Jon Snow says he owes everything to nepotism.

 

Jon Snow

Jon Snow says that he's a "nepo baby". He says that he owes his success in life to nepotism, his social class, and his social connections. "I would have been nowhere, but for nepotism." His father, the Bishop of Whitby, went to Winchester and Oxford and taught at Eton. Snow went to boarding school where he got abysmal O-Levels and then Scarborough Technical College. He then went to Liverpool University - which his father facilitated - but got slung out for challenging the Chancellor over his support for South African apartheid. His cousin, Peter Snow, put him in touch with the Earl of Longford who gave him a job running a shelter for the homeless called New Horizon.  Peter Snow then got him a job at LBC. By the 1980s, he was a roving reporter for ITN covering wars in Central America and the Washington correspondent for ITN.

 Zoe Williams of the Guardian, who has just reviewed John Snow’s memoirs, says that the 1960s, was a funny era where a well-connected scion of the upper classes - like Jon Snow - would find it impossible to do anything but succeed. I wouldn't signal out the 1960s for being particularly significant. It was also an era of social mobility for many people due to the expansion of the State, which required more bureaucrats.

 The Old Boys Network has been operating a long time. I remember reading about the MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott, who went to Eton and Trinity College Cambridge. He was a close friend of Kim Philby. Elliots father, Sir Claude Aurelius Elliott, was the headmaster of Eton. It is said of Sir Claude, that he "knew everybody who was anybody, and nobody who wasn't somebody." Nicolas Elliot got a job with MI6, when he asked Sir Robert Vanisittard, over a glass of champagne at Ascot races, if he could pull some strings and get him in MI6. Sir Robert, who was a friend of Sir Claude Elliot, replied:  "I'm am relieved you have asked me for something so easy." I gather that 'White's' gentlemen's club was a favourite recruiting ground for MI6, and both Sir Claude and his son, were members.

 After playing in a cricket match at Eton, and before he joined MI6, Nichols Elliott, was approached by Sir Neville Bland, a senior diplomat, who offered him a job as honorary attaché at the Hague, where Sir Neville was Britain's Minister. Although Elliot hadn't a clue what the job entailed, he wrote that there was no serious vetting procedure and that Sir Neville had simply told the Foreign Office, that I was all right, because he knew me and had been at Eton with my father. 

Hands off Roald Dahl! French publisher says Dahl's novels will remain intact.

 Author Roald Dahl

Viva La France. The UK publisher Puffin have hired 'sensitivity readers' to delete language deemed offensive in the books of Roald Dahl. The French publishers Gallimard said no changes would be made to the author's children books in France and the original text would "remain intact." Puffin said its overhaul of the books was aimed at bringing them into the modern world.

In the new English version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the word 'ugly' and 'fat' used to describe the greedy Augustus Gloop, is replaced by the word 'enormous' and the Oompa-Loompas are gender neutral. In the French version, Gloop remains "a hippopotamus...enormous...like a fat pig" and the Oompa-Loompas are described as men who wear "deer skins "

Antoine Cheron, a lawyer specializing in author's rights said it was not illegal in France to change a dead author's works, but it was "dangerous for culture." "How far back should we go?" Cheron said. "Baudelaire? Voltaire? The Bible? If books are changed in this way they are not the original works. It is not far off censorship. This seems to be an attack on artistic creation and Freedom of expression."

The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has criticized the 'airbrushing' of Roald Dahl's classics by Puffin, saying "don't 'gobblefunk' around with words", a word that was used by Dahl in his children's book the Big Friendly Giant to denote the practice of playing around with language. Gobblefunk, is what we might call a 'nonce word' that like Lewis Carroll’s 'jabberwocky', is used for a single occasion. The word 'nonce' has now acquired a different meaning to many English people who think that it refers to a child sex abuser. The word 'gay' has also lost its original meaning.

I think that Antoine Cheron makes a very valid point. Are we going to finish up seeing 'sensitivity readers' scouring over and 'airbrushing' the works of Dickens, Waugh, Trollope, Orwell and Enid Blyton? They're bound to find something objectionable. I'm currently reading a novel by Joseph Conrad called Victory. In his novel, Conrad refers to a "Big Buck Nigger"and says "Wang was not a common coolie " Yes, they are very offensive words, but Conrad was a man of his time and not of our times. What right have we got to mess about with his words by trying to turn the clock back and impose a modern view of the world on him?

Euro consumers mock Brits with photos of full supermarket shelves.

 Empty shelves in Britain's supermarkets

The Germans call it schadenfreude, the English, malicious joy. Europe's consumers are mocking Brits with photos of supermarket shelves piled high with an abundance of tomatoes, lettuces, cucumbers, and fruit.

The bad weather in North Africa and Spain doesn't seem to have led to a shortage of salad foods in other parts of Europe. I shop in Aldi, and they've been having supply problems for ages.

Justin King, the former CEO of Sainsbury's, blames Brexit for "horribly hurting" UK supermarkets which he says has led to supply shortages in British supermarket and dwindling supplies of fruit and vegetables.

Isn't it about time the British stopped kidding themselves about the benefits of Brexit and admit that it has been an unmitigated disaster.

Spy Cops Inquiry - Counsel Closing Statement.

 "They should have decided to disband the SDS". The final eight words of David Barr KC, counsel to the inquiry, when giving his closing statement for the Tranche 1 phase of the inquiry (1968-1979). Later Barr stated that: "We cannot rule out that some [SDS intelligence], once filed, was leaked to the private sector and misused to blacklist activists". The counsel of the inquiry is not on the side of the activists spied upon, but is there to provide the general thinking of the inquiry so far. He has stated that an Interim Report will be produced soon. Full statement is available here: https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20230216-CTIs_T1_Closing_Statement.pdf

Blacklist Support Group (BSG) are core-participants in the public inquiry. Blacklisted workers recognise the importance of the statement made by the counsel to the inquiry. In many ways Barr's closing statement provides vindication for our fight. We have only got to this point because by the work of activists, investigative journalists, lawyers, unions and a small number of politicians, in waging campaign to uncover the truth about the nature of political policing in the UK. It is no thanks to the Metropolitan Police, the Home Office or the multiple arms of the state apparatus who have sought at every opportunity to cover up their wrong doing and delay the process. BSG applaud our fellow non-state non-police core participants, our legal teams and sister campaigns: Police Spies Out of Lives, Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, The Monitoring Group, Undercover Research Group, who have stood shoulder to shoulder for over a decade in this fight for justice. 

Counsel to the Inquiry's closing statement admits that the SDS political policing was unjustified and that undercover police officers joined trade unions to spy on internal union meetings: "trade unions and trade unionists are both mentioned in SDS reporting. Specific justice campaigns often feature in SDS reporting... for example the reporting on the Shrewsbury Two Action Committee". 

Yet counsel to the inquiry also claims that trade unions were not "specific SDS targets or that individual trade unionists were reported upon solely because of their trade union activities". This is a legalistic tautology. Information about what trade unionists said at union meetings was gathered by undercover police officers claiming to be union members. This intelligence was sent back to Special Branch. This is spying on trade union activities: plain and simple. 

Counsel to the inquiry also accepts that intelligence was shared with employers to blacklist British citizens because of their perfectly lawful political and trade union activities. This is state sponsored blacklisting: plain and simple.  

Conclusion to counsel to the inquiry's statement:

111. The SDS was created in 1968 to deal with a specific, large scale public order threat, for which there was a concrete basis for concern. It used relatively short and shallow deployments to gather valuable intelligence about the October 1968 Demonstration. The unit then became a permanent feature, deploying undercover officers continuously into far-left groups, often with vague remits. Individual deployments which lasted for several years became the norm. Officers became involved in the lives of those they were spying on. Although, they were not ordered or encouraged to do so, in some instances, this went as far as sex. Reporting was extensive, unfiltered, deeply personal and often recorded in unprofessional terms. We cannot rule out that some of it, once filed, was leaked to the private sector and misused to blacklist activists.

112. The whole operation was secret and a very high priority was accorded to keeping it that way. Courts were sometimes misled. Miscarriages of justice occurred as a result. An officer whose cover was compromised was told to pretend that he was acting independently. Discipline was not enforced. Aspects of deceased’s children’s identities were used even though they added only a limited further protection.

113. These operations have caused a lot of harm. Democratic freedoms have been infringed, outrage and pain has been caused. The damage is not limited to members of the public. Former undercover officers have suffered psychiatric injury.

114. The primary reason for conducting these operations was to gain intelligence to assist police to maintain order on the streets. However, the level of threat posed to public order was often not commensurate with a need to deploy undercover police officers for this purpose. Not in the way that they operated. The benefits which the unit’s intelligence brought to public order policing do not, in our submission, justify the means.

115. The ancillary reason for the SDS’ work was to assist the Security Service to counter subversion. However, the evidence of the SDS’ own officers and other contemporary documents show that the groups targeted by the SDS did not meet the official definition of subversion. Many of those targeted were revolutionaries. But they did not threaten the safety or wellbeing of the State. In the words of Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, Sir Robert Mark, they were “a bad joke”.

116. There was a remarkable lack of oversight, formal training and instruction. However, the SDS was not a rogue unit. It was part of a larger intelligence gathering apparatus and counter subversion effort which also operated in secrecy. The SDS was known to the chain of command within the Metropolitan Police Service. Senior officers visited the unit on occasion and met its undercover officers. They received annual reports about the unit’s work. The existence of the SDS was known to some within the Security Service, the Home Office and, to a lesser extent, the Cabinet Office.

117. We remain of the view expressed in last month’s submissions. There was no effective review of the SDS’ operation. No one appears to have considered whether the level of intrusion occasioned by SDS long-term undercover police deployments was justified. No one appears to have addressed their mind specifically to the legality of the SDS’ operations. No one appears to have considered whether (after its introduction) both limbs of the Harris definition were met. There is a strong case for concluding that, had they done so, they should have decided to disband the SDS.

Blacklist Support Group

book: http://newint.org/books/politics/blacklisted-secret-war/

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNcgrNs6pB8

facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/blacklistSG/

blog: www.hazards.org/blacklistblog

Spy Cops Inquiry - Live Hearings Online.

 The public inquiry into undercover policing is holding virtual hearings for the completion of Tranche 1 (of seven) this week. There will be ‘closing statements’ from the police and various arms of the state, and from those that were spied upon (non-state non-police core participants). There will be plenty of media coverage. You can watch today’s hearings live via:

https://www.ucpi.org.uk/hearing/ucpi-closing-statements-t1-day-1/

Some media regarding this week's hearings:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/undercover-policing-inquiry-spycops-trade-union-spying-government-state/

https://www.irishnews.com/news/uknews/2023/02/17/news/prime_ministers_knew_of_met_s_undercover_unit_spying_on_activists_campaigners-3070715/

Blacklist Support Group

book: http://newint.org/books/politics/blacklisted-secret-war/

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNcgrNs6pB8

facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/blacklistSG/

blog: www.hazards.org/blacklistblog

U.S. Journalist says Biden gave order to sabotage gas pipeline.

 

Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline

The American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, who exposed the My Lai massacre in the Vietnamese war, has claimed that the Americans blew up the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, on orders from Joe Biden. 

Although nobody has acknowledged responsibility for the explosion, many countries see it as an act of sabotage. The Whitehouse has denied the report, claiming it was "utterly false and complete fiction." The pipeline was designed to carry gas to Europe via Germany, but it has never been used since its completion in 2021, with Germany backing out.

Boris Johnson buys Brightwell Manor for £5m.

 

Brightwell Manor Oxfordshire

In November 2019, Penny Churchill of Country Life, wrote an article about the Grade II-listed Brightwell Manor in Oxfordshire. The property was then on the market for £5m.

Last week, it was reported that the nine bedroom, five-bathroom house, had been bought by Boris and Carrie Johnson, for a reputed £4m. The house, which dates from the early 1600s, is set in five acres of land, partly moated, in the Oxfordshire village of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell.

 After being ignominiously slung out of 10 Downing Street, six months ago, when members of his cabinet and junior ministers resigned in their droves, Boris and Carrie, and their two children, Walter and Romy, have been looking for a permanent home. After resigning as Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, said he would now be spending his time putting "Hay in the hayloft." He once described his £250,000 a year earnings from the Daily Telegraph, as "chicken feed" and always said that he couldn't live on a PM's salary of £164,00.

It has been reported that in the last 6-months, Johnson has made nearly £5m from speeches, advances, and donations. He registered £74,000 in accommodation from Lord Bamford and his wife Carole, who are personal friends. The mega-rich, Lord Bamford, who owns JCB, also paid £23,000 for Boris's postnuptial summer wedding celebration in 2022.

Dartmoor landowners close car parks.

 

Dartmoor

Dartmoor is fast becoming a National Park in name only as private landowners restrict access to the moor and are closing carparks.

Until recently, Dartmoor was one of the last places in England where wild camping was allowed without the landowners’ permission. Hedge fund manager, Alexander Darwall, who owns the 4,000 acre Blachford Estate, took legal action in the High Court to stop wilding camping on Dartmoor, and won his case.

The right to roam and the right to go wild camping are enshrined in Scottish law. Although the Dartmoor National Park Authority, are considering an appeal against the High Court ruling in the Darwall case, some say this doesn't go far enough. They are now demanding that legislation be introduced to guarantee a right to roam and wild camp in England and Wales.

Gambian school dedicates library to Brian Bamford of Northern Voices.

 

"Following former Northern Voices editor, Brian Bamford's death last year, his wife Pat asked that all donations (in lieu of flowers ) should be sent to an educational project in The Gambia, that was close to Brian's heart, beliefs and aspirations. Friends, relatives and comrades were generous with their support.

 Sohm Schools Support was set up by John Walker - a long- time friend of Brian, and former joint editor of Rochdale's Alternative Paper, in the 1970s - and his wife Sandra 12 years ago, to provide help to the pupils in two schools in the relatively remote Gambian village of Sohm. Over the years the small charity has added to the scarce resources the government has been able to provide the schools with, and Brian was always a passionate supporter and contributor to this endeavour.

 So, classrooms have been restored, a sick room installed, electricity provided for the first time, a new assembly hall built etc. Each year the charity spends about £1,000 in supplying stationery, so that all pupils at the Lower Basic (primary) school have all their exercise books, pens, and other material, as well as teaching aids, supplied. The results have seen the school climb rapidly up school league tables, achieve great Ofsted-equivalent reports, and been used as an exemplar for how to run rural schools in the community.

 Those who knew Brian will have been touched by his on-going beliefs in the empowering nature of education in helping people fulfill their potential, and his love of books. It seemed fitting, therefore for the school to name its library (which the charity has rebuilt and stocked) after him, in recognition of his support and beliefs. The picture illustrates some of the children and teachers with the mural they created, after a small ceremony of remembrance and dedication, just last week.

 Brian would have taken particular delight in not only seeing this tribute, but in knowing that the only other building in the village named after a European are the school's toilets, named after his long-time adversary and disgraced former Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk"

O'Mara gets four years jail for fraud!

 

Former Sheffield Labour - MP Jared O'Mara

A jury at Leeds crown court, have been told that the voters in the constituency of Sheffield Hallam, elected as their MP, a Labour candidate who was both incompetent and inadequate and had autism and a 'galloping' cocaine habit.

In 2017, Jared O'Mara, was elected the Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam after beating the Liberal Democrat leader and former deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg. O'Mara, aged 41, remained the MP for Sheffield Hallam until 2019.

In October 2017, it was revealed that O'Mara had posted misogynistic, racist and homophobic online comments before he became an MP. He was suspended from the Labour Party and briefly reinstated. He then resigned from the Labour Party in July 2018.

O'Mara is currently on trial at Leeds crown court accused of submitting fake invoices to fraudulently claim about £30,000 of taxpayers' money. He has been charged with eight counts of fraud by false representation. Two other individuals are also on trial with O'Mara.

The prosecution have described O'Mara as "thoroughly rotten" and "thoroughly inadequate." They have accused him of "stuffing the parliamentary payroll with mates and cronies" who did no relevant work. Prosecutor, Richard Wright KC, told a jury on Thursday that O'Mara, had invented "a series of scams" to help fund his "galloping" cocaine habit. He said O'Mara had used fraudulently claimed money to enable friends "to hang around his flat, getting drunk and snorting lines of coke, all paid by you, ladies and gentlemen, the hardworking and honest British public."

The court heard that O'Mara had fired his constituency office staff or they had resigned. The jury were told that O'Mara was taking up to five grams of cocaine, often drinking a litre of vodka, and smoking 60 cigarettes a day.

O'Mara has declined to give evidence in his own defence and is attending the hearing via videolink from his home in Sheffield. Mark Kelly KC, defending, told the jury that they should have regard to O'Mara's mental state at the time of the alleged offences and his administrative ignorance and incompetence. He said that the former MP for Sheffield Hallam, had made claims that were incompetent rather than dishonest.

All three men, denied all charges. But this week, O’Mara was given a four year jail sentence after being found guilty of six counts of fraud.

Transsexual killer was moved from women's jail for having sex with female inmates!

 

Transsexual Killer - Paris Green

The transexual killer, Paris Green, was allowed to serve his 18-year jail sentence for murder at Cornton Vale women's prison in Stirling.

Paris who was a pre-op transsexual, was born a male and was previously known as Peter Laing. He was found guilty and convicted with two other individuals, of the murder of Robert Shankland, in March 2013. The trio, beat and tortured Robert Shankland to death, following a row about buying a bag of chips.

Laing was allowed to serve his time in Cornton Vale because he was transgendered. In December 2013, it was reported in the press, that he'd been transferred to a male prison because he'd been having sex with female inmates at Cornton Vale.

Shamima Begum says she was groomed by ISIS for sexual exploitation.

 

ISIS BRIDE - SHAMIMA BEGUM

I have no time for Shamima Begum or the Muslim fanatics of Islamic State. She had her British citizenship removed on the grounds of national security and because she supported this group who killed innocent civilians and made sex-slaves out of the Yazidi women in Iraq. Most of their victims were Muslims.

Begum, who remains in Syria, has commenced a legal action at the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal to try and overturn the Home Secretary decision to remove her British citenzship. The British government say that she's not 'Stateless' because she can claim citizenship in Bangladesh. The problem is that the Bengali's don't want her because she's a terrorist and they dispute her right to citizenship.  Her husband, Yago Riedijk, is a Dutch national who is in custody in northern Syria.

In her legal action, Begum claims that she was groomed and trafficked by ISIS for the purpose of sexual exploitation. She left Britain in 2015, with two friends, Kadiza Sultana aged 16, and Amira Abase, aged 15.  All three were from Bethnal Green, in East London. Her husband says they were happily married. All of their three children died in infancy.

Begum said that she was inspired to join ISIL by videos of fighters beheading hostages and also of "the good life" under the group. These remarks sealed her fate and made her a pariah and a social outcast in the eyes of many people.

Other British Muslim women, around 450, who joined Islamic State, kept their mouths shut and have since returned to Britain. Only about 10% have been prosecuted.