Friday 29 March 2024

Nothing Cryptic About It

Tony Blair and Bill Clinton may have gushed over Sam Bankman-Fried, but where cryptocurrencies were concerned, then I have always thought that the clue was in the name. It gives me no pleasure to have been right, but I was.

What matters is to get our hands on the power. Then there would be no cost of living crisis. Recession and inflation are both political choices. A sovereign state with its own free-floating, fiat currency has as much of that currency as it chooses to issue to itself. All wars are fought on this understanding, but the principle applies universally. The State also has the fiscal and monetary means to control inflation, means that therefore need to be under democratic political control in both cases.

As you can see, I have never professed to agree with George Galloway about everything. We do need to work on him where cryptos are concerned, although the whole thing is busily collapsing as it is. But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

Remote Access

More than £100 million. So much for there being no money. Would that anyone could be remotely surprised at the latest revelations about the Post Office. As long ago as 2011, it had to be hived off from the Royal Mail because the whole City knew about Horizon and would have refused to have bought the Royal Mail in its complete form, or to have handled the sale. Now look up the shareholder base of the Royal Mail, which is not unlike that of the water companies.

But hey, ho. At least the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator have been saved for the nation, and that is what matters. The people who are crowing about having seen off Sheikh Mansour have turned their venom on Paul Marshall, so who do they want? It must be someone. When Reform UK, which exists only in the Telegraph and on GB News, had not won the Blackpool South by-election, then that might be the signal to make the move on the Telegraph by whoever it was that had been lined up.

That said, you can defect straight from being the Conservative to being the Reform candidate for Mayor of Greater Manchester without any selection process whatever, the way you can defect straight from being the Conservative MP for Bury South to being the Labour MP and candidate for Bury South without any selection process whatever, so Reform is clearly in the club. Based on who is or is not invited to sign letters calling for an end to arms sales to Israel, the only MP who is not in the club is George Galloway. Who refused to sign if he had been copied into the email? What has any of them ever done for Gaza? And what were their precise grounds for drawing the line at George?

The Crown Prosecution Service has been ordered to pay compensation to Claudia Webbe for its false allegation that she had threatened an acid attack, but it remains highly secretive about the fact that in 2011, Keir Starmer blocked the arrest of Tzipi Livni. What might he have to hide? There may be, and there may need to be, a policy of not prosecuting dual nationals who had been conscripted, but even that is not the law. Any British citizen is committing a criminal offence by joining the armed forces of any foreign state, so when are the holders of only British nationality going to prosecuted for having joined the IDF? The revocation of their citizenship, which like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Peter Hitchens I oppose in the case of Shamima Begum, would be more than consistent on the Government's part, since Begum was trafficked to the side that Britain was backing in Syria, as Israel still is.

Likewise, Ukraine has been bringing in IS fighters from Syria for nearly two years, so there is no reason to assume that they could not jointly have bombed the Crocus City Hall, aided and abetted by the intelligence agencies and the special forces of countries that have assisted IS in the past, even if ridiculously only on one side of the Sykes-Picot line while bombing it on the other, and which more or less openly profess to be at war with Russia, proudly supplying Ukraine while being casually observed to have boots on the ground. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a statement of the obvious.

If it is conspiracy theories that you want, then try the suggestion that Russia, China and Iran had been behind the lies peddled against the Princess of Wales by the very media outlets that were now trying to pin the blame on Russia, China and Iran. Or that China hacked the British electoral register to some undefined purpose or effect. Or that TikTok is this, that or the other. In fact, of course, the problem with TikTok is that does not sufficiently censor pro-Palestinian content. Hence the ruse to hand it over to Steven Mnuchin on behalf of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Yet the Emiratis were unfit to own two small circulation newspapers and a tiny circulation magazine, apparently. Oh, well, they'll live. They are in BRICS now, and Senegal has just joined Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger is throwing off Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden for where the action is this century whether anyone likes it or not, and there is plenty to dislike.

Until the General Election, then the only British MP who understood these things will be the one to whom none of the others was allowed to speak, or else. But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 261

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Sarah Kilmartin, Jenny Holmes, Sir David Behan, and Sr Una Coogan IBVM.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Fr Christopher Hancock MHM, Canon William Agley, Catherine Dyer, Canon Martin Stempczyk, Canon Peter Leighton VG, Maureen Dale, and Tony Lawless.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Andrew Grant, Kirsty McIntyre, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Petra Scarr.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The CPS Challenge: Day 261

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of its organised persecution of the opponents and critics of Keir Starmer, which is its principal national priority.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from contesting the next General Election.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a thinktank to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually also a fortnightly satirical magazine.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from taking journalistic, political or other paid work for fear of losing my entitlement to Legal Aid.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service out of the same racism that has caused it to refuse to prosecute the Police Officers in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

And I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to incite my politically motivated murder, a murder that the CPS has already decided would never lead to any prosecution.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Board, currently Monica Burch, Stephen Parkinson, Simon Jeffreys, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan, and Kathryn Stone.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the CPS senior leadership, currently Tristan Bradshaw, Dawn Brodrick, Mike Browne, Steve Buckingham, Matthew Cain, Gregor McGill, Grace Ononiwu, and Baljhit Ubey.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, currently Simon Jeffreys, Stephen Parkinson, Michael Dunn, Deborah Harris, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Nominations, Leadership and Remuneration Committee, currently Kathryn Stone, Stephen Parkinson, and Monica Burch.

And each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the 279 members of staff of the CPS North East Area, by definition including, but not restricted to, Chief Crown Prosecutor Gail Gilchrist, and the Area Business Manager, Ian Brown.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 965

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 965

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Since Lanchester is be moved into North Durham by the boundary changes,  I invite each and every other candidate for that parliamentary seat to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Thursday 28 March 2024

Now Canada Is Euthanising Autistic People

Kevin Yuill writes:

Imagine one day you discover that your adult daughter, who still lives with you, wants to be euthanised. As far as you are aware, she is healthy. She suffers from autism and ADHD, but no physical illnesses or disabilities that you know of. You know that she has faced many difficulties in her life, but you love her and desperately want to prevent her death. You are left fighting against her doctors, who encourage her decision and are perfectly happy to help her go through with this. To make this nightmare even worse, no one will even tell you why your daughter has been approved to die.

This is the awful reality facing one father in Alberta, Canada. A judge issued a ruling this week that clears the way for a 27-year-old woman, known to the court only as MV, to be accepted into Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) programme. Despite the attempts by her father – known as WV – to prevent this, there was really very little that could have been done. Under Canadian law, the court had no choice but to allow his daughter to be killed. According to the twisted logic of assisted-dying campaigners, this is the ‘compassionate’ option.

To be eligible for MAID, a patient needs to have a ‘grievous and irredeemable’ medical condition. In court, MV did not need to identify which medical condition she is supposed to be suffering from. She was not required to provide information about her symptoms or explain how they cause her to suffer. All her parents have seen is the evidence that she followed the correct procedures to access MAID, and that her eligibility was approved by two doctors.

WV argues that the doctors were wrong to conclude that his daughter met the MAID criteria. He told the courts that she was diagnosed in 2016 with autism-spectrum disorder. She also has a long history of seeking medical diagnoses for physical ailments. But, to her father’s knowledge, no diagnosis was ever made. He said it is unclear to him whether she suffers from any physical condition at all. He speculated that she may suffer from psychological conditions that ‘caus[e] her to believe that she suffers from physiological symptoms’.

MV’s case gives a disturbing insight into just how easy it can be to access MAID. Patients can simply shop around for doctors who are willing to give their approval. Her first application was turned down, because one of the two doctors she consulted said she did not meet the criteria (it is not known when she made this application). She made a second application in 2023. Again, one doctor determined her to be eligible and the other did not. The Alberta Health Services then allowed her to obtain a third assessment (a ‘tie-break’). However, the doctor selected to break the tie was the same doctor who had already agreed with MV’s first MAID application. Who was responsible for this decision? We will probably never know.

The court agreed that MV had no obligation to answer any of her parents’ questions about her medical condition or the MAID process. The judge declared that ‘the court cannot review a MAID applicant’s decision-making or the clinical judgement of the doctors and nurse practitioners’. Because of medical-privacy laws, her parents can never know why two doctors felt it was acceptable for the state to euthanise their daughter. Life and death decisions are being made in secret, by unaccountable figures.

Assisted-dying campaigners often claim that they are on the side of compassion. But stopping a father from saving his daughter’s life is surely the cruellest outcome possible. Anyone who still believes that euthanasia prevents suffering needs to seriously think again.

Thames Water Proves Privatisation Has Failed

Although he cannot resist an ill-placed dig at the unions Ross Clark writes:

Why do the Conservatives find it so difficult to admit that the privatisation of public utilities has in many cases been a disaster? It was supposed to bring heaps of finance into public services, protect taxpayers from financial risk and bring prices down through competition.

Yet we have ended up with energy prices fixed by Ofcom, a rail industry which is swallowing vastly more subsidy in real terms than British Rail ever did – with unions bidding up pay to astronomical levels and taxpayers forced to cough up to fund those rises. Royal Mail has flogged off valuable city centre development sites while it jacks up the price of stamps and tries to wriggle out of its obligation to deliver post six days a week. And now we have Thames Water tottering under its enormous debts, its shareholders refusing to put in more money and water customers likely to be forced to bail it out.

The people who run our privatised utilities are ardent capitalists when it comes to rewarding themselves when things are going well. But then they turn remarkably socialist when things are going badly and they start looking to the government for help. Customers, needless to say, won’t have any choice because there is no competition for retail water consumers.

Is there any sign that private finance has enriched our water infrastructure? London has gained a new ring main water distribution system under Thames Water. Yet sewage is being dumped in rivers across the country at an ever greater rate (conveniently blamed on that great get-out clause, climate change), and water is frequently being rationed through hosepipe bans. Almost all the impressive infrastructure – great dams, pumping stations, sewers – was built when water companies were public corporations. All that seems to have happened under privatisation is that those inherited assets have been sweated, and in some cases sold off to developers. Private equity owners of these companies have taken out billions and piled on debt.

This isn’t capitalism. If it was, Thames Water would be allowed to go bust and vultures left to pick through its assets. But of course that isn’t going to be allowed to happen because Thames Water owns the only water supply London has. Utility companies have become complex hybrid structures which straddle the public and private sectors, with taxpayers generally the losers.

This would be my test as to whether or not an industry should be privatised: ministers must ask themselves what should happen if the privatised company gets into trouble. Can the government allow it simply to go bust or will it have to be bailed out in some way? If it is the latter, it shouldn’t be privatised.

Polls have been showing for years that there is strong support for the renationalisation of public utilities, with one recent survey showing 69 per cent in favour and only eight per cent against. But in spite of the party’s voter base having shifted to former red wall seats where voters are generally very favourable to public-run services, the party seems strangely reluctant to tap into this political gain. Privatisation is just too much tied up with fabled memories of the glory days of the Thatcher government.

There are, of course, good arguments against wholesale renationalisation of utilities: would taxpayers really appreciate having to shell out billions to buy out private shareholders? Then again, when you have a company which seems to be sinking, like Thames Water, or the rail companies which would be desperate to offload their franchises were it not for being feather-bedded by soaring public subsidies, why don’t ministers try sitting on their hands, letting capitalism do its usual, punishing work against poorly-run companies – and then pick up their assets, on the cheap, for the public good? Meanwhile, they should show some humility and admit that the privatisation of public utilities wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The Conservatives might find themselves a bit more popular for once.

We Are The Pirates Now

Yesterday’s sixtieth anniversary of Radio Caroline’s first broadcast has brought out the usual guff. Now, don’t get me wrong. Although it rarely comes up on here, I am a serious lover of popular music, with, though I say so myself, some knowledge of the subject. Just never ask me to sing or play anything.

But for all its alleged left-wingery, and its ability to annoy the forces of conservatism no end, rock’n’roll was made up of common or garden proto-Thatcherites, often tax exiles. The only notable exceptions were David Bowie and Eric Clapton, way out on the Far Right, at least performatively in Bowie’s case.

The Sixties Swingers hated with a burning passion the Labour Government of 1964 to 1970. The pirate radio stations were their revolt against its and the BBC’s deal with the Musicians’ Union to protect the livelihoods of that union’s members. Hence the Marine Offences Act 1967, which outlawed broadcasting from a boat off the British mainland. The Minister responsible was Tony Benn. Of course.

Behind this union-busting criminality was Oliver Smedley, who was later to be a key figure behind the Institute of Economic Affairs, an engine room of Thatcherism. Viewers of The Boat That Rocked, once a mainstay of late night television, should consider that the Postmaster General so mercilessly ridiculed in it was in fact Benn, and that the Prime Minister who legislated against pirate radio was Harold Wilson. Those Swingers used the lowering of the voting age to put what they thought were the Selsdon Tories into office in 1970.

They went on to entrench their moral, social and cultural decadence and libertinism, first in the economic sphere during the 1980s, when the pirate radio stations were entirely frank and accurate about their own impeccably Thatcherite credentials, and then also in the constitutional sphere under Tony Blair. David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss accepted uncritically the whole package: moral, social, cultural, economic, and constitutional. Indeed, they embodied it.

Rishi Sunak wants to do so, and he would if he were given an overall majority this year. Keir Starmer already does, even in Opposition. The Liberal Democrats were founded to defend the moral, social, cultural and economic aspects against unsympathetic sections of both main parties, while bringing about the constitutional ones on the same basis. They pursued that mission vigorously in office, as they would again. Whether or not it was immediately apparent in the 1960s, and there were a few who did see it, the anti-industrial Malthusianism of the Greens has always been fundamental to the entire project.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blairs Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

Water Works

At the point of privatisation, the water companies were debt free, as befitted the monopoly suppliers of something that everyone had to have, and the raw material of which fell out of the sky for free.

The money that those companies pay out in dividends would easily cover any infrastructure costs. Yet leakage is out of control, and raw sewage is being pumped into our rivers, our lakes and our seas. In 2022, Thames Water, typically of the sector, declared a billion pound profit in order to pay dividends, despite being £12 billion in debt.

So we are all expected to bail it out, at whatever rate happened to be demanded by the shareholders, themselves largely foreign states as such, which are allowed to own our vital infrastructure but not two small circulation newspapers and a tiny circulation magazine. They should be told to forget it. Those shares are worth what anyone else would now pay for them. How much is that?

More broadly, since dividends are supposed to reward investment, then they should be limited by the Statute Law to the Bank Rate plus risk on the capital provided by the original share issue, with customers awarded shares for all capital converted from their payments.

None of the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats or the SNP would ever do that on their own or only with each other, just as they would never renationalise England's water, even though that is what the huge majority of people in England wants.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

Wednesday 27 March 2024

Sting

Throughout the Corbyn years, the entire Labour Party agreed about one thing, and that was WASPI. Blairite ultras asked Prime Minister's Questions about it, and held rallies in their constituencies to which they invited, by post, every woman in the age range. They were of one mind with a Corbynite activist base that, being largely one or more of young, male and working-class, was by no means sympathetic to the entitlement that can often characterise middle-class, female Boomers.

The Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the Workers Party, the Greens, the Alba Party, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP, the Alliance Party and the DUP are all going into the General Election with that commitment intact. If neither Labour nor the Conservatives did so, then bet your house on a hung Parliament. Now, in coalition negotiations, the first things to go are the things that would cost the most. But the point is that such negotiations would be necessary.

In any case, this very day, the Government is expecting us all to dance in the streets that it has sent yet another $1.5 billion, and that is pointedly how it is phrased, to Ukraine. Over two years, Test and Trace cost £37 billion. And so on, and on, and on, and on, and on. Is there no money, or nowhere enough as would be just? For the victims of contaminated blood, who have to come first? For the victims of Orgreave, Grenfell Tower, the Windrush scandal and the Post Office scandal, who have to come next? For the WASPI women? For anyone? No money? No money? No money?

A tax of one to two per cent on assets above £10 million could abolish the two-child benefit cap 17 times over, while merely taxing each of Britain's 173 billionaires down to one billion pounds per head would raise £1.1 trillion, an entire year's tax take. Labour was always wrong to make the £28 billion about the Green stuff. It should have said that that was an industrial strategy, much of which happened to be Green. "Without an industrial strategy, then why have a Labour Government?" Why, indeed? £28 billion for investment? This Government has borrowed £1.7 trillion for nothing. £28 billion could easily be raised by taxing dividends and capital gains at the same rate as wages, as was the case under Labour's once again beloved Margaret Thatcher.

Put those together with other things, including the massively popular renationalisation of the utilities, and in the right hands there would be no question of rivers running with sewage, or of doubling the pay of the boss of British Gas to £8.2 million, or of withholding NHS Covid bonuses from agency staff until they had been on strike, or of Mel Stride's plan to order DWP staff to take an arbitrary 150,000 people off sickness and disability benefits as if that would cure them or find them jobs, or of Liz Kendall's even more hateful scheme in the same vein.

A sovereign state with its own free-floating, fiat currency has as much of that currency as it chooses to issue to itself, with readily available fiscal and monetary means of controlling any inflationary effect, means that therefore require to be under democratic political control. The responsibility of the Government is to ensure the supply of goods and services to be purchased with that currency. There is no debt. It is an accounting trick. The Treasury, which is the State, has issued bonds to the Bank of England, which is the State. Even if those bonds were held by anyone else, then the State could simply issue itself with enough of its own free floating, fiat currency to redeem them. There is no debt. There is no debt. There is no debt.

It is impossible for the currency-issuing State to run out of money. Money "lent" to the Treasury by the Bank of England is money "lent" to the State by the State; such "debt" will never be called in, much less will bailiffs be sent round. Call this "the Magic Money Tree" if you will. There is no comparison between running the economy and managing a household budget, or even a business. There is no "national credit card" to "max out". Terms such as "taxpayers' money" are extremely and intentionally misleading. "Fiscal headroom" is nothing other than the gap between the Government's tax and spending plans and what would be allowed under the fiscal rules that it sets for itself and changes frequently.

Giving up democratic political control of monetary policy has been a disaster. Without a manifesto commitment, Labour farmed out monetary policy. The Lib Dems forced the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility. The Conservatives have created the Economic Advisory Council out of thin air. Yet on none of those occasions have the salaries of the First Lord of the Treasury, of all other Treasury Ministers, and of all senior Treasury civil servants been halved, as in each of those cases they should have been.

If there is an Economic Advisory Council, then what is the Treasury for? And look who is on it. Imperial protectorates and Indian princely states had British advisers whose advice had to be taken, and our nominally sovereign little colony of BlackRock and JP Morgan is in much the same position. Rupert Harrison was George Osborne's long-time Chief of Staff and then Evening Standard employee, while Osborne, Philip Hammond and Sajid Javid are also all advising Hunt. Harrison has been selected as the Conservative candidate for Bicester and Woodstock. Yet whom would you have instead? Rachel Reeves? Even if Harrison were a sitting Conservative MP, then would Reeves remove him from the Economic Advisory Council? Merely to ask that question answers it.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

Why We Mustn’t Ban TikTok

Thomas Fazi writes:

For the third time in just over a century, the US is, once again, in the grip of a full-blown Red Scare. The home of the “communist threat” may have changed — China rather than the Soviet Union — but the elements are all there: moral panic, paranoia, authoritarianism, repression. This became apparent earlier this month, when Democrats and Republicans, in a rare show of national unity, joined forces to confront one of the gravest threats facing America today. No, not rampant crime, not illegal immigration, not falling living standards — but TikTok.

On March 13, with a resounding majority, the House of Representatives passed a bill calling for a nationwide ban against the hugely popular social media app, used by roughly 170 million Americans. If the bill, which has the White House’s support, is approved by the Senate, TikTok’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, will be forced to sell the social media platform to a US-based company or stop operating in the country.

The US lawmakers’ main claim is that TikTok represents a national security threat due to its ties to the Chinese government, which they fear may use the app to access American user data. In this, Beijing’s critics are in good company: just yesterday, the UK and the US accused China of launching a “prolific” campaign of cyberattacks against the West.

It’s worth noting, however, that neither US intelligence nor the bill’s sponsors have produced any evidence that TikTok has ever coordinated with the Chinese government. In interviews and testimony to Congress about the app, leaders of the FBI, CIA and the director of national intelligence have in fact been careful to qualify the national security threat posed by TikTok as purely hypothetical. Indeed, when cybersecurity officials in Connecticut asked the FBI for advice on whether to ban the app on government devices, they were informed that similar bans introduced in other states appeared to be based “on news reports and other open-source information about China in general, not specific to TikTok”.

Upon closer inspection, the US lawmakers’ case looks rather weak. For starters, is TikTok even really a “Chinese app”? The app is owned by TikTok LLC, a limited liability company incorporated in Delaware and based in Culver City, California. The LLC is in turn controlled by TikTok Ltd, which is registered in the Cayman Islands and based both in Los Angeles and Singapore. As it happens, TikTok doesn’t even exist in China, where they use a different version: a sister app called Douyin.

TikTok Ltd, in turn, is owned by ByteDance, which is also incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Beijing. But how Chinese is ByteDance itself? Sure, the company was founded in 2012 by Chinese entrepreneurs, and it operates many businesses in China — but roughly 60% of the company is owned by international investors, most of them American, with the remaining shares divided among its founders and Chinese investors (20%) and the company’s own employees (20%), including more than 8,000 Americans. Moreover, ByteDance’s board of directors is comprised of five individuals — three Americans and two Chinese — while the company’s CEO is Singaporean.

As for the Chinese government itself, it owns a 1% stake in ByteDance’s main domestic subsidiary — a legal requirement for all news and information platforms operating in China — and a government official who used to work for China’s internet regulator sits on the subsidiary’s board. This is hardly surprising: everyone knows the internet is heavily censored and controlled in China, and ByteDance’s domestic version of TikTok, Douyin, is no exception. The question is whether the same applies to ByteDance’s global operations outside of China, including TikTok.

As one might expect, the company vehemently denies this — and, as noted, US authorities have so far been unable to produce any evidence that TikTok, to date, has shared its data on American (or other Western) users with the Chinese government, or has censored or otherwise manipulated content on the platform (though some researchers have made this claim). Indeed, to assuage US national security concerns about data privacy — and head off a ban planned via a Trump executive order in 2020 — the company announced a far-reaching initiative known as “Project Texas”.

So far, TikTok has implemented many of the project’s features, including transferring US user data to the cloud infrastructure of Oracle, a US company (with well-known ties to the US intelligence community), and placing dozens of former US government and intelligence officials in key positions at TikTok. These developments, however, have had little impact on the policy debate in the US. Nor has a convincing explanation been provided as to why TikTok would threaten its hugely profitable global operations — its worth is currently estimated at $75 billion.

So why all the fuss? There are various factors at play here, the first of which is cultural and generational. Many US lawmakers are boomers (the average age of Congress is close to 60) who appear to have a rather poor understanding of how these new technologies work. This led to some rather cringeworthy exchanges during the congressional hearing on TikTok, such as Republican congressman Richard Hudson asking whether TikTok could access home Wi-Fi networks, or his colleague Buddy Carter demanding to know whether the app utilised users’ phone cameras to track dilation in their eyes. Several US politicians also displayed a rather staggering ignorance about China itself, such as when the Republican senator Tom Cotton repeatedly asked TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew — a Singaporean — whether he was a member of the Chinese Communist Party (foreigners can’t join the CCP).

It seems fair to assume that such clueless politicians are particularly susceptible to lobbying by groups interested in antagonising TikTok — and China itself — for economic, political or ideological reasons. These range from investors hoping to scoop up TikTok on the cheap, to US tech companies aiming to crush a competitor and those poised to benefit from the militarisation of US-China relations. Jacob Helberg, for instance, is a member of the ultra-hawkish US-China Economic and Security Review Commission who has been instrumental in the renewed legislative fight against TikTok — but also happens to be a policy adviser to Alex Karp, CEO of the defence and intelligence contractor Palantir, which relies heavily on government contracts for AI work, a business that would grow in a tech arms race with China.

Psychological projection also appears to be a factor. After all, the reason many US politicians assume the Chinese government is using TikTok to spy on foreign citizens is arguably because this is what the US has always done with its own tech companies. Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, for example, forces US firms like Google, Meta and Apple to turn over the email, phone and other online communications of users at the request of US intelligence agencies, which, as disclosed by Edward Snowden, has allowed the US government to warrantlessly spy on millions of American and foreign citizens alike. Tellingly, as US lawmakers consider banning TikTok to allegedly protect the privacy of its citizens, they are also weighing the renewal of Section 702, which was set to expire in January this year.

Aside from dubious safety concerns, there’s another reason the bill gained new momentum in recent months. Several conservative activists, tech investors and Jewish organisations have expressed outrage about the amount of pro-Palestinian content on the platform, arguing that TikTok’s algorithm was biased towards Palestine — and coming out in support of the ban. TikTok, for its part, has denied this, noting that content on the platform simply reflects the fact that it has a young user base and “attitudes among young people skewed toward Palestine long before TikTok existed”. What’s probably happening isn’t that TikTok is pushing pro-Palestinian content, but rather that it isn’t suppressing it like other US platforms such as Meta have been accused of doing. Once again, this seems to be a case of projection, given all that we now know about the way in which the US government has, in recent years, coerced and colluded with social media companies to censor certain viewpoints.

Seen in this light, it’s not hard to see why many, including Matt Taibbi, believe that the purpose of the new bill is to further consolidate domestic censorship and control over online information under the guise of national security. As Taibbi has observed, the legislation isn’t so much directed at “foreign adversaries” themselves but rather any “website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application” that is “determined by the President to present a significant threat to the National Security of the United States”.

As for the claim that China is using TikTok to somehow “destabilise” American society or push anti-government narratives, this also sounds like a confession. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that as President, Trump signed a covert action order authorising the CIA to use social media to influence and manipulate domestic Chinese public opinion and views on China — and similar American cyber influence programmes are known to exist with regard to other countries as well. More than an issue of Chinese control over TikTok, then, the problem appears to be one of insufficient US control over the platform — despite the fact that, as noted, this is already quite extensive in terms of company staff, ownership and board membership.

Ultimately, however, it’s perhaps fruitless to look for a single overarching reason for the US government’s war on TikTok. At a time of heightened geopolitical rivalry between the US and China, it was inevitable that this contest would spill into the realm of cyberspace as well. Simply put, the “world wide web” — the idea of a single, open, global internet, accessible to everyone around the world — is all but dead. What we have today is an increasingly balkanised replacement — a “splinternet”, as some have called it — where states aren’t simply exercising growing control over their own cyberspace’s physical infrastructure and data but, more worryingly, over the online information their citizens can access. As Western citizens are now discovering, the internet has become yet another terrain for waging global warfare — against foreign adversaries but also, and perhaps even more importantly, against us too.

The EU Plot To Ensnare Switzerland


Switzerland and the European Union have restarted negotiations on a cooperation agreement that would deepen their institutional and trading ties. It would also do great damage to Swiss democracy and sovereignty.

Earlier this month, Viola Amherd, Switzerland’s federal president, met with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, to start the discussions. According to the EU mandate for the talks, the aim is to complete negotiations by the end of this year, before Switzerland’s federal council eventually puts the deal to the public in a referendum. This could happen anytime between 2026 and 2029.

It should be said that all this is far from a fait accompli. Swiss politicians have already tried and failed to deepen institutional ties with the EU before. Following negotiations lasting seven years, the federal council was forced to pull out in 2021 after a proposed agreement received a resounding thumbs down from Swiss politicians and the broader public. Left-wingers complained that the agreement would undermine wage protections for Swiss workers, while right-wingers did not want to give the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) sovereignty over Switzerland’s laws. An incensed EU responded punitively, denying the Swiss stock exchange access to European financial markets, slapping expensive regulations on Switzerland’s medical technology industry and restricting cooperation in the electricity market.

Now, however, pressure from Switzerland’s political and economic elites seems to have pushed the federal council back to the negotiating table. Worryingly, the EU mandate suggests that any agreement between the two sides will be little different to that which was proposed in 2021.

Brussels and the federal council are seeking to update five existing bilateral agreements on freedom of movement, trade, agriculture, air travel and land transport. They also aim to hammer out new cooperation agreements on electricity, food security, healthcare, research programmes and education.

All of this may sound benign, but the devil is in the detail. First published in December 2023, the EU’s mandate states that under any agreement, Switzerland should automatically adopt EU laws relating to areas of bilateral cooperation. Should Switzerland decline to do so, the Commission calls for the establishment of a joint court of arbitration. Any arguments over the interpretation or application of EU law would then be subject to the supreme authority of the CJEU. In other words, the EU will ultimately render Switzerland powerless in any dispute.

Furthermore, if Switzerland defies the CJEU, the Commission recommends imposing ‘compensatory measures’ – in other words, punishments – via a joint arbitration court. For example, if Switzerland refuses to adopt any given EU law, Brussels could ‘compensate’ by slapping tariffs on Swiss agricultural produce, or excluding Switzerland from research programmes like Horizon.

Make no mistake, these negotiations are once again preparing the way for the subjugation of Switzerland to foreign laws and courts. As a cherry on top of this miserable cake, Switzerland is being asked to make a ‘permanent financial contribution to social and economic cohesion in the EU’. The amount is unspecified, but it is likely to be significant.

The most contentious of all the laws the EU wants to foist upon Switzerland is the Citizens’ Rights Directive (CRD). Under the CRD, EU nationals would be entitled to reside in Switzerland and obtain social-security benefits permanently, after just one year of working there. Many in Switzerland object to the directive, fearing that it could attract welfare-seekers from poorer EU countries.

Indeed, such is the domestic unpopularity of any prospective agreement with the EU that the Swiss pro-EU lobby is already trying to lower the bar for passing the agreement in a referendum.

Usually, decisions of great constitutional importance in Switzerland require what’s called a ‘mandatory referendum’. To pass, mandatory-referendum motions have to win the support of a majority of both the people as a whole, and a majority of the 26 cantons. But those pushing for a new EU-Switzerland agreement are advocating a different sort of referendum on any deal, called a ‘facultative referendum’. This type of referendum only requires a majority among the popular vote, not the cantons. This has caused outrage among many legal and constitutional experts. To subject a deal this wide-ranging to only a popular vote would be unprecedented in Switzerland.

There is already plenty of opposition to the deal that is taking shape. The right-wing populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) – the largest political party in Switzerland – argues that the EU is seeking to rob Swiss citizens of their basic constitutional rights. And the SVP is far from alone in thinking this. Ronnie Grob, the editor-in-chief of liberal magazine Schweizer Monat, claims that far from being a bilateral deal between equal partners, any contract is likely to establish the EU’s power over Switzerland.

The left is split on closer links with the EU. Left-wing politicians tend to support closer integration with Brussels, while trade unions are resistant. They are concerned that any agreement will lower wages and threaten workers’ rights. However, the unions’ stance does suggest that if Brussels made certain guarantees over workers’ rights, they could well cave in and support the new agreement. This would be a huge betrayal.

The stakes could hardly be higher. Should Brussels get its way, then the once fiercely independent Switzerland is at real risk of becoming a vassal state of the EU. This agreement must be resisted.

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 260

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Sarah Kilmartin, Jenny Holmes, Sir David Behan, and Sr Una Coogan IBVM.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Fr Christopher Hancock MHM, Canon William Agley, Catherine Dyer, Canon Martin Stempczyk, Canon Peter Leighton VG, Maureen Dale, and Tony Lawless.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Andrew Grant, Kirsty McIntyre, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Petra Scarr.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The CPS Challenge: Day 260

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of its organised persecution of the opponents and critics of Keir Starmer, which is its principal national priority.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from contesting the next General Election.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a thinktank to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually also a fortnightly satirical magazine.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from taking journalistic, political or other paid work for fear of losing my entitlement to Legal Aid.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service out of the same racism that has caused it to refuse to prosecute the Police Officers in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

And I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to incite my politically motivated murder, a murder that the CPS has already decided would never lead to any prosecution.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Board, currently Monica Burch, Stephen Parkinson, Simon Jeffreys, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan, and Kathryn Stone.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the CPS senior leadership, currently Tristan Bradshaw, Dawn Brodrick, Mike Browne, Steve Buckingham, Matthew Cain, Gregor McGill, Grace Ononiwu, and Baljhit Ubey.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, currently Simon Jeffreys, Stephen Parkinson, Michael Dunn, Deborah Harris, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Nominations, Leadership and Remuneration Committee, currently Kathryn Stone, Stephen Parkinson, and Monica Burch.

And each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the 279 members of staff of the CPS North East Area, by definition including, but not restricted to, Chief Crown Prosecutor Gail Gilchrist, and the Area Business Manager, Ian Brown.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 964

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 964

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Since Lanchester is be moved into North Durham by the boundary changes,  I invite each and every other candidate for that parliamentary seat to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Tuesday 26 March 2024

Licensed Premises

Following the introduction both of the Universal Basic Income and of Modern Monetary Theory’s Job Guarantee, then a suitably renamed version of the licence fee ought to be made voluntary, with as many adults as wished to pay it at any given address free to do so, including those who did not own a television set but who greatly valued, for example, Radio Four. One would not need to be a member of the Trust to listen to or watch the BBC, just as one does not need to be a member of the National Trust to visit its properties, or a member of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to be rescued by its boats.

The Trustees would then be elected by and from among the members. Each member would vote for one, with the top two elected. The electoral areas would be Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and each of the nine English regions. The Chairman would be appointed by the relevant Secretary of State, with the approval of the relevant Select Committee. And the term of office would be four years.

Here as elsewhere, we ought to be bypassing the weedy brains of the Liberal Establishment and the brainless brawn of the municipal Labour Right, in order to secure the representation that had never been afforded by those who had presumed to speak for our people, but never to our people. Yes, that would indeed involve doing deals with the Conservatives. We could not possibly get less out of them than we had ever managed to get out of the Keir Starmers of the world.

The party that would now be mine if I had one is by no means averse to such arrangements. A seven times elected Member of Parliament is in the Premier League while a seven times failed parliamentary candidate is not even a ball boy, a job that is sometimes done by a dog, but George Galloway did campaign with Nigel Farage in the 2016 referendum, and he did endorse the Brexit Party at the 2019 European elections. Richard Tice offered George a byelection candidacy. George has kept the receipts.

George advocated a vote for the candidate best placed to defeat the SNP in each Holyrood constituency last time, plus a list vote for All for Unity, and accordingly he voted Conservative. Subsequent events have thoroughly borne him out. In 2006, it was a coalition with the Conservatives that retained the Leadership of Derby City Council for Chris Williamson. That coalition did eventually lose an election to the Liberal Democrats, but it did not collapse.

Similarly, across Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, and County Durham, Independent councillors who would at least ordinarily vote Conservative at parliamentary elections, and many or most of whom used to vote for UKIP and then the Brexit Party at European elections, are not only preparing to vote for Jamie Driscoll, but are preparing to get the vote out for him, and that is politics, not charity.

When I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

The Stakes Could Hardly Be Higher

As a Commonwealth citizen who is not serving a term of imprisonment in the United Kingdom or in the Republic of Ireland, Julian Assange is eligible to contest the Blackpool South by-election. He should do so, supported at the very least by the Alba Party and by the Workers Party of Britain, led as those are by two of his staunchest supporters, as well as by another such, the Independent MP for Islington North.

Fraser Myers writes:

Julian Assange has been handed a temporary lifeline against his extradition to the US.

Today, the UK’s High Court announced that it would give the US government three weeks to provide ‘satisfactory assurances’ that the Wikileaks co-founder would face a fair trial and not receive the death penalty, among other things. If those assurances are not given in time, then Assange will be granted a full appeal hearing on 20 May.

Were it not for today’s judgement, then Assange could have been sent to the US within the next few days, where he faces 17 charges of espionage and one of computer misuse. If found guilty of all of these, he could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.

The stakes could hardly be higher. Not just for Assange personally, but also for press freedom itself. Because the ‘crime’ the authorities really want to punish him for is journalism – that is, for publishing things that are true.

Indeed, we know that Assange is in the dock for journalism because the US Department of Justice has essentially admitted as much. Wikileaks began to make a name for itself in 2010, when it published classified videos and files from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In December 2010, it leaked the contents of 250,000 secret diplomatic cables from US embassies, in collaboration with the Guardian. Around this time, the Obama administration looked into the possibility of prosecuting Assange under the Espionage Act 1917, a law passed during the First World War intended for prosecuting spying and treason. But, as Obama’s DoJ was forced to concede, prosecuting Assange would also mean prosecuting ‘the New York Times and other news organisations and writers who published classified material, including the Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper’. Indeed, the stories that emerged via Wikileaks were printed and broadcast in just about every major media outlet on Earth.

What the Obama administration begrudgingly recognised was the crucial distinction between leaking or stealing classified information and publishing that information. To criminalise Assange and the activity of Wikileaks would open the door to criminalising all manner of investigative journalism. The chilling effect this would have on free speech and press freedom would be unprecedented.

Any hesitation about going after Assange disappeared in 2017, with Wikileaks’ publication of over 8,000 CIA documents. The ‘Vault7’ files revealed the techniques agents used to hack into smartphones and turn them into listening devices. This infuriated Mike Pompeo, the then head of the CIA. He publicly declared all-out war on Assange and branded Wikileaks a ‘non-state hostile intelligence service’. He said the US must not allow its ‘free-speech values’ to undermine the national interest. Two years later, Pompeo, who by then had been promoted to Donald Trump’s secretary of state, issued the 18 indictments against Assange that he is currently awaiting extradition for.

Given this train of events, there are elements of today’s High Court judgement that seem truly baffling. The judges, while granting Assange three weeks of reprieve, ruled that the US’s extradition request is not ‘political’. This is significant because extraditions for political reasons are unlawful under the UK’s Extradition Act 2003. But the indictments did have a clear political motivation; Pompeo’s personal hatred of Assange was a matter of public record at the time the indictments were issued. What’s more, the CIA and the Trump administration held high-level discussions about potentially kidnapping and even assassinating Assange while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Yes, there is a new president in the White House, but the Biden administration has just as much reason to loathe Assange. Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Wikileaks published thousands of emails belonging to John Podesta, chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Many Democrats hold this leak as partly responsible for Trump’s shock victory. In other words, Democrats, Republicans and the US security state more broadly have been badly bruised by Wikileaks’ publishing. It is not hard to see a political motivation behind their persecution of Assange.

The High Court’s partial reprieve for Assange is, of course, preferable to his immediate extradition. But some of the reasoning behind the judgement is far from reassuring. Press freedom still hangs in the balance.

And Gavin Haynes writes:

Lord Palmerston apparently said of the 19th century diplomatic tangle, the Schleswig-Holstein Question, that only three people had ever understood it — one was dead, another had gone mad, and the third, Palmerston himself, had forgotten it.

So it seems with Julian Assange, who today won his request for an appeal hearing in his US extradition case. Peer dimly back into the mists of time, to 2010, and it is possible to discern a sexual assault allegation in Sweden that was later withdrawn, but which formed sufficient grounds to have him put under house arrest in England.

After time spent in the Ecuadorian embassy and then HMP Belmarsh, there have been years of appeals and counters-appeals, all hinging on whether, finally, Assange will end up in a US court. There he could be charged with spying under the 1917 Espionage Act, for an act that was performed in Britain by an Australian citizen.

Today concerned part of a different counter-appeal by Assange’s legal team. They had set out nine grounds as to why he should stay in Britain and three of these have now been upheld, if only temporarily. A new court date has been set for 20 May, when US authorities will have to provide evidence as to why those three reasons don’t apply. Firstly, that he will be able to use a First Amendment free speech defence; secondly, that there is no chance he will be put to death; and lastly, that he will not be placed in a particularly tough prison environment.

Given that all three seem eminently doable, the way will once again be cleared for Assange to meet his fate in a US courtroom, which could amount to as much as 175 years in prison. American authorities maintain it would be closer to six. Yet, 15 years since he first sparked the State Department’s ire, the question of what justice means, and what Assange even did, seems increasingly lost not only on the public but on the authorities themselves. There is a kind of muscle memory in the system, the locked jaws of a deep state that just will not let go, forever doubling down on the losses it took.

Assange embarrassed the Pentagon and put his head so far above the parapet that he began a blood feud with the CIA. The questions that WikiLeaks threw up relate back to the White House of George W. Bush and the early Obama years. Few can remember many of the specifics, and the world has turned. But in terms of ending this infinite saga, there is no choreography being suggested that would allow for the authorities to save face.

Without that, the show must go on. And the longer it goes on, the more the public gets the sense that the system has its targets. That justice might be blind in the courtroom, sure, but outside of it the US security apparatus is behaving as capriciously as Assange always suggested it did.

Our touchingly Nineties faith in the decency of our legal system is being tested. There have been other dots along the road that have given credence to this mood. The January 6 riots, for instance, illustrated quite how much book there is to throw at people if desired: 22-year sentences for someone who wasn’t even at the Capitol.

See also: the many legal troubles of Donald Trump. In New York, the former president is charged with exaggerating his asset base when taking out a loan that he long since paid back without issue. As with Britain’s novel hate speech codes, what gets to court — and how intent the authorities are to follow through — is what counts.

In hindsight, Assange was an early case in this modern phenomenon. At the time, he was a crowd-splitter. But the longer this has dragged on, the more the anti-Assange types have melted away.

Increasingly, his case is a cause célèbre that isn’t even about “free speech” or “journalistic integrity”, as his supporters loftily claim. It’s about sticking sand in the gears of a power system whose slip is showing. The question becomes not the Schleswig-Holstein version: “Does anyone remember what he did?” These days, it’s resolving into a crisper, more emotive thing: “Why are they so obsessed with him?”

Security Counsel

Judgment in the case of Julian Assange is expected at 10:30. Keir Starmer should live forever in infamy for his role in that affair, but he also now stands exposed as a complete fool, with his support for the Gaza genocide no longer shared even by the Biden Administration. Antony Blinken or Linda Thomas-Greenfield would be sacked from the Labour frontbench, to be replaced with Bezalel Smotrich or Itamar Ben-Gvir, the only people in the world with whom Starmer still agreed.

Any Labour pretence to the contrary is only because George Galloway won the Rochdale by-election and has received 600 applications to contest the General Election on behalf of the Workers Party of Britain, in addition to the Independents who were already in the field against, among others, Starmer and Wes Streeting, whose majority was only 5,198 even before the boundary changes.

Shamima Begum has lost her initial bid to take her case to the Supreme Court. Those of us who agree with Jacob Rees-Mogg and Peter Hitchens about her should hope that they will join us in calling on the Government to be more than consistent. Begum went to join the side that we were backing in Syria, as Israel still is. As sworn enemies of Russia, IS fighters have been brought into Ukraine from Syria and elsewhere, making it perfectly possible that Ukraine and IS were both responsible for the attack on Crocus City Hall. We do not know that that is the case. But it certainly could be. That is the British Government's side, and NATO trafficked Begum to it.

Begum ought to be tried by a jury that, unless it were unanimously convinced beyond reasonable doubt of her guilt, ought to deliver a verdict of not guilty, which should be an enduring verdict, affording lifelong protection from double jeopardy, because that ought to be how it worked for everyone, as it used to be. In the event of such a conviction, then like a 15-year-old runner for county lines, she would not be blameless, but like a 15-year-old runner for county lines, she would not be the most to blame.

By contrast, Britain has just voted in the United Nations Security Council against the side that Begum's fellow natural born Londoner, Eylon Levy, has joined entirely voluntarily and as an adult. When is his British citizenship going to be revoked? If Starmer had been Prime Minister and David Lammy had been Foreign Secretary, then Levy would not even be suspended from his job as the war criminal that is a propagandist for war crimes, just as Starmer is a war criminal for having publicly egged on a war crime.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 259

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Sarah Kilmartin, Jenny Holmes, Sir David Behan, and Sr Una Coogan IBVM.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Fr Christopher Hancock MHM, Canon William Agley, Catherine Dyer, Canon Martin Stempczyk, Canon Peter Leighton VG, Maureen Dale, and Tony Lawless.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Andrew Grant, Kirsty McIntyre, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Petra Scarr.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.