New big western alliance against alleged tyranny to replace it with even more stronger tyranny ( sic ) all in the name of democracy. As in 1914-18 and 1939-45, the elite were fighting for their privileges in the face of probable communist uprising. It is the same old story, with no shortage of new fake enemies and high tech to hide the truth. The following two songs say it all. R.J Cook

Christmas 1914 by Mike Harding – YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com › watch5:16The re-mastered single of Christmas 1914 is available for download now

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj3tZ7SnN_vAhWU_rsIHd74BlsQtwIwDnoECBYQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fsaffyremusic%2Fvideos%2Fwillie-mcbride-green-fields-of-france-by-saffyre%2F2894710414145760%2F&usg=AOvVaw12iTIkWuo-e-tdj7KH0JG2

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/26/do-we-now-need-permission-to-be-free/

Heritage and RetroRetro

https://www.notonthebeeb.co.uk/

Lockdown – the Big Lie that will never end

Videos

Preview10:47The Two Ronnies – The Worm That Turned (1 of 8)YouTube · nymphofwater11 Sept 2011Preview9:56The Two Ronnies – The Worm That Turned (3 of 8)YouTube · nymphofwater11 Sept 2011

https://www.britishfreedom.net/post/where-the-nuts-come-from

https://app.spectator.co.uk/2021/03/24/eight-reasons-to-leave-the-uk/content.html

Alastair Cavendish

• • Mar 18
  • 5 min read

John Ward posted: ” Massive doubts raised about ethics & efficacy behind Oxford-Astrazenica “vaccine” —————– Some fill-in establishing information is required to help explain this post. That’s because the issuer of the data is obscure – but very serious”

Frankly About France by Robert Cook April 27th 2021

The last time I walked up the Champs-Élysées , I was beset by beggars from foreign parts . As one can see from this picture , Pale faces are in the minority.

It is easy to fill lazy minds with propaganda masquerading as history. Feeding black resentment is causing problems throughout the fake democracies of the west. The British elite are  mainly descended from the Norman French. All whites are not and never have been privileged. We see the elite at work with Covid lockdown.

When Boris Johnson stepped out of line over lunatic lockdowns, the elite with their feminised and LGBTQI indoctrinated masses were on him like a ton of bricks. Johnson’s financial fiddles, as with his cronies , don’t matter. Lockdown does because it authorises small minded Nazi style police to watch and arrest even more. Stoke up black protest by making them think it is only them being victimised and you can suppress any sign of intelligence and protest the police state may spot among the masses.

The following reports sneer at Marie Le Pen and her supporters. They are not allowed a point of view because they are white and hence privileged. Also , only whites can be racist because they have the power of being white. To avoid civil war , with more beheadings, , France must listen to Islamic leaders. That says it all about the intentions of worldwide Islam.

France , for all of its Catholicism , had the good sense to pass a separation of powers act in 1905. Britain , with its Norman elite mentality never gave up on institutionalised religious dogma because it controls, instils fear and justifies wars in God’s name – like the one they led against Napoleon because they feared his egalitarianism and during which Britain’s Duke of Wellington described his troops as ‘the scum of the earth.’.

In the early post war years, the tide turned in Britain, satire putting the Anglican High Church , with its’ figurehead Queen, in their place. No worries , in its place. Britain’s leadership into rolling wars with targeted Islamic nations, provided an unstoppable flood of illegal and economic resentful religious migrants. Europe’s ruling elite think they can become part of their ridiculous multi culture rainbow world.

So , with anti hate laws in place, it’s O.K for a young black migrant Muslim to throw 65 year old Jewish woman from a window. We mustn’t stoke up anti Islamic hate. We must talk and obey ( sic ). You want to hate someone , focus on Christians, Jews , heterosexual white men and conservative women. We have a new religion in Europe. It is called Islam and demands respct.

If there was any real sincerity about handling white privilege , then we would see the British Royal Family abolished and their vast properties nationalised. We would have a White Lives Matter movement , accept that police will abuse anyone they look down on as a soft target, that they are habitual corrupt liars , needing reform and monitoring by a truly independent body , offering extreme punishment to miscreant officers. Instead they recruit lying psycho bullies to enforce police state laws.The rich should not have benefited from ludicrous lockdown and it would not be a hate crime to talk truth to power. Robert Cook

The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic *Hrōþi- “fame” and *berhta- “bright” (Hrōþiberhtaz).[1] Compare Old Dutch Robrecht and Old High German Hrodebert (a compound of Hruod (Old Norse: Hróðr) “fame, glory, honour, renown” and berht “bright, shining”). It is the second most frequently used given name of ancient Germanic origin.[2][3] It is also in use as a surname.

After becoming widely used in Continental Europe it entered England in its Old French form Robert, where an Old English cognate form (Hrēodbēorht, Hrodberht, Hrēodbēorð, Hrœdbœrð, Hrœdberð, Hrōðberχtŕ) had existed before the Norman Conquest. The feminine version is Roberta. The Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish form is Roberto.

Robert is also a common name in many Germanic languages, including English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Scots, Danish, and Icelandic. It can be used as a French, Polish, Irish, Finnish, Romanian, and Estonian name as well.

Macron can’t ignore furious generals’ warning that terror attacks & ‘Islamist hordes’ are pushing France towards civil war Posted April 27th 2021

Damian Wilson is a UK journalist, ex-Fleet Street editor, financial industry consultant and political communications special advisor in the UK and EU.26 Apr, 2021 17:36 Get short URL

FILE PHOTO. French President Emmanuel Macron pays tribute to victims of the March 15, 2012 attack at the Montauban cemetery in MONTAUBAN, FRANCE. © AFP / Fred SCHEIBER

Follow RT on A warning from 20 retired army generals that the ‘Islamist hordes of the banlieue’ are causing France to disintegrate has been dismissed by the government. But as the terrorist atrocities continue, many citizens share their fears.

Although France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim population, the simmering tensions over Islam’s place in the secular republic are only ever a news cycle away from boiling over.

In the space of just a week, there has been controversy over a court decision to free a killer without charge, the murder of a police worker on the steps of her station and a call to arms from a group of retired generals who warn the actions of Islamist “hordes in the banlieue” risk the disintegration of the country and civil war.

Frankly, it’s hard to keep up. But while President Emmanuel Macron’s officials dismiss as bitter pensioners a gang of retired military types who probably still rue the day President Charles de Gaulle put Algeria on the path to independence – and chose the 60th anniversary of an attempted coup by his generals to air their own grievances – they do deserve some respect, and even recognition of their views. Also on rt.com Macron needs the help of Muslim world leaders or France’s tally of decapitated heads will continue to rise

They make no bones about it. “France is disintegrating,” 20 retired generals and another 80 officers wrote in a letter published by Valeurs Actuelles magazine.

“Disintegrating with the Islamists of the hordes of the banlieue who are detaching swathes of the nation and turning them into territory subject to dogmas contrary to our constitution,” they continued.

“It is no longer time to procrastinate, otherwise tomorrow the civil war will put an end to this growing chaos, and the deaths, for which you will bear the responsibility, will number in the thousands.”

Strong language, for sure, but maybe they are right. All too often another Islamist atrocity takes place on French soil. Over the past four years, 14 attacks carried out in the name of radical Islam have resulted in the deaths of 25 people in France, and 36 others have been foiled, according to the government.

The most recent was Friday, when mother-of-two Stéphanie Monfeture, a 49-year-old police worker, had her throat cut in the entrance hall of the Rambouillet police station by a 36-year-old Tunisian national, identified only as Jamel G, shouting the terrorist mantra of “Allahu Akbar”.

Unsurprisingly, bearing in mind the location, the killer was shot dead by police at the scene. While brutal in nature, Mme Monfeture’s attacker was the recipient of a swift reprisal, which may lead to some sense of justice, more than Sarah Halimi’s family and friends will ever receive. Also on rt.com France tells its citizens to flee Pakistan as deadly anti-French riots intensify over Emmanuel Macron’s perceived slight on Islam

Because a court has decided not to send to trial the 27-year-old man who attacked, stabbed and threw the 65-year-old Jewish woman, a retired doctor and kindergarten teacher, who was his neighbour, from her third-floor balcony while repeatedly crying “Allahu Akbar!”

The court agreed with a panel of psychiatrists that Kobili Traoré was so stoned on marijuana during the attack on Mme Halimi in 2017 that he could not be held criminally responsible, and therefore would not face trial.

Critics of the decision compared the case with that of a 51-year-old Marseille man, who while drunk and on cocaine threw his neighbour’s French bulldog from a fourth floor window on New Year’s Eve and claimed he remembered nothing about it. He was handed a two-year prison sentence, with a year suspended.

Considering what appears to be a gross miscarriage of justice and the relentless bloody assaults on regular French citizens going about their daily lives, you start to understand where the generals are coming from.

And being generals of the retired variety, of course there is no need for temperate language. Just ensure you grab the attention of the damn fools in charge, and see how they respond.

National Rally leader Marine Le Pen quickly moved to side with the generals. “As a citizen and as a woman politician, I subscribe to your analysis and share your suffering,” she wrote in response.

Marine Le Pen’s chances of an electoral earthquake in France are gaining momentum as Macron loses his bearings. April 27th 2021

Damian Wilson is a UK journalist, ex-Fleet Street editor, financial industry consultant and political communications special advisor in the UK and EU.

France goes to the polls in 2022, and such is President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopularity that the prospect of a Le Pen victory is being seriously considered, to the extent a risk assessment has been produced by a leading think tank.

With the French presidential elections now less than a year away, when cafes and bars reopen post-Covid, there will be one topic of conversation among customers to dominate all others – the very real possibility that Marine Le Pen could be the next President of the Republic.

So strong is the sense of dread of this nightmare for the French left that one influential think tank has issued a ‘risk assessment’ on what this could mean for the nation. It’s the sort of exercise usually taken to forestall a national disaster like, for instance, an outbreak of an uncontrollable killer virus.

The work by Fondation Jean-Jaurès – named after a French Socialist Party leader from the early 20th century – goes so far as to delve into voter emotions in an effort to understand the rise of Marine Le Pen since her defeat in the 2017 election. Also on rt.com France tells its citizens to flee Pakistan as deadly anti-French riots intensify over Emmanuel Macron’s perceived slight on Islam

The researchers found that Le Pen can rely on support in a second round run-off not just from her National Rally fanbase, but from people who simply cannot stand President Emmanuel Macron.

As the Fondation points out, “A majority of the French population is forced to make a choice by default in the second round of the election and to vote for the candidate they prefer, or rather, whom they hate least.”

And as a result they say it is possible that “the second round vote for Marine Le Pen would then not mark an adhesion to her program, but a simple rejection of the candidate who faces her.” 

That’s victory as the lesser of two evils. Not what Macron wants to hear!

The Fondation backs up that claim of animosity towards the incumbent with a wonderfully colourful graph illustrating the “Main emotions felt by the French when they see or listen to Emmanuel Macron”. Strangely, these emotions – anger (28%), shame (18%), disgust (21%) and despair (21%) – match those felt by many teenagers towards their parents. Also on rt.com Macron’s randomly picked climate board axes 1/10 domestic flights after €4bn Air France bailout – this is a French farce

The think tank goes even further. Not only does the National Rally stand to benefit from Macron’s unpopularity, but also from those formerly aligned to the Republican right who are no longer deterred by the “cordon sanitaire”. This was a construct introduced by former president Jacques Chirac, who refused to even debate with his 2002 run-off opponent, then National Front Leader Jean-Marie Le Pen because, as he said at the time, “Faced with intolerance and hatred, there is no possible transaction, no possible compromise, no possible debate.”

Since then, the idea of the “cordon” has been used by the Republicans as some sort of invisible power, invoked occasionally to convince any of their wavering followers that however dissatisfied they might be with their lot, the answer did not lie with the Le Pens. Nowadays, its effect has been greatly diminished, not least because the Republican right is a shambles.

In addition to those Republican voters looking for right-wing policies who are swinging towards the National Rally, an increasingly unpopular Macron could lose support to Le Pen due to his own battle for the hearts and minds of the right. Because while he was elected very much as a centrist politician, his actions in office now mean he’s seen as right wing by 30% of French voters who expressed an opinion, according to a recent New Statesman survey. Look to the anti-separatism laws if you want evidence. Also on rt.com Macron needs the help of Muslim world leaders or France’s tally of decapitated heads will continue to rise

A second New Statesman poll supports the Fondation’s findings with the revelation that 37% of people who voted for Macron in the 2017 run-off say they would now change the way they voted in that second round, logically meaning they would opt for Le Pen.

Bear in mind that while Macron took a whopping 66% of the vote in 2017 – while his run-off opponent took just 34% – if those turncoats had voted as they now wish back then, the daughter of the racist 92-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front, would be sitting comfortably in the Élysee Palace today.

While the daughter is a long way from being her estranged father, that idea to many French citizens – whatever their political leaning – may be the cause of ‘les cauchemars terrifiants’. But in a year’s time only a fool would bet against Marine Le Pen making them come true.

Talking Point: What do you think needs to be done about crime in London? Posted April 26th 2021

Following the fatal stabbing of 14-year-old Fares Maatou last Friday, the parents of young London murder victims have now also come forward to urge Mayor Sadiq Khan to do more to tackle the bloodshed.

The plea comes as the Met Police began a new crackdown on knife crime today, with extra patrols and knife arches being implemented across the city.

But what more do you think needs to be done about crime in London? Comment below for your chance to be featured on the Evening Standard website tomorrow. Read More

Four teenage boys arrested as girl, 16, ‘fights for her life’ after double stabbing in West Norwood

Boy charged with stabbing murder of teenager Fares Maatou

75% rise in London dog thefts as lockdown pets are targeted in burglaries and knife robberies

Talking Point: What do you think needs to be done about crime in London? Posted April 26th 2021

Sophie Rainbow 39 mins ago Scottish pub and restaurant owners blast ‘muddled’ new Covid rules as they open… Line of Duty’s James Nesbitt gets back to work on new Netflix show after… © Provided by Evening Standard

Headlines today have been dominated by reports of crime across the capital.

From the attempted abduction of a six-year-old boy, to a double stabbing in West Norwood and a 75% rise in dog theft over lockdown, it’s clear that London is grappling with a disturbing wave of offences.

Following the fatal stabbing of 14-year-old Fares Maatou last Friday, the parents of young London murder victims have now also come forward to urge Mayor Sadiq Khan to do more to tackle the bloodshed.

The plea comes as the Met Police began a new crackdown on knife crime today, with extra patrols and knife arches being implemented across the city.

But what more do you think needs to be done about crime in London? Comment below for your chance to be featured on the Evening Standard website tomorrow. Read More

Four teenage boys arrested as girl, 16, ‘fights for her life’ after double stabbing in West Norwood

Boy charged with stabbing murder of teenager Fares Maatou

75% rise in London dog thefts as lockdown pets are targeted in burglaries and knife robberies

1. Summary of Crimes in Barking and Dagenham This Year Barking and Dagenham Barking and Dagenham London London Crime Count Rate Count Rate Anti-Social Behaviour 8,438 39.63 416,474 46.47 Bicycle Theft 198 0.93 24,356 2.72 Burglary 1,208 5.67 61,090 6.82
   11 more rows … Mar 22 2021Barking and Dagenham Crime and Safety Statistics | CrimeRatecrimerate.co.uk/london/barking-and-dagenhamFeedback
2. People also askWhat is the crime rate in Barking and Dagenham?By far the largest neighbourhood in Barking and Dagenham, it’s no surprise this area has high crime rates, at 108 per 1,000 people. A despicable 441 acts of violence were reported in the last year. 1. Abbey 2,575 The worst offender, with almost 1,000 more crimes than anywhere else, is the tiny ward on the west of Barking and Dagenham.The 10 most dangerous places in Barking and Dagenham …www.mylondon.news/news/east-london-news/10-most-d…See all results for this questionIs Barking and Dagenham a good place to live?What is the largest crime category?The largest category was Anti Social Behaviour, followed by Violent Crime. Below are these incidents broken down by category. Police data is divided in Policing Neighbourhoods. We have taken the ‘best fit’ neighbourhood that includes Barking.Crime Statistics for Barking, London, Barking and Dagenham …www.ilivehere.co.uk/crime-statistics-barking-and-dagenha…

1. Summary of Crimes in Barking and Dagenham This Year Barking and Dagenham Barking and Dagenham London London Crime Count Rate Count Rate Anti-Social Behaviour 8,438 39.63 416,474 46.47 Bicycle Theft 198 0.93 24,356 2.72 Burglary 1,208 5.67 61,090 6.82
   11 more rows … Mar 22 2021Barking and Dagenham Crime and Safety Statistics | CrimeRatecrimerate.co.uk/london/barking-and-dagenhamFeedback
2. People also askWhat is the crime rate in Barking and Dagenham?By far the largest neighbourhood in Barking and Dagenham, it’s no surprise this area has high crime rates, at 108 per 1,000 people. A despicable 441 acts of violence were reported in the last year. 1. Abbey 2,575 The worst offender, with almost 1,000 more crimes than anywhere else, is the tiny ward on the west of Barking and Dagenham.The 10 most dangerous places in Barking and Dagenham …www.mylondon.news/news/east-london-news/10-most-d…See all results for this questionIs Barking and Dagenham a good place to live?What is the largest crime category?The largest category was Anti Social Behaviour, followed by Violent Crime. Below are these incidents broken down by category. Police data is divided in Policing Neighbourhoods. We have taken the ‘best fit’ neighbourhood that includes Barking.Crime Statistics for Barking, London, Barking and Dagenham …www.ilivehere.co.uk/crime-statistics-barking-and-dagenha…

On The Roads Of A Small Island – Robert Cook April 26th 2021

Democracy

Many of my family were in either the transport or construction industry. I have worked in both. My mother’s maternal great uncle Harry was County Highway’s engineer, which is why I was welcomed on board after leaving university. Foolishly , I left to follow a girl down in Portsmouth – not my ex wife.

I digress, except to say that simple logic is not behind most people’s key decisions. Romance, fear and greed are but three of the emotions guiding and misguiding us.

So whilst the likes of Macadam gave us the first weather proof roads, Stephensons efficient steam engines , Etienne Lenoir in 1859 the first internal combustion engine – Nikolaus Otto the first commercial one in 1876, the politicians made the rules. These politicians cared , as they still do , for themselves and pet interests. The only logic they know is ‘what is best for me and my own.’

In Britain . Lloyd George decided that all roads needed numbers because World War One logistics so demanded. Petrol engines had been adapted to flying machines and other equipment of warfare.

Post World War Two, road haulage, and railways were nationalised. There was already effectively a national bus company dating from 1933. Thatcher would go on to sell this organisation , along with the valuable real estate , at knock down prices , using the money to cut taxes for the rich.

By 1950, the superficial British voter was easily persuaded to vote out the Labour Government who had done so much , with little money, to create a more efficient equal rights society. All the Tories needed to do , under demented Churchill, was offer tax cuts.

The platform was made ready for Margaret Thatcher who built on the Tories infrastructure destruction and useless Labour Minority Governments incompetence. She was followed by John Major – who privatised British Rail – and so we are are where we are. Council Road maintenance and management was privatised, leading to what John Kenneth Galbraith described as ‘Private Wealth & Public Squalor’ – ‘The Affluent society’. The old Winslow No1 Highways Depot, where I worked, was sold off for housing in 1988. Work was transferred to a private contractor called Prismo with costs rising by 50% across the board. A new age of pot holes and rising council taxes for the lower orders, was born.

Tory , pretty boy,  Prime Minister David Cameron, came up with a solution ( sic ) to Britain’s traffic congestion. The hard shoulders considered so vital to motorway safety, at the outset of building the M1, were to become extra lanes. This was extra road capacity on the cheap, with lives on the cheap as payment.  I have used the busy M23 London to Gatwick  -a few times by car to the airport- and Brighton road in a truck , on a regular run. I watched them converting it to SMART motorway status.

There has also been a government bonus of lots of cameras to keep watching us. Democracy is a term bandied around by our corrupt politicians who are so hypocritical , they use it as an excuse to make war on any country where they don’t like the regime and want the resources. The word , ill defined in practice,  could be the name of a new style of advanced wallpaper; because  it papers over the cracks.

Robert Cook

‘The road killed them all’: Inside the fight to have smart motorways abolished -Posted by Robert Cook April 25th 2021

Colin Drury

Derek Jacobs passed his driving test when he was 17 and, in the 66 years since, had never been involved in a major accident.

He taught his wife and his two sons to drive, and there was talk he would do the same for his grandchildren.

At the age of 83 and, still working part-time as an engineer, he continued to travel around the country in his much-loved Volkswagen Crafter van. He was healthy, active and retained the sharp practical intelligence he was known throughout his life for.

Then, on Friday 22 March 2019, he suffered a suspected tyre burst on a smart motorway.

Such was his competence as a driver that Mr Jacobs did everything right in a suddenly horrific situation. He did not jam on the brake, sending the vehicle into a tailspin; he did not oversteer, causing a potential flip. He kept control of the van as it lost speed, pulling it over as far as he could onto the carriageway’s left-hand side. When he came to a halt, he exited from the passenger door and was, it seems, about to climb over the highway’s barrier as government advice dictates.

But his tragic misfortune was to have found himself that lunch time on the kind of road that many experts now suggest may be responsible for dozens of driving deaths.

As a so-called smart motorway, the hard shoulder on this stretch of the M1 in South Yorkshire had long since been scrapped and turned into a live lane. It meant that, when his van came to a stop, Mr Jacobs, from Edgware in north London, had to effectively park in the way of 70mph traffic.

As he tried to climb the barrier, a Ford Ka smashed into the Crafter, sending it hurtling into him. He was crushed between it and the hoarding. He died on the side of the road, 140 miles from home.

“It goes round and round in my mind, day in, day out,” says his widow Sally, 83, today. “Sixty-six years we were together and without him – for that to happen – I wouldn’t wish what he went through on my worst enemy.”

The devastation did not end there that day.

The car that smashed into Mr Jacobs’s van did so with such force that it flipped over and was itself ploughed into by a coach. The driver survived but her passenger, 78-year-old Charles Scripps, did not.

“Can you imagine it?” asks Sally. “Two people lost, just like that Derek Jacobs was crushed between his Volkswagen Crafter van and the hoarding.

The twin tragedy is just one that, this summer, will be presented to a High Court judge in a bid to have the vast majority of the UK’s smart motorway network abolished.

A campaign group, Smart Motorways Kill, is to apply for a judicial review to effectively illegalise M-roads without hard shoulders on the grounds that they are inherently dangerous.

Small incidents (like blown tyres) on such roads, the group will argue, have a habit of ending in catastrophic consequences. Some 53 deaths over a six-year period will be referred to in their evidence. Almost all of them, lawyers will submit, could have been avoided if only the emergency lane had still existed.

Crucially – and explosively – they will suggest officials have long known the extent of this danger but have repeatedly obscured it behind flawed data in a bid to keep rolling more such roads out.

“It’s the job of transport engineers to design the risk out of our motorways,” says Claire Mercer, who leads the campaign and whose husband Jason died on the same stretch of M1 in 2019. “By making the hard shoulder a live lane, they have literally added extra risk in.”

If the group’s action succeeds, the repercussions would be monumental.

Highways England – the government company in charge of the UK’s major roads – would, at a stroke, be told to reinstate the 204 miles of hard shoulders which it has spent the last 15 years transforming into live carriageways. Billions of pounds worth of work would be rendered instantly unusable.

Yet Mercer – a tenacious South Yorkshire woman, red of hair and fiery of character – is quietly confident. “Every time these motorways are reviewed in any independent legal realm, the experts come to the same conclusion; they’re death traps,” she says today. “Coroners see it, police see it, MPs see it. When they look at the evidence, I think a judge will see it too.”

Something, somewhere being obscured

For almost 50 years, British motorways were built with a compulsory hard shoulder. This spare lane was considered essential for vehicles to pull into in emergencies and for ambulance, police and fire crews to use in life-and-death situations.

Then, in 2006, conventional wisdom was thrown on its head. On a clogged-up stretch of the M42 in the West Midlands, the shoulder was repurposed as a fourth live lane. It was the UK’s first so-called all-lane-running smart motorway.

The Highways Agency – forerunner to Highways England – declared the change a triumph of technology over tradition.

The previously unused carriageway, so went the sell, could be safely opened to traffic because a network of sensors, cameras and electronic signage would detect emergencies and temporarily close any stretches where there was danger. It would, advocates said, increase road capacity at minimal cost and without putting motorists at additional risk. In the 15 years since, sections of the M1, M3, M6 and M62, among others, have all had the same adaptations made.

When critics raised concerns, officials responded with hard data.

Annual figures repeatedly showed smart motorways were as safe as their conventional forerunners. If anything, indeed, they appeared safer: in 2018, they accounted for just 12.8 per cent of M-road deaths despite carrying 13.8 per cent of traffic. If you wanted evidence-based policy-making, the implication was, the evidence said build more of the things. So they did.

Yet for Mercer and other campaigners the numbers didn’t stack up. They couldn’t reconcile the figures with the reality of how their loved ones had been lost. They were sure something, somehow, was being obscured.

“There’s always this feeling from Highways England that we don’t understand because we don’t have a degree or we’re not engineers,” the 45-year-old says today. “But I understand enough to know that you don’t make something safer by taking away the primary safety feature.”

Refusing to accept the official reassurances, the group started digging into both the data and the deaths. It is precisely what they found that will now go before a high court judge.

Like a ship without lifeboats

Jason and Claire Mercer first met in a pub in Rotherham in 2005.

“He came over and said ‘Hallo, I’ve seen you around,’ and we never really ever stopped talking after that,” she says.

She loved him because he was different: all tattoos, red hair and heavy metal T-shirts.

On the morning of 7 June 2019, he told her he loved her and left the house for work as a contract manager. It was coming up to 8am when he closed the door behind him. By 8.15am, he was dead.

Shortly after entering onto the M1 at junction 33, the 44-year-old and another driver, 22-year-old Alexandru Murgeanu, were involved in a shunt. With no hard shoulder to pull into, both managed to come to a stop on the far left of the carriageway.

What exactly happened next remains unknown but, if they had attempted to climb over the barriers as seems certain, they would have realised it was a 30-foot drop on the other side. When a HGV came bearing down on them at 55mph, they had nowhere to go. Both men died instantly.

“The bodies were thrown so far they didn’t know who belonged to what car,” says Mercer.

The case became semi-complicated because the truck driver, Prezemyslaw Szuba, later admitted causing deaths by careless driving. He was jailed for 10 months. But, even as he was sentenced, Judge Jeremy Richardson compared a motorway without a hard shoulder to a ship without lifeboats. At a subsequent inquest, a coroner went further; motorways without emergency lanes “present an ongoing risk of future deaths”, David Urpeth said.

“When I first heard how Jason died, I couldn’t understand why he would get out on a motorway,” says Mercer, an engineering buyer by trade. “But then, little by little, it became clear he had no choice. And then I started finding about others who had lost people in the same situation, and for all of them, it was never their fault – or, if they’d made a mistake, it was just a small one. And it was the road that had killed them. It was always the bloody road.”

More Cummings & Goings Posted by Robert Cook – April 25th 2021

Dominic Cummings is preparing a bombshell dossier that will attempt to blame the prime minister for thousands of deaths during the pandemic, according to reports.

The former top aide will give evidence to a joint committee of MPs investigating the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis next month.

According to the Sunday Times, Mr Cummings will use the appearance to launch a fresh attack on Boris Johnson.

A source told the paper: “Dominic has copies of everything and knows where all the bodies are buried.

“He was pushing the prime minister hard to lock down sooner in the autumn and he has lots of evidence that shows that his decision to delay led to devastating consequences.”

Downing Street is also concerned that Mr Cummings might expose details about Mr Johnson’s life with fiancee Carrie Symonds.

Last night Mr Cummings suggested the government was too slow to close the borders when the pandemic started.

He said the scientific consensus that travel bans would not help prevent the spread of Covid-19 was flawed.

In response to a tweet about how Vietnam had protected its borders he said it was a “very important issue re learning from the disaster”.

His tweet followed a lengthy blog post where he openly attacked Mr Johnson and claimed that the manner in which he obtained funding for the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat was “unethical” and “possibly illegal”.

Mr Cummings claimed Mr Johnson had attempted to secure funding from Conservative supporters for £58,000 worth of renovations to the flat he shared with Ms Symonds.

The prime minister said on Friday he had personally paid back the money.

Mr Cummings also accused Mr Johnson of trying to block an inquiry that implicated Henry Newman, a friend of Ms Symonds, after details of the autumn lockdown were leaked to the press.

The blog post came after Mr Johnson blamed Mr Cummings for leaking texts he sent to James Dyson regarding a tax waiver.

Jeremy Hunt, the chairman of one of the committees that will question Mr Cummings told the Sunday Telegraph that MPs would would publish whatever the former Downing Street aide gave them as long as it did not put national security at risk and as long as the MPs on the committee agree.

Mr Hunt said: “We will publish whatever he gives us – we would have to check if it passes any tests.”

Downing Street insiders have no idea the extent of the material Mr Cummings claims to have and say they are “terrified” about further revelations.

One source said there is extreme nervousness about an apparent “treasure trove” of embarrassing documents that Mr Cummings might seek to get published.

Mr Cummings quit 10 Downing Street last November after an apparent power struggle involving Ms Symond

Humans , Hypocrisy, Elites , Lies & Genocide – a prelude to the next post by Robert Cook April 25th 2021

We Humans & Genocide April 25^th 2021

We humans are not made in any creator’s image. We are animals with certain basic instincts and individual variations within a frame work, varying with socialisation, chance and hormones – declining in mind and body with age. Unfortunately , the richer and more powerful of the declining old , don’t like letting go of power. They do ongoing harm , many resenting any sign of real talent or oppositin from below. The young must copy them to get on in life , so the cycle of lies and corruption rooted in our western culture goes on and gets worse. Much of what we do is automatic, survival and reproduction being primary drives.

Over the centuries , humans have divided into cultural groups , hierarchies like all primates, ethnicity being key factors and ultimately developing nation states. The word culture means attitudes and values. These are dictated by group leaders for the purposes of control and their own pleasure.

Transport and communication limits originally confined conflicts to small areas. As time passed , dominant groups spread their power and colonialism was born. With three original racial groups of Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasoid , original colonialism appeared as if racist – the abuses of elites against their own people was and still is overlooked.

Class is there behind the scenes as bleeding heart so called elite white liberals feign concern for the chaos of what is called euphemistically the BAME population. Hence that ruling elite has been careful not to upset favoured ethnic groups like Turkey’s ruling Muslim elite by accusing them of genocide against Armenian Christians – a pattern of behaviour that goes back to the original Ottoman Turk conquest. The Western Anglo-U.S elite sees mileage in stoking up so called religious tolerance.

As fake Christians and hypocrites , they think Muslim leaders are as superficial as they are. Terrorism , stoked up by 9/11, and subsequent expedient rolling wars enriches and empowers them ever more.   Religion , with its go forth and multiply mentality , is not compatible with science. It should be a thing of the past as real science shows us exactly what planet we should all be living on. But elites across the world , teach their masses only what they want them to know. They have a culture of secrecy. When their mutual greed goes too far , as with World War One and Two , they don’t hesitate to post their minions as pawns in a game – glorifying it all with martial music and Vera Lyn style singing..

As for genocide, the original English colonists started that against the Red Indians of North America, reducing the population thereof , from 9 million at the start of the nineteenth century to 900, 000 by the end. Those Red Indians , as we call them , lived in harmony with nature. You won’t hear any apologies or reparations talk about those dignified people which our culture labelled savages.

Meanwhile , we are supposed to hate a larger group of Mongoloids in China, who have been making our luxury goods for many years. Large western corporations , like Microsoft , didn’t hesitate to exploit cheap Chinese female labour at the equivalent of 34 pence and hour , building cheap laptops and mobiles so we could all plug into what is in reality a ‘disinformation highway’ and a system which the state elite and their police use to spy on and control us of the lower order masses. Robert Cook.

Genocide & Selective Causes April 25th 2021

Joe Biden has formally recognized the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces as an act of genocide, becoming the first US president to do so since Ronald Reagan and inflaming already strained relations with a strategic ally.

“Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian Genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” Biden said in a statement on Saturday, commemorating Armenian Remembrance Day. Also on rt.com Forgotten Genocides: RT America looks at crimes politics has swept under the rug

Turkey rebuffed the statement immediately, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying the Armenian issue has been “politicized by third parties.” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara “entirely rejects” Biden’s decision and added that the move would “open a deep wound that undermines our mutual trust and friendship” with the US.

“After more than 100 years of this past suffering, instead of exerting sincere efforts to completely heal the wounds of the past and build the future together in our region, the US president’s statement will not yield any results other than polarizing the nations and hindering peace and stability in our region,” Cavusoglu said. Read more Turkish leader Erdoğan slams NATO ally Biden for calling Putin a ‘killer,’ says US president’s remarks were ‘truly unacceptable’

At issue are atrocities against ethnic Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, when an estimated 1.5 million were killed or deported by the Young Turks movement, starting in 1915. The Turkish government has denied the genocide for more than a century, saying Armenians were resettled – not exterminated.

Given the diplomatic sensitivities over the issue and Ankara’s geopolitical importance as a strategic NATO ally, past US presidents have largely tiptoed around the issue. In fact, John Evans was fired as US ambassador to Armenia by the George W. Bush administration for referring to the massacre as a genocide.

Barack Obama criticized the firing during his 2008 presidential campaign and pledged to recognize the genocide, but he stopped short of keeping that promise during his eight years in office. Both Obama and his successor, Donald Trump, used the Armenian term, “Meds Yeghern,” meaning “great crime.”

Biden used both terms. “We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history,” he said.

“And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.”

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan hailed Biden’s move as a “powerful step on the way to acknowledging the truth, historical justice” and said it provides “invaluable support” for descendants of the victims. He added, “The recognition of the Armenian genocide by the US is a much-needed message to the international community, which comes to reaffirm the primacy of human rights and values in international relations.”

For decades, Armenians and the Armenian diaspora have pressed for the US government to officially recognize the genocide, as Russia has since at least 1995. Dozens of other nations, including Germany and France, also have done so. The US House and Senate passed resolutions acknowledging the genocide in 2019.

Ryan Giggs charged with assaulting two women – April 23rd 2021

Wales manager and former Manchester United player Ryan Giggs has been charged with assaulting two women.

He is accused of causing actual bodily harm to a woman in her 30s and common assault of a woman in her 20s at an address in Salford last November.

Mr Giggs, of Worsley, is also charged with coercive or controlling behaviour.

He has been bailed to appear at Manchester and Salford Magistrates’ Court on 28 April.

Mr Giggs, 47, said in a statement he would plead not guilty to the charges in court.

“I have full respect for the due process of law and understand the seriousness of the allegations,” he said.

“I look forward to clearing my name.”

Greater Manchester Police said officers were called at 22:05 GMT on 1 November to reports of a disturbance at an address in Worsley.

The force said a woman in her 30s was treated for minor injuries at the scene.

Mr Giggs is also accused of coercive or controlling behaviour between December 2017 and November 2020.

The Football Association of Wales (FAW) has confirmed assistant manager Robert Page will take charge of Wales at this summer’s European Championships.

The FAW said there would be a board meeting to “discuss the developments and its impact on the association and the national team”.

In his statement, Mr Giggs added: “I would like to wish Robert Page, the coaching staff, the players and the supporters every success at the Euros this summer.”

The former Manchester United winger is one of British football’s most-decorated footballers following his 24-year career at Old Trafford and was appointed an OBE in 2007 before winning the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year in 2009.

He also won 64 caps for Wales between 1991 and 2007 and was appointed national manager in January 2018, leading them to qualification for Euro 2020, which has been re-scheduled because of Covid-19.

He is also co-owner of League Two side Salford City.

Fury in Germany as Merkel Enhances Government Power & Lockdown with curfews – deja vu, Posted April 22nd 2021

‘Thieves R Us’ Posted by F.S Political Editor April 22nd 2021

US Ambassor to Russia to return to America: Sullivan heads home after advice from Moscow to go to Washington for ‘consultations’

20 Apr, 2021 14:21 / Updated 1 day agoGet short URL

US ambassador to Russia John Sullivan ©  REUTERS / Evgenia Novozhenina

By Jonny Tickle US ambassador to Russia John Sullivan is to head back to America this week after a Kremlin official recommended he return home “for thorough, serious consultations,” amid mounting tensions between Washington and Moscow.

The diplomat has been reportedly reluctant to leave the country, with US news outlet Axios saying that he wanted to stay in Moscow, and would not go home unless he was expelled. Now, it appears he has taken the ‘advice’, and will return this week.

“I believe it is important for me to speak directly with my new colleagues in the Biden administration in Washington about the current state of bilateral relations between the United States and Russia,” an official statement from the ambassador said. “Also, I have not seen my family in well over a year, and that is another important reason for me to return home for a visit.” Also on rt.com Biden’s new ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine with Russia runs risk of Moscow deciding it has nothing to gain from good US relations

He further noted that he would return to Moscow in the coming weeks, before any potential summit between US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

The suggestion for Sullivan to leave Russia came from Yury Ushakov, an aide of Putin. On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained that Ushakov had “recommended” that the US ambassador “go to his capital city for thorough, serious consultations.”

The Kremlin recalled its own ambassador back to the Russian capital last month, to facilitate discussions with officials. There has been no decision yet on when, or if, he will return to Washington.

Putin says Russia developing high-tech nuclear & laser weapons, warning ‘provocateurs’ will regret crossing country’s red lines

21 Apr, 2021 13:07 Get short URL

Peresvet (laser weapon) © Wikipedia; (inset) Vladimir Putin © Sputnik / Mikhail Klimentyev

Follow RT on Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the vast majority of the country’s Soviet-era atomic stockpile will soon be replaced by modern weapons, warning that Moscow is intent on defending itself against foreign aggression.

Speaking as part of his annual address to the Federal Assembly in Moscow on Wednesday, Putin said that his government “wants to have positive relationships with everyone on the international stage, including those with whom relations have broken down recently. We really don’t want to burn bridges.”

At the same time, however, he cautioned that “those who mistake this stance for weakness need to know that Russia’s response [to any aggression] will be asymmetrical, swift and harsh.” Those planning provocations, he said, “will regret their deeds in a way they have not regretted anything else for a long time.”

As part of the country’s plans to defend itself, he said, its stockpile of strategic weapons is currently being overhauled, updating older Soviet-era equipment in favor of next-generation technology, such as “hypersonic and laser” armaments. Also on rt.com Putin promises ‘asymmetrical’ response to any threats made against Russia, promises those provoking Moscow will come to regret it

Among the overhaul, he revealed that the advanced RS-28 Sarmat missile will be delivered to troops in the field from 2022. A heavy intercontinental ballistic rocket, it boasts up to 15 nuclear warheads which can be directed against individual targets and each deliver 350 kilotons of atomic hellfire. Ship-mounted missiles and other, “next-generation” projectiles are also slated for deployment in the near future.

According to the president, more than two-thirds of Russia’s military equipment will be “modern” at the end of the next three years, while more than 88% of nuclear weapons will be this year as well.

Putin also referenced the Peresvet, a secretive laser cannon that is said to have the potential to shoot down both enemy aircraft and incoming missiles. The weapon has reportedly already been deployed to installations across the country.

“We have patience, self-confidence and righteousness on our side,” Putin added. “I hope no one will think of crossing red lines in their relations with Russia. Where that line sits is ours to determine.”

Nonsense and Insensibility: Trying to rewrite Jane Austen for ‘links’ to slavery shows the idiocy of woke historical revisionism , RT – April 21st 2021

20 Apr, 2021 16:38 Get short URL

Pride & Prejudice (2005) Dir: Joe Wright ©  Focus Features, Universal Pictures

Follow RT on

By Charlie Stone, author and journalist who has worked for the BBC, several national newspapers in the UK and international media.  The English novelist’s tea drinking is being subjected to “historical interrogation” over its slavery links and “Regency-era colonialism” in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests. Why? Who cares?

What good does it do anyway, all this picking away at the past?

‘Pride and Prejudice’ author Jane Austen and her characters often drank tea and plopped sugar into their cups. They also wore cotton. All products linked to the slave trade. Yup, that’s true.

So what? Also on rt.com ‘Madness’: Jane Austen museum to add displays on iconic writer’s ‘connection’ to colonialism & slavery after BLM protests

Ah, but her father, Rev. George Austen, you see – at one time he was the trustee of a sugar plantation on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Her dad, though – I’m just saying  – didn’t actually write any of those books beloved by millions for over 200 years.

Plus Britain, at the time she wrote her novels about the landed gentry at the end of the 18th century, was the biggest colonial power the world had ever seen. So, plenty of people  – most even, I guess – from the middle classes or above in that era no doubt had some links to practices and behaviours that run counter to the culture of today. Of course they did.

Again though, so what?

The author’s house in Chawton, Hampshire, where she wrote ‘Emma’ and ‘Mansfield Park’, is now the Jane Austen’s House Museum and future displays will analyse all this colonial era stuff.

As Lizzie Dunford, the museum’s director, told the Telegraph: “This is just the start of a steady and considered process of historical interrogation. The slave trade and the consequences of Regency-era Colonialism touched every family of means during the period. Jane Austen’s family were no exception.”

Well, of course, Lizzie. Exactly!

Tea drinking and that sedate society of the middle classes of her era is pretty much what most of her books are all about. Her novels – ‘Pride and Prejudice’, ‘Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Persuasion’, ‘Northanger Abbey’ – must have been pretty damned good though, if you think about it. They have most certainly withstood the proverbial test of time. She died in 1817. 

And there are signposts all over Hampshire, proudly declaring “Welcome to Jane Austen Country.” Protesters will no doubt have them on a list so they can be toppled or recycled in the name of some Hampshire-born activist nobody has ever heard of.

Austen, of course, isn’t the first to face this current obsession for navel gazing. And she won’t be the last, that’s for sure. Winston Churchill’s home Chartwell made it onto a National Trust hit list of historic places linked to “colonialism and slavery” due to the former prime minister’s role in the Bengal famine and his opposition to Indian independence. Rudyard Kipling and William Wordsworth’s homes also made the list due to their links to the empire. Read more Sssh, the hedge might get upset! National Trust caves in to woke mob by forcing its volunteer gardeners to do diversity training

The Trust’s list also, of course, came out after the Black Lives Matter protests last year. Researchers found that one third of its protected sites had ties to the “sometimes-uncomfortable role that Britain, and Britons, have played in global history.”

Yet again, so what? I mean, really, who cares? What difference does it make? Are they gonna try to cancel Churchill, Wordsworth, Kipling and Austen? And even if they did, what good would it do? Who gains from all this?

And how far do the woke mob wanna go back into the fat folds of time? The Roman emperors did more than a few nasty things, and let’s not get started on the Mongols, the Assyrians and myriad other cruel and bloodthirsty regimes in history. Dig back far enough and everybody is almost certainly linked by blood to a psychopathic killer, a rapist or  – worse to the warped woke abyss we seem to be falling into – an ancestor who may have been slightly offensive to a transgender woman.

Not only does the woke mob want to control and police every facet of the living, they’re also trying to get their hands around the dead: Austen, Churchill, Wordsworth et al. 

Oh, plus they want control over those who were never actually alive in the first place – the characters in her books: Mr. Darcy, Sir Walter Elliott, Elizabeth Bennett, the Dashwoods. They do know that none of these people ever actually breathed any air, polluted or otherwise?

And what about future authors, what about as yet unwritten books and characters? Writers these days are becoming impotent or simply have no chance of getting their work published because their characters don’t pass the woke test. 

All future books will be populated by characters that must fit an ideal template and never give offence. But they would not be familiar to anyone who actually lives in the real world and bumps and rubs up against real people. No writer will dare take a risk for fear of being shouted down and chased through Twitter and Facebook and Instagram by wokeists wielding their digital pitchforks.

Lionel Shriver, the author of We Need To Talk About Kevin, warned in a piece in Prospect magazine a while ago that “politically correct censorship” risks turning the world of fiction into a “timid, homogeneous, and dreary” place. 

And that means no more Ernest Hemingways, Stephen Kings, Cormac McCarthys. No more Jane Austens. And William Shakespeares? Forget it.

Not 4 EU Posted April 20th 2021

My son and I had significant differences over Brexit. It is difficult to separate the consequences of ‘leaving’ the EU with the related consequences and mystery of why lockdown is dubiously associated with controlling Covid19.

My son’s educated view is that ‘leaving’ the E.U will expose the British ruling elite for what they are , lying money grabbing fascists with politically correct shock troops and police lackeys. He tells me that the European Police State is worse. Meanwhile , in Europe, one intern commits suicide every 18 days because of Covid stress.

The first thing I learned about when studying A level history was the European Balance of Power after Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815 – at the Congress of Vienna. Napoleon is popularly seen as the bad guy , a prototype Hitler. In fact he was fighting the plutocrats and the ancien regime.

The Bourbons were so appalling that the British elite had no problem offering luxury shelter. Wellington was an arrogant pig who called his white working class troops ; ” The scum of the earth “. He was responsible for the 1819 definitive Peterloo Massacre.

Two world wars were about greed , money the balance of power – at the gullible masses’ expense. Hitler was window dressing, hero or anti hero depending on which side people were on. Nothing has changed. Cameron offered a referendum on Europe because he expected it, telling the EU the same, to get an endorsement for membership of the ever advancing Nazified European Police State – for which they were a driving force and major funder.

Inevitably Brexit isn’t working. It has exposed the Irish Good Friday Agreement for what it was – clandestine regional unification. The upset to trade has been considerable. Climate change has seriously affected food supply and prices. None of this matters. The rich are getting richer. Rolling fake demcoracy wars have displaced millions , overflowing into Europe.

Lockdown is a necessity, for elite survival. The myth of a virus as an act of God justifies all the secrecy and cover up – hence using fear to justify the so called ‘new normal…’ The police state growS stronger and some of us see suicide as a comforting idea. Life on the planet drives more and more insane. The best the ruling class can come up with is Multi Culture, BLM , Me too Gender War , support for LGBTQI rainbow world ( you will never find the end of the rainbow , so no crock of gold ) for all ages and more police to deal with the chaos and carnage. It will get worse.

Robert Cook

Newspapers April 19th 2021

Warning – the BBC are propagandists and we have more now on Russia – Comment on the following by Robert Cook April 18th 2021

Note the BBC certainty about Russia being linked to a 2014 event in the Czech Republic. The BBC represent the Anglo – U.S ruling elite.They talk and act like wounded virgins , about Russia because they want a regime more to their persuasion. Salisbury is a lot more complex than this elite will ever admit.

From the Russian perspective it makes no sense, nor does the Czech explosion beyond the fact that the Anglo/US/EU dominated NATO is arming and psyching up Eastern Europe to intimidate Russia. Obviously it would be naive to believe two Russian agents came to view a boring old Salisbury cathedral. However, they may have had other reasons for wanting to see an alleged Russian defector.

It is in the nature of spying that we can’t know the truth. However, for anything led by the Anglo-U.S elite to be taken at face value , when they intend to incarcerate war crime whistle blower Julian Assange as they have done with others, would also be very naive. It is interesting and most peculiar that the Skirpal’s weren’t allowed a TV press conference -the daughter having an FSB boyfriend , was heard on BBC Radio asking if what she had said ws O.K. They haven’t been seen or heard of since. Robert Cook

Salisbury poisoning suspects ‘linked to Czech blast’

By Gordon Corera
Security correspondent

Two Russian men suspected of carrying out the 2018 Salisbury poisonings are being linked to an explosion at an arms depot in the Czech Republic.

Evidence links the 2014 explosion, and an attempted poisoning in Bulgaria, to a unit of Russian military intelligence – the GRU – the BBC has learnt.

European intelligence agencies believe the GRU’s Unit 29155 is tasked with sabotage, subversion and assassination.

The Russian government said the claims were unfounded and absurd.

Czech authorities say they are expelling 18 Russian diplomats believed to be intelligence operatives in retaliation for the explosion, which killed two people.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the country had to react to revelations tying the blast to the GRU.

The country will inform Nato and European Union allies about its suspicions, and will discuss the matter at an EU foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday, its acting Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said.

The Russian foreign ministry said it would “take retaliatory measures that will force the authors of this provocation to fully understand their responsibility for destroying the foundation of normal ties between our countries”.

• Russian spy: What happened to the Skripals?
• What is the Salisbury poisoning’s legacy?
• Skripal poisoning: Third man ‘commanded attack’

A huge explosion tore apart an ammunitions storage depot in a forest in the Czech Republic on 16 October 2014.

Windows in nearby buildings were blown out and local schools were evacuated as emergency vehicles rushed to the scene. The remains of two men – aged 56 and 69 – who worked at the site were found more than a month later.

The blast was assumed to have been an accident.

But painstaking detective work by Czech authorities has pointed the finger at Moscow – and Unit 29155 of the GRU.

In the wake of the Salisbury poisoning, European security services have been investigating a series of previously unexplained events.

For Czech police, that included the October 2014 explosion. A crucial find, sources close to the investigation have told the BBC, was an email sent to Imex Group, the company which operated the depot.

It claimed to come from the National Guard of Tajikistan. It asked for two men to be given access to the site for an inspection visit. Scans of their passports were attached. The men were said to be Ruslan Tabarov from Tajikistan and Nicolaj Popa, a Moldovan citizen.

The pictures on the passports match those of the two men accused by Britain of the Salisbury poisoning.

Salisbury link

The two men travelled to the UK in March 2018 under the names Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov.

Both were caught on CCTV at Salisbury and identified by the Metropolitan Police as suspects in smearing Novichok nerve agent on the door handle of the house of former GRU officer Sergei Skripal.

Skripal and his daughter fell ill while a local woman, Dawn Sturgess, was killed months later by Novichok from a discarded perfume bottle.

The investigative site Bellingcat soon after identified Ruslan Boshirov as Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Petrov as Alexander Mishkin, both GRU officers.

The pair then appeared on Russian TV denying involvement, claiming they were sports nutritionists who visited Salisbury to see the spire of the cathedral.

On 11 October 2014, the men used the same cover identities they used in Salisbury – Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov – to arrive at Prague airport.

They stayed in Prague for two days (Chepiga’s presence had previously been noted based on social media posts but not linked to the explosion).

They then booked into accommodation in Ostrava, near the ammunition depot on 13 October. They were booked to stay until the 17 October.

The explosion took place on the 16th and that day the pair headed to Vienna airport to fly to Moscow. The authorities do not appear to know exactly how the depot was blown up.

Another clue, the BBC has learnt, was the email used to request the men’s visit to the arms depot. It was traced to a user in Russia rather than Tajikistan and when entered in a Skype directory linked to a username “Andrey O”.

The commander of Unit 29155 was first reported by the New York Times to be Andrey Averyanov and he is believed to have used Andrey Overyanov as a cover identity.

Another poisoning

Why would Russian intelligence blow up the arms depot?

One of the people storing weapons there was a Bulgarian arms dealer called Emilian Gebrev, sources have told the BBC.

That provided another link to Unit 29155.

In April 2015, six months after the Czech explosion, Gebrev fell seriously ill in the Bulgarian capital Sofia. After a month in hospital, he was released but then fell sick again. Despite suspicions, Bulgarian authorities made little progress amid talk it was simply food poisoning.

It was only after events in Salisbury in 2018 that people paid more attention.

The ‘third man’

A third man, using the name Sergei Fedotov had been identified as coming to the UK to oversee the Salisbury poisoning. And he was also found to have been in Bulgaria at the time of Gebrev’s poisoning.

Bulgarian authorities found that Fedotov and two other men from Unit 29155 had checked into a hotel in the same complex as Gebrev’s office in April 2015 and insisted on rooms with a view of the underground car park.

Surveillance of that car park released by a Bulgarian prosecutor last year shows one man approaching the cars of Gebrev, as well as his son and business partner who would also fall ill.

A toxic substance is believed to have been smeared on the handles – similar to the way Novichok was placed on the handle of Sergei Skripal’s house.

Although he had a return flight booked two days later, Fedotov left the country on April 28th – the day of the poisoning.

Why was Gebrev targeted?

It has been reported he was supplying weapons to a number of countries against Moscow’s wishes, possibly including Ukraine, or to other countries in competition with Russian suppliers, including in Asia.

And one business deal may also have brought him into direct conflict with powerful Russian businessmen linked to the GRU.

The explosion at the Czech depot in October 2014 looks like it could have been an initial attempt to hurt Gebrev’s business or issue a warning which was then followed up with an attempt to kill him.

But the only people to die were two innocent Czech men working at the depot. (There were also explosions at Bulgarian arms factories in 2015 although no link has publicly been made.)

On Saturday, the Czech Prime Minister announced evidence linked the explosion to the GRU and said 18 employees of the Russian embassy – identified as intelligence operatives – had to leave the country within 48 hours.

Czech police issued pictures of the two suspects saying they wanted to speak to them. Russian authorities say their constitution prevents the men being extradited.

Unit 29155

Czech ministers pointed the finger specifically at Unit 29155. European intelligence officials say its mission is sabotage, subversion and assassination.

They think it numbers around 200 but with only 20 or so of those involved in carrying out operations with the rest support staff.

As well as Salisbury, Bulgaria and now the Czech Republic, the unit has been linked to other operations including an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016.

A number of European countries are investigating past travel to see if it correlates with suspicious events. That means this revelation may not be the last.

The pair involved in Salisbury and now linked to the Czech explosion have not been seen since they were identified in 2018. But Unit 29155, western intelligence officials say, is still active.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the UK stands “in full support of our Czech allies, who have exposed the lengths that the Russian intelligence services will go to in their attempts to conduct dangerous and malign operations in Europe”.

Liam Scarlett: Former Royal Ballet choreographer dies at 35 Posted April 18th 2021

Liam Scarlett, the internationally-known choreographer who left the Royal Ballet last year after claims of sexual misconduct, has died at the age of 35.

His family called it a “tragic, untimely death”. The cause of death has not been disclosed.

A day earlier, the Royal Danish Theatre had reportedly cancelled his show over allegations of unacceptable behaviour.

The Royal Ballet cleared him after an independent investigation, but the British choreographer left the company.

• Choreographer Liam Scarlett to leave Royal Ballet

Scarlett had joined the Royal Ballet in 2006 as a dancer and retired six years later to dedicate himself to choreography. The artist-in-residence was responsible for creating some of the company’s major recent shows, including a new production of Swan Lake in 2018.

His work also included Despite, and Consolations and Liebestraum.

But he was suspended from his post in August 2019 after the allegations of misconduct with students emerged. Australia’s Queensland Ballet also cancelled work with him as a result.

On Friday, the Royal Danish Theatre announced it was cancelling a planned production of the ballet Frankenstein, for which Scarlett was the guest choreographer, over alleged misconduct towards its staff in 2018 and 2019, the Times reported.

In a statement announcing the death, the family said: “At this difficult time for all of our family, we would ask that you respect our privacy to enable us to grieve our loss.”

The Royal Opera House said on Twitter: “Our thoughts are with his friends and family at this very sad time.”

The Royal Ballet said it was “deeply saddened to hear the news of Liam Scarlett’s death”.

Comment Sex is a minefield for men , including gays. There is no statute of limitations and allegationsare always against men , The accused is immediately pilloried and sacked. How can art survive this policing ? It has already become pedantic , pretentious agonising predictable and dull. Robert Cook

Prince Philip’s Funeral: Latest Updates April 17th 2021

The Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II and patriarch of the House of Windsor, died last week at age 99.

Queen Elizabeth II, wearing a black mask and seated alone, said goodbye to her husband of more than 73 years, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, at his funeral on Saturday at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.

The ceremony for Prince Philip, who died last week at age 99, was highly unusual — in part because coronavirus restrictions meant that it had to be scaled back, but also because it followed a very public airing of a family rift.

Members of the royal family — Philip’s four children, Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward, and some of his grandchildren, including William and Harry — walked in a somber procession behind his coffin as it was driven to the chapel.

As is custom, no family members delivered a eulogy, but the Right Rev. David Conner, dean of Windsor, who conducted the funeral service, spoke of “the many ways in which his long life has been a blessing to us.”

“We have been inspired by his unwavering loyalty to our queen, by his service to the nation and the Commonwealth, by his courage, fortitude and faith,” he said. “Our lives have been enriched through the challenges that he has set us, the encouragement that he has given us, his kindness, humor and humanity.”

Pandemic rules in Britain meant that the funeral was pared down, with adjustments including a limit of 30 guests at the church service. The queen and the select family members in attendance all wore masks and were seated six feet apart in the chapel.

But the subdued service reflected not only the reality of life in a pandemic, but also Philip’s own wishes for the ceremony, Buckingham Palace said. The prince was deeply involved in the organization of the event, which was years in the planning.

Before the ceremony, his coffin was moved on Saturday afternoon from a private chapel in Windsor Castle to the castle’s Inner Hall, where prayers were said.

The ceremony was rich with symbolism and nods to Philip’s life of service to the royal family and to Britain. The Grenadier Guards, a centuries-old regiment of the British Army, which the Duke of Edinburgh served as a colonel for more than four decades, placed his coffin on a hearse that the prince helped design. The vehicle, a modified Land Rover Defender, then led a small procession toward St. George’s Chapel, also on the grounds of Windsor Castle.

The process of designing the hearse began 18 years ago, and tweaks were still being made up until 2019. The open-top rear section was custom-made to Philip’s specifications, and the original vehicle was repainted “dark bronze green,” typical of military use, at his request.

Philip served in the Royal Navy, seeing combat during World War II, and his naval cap and sword were placed on his coffin before the funeral service. The coffin was draped in his personal flag, which pays tribute to his Greek heritage and his British titles. A variety of other military groups were represented during the procession, and a team of Royal Marines carried his coffin into St. George’s Chapel.

In the procession, members of the royal family with honorary military titles wore suits displaying their medals rather than uniforms, apparently in deference to Prince Harry, who was forced to give up his military titles when he stepped away from royal duties.

The queen arrived at the chapel by car. Before the service began, there was a national minute of silence.

There was much speculation about how the family dynamic would play out, as the funeral will be the first time that Harry has returned to Britain since stepping down as a senior royal. The service also came just weeks after he and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, gave a bombshell interview to Oprah Winfrey in which they laid bare their problems with the royal family.

The funeral service lasted less than an hour. A choir of four sang music chosen by Prince Philip, but were some distance from the seated guests, in line with public health guidelines.

Near the end of the service, the “Last Post” was played by musicians from Britain’s Royal Marines, before military buglers had one final task. As planned by Prince Philip, the buglers sounded so-called Action Stations — a call used on naval warships to summon crew to battle readiness.

His body was interred in the royal vault in St. George’s Chapel. Flags in Britain that have flown at half-staff at royal residences since his death will remain that way until Sunday.

— Megan Specia

‘Critical point of the pandemic’: WHO warns Covid cases are ‘growing exponentially’ globally

12 Apr, 2021 16:16 Get short URL

FILE PHOTO: Medical workers prepare to manually prone a COVID-19 patient in an intensive care unit at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles. ©  AP Photo / Jae C. Hong

Follow RT on As some states proceed with easing lockdown, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the pandemic is at a “critical point” and new infections are “growing exponentially,” with 4.4 million cases globally last week.

Speaking on Monday, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, laid out how “we’re in a critical point of the pandemic” despite some nations claiming to have brought the virus domestically under control, as cases globally are currently eight times higher than they were a year ago.

This is not the situation we want to be in 16 months into a pandemic where we have proven control measures.

Citing recent figures, the infectious disease epidemiologist said cases have been “growing exponentially,” with the WHO documenting more than 4.4 million new infections per week worldwide. The week’s global case figures are the highest for a seven-day period since mid-January.

The stark remarks come as states in America and parts of the United Kingdom ease their lockdown restrictions, claiming the virus has been brought under control through Covid-19 restrictions and the fast rollout of their vaccination programs. Also on rt.com Apple and Google block UK NHS Covid app update on privacy grounds

However, while some states are starting to relax, the WHO official highlighted how other countries are still crippled by the virus, as vaccinations “aren’t here yet in every part of the world.”

Taking a similar line to his colleague, the WHO’s emergencies program head, Dr Mike Ryan, said the virus is becoming “stronger” and “faster” due to the spread of mutated strain. He warned countries to maintain safety measures, such as mask mandates and social distancing.

The WHO’s latest comments on the state of the pandemic follow the news that India has surpassed Brazil as the second worst-infected country in the world, only behind the US. The government in New Delhi has recorded more than 13.5 million cases across the country since the start of the pandemic. Over 30.7 million Covid infections have been logged in the US to date.

Posted April 11th 2021 F.S

Respond to this post by replying above this line   New post on The Slog   WORLD COVID EXCLUSIVE by John Ward Massive doubts raised about ethics & efficacy behind Oxford-Astrazenica “vaccine” —————– Some fill-in establishing information is required to help explain this post. That’s because the issuer of the data is obscure – but very important to the “guidance” of government policy. SP-I-MO stands for Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling. It reports into the SAGE/Secretary of State Number Ten Group. Almost nobody in the UK has ever heard of it, and its pronouncements online are stored in an unexpected place under the “assets publishing service”. What follows aren’t leaks; they’re representative extracts from the latest SPIMO report, issued on March 31st last, and discussed in Downing Street some ten days ago. As far as can be gleaned the data reports are given sporadically….as in, when SPIMO has something to say. As you will see, at the end of March, SPIMO had a lot to say. I willingly give a huge hat-tip to Slogger ‘Dutch Cap’ for inspiring this investigation. Unsurprisingly – albeit incomprehensibly, given their track-record – SPIMO gives advice entirely on the basis of models. The document under scrutiny here was almost entirely to do with the effects of Boris Johnson’s “roadmap” for exit from lockdown – allegedly a one-way street, but already showing signs of roadworks delays. Taken as a whole, it is at times contradictory and prone to almost surreal conclusions: my IQ is allegedly 142, but having read all 23 pages three times, I confess that, were I the Secretary of State, I’d be utterly confused about what to do. That aside, however, some of the observations are astonishing. This first one below is bare-faced in its admission of failure: The explosive statement there is ‘immunisation failures account for more serious illness than unvaccinated individuals’. Five pages later, reference is made to data used to make further modelled projections as follows: ”assuming two doses of AstraZeneca provide only 31% effectiveness against transmission”. So in short, SPIMO is working on the basis of a supposed ‘vaccine’ that fails to stop the spread of infection in more than two out of three cases. This is radically different to the impression government publicity has given us – viz, that “even after vaccination, it may still be possible for you to infect others”. It sounds cautionary and responsible, but asking around a sample of acquaintances yesterday, they imagined a figure of around 80% – not 31%. Under 1 in 3 is, let’s face it, a risible result. But the initial statement cuts the legs off continuing the vaccination rollout, because it rejects the benefit such might bring with the haunting words, “Immunisation failures account for more serious illnesses than unvaccinated individuals”. So much for “Don’t be selfish, get the jab”. But ever the man obsessed with a bone, Hancock is ploughing forward doggedly with a vaccine programme that simply isn’t justified by the facts. Equally however, it further justifies the claim I made a fortnight ago, that government insistence on a causal relationship between vacination on one hand, and reduced cases and deaths on the other is pure baloney. Fast forward to the “further discussion” promised on this topic, and try to contain your laughter at this gem, referring to an associated chart: 56. This shows that most deaths and admissions in a post-Roadmap resurgence are in people who have received two vaccine doses, even without vaccine protection waning or a variant emerging that escapes vaccines. This is not the result of vaccines being ineffective, merely uptake being so high. You couldn’t make this up: even without left-field factors, there’ll be a resurgence after lockdown exit, but this is not Astrazeneca’s fault – the “problem” was high uptake. By vaccinating the vulnerable bigtime, we killed more people, but a drug struggling to demonstrate efficacy had nothing to do with it. The first sentence at Pt 56 above contradicts the second, but the conclusion drawn is denial beyond reason. It suggests two sensitivities: first, a political commitment to the Astrazeneca product come what may; and second – much more disturbing – a casting of doubt about the Oxford Recovery test results offered during development. Oxford Recovery, as we know, has form in this area via Peter Horby and his HCQ ‘trial’ that allegedly killed some 22 patients. I have also in past Slogposts pointed out inexplicable differences of opinion about the second dosage between AZ and Oxford. I realise that this is a serious charge, but as I showed yesterday, a lot is at stake here. We’ll return to that unpleasant business later in this piece. Meanwhile, ready for another giggle? Below is an object lesson in yes-and-no-with-reservations: Take cover in the event of threatened buttocks. Basically, the above says, “Sorry guys, but after Step4 of lockdown withdrawal, you’re on your own”. In this next one however, there are some very bad signs of private intentions versus public mendacity: First of all, it gives more than a hint of waning faith in the AZ product…..”to allow for the next generation of vaccines to be developed”. But the need for ‘many months’ to do so (or in a safe world, five years) means we must maintain “strict quarantine measures for those entering the country will remain important”. It feels to the sane reader like – as many online commentators have suggested – the New Normal is not going anywhere soon. Or at least, not while these deranged clowns are on the case. It also suggests serial vaccine development likely to make at least two people at Oxford Recovery billionaires. Last but not least, Pontius Pilate washes his hands – presumably as part and parcel of previously recommended hygiene procedures to do with staying at home in order to infect the entire family: Basically, here the authors contradict recent publicly expressed Number Ten confidence in herd immunity by saying coronavirus immunity wanes: so as they haven’t taken that into account in their models [why not?] let’s chuck some more plates in the air and see where they land, hmm? That should do the trick: oh, and by the way (Pt 66 doesn’t add) all viruses mutate and they never go away entirely: they are a part of life – Kiwi and Aussie political classes, please note. Covid19 is not a deadly pandemic, it is another type of seasonal killer that culls the aged and infirm – but produces, on a global basis, no significant rise in such mortality. It is and always was an excuse to contain and control. Forecasting models – be they commercial, climate, virus or fiscal in nature – have a truly appalling track record of laughable inaccuracy: the very last thing they represent is “science”. The State uses models because they frighten people….and frightened people (as we have seen over the last fifteen months) are easier to coerce. The fact that they continue to employ these cowboys suggests strongly to the objective mind that their aim is to eradicate liberty – not a largely benign virus. But not everything is about the Unelected/Secret State and its intentions. Other fellow-travellers jump on the gravy train, the scent of monied power in their nostrils. Yesterday here I repeated the FT/Sky News story about secretive plans to float Oxford Recovery’s spin-off onto the NYSE using the vehicle of Vaccitech – in which Vaccine team-leader Sarah Gilbert and her colleague Adrian Hill retain a 10% shareholding likely to be worth in the region of £40million after a successful launch on the market. Today – thanks to the sharp eyes of veteran Slogger KJH pointing me in the right direction – I am able to reveal further grubbiness. Vaccitech’s main investors include former top Deutsche Bank executives, Google and the UK government. Three in a bed comprising the most toxic bank on the planet, a viciously censorious search engine, and a serially mendacious corporatocracy. It doesn’t inspire thoughts of confidence in the ethics of it. Equally, it raises a question: what will HM Gov do with a medtech IPO windfall, and who in Whiteminster stands to benefit? Adrian Hill and Sarah Gilbert are a longterm item who get together at the Wellcome Trust. It has clear and long established links to the Galton Eugenics Society – whose aims largely surround culls of racially and gentically “inferior” humans. Lots in common with Bill Gates and George Soros, then. Adrian Hill was the boss of the Jenner Institute – which the BMJ found guilty of knowingly misleading parents in South Africa about the negative results of, and questionable methods used in animal studies, as well a vaccine being known to be ineffective. (See earlier – more form here for Plod to think about when he has spare time after beating up demonstrators). Further, an experimental tuberculosis vaccine developed jointly by Emergent Biosolutions and the Jenner Institute was scrapped following a controversial study in infants when it was confirmed that the vaccine was ineffective. The trial was praised as “historic” by the BBC. Can anyone else hear the bell tolling for us here? This is mind-blowing, horrific stuff. It suggests fakery, hidden intentions, manslaughter, genocidal agendas, and serial political lying on a scale beyond industrial. It also vindicates all those of us who have said throughout most of this saga that the “pandemic” presentation of SarsCov2 makes no fiscal, medical, social, cost-benefit, statistical or indeed scientific sense whatsoever. The Astrazeneca drug has all the hallmarks of being a fake vaccine. The original Watergate questions must be asked again: “Who knew, what did they know, and when did they know it?” In the here and now, however, it is time to call those paid to prosecute and punish calumny to the table. It is the moment of Truth not just for Britain, but for all of humanity. Those of sound mind and fair heart should now focus on forcing accountability to come to pass – despite the fact that those charged with that role would rather pass on it. We’re on our own, but we must: · Demand that MPs force an emergency public inquiry into the Astrazeneca product in particular, and the virusecrecy surrounding Covid policy in particular · Get Whitty, Vallance, Horby, Hill, Gilbert and Ferguson in front of a Commons committee with teeth this time rather than gums · Write to every Commons MP with the simple message, “Ask a PMQ and open this can of worms forthwith, or lose my vote forever” · Ask every candidate in the May 6th Hartlepool by-election to confirm their support for those actions – and if necessary pile in behind the candidate who seems most sincere in his or her support · Face up to the reality that we have men and women in high places who are bought….and one key action to stop their totalitarian agenda is to move swiftly and with élan into making gains in local politics · Knock small Party egos together and build a united front for open government and the reclamation of all liberties lost · Get this reality off the ground in the rest of Europe and the US, where the Astrazenica fake is rapidly becoming a default choice · Scrap the Vaccitech IPO · Stop buying the Times, Guardian and New York Times. Stop watching the BBC. · Stick a large band-aid over Edwina Curry’s capacious mouth. · Get peaceful but serious mass civil disobedience under way. · Do what you can – please – to ensure this post gets a proper airing far and wide. · Ask Labour to grow some cojones and dump their collaboration in this filthy business. (This is said more in hope than any expection)

Why does loyalism matter so much in Northern Ireland , where someone told me they even paint the kerbstones red white and blue ? – Robert Cook April 10th 2021

Scenes of violence on the streets of Northern Ireland this week prompted many to recall the country’s troubled past: rioters pelting rocks at police, young men with covered faces throwing petrol bombs and bricks.

Videos shared on social media Thursday showed a driverless bus rolling down a Belfast street with its doors open. Two young men, dressed in black, pelt it with Molotov cocktails. Another video taken minutes later shows the vehicle engulfed in flames. The driver, chased from his cockpit seconds before, escaped unhurt but shaken.

Read More: Brexit Could Jeopardize Peace in Northern Ireland—and America Is Ignoring It

Seven nights of rioting on the streets of the Northern Irish capital have left 74 police officers injured, in what observers say is the country’s worst violence in years. Late Thursday, the White House appealed for calm. “We are concerned by the violence in Northern Ireland,” President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement, adding that Biden hoped for a “secure and prosperous Northern Ireland in which all communities have a voice and enjoy the gains of the hard-won peace.”

Fairy Tales – Posted April 10th 2021

I just heard and saw an old clip of the late Duke of Edinburgh , aka Prince Phillip, whre he said on a BBC obituary programme : “Today it doesn’t matter when or whether it rains or blows , it’s wet or its cold. People just get indoors.” He was speaking as an old sailor. But in today’s world he showed a great lack of contact with what is really going on.

I keep hearing on the BBC , as I write, of his life of service. This is a simplification. There is no doubt this pauper German prince did well as refugee from a Greece seeing no future with Royalty, to marry a member of another related German Royal family.

The fact that he distinguished himself during a world war that was an outcome of conflict between his imperialistic in bred ancestors from Russia, Germany and Britain should be nothing to boast about. Both world wars killed so many unknowns, like my uncle Charles who served with the London Irish Rifles. Those wars were fought for the wealthy by minions.

He got lucky and had a fun and lavish life – a founder member of ‘The Hell Fire Club’. When he said anything off script and useful, he was savaged by the press. The reality of Royalty was part of what anthropologists call solidarity rituals.

There is no doubt he did good, but the class system he came to represent continues to do much bad. People sleep rough among the bins and bus shelters outside the Royals’ beloved Windsor Castle. They were brutally moved on the day spoiled Prince Harry married moaning Meghan in a mini Royal solidarity ritual intended to make Royalty appear inclusive.

It failed. The neon writing on the wall should have been seen during the Charles and Diana affair. Royalty were reinvented by importing this minor German Royal family , distant relatives of the Stuarts to block ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ and the Jacobites. They are now part of the propaganda industry as a smokescreen for a gender fragmented multi culutural society that fails far too many of us.

As a former Royalist, I must , however say , he was a remarkable man and could have done even more good free from the constraints of the monarchy. No husband or wife can be perfect. As the old saying goes, ‘ To er is human.’ The Queen does not need me to tell her how lucky she was to have and love him. She called him her constant strength and guide. For me , I must say he knew how to go for the jugular.

He put his finger on the spot when he told the BBC’s John Humphrey’s that the real challenge for human survival on the planet is an unsustainable global population growing at over 2% a year. He was never popular when he spoke the truth. Today’s virtue signalling liberals didn’t like him,. They were delighted when he suddenly retired age 96. All that’s happening now , with tributes are talking fairytales. Robert Cook

Prince Phillip Dies – end of a fairy tale April 9th 2021

The longest serving Royal Consort, Prince Philip will be remembered for his long life of public service, his commitment to the Queen and his embrace of modernity.

By Ian Lloyd Friday 9 April 2021

The reign of Queen Elizabeth II has been, for all intents and purposes, a joint one. For 65 of her seven decades on the throne the majority of her public engagements were carried out alongside the man she once referred to as her ‘strength and stay.’ From the State Opening of Parliament to the opening of a factory in Sheffield, or criss-crossing the globe from Algeria to Zimbabwe the programme was reassuringly ‘in the presence of HM the Queen and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh.’

Historians have emphasised their strong work ethic, one of many personality traits the royal couple shared. Prince Philip, like the Queen, embodied the Second World War generation’s values of duty, self-sacrifice and loyalty to King/Queen and country.The Duke of Edinburgh has died aged 99

N Ireland leaders call for calm after night of violenceAP NEWS

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https://thecritic.co.uk/vaccine-certification-when-intolerance-meets-hypochondria/

A very convenient pandemic

In what universe does this make sense ? F.S April 8th 2021

Under the threat of substantial fines, we’re currently prevented from leaving the country. But I hear that 8000 tourists a day are coming in through our airports at the moment.

Flying High Posted April 8th 2021

Almost one in four HS2 employees are being paid more than £100,000 a year, it has been revealed.

The news comes despite the government insisting it is “keeping a tough grip” on the cost of the controversial project.

Some 318 people – out of the 1,346 employed on the new high-speed railway – are earning at least £100,000 in salary and perks, according to a information given to The Times under the Freedom of Information Act.

This number is an increase compared with the 155 who were paid six figures in 2015/16, the newspaper reported.

Some 112 people are receiving more than £150,000 annually and 15 have pay packets topping £251,000.

An HS2 Ltd spokeswoman said: “In a highly technical project of the scale and complexity of HS2 it is necessary to employ the right level of expertise and knowledge to deliver the programme successfully.

“As the project moves increasingly towards construction, as does our need for highly technical support increase.

N Ireland leaders call for calm after night of violence – April 8th 2021

By PETER MORRISON and JILL LAWLESS35 minutes ago

1 of 10Hijacked cars burn at the peace wall on Lanark Way as rioting broke out in West Belfast, Northern Ireland, Wednesday, April 7, 2021. The police had to close roads into the nearby Protestant area as crowds from each divide attacked each other. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Young people set a hijacked bus on fire and hurled gasoline bombs at police in Belfast in at least the fourth night of serious violence in a week in Northern Ireland, where Britain’s exit from the European Union has unsettled an uneasy political balance.

People also lobbed bricks, fireworks and gasoline bombs Wednesday night in both directions over a concrete “peace wall” that separates Protestant, British loyalist and Catholic, Irish nationalist neighborhoods.

Police Service of Northern Ireland Assistant Chief Constable Jonathan Roberts said several hundred people gathered on both sides of a gate in the wall, where “crowds … were committing serious criminal offenses, both attacking police and attacking each other.”

He said a total of 55 police officers have been injured over several nights of disorder.

The recent violence, largely in loyalist, Protestant areas, has flared amid rising tensions over post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland and worsening relations between the parties in the Protestant-Catholic power-sharing Belfast government. Britain’s economic split from the EU last year has disturbed the political balance in Northern Ireland, where some people identify as British and want to stay part of the U.K., while others see themselves as Irish and seek unity with the neighboring Republic of Ireland, which is an EU member.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson condemned the unrest, and Northern Ireland’s Belfast-based government was holding an emergency meeting Thursday on the violence.

Johnson appealed for calm, saying “the way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or criminality.” Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster, of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, and Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill, of Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, both condemned the disorder and the attacks on police.

The latest disturbances followed unrest over the Easter long weekend in pro-British unionist areas in and around Belfast and Londonderry, also known as Derry, that saw cars set on fire and projectiles and gasoline bombs hurled at police officers.

Authorities have accused outlawed paramilitary groups of inciting young people to cause mayhem.

“We saw young people participating in serious disorder and committing serious criminal offenses, and they were supported and encouraged, and the actions were orchestrated by adults at certain times,” said Roberts, the senior police officer.

A new U.K.-EU trade deal has imposed customs and border checks on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. The arrangement was designed to avoid checks between Northern Ireland and Ireland because an open Irish border has helped underpin the peace process built on the 1998 Good Friday accord.

That accord ended decades of violence involving Irish republicans, British loyalists and U.K. armed forces in which more than 3,000 people died. But unionists say the new checks amount to a new border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. They fear that undermines the region’s place in the United Kingdom and could bolster ties with the Irish Republic, strengthening calls for a united Ireland.

Both Britain and the EU have expressed concerns about how the agreement is working, and the Democratic Unionist Party, which heads the Northern Ireland government, has called for it to be scrapped.

Katy Hayward, a professor at Queen’s University Belfast and senior fellow of the U.K. in a Changing Europe think tank, said unionists felt that “the union is very much under threat, that Northern Ireland’s place is under threat in the union and they feel betrayed by London.”

Unionists are also angry at a police decision not to prosecute Sinn Fein politicians who attended the funeral of a former Irish Republican Army commander in June. The funeral of Bobby Storey drew a large crowd, despite coronavirus rules barring mass gatherings.

The main unionist parties have demanded the resignation of Northern Ireland’s police chief over the controversy, claiming he has lost the confidence of their community.

“You have a very fizzy political atmosphere in which those who are trying to urge for calm and restraint are sort of undermined,” Hayward said.

Comment Ireland has an interesting history. Tribal rivalries made it a target for colonialism. The Protestant Reformation, beyond the Scots Presbyterians travelling to the north, never happened. Scheming Irish former maths professor, Spanish Irish American Eamon deValera played Stalin’s role of fake heroics during the 1917 uprsing.

He arranged the assassination of peacemaker Michael Collins in O’Connell Street in 1921 in order to bind and control the newly created Southern Irish Republic by creating fear of the Protestant north , thus undermining unity . So , according to papers released in 1990, he refused Churchill’s request for use of the Atlantic ports in 1940, in return for unification.

He knew how to play the numbers, reasoning that his party’s election victories depended on stirring up anti British hatred – all rather British really.

Brexit , under the influence of the dangerous fool Johnson, has exposed the fact that ‘The Good Friday Agreement’ was a con for back door unity. Multi culture doesn’t work. People need things in common. Politicians either don’t know or don’t want to know. They don’t care how many die because of this, so long as it isn’t them doing the dying.

Robert Cook

What a State we’re in ! Posted April 7th 2021

Craig Murray, a former British diplomat, once said that if the government wants you to know something, it won’t be true. April 7th 2021

April 6th 2021 Cry Freedom or Just Cry.

Old Ways of Old Ireland – R.J Cook April 6th 2021

Time Travelling On the buses April 6th 2021

Truth must not be told, blaming and controlling social media is scapegoating failings of and reinforcing Britain’s police state social engineering, Comment later today. R.J Cook April 5th 2021

Twelve girls aged between 12 and 16 are thought to be part of a message thread which police fear led to ‘suicidal crises’ and ‘serious self-harm’. The group was found after three girls went missingmirror

Police have uncovered a social media group used by teenagers whose name refers to suicide, it has been reported.

Twelve girls aged between 12 and 16 are thought to be part of an Instagram message thread which police fear led to “suicidal crises” and “serious self-harm”.

The girls, from southern England, had conversations in an Instagram group whose title mentions the words “suicide” and “missing”.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, said the group was not removed because the content of the messages in it does not break the social media platform’s rules.

Police discovered the message thread after three of the girls went missing and were found unwell in London, a report seen by BBC News said.

They had travelled to train to the capital and, after being found unwell in a street, they were taken by ambulance to hospital for emergency treatment.

According to a police report, one of the girls mentioned they had met online and had discussed suicide.

Officers found the Instagram group after examining digital devices and found that seven of the 12 members had self-harmed prior to being traced by the police, BBC News reports.

Police said that “peer-to-peer influence increased suicidal ideation amongst the children involved to the extent that several escalated to suicidal crises and serious self-harm.”

Facebook said it was co-operating with the police and found no evidence that the group’s members were breaking Instagram’s rules around suicide and self-harm.

A spokesperson for British Transport Police – which led the investigation – told The Mirror: “Officers were called to Chingford station in the early hours of March 1st, following concern for the welfare of three teenage girls. They were taken to hospital for medical assessment and were later discharged and we worked to ensure relevant safeguarding measures were in place.

“An investigation is currently ongoing into a report of a social media page encouraging harmful behaviour, which is also believed to be linked to a second concern for welfare incident in London later that day.

“The page has now been deleted, and these are believed to be localised incidents. British Transport Police are working closely with partner agencies to ensure the continued safeguarding of those involved.

“While there is no suggestion of this reaching a wider network, we’d urge parents to be vigilant around their children’s social media use and to report an concerns to us by texting 61016 or calling 0800 40 50 40.”

The Mirror has contacted Facebook for comment.

Last year, a coroner’s court heard that a schoolgirl browsed social media-posts about suicide and self-harm too disturbing for police to look at for extended periods of time.

Before Molly Russell took her own life in 2017 she viewed content online linked to depression, anxiety and suicide.

The 14-year-old viewed a lot of ‘pretty dreadful’ Instagram posts which have now been handed over by parent company Facebook to lawyers investigating her death.

Since his daughter’s death, Ian Russell has been a vocal campaigner for reform of social media platforms and set up the Molly Rose Foundation in her memory.

In a report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists published in January, he said: “Among the usual school friends, pop groups and celebrities followed by 14-year-olds, we found bleak depressive material, graphic self-harm content and suicide encouraging memes.

“I have no doubt that social media helped kill my daughter.”

Police say dozens arrested, 10 officers injured at ‘policing operation’ – aka ‘Kill the Bill’ protests Posted April 4th 2021

3 Apr, 2021 21:25 Get short URL

©  REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

Follow RT on Protests in the UK over proposed legislation that would crack down on public demonstrations have led to ten officers being injured and dozens people arrested, according to police, who describe the event as a “policing operation.”

“Today’s policing operation is still ongoing and arrest numbers may rise, but at this time, 26 people have been arrested for a variety of offences,” London’s Metropolitan Police announced on Saturday hours after numerous protests kicked off in 25 cities in the UK, including London.

It was also revealed that 10 officers have sustained injuries “during the operation,” but none of them have been serious. 

Today’s policing operation is still ongoing and arrest numbers may rise, but at this time, 26 people have been arrested for a variety of offences. Ten police officers received injuries during the operation; none of these are believed to be serious.— Metropolitan Police Events (@MetPoliceEvents) April 3, 2021

In a statement, Commander Ade Adelekan, who is leading the “policing operation,” said the “vast majority” of protesters have adhered to social distancing guidelines “engaged with my officers when required and left when asked.”

A small majority being less cooperative, however, led police to move to “the enforcement stage,” according to Adelekan.

He added that the protests threatened the “progress” that has been made in the fight against Covid-19, and blasted “the selfish actions of a small number of people.”

We remain in the middle of a global pandemic and we have made great progress in controlling the spread of the virus; we will not allow the selfish actions of a small number of people to put Londoners progress in jeopardy.

Just before their update, police urged people to “leave and return home.” Officials had previously warned citizens that such large demonstrations violate current Covid-19 restrictions and they could be fined by police.

Demonstrators on Saturday marched and gave speeches while holding signs with slogans such as ‘Kill the Bill,’ referring to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The proposed legislation would give police more authority in restricting public protests, supposedly in an effort to avoid rioting and destruction to property. Critics believe the “draconian” bill is thinly-veiled crackdown on the freedom of assembly, which has already been de-facto heavily restricted by the tough British Covid-19 regulations. Also on rt.com ‘Kill the Bill’: Londoners march against proposed law that would give police more powers to crack down on public protests (VIDEOS)

Regional Round-up of Harvest Prospects and Trends for Cropping in 2021

I was born and bred in a rural community. I was working on a farm aged 12, mucking out the animal pens, driving sheep on open roads , rounded up cattle and helped recapture an escaped bull. The first vehicle I ever drove was a Massey Ferguson 35 tractor and trailer loaded with hay bales in 1963, no roll bar and I was the little squirt who packed the last bales high in the hot upper back reaches of the Dutch barn. Country ways were my ways.

I went away to university and city life. There I formed the impression that the likes of former PM Tony Blair and city folk have a very patronising attitudeto us rural folk. Hence the creation of DEFRA where environmental and climate issues – which are an outcome of so called developing countries over population and his sort of war mongering are more important than feeding the British population explosion which is fed by mass and endless third world immigration. Technology is supposed to be the answer. Yesterday I was surprised to see some very old technology at work on a North Bucks farm.

The poor state of affairs in local agriculture and across the country has been obvious from what I have seen on my country walks. When it comes to food production, climatic extremes and emerging exotic diseases, such as bluetongue and African swine fever, are arguably of more concern than the likes of COVID-19, given their potential to devastate production/supplies, both in summer and winter, accidental fire and heat stress to livestock, to name but a few, are all growing issues that have been linked to climate change.

Meanwhile to question global over population by the likes of African women having an average of 15 babies each and the mad rush of opportunistic migrants from Catholic Latin America in to the U.S.A, is considered racist. White people are not allowed a point of view. Whatever, the global food and population outlook is grim.

Malthus’s warnings have been down played with hope placed in absurd crops like IR35 etc, along with banning meat for the masses. Back in 1971, I had to write an extended 5000 word essay around the Ministry of Agriculture’s quote : ‘British Agriculture is dead All that remains to do is bury it.’

Strutt & Parker’s farming consultants offer a regional insight into crop prospects for harvest 2020 and how growers are approaching the 2021 cropping season.

Common themes and key messages:

• Caution about selling too much grain forward, because of pessimistic outlook for yields.
• Growers should see significant savings in fungicide spend because of the dry 2020 conditions, which coupled with better prices, will help.
• Growers generally looking to drill earlier this year, despite blackgrass and BYVD risks.
• Wheat likely to form large part of many rotations – necessary for income and stability and because there is seed on farm that needs using up.
• Whether to include OSR in the rotation will be localised decision, based on conditions at the time.

Harriet Ross – Scotland 

It has been an extraordinary growing season, so far, here in Scotland. After some on the wettest winter months seen on record, April in Scotland was the third driest on record. The contrast with the winter months could hardly be starker.

Crops that sat doing nothing through April, inevitably put on growth spurts and raced through the stages in May. The variation in crop advancement is reducing but the difference in yield potential is very striking.

Harvest 2020 yields expectations are looking extremely varied throughout Scotland. Here in the north east we have had an almost perfect growing season and missed most of the extreme weather, so crops are looking well and yields should be good. However, further south crops are now drought-stressed at the crucial grain filling growth stage. Yields are expected to be significantly less in these regions. The good news is prices have been steadily increasing over the past month, this should help with the generally poorer yields.

2021 cropping will generally remain unchanged, but completely depends on the weather we get after harvest. In southern Scotland, growers might try and get crops drilled earlier than last year. This will increase the chance to get plants well established before any wet weather hits. We are also lucky to still be able to grow viable oilseed rape crops, although more insect issues have been seen this season. Some establishment methods need to be reconsidered for next season. Although the weather played a part, some combinations of kit have really not worked too well in the circumstances and whatever else, we need to be able to make a decent job in a wide range of conditions.

Growers are already busy buying inputs for the coming season. Fuel and fertiliser being two of the main inputs that are a very good price at the moment. Businesses are also looking into the future and some are setting up grain contract options for the next couple of years. With a lot of uncertainty around what will happen with trade deals at the end of the Brexit transition year, growers are wanting to have as much certainty as possible that there will be an end market for their products.

Alice Montrose – Oxfordshire

Here in the centre of the country we are lucky to have a large mixture of soil types which allows us to grow a wide range of crops, spread planting and harvest windows and also diffuse risk in terms of crop performance. On the flip side, looking after this wide range of crops also means we experience a vast array of problems!

On the lighter land, the winter cereals we managed to drill in the very wet autumn came out of the winter well and looked to have real potential. However, the wet soil conditions prevented the crops from establishing adequate root systems to tolerate this drought. Therefore, both the winter wheat and winter barley is turning very quickly. This is not so much of an issue in the barley which is well into the grain-filling stage but more of an issue in the wheats where the ears are only just beginning to flower. However, with rain on the horizon hopefully it is not too late! We will be adding micronutrients in with the ear washes to help crops hold on as long as possible – magnesium and boron to help chlorophyll production continue, copper to help prevent blind grain sights and zinc to prevent ear abortion.

It is a similar story with the spring crops on the heavy land where very little winter crops were planted. If seedbeds were not prepared well in the autumn or if crops were drilled slightly too early, establishment was severely affected and therefore the already stressed crops are struggling in the dry weather. Where crops were drilled into good seedbeds, the crops are looking fit and growing well.

On the plus side, the low rainfall has kept the both the spring and winter crops really quite clean in terms of disease which has allowed us to reduce spend on fungicide programmes quite significantly and protect margins where yields are expected to be lower this year.

As well as trying to minimise spend as far as possible due to the reduced yield expectations, grain sales strategy has also been affected. Growers are cautious to commit too heavily, despite the attractive prices available at the moment. In a few situations, farmers have kept 2019 crops back to capitalise on the November new crop prices. As a rough rule on wheat, farmers are around 40% sold at a predicted yield around 60% of what they would normally work on.

Looking forward, I think it will be difficult to not let the problems of this year affect our better judgement – farmers will be nervous to continue the hard work they have started in terms of delayed drilling for blackgrass control in fear of getting caught out by the rain. It is important to remember that no two seasons are the same. I am also slightly nervous that growers who have had significant financial losses from growing OSR and therefore plan to not grow it this year, will get tempted to plant again if the drought allows an early harvest and we get some wet days in August. We must bear in mind that even crops that made it to stem extension and even early flower were lost to flea beetle larvae this spring.

On the positive side, there is lots of seed and chemical stock on farm left over from Autumn 2019 that is ready to be used and will therefore help cashflow over the next few months. Also, fertiliser prices are currently very attractive which all helps us to look onwards and upwards to next year.

Generally, I expect the first wheat acreage to be up across my clients farms by around 30% next year; this is due to the fact that there are lot of opportunities in the rotation for first wheats with a large spring crop and legume area this harvest; but also a tactic to recoup some of the expected financial losses from an unprofitable rotation this year. Lots of growers are having success this spring with growing spring linseed and spring beans in this region, so I also expect a greater diversity in spring cropping in addition to the conventional spring barley option going forward. This is also a great opportunity to reapportion some ‘break crop area’ away from winter OSR.

Cameron Knee – North & North East England

Following one of the wettest winters on record in the North East, typically a fairly dry region, good-looking and fit winter crops are few and far between.  Establishment was the real issue, with much of the winter drilling delayed or followed by a prolonged deluge of rain leaving seed rotting in the ground.

Those early sown wheat and barley crops have fared relatively well and will likely produce some average yields however, later drilled crops established from October onwards tend to be patchy with low tiller numbers contributing to a likely poor yield come harvest. 

Although we have seen an increase in the growing area of spring crops this year, the region is historically a big grower of spring barley, therefore the larger increase in spring crops has been seen in the spring oat market.  It is these spring crops that seem to have struggled the most with these recent bone-dry weather conditions, with poor establishment and tillering paired with a snail’s pace growth likely contributing to some subpar yields across the board.  I have however seen some excellent spring barley crops this past month and the challenge now will be keeping them green for harvest.

Conservative has been the approach for grain marketing, with growers and myself alike hesitant to forward sell much of the grain without it being in the shed, with others relying more heavily on pool marketing.

Around 70% of growers have made the most of the drop in early season fertiliser prices and where I have the space to store it over the summer, early delivery has been organised.  Leftover seed from last autumn is driving some cropping decisions for the following season and it is likely that wheat will form a large part of many rotations following the low drilling percentage for Harvest 2020.

Oilseed rape continues to become less popular in Yorkshire and County Durham, with flea beetle pressure posing too high a risk to this break crop at establishment.  Northumberland and the Scottish Borders is still yet to see large scale flea beetle damage therefore I, like others in the region have chosen to still include a large hectarage of this breakcrop in rotations for 2021 to help mitigate the anticipated fall in wheat prices following a likely increase in next year’s wheat plantings.

Will Davies – East Midlands

Oilseed rape has had mixed fortunes in the region with dry weather at the back end of drilling causing many crops to fail to establish. CSFB larvae has caused issues in some crops for the first time causing many growers to understand the pain of their eastern counterparts.

Many autumn cereals did not get drilled and those that did were left in varying states over winter. Despite some patchy emergence and a struggle with yellow rust throughout the spring, most had pulled themselves into respectability. Up until three weeks ago, optimism was high given the year to date, but lighter land wheat and barley and second cereals are now struggling. Late frosts were the icing on the cake for crops at ear emergence. Yield predictions with clients are therefore realistic and will focus the mind on crop marketing.

I would estimate that the split between winter and spring crop this year is 30:70 in favour of spring crops of which barley and wheat make up the majority. Land that was moved a lot this spring and later drilled April crops are not faring as well as crops drilled straight into stale seedbeds which at present seem to be faring well and finding moisture. With the dry weather, spring cereal disease control has been achieved with low cost options and savings made on agchem. This will almost offset the cost of the spring wheat seed.

With people wanting to push 2020 from their mind, our focus has turned somewhat to 2021 and minimising the impact of 2020 on future years. Poor grassweed control this year has meant patches of blackgrass have been sprayed off. One thing that I can see presenting a difficulty in the autumn of 2020 is delayed drilling for blackgrass control. Autumn 2019 will be fresh in people’s mind but we must be vigilante and remember why we are taking this precaution. 

A decision on growing OSR has been made, that decision is to “maybe plant it, maybe not”, moisture will be needed, fields will be chosen carefully and areas will certainly be reduced. I am having discussions with growers about alternative cropping options and there is no one crop that can replace OSR, it might be pulses, linseed, beet, forage or even a stewardship scheme with rotational options.

It is important to look at the profitability and robustness of the rotation as a whole rather than weighing up crop for crop and crop choice will be chosen on a farm-by-farm basis to suit existing cropping, farming system and business objectives.

Dan Matthews – West Midlands

In the West, most growers have at best poorer than average winter cereals due to late or sub-optimal establishment, combined with an exceptionally dry spring, which has led to a pessimistic outlook for yields this harvest.

The decision to delay drilling of winter cereals due to the withdrawal of neonicotinoid seed dressings has had the biggest impact on the area of winter cereal establishment. Last autumn later drilling was hoped to lower the risk of BYDV through transmission from infected aphids. When the weather broke, very little of the planned winter cereals were drilled after the end of September. To avoid that situation this autumn, growers are prepared to take the risk and begin drilling a lot earlier, planning to spray to control aphids instead.

Until last autumn, cabbage stem flea beetle in oilseed rape was not been considered to be endemic in this region. However significant levels have been observed throughout this growing season and has made growers question if the crop has a future.

There is split opinion amongst growers as to whether the crop should still be included in the rotation and with market prices relatively static it will make that decision to reduce or stop growing oilseed rape altogether so much easier.

With wheat prices currently buoyant and if they have few grassweed problems, growers are considering increasing the quantity of second wheat for the coming season. But deciding on a sustainable and profitable break crop is still going to be a challenge.

After recent dry conditions growing more spring pulses does not look very attractive. The abrupt switch from a record wet winter to a record dry spring this year held lots of promise for successful spring cropping. However extended drought during the second half of May has tested any spring crops that were drilled late or where establishment was compromised, with most of them very little or no rainfall since drilling. This season has seen a lot of spring barley grown locally and yields are likely to be variable depending on establishment, soil type and rainfall.

Going forward it is giving growers a headache returning to a sensible and sustainable rotation. Most growers are hoping that recent improved wheat prices come harvest will help to support margins where yields have already been compromised.

Zoe Brooks – Norfolk

In Norfolk, the dry weather has kept septoria pressures low to date. Rust has been visible in a lot of crops this season, with the warmer conditions increasing the risk of brown rust. Orange blossom midge populations are increasing in the East, but with many crops flowering few crops should require an insecticide.

The oilseed rape that has survived to pod set is variable and we are seeing a number of growers questioning its future as a breakcrop, or persisting with the crop but on a smaller area. Sugar beet has suffered in the dry conditions. With variable plant populations and size, weed control has been compromised, necessitating a hoe. Aphid populations have soared this season, the prolonged  warm weather has encouraged aphid movement, slowed the beet development and reduced the persistence of the insecticides.

Turning to harvest 2021, we are seeing the majority of growers looking to establish an increased area of wheat. Many will try to start drilling winter cereals a week or so earlier to mitigate the risk of weather restricting the drilling window. Those who are persisting with OSR will try and establish crops in early August with around the 12^th being seen as the cut-off date. Some growers are cautious about committing too much of the Harvest 2020 crop due to yield concerns, whilst other growers are marketing crops forward for Harvest 2021 to take advantage of the current uplift in prices.

Will Cobley – Cambridgeshire

Wheat crops drilled in the autumn look to be holding up currently, but will be dependent on significant June/July rainfall assisting grain fill. Pre-emergence herbicides have worked effectively which can be clearly seen in any spray misses, and any areas with a significant blackgrass population have now been sprayed off to prevent any seed return. Spring crops and those on lighter land on the other hand have noticeably started to show the effects of the rainfall deficit.

Thoughts are now turning to the 2021 cropping season and discussions are starting to be had about the rotation going forward. If one thing has been learnt from this season it is to be flexible in our approach as you never know what is around the corner.

The normal sticking point of any cropping discussion is how much OSR will feature if any at all, with many growers feeling that the unpredictability of OSR since the loss of neonicotinoid seed dressings has become too much of a headache. However, with what looks set to be an early harvest, if fields are cleared and weather conditions are favourable for establishment then this may change.

Those not growing OSR are looking to increase their area of spring/winter beans and alternatives such as the two-year legume fallow within the countryside stewardship scheme.

The season to date has been challenging, and careful consideration should be made to a number of factors going forwards. Firstly, soil health after a particularly wet autumn and droughty spring. Restorative cultivations shouldn’t be overlooked, particularly if significant damage has been done e.g. harvesting compaction after sugar beet. Finally, growers shouldn’t be afraid to hit the reset button on rotation – the autumn would be the time to do it.

George Hoyes – Hertfordshire

Despite the lack of rain, the autumn drilled crops in Hertfordshire have held on surprisingly well. Although we are starting to see the crop stress levels reach permanent wilting point on some of the gravellier patches. The different soil types are very recognisable. In these areas, the flag leaf is beginning to curl up and this does not bode well as the plant enters the grain filling growth stage. All of this is likely to lead to narrow grains and the knock-on effect to losing out on the potentially big milling premium that could be available this year due to lack of supply.

Some benefits with the lack of rain has been to trim back inputs costs accordingly. For example, fungicide spend on some farms has been half of what we had budgeted.

Within the area we had farms ranging from 0% autumn-drilled because of the initial rainfall right through to 115%, i.e. we drilled more winter wheat than originally planned to capitalise on the market prospects.

All of my clients have forward bought their fertiliser, with AN at sub £200/t and Nov 21 futures at £150/t feed base price, the ratio between fertiliser and final price is that not seen since 2013. In addition to this we have several farms who have already sold 15% of their anticipated 2021 wheat harvest to lock in a hopefully profitable price although there is still a long time between now and then and who knows what will happen weather wise.

Due to the horrors of the CSFB, there is very little OSR planned. However, everyone I have spoken to has said if the weather conditions come right (warm and wet), then they will try and get some established. If this is the case, they will be utilising a method that involves very little upfront cost. Home-saving seed where possible and not applying any inputs until a viable crop is there.

There is a very serious risk of everyone drilling their wheat at the start of September and us having to face the repercussions of not utilising the key blackgrass cultural control method of delayed drilling. The worst thing farmers do is change practices to suit the previous year’s weather.

Leo Page – Berkshire

The weather we have had recently would usually be headline news, and the threat to cropping yields is as great or greater than in the drought of 2018. Obviously there is something more important going on, but who knows?

Regardless of what the weather does now, we have noticed much less potential in the cereal crops as tillering and ear/grain counts are lower than usual, leading to predictions of a much reduced bushel weight. Possibly a yield reduction of up to 50% from last year, if the rain doesn’t arrive in time – or a fall of 2 to 3t/ha on the winter wheats if the rain is generous. The one crop which does seem to be doing well is the winter barley, although with the difficult drilling period in the autumn there isn’t much of this around.

There is variation, of course, in optimism depending on soil type. Up on the chalky hills the moisture is still just about hanging on, while down by the Thames and Kennet rivers the sandy-shallow soil farmers are already having problems with flag leaves curling up on the cereals. Ear emergence has been alarmingly quick, with a little as 10 days from the flag leaf emerging to the ear emerging on the drier, more stunted, crops (straw production is bound to be reduced from last year).

In terms of disease pressure on the cereals, this year ought to be one where savings are made on the fungicide spend, with only a few yellow rust issues and these are sporadic at worst.

The picture with OSR is also varied, with some cause for optimism where people have found success with some work-arounds with drilling times and practices to mitigate the flea beetle problem. Some farmers are trialling very early drilling dates for this crop (as early as late July), and others have decided to try direct drilling after chicken muck has been spread as a deterrent to flea beetle. Other good news is some grain breeders have been taking some of the risk for drilling OSR, with rebates for failed OSR on the Breeder’s Royalties. Good news aside, the area of OSR grown in this area continues to slide as people look at more reliable alternatives, including even the “black sheep” of the crop rotation family – linseed. A few people have even dabbled with spring OSR this year and many have had their fingers burnt, the options for weed control being too restrictive in this crop.

In terms of risk mitigation, cropping rotations are generally getting longer (but farmers are finding ways to maintain the winter wheat area). The thoughts of some farmers have turned to a greater focus on non-combinable crops such as hay and silage or even horticultural options on the sandier soils. Meanwhile there are also efforts to move ahead ambitiously with regenerative practices such as cover cropping and a greater use of direct drilling.

For 2021, a lot hangs on where we stand with the three-crop rule which was put aside this year by Defra minister George Eustice due to the bad weather. There has been discussion within Defra that it doesn’t seem to make sense here in the UK in its current iteration, and as Defra are looking to simplify BPS there is hope that the three-crop rule will be given the guillotine. People are holding their breath on planning cropping for 2021 for this reason. People will be aiming to keep a large area of winter wheat in rotation as per usual, but there will be a yet smaller area of OSR. As winter barley seems to have been reliable this year it might be suggested that it will be popular again

The 2020 harvest may end up being notable for all the wrong reasons, but there is a general feeling that these climatic and pest issues are here to stay and we need to adapt and move on.

Harriet Cartwright – Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset

Spring drilling went in well, but the subsequent serious lack of rainfall has spread concern for the spring crops, Countryside Stewardship plots and game covers. This seems to be more prevalent the further west you head, although definitely a problem across the counties.

Growers are taking a step back and looking at their current cropping rotation amid dropping confidence in the viability of growing oilseed rape. Research into alternative break crops, is underway, with oats, beans peas and linseed at the forefront of a lot of our clients’ minds.

Early research in to contracts available in also underway, as well as the use of farm benchmarking to compare gross margins. Alternative cropping such as growing crops for AD plants and incorporating grass and maize into the rotation to provide for silage to neighbouring livestock farms is also being considered.

Trying to market grain for a rain hungry crop has been challenging. Prices do generally seem firm in comparison to other years.

The decision-making process for reinvesting in machinery or farm buildings has another layer added when considering whether to do it now whilst the BPS payments are still coming in their fullest form, or whether to delay until we know more about what funding that might be available under the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS).

‘You can’t tell victims what racism is’ Posted March 31st 2021

A report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities has said the UK “no longer” has a system rigged against people from ethnic minorities.

Instead it pointed to family structure and social class as having a bigger impact on how people’s lives turned out.

Here is what some people have made of the commission’s conclusions.

‘You can’t tell victims what racism is’

Tyrek Morris, a 21-year-old student in Manchester who took part in the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, is not surprised by the reports’ findings.

“They say we are a model country in terms of how we deal with race in this country which quite frankly it is not that at all,” he says.

“We live in a racist country, you can’t take that away from us, this is what black people have been saying for years upon years, upon years and we finally get the government to look into race and it says ‘no it’s not racist’.

“You can’t tell people, you can’t tell the oppressed, you can’t tell the victims of racism what’s racist and what’s not because it is not you that is facing it,” he says.

He says it was “highly condescending to say the least” to suggest that young campaigners were idealists.

“This is how the country should work, asking for this country to start teaching about black history or black literature in schools isn’t an idealist thing, it is something which we should do, especially considering black history is very deep rooted into this country’s history,” he says.

He says “the proof is in the pudding” when it comes to the recommendations from the report but said he personally did not trust it to produce anything “useful” for black people.

“A lot of these things are good ideas, there is a lot more to be done and a lot more which needs to be looked at,” he says.

‘You have to look at the facts’

Nadine Drummond, a communications strategist for the UN, says she is not sure about the report’s conclusions or optimism.

“I’m not quite sure how you can be optimistic when you consider the health outcomes of black people in this country,” she says.

“When you have women that are four times more likely to die in child birth than their white mates, when you have black men 19 times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white mates, when you have black men three times more likely to die in police custody than their white mates.

“So when you talk about optimism you have to look at the statistics and the facts.”

She says the report “seeks to gaslight black and other minority ethnic people in the UK by telling us institutional racism in the UK is a myth and intersectionality is a dirty word”.

But she agrees with its recommendation to stop using the term BAME, which means Black Asian and Minority Ethnic. “The term is actually dehumanising and it ‘otherises’ us and doesn’t give any consideration to our uniqueness as people with views from different parts of the globe”.

‘Trust is key to progress’

“Yes, we have made some progress,” says civil servant Shaun Pascal, “but the progress has come at a very slow pace and what we are seeing is a generation of young people that are tired of being asked to be patient and to wait and we need to have some real conversations and acknowledge what people of colour are saying and move forward.”

He says there needs to be more people from ethnic minority communities at the top of corporations and organisations.

“As black people we are not asking you to change for us, you need to do it for yourself because we have a contribution to bring if you allow us the opportunities,” he says. “Our contribution goes further than the low position we are given.

“We need to see more black people, more people of colour, in those CEO positions at the top of those organisations.”

“Trust is key to progress and when you are constantly denying what people are experiencing and what we see and not acknowledging it you are never going to win people over,” he adds.

‘These are good plans, let’s see them in action’

London-based artist Ajani Carrington, 22, says he found the conclusions of the report “interesting” and agrees that sometimes socio-economic factors could be bigger than ethnicity in people being denied life opportunities.

“But I feel like ethnicity is the reason that some people get dismissed in life from chances and opportunities, I think it all goes together,” he says.

“I’ll be optimistic when I can feel and see it coming to life in actual lifetime experiences and real life stories,” he says.

“The government, the politicians, the system, everyone knows what to say to make it sound nice but what we want to see is it put into action.”

“We have had years and years of words and manipulations and deceptions and what we now want is actual actions which represent those words and these plans,” he says.

“These are good plans, let’s see them in action.”

‘A report will not make a difference’

Mohammad Karin, the founder of a youth consultancy and a student, says while some ethnic minority pupils did well academically it “doesn’t mean the system is perfect it means that they have learnt to thrive in an imperfect system”.

“We have got to celebrate the fact that children from ethnic minorities are doing better than their counterparts but that’s not to say that the issue doesn’t exist,” he says.

He says it is contradictory for the report to call the UK a model for other white-majority countries when it also states there is overt racism.

“The report is going to do very little for the individual people that this report was commissioned for. We can start to be optimistic when this report is acted on but today we can’t be optimistic because a report in of itself will not make a difference,” he says.

“I don’t trust the people who carried out this report to make substantial change based on the tone they are giving, that it is ‘not as big an issue as you are saying it is’, saying that we are some sort of model country for dealing with it,” he says.

Worse & Worse – F.S March 30th 2021

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9410665/University-Oxford-considers-scrapping-sheet-music-colonial.html

As the sadly late but supremely great George Carlin once remarked, “I have one simple rule when it comes to folks from the Government….I don’t believe a single fucking word they say – not one single, solitary fucking word”.

New post on The Slog

VIRUS POLICY: SAVING LIVES BY KILLING PEOPLE by John Ward State actions on Covid19 totally contradict its lachrymose virtue signalling I came across yet another NHS hard-sell persuasion document during the course of my travels the day before yesterday. It directed the vaccine marketeers to say to older people, “Do you realise you are three times more likely to die from Covid than the under-40’s?” Not only is that an understatement (they are 20 times more likely to die from it) it is also very obviously alarmist. The risk context has been left out: oldies have a 6% chance of dying from Covid infection….whereas forty-somethings and below have a 0.03% chance of so doing. In short, very little and almost nothing respectively. But of course, the Government’s policy there was plain for all to see: better to terrify the wrinklies without letting Thatcher’s children realise how miniscule the threat is to them. Our élites tell us we are facing a deadly virus and combating it with benign vaccines. But the facts suggest they are hyping a benign virus and selling potentially deadly vaccines. Why would any truly independent elected Government with Benthamite apirations want to follow such a devious strategy in relation to a health threat? Why would they indemnify the makers of such vaccines from all legal claims made by their citizens? Why would they grant an unprecedented level of “emergency” use of those vaccines when tests are woefully unfinished – and the techniques used so experimentally in doubt? Why is the British Government relaxed about using its citizens as guinea pigs in the development of vaccines that can’t guarantee immunity from infection or even inability to infect others? Why is it driving this programme against a virus whose best efforts to date (according to Worldometer stats) have taken just forty-two lives out of a hundred thousand….75% of whom were aged over eighty five? Why is it happy to ruin the economy to do it? If it was done to “save” the NHS, why did they rack up 26 times its budgetary worth in expenditures? Why did they blow £200 million on pop-up hospitals when there were no staff to run them? Why are 40% of all UK Covid cases a direct result of being admitted to hospital for something else? Why are the Cabinet, Hancock, Johnson and SAGE unwilling to even consider bringing Ivermectin and HCQ+Zinc into the mix as proven infection management drugs? Why did Horby falsely smear HCQ….along with Fauci? Why did they have “high hopes” for Remdesivir, when it has no track record of efficacy and never did? Why did Ferguson deny that Covid19 is ‘a sort of flu-like virus’ after having based his entire flakey model on flu virus behaviour? Why are he and Horby still in positions of influence on Covid policy? And perhaps most important of all, why is the Opposition not hammering this shifty Government about all these basic questions day in, day out? After all, wherever you look, all roads lead to Big Pharma when it comes to “follow the money”. Billionaire Bill Gates has spent the last twelve years investing in low altitude tracking satellites, vaccine developers and the medical research sector; our Opposition are supposed to be socialists….why aren’t they calling out all of it as smelly beyond belief? Just attempt for a few seconds to wipe the memory of the last fourteen months out, and consider these facts….not allegations, verifiable facts. ·         It is possible to suggest, based on the oddly configured side effect/death vaccination stats put out by PHE about Astrazeneca’s product, that it is borderline dangerous for people over 55 to take it. Both Oxford and the Government know that in the trials the drug was never tested on over 55s. But they still seem relaxed. With Covid deaths now tumbling, there is a real possibility that it will kill more than it might have cured. ·         Far from saving the NHS, Covidaphobia has strangled it. Cancer attacks all ages and kills 170,000 Britons a year. No less than seven distinguished British oncologists have published articles and papers lamenting avoidable cancer deaths since Covidmania began. Whereas C19 kills four (that’s 4) people per hundred thousand, cancer kills 313 men and 218 women – a death rate over 150 times higher than SarsCov2. ·         From very early on in the Covid19 saga, it was glaringly obvious that over 80s in care homes were by far the most vulnerable. In the First Wave, the Government took Covid-infected NHS patients and dumped them in care homes. There were abject apologies. In the Second Wave, they did it again. Security in care homes was absolutely risible for at least the first four months of the outbreak. Thousands more died than was necessary. ·         Nobody seems to want to talk about the Hairy Mammoth in the understairs lavatory – this astonishing figure of 40% of all infections taking place in hospital. Why hasn’t this been addressed? Why are 2 in 5 more than necessary dyingbecause of nothing more than poor hospital hygiene…or is there some darker reason nobody wants to talk about? ·         I refer you all back to the Elmhurst hospital nurse who revealed last year that Covid-free black and hispanic patients were being admitted to the New York hospital where she worked, and sprinkled merrily onto the existing wards even though the entire hospital was devoted to managing infected Covid19 patients. See for yourself – in medical background and personality, she is a highly credible witness. Thousands died because of this and other unexplained incidents in Ohio, Ireland and England. ·         Eleven months of 2020 went by with only sporadic use of ameliorating management drugs, despite the fact that cheap and effective drugs were available with proven track records of cutting the Covid death rate following infection by 80-90%. News of their existence was persistently spiked – and their efficacy rejected by Fauci, Macron and Hancock. Those in favour of their use were deplatformed or otherwise silenced online. None of these palliatives had anything like the risks and unknowns of the “vaccines” now available….but rather than being falsely rejected as useless (thank you, Professor Horby) the Pfizer and Astrazeneca products were rushed to market – and declared by the political élite to be safe. They don’t know any more than we do whether they’re safe or not. At the bottom line, tens of thousands are dead because of Fauci’s inexcusable rejections of the palliatives, and many millions may die (like the rhesus monkeys under test) from later reactions caused by acute Cytokine response. Now string those highlighted words together: kill more, higher death rate, more died, 2 in 5 more unecessary fatalities, thousands died, tens of thousands are dead, and millions may die. It doesn’t sit terribly well with the narrative image of a media set, health bureaucrats, Big Pharma and the political classes all desperate to save lives, does it? But then, it wouldn’t, if you think about it. Our Bill Gates is enthusiastic about dramatic cuts in the global human population. But he has invested billions of dollars in vaccination against deadly diseases. Er…..right. Boris Johnson dismisses the claims of cheated UK State pensioners with one curt letter on his arrival in Downing Street….then blows trillions on a near-harmless virus. Matt Hancock sheds tears on announcing a vaccine “breakthrough”, then potters off to the Commons and lies his bare face off about its safety. The Brussels Commission declares Covid “a horrifying and tragic global threat”…but then von der Leyen starts playing politics with vaccine access. Fauci declares Trump to be a “crank” about existing palliatives, but after Biden’s election “success”, he takes Ivermectin off the naughty step. This is a nothing virus, these are not nice people, and their motives have nothing to do with saving lives, public health provision or compassion in any shape or form. As the sadly late but supremely great George Carlin once remarked, “I have one simple rule when it comes to folks from the Government….I don’t believe a single fucking word they say – not one single, solitary fucking word”. More people will die as a result of NHS cuts once the dust settles. More suicides will result from Lockdown mental illness. If vaccines cause fatal reactions down the line, they will be dismissed as non-causal and/or blamed on “new mutant variants”. Human loss of naturally gained resistance may well mark the end of all but the most privileged members of our species. Those running this psy-op understand the consequences perfectly. Look at their track records before and during this odd little virus: serial liars squashing public enquiries and perverting the Law, pushy oiks consumed with ruthless ambition, treasonous bureaucrats who spit on votes, tamperers with medical data, manslaughter of trial patients in an effort to discredit rival drugs and doctors, clear and intolerantly extreme ideologies, undeclared pharma interests, and ascetic lifestyles sadly devoid of any time or feeling for human stress. Market research showed me many awkward realities, but it gave me one life rule above others: harken not unto what people say until you have confirmed that it matches their behaviour. I continue to apply that wisdom on a day to day basis – and am quickly running out of friends because of it. I continue to point out the obvious signs; however, I no longer discuss the totalitarian Reset with any but the closest, brightest and best I’ve been fortunate enough to find. I’m sick to death of the gullible naifs, the bombastic infants straight out of Lord of the Flies, and the patronising Leftlib Remainoids secretly enjoying the misanthropy of the EU federalists. This is not a good way to feel. There is anger at the denial, frustration about the compliance, and despair at the utter failure of self-styled political ideologues to discern a whole different level game in play. Covid19 is at one and the same time a symptom and an excuse. The motive is power. The disease driving that pursuit is godless megalomania. “There’s not many peepull know that,” observes Michael Caine – only now emerging as a world expert on vaccination. John Ward | March 30, 2021 at 4:11 pm | Tags: Achtung: hospitals can kill, Covid19 contrick measured, Psy-op marketing, Psychos in the supremacy, See reason, Vaccine sell, Virus hype | Categories: Covid Killing Fieldss | URL: https://wp.me/p18jPR-AmK

Where the Nuts Come From Posted by R.J Cook March 25th 2021

https://www.britishfreedom.net/post/where-the-nuts-come-from

Having decided long ago that literature is vastly superior to life, I occasionally have to disillusion my students by pointing out that the books they read are all too likely to engender unrealistic expectations. Their love affairs will not be neatly arranged by Jane Austen, and their adventures will not be thrillingly plotted by Arthur Conan Doyle. The same, oddly enough, is true of dystopias. Real life, in certain countries and at certain times, has been far bleaker than any book by Kafka or Zamyatin, but it has never been so well-organised or so competently led as fictional dystopias are.

Take O’Brien in Nineteen Eighty-Four. We do not know how close O’Brien is to the apex of power in Oceania, but he is the highest-ranking Party official we meet, who also happens to be the most intelligent character in the book. Winston’s defeat is not merely physical, but intellectual, he cannot argue with the evil genius whose mind contains his. The same is true of the suave, sophisticated Mustapha Mond in Brave New World. These tyrants are more able leaders than democracies have ever been able to provide, in fact or fiction.

In real life, dystopian societies are created by men with a combination of luck and brutality. Mao, a failed academic who had to become a dictator in order to get anyone to read his turgid bloviations, was probably the most intelligent of them. Mussolini had all his thinking done for him by Giovanni Gentile. Hitler was, at best, a third-rate intellect who misunderstood and misapplied the ideas of cleverer men. Stalin was even less able. The most thoroughly dystopian society I have experienced myself is that of Venezuela, where I did my best to forget all the Spanish I had ever learned in order to be free from the nonsensical ramblings of Hugo Chavez, which caused every public space to echo with idiocy.

Perhaps the fictional dystopia that best captures the atmosphere of a real one is Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film, Brazil. Apparently, the original title was some variation on Nineteen Eighty-Four, and I have no idea why it was finally called Brazil unless it is because, as Charley’s Aunt observed, that’s where the nuts come from. The regime against which Sam Lowry, played with wide eyed-astonishment and exasperation by Jonathan Pryce, finds himself pitted is stupid as well as evil, bureaucratic, dysfunctional, corrupt, and maddeningly incompetent. In other words, it is just the type of dystopia that the current government is in the process of creating.

When you, sagacious reader, find yourself in the Ministry of Love, your interrogator will not be a brilliant polymath with a sophistical solution to every objection you raise. He will be a glassy-eyed clone of Gavin Williamson, without the intelligence to form a coherent sentence. Winston Smith found himself outmaneuvered by an International Grandmaster; you will be playing chess with a pigeon.

The combination of malice and idiocy which characterises the Johnson regime has been graphically demonstrated by the government’s reaction to the murder of Sarah Everard. When some people held a peaceful vigil on Clapham Common, the authorities refused to cooperate with the organisers, presumably to ensure that the event would be as chaotic as possible. When, in spite of this, it proved to be a perfectly dignified and peaceable response to a tragic event, the government decided to send in riot police to beat up some of the women there. Then various politicians appeared the next day, clutching pearls and wringing hands over a display of violence they had authorised and encouraged. I hold no brief for Dame Cressida Dick; her actions and comments show that she is fully complicit in the idiocy, but Johnson, Patel, and Khan certainly have no right to criticize her for following their instructions.

It is the announcement of Project Vigilant, however, that brings this government’s actions to a pitch of irony and absurdity so intense that it is difficult to see how they will ever eclipse it, though in this one area, I have confidence in their abilities. Their latest idea is to prevent violence against women by putting plain-clothes police officers in pubs. I imagine you have a few thoughts about this, and I don’t suppose many of them could be voiced in the presence of children or the delicately nurtured, so allow me to address the government on your behalf, after taking a very deep breath and counting, like Tattycoram, to five and twenty:

1. There aren’t any pubs. You closed all the pubs, you wretched fascists. Had you forgotten that?

2. The highest-profile person to be arrested for violence against, and, indeed, murder of a woman in Britain today is a serving police officer.

3. You decided it would be a good idea to send more police officers to molest women while they were holding a vigil for that murdered woman. This has led some women to think that the police are not altogether committed to their safety.

4. That situation probably would not have been improved if the officers in question had spent the previous few hours drinking themselves into a frenzy.

5. Very little violence against women occurs in crowded pubs. Some rapists and murderers are put off by the presence of large numbers of witnesses.

I could go on, but you, dear reader, are a great deal sharper than Priti Patel, and have grasped the point. The more powerful and power-hungry the state becomes, the more clueless and incompetent it is. In fascist regimes, strength goes hand in hand with stupidity. As E.M. Forster observes, in this magnificent passage from “What I Believe”, intelligence may not save us in the end, but we can at least use it delay the destruction of civilisation by dull-witted dragons and giants:

Some people idealise force and pull it into the foreground and worship it, instead of keeping it in the background as long as possible. I think they make a mistake, and I think that their opposites, the mystics, err even more when they declare that force does not exist. I believe that it exists, and that one of our jobs is to prevent it from getting out of its box. It gets out sooner or later, and then it destroys us and all the lovely things which we have made. But it is not out all the time, for the fortunate reason that the strong are so stupid. Consider their conduct for a moment in The Nibelung’s Ring. The giants there have the guns, or in other words the gold; but they do nothing with it, they do not realise that they are all-powerful, with the result that the catastrophe is delayed and the castle of Valhalla, insecure but glorious, fronts the storms. Fafnir, coiled round his hoard, grumbles and grunts; we can hear him under Europe today; the leaves of the wood already tremble, and the Bird calls its warnings uselessly. Fafnir will destroy us, but by a blessed dispensation he is stupid and slow, and creation goes on just outside the poisonous blast of his breath.

High Time For Return To Female Modesty – March 24th 2021

Given the mass hysteria following the police officer who flashed more than his blues and twos before going on to murder a young female, , it is time to point out the unpleasant and peculiar truth that males are attracted to females . Females are atracted to money, power and uniforms. Clothes are an advertsiement of sexuality, wealth and power. Women are not innocents, men are not all guilty or potential rapists – a female fantasy , clearly absurd given the demand for viagra and rise of the LGBTQI.

Feminists like to say that sex change is impossible. So they should logically accept differences and not bandy around their desire to control and emasculate men under guise of equality. Female bodies attact men. So feminists are working on creating unattractive domineering cop loving personalities – shame about Wayne Couzens but he has done more to rapidly advance the feminist cause than the Pankhursts ever did.

Next step is to discourage women from wearing bright clothes and anything else drawing attention to their being female. The Muslim ladies set a fine example, with their dark clothes offering further camouflage during that health giving much needed night time walk on the common.

The reality that nature intended men to act stupid at the sight of women is denied. This s why so much about sexuality is secretive , guilt ridden, hyporitical and often perverted. It shoulld be seen for what it is, as the Americans used to say ‘bumping uglies.’ Or as writer and poet Samuel Beckett wrote in his poem ‘Cascando’ : ‘Thud, thud, thud of the old plunger, echoes of the stale words in the flesh again, sockets filled once with eyes like yours, the grapples clawing blindly at the bed of want, saying again, nine days never floated the loved, nor nine years, nor nine lives.’

We have come a very long way from the middle class hippy peace and love days of my youthfull student years – the hippies matured ( sic ) into hippycrits. There is no way back. Not even for the young or unborn. There are no good tunes to dance to anymore. R.J Cook

BBC looks at Lockdown Britain a year on. The message is more to come, we must learn to live with restrictions because there will always be new variants, but the NHS has staff big enough for anything. R.J Cook March 23rd 2021

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URGENT ACTION ALERT    REPEAL THE CORONAVIRUS ACT This week on Thursday 25th March your MP will have an opportunity to repeal the Coronavirus Act. If we don’t pressure MPs to repeal this draconian law now, it could remain on the statue books for another 1.5 years.   EMAIL YOUR MP NOW The Coronavirus Act contains some of the most draconian detention and anti-protest powers in modern legal history and has led to an extraordinary 100% unlawful prosecutions.  It needs to go. There are two urgent actions you can quickly take: 1) EMAIL YOUR MP Tell them to repeal the Coronavirus Act. MPs need to know that their constituents care about this Government power grab. If you haven’t emailed your MP yet, use our quick and easy template now! EMAIL YOUR MP NOW 2) SHARE THIS ACTION WIDELY The more of us who speak out, the louder our voices become. If you forward this email action alert widely and share on social media, hundreds more emails will reach MPs.   You can also share our new YouTube video, The Biggest Expansion of State Power in Living Memory, which explains just how dangerous the Coronavirus Act is. We only have a few days left. Without pressure from every single one of us, these powers will remain in force. The Coronavirus Act is a proven threat to our rights and democracy. Tell your MP it must be repealed. With thanks as always, Madeleine Stone Legal and Policy Officer

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China ‘Sindrome‘ Posted March 22nd 2021

You know who’s won economically from all this? China. Exports now up to 110% of pre-Covid levels. https://ccpgloballockdownfraud.medium.com/the-chinese-communist-partys-global-lockdown-fraud-88e1a7286c2b

Bristol March 22nd 2021

https://unherd.com/thepost/bristolians-have-always-loved-rioting/?mc_cid=209f7ecd93&mc_eid=822c34b0d4

Bristol is a very odd place. It’s been much gentrified recently, so house prices have rocketed and there are lots of visitors. But they also try to major on the alternative lifestyle business in places like Stokes Croft, with huge graffitied murals and a kind of funky vibe (man). Looks like Beirut on a bad day, but it’s got that dangerous inner-city vibe. How much of it is real is anybody’s guess – but I have my doubts. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the tattooed and pierced junkie types aren’t actually stockbrokers. This has been backed up by a comment from (I think) the mayor also deleted from the rewritten article, in which he says that vandals and criminals shouldn’t be allowed to get away with burning things or putting graffiti on buildings. Yet there’s a whole tourism business built around graffiti; examples here:
https://visitbristol.co.uk/things-to-do/street-art
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/england/articles/graffiti-galore-the-best-street-art-in-bristol/
http://www.bristol-street-art.co.uk/map-of-bristol-street-art
Presumably ‘official’ graffiti is OK.
Alongside the inner-city funk, there’s huge deprivation. Up on the Clifton Downs, there are dozens of old vans and caravans parked at the sides of the roads, and there are tents pitched anywhere there’s a bit of green space. These aren’t pikey losers: they are people with jobs in the city who can’t afford even to rent.
Bristol is also home to Cabot Circus. When that was developed, the public streets involved were handed over to a private company. There are now rules on photography and acceptable behaviour, and security guards. On what to all intents and purposes are open streets.

F.S West Country Correspondent.

Bristol used to be on several of my food delivery runs. I especially remember December 2016. There were some terrible sights. Parking an 18 ton truck near the restauarants was challenging, so at one drop there was a long walk through a very run down area pulling a pallet with a pump truck. Rough sleepers and hardship was most evident and depressing in such bitter cold.

Last time I delivered to Cabot’s Circus Bristol City Centre was on a Sunday morning. I was with a Portuguese man. Sundays were always easy. I had finished at 6 the day before. We did Basingstoke and Reading then motorway. Lots of time to talk. We talked about the police. I asked him if he had ever been in jail. He said ‘No, but my father has.’ I asked him why. He said ‘He shot my mother and I saw him do it. I was a boy.’ I said ‘How terrible.’ He replied ‘No. The bitch deserved it. She took pleasure in humiliating my father in public and cheating on him.

There is a real gender problem across the global economy it seems , manifesting itself in different ways. Efforts to exploit and manipulate this will have ongoing deepening psycholgical and justice consequences.

R.J Cook

EXPLOSIVE: EU HAD VAX PASSPORT ROADMAP TWO YEARS before COVID ‘BORN’ Posted March 21st 2021

by John Ward

EXPLOSIVE: EU HAD VAX PASSPORT ROADMAP TWO YEARS before COVID ‘BORN’ by John Ward

SUMMIT IN SEPT 2019 HAD SOCIAL MEDIA PITCHING TO QUASH NAYSAYERS, & SPELT OUT WHO’s AGITPROP AGENDA

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Gates, Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, secret State and WHO implicated in global web of deceit & corruption

Where to start on this one? What follows is an evidential trail of geopolitical psychopathy revealing that not just Bill Gates and Davos were trailers for hyper-hyped Covid19: also inside the tent (it appears) were the WHO, Jeffrey Epstein, US biowarfare intelligence, Beijing – and the European Union. Coincidence? Judge for yourselves.

The European Commission website speaking in Autumn 2019:

‘Vaccination prevents an estimated 2.5 million deaths worldwide each year and reduces disease-specific treatment costs. Despite its brilliant track record, several EU and neighbouring countries are currently facing unprecedented outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases due to insufficient vaccination coverage rates. Unequal access to vaccines and in some places warning of public confidence in vaccination are a cause for concern and a major challenge for public health experts. The WHO declared vaccine misinformation as one of the main health threats for 2019.’

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You may recall that earlier this year, The Slog revealed how Germany ordered its test and trace kits from South Korea before Christmas 2019….when barely a soul on the planet had even heard of SarsCov2 aka Covid19. The information was largely poo-poohed by the media….who do not, of course, have any alterntive explanation as to why our friends in Berlin got on top of the virus before anyone else.

My point was that the German Secret Service got wind of ‘something in the air’ before C19 was rapidly turned into “a deadly global pandemic” some six weeks later. But this week, further evidence pointing to WHO/EU links has emerged.

In September 2019 (the roadmap at the head of this post can easily be examined here ) the EU updated the roadmap which was first published in Q3 2018. In that same month a year later, a major Summit was called in association with the WHO.

Over a similar time period, Bill Gates (with many years behind him of massive investment in Biotech Pharma companies and huge donations to academic vaccination research) was also busy in New York and at Davos whipping up support for global vaccination campaigns. During those years, he had several meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, the paedophile pimp; later, Gates denied this, but it is true:

Even the New York Slimes admits that ‘beginning in 2011, Mr. Gates met with Mr. Epstein on numerous occasions — including at least three times at Mr. Epstein’s palatial Manhattan townhouse, and at least once staying late into the night, according to interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the relationship, as well as documents reviewed by The New York Times. Employees of Mr. Gates’s foundation also paid multiple visits to Mr. Epstein’s mansion.’

The two men planned a massive global foundation in concert with JP Morgan Chase – run by that nice man, Jamie Dimon. At the time, Gates had but two interests – healthtech in general, and vaccination biotech + track and trace via his equally astonishing investment in low altitude satellites after 2008. The point of introducing this dimension into the mix is that it is now widely accepted that, at least part-time, Epstein was heavily involved in CIA entrapment/psy-op counter espionage for the US Government.

When Epstein became a little too gobby and fond of making threats about the location of bodies, he was duly run in, and conveniently hanged himself while allegedly under 24/7 guard…but the guards were conveniently doing other stuff at the time.

Now our Jeffrey’s most trusted “madame” and procurer Ghislaine Maxwell is also under lock and key in a New York jail. Two days ago, however, this report appeared, and his since been confirmed by the judge concerned:

So then, impure thoughts about global culls are forbidden.

But isn’t that just about the worst example of Top Down State talking to its infant citizens you ever saw? I mean, c’mon – ‘too sensational and impure to be disclosed to the public’. Dear oh dear oh dear – The Bidenist Secret State in action: you were all brought up in a nunnery, so that’s enough of that. A wonderful reminder of the Judge during the 1963 obscenity trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover: “I would ask the jury whether they would want their servants to read this book”.

The bottom line is this: Epstein was heavily involved with US security services, and Bill Gates Vaxxer-Surveillance man was happy to get into bed with both him and Dimon on joint operations by the Unelected State.

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So what happened at the Big EU Vaccine Jamboree a few months before Covid19 so conveniently appeared to give everyone a terrific return on investment?

Well for starters, a Slog source within Brussels this morning confirmed to me that Facebook made a pitch to “offer its services” in promoting the benefits of vaccination…..but as we know with Zuckerberg, this really meant shutting up every critic who gets in the way. And luckily for Marky-Mark, the profoundly corrupt Jean-Claude Juncker was all in favour of censorship to the maxx on the subject of vaxx (my emphases):

“While some people are suffering due to lack of access to vaccines, many people are risking their lives – and the lives of others – by refusing vaccines based on myths and unfounded rumours about safety and effectiveness. This scepticism had its origins in disinformation campaigns designed to undermine vaccination, but the Commission is working with internet platforms to tackle this problem. “

This was a solution in search of a problem. Within four months, the problem arrived with suspiciously impeccable timing.

In an opening address, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, spat some more petrol onto Juncker’s fire:

“When we talk about the right to health, we talk about the right to vaccines…..The WHO has been working with Pinterest and Facebook to ensure social media users are directed to accurate and reliable information.”

Well of course they were…for everyone else but the WHO was wrong, right?

Dr Tedros is Ethiopian. While Health Minister of that country, he was accused of covering up cholera outbreaks. Human rights activist Kassahun Adefris said he was worried about Tedros becoming head of the WHO. Human Rights Watch also criticized Tedros during his campaign for WHO Director-General, because he was part of what they said was an authoritarian regime in Ethiopia that persecuted members of the opposition and journalists. Which, indeed they did. Tedros got himself elected chief at the WHO because he “aggresively lobbied 54 African State officials at the UN”. We all know what “lobbying” in Africa really means.

More intriguing links emerge: Tedros was also elected to head WHO with Chinese behind-the-scenes support, reflecting Beijing’s close relationship with Addis Ababa, which has for years acted as China’s key bridgehead in Africa. Covid19 first became life (depending on how you define life) in the town of Wuhan….which, research shows, is in China – and a key centre of biowarfare development.

On January 11th 2020, Tesdros heaped praise on the director of China’s National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei for “sharing information on the genetic sequencing of the coronavirus in a timely manner,” when in fact Beijing had delayed passing on this lifesaving information for 10 days after Chinese doctors finished their research.

Whichever way you lean on this issue, it’s time to stop sucking your security blanket, and accept that Covid19 is some kind of geopolitical operation in which bigging up the role of vaccination in medicine played a crucial role.

The evidence mounts to suggest that advisers to government are on one or more payrolls, that the key players are serially anti-democratic, and that the political class is nothing more than a rag-bag of monied ignorami working for the 0.1%.

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John Ward | March 20, 2021 at 2:07 pm | Tags: Bill Gates, EU/WHO alliance revealed, Facebook, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, More Covi19 sleaze | Categories: EU>>WHO>>Gates>>Covid smoking gun | URL: https://wp.me/p18jPR-AkJ

Police State Britain March 2021

Police confront thousands of maskless anti-lockdown protesters in London as MPs call for Priti Patel to allow demonstrations during pandemic in wake of Sarah Everard vigil

• Thousands of protesters not wearing face masks met at Hyde Park before marching through central London
• Lockdown conspiracy theorist Piers Corbyn and actor Laurence Fox were spotted at the demonstration today
• Protesters marched near Oxford Street despite organised protests being currently banned during lockdown
• There were expected to be people rallying against plans to give police more power to prevent demonstrations
• It comes as politicians across House called for Priti Patel to change coronavirus legislation to allow protests

By James Gant and Joe Davies For Mailonline

Published: 08:02, 20 March 2021 | Updated: 17:03, 20 March 2021

1.1k shares 1.7k View comments Advertisement

Police have clashed with thousands of anti-lockdown protesters in London today amid outrage over the Met’s handling of a vigil to Sarah Everard last weekend.

Maskless demonstrators met at Hyde Park before marching through the streets of the capital, with some being hauled away by officers. Police confirmed 13 arrests have been made so far.

Conspiracy theorist Piers Corbyn – who was launching his mayoral bid – and actor Laurence Fox were among activists waving signs reading: ‘Stop destroying our kids’ lives.’

Protesters continued to march towards the world-famous Oxford Street and blocked off Park Lane, despite organised demonstrations being banned under lockdown restrictions.

There were also expected to be people rallying against plans to give police in England and Wales more power to impose conditions on non-violent protests, including those deemed too noisy or a nuisance.

Ahead of the gatherings – some which were held to mark a year since the first lockdown on March 23, 2020 – the Met warned people if they attended they risked being arrested.

Demonstrators also took to the streets of Newcastle and Manchester City Centre, as anti-lockdown protests erupted across the globe.

Meanwhile politicians across the House of Commons called for Priti Patel to change coronavirus legislation to allow protests.+42

Hundreds of protesters waving signs marched through central London today after meeting earlier in the afternoon in Hyde Park+42

Police officers detain a demonstrator in Hyde Park, London, during a protest against lockdown today +42

Police officers stand around a statue to Britain’s greatest Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill during a protest against the lockdown today+42

A man is restrained by five police officers as others hold back demonstrators filming the arrest+42

A demonstrator is pushed to the ground by police after outrage at Metropolitan Police’s handling of the Sarah Everard vigil last week+42

A person holds a sign during a protest against the lockdown, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease in London+42

An anti-lockdown protesters is arrested and taken away by officers in Hyde Park, London, today+42

Laurence Fox is seen attending a rally in Hyde Park London. The actor is fighting to become the next mayor of London+42

Conspiracy theorist Piers Corbyn – the old brother of Jeremy – stands in front of police as he attends yet another illegal gathering +42

Thousands of protesters holding flares and signs reading ‘fear Westminster not the virus’ march through Hyde Park

• Watch video Influencer spends time with new lover a year after husband died
• Watch video President Joe Biden FALLS up the stairs of Air Force One
• Watch video Shocking CCTV footage shows policeman assaulting lone woman
• Watch video Experts warn of potential third wave of Covid-19 infections in UK

+42

A woman holding a sign and a man are confronted by police in central London today as the protests picked up the pace+42

Police officers stand by protesters marching during a ‘World Wide Rally For Freedom’ protest on Saturday afternoon in London+42

Stern-faced protesters march down central London in a large crowd despite the current lockdown restrictions preventing mass gatherings

• Watch video Influencer spends time with new lover a year after husband died
• Watch video President Joe Biden FALLS up the stairs of Air Force One
• Watch video Shocking CCTV footage shows policeman assaulting lone woman
• Watch video Experts warn of potential third wave of Covid-19 infections in UK

London Metropolitan Police said: ‘As of 3.45pm , 13 people have been arrested by officers policing the protests in central London. Most of the arrests have been for breaching Covid regulations.

‘Our officers are continuing to engage with people attending the ongoing protests in Central London. Those gathering in crowds are being encouraged to disperse and go home. 

‘Officers will take enforcement action where necessary. This could be a fixed penalty notice, or arrest.’ 

Police officers pulled protesters down to the ground and cuffed them while other demonstrators shouted ‘shame on you’. One man – wearing a hazmat suit and gas mask – was removed from the demo by police.

Thousands marched through the popular Hyde Park setting off flares and waving signs that read: ‘Fear Westminster not the virus.’

Another woman at the protest held up a placard which said: ‘Yes sex is great, but have you ever been f***ed by the Government?’

A witness said: ‘Flares being set off on Oxford Street in front on the police, approx 4,000 unite for freedom march protesters marching across London.’

They continued through the centre of London, with police following the illegal gathering closely. One of the groups in park today, Jam For Freedom, said on its Twitter followers should meet at 12.45pm.

The group said there would be an organised flash-mob, told people to ‘look for the smoke flares’ and said there would be a ‘vigil march’ at 1pm.

It told its members: ‘You may want to link arms as we march, especially if police are close or trying to take someone.’ It added: ‘Stay tight, stay aware, stay peaceful and polite.’

There were also expected to be protests against plans to give police in England and Wales more power to impose conditions on non-violent protests, including those deemed too noisy or a nuisance.

Those convicted under proposed legislation contained in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill could face a fine or jail.

People opposed to the legislation were urged on social media to take to the streets over the weekend, using the hashtag #KillTheBill.

The Met said on Friday it was aware of several protests planned for Saturday in breach of lockdown rules banning gatherings of more than two people from different households.

The force said a ‘significant policing operation’ would be in place in central London throughout the day.

‘Those gathering will be encouraged to return home, if they do not, they face necessary and proportionate enforcement action. This could be a fixed penalty notice, or arrest.+42

Demonstrators holding a banner saying ‘stop destroying our kids’ lives’ march through Hyde Park this afternoon+42

Demonstrators holding flares gather in Hyde Park in London during a protest against the coronavirus lockdown today+42

Police officers haul a demonstrator to the ground before cuffing him in Hyde Park during a protest against the coronavirus lockdown today+42

Protesters holding a banner saying ‘stop destroying our kids’ lives’ and not wearing face masks march through the streets of London this afternoon+42

Referring to the protests planned for this weekend, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, said: ‘The Met is committed to working with groups who wish to assemble to protest or for other purposes’

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+42

A man lies on the ground as he is cuffed by officers during the protests which has seen hundreds flock to central London today+42

Thousands walk past busses in central London and hold up signs on their way through the capital during the protests today+42

Police line up during the anti-lockdown demonstration in London. Protests within the scope of anti-vaccine anti-coronavirus restrictions ‘World Wide Rally for Freedom and Democracy’ rallies are taking place around the world today+42

A man wears a coronavirus face mask over his eyes during the anti-lockdown protest in central London this afternoon+42

The masses block up roads as they wander through the streets of central London during the widespread protesting on Saturday+42

A protester holds a sign reading: ‘The emperor has no clothes! Lockdowns and masks don’t work. 99.7% survival from Covid. Let’s get back to normal’+42

Demonstrators holding flares and filming with their phones surround police officers at the anti-coronavirus lockdown protest in London today+42

Some carried large Union Flags as they descended on the streets and clogged up roads during the maskless protest on Saturday+42

Two women hold up their signs as they make their way through the city centre during the illegal protests on Saturday afternoon+42

Protesters march through St James’s Park up to Buckingham Palace during the anti-coronavirus lockdown demonstration in London today

Referring to the protests planned for this weekend, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, said: ‘The Met is committed to working with groups who wish to assemble to protest or for other purposes.

‘But these are not normal times.’ He added: ‘People who gather as part of the protest risk the health of Londoners.

‘That is why we have a policing plan in place to disperse crowds and where necessary, take proportionate enforcement action.

‘This will not just be organisers of the protests but participants too – by now everyone knows their part to play in stopping the spread of the virus and thousands have sacrificed much over the last 12 months to do so.’

The protest in London today occurred at the same time as hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Manchester and marched to the Police Headquarters after branding the lockdown a ‘crime against humanity’.

Anti-lockdown protests were scheduled today around the country as the UK approaches the anniversary of the first lockdown due to Covid.

Protesters marched three miles from the National Football Museum to the Greater Manchester Police Headquarters in Newton Heath.

They carried with them police reports outlining the ‘crimes the government are committing’ and expect the force to process each report individually.

Around 500 protesters who rallied together could heard chanting ‘freedom’ and ‘take off your masks’.

One of the protesters, Luke Scott, said he lost his source of income this year due to the lockdown and lambasted the government’s decision-making which had ‘no basis in science’.

Mr Scott, who runs an events company, said that the lockdown was a ‘crime against humanity’ which has caused people to suffer financially, physically and emotionally.+42

Protesters also took to the streets of Manchester and marched to the Police Headquarters after branding the lockdown a ‘crime against humanity’ today+42

Hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters march through Manchester City Centre to Greater Manchester Police HQ to hand in crime reports+42

A demonstrator in Manchester wearing a wig, ski mask and face covering holds a sign reading: ‘Mask wearing zombies wake up or comply and die’+42

Protesters swarm around Greater Manchester Police HQ this afternoon. They carried with them police reports outlining the ‘crimes the government are committing’ and expect the force to process each report individually

The 33-year-old said: ‘Today we are urging the government to change their regulations around the lockdown.

‘We are handing in crime reports at the headquarters to report the crimes the government are committing.

‘We are marching against the dangerous language they are using which are causing mental health issues, physical issues, closing businesses.

‘No scientific evidence, we don’t know if this virus is the threat they say it is.

‘My business was destroyed by the lockdown. I lost my income, I have an eight month old child, I have a wife. I’ve made no money this year.

‘These are crimes against humanity.’

And anti-lockdown protesters also took to the streets of Newcastle today, prompting a huge police response in the city centre.

Close to a hundred officers lined a guard surrounding Grey’s Monument to prevent any groups from gathering during ongoing Covid-19 restrictions.

The response comes after Northumbria Police issued a statement earlier urging people not to meet in groups over the weekend.

A spokesperson said: ‘We have become aware that a range of groups plan to gather to protest in the centre of Newcastle this weekend.

‘We are taking this opportunity to remind people that protests are not exempt from the current Covid legislation. Such public gatherings remain unlawful due to the risk they pose to public safety. 

‘We recognise the right to protest is extremely important but this right has always had to be balanced against the rights of the wider community.

‘We would therefore urge people to take heed of the regulations and Public Health advice. Anyone thinking of visiting the city centre to take part in protest activity should reconsider.

‘The safety of everyone, including those participating in protests, other members of the public and our officers will always be our upmost priority.

‘People can expect to see an increased presence from officers and we will deliver a proportionate policing response to any activity taking place.’ 

The Met has come under fire this week for its heavy-handed policing of a vigil on Clapham Common on Saturday in memory of Ms Everard, with Commissioner Cressida Dick facing calls to resign.

The event had been planned by protest group Reclaim These Streets, but it switched to an online event after being warned it would breach Covid-19 rules.

But crowds still gathered to express their anger and grief at the death of the 33-year-old. While largely peaceful, it was marred by scuffles with police and images of some women being bundled to the ground and handcuffed.

Elsewhere today police in Norfolk warned people gathering for a Sarah Everard vigil in a small town tonight risk breaking the Covid laws on gatherings.

Organisers of the vigil – planned for the Market Place in King’s Lynn – say local police have been ‘consulted and are aware’.

A Norfolk police spokesman said ‘We understand the strength of feeling and people’s desire to come together to mourn the death of Sarah Everard and make a statement on the issues of women’s safety.

‘However, large gatherings are not currently permitted under the COVID-19 regulations to prevent the spread of the virus.

‘Many people have made sacrifices during lockdown and we must take a consistent approach to policing the regulations and cannot wave the regulations for any one type of gathering.

‘We will continue to follow the four Es…to engage, explain and encourage, using enforcement where there are breaches of the law.’ The vigil is planned at 6pm tonight. +42

Thousands of protesters met at the park to listen to speakers before marching through the centre of London this afternoon +42

Demonstrators march during a protest against the coronavirus lockdown in Hyde Park, London, today. London Metropolitan Police said it would arrest protesters at the illegal event+42

Police wearing face masks arrest and hold down a protester in near Oxford Street in central London today

Co-organisers Councillor Jo Rust said: ‘There is a great strength and depth of feelings and it’s important that the women of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk are able to peacefully pay their respects and remember the lives of women who have been… while doing nothing more than walking home.

‘We will make sure the event is Covid safe and will only allow four people at a time to come and pay their respects. Supporters have been advised to wear masks and observe social distancing guidelines.’

Sarah, 33, went missing on March 3 as she walked home from a friend’s house in London. Her remains were found in woods in Kent on March 10 and police officer Wayne Couzens has been charged kidnap and killing her.

Another organiser of the King’s Lynn vigil, known only as Rosie, said it was to highlight concerns over women’s safety.

She said: ‘We’re all mindful of safety during the pandemic, and will be acting with the utmost respect for Covid guidelines, but Sarah’s [death] has brought it home to many of us, that whatever we do, we’re not safe.’

Another woman, called Cissy, said: ‘Women should be able to walk home without fear of attack, but for most women this isn’t the case.

‘This vigil is to give us all the opportunity to pay our respects to a young woman who was [killed] while walking home.’

A woman called Jo added: ‘There is a great strength and depth of feelings and it’s important that the women of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk are able to peacefully pay their respects and remember the lives of women who have been [killed] while doing nothing more than walking home.’

They said supporters are advised to attend wearing masks and observe social distancing.

More than 60 MPs joined campaign groups Big Brother Watch and Liberty in writing to the Home Secretary yesterday to say it is a human right to demonstrate.

Tories Steve Baker and Sir Christopher Chope as well as Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey and Labour MPs Diane Abbott and Dawn Butler signed the letter. 

They are calling on Ms Patel to tell police to ‘facilitate’ protests and avoid forcing them to ‘decipher precisely what is required’. +42

More than 60 MPs joined campaign groups Big Brother Watch and Liberty in writing to the Home Secretary (pictured on Monday) to say it is a human right to demonstrate+42

Police detain a woman as people gather at a memorial site in Clapham Common Bandstand, following the kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard, in London, on March 13+42

+42

+42

Which MPs and Peers signed Liberty and Big Brother Watch’s letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel?

1. Diane Abbott MP
2. Steve Baker MP
3. Paula Barker MP
4. Apsana Begum MP
5. Lord Beith
6. Baroness Natalie Bennett
7. Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury
8. Lord Bradshaw
9. Baroness Brinton
10. Richard Burgon MP
11. Dawn Butler MP
12. Dan Carden MP
13. Alistair Carmichael MP
14. Baroness Shami Chakrabarti
15. Sir Christopher Chope MP
16. Wendy Chamberlain MP
17. Daisy Cooper MP
18. Sir Edward Davey MP
19. Geraint Davies MP
20. Tim Farron MP
21. Baroness Featherstone
22. Richard Fuller MP
23. Lord Greaves
24. Chris Green MP
25. Baroness Hamwee
26. Baroness Harris of Richmond
27. Wera Hobhouse MP
28. Rachel Hopkins MP
29. Christine Jardine MP
30. Baroness Jenny Jones
31. Baroness Jolly Mary
32. Kelly Foy MP
33. Ian Lavery MP
34. Clive Lewis MP
35. Tony Lloyd MP
36. Caroline Lucas MP
37. Baroness Ludford
38. Lord McNally
39. Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
40. Andrew Mitchell MP
41. Layla Moran MP
42. Lord Oates
43. Sarah Olney MP
44. Kate Osborne MP
45. Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
46. Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP
47. Virendra Sharma MP
48. Baroness Sheehan
49. Jamie Stone MP
50. Lord Strasburger
51. Zarah Sultana MP
52. Sir Desmond Swayne
53. Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
54. Baroness Thornhill
55. Lord Tyler Sir Charles Walker MP
56. Lord Wallace of Saltaire
57. Baroness Walmsley
58. Claudia Webbe MP
59. Mick Whitley MP
60. Munira Wilson MP
61. Nadia Whittome MP

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The letter said: ‘The absence of clear guidance on these issues has created an entirely unsatisfactory situation, which has persisted to varying degrees for almost a year now.

‘The police have no legal certainty as to their duties and powers, protestors have no legal certainty as to their rights, and there is inconsistent application of the Regulations across the country. This cannot continue.’

But the Home Office doubled down on its position that it is still illegal to leave home without and exemption until March 29.

A spokesman said: ‘While we are still in a pandemic we continue to urge people to avoid mass gatherings, in line with wider coronavirus restrictions.’

There have been constant anti-lockdown protests throughout the pandemic, often attended by conspiracy theorist Piers Corbyn.

But over the last week demonstrations were sparked after the police’s handling of a vigil to Sarah Everard. A policeman is facing a charge of murder and abduction.

Organisers cancelled the service at Clapham Common, London, last weekend, but hundreds still attended and clashed with officers.

The day before they had failed to persuade the High Court to overrule the Met in allowing the event to be held.

The judge ruled he would not intervene but hinted human rights of expression and gathering could be considered acceptable excuses.

On Sunday and Monday people took to the streets of Westminister and gathered outside Downing Street and in Parliament Square in protest.

Director of Big Brother Watch Silkie Carlo said: ‘The harrowing scenes of police officers using force against women at Clapham Common recently were avoidable and wrong.

‘Over the past week, many more demonstrators and even legal observers have been arrested or fined.

‘This stain on our democracy is a direct consequence of this government’s disrespect for the most basic of British democratic freedoms.’

Sam Grant from Liberty added: ‘Last week, the police conceded protest is not banned under the lockdown regulations, but used them to threaten then arrest demonstrators anyway.

‘The home secretary must immediately issue guidance to all police forces to ensure socially distanced protests can go ahead and create an explicit exemption for protest in the current regulations.’

Ms Patel has asked Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to ‘conduct a lessons-learned review into the policing of the event’ at Clapham Common.

More protests are expected this weekend but the Met said a ‘significant policing operation’ will be underway to ‘engage’ with lockdown flouters.

It added: ‘Those gathering will be encouraged to return home. If they do not they face necessary and proportionate enforcement action. This could be a fixed penalty notice or arrest.’

A number of demonstrations are expected to take place in the capital, including a rally at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park to support Piers Corbyn’s mayoral bid.

The brother of the former Labour leader has been at the forefront of the anti-lockdown movement since restrictions were imposed a year ago.

There are also expected to be protests against plans to give police in England and Wales more power to impose conditions on non-violent protests, including those deemed too noisy or a nuisance.

Dame Cressida Dick’s tenure as chief of the Metropolitan Police is reportedly ‘unlikely’ to be renewed following the anger over her officers’ handling of Sarah Everard‘s vigil.

Ms Patel is not expected to extend her contract at Scotland Yard when it expires in April next year, government sources told the Times last night.

Britain’s most senior officer has been under fire after widespread condemnation of how the Clapham Common memorial was policed last weekend.

Officers arrested and pinned down women attending the event in honour of the 33-year-old marketing executive Ms Everard.+42

+42

Priti Patel (left) is not expected to extend Dame Cressida Dick’s (right) contract at Scotland Yard when it expires in April next year, government sources claimed last night

Dame Cressida faced calls to quit from across the political spectrum and was criticised by both the Home Secretary and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

Ms Patel said she was ‘shocked at the way in which Saturday night’s vigil was policed’, while Mr Khan was ‘not satisfied’ with Dame Cressida’s explanation.

Yet she refused to bow to pressure and lambasted ‘armchair’ critics who she said failed to grasp the complexities of policing during the pandemic.

But insiders are said to believe last week’s saga was the final straw in what is being viewed in government as a mounting catalogue of blunders.

Dame Cressida came under fire last year for her handling of London’s Black Lives Matter protests, which spiralled into chaos and saw violence.

A source told The Times: ‘Cressida is not seen as having done a great job… The general expectation is that her contract won’t be extended.’

Ms Patel said she retained ‘full confidence’ in the Met comissioner and the source stressed the pair have a strong working relationship.

In the wake of the protests Mr Khan, who is up for reelection in May, said he did not believe the capital’s streets were safe for young women.

He told LBC: ‘No, they aren’t – or for girls – and it’s really important that people of my gender understand that.

‘If you’re a woman or a girl, your experiences of our city, in any public space, whether it’s in the workplace on the streets, on public transport is very different to if you are a man or a boy, and it’s really important that people like me in positions of power and influence understand that and take steps to address that.’

After last week’s protests Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey called on the Commissioner to ‘consider’ her leadership of the force, adding: ‘Cressida Dick has lost the confidence of the millions of women in London and should resign.’

Women’s Equality Party co-founder Catherine Mayer said her position was ‘untenable’.

Do Not Think For Yourselves, You Are Not Educated, Trust Scientists – Posted March 20th 2021

5 ways to spot if someone is trying to mislead you when it comes to science Posted March 20^th 2021

by Hassan Vally, The Conversation 

It’s not a new thing for people to try to mislead you when it comes to science. But in the age of COVID-19—when we’re being bombarded with even more information than usual, when there’s increased uncertainty, and when we may be feeling overwhelmed and fearful—we’re perhaps even more susceptible to being deceived.

The challenge is to be able to identify when this may be happening. Sometimes it’s easy, as often even the most basic fact-checking and logic can be potent weapons against misinformation.

But often, it can be hard. People who are trying either to make you believe something that isn’t true, or to doubt something that is true, use a variety of strategies that can manipulate you very effectively.

Here are five to look out for.

1. The ‘us versus them’ narrative

This is one of the most common tactics used to mislead. It taps into our intrinsic distrust of authority and paints those with evidence-based views as part of some other group that’s not be trusted. This other group—whether people or an institution—is supposedly working together against the common good, and may even want to harm us.

Recently we’ve seen federal MP Craig Kelly use this device. He has repeatedly referred to “big goverment” being behind a conspiracy to withhold hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin from the public (these drugs currently don’t have proven benefits against COVID-19). Kelly is suggesting there are forces working to prevent doctors from prescribing these drugs to treat COVID-19, and that he’s on our side.

His assertion is designed to distract from, or completely dismiss, what the scientific evidence is telling us. It’s targeted at people who feel disenfranchised and are predisposed to believing these types of claims.

Although this is one of the least sophisticated strategies used to mislead, and easy to spot, it can be very effective.

2. “I’m not a scientist, but…’

People tend to use the phrase “I’m not a scientist, but…” as a sort of universal disclaimer which they feel allows them to say whatever they want, regardless of scientific accuracy.

A phrase with similar intent is “I know what the science says, but I’m keeping an open mind.” People who want to disregard what the evidence is showing, but at the same time want to appear reasonable and credible, often use these phrases.

Politicians are among the most frequent offenders. On an episode of Q&A in 2020, Senator Jim Molan indicated he was not “relying on the evidence” to form his conclusions about whether climate change was caused by humans. He was keeping an open mind, he said.

If you hear any statements that sound faintly like these ones, particularly from a politician, alarm bells should ring very loudly.

3. Reference to ‘the science not being settled’

This is perhaps one of the most powerful strategies used to mislead.

There are of course times when the science is not settled, and when this is the case, scientists openly argue different points of view based on the evidence available.

Currently, experts are having an important debate around the role of tiny airborne particles called aerosols in the transmission of COVID-19. As for most things COVID-related, we’re working with limited and uncertain evidence, and the landscape is in constant flux. This type of debate is healthy.

But people might suggest the science isn’t settled in a mischievous way, to overstate the degree of uncertainty in an area. This strategy exploits the broader community’s limited understanding of the scientific process, including the fact all scientific findings are associated with a degree of uncertainty.

It’s well documented the tobacco industry designed the playbook on this to dismiss the evidence that smoking causes lung cancer.

The goal here is to raise doubt, create confusion and undermine the science. The power in this strategy lies in the fact it’s relatively easy to employ—particularly in today’s digital age.

4. Overly simplistic explanations

Oversimplifications and generalizations are where many conspiracy theories are born.

Science is often messy, complex and full of nuance. The truth can be much harder to explain, and can sometimes sound less plausible, than a simple but incorrect explanation.

We’re naturally drawn to simple explanations. And if they tap into our fears and exploit our cognitive biases—systematic errors we make when we interpret information—they can be extremely seductive.

Conspiracy theories, such as the one suggesting 5G is the cause of COVID-19, take off because they offer a simple explanation for something frightening and complex. This particular claim also feeds into concerns some people may have about new technologies.

As a general rule, when something appears too good or too bad to be true, it usually is.

5. Cherry-picking

People who use this approach treat scientific studies like individual chocolates in a gift box, where you can choose the ones you like and disregard the ones you don’t. Of course, this isn’t how science works.

It’s important to understand not all studies are equal; some provide much stronger evidence than others. You can’t just conveniently put all your faith in the studies that align with your views, and ignore those that don’t.

When scientists evaluate evidence, they go through a systematic process to assess the whole body of evidence. This is a crucial task that requires expertise.

The cherry-picking tactic can be hard to counter because unless you’re across all the evidence, you’re not likely to know whether the studies being presented have been deliberately curated to mislead you.

This is yet another reason to rely on the experts who understand the full breadth of the evidence and can interpret it sensibly.

The pandemic has highlighted the speed at which misinformation can travel, and how dangerous this can be. Regardless of how sensible or educated we think we are, we can all be taken in by people trying to mislead us.

The key to preventing this is to understand some of the common tactics used to mislead, so we’ll be better placed to spot them, and this may prompt us to seek out more reliable sources of information.

Comment The above article references science being messy, implying it is beyond the brain power and education of the average person – state education being mainly about brainwashing , PSHE etc.

What the writer is really getting at is why we must hunker down for more lockdown as they hype up the menace of a third wave. We are all too stupid to understand why lockdown has worked so well and that millions more would have died without it. We mustn’t suspect that it hasn’t worked at all , and that the virus has been hyped up while borders have remained open. Only a deranged conspiracy theorist would suspect a hidden agenda. Leave it all to the ‘scientists.’

We are told that vaccines are no reason to lift lockdown whatever the apparent damage to the masses lives, income and sanity. Hence vaccination has been suspended in U.K and Europe’s leadership ( sic ) are bickering over what vaccine can and cannot be used. R.J Cook

‘It’s a national crisis’: UK’s birth rate is falling dramatically Posted March 20th 2021

August 14, 2019 10.48am BST

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1. Carly-Emma Leachman PhD Candidate in the School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University

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The birth rate in England and Wales is now the lowest it has ever been since records began. Only 11 babies were born for every 1,000 people in 2018, with 657,076 born overall. To put this in perspective, 957,782 babies were born in 1920 despite the overall population being 22m fewer than it is today.

It may not seem a cause for concern. We are all familiar with the strain being placed on the environment by increased human activity – and in fact it has even been suggested that to help tackle climate change people should be having fewer children.

But with an increasingly ageing population, and Brexit due to impact on the number of non-British workers in the employment market, the UK is facing a population crisis.

All time low

This isn’t the first time the UK has encountered such an issue. The early 20th century saw a continued decline in birth rates combined with high levels of infant mortality. And with the losses of the First World War and the threat of another conflict approaching, motherhood was increasingly of interest to both society and state.

We believe in experts. We believe knowledge must inform decisions

Concern over the sustained reduction in birth rates prompted increased levels of government involvement in maternal and child welfare. The Maternity and Child Welfare Act of 1918 extended the powers of local authorities to establish antenatal clinics, educational classes, dental treatment and home visits for expectant mothers, and empowered them to provide food and milk for pregnant women in need.

At a time when state aid was uncommon, pregnant women and infants were unusually favoured. By 1921, £9.8m a year was spent on community care and £7.7m on maternal and child welfare. By 1937, community care expenditure totalled £29.5m – with £17.4m alone spent on maternal and child welfare services.

Over time, a package of measures was put in place to attempt to support mothers and ensure the health of both mothers and children. And the number of infant welfare centres in England and Wales increased massively – from 650 in 1915 to 3,580 by 1938.

As the century progressed, the country continued to invest in its families. In 1945, the Family Allowances Act was passed, paying five shillings a week for each child in a family – excluding the eldest if one adult was in work. The rate was increased in 1952 by a further three shillings, and in 1956 the Family Allowances Act extended the payments to all children.

Alongside efforts to financially support families, there were various government funded projects that attempted to uncover the root causes of birth rate decline. In 1937, a survey titled “The Reluctant Stork” was undertaken to ask a sample of women why they were not expanding their families. The answers that came back broadly fell into the categories of money, lack of support, housing and security.

An ageing nation

In times of uncertainty, families do not add to their number – this is as true now as it was in the 1930s. And the decline in birthrate in the UK is as serious a matter in 2019 as it was a century ago.

The UK is an increasingly aged nation and that is only set to become more so. There are 26.6m people in the UK aged between 40 and 79 – these are the people who, in the next 20 years, will be needing care or approaching that point. In contrast, there are fewer than 14m young people under the age of 19 – the people who in the next 20 years will be providing that care.

Right now there is a deficit of 100,000 staff across the NHS – with a further 110,000 vacancies in adult social care. That is the situation with an EU workforce still supporting the system – 62,000 of NHS England’s 1.2m workers and approximately 104,000 of the 1.3m employees within adult social care are EU nationals.

So given that the birth rate has fallen consistently for over 60 years, it’s clear there will not be enough young people coming into the workforce. And with an ageing population, the strain upon that smaller number is all the greater.

Families hit hardest

The UK is unsettled and the future is uncertain. Austerity has been in force for almost a decade and the impact has been felt by many families. Whereas the interwar and post-1948 governments made mothers and children a priority in order to tackle the low birth rate, the last ten years has seen support for families rolled back.

Sure Start centres have been closed in their hundreds, a two child limit has been enforced on Tax Credit and Universal Credit payments, maternity services are struggling and infant mortality rates are rising.

This is a national crisis once more and one that can only be tackled by again placing social and financial value on parenting and the family. The UK needs children. It needs children to support the economy and the ageing population in the decades ahead. But the only way this will happen is if children and families are valued and supported once more.

All About The Women R.J Cook March 17th 2021

Women are 50% less likely to be murder victims than men.

77% of women are murdered indoors by somebody they know.

Fatal violence on women is down 16% year on year.

Only 13% of female victims were murdered after abduction in the street.

Last year, 24 women (out of a UK adult female population of 18 million) died that way.

Across Europe there are anti lockdown protests. That was hardly happening in the U.K because the Police State Government’s fear campaign has worked well. However , last Sunday , the British Police State Government was presented with the connundrum of mainly young women breaching lockdown rules for a vigil over the murder of a lockdown breaching woman at night time near Clapham Common.

The speed at which the British Police State govenment has brought out its new policing bill leads many to believe that it is poor and rushed response to protect women. Clearly the bill’s dangerously intrusive female biased clauses to provide plain clothes cops in busy pubs and clubs to protect women has a deeper intent.

Sarah Everard vigil: Woman ‘was ignored by police’ over exposure report March 15th 2021

Comment on the BBC article below. The guy was probably taking a leak because London has few public toilets. We can see how this is shaping up with cosseted posh girls on the look out for offence, effectivly sex police – safe with the liberal ideology that females are strong , independent and equal. Here we have a young female with so little in her life that this makes her spoiled self uncomfortable. In this context, they are demanding special treatement for their sensitvities, freedom to go where they like , violate lockdown and riot if sufficiently indignant.

They are equal but much more sensitive, so society has to be rebuilt because one young woman breached lockdown , meeting a non relative in her flat , and took a 50 minute night walk alone in historically dangerous South London.

What happened to her is a matter for court to decide. My guess is that a weirdo cop stopped her, flashed his warrant card because he was not in uniform, came out with lockdown nazism as a pretext for trying it on. A lot of cops expect women to melt at the site of a cops uniform, warrant card and weaponry. Cops expect naive women to feel grateful and protected. Sadly that is true in lots of cases – there is even a ‘uniform dating’ website for those with that fetish.

Women want to pick and choose rules and regulations and define equality. Clearly this is a dangerous power grab with terrible implications for the psychological well being of young people of both sexes – in a society where there are large numbers of one parent female dominated families. Women are now highly charged , putting all men in danger because of the myth that they never lie or fanatasise.

It will be very interesting to see how this develops as female dominated mainstream media and education services join in a rant for change. The data and science upon which it is based is as spurious and disruptive as the never ending Covid lockdown.

In this context , we will not only see the rise of transsexuals , but more gay identity and youth gang culture which in London is predominantly BAME. This is a highly explosive situation with a certain type of female calling the tune and grovelling politicians , along with courts, clamouring to please a dangerous powerful raging women’s lobby.

R.J Cook

A woman who attended a vigil for Sarah Everard in south London says she was ignored when she tried to report a case of indecent exposure to police.

Georgina Ashby was on her way home from Clapham Common on Saturday when she was confronted by a man exposing himself.

Ms Ashby told the BBC she tried to speak to a group of police but a male officer told her they had “had enough with the rioters tonight”.

The Met Police said it was looking into the report.

The force has faced criticism for the way it handled the vigil after officers handcuffed and forcibly removed a number of women from the event.

Ms Ashby was among hundreds of people who had gathered to pay their respects to 33-year-old Ms Everard, who went missing while walking home from a friend’s house on 3 March.

On her way, Ms Ashby said she walked past a man who was standing on a pavement with “his genitals out of his fly”.

She told the BBC she went up to a group of “about five or six police officers” to ask them if they could address the situation as she was feeling “very uncomfortable”.

“The female officer said ‘ok, fine, we’ll go’ and she was about to go when a male colleague said ‘we’re not dealing with this anymore, no, we’ve had enough with the rioters tonight, we’re not dealing with it’,” she said.

Ms Ashby added that she had been left “shocked” by the police’s reaction.

“It’s such a huge challenge that women don’t feel they have a safe space to even speak on these things let alone that these things even happen and continue to happen,” she said.

Two female officers from the Met have since visited Ms Ashby and the force has said it was looking into her report.

“We are aware of a report that she tried to report this incident at the time to officers in the area – this will be looked at,” the Met said.

Men Beware Strict New Rules For Sexual Relationships – R.J Cook March 15th 2021

With confidence in the Met falling, could this be the end for comeback Cressida? Extract Posted March 15th with comment above.

Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondentSun, 14 March 2021, 8:36 pm·5-min read

Faced with massive political pressure, Cressida Dick decided to make the personal her best defence on Sunday, while focusing on loyalty to her officers no matter how vehement the criticism.

The first female commissioner since the founding of the Metropolitan police in 1829 stressed her identity as a woman as she tried to convince her critics she should stay in her job and bear down on violence, especially that suffered by other women and girls.

“If it had been lawful, I would have been there,” she said of the vigil for Sarah Everard on Clapham Common, which ended in shocking clashes between officers and mourners.

In a statement and interview on Sunday evening, Dick insisted she was not considering resigning. She added: “What happened to Sarah appalls me. As you know, I’m the first woman commissioner of the Met – perhaps it appalls me, in a way, even more because of that. What has happened makes me more determined, not less, to lead my organisation.”

There was not a word of criticism for the actions of officers that triggered an outcry across the political divide. She said the vigil had been peaceful for several hours before officers feared danger. “Unfortunately, later on, we had a really big crowd that gathered, lots of speeches and quite rightly, as far as I can see, my team felt this is now an unlawful gathering which poses a considerable risk to people’s health according to the regulations.”

She regretted the scenes, but Dick was mindful of the fact no force has to deal with the volume of protests the Met does: “What we do at one event sets precedents for other events.” Faced with an independent review by the policing inspectorate, Dick said she welcomed it. In reality, she has little choice.

Policing, she insisted, was “fiendishly difficult” and she took aim at “armchair” critics, a common way for those in policing to dismiss concerns.

After 24 hours during which the judgment of her force was questioned by the home secretary, the leader of the opposition, the mayor of London, backbench MPs and campaigners, the commissioner seemed to dismiss critics and said the demands her officers faced were not understood: “They have to make these really difficult calls and I don’t think anybody should be sitting back in an armchair and saying well that was done badly or I would’ve done it differently without actually understanding what was going through their minds.

Hate Britain by R.J Cook March 14th 2021

The most peculiar aspect of the Everhard case is what on earth was the motive. Are there men who just cannot control themselves at the sight of a pretty young woman. If so it begs the question as to whether that has always been the case or has something changed since the end of the tumultuos twentieth century.

Feminism derives from bourgeoise sociology , a so called social science and subject upon which I lectured and examined in college. It was hijacked by feminists in the 1970s, now claiming to speak the absolute truth. Like cancer or ground elder it is everywhere.

So the multi ethnic but predominantly upper middle class ‘uni’ girls claim the right to decide who can protest – meaning them and the BLM. They are the moral arbiters. The police are there to protect them so they won’t shout too loud about a perv cop who was caught flashing in February before abducting and murdering Ms Everard. So these nice young career women and the mainstream media where many of them walk into jobs, could not understand why the London female Police Chief ordered her officers to break up last nights feminist vigil for Sara Everard on the grounds it breached lockdown restrictions.

There are allegedly good science reasons for lockdown. So why should these women and BAME be exempt when both sides campaign to make the country and wider world safer for them ? Why can’t men have safe spaces from them ? Why must men accept the lie that women are never ill intentioned ? Why must men accept the lie that women never lie ? These women do not want equality. They want supremacy and are playing the Everard case for their own ends, which is why the killer being a cop and indicative of an obvious malignancy in the police, is of no interest to them. Of course they will call for more senior female police cops.

They want Dick to go , not because she was responsible for the unlawful killing of a young Brazillian. These women will not even have heard of him because he wasn’t black. No. They want her to go to make room for s woman more to their taste and persuasion. In this case, there is no reason to resign just because her offcers were forced to remove leders of an illegal gathering during lockdown.

After all this crime has given feminists and political virtue signalling backers, a golden opportunity to further clamp down on white men – remember in the Liberal feminist pecking order , blacks are nearly as oppressed by white men as they are. So with excuses to extend lockdown wearing thin and elite fear of the right wing whites rising, it is another hope for keeping them shut away. No doubt young white males will have to gain certificates in race and gender awareness before being allowed into the wider economic and social world.

I can think of lots of reasons why Cressida Dick should resign from her boss’s job. I can think of one big reason why she should have left the Met for its own good.

Dick got the top ob because it had to be a woman and her only rival Sara Thornton was also tainted. Dick’s taint should have been terminal.

The mother of a man shot dead 15 years ago in a Tube station by police who mistook him for a terror suspect has said her pain “is not over yet”.

Jean Charles de Menezes was chased into the station, down the escaltor pinned down and shot nine times in the head and body by plain clothes officers in Stockwell station on 22 July 2005. Video footage of the incident which ended with Jean Charles sitting dead in an underground train carriage , mysteriously disappeared. Police discredited the woman sitting next to him , who saw it, as a prostitute. The British police ar too moronic and lazy to be sexist or racist. They are just vile liars.

Maria de Menezes told the BBC she was “still suffering”, and criticised the Met Police.

No officers were prosecuted for the killing but the Met was fined for breaching health and safety laws.

Mr de Menezes, an electrician who was 27, was chased Obviously police are equal opportunities employers because their ‘marksmen’ ( sic ) mistook the slim tee shirt wearing. Charles for a fat parka wearing Pakistani with explosives up his shirt. Dick gave the order to kill Charles over the radio. She hadn’t a clue what was going on. This crime got her a promotion – and look where she is now. The police hierarchy always promote their chosen ones who fu-k up. It is two fingers up to the long suffering lower classes.

I bought the video of Mike Bull’s ‘Peterloo’ and watched it again last night and early morning. The upper middle class critics slagged it off as another boring costume drama with too much build up using repetitive speeches and no character arc. Here is an example of on such condescending drivel that one has to expect from snooty middle class English Literature . graduates who infest the media – with an ongoing prejudice that every white person is as privileged as they are. They also force the view that the only slavery enriching their ancestors during the industrial revolution was black. Peterloo doesn’t fit the narrative. The story arc was class war, which suddenly doesn’t exist and has been written out of bourgeoise feminist woke history. The oppressed are simply blacks and female.

“Kerry Lengel   | The Republic | azcentral.com

“If you happened on any five-minute stretch of “Peterloo,” it might look like another finely tuned, gently probing historical film from writer-director Mike Leigh (“Vera Drake,” “Mr. Turner”). But it doesn’t take long to suspect you are witnessing an epic fail of “Alexander” proportions — a visionary filmmaker pouring years of craft and ambition, not to mention millions of dollars and the talents of dozens of gung-ho actors, down the drain of a misconceived “statement.”

But where Oliver Stone’s cinematic sins include riding roughshod over history, Leigh’s faithful reliance on primary sources is what sets “Peterloo” on the road to disaster.

The film marks the 200th anniversary of a little-known massacre in Manchester, where Leigh grew up. After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, the British aristocracy was terrified of homegrown radicals demanding things like voting rights and relief from the crushing burdens of the new industrial economy, and on Aug. 16, 1819, soldiers put down a peaceful gathering of tens of thousands of protesters at St. Peter’s Field — hence Peterloo — killing 15 and injuring hundreds.”

These three images from the film ‘Peterloo’ show the arrogance of Britain’e elite at the 1819 peaceful protest against the ‘Corn Laws’ which kept bread prices artificially high for landowners who had profited from marginal land during the Napoleonic Wars. Britain’s elite paid slave wages in their thriving cotton mills. White working classes were treated like slaves. Wellington became Prime Minister and was behind the massacre of protesters at St Petersfields Manchester. The militia was led by rich officers and full of class traitors. They tore protesters to pieces. Reviewers of the film didn’t like it because the only people who suffered during the Industrial Revolution were blacks and women. There is and never was such a thing as class according to the new sociology.

While the massacre was going on, the law makers down in London were having fun at the races. Below we see the current Queen’s not so distant relative, fat Prince Regent, standing in for mad King George, bloated and drinking claret , whilst saying how pleased he is that England’s tranquility has been restored.

The above images show the Queen Mother’s visit to Royalist and true blue Buckingham in 1963 and the Queen’s visit there in the 1950s. These people were descendants of the German Hohenzollern Saxe Coburg Goethe family of princelings who were persuaded to take the British throne to block ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ who was a Catholic Stuart – the Stuarts were married into the Saxe Coburgs. The newly promoted British Royal agreed to play by the rules and not upset the applecart.

The German name was changed to Windsor during World War One so that the masses wouldn’t realise it was a war between rich inbred elites. The ruling elite are now worried that Prince Harry and Meghan’s interview on U.S T.V has exposed British Royalty as racist. Their posh and highly paid courtiers quickly packed off Princess Kate to the Clapham Common bandstand where she did a photo call , empathising with the murdered middle class marketing executive Ms Everard, saying how awful she found it walking out in London at night time. The Royal ‘firm’ will stoop to anything. The stupidest thing I heard yesterday was from a posh BBC news woman. She said ‘It is wrong to call the Royal Family racist. The Queen has alway believed in and fought for equality.’

Well , here is the reality of equality in Britain during lockdown, where millions of jobs have been lost and 10,000 High Street chain stores have closed. This is the longest food queue ever seen in Britain, worthy of Peterloo. It is London but there is no sign of the Queen or Princess Kate.

R.J Cook

Curious & Curiouser – Just in From Our Own Correspondent. March 13th 2021.

EXPLOSIVE: Sarah Everard’s murder and the link to Britain’s Secret State March 13th 2021

The mainstream media seem happy to publicise mentally ill supporters of imposing a 6pm curfew on all men following an alleged murder by one secret State policeman. This coming week, the Lords will debate making misogyny a hate crime. The Slog discusses a possible return to sanity, and begins an investigation into the process of orchestrating public acceptance of full-on totalitarian corporatocracy.

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I offer a riposte to the MSM line about the Everard murder case today. The media, Green, feminist, hard Left response to this act shows all the signs of orchestration. Within a few hours of disappearing, Sarah Everard’s absence was running end to end on all social media. Someone is reported missing every thirty seconds in the UK: this level of concern was completely atypical in both speed and size.

Plod apprehended the alleged killer within 24 hours. Surely a record for them. He is in fact a member of the security services. A day later he was in hospital with “serious head wounds” that occurred while in custody. But then he was discharged and back in custody. The media seem little interested in these details; instead, they have whipped up support for vigils….and given a voice to the man-haters from both within and without their ranks.

The result is that another “reason” for draconian totalitarian action has been created and is gaining ground. Meanwhile, some form of national security agenda (or vendetta) is being completely ignored.

This has to stop, right? Secret State censors gag our mouths and disable our sensors.

This morning, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak said a full return to the office after the “pandemic” will probably not happen. We are being conditioned to a future existence as fulltime political prisoners. On arriving there we can rejoin our minds that were imprisoned decades ago.

The deranged policy options we’re asked to accept, debate and then support get more surreal with every day.

The assertions we no longer challenge – only white people are racist, George Floyd was a hero, Islam is the religion of Peace, Trump was a racist-Russophile sex pest, all men are born rapists, Pakistani rape gangs are a myth, Incorrect Statues must be smashed – are legion.

How do we kick-start a Cold War of counterbalance against this deep pool of unhinged thought?

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There’s a case for arguing that, when it comes to fighting choreographed insanity, there are ten social typologies to take into account:

1. Too desperate, busy, idiotic, “grounded” or distracted to care about it
2. Ideologically blinded knee-jerk supporters of it
3. Orchestrators of it
4. Suspect it, but prefer denial to facing the music
5. Probably accept it, but are too socially nervous to say anything
6. Recognise it, moan about it, but prefer Netflix and the sofa to doing anything about it
7. Cooperate with it for purely personal (often selfish) reasons
8. Appalled by it, but bullied into silence by family and peers
9. Oppose it, but see little sign of having any influence without organised mass support
10. Oppose it volubly in all media

Obviously, these broad simplifications cannot be hard and fast….and they change over time. For myself, I’d say I’m 75% in the last category, 25% in the penultimate one. Twenty years ago, I was in the first category.

Today, I draw one strategic insight, based both on the above list, and some rough stats I’ve imputed over the last eighteen months. It goes as follows:

Those in the last grouping represent only around 1 in 200 of the adult population. However, creating an organisation offering succour, identity and unity would gain more active support from Groups 8, 9, and 5; further, in a worsening economic environment, it would make inroads into Group 4, and the higher social end of Group 1.

In a nutshell, in 2021, a well branded and relevantly constructed resistance group would have appeal to roughly 8.5% of adults in the UK. By the time serious fiscal anarchy had taken hold (say, 2023) this would rise to nearer 20% of the electorate.

So the concept of pushing back against madness has an immediate appeal to some 5.7 million already unhappy and active people….and within two years could easily build into 13.6 million.

Civil disobedience among that large a social group could, if directed imaginatively:

• Reduce business funding to politicians
• Starve the Treasury of funds when it most needs them
• Break the link between dirty money and the MSM
• Hold individual ministers to account
• Reduce social media advertising revenue
• Apply stealth pressure in key electoral contituencies
• Leave pols in fear of unpredictable actions
• Stay completely pacifist and within non-tyrannical laws.

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For a couple of weeks now I’ve been talking to people, testing hypotheses and gaining reactions. To be frank, it’s an uphill task….but with enough will among those who prefer being awake rather than woke, it can be achieved.

It would, however, be completely inappropriate to discuss and develop specifics of structure and tactics in any public medium. That will be done entirely through encrypted invitation.

In the meantime, vigilance remains absolutely vital. Stay close to the Everard murder case – and other similar orchestration methods.

Why Suffragists Helped Send Women Doctors to WWI’s Front Lines Posted March 13th 2021

Doctors of the Women’s Oversea Hospitals Unit operated under bomb and gas attacks. And their all-female support teams built new hospitals—even the coffins.Melinda Beck

The unlikely band of American women who crossed the Atlantic into war-torn France in February 1918 included six doctors, 13 nurses, a dentist, a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter and a mechanic. They were the first wave of women determined to build hospitals to treat the war-wounded and help the Allied effort in World War I. But they had an ulterior motive as well: to prove beyond doubt that women were just as brave, competent and self-sacrificing as men—and thus deserved the right to vote back home.

They did so working shoulder to shoulder alongside men in makeshift hospitals, operating under enemy fire, treating soldiers and war refugees who had been maimed, wounded, gassed or ravaged by influenza.

World War I offered many new opportunities for women—and suffragist groups pushed for even more. At the time, only about six percent of American doctors were female and most could only find positions in hospitals established by and for women. Soon after America entered the war in 1917, four New York-based physicians, Drs. Caroline Finley, Alice Gregory, Mary Lee Edward and Anna Von Sholly, offered their medical services to the U.S. military and were firmly rebuffed because they were women.

But the desperate French welcomed the women—along with whatever funding and supplies they could bring—into the Service de Santé, which oversaw French military medical care.

The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), with some 2 million members nationwide, joined forces with the women doctors. At its December 1917 meeting, NAWSA pledged $175,000 to sponsor an all-female team of physicians, nurses and support personnel to build and staff hospitals in France. They called it the Women’s Oversea Hospitals Unit, deliberately leaving “suffrage” out of the title—”for fear it would queer it,” according to accounts at the time.

In all, 78 women doctors and their assistants risked their lives under NAWSA’s suffragist banner in World War I, but their stories remain largely lost to history. “Practically no information exists about the women doctors and the Women’s Oversea Hospitals Unit, outside of the rare mention in an obituary or the self-published pamphlet authored by a NAWSA volunteer,” writes Kate Clarke Lemay, a historian at the National Portrait Gallery who chronicled what she could find in her 2019 book, Votes for Women! A Portrait of Persistence.

READ MORE: How Women Fought Their Way Into the Armed Forces

‘Bombs Shook the Operating Room Theater’

Suffrage pin manufactured for the American market by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, to publicize their sponsorship of overseas hospitals to care for wounded soldiers during World War I, 1918. By underscoring the important and dangerous work women doctors were doing on the front lines, NAWSA hoped to strengthen their case that women deserved the right to vote.

The Women’s Oversea Hospitals’ first unit intended to build a hospital in Guiscard, in northern France, but the Germans had overrun it by the time the women arrived. Twelve of them dispatched instead to Château Ognon, a 17th-century estate-turned-military evacuation hospital outside of Paris. 

The French military surgeons who greeted their truck roared with laughter when they saw that their reinforcements were American women.

But the laughter didn’t last long. In the first 36 hours, the women treated some 650 cases. “Wounded men started coming in so fast there was no time to think of men people or women people, just human needs,” Dr. Olga Povitsky wrote in a 1918 letter excerpted by the Woman Citizen, NAWSA’s weekly newspaper. Soon the Americans were in charge of entire wards and operating alongside French surgeons.

Château Ognon, situated along the route German bombers took to attack Paris, was itself bombed in the Germans’ final offensive of the war. Dozens of patients, staffers and soldiers were killed or wounded as the Germans lobbed 3,000 pieces of artillery on the hospital between May 27 and June 16. But the women doctors never flinched. “Bombs shook the operating room theater and the barracks. Cannons roared and planes vibrated the atmosphere,” wrote Dr. Edward, who operated on more than 100 casualties in a 24-hour period under enemy fire.

For their bravery, the French government later awarded the Croix de Guerre to Drs. Finley, Edward and Von Sholly and nurse Jane McKee.

READ MORE: Women in World War II Took on These Dangerous Military Jobs

‘We Had to Do All Our Own Heavy Work, Including Making Coffins’

Other members of the first suffragist unit were sent build a 50-bed hospital at Labouheyre, in southwestern France, to care for refugees fleeing the German offensive. German POWs framed the barracks, supervised by carpenter Florence Kober, who spoke German. But the women built everything else, from furnishing the hospital with running water and electricity to outfitting it with closets and shelves.

“We had to do all our own heavy work, including making coffins,” Dr. Mabel Seagrave, an ear, nose and throat specialist from Seattle, later told a reporter. “Our plumber was a former New York actress. Our carpenter was just out of a fashionable girl’s school. Our chauffeurs were all girls.”

Directed by Dr. Seagrave and Dr. Marie Formad, a surgeon from Newark, N.J., the hospital soon grew to 125 beds and treated more than 10,000 refugees during its existence. The Women’s Apparel Association, representing the U.S. fashion industry from factory workers to department-store buyers, provided more than $100,000 for its funding.

READ MORE: Night of Terror: When Suffragists Were Imprisoned and Tortured in 1917

Treating Gas Attack Victims—and Being Gassed

In the summer of 1918, the French asked NAWSA to send 50 more women doctors, nurses and assistants to set up a 300-bed hospital in Nancy for victims of gas attacks, along with a mobile unit that could travel to the frontlines. NAWSA leaders scoured the country for female physicians with appropriate experience, but warned candidates, “This service may be dangerous and will require women of good nerve.”

Among those who volunteered were Dr. Marie Lefort, a specialist in skin diseases from Bellevue Hospital Dispensary in New York; Dr. Nellie Barsness, an ophthalmologist from St. Paul, Minnesota and Anna McNamara, a mechanic needed to drive the mobile unit’s three-ton truck and run the steam engine needed to heat water for baths and disinfecting clothes. Several of the women suffered gas attacks themselves, including Dr. Irene Morse, a lung specialist from Clinton, Connecticut, who died of the after-effects in 1933.

READ MORE: 9 Groundbreaking Inventions by Women

‘Thank God You’ve Come’

The signing of the armistice in November 1918 didn’t end the need for medical care as thousands of repatriates, many of them sick, wounded and starving, traversed the ravaged French countryside. Members of the Women’s Oversea Hospitals units stayed on for months in different roles. Dr. Finley’s group was deployed to Cambrai, on the German-French border, where 1,500 refugees were returning every day. When she reported to the commanding officer there, he said, “Thank God you’ve come,” Dr. Finley wrote.

Other American women transformed a bombed-out girl’s boarding school in Nancy into the Jeanne d’Arc Hospital, where they treated thousands more refugees. “These poor people come in on trains that have sometimes taken days,” wrote Dr. Lefort. “They have the hunted expressions one sometimes sees in animals.”

Several other women’s groups also sent female physicians to Europe in World War I, including the Medical Women’s National Association, Smith College and philanthropist Anna Morgan, the daughter of J. P. Morgan.

‘These Women Went Through Hell…and They Became Mostly Footnotes’

WATCH: The 19th Amendment

In all, some 25,000 American women journeyed to France during World War I to support the Allied efforts. More than 100 were decorated by foreign governments, but not one was ever recognized by the U.S. government for her service.

It’s unclear how much their hard work and sacrifice helped the American suffragist cause.

After many failed attempts, Congress finally passed the 19th amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote, in 1919. It was ratified by the necessary 36 states in 1920.

But aside from brief newspaper accounts, the contributions of the female physicians went largely unrecognized. “These women went through hell just to get the opportunity to serve,” says Lemay, “and they became mostly footnotes in history books.” TagsWomen’s History

Comment There is the usual upper middle class feminist whinge element to this story. Ex servicemen were less than footnotes after the 1918 non negotiated peace settlement. Many ended up shell shocked mutilated tramps. The British Legion had to fight for a Royal Charter.

It should be remembered that upper middle class women handed out white feathers to men who were not in the ‘King’s Uniform’ in 1914. They mindlessly accepted the lies that Germans were all potential rapists and baby spearers. If they had any principles they should have refused to make the bombs, but then armaments were the only jobs going. It was the beginning of the age mass slaughter of privileged young white men, along with liberation of upper middle class women.

Upper Middle Class women made sure Germany was unfairly punished for starting World War One, thus guaranteeing the resentment that caused Nazism. This class mentality is redolent with the feminists , like Baraoness Sasha Bates , caling for male curfew because one of U.K’s weird coppers committed another serious crime.

This mentality stokes up resentment and reaction. Women are not angels, they tell lies and do commit hideous crimes out of malevolence and greed – often against children and other women. Women actually kill women. Feminists obviously need more men to hate women. They are of the dominitrix mentality , enoying cracking the whip.

History is , as they say, always written by the winners- or in the days of this cancel culture, by lackeys to publishers . In these days of Woke culture, feminists are the winners and they are re writing history. It should be noted that the , on average, suffragists were the non violent and long forgotten and decent minded wing of the women’s suffrage campaign. R.J Cook.

How many attacks on women are there? Posted March 12th 2021

The Sun@TheSun · 14h’Wales would consider curfews for men to make women feel safer on streets at night’ https://thesun.co.uk/news/politics/14315489/men-face-curfew-wales-markj-drakeford-sarah-everard/?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=sunmaintwitter&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1615540879

Serious Nazi Police State stuff. Love it.

Martyn Brown@MartynBrown80·10hReplying to @dominiquetaegonHow would you even police that, which is ironic given it was a policeman? Even the woke would probably have an issue with a “trans man” being put on curfew.

Ringo Mountbatten@arsenalite82·10hReplying to @dominiquetaegonHis son.Politician’s son exploited vulnerable woman to act out sex fantasiesJonathan Drakeford, 31, was jailed for eight years and eight months after being convicted of rape and assaultwalesonline.co.uk

The disappearance of 33-year-old Sarah Everard in south London has led to a conversation about violence by men against women.

Many women have spoken about their fears and personal experiences.

How common are killings of women?

In the year to March 2020, 207 women were killed in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales). This means about one in five killings were of women.

The number of female victims was lower than in the previous year, when 241 women were killed. This was the highest number in a decade.

Research from the Femicide Census – an organisation which collects information on men’s violence against women – calculates that across the UK 1,425 women were killed by men in the 10 years to 2018.

That is about one killing every three days.

Who are the victims attacked by?

In the past decade, there were 4,493 male victims of killings and 2,075 female victims (31%) in England and Wales.

More than nine out of 10 killers were men.

About 57% of female victims were killed by someone they knew, most commonly a partner or ex-partner. This compares with 39% of men.

The other victims were either killed by strangers – 13% in the case of women and 30% among male victims – or no suspect has been identified.

More than 70% of women were killed in their own home – twice the figure for men.

What about other violent attacks?

In general, men are more likely to be victims of violence such as assault.

It is estimated that about 1.3% of women were victims of violent crime in the year ending March 2020, compared with 2% of men.

Most violent attacks are by people the victim knows – 92% in the case of women and 79% among men.

How common are sexual offences?

In 2017, the latest year for which figures are available, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimated that 3.4m women had been victims of sexual assault in their lives. This included one million who had been raped, or had faced attempted rape.

About 650,000 men had experienced sexual assault.

Sexual assault was most common among younger women with about one in 10 students saying they had experienced a sexual crime in the past year.

One in five women has been the victim of stalking since the age of 16 – twice the number for men.

The estimates used the Crime Survey for England and Wales. This involves interviewing thousands of people and is seen as the best way of measuring crimes including those not reported to the police.

How many of these crimes are solved?

The vast majority of sexual offences do not get solved. In fact, most sexual offences do not even get reported to the police.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales shows 151,000 people – including 144,000 women – were victims of rape or attempted rape in the last year for which these figures are available.

But just 55,000 rapes were actually reported to the police last year.

In the same year, just 1,439 people were actually convicted of rape. This was the lowest number since figures started being released in 2014-15.

• Why are rape prosecutions falling?

What about sexual harassment?

Official statistics don’t provide estimates of how many women face sexual harassment.

However, surveys suggest the problem is common.

A recent YouGov poll for UN Women found that seven out of 10 of women had experienced some form of sexual harassment in public.

This number was nearly nine out of 10 for younger women.

The survey found:

• Over half of women had experienced catcalling
• Four out of 10 had been groped or faced unwelcome touching
• A third of women had been followed
• One in five had faced indecent exposure

Another YouGov survey, in 2016, found that half of women had been victims of sexual harassment at work, most often through inappropriate comments or touching.

How common is domestic abuse?

Last year, it was estimated that 1.6m women in England and Wales were victims of domestic abuse. There were 757,000 male victims.

These figures include all forms of abuse, including physical, emotional and financial.

There has been an increase in domestic abuse since lockdowns began in March of last year.

There were 444,000 domestic abuse-related crimes – against both men and women – in England and Wales between April and September.

This was almost one in five crimes recorded.

Why has the UK’s COVID death toll been so high? Inequality may have played a role March 11th 2021

March 4, 2021 11.59am GMT

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1. Danny Dorling Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford

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The first death to be publicly attributed to coronavirus in the UK was of a woman in her seventies on March 5 2020. The same day, a spokesperson for the prime minister, Boris Johnson, warned the virus could spread in “a significant way” in the UK.

On March 16 2020, a group of 30 scientists concluded: “In an unmitigated epidemic, we would predict approximately 510,000 deaths.” At the time, this prediction was greeted with some incredulity. In hindsight, more than 120,000 deaths later, it appears less outlandish, although we will never know what would have happened in an unmitigated scenario because the UK did act to control the epidemic.

Internationally, mitigation measures have ranged from social distancing and isolating, to the most extreme of lockdowns. The debate about which measures of protection have been most effective, and which may cause more harm than good, has often been acrimonious.

Acrimony has often occurred when a relatively new disease arrives in the UK. As one of the founders of epidemiology, John Snow, said in 1853 during the middle of the 19th-century cholera epidemics:

The question of contagion in various diseases has often been discussed with a degree of acrimony that is unusual in medical or other scientific inquiries. The cause of the warmth of feeling that has been displayed has, in most cases, probably been unknown to the disputants. It is the great pecuniary interests involved in the question, on account of its connection with quarantine.

Looking back, we can now see that the pecuniary interests in 2020 were the interests of businesses that were shut down during lockdown, the interests of the government in maintaining an economy of the type they favoured, and the interests of the many individuals who personally suffered financially.

These individuals included 4 million people who lost income, but for various reasons were excluded from any of the government income support schemes. Since the beginning of the pandemic, some 1.8 million UK adults lost at least a third of their income with no resort to benefits or help of any kind. Many in this group now struggle to pay for food and everyday essentials – some will be starving.

We need to now start admitting and correcting some of the worst mistakes made. Too many people were unprotected not just from the disease, but also from the policies implemented to contain it.

Long-term consequences

A year on from the first officially recorded death with COVID-19, we know the current death toll, but we have little idea what the long-term health consequences will be.

However, some things are becoming more clear. One summary of the past year published in the BMJ is particularly damning. It explains that many of the policies that had been adopted in the UK – not least the closure of schools for the majority of children for so many months – has meant that, “This pandemic has seen an unprecedented intergenerational transfer of harm and costs from elderly socioeconomically privileged people to disadvantaged children.”

The protection of elderly people (in the way that we chose to do it) was also more effective in protecting those who are more affluent and was often done at the expense of poorer families, and their children, who were both far less protected from the disease and far more hurt financially.

Others may say that the countries of the UK had little option but to close schools for so long to try to control the disease. But the UK still reported the worst pandemic outcome of any large country in the world over a year on. Of all the countries with more than 12 million people, the UK had the highest crude pandemic mortality rate by the start of March 2021: 18 people had died of the disease for every 10,000 alive at the start of the year.

Why was the UK death toll so high? Ironically, it might have been much higher had austerity not stalled improvements to public health, which researchers have estimated led to 131,000 preventable deaths, again largely of the elderly, but between 2012 and 2019.

One reason the 2020 toll was still so high is that the disease was able to spread across the whole of the UK before it was widely realised it had. We now know that there had been many deaths within the UK attributable to the disease before March 2020 and that it had been spreading across the four countries of the UK for many weeks before that first recorded death. On January 30 2020, a man in his eighties in Kent died of COVID-19 exactly five weeks earlier than the woman in her seventies mentioned at the very start of this article.

A second possible reason as to why the death toll was so high is that the UK has become one of the most economically unequal countries in Europe by income.

Another early epidemiologist, William Budd, who was working alongside John Snow in the middle of the 19th century understood the role epidemics played in exacerbating inequality.

In 1849, Budd explained:

How important it is – even in regard to their own interests – for the Rich to attend to the physical wants of the Poor. To do this is one of our first and plainest duties. The duty itself we may evade, but we cannot evade the sure penalties of its neglect. By reason of our common humanity, we are all more nearly related here than we are apt to think. The members of the great human family are, in fact, bound together by a thousand secret ties, of whose existence the world in general little dreams. And he that was never yet connected with his poorer neighbour by deeds of Charity or Love, may one day find, when it is too late, that he is connected with him by a bond which may bring them both, at once, to a common grave.

Vaccines are being rolled out, deaths are falling, but enormous damage has been done. A year on we still do not have a good test, trace and isolate programme – at a time when many cannot afford to isolate.

The UK’s approach was not, in hindsight, the right response. Ranking so badly internationally tells us that. But it does not tell us the extent to which our prior circumstances were so bad in the UK that we were doomed to have a poor outcome – or to what degree we made an already bad situation worse.

Explosive Harry, Meghan interview reverberates across globe

Posted March 9th 2021

By DANICA KIRKA and JILL LAWLESS

LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry and Meghan’s explosive TV interview divided people around the world on Monday, rocking an institution that is struggling to modernize with claims of racism and callousness toward a woman struggling with suicidal thoughts.

During the two-hour appearance with Oprah Winfrey, Harry also revealed the problems had ruptured relations with his father, Prince Charles, and brother, Prince William, illuminating the depth of the family divisions that led the couple to step away from royal duties and move to California last year.

The palace has not yet responded to the interview, in which Meghan described feeling so isolated and miserable inside the royal family that she had suicidal thoughts and said a member of the family had “concerns” about the color of her unborn child’s skin.

The family member was not Queen Elizabeth II or Prince Philip, according to Harry, sparking a flurry of speculation about who it could be.

Leaders around the world were asked about the interview, and citizens of many countries had an opinion.

In Accra, Ghana, Devinia Cudjoe said that hearing that a member of the royal family was worried about the color of the skin of an unborn child was insulting to people of the Commonwealth, the grouping of Britain and its former colonies that is headed by the queen.

“That is pure racism,” Cudjoe said. “(The) Commonwealth is supposed to foster unity, oneness amongst black people, amongst white people. But if we are hearing things like this … I think that is below the belt.”

In Nairobi, Kenya, Rebecca Wangare called Meghan “a 21st- century icon of a strong woman. She has faced racism head-on.”

Asma Sultan, a journalist in Karachi, Pakistan, said the interview “is going to tarnish the image of the royal family.”

“There is so much controversy ever since Diana’s death, so it is new Pandora box which is opened up,” she said.More on the Interview with Harry and Meghan:

• – Memorable quotes from Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview
• – The Latest: Estimated 17.1 million watched royals interview
• – Meghan and Harry interview with Oprah lays bare royal rift

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson refused to comment on the interview, praising the queen but saying that “when it comes to matters to do with the royal family the right thing for a prime minister to say is nothing.”

Asked whether U.S. President Joe Biden and his wife Jill had any reaction to the interview, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Meghan’s decision to speak about her struggles with mental health “takes courage” and “that’s certainly something the president believes in.”

But she said she wouldn’t offer additional comment on the situation “given these are private citizens, sharing their own story and their own struggles.”

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the interview bolstered his argument for Australia severing its constitutional ties to the British monarchy. Turnbull met the couple in April 2018, four months before he was replaced by current Prime Minister Scott Morrison in an internal power struggle within the conservative government.

“It’s clearly an unhappy family, or at least Meghan and Harry are unhappy. It seems very sad,” Turnbull told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “After the end of the queen’s reign, that is the time for us to say: OK, we’ve passed that watershed. Do we really want to have whoever happens to be the head of state, the king or queen of the U.K., automatically our head of state?”

Britain’s monarch is Australia’s head of state. Turnbull was a leading advocate for Australia selecting an Australian citizen as its head of state when he was chairman of the Australian Republican Movement from 1993 to 2000.

News of the interview was reported in Chinese state media, including the overseas edition of the ruling Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, and was widely discussed on the popular Weibo social media platform.

The allegations are especially damaging because many observers hoped Harry and Meghan, who is biracial, would help the tradition-bound monarchy relate to an increasingly multicultural nation. In the early days of their marriage, Harry and Meghan joined William and his wife, Catherine, in projecting a glamorous, energetic image for the young royals.

That partnership was severed when Harry and Meghan left the country, saying they wanted to earn their own living and escape what they called intrusive, racist coverage by the British media.

But the interview brought that criticism into the palace itself, with the couple directing allegations of racism at an unidentified member of the royal family.

Meghan said that when she was pregnant with her son, Archie, Harry told her that the royal family had had “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”

Harry confirmed the conversation, saying: “I was a bit shocked.” He said he wouldn’t reveal who made the comment. Winfrey later said Harry told her the comment didn’t come from Queen Elizabeth II or Prince Philip, his grandparents.

Meghan, 39, acknowledged she was naive at the start of her relationship with Harry and unprepared for the strictures of royal life. A successful actress before her marriage, she said she bridled at the controlling nature of being royal, squirming at the idea that she had to live on terms set by palace staff. This was compounded by the fact that the staff refused to help her when she faced racist attacks from the media and internet trolls, she said.

The situation became so difficult that at one point, “I just didn’t want to be alive anymore,” Meghan told Winfrey.

But when she sought help through the palace’s human resources department, she was told there was nothing it could do because she wasn’t an employee, Meghan said.

The implications for the interview — which was broadcast Sunday evening in the United States and will air in Britain on Monday night — are only beginning to be understood. Emily Nash, royal editor at Hello! Magazine, said the revelations had left her and many other viewers “shell-shocked.”

“I don’t see how the palace can ignore these allegations, they’re incredibly serious,” she said. “You have the racism allegations. Then you also have the claim that Meghan was not supported, and she sought help even from the HR team within the household and was told that she couldn’t seek help.”

The younger royals have made campaigning for support and awareness around mental health one of their priorities. But Harry said the royal family was completely unable to offer that support to its own members.

“For the family, they very much have this mentality of ‘This is just how it is, this is how it’s meant to be, you can’t change it, we’ve all been through it,’” Harry said.ADVERTISEMENT

The couple had faced severe criticism in the United Kingdom before the interview. Prince Philip, 99, is in a London hospital recovering from a heart procedure, and critics saw the decision to go forward as being a burden on the queen — even though CBS, rather than Harry and Meghan, dictated the timing of the broadcast.Full Coverage: Harry and Meghan

In the United States, sympathy for the couple poured in. Tennis star Serena Williams, a friend who attended Harry and Meghan’s wedding, said on Twitter that the duchess’s words “illustrate the pain and cruelty she’s experienced.”

“The mental health consequences of systemic oppression and victimization are devastating, isolating and all too often lethal,” Williams added.

Britain could be less forgiving once the full interview is broadcast, since some see the pair as putting personal happiness ahead of public duty.

Meghan — then known as Meghan Markle, who had starred on the American TV legal drama “Suits” — married Harry at Windsor Castle in May 2018.

But even that was not what it seemed: The couple revealed in the interview that they exchanged vows in front of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby three days before their spectacular wedding ceremony at the castle.

Archie was born the following year and in a rare positive moment in the interview, the couple revealed their second child, due in the summer, would be a girl.

Harry said he had lived in fear of a repeat of the fate of his mother, Princess Diana, who was covered constantly by the press and died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi.

“What I was seeing was history repeating itself, but definitely far more dangerous — because then you add race in, and you add social media in,” Harry said.

Both Meghan and Harry praised the support they had received from the monarch.

“The queen has always been wonderful to me,” Meghan said.

But Harry revealed he currently has a poor relationship with William and said things got so bad with his father that at one point Prince Charles stopped taking his calls.

“There is a lot to work through there,” Harry said of his father. “I feel really let down. He’s been through something similar. He knows what pain feels like. And Archie is his grandson. I will always love him, but there is a lot of hurt that has happened.”