [Elon Musk] this is what Independent journalist have to go through, yet you continued to deny him a voice on Twitter … Protecting truth tellers is very important”.

Truth teller my arse. I’ll go further: journalist my arse. And why is Lennon threatened with arrest and up to two years behind bars (not that I’m objecting to him being thrown in Chokey)? Ah well. Hope Not Hate are not always on Lennon’s case as some anti-fascists would like, but they are this time.

“Tommy Robinson (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) has broken a court injunction this week and could now face two years in prison”. Ooh interesting. Do go on. “Back in 2021, Tommy lost a libel case against a young Syrian schoolboy named Jamal Hijazi. Jamal had been the victim of violent bullying at his school in Huddersfield, as captured on a video that went viral”.

There was more. “During the court case in 2021, the judge issued an injunction, forbidding Tommy from repeating the lies he told about Jamal … But Tommy is deliberately breaking the law, working with a US alt-right outfit to release a film that repeats the lies, and in doing so attempts to profit from Jamal’s pain again”. No link will be included. Cos I’m not into lawbreaking.

“The film has been released with Tommy’s full knowledge and collaboration … Tommy thinks this latest grift can make him big money through new supporters in the US and fundraising for legal fees from his UK base. But we are on the case and will be doing everything in our power to [Get Jamal Justice] - watch this space”. Lennon, as so often, can’t keep quiet about it.

So it was that The Great Man has sent a video from Cuba, where he tells the world that he’s just off a ten and a half hour flight, and that the food was terrible (cue nanoviolin). He can then be heard saying “next stop America”. And, as Jon Stewart might have said, two things here. One, you don’t just hop on the plane in Cuba and get off in the USA. Not with his criminal record.

Lennon has already tried to enter the USA illegally and failed. He rocks up there again, his stay will only last until he gets spotted by law enforcement, and given his inability to button his North And South, that won’t take long. And Two, the obvious question right now is, do the authorities in Havana know that someone with a significant criminal record just rocked up there?

If they don’t know, it has to be assumed Lennon most likely entered Cuba on a false passport. Maybe the régime there doesn’t mind the odd bit of passport fraud, but I doubt it. And if they lift him and dump him in the local prison, he’ll soon find that being gobby with the Law doesn’t work in a country that has a lamentable human rights record. Including the use of torture.

That’s one hell of a risk to take just so he can kick off another grift. A risk that could end up in either Cuba or the USA deporting the SOB back to the UK, and the UK as a consequence not only locking him up, but confiscating his passport on the grounds of his being a flight risk. Which would mean if he rocked up abroad in future, everyone would know he was breaking the law.

Which will, of course, be someone else’s fault. Maybe the Muslims Done It.

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