Bumbling Boris denied access to Parliament.

 

Boris Johnson

Bumbling Boris Johnson has been denied access to Parliament. Yet, Jacob Reese-Mogg, says that it's absolutely ridiculous to deny the serial liar access to Parliament and calls the Privileges Committee report into Boris Johnson, 'vindictive'.

The committee was set up by Parliament to investigate whether Boris Johnson had intentionally or recklessly misled Parliament over 'Partygate'. A staunch Roman Catholic, Reese-Mogg, says it was perfectly right to criticise the committee's findings because that's politics. Although Boris Johnson was fined by the police for breaking lockdown rules that he introduced, Reese-Mogg, claimed that Johnson had stuck to the rules during lockdown and that the allegations against him, were "nuttier than a fruitcake", the work of 'remainiacs'.

An official told the Privileges Committee that 10 Downing Street had been an "oasis of normality" during the pandemic, with birthday parties, leaving drinks, and 'Wine Time Fridays' all continuing. Boris Johnson told Parliament that he'd been repeatedly assured that lockdown rules and regulations had been adhered to at all times.

Although politicians have a reputation for being professional liars, there are still some, who believe that the truth matters. Boris Johnson turned mendacity into an art form, believing that we live in an age of alternative facts and realities.

Although a majority of the committee members were Conservative MPs, Reese-Mogg, is one of a number of MPs who are now under investigation by the committee, for having impugned the committee by accusing it of "egregious bias", likening it to a "kangaroo court."

A recent YouGov survey of more than 3,000 adults, found that nearly 70% believed that Johnson had knowingly misled Parliament. As Jonathan Swift famously said, where "falsehood flies, truth comes limping after it..."

Titanic survivor - Frank Prentice.

 

Titanic survivor - Frank Prentice

Major Frank Prentice survived the sinking of the Titanic on the night of 15 April 1912. Age just 18 years old, he was employed on the ship as an assistant purser. He helped many women and children into the lifeboats and was one of the last people off the ship.

In an interview which he gave before his death, he said that he was clinging on to the stern of the ship, as it was about to go down. He fell over 100 feet into the water, missed the propeller’s, and survived the fall. He then spent another four hours swimming in the freezing North Atlantic Ocean, before he was helped into a lifeboat. He was among 706 Titanic survivors who were rescued by the RMS Carpathia, two hours after the Titanic had sunk.

He returned to England and by July 10, he had signed on to the Oceanic, which was also owned by the White Star Line. He was on board when the ship found one of the Titanic's lifeboats drifting in the mid-Atlantic, with four dead.

In later life, Frank Prentice, recalled: "I've had a lot of experiences during my life. Two world wars. Badly shattered right arm. Another wound in the leg. And all anyone wants to know about is the Titanic."

He was commissioned temporary Second Lieutenant in the Tank Corps on 28 August 1917, and was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry during the attack on Hamel and Vaire Wood on 4 July 1918. He was later promoted to Major. Frank Prentice died in Bournemouth on May 19, 1982, aged 93. He was the second to the last surviving Titanic crew member.

Russia coup called off. Wagner boss goes to Belarus.

 

Wagner mercenary boss - Yevgeny Prigozhin

The Russian leader of a mercenary group called 'Wagner', Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former criminal and hotdog seller, who was also known as Putin's chef, has now fled to Belarus after staging an abortive coup. He claimed that the Russian army had shelled and killed his soldiers.

Although Russian citizens face up to 15-years imprisonment for criticising the Russian army and Putin's invasion of the Ukraine, Prigozhin, has never been prosecuted for his criticism, and Putin has now granted his soldiers and Prigozhin, an amnesty after accusing them of treason.

Although the coup failed, Prigozhin has humiliated Putin, exposed the weakness of his government, and made the Russian government look like a Potemkin state. Is Putin now coming to the end of his rule in Russia?

The Diversity Illusion.

 

Britain seems to have an obsession with what it calls 'diversity' and identity politics. It also seems to have obsession with categories, targets, and measuring things. If you fill a form in today, there's always some standard question about private and confidential matters such as your sexuality, racial origins, or religion.

We're frequently told that this information is necessary for the purpose of monitoring equality, diversity, and social inclusion. Although Britain is a highly stratified, class ridden society, where social class, caste, and estate, will limit access to resources and prestige to some people, the question of social class is curiously always omitted in questionnaires.

In the Equality Act 2010, 'social class' - defined sometimes by a person's occupation -  isn't even a 'protected characteristic', yet we know that social class, is often used as a basis of discrimination in Britain. Identity politics, takes issues like social class, equality, and redistribution, out of the equation.

According to the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), just 7% of all Britain's MP's, can be considered working-class compared with 34% of all UK working-age adults. Only about 1% of the current crop of Tory MPs, entered Parliament from a working class job. In 1987, some 28% of Labour MPs came from working-class jobs and that proportion has since halved. You might say that British Parliamentary politics is a racket for the middle-classes.

In France, it's illegal to ask people questions about their sexuality, religion, and racial origins, and to do so, can lead to imprisonment and fines. Given the history of France this seems to be perfectly reasonable and understandable. In WWII, the country was occupied by Nazi Germany and some French citizens were Nazi collaborators. The Nazi persecuted people because of their sexuality, religion, and racial origins, and many millions of people were murdered because of it. To have had information about a person's sexuality, race, and religion, would have been very useful to the Nazi regime, but very detrimental for some people.

The British don't seem to fear that personal information can be used by governments for nefarious purposes, because they view the State as largely benign, utilitarian, and harmless, a kind of fairy godmother that dishes out free bus passes and social security benefits. Yet all states and governments, are capable of degenerating into repressive dystopias, and we also know that the people are quite capable of putting dictators into power and turning democracies into dictatorships, as was the case in Nazi Germany.

General Secretary of the UCU pays substantial damages to Paul Embery.

 

Paul Embery (left) - Dr Jo Grady (right)

I remember reading some time ago, about Paul Embery, threatening to start legal proceedings for defamation against Dr Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), after they had a spat on Twitter about an incident on a train.

Embery, a fireman, columnist, and a trade union activist, had been travelling on the train from London to Norwich in August 2022, with his children, when he challenged a group of women about their alleged loutish behaviour, threats, and foul and abusive language. He was threatened with a beer bottle and told he would be knocked out. He'd asked them to stop swearing in front of his children. He filmed the incident on his phone and tweeted a photo of the group, to the train operator Greater Anglia, expecting that they would take action against the women. The tweet 'went viral' and was seen by over a million people including Dr Grady.

Among other things, Grady accused Embery of being "creepy" and "bullying women." She tweeted: "It's creepy to record young women on the train, share that video, and lie about them for clout." Over a period of two days, Grady published other tweets: "Grow up Paul and take a day off bullying women and pretending to be outraged for clicks. It's pathetic at any age, but especially yours."

Embery claimed that she'd falsely portrayed him as "a misogynist, a pervert, and a liar", and had caused "immeasurable harm" to his reputation. When Grady refused to apologise and withdraw her allegations after Mr Embery wrote to her, he started legal proceedings which he financed through crowdfunding and raised £24,000 in just eight days.

Earlier this month, the High Court, was told that Grady had agreed to pay damages, legal costs, and had given an undertaking not to repeat her allegations. Paul Embery told a reporter that he expects to receive £10,000 in damages and that Dr Grady will have to pay over £12,000 in costs. He said he will be donating the damages awarded, to groups that are campaigning to defend women's sex based rights.

Within the UCU, Dr Grady is facing several votes of no confidence in her leadership of the union which will be debated at the union's annual congress. Since 2019, the union has been involved in the country's longest-running dispute over pay and working conditions which some union members feel, is going nowhere, under Grady's leadership of the union. There have also been concerns raised about Grady's outspoken views on social media. Jo Grady seems to be rather young to be a General Secretary of a British trade union and this is reflected in the asinine remarks directed at Paul Embery.

Crime Commissioner was forced to resign after interfering in murder trial.

 

Councillor Tafheen Sharif

Tomorrow, 23rd May 2023, Tafheen Sharif, a Labour councillor from Mossley, will be confirmed as the new civic Mayor for Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council for the year 2023 -2024. She will make history by becoming Tameside's first Muslim and ethnic minority mayor. Councillor Sharif, who comes from Luton, in Bedfordshire, is a law graduate and a Justice of the Peace. She has represented Mossley since 2016.

From 2012 to 2014, councillor Sharif was deputy police and crime commissioner for Bedfordshire. As a PCC she was forced into resigning her position in 2014, after she attempted to interfere in a murder plot trial involving a cousin, who was involved in a love triangle, that led to her fiancé, Antif Ali, 28, being shot by a hired hitman. It was alleged that councillor Sharif had used her position to try and get a judge to stop her cousin's name from being made public, as it would have revealed embarrassing details about her tangled love life. Her cousin, Naveem Dadd - who was also involved in another relationship with a rival suitor, Shahzad Mahroof - was a witness and gave evidence in the trial.

Mahroof had hired the contract killer, Bernard Pillay, to kill Mr Ali. In May 2013, Pillay rammed Mr Ali's car off the road while he was driving in Luton. When Mr Ali got out of his car, he was shot in the leg with a sawn-off shotgun, which left him with life-changing injuries. Police and court officials said that this unauthorised approach by councillor Sharif, could have led to the case being abandoned at great cost, and they were forced to step in and to report her. Her boss, Olly Martins, the Labour Police and Crime Commissioner for Bedfordshire, told her that her position was untenable and Sharif was forced to resign her position in July 2014.

Mahroof, 28, and Pillay, 41, were found guilty of conspiracy to murder and given life imprisonment. The Bedfordshire police and crime panel referred Tafheen Sharif to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), to establish if any crime had been committed.

Reese-Mogg accuses the government of gerrymandering!

 

Jacob Reese-Mogg

The former Conservative minister, Jacob Reese-Mogg, has implied that the Tory government introduced photo voter ID in political elections to boost their election chances. Although he was responsible for introducing this measure as Commons leader, which the government said was necessary to counter voter fraud, Reese-Mogg, told a conference of Conservatives in London, that there was "no evidence that personation (the crime of voter fraud) was a serious problem." He added, "There have been hardly any prosecutions or even any complaints in this country over decades."

Although around 11 million people in this country do not possess a driving license or a passport, photo ID became necessary for the first time in elections, on 4 May. For those who didn't possess the required photo ID, the government introduced a 'Voter Authority Certificate' (VAC), that could be obtained from their local authority to vote in the May 2023 local elections.

In February, The Observer newspaper, reported that fewer than 21,000 people out of an estimated 2 million people who required a VAC to vote in the elections had applied for them. Only 505 people aged over 75 had applied and fewer than 6% of applicants were aged under 25. Reese-Mogg told the conference that the change had backfired and "had upset a system that worked perfectly well" and had "made it hard for our own voters" to take part in England's local elections. He said, "We found the people who didn't have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative so we made it hard for our own voters..."

Although critics denounced the governments photo voter ID scheme as 'gerrymandering' aimed at giving them an electoral advantage, the Conservatives lost more than a 1,000 councillors and control of 48 councils, with Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens, all making gains at the expense of Rishi Sunak's party.

Many months ago, I wrote to Downing Street, asking a number of questions about why the government had introduced the voter ID scheme in elections, when voter fraud was almost non-existent. I also asked them how they responded to the charge of critics that they were trying to rig elections in their favour. I'm still waiting for a reply. I don't normally vote in political elections because I haven't much faith in self-serving politicians who are in the pockets of the money men, or a political system that bows and scrapes to them, but in May, I decided to give it a go for research purposes, to see how the system worked. As a pensioner, who would never vote Tory, nor voted for Brexit, I didn't have a problem. I simply produced my age related free bus pass as evidence of my ID which was accepted along with my polling card. The staff at the polling station told me that they had not had any unpleasant incidents or problems with voter ID.

Britain is essentially a two-party political state with Labour and the Conservatives being the dominant political parties. Whichever political party gets into power; they always try to change the voting system to give themselves an electoral advantage. However, why the Tories would want to rig a political system that already favours them, is intriguing. In the last 123 years, the Labour Party have held power for just 33 years. For two thirds of the 20th century, the Conservatives were in government and in control of Britain. What does that tell you about the British people and its political system? What it tells me, is that whoever you vote for, capitalists like Jacob Reese-Mogg always get in, even if they don't stand in elections, and nothing much changes. With Keir Starmer's Tory-lite Labour Party, choosing which party to vote for, is a bit like choosing between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Butcher sexually abused child while dressed as a woman.

 

Child molester - Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller, a 53-year-old transgendered butcher from Melrose, in the Scottish Borders, who uses the name Amy George, has pleaded guilty in Edinburgh high court to sexually abusing and abducting a child, who he sexually abused in his bedroom, over a period of 72-hours.

At the time of the abduction, Miller was dressed as a woman. The father of three, told the court that he was following his motherly instincts. Following his arrest, the police seized three laptops and found 242 indecent images of children. Miller, who is currently being held in a male prison, HMP Edinburgh, will be sentenced on August 15.

The trial Judge, Lord Arthurson, described Miller's offences as "abhorrent crimes" of the utmost "deviance and depravity" which were "the realisation of every parent’s worst nightmare." Scottish First Minister, Humza Yousaf, has refused to say if Miller will be transferred to a women's prison after sentencing.

Gran on Zimmer Frame tasered in Aussie care home.

 

Clare Nowland (inset)

A 95-year old grandmother is in hospital and in a serious condition, after she was tasered twice by a police officer in a nursing home in Cooma, New South Wales, Australia.

The police say that they were called to Yallambee Lodge in Cooma, when Clare Nowland, had picked up a steak knife and refused to drop it. The mother of eight, who suffers from dementia, and is 5' 2" tall and weighs 6' 7 pounds, was using a Zimmer Frame at the time and was walking slowly. She fell to the floor sustaining severe head injuries. Her family say that she's in a critical condition and on end of life care in Cooma Hospital.

The police officer who fired the taser, joined the police twelve years ago. He's now been suspended pending an investigation. Assistant Commissioner, Peter Cotter, declined to say if the officer had used excessive force but said he'd seen video footage from a body camera that was "confronting" to watch. He declined to release it publicly.

GP's demand the right to charge patients fees.

 

With the advent of the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, many GP's became reluctant to do face-to-face appointments with patients and some ended walk-in surgeries and introduced 'triage'. Although the government eased restrictions in May 2021, and urged GP's to start seeing patients, in many cases this did not happen.

Although hospital doctors and nurses, dentists, and opticians, were seeing patients face-to-face, many GP's offered their patients, virtual consultations by telephone or Skype or WhatsApp.

As many NHS patients are finding it increasingly difficult to see a GP, the GP's are now demanding the right to charge patients fees for consultations so they can jump the queue. Many NHS hospital trusts are already telling NHS patients that they can jump the queue if they're prepared to pay for treatment.

It seems extraordinary, that NHS waiting lists, delays, and other bureaucratic hiccups, can be easily circumvented when your prepared stump up some cash and pay for your medical treatment. Even the GPs reluctance to face patients can be overcome, if you're prepared to grease their palms.

I tend to agree with those who argue that the so-called crisis in the NHS, has been largely engineered by a Tory government that would like to privatize healthcare in Britain and wants to see a greater role for the private sector. The Labour Party also favours more private sector involvement in providing healthcare. Both the Tory Party and the doctor's union the British Medical Association (BMA), initially opposed the formation of the NHS in July 1948.

As more people start to pay for medical treatment, there's is a danger that it will create a two-tier health service where those who can pay get urgent treatment, and those who can't, have to wait. There's also the danger that we will lose the NHS by default.

Black Sheep Brewery Goes Bust

 

As a real ale drinker, it's sad to hear of the demise of the Black Sheep Brewery, but it's not surprising. Pubs and breweries are closing because the price of a pint of beer in some places, has become far too expensive. In some places, a pint of beer costs more than a bottle of wine.

This is why people are buying from the supermarkets or go in J D Wetherspoon. Even though Tim Martin, the Chairman of J.D Wetherspoon, has recently jacked up the price of food and drink in his 836 pubs, it's still far cheaper to drink in his pubs than most other establishments. His business model is pile it high and sell it cheap. He undercuts his competitors because of economies of scale, where he can negotiate discounts for bulk purchases.

The price you will pay for a pint, will also vary in different Wetherspoon pubs subject to the location. There's no point in blaming the rising cost of a pint of beer on the pandemic, because beer prices have been increasing far faster than inflation, for donkey’s years and so as the tax we pay on it. Back in the early 1970s I could buy ten pints of beer for £1.

Admittedly, wages weren't as high as they are today, but a pint of beer was still far cheaper than it is today. In some places, they're now paying over £5 for a pint of beer. No wonder pubs are closing.

Who Killed Ruth Perry?

 

Who Killed Ruth Perry?

by Christopher Draper

On 8th January 2023 the head teacher of Caversham Primary School killed herself when OFSTED downgraded her school from “Outstanding” to “Inadequate”. Matt Rodda, the local Labour MP demanded; “OFSTED must now ask themselves some tough questions about their role”. Yet many who now point the finger of blame at OFSTED colluded in creating the monster they now condemn.

The Nature of the Beast

On 25th March 2023 The Observer reported, “Stress caused by Ofsted inspections was cited in coroners’ reports on the deaths of 10 teachers over the past 25 years”. This could have been predicted by teachers from the time Ofsted began in 1992. I qualified as a teacher fifty years ago, in 1973, when I was criticised by comrades as a “soft cop for the system” I argued then that the old authoritarian school system (corporal punishment, examinations, grammar schools etc) was giving way to a more enlightened approach. Creative, child-centred, learning-by-discovery methods were being widely adopted by primary schools and beginning to influence the new comprehensives.

At that time education was administered locally and Local Authority school inspectors were formally reconstituting themselves as “Advisers” with the focus more on assisting teachers, schools and pupils rather than policing the system. I don’t claim it was heaven on earth but new ideas flourished and the educative process was moving from domination to liberation but as the education system was propelled by the radical cultural changes initiated in the 1960’s the reactionaries began to react.

The Roots of Uniformity

Many on the left blame Thatcher for turning the tide but years earlier Prime Minister James Callaghan sowed the seeds that sprouted Ofsted. Speaking at Ruskin College in 1976 Callaghan proposed replacing the autonomy of schools to create their own curricula with a standardised national curriculum. As the teachers’ delegate to York Trades Council at the time I was surprised to find fellow trade unionists welcomed this move towards centralization. They actually wanted their kids “trained at school for the world of work” whilst I argued, on the contrary, that schools should be less like factories not more.

An Authoritarian Framework

Callaghan’s government didn’t survive long enough to impose his centralised curriculum but Thatcher eagerly embraced his scheme. Sixties radicalism was anathema to Thatcher who recognised the potential of ideas to inspire progressive political change which she was not only determined to prevent but to roll back. Kenneth Baker was tasked with creating a National Curriculum fit for the nineteenth century. Learning was commodified and the whole system increasingly privatised with schools acting as competing businesses. Sadly, most head teachers proved only too willing to operate as CEO’s with balance sheets, elevated salaries and performance bonuses.

The National Curriculum was instituted in 1988 but it was left to John Major, in 1992, to create an Ofsted Inspectorate to enforce this regime. Where the previous inspection system helped schools identify and repair weaknesses the Ofsted role is to find fault not offer solutions. The consequence of an Ofsted inspection is that a school is crudely ranked on a four point scale, if assessed as grade four a school is placed in “special measures!”

The sixties philosophy of “The Child at the Centre of their Learning” has been supplanted by a top-down curriculum directed by public school educated politicians with creativity replaced by commercial values. From its origins, Ofsted was a political project devised by politicians of both major parties with collusion from self-serving individuals within the educational establishment.

Collaborators

Politicians enjoy wielding power over others and many head teachers are similarly motivated although some are simply politically naïve. Heads across England facilitated the Frankenstein’s monster that is Ofsted, incorporating quotes from inspection reports in prospectuses and even (as illustrated above) displaying banners at their boundaries boasting of a favourable Ofsted assessment. Under the old inspection system, schools were not permitted to selectively quote from inspection reports to prevent this shabby form of competitive advertising. Very few heads have had the courage or decency to publicly challenge Ofsted. In 2019 Ruth Perry herself invited Ofsted into her school for a voluntary inspection which included Chief Inspector Spielman! In seeking approval from Ofsted and advertising its commendations head teachers ultimately made a rod for their own backs which some have tragically come to regret.

Many heads have gone further and taken Ofsted’s shilling (or rather up to £500 a day) and acted as Inspectors at other schools. In doing so they have assisted Ofsted in creating the thoroughly toxic atmosphere that pervades schools throughout England to the detriment of teachers and even more so to children.

Education, More Political than Politics

Matt Rodda M.P. now seeks political advantage criticising Ofsted but I have before me a front page article I wrote for Freedom in March 2000 defending the internationally acclaimed free school, Summerhill, from a determined attempt by Ofsted (and then Labour Education Minister, David Blunkett) to close it down. Lest anyone be taken in by the belated bleating of Labour politicians and craven head teachers, my article noted, “British education has been colonised by government appointees, toadying heads and armies of commercial “consultants”. Collaboration is rife and children and teachers are kept chained to approved curricula by rigid testing and assessment”.

Ofsted is but one element in an ever more authoritarian education system dominated by commercial values. The one thing Ofsted accurately reflects is affluence with schools in well-off areas four times more likely to be assessed as “Outstanding” than schools in disadvantaged areas. Former inspector, Colin Richards, reveals how Ofsted obscures such politically inconvenient truths, “ much of what those undertaking the inspection had originally written was removed from the final report, including details of the number of pupils with special educational needs, from deprived backgrounds or were not English speakers."

Witchfinder General

Amanda Spielman, the current head of Ofsted, continues the long tradition begun by Chris Woodhead in 1992, of acting as a government stooge. Neither qualified nor experienced as a classroom teacher, Spielman’s background in City finance nonetheless commends her to government. After boarding school and Cambridge she worked successively for KMG Thomson McLintock; Kleinwort Benson; Newstead Capital; Bridgewater Business Analysis; Mercer Management Consulting and Nomura Principal Finance.

Appointed head of Ofsted in 2017, in 2019 Spielman said students accused of sexual assault should be free to attend school along with their accusers. This provoked criticism of her lack of understanding of basic safeguarding procedures and contradicted Ofsted’s own guidelines. Ironically this was very area of weakness cited in fatally branding Ruth Perry’s leadership as “Inadequate”.

Predictable gestures from Keir Starmer, such as sacking Spielman or reforming Ofsted will achieve little. The National Curriculum and the whole panoply of centralising measures and commercialisation of education must be scrapped with a return to a local system respecting the ideas and experiences of children, parents and teachers.

Belarus: Dictatorship bans unions and jails union leaders!

 

Belarus: Unions crushed and leaders jailed - we need your solidarity today

Two weeks ago I sent you this message -- and 3,900 of you responded with messages of protest to the government of Belarus.   If you did not yet send off your message, please do so right now.  Click here.  The more of us send the message, the louder our voices -- and the greater the chance that the government will be forced to listen. If you did send off a message - thank you! But please make sure that many more peopl;e are aware of this very important campaign.  Spread the word to your friends, family and fellow union members.      One year ago, on 19 April 2022 dozens of union leaders and activists of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions were arrested.  The reason for the arrests was the public anti-war trade union position and criticism of the Belarusian authorities for violations of fundamental human rights.  More than 30 trade unionists were sentenced to up to 9 years on trumped-up charges.  All democratic trade unions were liquidated and trade union activity was banned.  Union activists and workers seen participating in the 2020 protests were dismissed.  Fired workers cannot find jobs, and their families are left without a livelihood.  Jailed union leaders are listed en masse as extremists and terrorists.  This is unacceptable.  It must stop. Unions have the full right to operate freely and to defend the rights and interests of their members.  Please take a moment to add your name to the global protest demanding that the government of Belarus release the trade union and political prisoners, end repression of trade union activists, and restore of guarantees of legal activities of independent trade unions. Click here: http://labourstart.org/go/belarus23 Thank you -- and please spread the word!

Eric Lee

The woman who falsely accused Emmett Till dies in Mississippi!

 

Carolyn Bryant & Emmett Till

They say it's wrong to speak ill of the dead, but in the case of Corolyn Bryant, of Mississippi, who died last week aged 88, I will make an exception. Good Riddance!

Emmett Till, was 14 years old in August 1955, when Bryant’s husband and another white friend abducted, tortured, and lynched him, in Money, Mississippi, because she claimed that he had whistled and grabbed her while she was working in the store that they owned. An all-white jury acquitted Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, for the murder of Emmett Till in September 1955. Both men later admitted to the killing in a paid interview in Look magazine, but never faced a retrial. Carolyn Bryant, admitted that her husband had brought Till to their house before killing him. Although Bryant is known to have lied about the incident, she never showed any remorse for the death of Emmett Till, who was from Chicago.

In August 1955, Emmett's mother, Mamie Bradley, had put her son on a train in Chicago so he could visit his cousins and great-uncle Moses Wright, in Money, Mississippi. Before his departure, Mamie had warned Emmett, to be "careful around white people." Being from Chicago, Emmett, knew nothing about the lynching’s and racism that were a feature of life in the rural South. He spent his days helping to pick cotton and swimming in the local river. Several days after his arrival, Emmett and his cousins drove to Bryant's Grocery & Meat Market, to buy snacks and candy.

One of the last living person's to have witnessed both the incident at the store and Emmett's abduction, was Emmett's cousin, the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. Parker says that nothing happened in the store, but he had concerns about Emmett's liking for practical jokes and whether he was using appropriate language for a black person in the rural South - "Yes, sir. No, sir." In his book, Parker recalled, "Emmett liked to make people laugh, and so he whistled", while Carolyn Bryant, then aged 21, was stood outside the door of the store. He said they were all stunned and added, "We could have died. If there was any way possible, we would have disappeared. We knew that he had violated Southern mores. That was not good at all. So we all made a beeline for the car."

What Bryant claimed to have taken place went much further. She said that Emmett had grabbed her hand and wrist, and had asked her out for a date. Several days later, Bryant and Milam drove to the house of Moses Wright in a Chevrolet pickup and dragged Emmett Till from his bed, and abducted him. Some witnesses believe Carolyn Bryant was also in the pickup. That was the last time that Parker ever saw his cousin Emmett Till alive. Emmett's body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River three days later on 31st August. He had been tortured and shot and beaten beyond recognition. His teeth were missing and an ear had been cut off. An eye was also hanging out of its socket. Emmett was found with a cotton-gin fan attached to his neck with barbed wire. A film about the death of Emmett Till recently went on release in British cinemas and he was immortalised in song by Bob Dylan, in his ballad, 'The Death of Emmett Till'.

Laura Trevelyan denies family responsibility for Irish famine deaths.

 

Laura Trevelyan

The English civil servant Charles Edward Trevelyan, was in charge of famine relief in Ireland during the Great Hunger, brought about by the potato blight, in the mid-1840s. It's estimated that around 1 million people died of starvation and a further 2 million people were forced to emigrate.

The former BBC journalist, Laura Trevelyan, is a direct descendant of Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan. He was her great, great, great-grandfather. After working for the BBC for thirty years, she left the corporation to become a full-time slavery reparations campaigner. The Trevelyan family recently agreed to donate more than £100,000 to the Caribbean island of Grenada, where they once owned around 1,000 slaves. When slavery was abolished in the 1830s, the Trevelyan family received £34,000 in official compensation, the equivalent of £3m in today's money. When Laura Trevelyan was asked why her family would pay compensation to Grenada over slavery and not to Ireland over the famine, she said her family had personally profited from the sale of sugar harvested by slaves, whereas, her ancestor, Charles Trevelyan, had been carrying out government policy. However, she said that if the Irish government felt that the family were responsible for the actions of their ancestor, they would have to consider it.

The journalist and Irish nationalist, John Mitchell, accused the British government of committing genocide in Ireland. He referred to the murderous effects of allowing the grain harvest of 1846 to be exported when people were experiencing hunger. The refusal of the British government to make fighting the famine a UK charge and the legislative decree of June 1847, that said that Irish ratepayers must bear all the expense of relieving the destitute. This led to clearances and evictions. Mitchell famously said that Providence had provided the potato blight but the English had provided the famine.

Ireland had been part of the Union since 1801, so it's people became subjects of the United Kingdom and Ireland. In 1846, the former Irish Chief Secretary under Sir Robert Peel, said of Trevelyan, that he "knew as much about Ireland as his baby, if he has one." Although Charles Trevelyan was a civil servant and a Bible reading Protestant, he played a vital role in influencing Irish policy and he had the power of life or death over huge numbers of starving Irish people. A laissez-faire ideologue, Trevelyan ensured that there was to be no interference with food exports from Ireland and he reversed Sir Robert Peel's policy of grain shipments to Ireland. He actually wrote to Baring Brothers Bank, to cancel a ship load of Indian corn that was being sent as famine relief. Baring congratulated him on "the termination of his feeding efforts." He also sought to close down relief schemes believing that wages of nine to ten pence a day, were far too high. Men died of starvation while waiting for wages owed to them.

The English historian, A.J.P. Taylor compared Ireland in the 1840s, to Bergen Belsen and said that the "the English governing class" had the blood of "two million Irish people" on its hands. That the death toll was not higher, Taylor savagely remarked, "was not from want of trying." Charles Trevelyan, seemed to think that the famine was an act of Providence, a calamity that had been sent by God to teach the Irish a lesson.

Laura Trevelyan says that it was when she was Ireland covering the negotiations for the Good Friday Agreement, that she first became aware of how odious the name Trevelyan was to many Irish people. She had people sing the ballad 'The Fields of Athenry' to her when they discovered her name. Martin McGuiness had said to her what a coincidence it was that the BBC had sent a Trevelyan to cover the negotiations. A member of Sinn Fein had asked her how she could be driving around south Armagh, when she had the blood of the Irish on her hands? Trevelyan says that she didn't understand what he was talking about. This led her to do research on Charles Trevelyan which culminated in her publishing the book, 'A Very British Family' in 2006.

Labour's double standards. Why can some sin while others can't?

 

Steve Reed MP

In 2020, Labour's Shadow Communities Secretary, Steve Reed, referred to a Jewish Conservative donor, Richard Desmond, as a "puppet-master'. He later deleted the tweet and apologised.

Despite using what many considered to be an anti-Semitic trope, Sir Kier Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, didn't withdraw the whip. Although Reed Tweeted: "Is billionaire former porn-baron Desmond the puppet master for the entire Tory cabinet?", a spokesperson for Sir Kier said: "Steve deleted the tweet and did not mean to cause any offence."

There seems to a curious double standard in Starmer's Labour Party. Why is that some can sin and others can't?  Some like Steve Reed get defended while others like the Labour MP, Rupa Haq, who called the Conservative MP,  Akwasi Addo Alfred Kwarteng, "superficially black", get suspended and sent for anti-racism and bias training, after they apologised.

Sir Kier has now suspended Dianne Abbott for a letter she wrote to the Observer in which she said that the Jews, the Irish, and Travellers, were not victims of 'racism' but of 'prejudice'. Starmer quite rightly criticised her stance of there being a hierarchy of racism which he said was not the view of the Labour Party.

Although there's nothing remotely anti-Semitic in Abbott's letter to the Observer, which most people understand to be a hatred of Jews as Jewish people, Starmer has also accused her of anti-Semitism. Since writing her letter to the Observer, Abbott, has now unreservedly apologised for any offence caused and now accepts that the Jews, the Irish, and Travellers, can be victims of racism.

Abbott accused of anti-Semitism and suspended by Labour!

 

Dianna Abbott

Labour have withdrawn the whip from Dianne Abbot after she claimed in a letter that Jewish people had not experienced racism.

Abbot was responding to an article in the Observer with the title, "Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It's far more complicated", but she later retracted her comments and apologised. Abbot said that the Irish, the Jews, and the travelling community, had undoubtedly suffered prejudice which was similar to racism and the two words were often used as though they were interchangeable. She wrote that the Irish, the Jews, and the Travellers, had not been required in pre-civil rights America to sit at the back of buses, could vote in apartheid South Africa, and had not been put in manacles and placed on slave ships. She said that white people can experience prejudice but are not a subject to racism all their lives.

Under Kier Starmer's leadership, there doesn't seem to be much appetite for free speech in the Labour Party. Whether you agree or disagree with Dianne Abbot, she should be entitled to an opinion and be able to express it. The Conservative energy minister, Grant Shapps, who is Jewish, has accused her of "casually spouting hateful anti-Semitism” and Starmer has accused her of antisemitism.

While I don't necessarily share Ms Abbots point of view on what constitutes racism, to accuse her of anti-semitism, is utter nonsense and idiotic. Admittedly, the Jews and the Travellers didn't have to sit at the back of the bus in Mississippi, but they finished up in the gas chambers in Auschwitz and were considered sub-humans by the Nazis. Is this racism or prejudice? I would say that it’s murder and genocide.

The Conservative Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has been criticised for making racist and inflammatory remarks about British-Pakistani men and refugees and asylum seekers. She recently claimed that the majority of perpetrators who sexually abuse children in grooming gangs are "almost all British-Pakistani." This isn't backed up even by the Home Office's own research. A Home Office review in 2020, concluded that the majority of group-based child sex offending is perpetrated by white offenders and noted that "while some studies suggest an over-representation of Asian and black offenders compared with the overall population, it is not possible to draw general conclusions because this data is not representative."

The Home Office have also been unable to confirm assertions made by both Braverman and her predecessor, Priti Patel, that the vast majority of refugees arriving in the UK by small boats or by other means, are "illegal economic migrants."

Britain opposed slavery in 1807, but in common with most major nations in Europe, had been involved in the Atlantic slave trade. At the time of Oliver Cromwell, in the 17th century, we'd also transported some Irish as indentured slaves to the British colonies in the West Indies. Dianne Abbot fails to mention black complicity in slavery. Since Egyptian times, Black Africans had sold countless thousands of other Black African's into slavery, first to Rome and then to Arab traders and then to the Europeans, who transported them to the Americas. The Ottomans and Barbary pirates also had their own slave trade and would sell white captives in the slave markets of Tangiers.

In fairness to Dianne Abbot, the Jewish population of the UK - if you can identify them - are not subject to stop and search in the way that black people are in this country and neither do they tend to finish up in prison. The anti-Zionist political activist, Tony Greenstein, says that Britain's "Jews have become the most privileged section of the white population. It is this that has led them to move to the right politically." Although Greenstein believes that Britain's Jews tend to be better educated, more affluent, have better jobs, and live in better housing, compared to other white sections of British society, this doesn't mean that they never experience anti-Semitism.

Both England and Scotland are now led by Asian men, one a Muslim and the other a Hindu, but this doesn't mean that some people of Asian origin or descent, do not experience racism.

Abbot had taken issue with a survey that found that high numbers of Irish, Jewish, and Travellers, had reported suffering from racism. Despite being a black woman, in a racist society, Dianne Abbot, has managed to get to Cambridge and into the House of Commons, following a similar trajectory to the former Conservative minister, Michael Portillo, who knew her at Cambridge.

Clearly, racism in Britain is far more complicated and complex than Dianne Abbot believes. Labour have condemned her comments calling them "deeply offensive and wrong." She will now have to sit as an independent MP pending an investigation. After unreservedly withdrawing her remarks, Abbot blamed the errors in her letter, to "an initial draft being sent." She said:

"There is no excuse, and I wish to apologise for any anguish caused. Racism takes many forms, and it is completely undeniable that Jewish people have suffered its monstrous effects, as have Irish people, Travellers, and many others."

I suspect that Abbot won't be treated as leniently as the Jewish MP Margaret Hodge, who called the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, a "fucking racist and an anti-Semite." Corbyn is also being hounded out of the Labour Party.

Southey advised the Bronte's to stick to cooking and darning.

 

The Bronte sisters

I visited the Bronte Parsonage in Howarth many years ago and St Peter's Church, at Hartshead, where Patrick Bronte, had once been the Minister.

There are no known photographs of the Bronte sisters that can be verified, but there are picture portraits and descriptions of them. The author Elizabeth Gaskell met Charlotte Bronte when she was 34 years old and Charlotte stayed with her at her home in Plymouth Grove, Manchester, on three occasions. I think she also knew the other two sisters. Charlotte was under five-foot-tall, very shy, and Mrs Gaskell said she had teeth missing. I read somewhere that one of the sisters stayed with Mrs Gaskell, possibly Emily, and had hit Mrs Gaskell's dog with her fist and had knocked the dog out, because it had soiled the laundry. On another occasion, Charlotte fled from a room at Plymouth Grove, because she was far too shy to meet a stranger who was visiting the house. Their father, Patrick Bronte, came to Manchester with Charlotte for an eye operation, and stayed at what became the Salutation pub near Manchester Polytechnic.

Before embarking on a writing career, the sisters had sent copies of their work to the poet Robert Southey, who advised them to stick to cooking and darning. Thankfully, they ignored his advice. All three of those sisters are better known today than he is.

Anne, Emily and Charlotte, were all ripped off by publisher's who made a lot more money from their literary efforts than they ever did. Charlotte Bronte's second novel, Shirley, is about the Luddites and is based on the attack on Cartwright's, Rawfolds Mill, near Cleckheaton in April 1812.

When I visited the area some years ago, the Shears Inn at Liversedge, a meeting place for Luddites, was still open as a pub. The landlord of the pub, Andrew Mitchell, had wanted to demolish the pub which dates from 1773 and replace it with four houses because he said the pub wasn't a viable business. This was opposed by some on Kirklees council who said the building was a spectacularly important piece of local history. The building is still functioning as a pub today. 

Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza gets 25 years in jail.

 

Vladimir Kara-Murza

The journalist and Kremlin critic, Vladimir Kara-Murza, 41, who holds both British and Russian citizenship, has been sentenced to 25 years in jail after having been convicted of treason for spreading false information about the Russian army and for criticising Putin's war against the Ukraine. The trial, in Moscow, which Kara-Murza likened to a 1930s Stalinist show trial, was held behind closed doors.

Since the Russian army invaded the Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin has introduced strict wartime censorship laws to silence dissenting voices in Russia. "Discrediting" the army is now punishable by up to five years in jail and spreading false information about the army, can lead to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Vladimir Kara-Murza has described the Kremlin as a "regime of murderer's."

Like other Kremlin critics and Russian dissidents who have been imprisoned, Kara-Murza, could now be at risk of poisoning by heavy metals. His supporters say that he's already survived being poisoned twice. Before being shot dead in 2015, his close friend Boris Nemtsov, nearly died from poisoning which he blamed on the Kremlin. The Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who is currently in prison, was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok and hospitalised in August 2020. Navalny, says he's also being poisoned in prison. 

Many Russian journalists and human rights activists, including those who have already fled the country,  have called on the Russian authorities to free Kara-Murza insisting that the charges against him are baseless and politically motivated. In a letter to the Russian authorities, they said: "Prosecute murderers and criminals rather than honest and responsible citizens who dare to speak the truth...Stop Russia's new slide towards Stalinism and a totalitarian system."

The authorities regard many of the signatories to the letter as traitors who desire Russia's defeat on the battlefield. Those Russian citizens who dare to question Putin's actions in the Ukraine, are regarded as a "pro-western fifth column trying to undermine the military campaign."

In a final speech at his trial in Moscow, which was made available to his wife and lawyer, Kara-Murza, said:

'I only blame myself for one thing. I failed to convince my compatriots and politicians in democratic countries of the danger that the current Kremlin regime poses for Russia and the world...For me as an historian, this is cause for reflection. Criminals are supposed to repent of what they have done. I, on the other hand, am in prison for my political views. I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate."

He declined to ask the court to acquit him and said he stood by everything he had said. The British ambassador in Russia, Deborah Bronnert, said the verdict was "shocking" and called for Kara Murza's immediate release. Amnesty International have designated Kara Murza a "prisoner of conscience."