Outside of Jayme's day job (product marketing), she loves cooking, reading, and screaming at Premier League broadcasts. She's an amateur photographer and birder who volunteers for Birdability, which helps ensure that nature and the outdoors are accessible for people with disabilities and health challenges.
PHYSICAL
- Penzy's Spices are one of my go-to gifts. I love encouraging my people to feel more comfortable in the kitchen, and these are an easy way to uplift even simple foods. Sunny Paris and Fines Herbes are my to-go (salt-free!) choices for eggs, and the Vietnamese Cinnamon blows grocery store options out of the water.
- I bought this wave study from an artist named Jean Wichea, whose work I found at a gallery in Maine. It looks eerily similar to my favorite cliffside spot, and I find myself staring at it a few times a day, since it pulls me out of my anxieties and helps me reset.
- I've been slowly replacing all of my lower-quality pots and pans over the last couple of years, and I saved up for this braiser after seeing someone else cook with one and instantly coveting it. Although I probably could have gotten away with a similar, cheaper model with a glass lid, I don't have any regrets. It cooks really evenly, and the bright yellow makes a big, happy focal point in the middle of the kitchen.
DIGITAL
- Dungeon Scrawl is an awesome tool for building fantasy maps, perfect for D&D and other tabletop RPGs. You don't even need to make an account to use it (unless you decide you want the premium features). Design a Dungeon next time you get bored in a Zoom meeting!
- Hanif Abdurraqib is one of my favorite authors and poets, and overlaps just enough of my friend group and special interests that I sometimes find myself thinking, "oh yeah, we'd be pals" before feeling creeped out at myself for skirting a parasocial hypothetical. His posts are always interesting, whether deep-diving into a song or album, basketball lore, or life in general. They're a welcome addition to an increasingly fraught social landscape.
INVISIBLE
"Now will never come again."
One of my best friends recently shared this quote with me (shoutout to the nerds that know the source), and it's influenced my decision-making dozens of times since. Sometimes, we need a reminder of the obvious.
Irving Harper: Works in Paper
by Irving Harper (artist) and Michael Maharam (editor)
Skira Rizzoli
2013, 176 pages, 8.3 x 10.3 x 1.1 inches
Anyone familiar with the American version of the hit comedy The Office might remember a scene in which Michael Scott attends an art show where Pam exhibits her paintings. Struck by a painting she made of the office building, Michael buys it and muses, "It is a message. It is an inspiration. It is a source of beauty. And without paper, it could not have happened." The quote could just as easily be said of famed designer Irving Harper, an alchemist who transforms paper into works of wonder. One look at Irving Harper: Works In Paper will be sufficient to astonish those who are not yet acquainted with the genius of design, and to further amaze those who are already fans of his.
Irving Harper was famous primarily as a furniture designer who championed the modernist style, becoming famous for the "Marshmallow Sofa" which comprises 18 plush discs arranged on a wire frame, and the "Ball Clock," which resembles an asterix with multi-colored balls punctuating the tip of each line. Harper was not a sculptor by profession, but he created paper sculptures at home as a pastime to relieve himself of the stress of his regular job. This book features the astonishing results of someone who was ultimately more artist than hobbyist. Within these pages, a series of masks with graceful, Kabuki-like features can be found alongside vivid and striking depictions of wildlife including a wizened owl with expressive eyes, a snarling wolf hovering over its prey and a stoic elephant made with spare grace. A lavish cathedral skillfully depicts a stained glass window with a seraph in an arched doorway, while a sparse rendition of a scowling soldier on horseback offers a remarkable contrast. A series of abstract sculptures reminiscent of some of Robert Rauschenberg's bold experiments also capture the reader's attention.
The book offers a brief introduction to Irving Harper and discusses his design career in some detail, but the majority of the pagers are devoted to stunning full-color and black-and-white images of his paper sculptures. One photograph stands out: Harper, surrounded by his magnificent creations in his living room, idly scans a newspaper from his easy chair. The image remains in the mind even after closing the book as a quiet and powerful document of a humble genius who gave shape to his imagination with the simplest of resources. It is, as Michael Scott suggested, a source of beauty. And it couldn't have happened without paper. - Lee Hollman
WHERE'S WARHOL - A VISUAL NEEDLE-IN-A-HAYSTACK PICTURE BOOK INSPIRED BY THE WHERE'S WALDO SERIES
Where's Warhol?
by Catherine Ingram and Andrew Rae
Laurence King Publishing
2016, 32 pages, 9.8 x 13 x 0.5 inches
Andy Warhol was known for both "making the scene," literally turning "scenes" into improvised art, and for being impressively awkward and shy within those scenes. So, there really is something fundamentally right about the concept of hiding Andy inside of iconic scenes from history, both art history and beyond.
In Where's Warhol? art historian Catherine Ingram teams up with artist Andrew Rae to create a visual needle-in-a-haystack picture book inspired by the Where's Waldo? series. In a series of two-page spreads, Andy, in his iconic striped shirt and shock of silver hair, is hidden within massive crowd scenes. The scenes range from actual places where Andy did hang out (e.g. Studio 54) to historical places and events such as the French Revolution and Germany's Bauhaus art school. The fun is not only in finding Andy, but in trying to identity all of the other historical figures drawn into these scenes. In the back of the book, many of these characters are pointed out with little anecdotes. And other known people are there, but not identified (like Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith). It's fun to see just how many characters from history you can identity. There is also enough going on here to reward repeat scans of the pages.
This would be a fun gift book to get for anyone who's a Warhol fan, a fan of art history, or who just enjoys these kinds of visual puzzle books. Everyone who's seen this on my coffee table has gotten a big kick out of it. - Gareth Branwyn
Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.
How to get rich slow
Wealth seems to grow out of a discipline, a habit, a practice that is applied daily and harvested decades later. Not everyone wants to accumulate a pile of money; but most people would like true wealth. This guide addresses that desire. I've gone through the entire New York Times bestseller list of how-to-get-rich books, and beyond. This is the book that most matches my own experience, and what I observe of the rich around me. It's wise where there is often little wisdom, and yet practical, but not so practical it goes out of date. (For that kind of advice see Your Money) — KK
- The biggest lie people tell themselves about wealth is that if you make more money, you'll be rich.
- Here's the problem: Most of us have been taught little or nothing about wealth. Most people grow up believing they should pay all their bills first and then play with what's left. There's some sense to that strategy. Certainly, it teaches us responsibility as debtors. The thing is, we've never been told that we count as much as our creditors. No one has ever said it's okay to save and pay ourselves first.
- All the time I hear people say, "If I just earned more money, then I could feel wealthy or pay my bills or use money as a tool to do good things, or save for my future." The lists seem to go on forever, but believe me when I say: Before significant wealth will come your way and stay, you have to master the money you already control.
- When it comes to saving and investing for your future, the historical rule of thumb is 10 percent. Save 10 percent of your income every single month and you'll grow wealthier than you dreamed possible.
- In some circles, budgeting is a plan for the future — not a record of the past. I prefer to keep track of my expenses as I spend, rather than plan a budget out to the year 2010. That just feels too constraining. I call my as-you-spend record keeping "take-control budgeting" and recommend it over forward-planning your expenses. I think there are just too many variables in our spending patterns to plan our future expenditures to the dollar. Furthermore, I think that most people find the money to buy the things they really want or need, so the goal here is to be aware enough of your cash flow to spend money only on things you really want. This awareness is accomplished by prioritizing your expenditures, which will be explained shortly. I think you'll find, as I did, that if you just keep a record of your prioritized expenses and balance them every month against your income, you'll instinctively know what to do next.
- So successful investing is not a matter of which new theory is hot lately, or when to buy low and when to sell high. It's a matter of getting invested, staying invested, and reinvesting the dividends over time. The accumulation of wealth is virtually that simple if you side with time.
- To many people approach being a giver from the wrong perspective. They look at the resources they possess and invariably fail to see any "extra" they can part with. That's wrongheaded thinking. Remember: If you don't feel secure enough to give, you'll never feel wealthy at the deepest level.
- ou can't give just a tiny bit and sit back, waiting for your ship to come in. You have to give with selflessness. And, if you don't feel like you can, then you must. It's the only way you can break free. We've already established how wealthy you really are, regardless of your situation. You know that you're wealthier than the majority of the world. You have to ask yourself: How rich is rich? How much is enough? How wealthy will I have to be before I become a good steward?
You know the answer: It all starts in the belief that you're wealthy right now.
Realtime budget overview
This web-based dashboard gives me an elegant overview of all my financial accounts in one screen. I've been using Mint for the past 6 months and it is marvelous. It is super friendly, quick, and illuminating. It makes me smart.
Mint will aggregate any money or spending account with online access — which is basically all financial accounts by now. In ten minutes or less I added our bank, credit cards, mortgage, cars, 401k, credit union, checking, and Etrade accounts to Mint. That's the last input I ever had to do. From then on Mint automatically updates all the accounts, sucking in their data with the correct passwords, and integrates this diverse information into a single unified realtime snapshot of our finances. At once glance I can see where we are spending too much, or how we actually allot our income. I no longer have to hunt for my password and numbers for different accounts, say checking our bank balance, or a credit card purchase. It is much much easier, and far more pleasant, to simply log into Mint, where I can see everything. There, in clear presentation far superior to most banks, are all my accounts informing each other. One window to watch them all!
Mint is a read-only interface. There is no way to move money, or reconcile accounts, or pay bills, or calculate taxes (for now). That is also why it is safe. In fact it is probably safer than most banks because fancy algorithms at Mint similar to credit card fraud detection software will alert you when your finances show an unusual pattern. This is one of its cool features. It will gently inform you (at your choice) that say, based on your past months' expenditures, you've overspent your grocery budget this month. It also makes a fairly good guess at categorizing your expenses on its own. It can then make comparisons of how your budget stacks up to other aggregate users in your area, and offer budget suggestions (which we have not followed). We rarely use cash for anything so Mint gives us a very complete picture.
Some people will not be convinced by any reasoning or proof that having a single window into your entire financial situation is safe. If you are of that type, don't use Mint. But for the rest, who long ago realized that using credit cards online is far safer than using one in a store, Mint is a fabulous cool tool. And it is free. Available anywhere the web lives.
There are a couple of similar sites, such as Wesabe and Geezeo, which emphasize sharing budgets, sort of like a Weight Watchers for finances, but I find their interfaces far less elegant. However this niche is evolving fast, and features expand. Mint has a good head start, a winning design (I love the pie charts!), and a sizable user base, so I think it will be around for a while. (If it did disappear, no loss because it does not store any unique data.) — KK
Best introductory guide to money
I didn't think another book on finance smarts would add anything new to the wisdom of the previously reviewed books Your Money, and Five Rituals of Wealth. But this one takes the great advice found in those and reduces it all to 100 maxims that you can read (and reread) in an hour or less. There is one simple paragraph of hard-won advice per page. This small book's chief benefit is that busy people will actually READ it.
This is also the best money guide for young adults. I think it is perfect to start with even for elementary kids. It is less about finance and more about developing a common sense about money. Works as a refresher and reminder for adults too. I found myself in total agreement, having done well over the years using the same principles.
If you need convincing on any point, or want the details on how to execute an idea, you can delve into the aforementioned books. — KK
- The four most powerful words in any negotiation: "Can you do better?"You're sitting in the office of the person who's dying to be your new boss. He's just offered you a job that you really want with the title you've been craving. The only hitch: The salary isn't where you'd hoped it would be. Don't commit-at least not neil you ask, "Can you do better?" It's the perfect haggle. You sound as if you know there's wiggle room, and you're willing to let him work his magic. And note: This works just as well when you're on the phone with the cable company, at the mechanic for an oil change, talking to a mortgage rep about in a "refi" rate. It even-I know from experience-works with teenage kids.
- There's no such thing as chump change.$100 is not a lot of money. Save it every week, however, and invest it in a retirement account where you earn a conservative 6 percent, and keep doing it for 30 years and you'll have $433,557. In 40 years, you'll have more than twice that. And that is a lot of money.
- Saving is more important than investing.Next time you stress about the stock market, remember this: The amount of money you manage to sock away is much more important than the return on that money. You can take my word for it. Or you can consider this eye-opening example: You save $250 a month, which you then invest. If you earn 6 percent on that money, a year from now you'll have $3,267. If you earn 10 percent, you'll have $3,311-$44 more. But what if you waited a month to start saving? Then even at 10 percent you'd have $3,052-$215 less. What if you saved $200 a month instead of $250? Then, again at 10 percent, you'd have $2,649-$618 less. As your nest-egg grows and gets into the six figure range, the return on investment starts to matter more. But you can't get to that level if you don't start to save now. Right now.
- Your retirement trumps their tuition.You know when you're on an airplane and they always tell you to put your oxygen mask on first before assisting a child? Saving for long-term financial needs is the same. If you don't save for your own future first, you won't be able to help your children when they need it. Worse, they may be forced to help you just when they're trying to put their own kids through school. There is no financial aid for retirement. There is plenty of financial aid for college. Don't feel guilty about this.
- The best cost-cutting tool is a good night's sleep.With the possible exception of prescription medication, flashlight batteries, bottled water (under the pressure of a hurricane), and a few other true necessities, there is nothing you need to buy that can't wait until tomorrow. So when you're faced with a discretionary purchase, do your wallet a favor and sleep on it. If you're not still thinking about it-whatever it happened to be-24 hours later, you didn't need or want it anyway.
- Don't shop hungry.This is not just a rule that applies in grocery stores. Do you know why they ply you with samples at warehouse stores? Because exciting your mouth-literally making you drool-makes you spend more money not just on food, but on everything. It primes the same part of your brain that responds to the rewards you really want. So maybe you went to the store to buy diapers but now that your brain is active, you buy the tent. (That shopping trip is legend in our family. I should tell you: we don't camp.) Oh, and when your favorite little boutique offers a special evening sale with wine and cheese? Steer clear. Alcohol not only primes the pleasure pump, it inhibits self-control.
Once a week we'll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.
TeamLab produces immersive destinations that are worth going out of your way to see. They began in Japan, where they have four huge installations that offer entertaining environments, using lights, mirrors, video, projectors and other media magic inside giant rooms. Our family spent an exhilarating 3 hours in the TeamLab Borderless site in Tokyo wandering through the mazes of experiences with constant smiles. It dazzled kids and elders. Even though TeamLab have become Instagram hot spots, and art snobs consider it too commercial, I would recommend making a trip to experience Borderless yourself. Go with friends, it's more fun. — KK
Listen to whale codasProject CETI's Listen to Whales website is an immersion into the codas and culture of cetaceans, inviting you to literally listen in on sperm whale family life and history. The project uses AI to listen to, decode, and translate sperm whale communication. I love how CETI reframes whales as cultural beings with their own clans, dialects, and stories, and has created this living platform to share what they're learning in real time—and to inspire meaningful action to protect our oceans. — CD
Kitchen drawer multitoolI keep this Workpro 24-in-1 Multitool in a kitchen drawer for quick fixes so I don't need to shlep down to the basement for my toolbox. It handles minor repairs: tightening a loose cabinet hinge, snipping a zip tie, prying open a battery compartment. The pliers are solid, the knife is sharp, and the Phillips and flathead screwdrivers cover 90% of household fasteners. Folds to about the size of a thick marker. Not a replacement for real tools, but perfect for "I just need to fix this one thing" moments. — MF
Compact travel toyI've long been a big fan of Magna-Tiles, which are small plastic squares that act as parts of a construction system for kids. The tiles rely on magnetic edges to build things easily. You can build a million different things, like Lego, but it is much easier to do than Lego. Even toddlers can master them without boredom. They now make MicroMags, tiny compact versions of mini-Magna-Tiles, perfect for travel. A small set of MicroMags will fit into a slim box about the size of a standard book, and give restless kids enough options to occupy them for hours. Small enough to pack in luggage, but set out on a table, they invite playful engagement. — KK
The Correlation ExperimentThe Correlation Experiment has you answer questions about everyday preferences so it can predict your answers based on data correlations. I don't like being predictable, so I loved when its predictions went wrong—out of 60 questions, it missed about 20%. After a while, though, I was insulted by the misses: it pegged me as not an inbox zero person, guessed comedy over horror, and said I don't make my bed first thing in the morning. No login needed, and it's fun to play. — CD
Free iPhone storage cleanerClever Cleaner is a free iPhone app — no ads, no subscriptions, no paywalled features. It scans your photo library for duplicates and similar shots, identifies large videos hogging space, and rounds up forgotten screenshots. A "Smart Cleanup" button lets AI select which duplicates to trash, or you can swipe through photos manually. All processing happens on-device, so your photos never leave your phone. It's made by CleverFiles, the folks behind Disk Drill data recovery software. — MF
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Drawing from traditional Buddhist wisdom, When Things Fall Apart offers a counterintuitive approach to suffering: instead of running from pain, move toward it with friendliness and curiosity — and discover that groundlessness itself can become the foundation for an awakened life.
Core Principles Embrace GroundlessnessWe spend enormous energy trying to find solid ground — security, certainty, permanence — but life is fundamentally groundless. Rather than fighting this truth, Pema teaches us to relax into uncertainty. Getting the knack of staying present with shakiness, a broken heart, or hopelessness without panicking is the path of true awakening.
Move Toward PainOur instinct is to flee from painful situations, but nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. When we protect ourselves from pain, that protection becomes armor that imprisons the softness of the heart. The approach that brings lasting benefit involves becoming intimate with difficulty rather than avoiding it.
Practice Maitri (Loving-Kindness)Before we can extend compassion to others, we must develop maitri — unconditional friendliness toward ourselves. This means having the courage and honesty to look at ourselves without aggression, accepting our fears, confusion, and imperfection as part of being human rather than evidence of failure.
This Moment Is the TeacherWe don't need to wait for extraordinary circumstances to practice awakening. This very moment — with all its messiness, ordinariness, and discomfort — is the perfect teacher. Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available right now in our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives.
Try It Now- Notice something uncomfortable you're feeling right now — anxiety, restlessness, sadness, or physical tension.
- Instead of trying to fix it or push it away, stay with the sensation for one minute. Breathe and observe it with curiosity.
- Silently say to yourself: "This is what fear feels like" (or sadness, or uncertainty). Name it without judgment.
- Ask yourself: "What is this feeling trying to teach me?" Don't force an answer — just let the question sit.
- End offering yourself the same compassion you would give a good friend in pain.
"Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. We run away from it, but the same problem just waits for us wearing new names and new faces."
…is Bangkok once again. Hosting more than 30 million arrivals in 2025, Thailand's capital was the most popular place to land. Next on the list were Hong Kong, London, Macau, and Istanbul. Paris, the #1 "most attractive city" on Euromonitor's list was #9 in arrivals. See the details here.
US/Canadian Rail Travelers in EuropeRailEurope only gets a fraction of the total foreign train bookings on the continent, but it gets enough of them do that the company could release a whole 2025 wrap-up on US and Canadian travel there. Nice to see that more than half of visitors are picking multiple cities and adding smaller cities to the big and famous ones. Nevertheless, France was the number one market overall and this was shocking: "The Barcelona-Madrid corridor accounted for almost 50% of all revenue from Canadian and U.S. travellers."
Experienced Travelers Shun AI BotsExperienced travelers may be fine with asking ChatGPT who won the best picture Oscar in 2019, but they're not about to let the computer bots plan their vacation. Anyone who has asked an AI tool to recommend an itinerary for their own city quickly sees why, but this new report says, "Only 20 percent said they would feel comfortable letting AI design a complete trip itinerary based on their preferences." A full 79 percent said they would feel uncomfortable letting "agentic AI" systems book their travel for them.
Huge Admission Increases in MexicoUntil this year, admission prices for the archaeological sites in Mexico were a good value when compared to others around the world. That was until the national government doubled them all for foreigners this month. It will now cost you $38 to brave the tour bus crowds and vendors at Chichen Itza. Oddly, it will cost you the same amount to visit far less popular Ek Balam and $35 to visit ruins almost nobody goes to as it is, such as Sayil and Labna. The best bang for the buck is sprawling Teotihuacan near Mexico City, now looking like a deal at less than $12. Despite the doubling, that's also the price for Monte Alban, Coba, and Palenque.
A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World's Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.
Jan 14, 2026
I work managing creative teams for the online communication of brands and institutions across Italy and Spain, but mostly on the Internet. For over seven years, I have been writing nonostantement - a weekly Sunday newsletter, collecting the most interesting things I find online. — Joele Lucherini
PHYSICAL
- Japanese Barbecue Tongs - I am completely influenced by Japanese chefs on TikTok, and when I saw these tongs, I had to buy them. I find them much better than regular ones, especially for handling small pieces of food while cooking.
- Manduka Yoga Mat - Over the past year, I started practicing yoga twice a week. I'm lucky to be able to do it at home with online classes, which helped turn it into a habit—even though I've never really enjoyed sports.
- Cat Meme Stickers Pack - A pack of about a hundred cat meme stickers. It's a small, inexpensive thing, but it can completely change my day — surprising someone with a weird cat sticker is a simple gesture that always makes people smile.
DIGITAL
- Parcel app - Working from home and spending a lot of time in front of my computer, I buy things online quite a lot. This app is reliable and it's almost always open on my laptop for tracking all my deliveries.
- Make.com - I've never really had the calm mind (lol) to become a proper coder, but I've always enjoyed tinkering with how things work behind the scenes. Make.com—a no-code platform that connects different apps and services—has genuinely changed my life, dramatically improving my work by letting me automate almost anything I can think of.
INVISIBLE
"Not my business, not my problem."
Every year, I choose a sentence to guide me in my work. This year it was this "mantra" I often had to repeat to avoid getting too involved in my clients' company issues, especially when dealing with things I don't control or am not responsible for.
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FIGHT CLUB 2 - IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A PUNCH TO THE CEREBRAL CORTEX, DEFINITELY PICK THIS UP
Fight Club 2
by Chuck Palahniuk (author), Cameron Stewart (illustrator) and David Mack (illustrator)
Dark Horse Comics
2016, 256 pages, 6.9 x 10.5 x 0.9 inches
Let's talk about Fight Club. This movie rocked me, and introduced me to the incredible and controversial work of Chuck Palahniuk. Now the concept of a sequel does seem a little out of sorts to the counter culture message of the original, but honestly, who hasn't been wondering how things turned out for Marla and the Narrator after he stuck a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger? Did they find their happily ever after? No, of course they didn't, thus the sequel.
The Narrator finally gets a name, Sebastian…it's not a great name, but it fits given the current state of his life. Marla's bored, Sebastian is in a drug-induced fog, Tyler Durden is raging behind the scenes trying to get back in control, and project mayhem is causing more chaos than ever. Then things get weird.
If you've only seen the movie you probably won't dig this. Actually Palahniuk's anticipation of the fanbase's dislike for the comic becomes an actual plot point. Things get meta to say the least. The comic builds off of not just the novel, but Palahniuk's work and reputation since the film came out. It's very fitting of Palahniuk, and I think fans of his will really enjoy it, but be clear this is not a blockbuster directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt or Ed Norton.
What I found really unique was that this story could only be told in comic form. Tyler's antics, and his fight to control the narrative couldn't be contained by text in a novel. And things get far too self-referential for any film goer - I found myself having to go back a page or two on several occasions to make sure I didn't miss anything. Images are strategically placed over dialogue, narration bubbles obstruct characters. The design of the comic itself adds to the feeling that this is a war over the story itself. Is Sebastian in control? Is Tyler? Is Palahniuk? I found myself engaged and thinking about it long after I finished reading. It's heady and not for a casual comic reader, but if you're looking for a punch to the cerebral cortex, definitely pick this up. I want you to read this as hard as you can. - JP LeRoux
TESLA: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AN ELECTRIC MESSIAH
Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah
by Nigel Cawthorne
Chartwell Books
2014, 192 pages, 7.2 x 10.5 x 0.8 inches
Mad scientist. Inventor. Philosopher. Visionary. Eccentric. A man who was terrible at business, but great with pigeons. A mythic figure, Nicola Tesla was all these things and more. Examining his life and career, Tesla: The Life And Times Of An Electric Messiah is a lengthy, oversized book filled with illustrations, photos, diagrams of his many inventions, and brief, informative vignettes about his friends, colleagues, business associates, and rivals.
Tesla's own words are pulled from writings and correspondence, and help flesh out a turn-of-the-century futurist, although they can be somewhat dry and academic. His eccentricities liven things up considerably. For instance, did you know he once fell into a vat of boiling milk, and lived on a diet of bread, warm milk, and something mysteriously known as 'Factor Actus'? Did you know he had a strange aversion to women's earrings, and would become feverish at the sight of a peach? Tidbits like these keep the book moving at a nice pace, as the man became more reclusive and odd toward the end of his life.
His War Of The Currents with Thomas Edison is detailed, as well as his battle of radio with Guglielmo Marconi. His experiments with wireless transmission of energy, X-Rays, flying machines, remote control, and artificial intelligence are also described, as well as the mystery surrounding the disappearance of his papers concerning his invention of a death ray by the US government. Beautifully illustrated on parchment-tinted paper, Tesla: The Life And Times Of An Electric Messiah is a handsome, encyclopedic book about a startlingly prescient early 20th-century pioneer. - S. Deathrage
Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.
Essential parental skill
Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems
I was trying to think of the book that has had the greatest effect on my life. Books like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , or The Fountainhead carried a lot of philosophical weight at the time I'd read them in college but they seem like junk upon re-reading them now. So, I asked myself again, what book has really changed my life? Then it hit me: it was, without a doubt, Richard Ferber's Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems.
We have two kids, one age six, the other 11 months. When our six year old was a baby, we put her to sleep by holding her and rocking her. She would wake up every couple of hours, crying for us to come back and rescue her. We finally gave up and let her sleep with us. It was the only way we could get any sleep. To this day, she demands that one of us crawls into bed with her until she falls asleep.
When we had our other daughter, she would cry for us every hour at night. The whole family was exhausted from the ordeal. Would we have to suffer this ordeal for three more years?
Some friends told us to "Ferberize" her and we'd all be able to sleep soundly. We were skeptical, but we bought the book and followed the instructions faithfully. In a nutshell, Ferberization entails putting your baby in her crib, kissing her goodnight and walking out of the room. She'll cry, of course. After five minutes, you walk in and reassure her, then walk out again. This time you wait ten minutes. You repeat this, adding five minutes between return visits. It sounds cruel. As a parent, your instinct is to run to your baby as soon as she starts crying. But in this case, not following you instincts is the best course of action. It took exactly two nights to Ferberize our baby. She has learned to fall asleep on her own, and when she wakes up at night, she knows how to fall back asleep on her own. Best of all, she is happy, confident, and well-rested. And so are we. We have our nights, and as a result, our days back.
While this was truly a life-changing book, you really don't need to read it. Other chapters address the nature of sleep and how to deal with more unusual child sleep problems, but for most people, the procedure I described above is all you need. Reading the book, however, made me feel better psychologically about going through with it. — Mark Frauenfelder
I have three kids. This method works. — KK
- Better than lying with your toddler or young child until he falls asleep at night is for him to fall asleep with a "transitional object" — a stuffed animal, a doll, a toy, a special blanket. The toy will often help him accept the nighttime separation from you and can be a source of reassurance and comfort when he is alone. It will give him a feeling of having a little control over his world because he may have the toy or blanket with him whenever he wants, which he cannot expect from you. His toy will not get up and leave after he falls asleep and it will still be there whenever he wakes.
Distributed weight babywearing
There are so many baby carriers on the market right now, and I've tried a good deal of them: various slings, the Ergo Baby, Baby Bjorn, and the like all tend to put the bulk of the baby's weight on one part of the back. While there is some distribution with shoulder or hip straps, the weight is still focused primarily on one area (shoulder/hips). I had seen the Moby Wrap and had decidedly avoided trying it, as it looked complicated and uncomfortable. A friend finally convinced me to try one, and I fell in love.
Not only is my baby securely snuggled up against my body, but it is incredibly comfortable to wear. It looks to be about 20 feet of fabric that you wrap around your body and slip the baby into. No doubt based on some age-old method of carrying babies, it is by far the most comfortable and versatile carrier I've seen. Because it crosses around your body so many times in different locations, it distributes the weight of the child to a variety of places: shoulders, upper back, lower back and hips. Plus, the baby can face forwards, backwards or sideways when worn on your front, and she can be worn on your hips or back as well.
While it does require an introduction on how to put it on, once you have figured out how it works, it could not be simpler to use. The basic concept is that you create a cross of fabric on your body and slip the baby between you and the cross, with her legs hanging out between. Also, because of the criss-cross over your shoulders you can nestle the baby's head under the wrap, allowing full protection from the sun or, more importantly for the new parent, a quiet zone in which to nap, even at a bustling market. For all its simplicity this is simply the best baby carrier available.
There are several variations on this idea — one with rings, one made of more stretchy material, one with fancy patterns — from various manufacturers, but the basic design is all the same — wrap the fabric around your body, slide the baby in and enjoy. — Elizabeth Sendil
Simplest baby carrier
Like most Americans, I hauled my firstborn around in his carseat/infant carrier. Never again. For my second child, I researched slings extensively, and bought a New Native. It's simpler than any other sling, including the Maya sling Cool Tools reviewed.
New Native is just one piece of fabric, hemmed and stitched into a big pocket. That means no adjustment rings or buckles to come loose or fiddle with. Accordingly, it's sized. I wear a medium. My husband, who is much bigger than I am, wears my (medium) sling as well — there are three sizes, small, medium, and large, and the medium fits a pretty wide range of people.
I've slung my second baby since day one. She has taken countless naps in it. The sleek, professional look of the New Native means that a lot of people take it for fashion. While my daughter was small, they didn't even know I had a baby on. I wore it to the office and even taught class with it.
At nine months I can count on one hand the number of times my daughter has ridden in a stroller. Everywhere I go people who see it wish they had known about it when they were carrying babies, and ask me where I got my sling: New Native. — Donna Bowman
Back/front/hip infant carrier
We carried our seven-month-old daughter around Prague and Leipzig for hours in a standard BabyBjörn this last winter and she/we loved it — cozy and comfortable. The problem: it's only a front carrier, and since then, she's gotten heavier, which started to take it's toll on our backs (imagine carrying a bowling ball strapped to your chest.). Now we're using an Ergo, which can be easily re-configured for back-, front-, or side-carrying. Since it buckles around your waist, most of the weight is put on your hips. While an "original" BabyBjörn is rated for use with babies up to 25 lbs, I tried ours with our daughter when she was 15 lbs and it was a no go. She's heavier now, and the Ergo remains incredibly comfortable: I've noticed much less lower back strain.
Learning to scoot the baby around your hips, onto your back, and into the Ergo without outside help is a bit of a production at first, but no problem once you get the hang of it. If you want to put the pack in front or on your hip, it's quite simple, too (ed. note: the videos are quite helpful). Like the BabyBjörrn, the Ergo is made of cotton and cleans up very easily with just a sponge most of the time. It can be washed in a machine, too. There's a cotton hood (the green fabric in the pic) that attaches with snap buttons for when the baby is sleeping — protects her from the elements, and keeps her head from flopping around.
Note: BabyBjörrn does make an "Active" model (which we have not tried) with lower back support that is supposed to "ease the burden." However, you cannot convert that one to a hip/back carrier. —Brandon Summers
Bedwetting solution
Our son is a very sound sleeper and had problems with bedwetting. We tried everything we could think of. Finally I stumbled across a mention of Enurad in a parents' forum. It's a wireless wetness sensor that you place in the child's underwear. A standard alarm clock has been modified to ring at the slightest wetness. Enurad combined with limiting nighttime fluids solved the problem in a couple of months. He wore the device for sometime after that as an insurance policy. He just slept better knowing it was there. At $210 it's not inexpensive, but worth every penny. Enurad doesn't have a US distrubuter that I know of. I ordered ours from Austrailia. Highly Recommended. — Johnboy
According to the most recent science moisture alarms are the most lasting medical cures for nocturnal bedwetting, better than commonly prescribed drugs. —KK
Once a week we'll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.
We launched a free daily email newsletter called Recomendo Deals that alerts you when products we've previously recommended in Recomendo and Cool Tools drop to unusually low prices. Here's how it works: Every day, the system checks thousands of products we've recommended over the years against Keepa, a service that tracks Amazon price history. When a product falls 20% or more below its 90-day average price, or hits an all-time low, it surfaces as a deal. These aren't random products — they're things we've already vetted and recommended. I've already purchased a few items myself. It literally takes 20 seconds to scan the 5 to 10 deals that show up each day, and most days there's nothing I need. But occasionally, something I've had my eye on drops to a great price. Give it a try by subscribing here. — MF
Bargain flights to JapanBy far the best bargain flights to Japan are through a Japan Airlines subsidiary called Zip Air. Our family used it going both ways to Tokyo this holiday and I can highly recommend them. All routes begin or terminate in Tokyo, flying from hub cities in Asia, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and from select cities in the US. Prices vary widely during the year, but on some weeks this coming spring an economy ROUND TRIP flight from San Francisco to Tokyo is only $283!!!! Of course, they charge for everything from meals, water, blankets, and luggage. But we can manage. And their "lie full flat" seats (business class) are less than $2,000, but also without blankets, pillows, or service. We tried both the economy and full flat seats, and both are worth the small hassles for the ridiculous cheap prices. — KK
35 simple health tipsThis article gathers 35 simple, research-backed practices from sleep specialists, sex therapists, psychologists, nutrition scientists and more, each offering one small habit they personally rely on to support everyday well-being. The whole list is great, and I especially love the reflection on "soft fascination" — turning to simple, almost meditative tasks when there are too many mental tabs open, and letting answers rise on their own. For me, washing dishes is always a meditative reset that clears out mental clutter and restores a sense of spaciousness. — CD
Understanding Old EnglishWhat we now call the English language has been rapidly changing for over a thousand years. The best way to experience this evolution is to watch this video by Simon Roper where the same passage is recited in proto-English, and then repeated in newer versions of Old English every hundred years, until you reach modern English. The game is to see when you begin to understand it. For me it was around 1600 in part. This gimmick, more than any other, gave me an appreciation of what ancestral versions of English were like. — KK
Dream school newsletterEvery night I have multiple, vivid dream adventures, and for the past five years I've been writing them down and treating them as a parallel stream of consciousness for self‑reflection, healing, and guidance. The dream teacher who's helped me the most is author Robert Moss, whose free Substack is a living archive of shamanic "active dreaming" prompts, personal stories, and techniques that make it easy to develop a co‑creative relationship with your dreams. If you're at all interested in understanding your dream self on a deeper level, I highly recommend subscribing to his newsletter. Two great starting pieces are "Nine Keys to Understanding Your Dreams" and "The Only Dream Expert is You." — CD
Satisfying squishA relative with ADHD brought a NeeDoh to a family gathering, and I couldn't put it down. Like me, she uses fidgets to focus, and this one is perfect — a soft, stretchy ball filled with a viscous dough-like substance inside a silicone skin. You squeeze, squish, and stretch it, and it slowly oozes back to its original shape. The resistance is deeply satisfying. Her tips: keep it in the fridge to make it harder(and more fun) to squeeze, and when the silicone skin gets grungy, wash it with soap and water, then rub cornstarch over it — good as new. NeeDoh comes in various shapes (balls, cubes, figures) and costs around $5-10. Great for desks, meetings, or anywhere you need to keep restless hands busy. — MF
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I have now been in Caracas for 48 hours and the contrast between what I have seen, and what I had read in the mainstream media, could not be more stark.
I drove right through Caracas, from the airport through the city centre and up to posh Las Mercedes. The next morning I walked all through and weaved my way within the working class district of San Agustin. I joined in the "Afrodescendants festival", and spent hours mingling with the people. I was made extremely welcome and invited into many homes - this from a district they tell you is extremely dangerous.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/caracas11.mp4I must admit I had great fun at this bit.
After this I continued on for miles walking through the residential area and through the heart of the city centre, including Bolivar Square and the National Assembly.
In all of this I have not seen one single checkpoint, whether police or military. I have seen almost no guns; fewer than you would see on a similar tour taking in Whitehall. I have not been stopped once, whether on foot or in a car. I have seen absolutely zero sign of "Chavista militia" whether in poor, wealthy or central areas. I drove extensively round the opposition strongholds of Las Mercedes and Altamira and quite literally saw not a single armed policemen, not one militia man and not one soldier. People were out and about quite happily and normally. There was no feeling of repression whatsoever.
Again, nobody stopped me or asked who I am or why I was taking pictures. I did ask the Venezuelan authorities whether I needed a permit to take photos and publish articles, and their reply was a puzzled "why would you?"
The military checkpoints to maintain control, the roving gangs of Chavista armed groups, all the media descriptions of Caracas today are entirely a figment of CIA and Machado propaganda, simply regurgitated by a complicit billionaire and state media.
Do you know what else do not exist? The famous "shortages." The only thing in short supply is shortage. There is a shortage of shortage. There is no shortage of anything in Venezuela.
A few weeks ago I saw on Twitter a photo of a supermarket in Caracas which somebody had put up to demonstrate that the shelves are extremely well stocked. It received hundreds of replies, either claiming it was a fake, or that it was an elite supermarket for the wealthy and that the shops for the majority were empty.
So I made a point, in working-class districts, of going into the neighbourhood, front room stores where ordinary people do their shopping. They were all very well stocked. There were no empty places on shelves. I also went round outdoor and covered markets, including an improbably huge one with over a hundred stalls catering solely for children's birthday parties!
Everyone was quite happy to let me photograph anything I wanted. It is not just groceries. Hardware stores, opticians, clothes and shoe shops, electronic goods, auto parts. Everything is freely available.
There is a lack of physical currency. Sanctions have limited the Venezuelan government's access to secure printing. To get round this, everybody does secure payment with their phones via QR code using the Venezuelan Central Bank's own ingenious app. This is incredibly well established - even the most basic street vendors have their QR code displayed and get their payments this way. Can you spot the QR codes on these street stalls?
To get a Venezuelan phone and sim card for the internet I went to a mall which specialises in phones. It was extraordinary. Four storeys of little phone and computer shops, all packed with goods, organised in three concentric circles of tiered balconies. This photo is just the inner circle. I picked up a phone, sim card, lapel microphones, power bank, multi-system extension lead and ethernet to USB adapter, all in the first little store I entered.
Registering the sim was quick and simple. There is good 4G everywhere I have been in Caracas, and some spots of 5G.
"Relaxed" is a word I would use for Venezuelans. You could forgive paranoia, the country having been bombed by the Americans just three weeks ago and many people killed. You might expect hostility to a rather strange old gringo wandering around inexplicably snapping random things. But I have experienced no sense of hostility at all, from people or officials.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Caracas7-1.mp4The African festival was instructive. A community event and not a political rally, there were nevertheless numerous spontaneous shouts and chants for Maduro. The Catholic priest giving the blessing at the festivities suddenly started talking of the genocide in Gaza and everybody prayed for Palestine. Community and cultural figures continually referenced socialism.
This is the natural environment here. None of it is forced. Chavez empowered the downtrodden and improved their lives in a spectacular manner, for which there are few parallels. The result is genuine popular enthusiasm and a level of public working-class engagement with political thought that it is impossible to compare to the UK today. It is the antithesis of the hollowed out culture that has spawned Reform.
I am very wary of Western journalists who parachute into a country and become instant experts. Although the stark contradiction between actual Caracas and Western-media Caracas is so extreme that I can bring it to you immediately.
Pretty well everything that I have read by Western journalists which can be immediately checked - checkpoints, armed political gangs, climate of fear, shortages of food and goods - turns out to be an absolute lie. I did not know this before I came. Possibly neither did you. We both do now.
I had lived for years in Nigeria and Uzbekistan under real dictatorships and I know what they feel like. I can tell sullen compliance from real engagement. I can tell spontaneous from programmed political expression. This is no dictatorship.
I am, so far as I can judge, the only Western journalist in Venezuela now. The idea that you should actually see for yourself what is happening, rather than reproduce what the Western governments and their agents tell you is happening, appears utterly out of fashion with our mainstream media. I am sure this is deliberate.
When I was in Lebanon a year ago, the mainstream media were entirely absent as Israel devastated Dahiya, the Bekaa Valley, and Southern Lebanon, because it was a narrative they did not want to report.
Disgracefully, the only time the BBC entered Southern Lebanon was from the Israeli side, embedded with the IDF.
The BBC, Guardian or New York Times simply will not send a correspondent to Caracas because the reality is so starkly different from the official narrative.
One narrative which the Western powers are desperate to have you believe is that Acting President Delcy Rodríguez betrayed Maduro and facilitated his capture. That is not what Maduro believes. It is not what his party believes, and I have been unable to find the slightest indication that anybody believes this in Venezuela.
The security services house journal, the Guardian, published about their fifth article making this claim, and flagged it as front-page lead and a major scoop. Yet all of the sources for the Guardian story are still the same US government sources, or Machado supporters from the wealthy Miami community of exiled capitalist parasites.
What is interesting is why the security services wish you to believe that Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge, Speaker of the National Assembly, are agents for the USA. Opposition to US Imperialism has defined their entire lives since their father was tortured to death at the behest of the CIA when they were infants. They are both vocal in their continuing support for the Bolivarian Revolution and personally for Maduro.
The obvious American motive is to split and weaken the ruling party in Caracas and undermine the government of Venezuela. That was my reading. But it has also been suggested to me that Trump is pushing heavily the line that Rodríguez is pro-American in order both to claim victory, and to justify his lack of support for Machado. Rubio and many like him are keen to see Machado installed, but Trump's assessment that she does not have the support to run the country seems from here entirely correct.
A variation on this that has also been suggested to me is that Trump wants to portray Rodríguez as pro-American to reassure American oil companies it is safe to invest (though exactly why he wants that is something of a mystery).
Meanwhile of course the USA seizes, steals and sells Venezuelan oil with no justification at all in international law. The proceeds are kept in Qatar under Trump's personal control and are building up a huge slush fund he can use to bypass Congress. For those with long memories, it is like Iran/Contra on a massively inflated scale.
I am trying to get established in Venezuela to report to you and dive much deeper into the truth from Venezuela. I am afraid I am going to say it takes money. I am looking to hire a local cinematographer so we can start to produce videos. The first may be on what happened the night of the murderous US bombings and kidnap.
I did not want to crowdfund until I was sure it was viable to produce worthwhile content for you. The expenses of getting and living here, and building the required team, to produce good work do add up. I was very proud of the content we produced from Lebanon, but ultimately disappointed that we could not crowdfund sufficiently to sustain permanent independent reporting from there.
So we now have a Venezuela reporting crowdfunder. I have simply edited the Lebanese GoFundMe crowdfunder, because that took many weeks to be approved and I don't want to go through all that again. So its starting baseline is the £35,000 we raised and spent in Lebanon.
I do very much appreciate that I have been simultaneously crowdfunding to fight the UK government in the Scottish courts over the proscription of Palestine Action. We fight forces that have unlimited funds. We can only succeed if we spread the load. 98% of those who read my articles never contribute financially. This would be a good moment to change that. It is just the simple baseline subscriptions to my blog that have got me to Venezuela, and that remains the foundation for all my work.
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Iraq.
Libya.
Egypt.
Syria.
Gaza.
Somalia.
No CIA- and Mossad-constructed regime change operation in the Middle East has ever made life better for the ordinary people of the country, nor even delivered the promised increase in personal and political freedoms.
The only limited improvement that might be gained comes from the lifting of Western sanction regimes. Apparently you can now buy M&Ms much more freely in Damascus. But that in itself is a reminder that the alleged "misgovernance" of non-puppet regimes is often the direct result of sanctions.
That is entirely true of the current situation in Iran, where the current unrest was almost entirely sparked by economic hardship attributable directly to Western sanctions on what should be a very wealthy country.
If anybody really wanted to help actual Iranians, they should be campaigning to lift the sanctions. Making that dependent on the installation of a Zionist Shah shows that this is actually about support for Israel, not about helping ordinary Iranians.
How many of those Western political and media commentators now obsessed with the rights of women not to wear a hijab, with the rights of gays, and with the stopping of executions, are campaigning for the violent overthrow of their Saudi Arabian ally on precisely the same grounds?
How many of them support the installation of the al-Jolani regime in Damascus, which is actively and newly imposing the very things they claim to oppose in Iran?
Did you know that the number of women in the Syrian parliament has just fallen from 28 under Assad to 6 under al-Jolani?
Did you know that over half of university students in Iran are female? That in STEM subjects it is over 60%?
Did you know that approximately 15,000 Jews live in Iran? The community has been there 2,700 years and their rights and synagogues are protected. There is even a dedicated Jewish seat in Parliament.
I do not paint Iran as a paradise. I am not, personally, in favour of theocratic government anywhere. I respect people's right to live according to religious observance if they so wish, but not the right to compel religious observance on those who do not wish it or to impose law on the grounds of divine ordination.
If you wish to live in a pure religious society, then enter a closed religious order or wait until you reach your Heaven.
I oppose theocracy in Israel, in Saudi Arabia, in Iran; equally. I deplore the Christian Zionist influence bringing effective theocracy to the United States. I deplore bishops in the House of Lords.
I have a great deal of respect for the teachings of Islam. But religious leaders should not have the command of worldly affairs anywhere, on the basis of institutional appointment. Those who wish to live their lives outside of religious guidelines should be free to do so.
In addition to which, Iran is as susceptible as the rest of the world to the misuse of power by individuals, to corruption and to abuse of office, to inequality and the abuse of power. I should like to see reform in Iran, as I should like to see reform everywhere, towards a freer and more equal society.
But that reform will not be obtained by a violent movement of protest that seizes on the economic suffering under sanctions to whip up people to murder and arson.
Israel is boasting that it is arming and organising protestors in Iran.
Again I do not view the Iranian government as blameless. If it had allowed more space for reasonable reformists to operate, for opposition figures to campaign, then you would not have a situation where the crowds are shouting the name of the sickening Zionist Pahlavi stooge, simply because it is the only "opposition" name they have heard.
It does seem the moment of greatest madness has passed. I do hope that the Iranian government reflects on opening more political space in the medium term.
But I have nothing but contempt for those in the West who have jumped on the anti-Iranian bandwagon.
Iran is the only remaining power in the Middle East that stood up against the genocide in Gaza. The Iranian sponsored resistance have been the only military opposition to the expansion of Greater Israel. Houthis aside, those resistance forces have been set back badly in the last two years, though not entirely defeated nor disbanded.
The installation of the Zionist puppet al-Jolani was a great boon for the expansion of Israel. They are now gunning for Iran itself.
Those in the West who pretend this is about human rights, and not about eliminating the last elements of physical resistance to Greater Israel, are sickeningly hypocritical.
Opposition to the government of Iran and support for its violent overthrow has become the new entry ticket to the Overton Window Show of British media and politics. It is the new "Do you condemn Hamas?"
Those who bow the knee before the latest ruse of Western Imperialist conquest, in the interests of maintaining their establishment respectability, should be treated with contempt.
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To my great surprise, the video recording of yesterday's Court of Session hearing on the judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action is still active on the court's website, and you can watch it. I do not know how long this will last.
I have been used to the ludicrous restrictions on the English court hearings, where passwords were needed to access the video and it disappeared instantly after the livestream, despite these being public courts.
This in Edinburgh was a preliminary hearing on permission for a judicial review and the judge wished to consider only two questions:
Firstly, whether I had standing to bring the case.
Secondly, whether the Scottish court had jurisdiction in the light of the English judicial review.
I should be genuinely grateful for people's opinions after watching the video, but my initial thoughts are these:
Firstly and most importantly, my legal team's Note of Argument had asserted that they assumed that, as the judge only wished to have two points discussed, he was already satisfied on the most important point that this was a well-founded petition for judicial review with a genuine prospect of success.
The judge did not contradict this and the respondent (the UK government) did not contest this.
This is absolutely crucial. I am sure that the judicial review will proceed if the two points of standing and jurisdiction go our way.
Still more crucial, the UK government appeared almost to concede on standing, in the light of an affidavit from Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, to the effect that I was involved in Palestine Action almost from the start.
The judge told my KC, Joanna Cherry, that she did not need to address him on standing. This appears to a certainty to mean he does accept my standing.
On jurisdiction, the UK government did not claim that the Scottish courts do not have jurisdiction. They also did not claim that the Scottish courts may not hear a matter being heard concurrently in England.
They instead fell back on two arguments. The first was the timing, convenience and cost (sic) of a Scottish judicial review. The judge appeared to give this short shrift.
The second argument - and it was the UK government's main point - was "comity". This was defined as "good neighbourliness between jurisdictions", "politeness", "courtesy" and even as mutual respect between labourers in neighbouring vineyards (honestly). The need to avoid "contradictory judgments" within the UK was advanced. All these were quotes from English judgments.
Joanna Cherry KC punctured this with one phrase: "that rather assumes the English court will get it right".
She also directly quoted in full my own assertion from my own affidavit:
22. I am a Scot. I live in Scotland. Scotland is where I wish to publish my views in support of Palestine Action. Scotland is where my established Article X and XI human rights are being infringed.
23. I wish to seek the protection of the courts in my own jurisdiction against executive infringement of my rights within this jurisdiction.
24. As I understand it, the Scottish courts are not subservient or junior to the courts of England and Wales. Their opinion is equally valid and - crucially - the courts of Scotland have the absolute right to take a different view, even in a very similar or identical matter, to the court of England and Wales.
25. The disproportionate effect of the proscription of Palestine Action on individuals in Scotland has been appalling. Scores of peaceful people of entirely good character have been arrested on absurd pretence of "terrorism".
https://www.facebook.com/reel/25520722000941647
There was a wonderful turnout of support on a cold, wet Monday morning at 9am. The court was packed. The judge promised to give a decision this week if possible, or very shortly thereafter.
As I said outside the courtroom, this was not about my standing or rights; it was about the abuse of the human rights to free speech and free assembly of everybody in Scotland. It was about those scores of decent people in Scotland being ludicrously treated as terrorists. It was about the lives of the hunger strikers. Above all it was about the right to act to stop genocide, and about the 100,000 or more Palestinians massacred by Israel.
The rigged judicial panel on the parallel case in England has still not delivered its ruling in their judicial review.
The jury is out on the Filton Six trial in Woolwich Crown Court, which includes the incident where a policewoman was unfortunately injured.
I have no doubt that what is happening is this: the Court of Appeal is awaiting that verdict and a massive media blitz of "Palestine Action Terrorists attacked policewoman with sledgehammer".
After that it will quickly be announced that the proscription of Palestine Action has been upheld.
On the Filton trial, I do urge you to read the astounding defence speech of Rajiv Menon KC on behalf of Charlotte Head.
Here is a little bit of it:
So that's what His Lordship said to you, and Ms Heer in her closing speech, on much the same theme, told you that the defendants who had given evidence had not raised any real challenge to the charge of criminal damage. I'm sorry, but it is not right to say that the defendants who gave evidence did not raise any challenge. They did raise a challenge. They maintained that they had a lawful excuse. That was their challenge. But what's happened is that His Lordship has withdrawn that defence as a matter of law, and that's the true position that we find ourselves in. Their challenge was lawful excuse and the court has withdrawn that as a lawful defence. So where does that leave you, the members of the jury?
You could be forgiven for thinking that His Lordship is in fact directing you, as a matter of law, to convict Charlotte, who I'll focus on for now, of criminal damage. But you'd be wrong to think that. His Lordship is not directing you to convict. In fact, not only is he not directing you to convict, but he's also absolutely forbidden from doing so as a matter of law. The law is crystal clear on this point. No judge in any criminal case is allowed to direct a jury to convict any defendant of any criminal charge, whatever the evidence might be. That is the law.
Please remember that fundamental principle at all times when you retire. Please don't misinterpret anything in His Lordship's directions or summing up (which will follow the defence speeches) as amounting to a legal direction to convict. That would be a terrible mistake to make. I repeat, His Lordship is absolutely not directing you to convict, because he's barred as a matter of law from doing so.
The jury has every right to be confused about this because it is confusing. You have every right to think that the distinction between withdrawing the only available defence to a criminal charge on the facts, and a direction to convict, is at best a distinction without a difference. You have every right to think that the two effectively amount to the same thing. But the fact of the matter is they are absolutely not the same thing. They are fundamentally different. Let me try and explain it.
If you look at the legal directions and the first section, headed Functions Of Judge And Jury, you'll see it's quite lengthy. I'm not going to go through it point by point, but I'd ask you to read it carefully when you retire. All the directions in this document are important, but I'd suggest that the directions on the function of judge and jury are particularly important in this case. The key point to summarise is that the facts, and the verdicts you return having considered the facts, are solely for you.
So nobody, not even His Lordship, can direct you as to what factual conclusions to reach. Nobody, not even His Lordship, can direct you to convict. It's as simple as that. That's the law. So, for the avoidance of any doubt about this, I am absolutely not asking you to disregard His Lordship's legal directions. On the contrary, I'm asking you to follow them, in particular this section on functions of judge and jury, and remind you that nobody, not even His Lordship, can dictate to you what factual conclusions to reach in this case, nor direct you to convict the defendants of any of the charges they face.
This is the one of the greatest legal speeches - including historical speeches - I have ever read. Its strength lies in its brazen defiance of the judge and brilliant footwork along the edge of contempt of court.
It is precisely what lawyers need to be doing to resist galloping authoritarianism and the complicity in it of the judiciary. I shall return to the question of what was withheld from the Woolwich jury about Elbit, just as soon as the verdict is in and I may do so without imprisonment.
I am afraid to say I still have to ask for donations. If we get a judicial review of the proscription in Scotland we are going to need to put in a huge fundraising effort for the actual review. If we lose the decision, I am liable to have the UK government's costs awarded against me. Either way, this is about to get very expensive - which is of course precisely what the authorities rely on to crush opposition.
If we can spread the burden across enough small contributions, we can do it.
I am extremely grateful to approximately 670 people who have already contributed. Every penny helps, but please do not cause yourself hardship.
You can donate through the link via Crowd Justice, which goes straight to the lawyers, or through this blog.
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The post A Step Towards Sanity appeared first on Craig Murray.
In the Western world today, fighting for freedom feels Quixotic, but I shall nevertheless wake early tomorrow to be at the Court of Session in Edinburgh by 9am to fight the proscription in Scotland of Palestine Action.
I remain extremely concerned for the lives of the Palestine Action hunger strikers. As I predicted, Starmer's government sees their potential deaths as an opportunity to burnish their populist, right-wing and Zionist credentials.
Tomorrow morning's hearing is limited by the judge to two points of UK government objection: that I have no standing to bring the case as I am not a member of Palestine Action, and that the Scottish courts should not hear an issue that is already being decided in the courts of England and Wales.
On standing, I give evidence by affidavit that there is no "Membership". Palestine Action never had a membership structure. But I collaborated with and assisted the co-founders, Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard, almost from the start of the organisation. I spoke together with them on public platforms to urge support for Palestine Action (while it was legal), participated in a Palestine Action protest at an Elbit factory and provided advice and support.
Huda Ammori has submitted an affidavit which concludes thus:
12. Not only was Craig Murray actively supporting Palestine Action online, sharing
actions, and raising awareness of Palestine Action's aims and strategy, he also
had joined the mass action himself against Elbit Systems' UAV Tactical Systems
factory.
13. I also consider him a close friend and a confidant, who I would regularly speak
to about the challenges myself and others personally faced due to state
repression of Palestine Action. For the above reasons, I believe it is clear that
Craig Murray was both involved and an active supporter of Palestine Action and
is therefore extremely well placed to legally challenge the proscription of
Palestine Action.
I believe it would be an extremely illiberal interpretation of standing to throw out the case on the grounds I have no standing.
There is a Kafkaesque twist to this court case that shows the outrageous effects of the proscription. I wished to demonstrate the chilling effect on journalism, and limiting effect on freedom of speech, by illustrating the things I should like to write now on Palestine Action that the proscription makes it illegal to write.
My lawyers strongly advised me not to do this as it would lead to arrest and terrorism charges. Evidence in court is not privileged speech.
So I cannot tell the court what it is that the attack on my freedom of speech prevents me from saying. I thus cannot illustrate the absurd disproportionality of the restriction.
That is an example of the extraordinary black hole, sucking in freedoms, down which this proscription of a non-violent group has led us.
To move on to the second part of the argument, this is what my affidavit says on the jurisdiction of the Scottish courts:
21. But if particular status is needed I have it. I have participated in Palestine Action protests and have demonstrably supported them. I am a colleague and collaborator of Palestine Action's founders. I am a journalist whose freedom of expression is being curtailed disproportionately. I have a demonstrable long-term particular interest in Palestine and in Article X and XI freedoms.
22. I am a Scot. I live in Scotland. Scotland is where I wish to publish my views in support of Palestine Action. Scotland is where my established Article X and XI human rights are being infringed.
23. I wish to seek the protection of the courts in my own jurisdiction against executive infringement of my rights within this jurisdiction.
24. As I understand it, the Scottish courts are not subservient or junior to the courts of England and Wales. Their opinion is equally valid and - crucially - the courts of Scotland have the absolute right to take a different view, even in a very similar or identical matter, to the court of England and Wales.
25. The disproportionate effect of the proscription of Palestine Action on individuals in Scotland has been appalling. Scores of peaceful people of entirely good character have been arrested on absurd pretence of "terrorism".
26. Terrorism related charges are life changing. They do not only bring potential imprisonment. They bring loss of employment, debanking and loss of access to money, and severe international travel restriction….
40. In the Scottish legal tradition sovereignty rests with the people, not with the Crown in parliament.
41. In the English legal and constitutional tradition, parliament may do anything, be it ever so authoritarian. Parliament could legislate to repeal the Human Rights Act or cancel elections, and English courts would likely uphold that if properly passed through parliament and approved by the Crown.
42. I believe that the Scottish tradition of legal thought and practice should and does provide greater protection for the people from arbitrary and oppressive government, as expressed in the still in force Claim of Right. That is why I believe it is important for a Scottish court to hear this judicial review in Scotland for the protection of the people of Scotland from what I see as an arbitrary, oppressive, politically motivated and intellectually absurd executive action
We have been allocated Court No 1 in the Court of Session. This has a large public gallery, and I hope those able to do so will turn up for the hearing. It starts at 9.30am on Monday morning and we are asking people to rally outside from 9am. I realise that 9am on a Monday morning in a stormy Edinburgh January is not an attractive prospect, but I do believe it is important to show the judge that people really do care about these issues.
If we win, then there will be a full judicial review looking at the wider questions of genocide prevention and the right to take direct action, and the disproportionate effect of the proscription on freedom of speech and assembly.
For those who cannot be here in person the hearing will be livestreamed from 9.30am on Monday morning.
I am sorry to say this but we do need to still ask for donations to continue this forward. It is a very expensive thing to do. One thing the government relies on is that it has unlimited resources and we do not. If we can spread the burden across enough small contributions, we can do it.
I am extremely grateful to approximately 670 people who have already contributed. Every penny helps, but please do not cause yourself hardship.
You can donate through the link via Crowd Justice, which goes straight to the lawyers, or through this blog.
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/scottish-challenge-to-proscription/
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The post Court of Session Tomorrow on Palestine Action appeared first on Craig Murray.
The mainstream media covered Venezuela non-stop yesterday. They many times mentioned Delcy Rodríguez, Vice President, because Trump stated she is now in charge. They never mentioned that 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the torture to death of her father, socialist activist Jorge Rodríguez, by the CIA-backed security services of the US-aligned Pérez regime in Venezuela.
That would of course spoil the evil communists versus nice democrats narrative that is being forced down everybody's throats.
Nor did they mention that the elected governments of Hugo Chávez reduced extreme poverty by over 70%, reduced poverty by 50%, halved unemployment, quadrupled the number receiving a state pension and achieved 100% literacy. Chávez took Venezuela from the most unequal society for wealth distribution in Latin America to the most equal.
Nor have they mentioned that María Corina Machado is from one of Venezuela's wealthiest families, which dominated the electricity and steel industries before nationalisation, and that her backers are the very families that were behind those CIA-controlled murderous regimes.
Economic sanctions imposed by the West - and another thing they have not mentioned is that the UK has confiscated over £2 billion of the Venezuelan government's assets - have made it difficult for the Maduro government to do much more than shore up the gains of the Chávez years.
But that Venezuela is a major production or trafficking point for narcotics entering the USA is simply a nonsense. Nicolás Maduro has his faults, but he is not a drug trafficking kingpin. The claim is utter garbage.
The willingness of the West to accept the opposition's dodgy vote tallies from the 2024 Presidential elections does not legitimise invasion and kidnap.
Yesterday almost every Western government came up with a statement that managed to endorse Trump's bombing and kidnap - plainly grossly illegal in international law - and simultaneously claim to support international law. The hypocrisy is truly off the scale. It is also precisely the Western powers that support the genocide in Gaza that support the attack on Venezuela.
The genocide in Gaza demonstrated the end of hopes - which were extremely important to my own worldview - for the rule of international law to outweigh the brutal use of force in international relations. The kidnap of Maduro, the rush of Western powers to accept it, and the inability of the rest of the world to do anything about it, have underlined that international law is simply dead.
In the long list of appalling awards of the Nobel peace prize, none can be worse than the latest to the Venezuelan traitor María Corina Machado, intended actively to promote and bring forward the imperialist attack on Venezuela by the United States.
It takes a great deal of effort to come up with a worse decision than to award Kissinger immediately after the massive bombing of Laos and Cambodia. It was a dreadful award, but it was intended to recognise the putative Paris peace deal and prod the United States towards honouring the peace process. Initially it was a joint award with Vietnamese negotiator Lê Đức Thọ (who sensibly declined).
The Kissinger award was a terrible mistake, but the Committee were seeking to end a war, starting from a willingness to cooperate with unprincipled realpolitik. In the award to Machado, they are deliberately seeking to endorse and promote the start of a war. That is a very different thing.
Similarly the award to Obama was a crazed moment of hope after the despair of the invasion of Iraq. It was a combined mistaken belief that Obama would be better, with a mistaken idea it would encourage him to be so.
I accept that the line I am drawing is a thin one; rewarding the perpetrators of Western aggression is only a short step away from actually encouraging Western aggression. But nevertheless a line has been crossed.
The gross hypocrisy of the morally bankrupt Committee chairman, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, in claiming that the prize is for non-violent action on Venezuela, at the very moment that Trump gathered the largest invasion force since Iraq off Venezuela makes me feel thoughts towards Frydnes that ought not qualify me for any peace prize at all. I feel similarly towards Guterres and all those others abandoning their supposed international role to lick Trump's boot today.
So what now for Venezuela? Well, on the most optimistic reading Trump's action was performative. He had to do something to avoid the Grand Old Duke of York jibes after that immense concentration of forces off Venezuela, and he has produced a spectacular that actually changes little.
On this reading, the Americans may be making the same mistake they made in Iran, in believing that decapitation strategy and bombing will spark internal revolution. In Iran, they actually strengthened support for the Government.
As of yesterday afternoon, the Bolivarian government in Caracas genuinely did not yet know what had happened, how far there was collusion in the armed forces in Maduro's kidnap, and whether they still had the control of the army.
Trump's plain signal that the US views Rodríguez as in charge, and Trump's contemptuous dismissal of Machado - the only bright point in an appalling day - might give pause to any in Venezuela expecting active US support for a coup.
To those who claim Maduro was a tyrant, I refer you to the comic opera Guaidó coup of 30 April 2019. Guaidó had been declared President of Venezuela by the western powers despite never even having been a candidate. He attempted a coup and wandered around Caracas with heavily armed henchmen, declaring himself President but just being laughed at by the army, police and population.
In any country in the world Guaidó would have been jailed for life for attempting an armed coup, and I expect in the majority he would have been executed. Maduro just patted him on the head and put him back on a plane.
So much for the evil dictatorship.
By pure chance, on Friday I had texted Delcy Rodríguez about arrangements for travel and accreditation so I could go and report from Venezuela and bring you more of the truth from that country that the media is hiding from you. I made plain I was not asking for financial support. Things are obviously fluid at the moment, but it is still my intention to get there.
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The post Venezuela and Truth appeared first on Craig Murray.
Fighting the proscription of Palestine Action has become more urgent as eight brave activists enter the crucial period of their hunger strike.
12 January has finally been set for the court hearing on holding a Scottish judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action.
I am frankly terrified for the hunger strikers.
- Qesser Zuhrah
- Amu Gib
- Heba Muraisi
- Jon Cink
- Teuta Hoxha
- Kamran Ahmed
- Muhammad Umer Khalid
- Lewie Chiaramello (a diabetic so on modified hunger strike or he would die very rapidly).
The Starmer government is quite prepared to let them die: to emphasise devotion to Israel, to show their Zionist donors they are earning their money, and to reinforce the hardline macho image they believe appeals to Reform voters.
Indeed I have no doubt that Starmer, Mahmood, Lammy and Cooper hope for their deaths as a political positive; just as Thatcher thought she would win plaudits for facing down IRA hunger strikers.
It is important to state that none of the hunger striking prisoners has been convicted of anything - all are on remand - and none of them was in any way involved in the incident in which a policewoman was allegedly injured.
The coordinated response from government and other Zionist troll farms and stenographers is that none of the hunger strikers deserve sympathy as "a policewoman was hit by a sledgehammer".
It remains astonishing to me that this assertion is constantly and stridently made by the state and its myriad acolytes, despite the rules against prejudicing a jury trial. This stance ignores the detailed accounts of the trial itself which paint a far more complex picture.
As well as the real danger to the hunger strikers, there are thousands of entirely peaceful protestors facing terrorism charges simply for speech. These are life-changing, bringing not just jail sentences but loss of employment, debanking and travel restrictions.
All this while the genocide of Palestinians continues, with appalling conditions in Gaza, stringent restrictions on aid (which is still at less than half the required levels), and continued Israeli bombing - despite the "ceasefire".
The judicial review of Palestine Action in the High Court of England and Wales appears to have been "fixed". The last-minute change of judges - including the total removal of the original judge from the panel - and the conduct of the review, have left little room for optimism.
My own most striking impression from that judicial review is the difference in how the judges treated the counsel for Huda Ammori and the counsel for the UK government.
Counsel for Huda Ammori, Raza Husain KC, was treated with impatience and at times disdain. That is difficult to quantify, but one thing that could indeed be measured was this:
Every time Raza Husain KC referred the judges to a passage in a past judgment or other quoted authority, they quickly skated over it and moved on, frequently with a phrase like "Yes, we have seen it" or "We are familiar with that".
Every time James Eadie KC for the government referred the judges to a written authority, they ostentatiously physically found it in their bundle and took time to peruse it, on one occasion taking over a minute to demonstrate they were reading and absorbing at the government's direction, before Eadie moved on.
The contrast was stark. Not just once, but over and over.
My favourite moment in the English judicial review was when Raza Hussain quoted the Proscription Advisory Committee's recommendation to Yvette Cooper that Palestine Action should be proscribed because "Palestine Action kept hiring good lawyers" and defendants kept being acquitted as it was difficult to prove guilt to the criminal standard.
Yes, they really did say that. Palestine Action should be proscribed because it was being found by juries not to be criminal.
By proscribing Palestine Action, this makes it a criminal offence of strict liability to support it, whether or not you were doing anything that a jury would have found criminal before the proscription.
Raza Hussain KC described this as "Not the Proscription Advisory Committee's finest hour". I thought much more could have been made of it, but a feature of the English judicial review - and I think a mistake - is that there was no playing to the gallery of public opinion.
It was conducted as a legal conversation between the lawyers and the judges, often incomprehensible to the onlooker because it was based on documents to which the public do not have access. Yet there is an extremely concerned public looking on.
The demands of the hunger strikers largely refer to the appalling prison conditions in which they are kept, despite the fact that none of them have been convicted and none of them have previous convictions, or can reasonably be said to present a danger to the public, or be a particular flight risk.
- Immediate bail/release on bail for the remand prisoners (many held longer than standard limits).
- The right to a fair trial, including access to all relevant documents and an end to demonization or "terrorist connection" claims.
- An end to prison censorship/restrictions on communications (e.g., blocking letters, phone calls, and books).
- De-proscription (lifting the ban) on Palestine Action as a terrorist organization.
- Shutdown of Elbit Systems' UK sites (Israel's largest arms manufacturer, accused of supplying weapons used in Gaza).
On right to a fair trial, it is worth noting that there is huge evidence of outside influence on the prosecutions, and there are communications between the police and prosecutorial authorities on the one hand, and Elbit, the Israeli Embassy, and various Zionist groups on the other, which have either not been released to the defence, or have only been released in very redacted form.
In the day of the Filton trial which I attended, I found the parts the jury was not allowed to know (when they were sent out) particularly interesting. I cannot tell you more than that until the trial is over.
We can help lift the proscription of Palestine Action if we win the judicial review in Scotland. We have finally been given a court date of 12 January at 9:30am in Edinburgh.
This hearing is to decide whether there will be a judicial review. It will look at only two points.
Firstly, whether I as an individual have sufficient connection to Palestine Action, or have my rights particularly infringed by the proscription, in order to have standing in the case.
The UK Government is arguing that I have no connection to Palestine Action. (I wish they would tell their police that!!)
We will however also be relying on the Supreme Court judgment in Walton vs Scottish ministers, which states that it "is sufficient that the applicant has a genuine concern about the legality of the act or decision, and that the issues raised are of general public importance".
The second ground to be heard is whether there can be a separate judicial review in Scotland when there is already one in the High Court of England and Wales.
Our view is that the principle has already been established in the Joanna Cherry and Gina Miller cases, where judicial reviews in London and Edinburgh came to opposing decisions on the legality of Boris Johnson's prorogation of parliament.
I am resident in Scotland, where the High Court of England and Wales has no jurisdiction. If my rights are infringed I am entitled, even within the United Kingdom, to the protection of my own courts of my own nation in first instance.
Scots law is different. Its intellectual basis and maxims are different. There is a reason why lawyers legally qualified to plead in courts in England and Wales are not automatically qualified to appear in Scotland; and vice versa. The Court of Session is not inferior to the High Court.
We intend to submit substantive evidence of the oppression of numerous individuals in Scotland as a result of the proscription.
We will need the maximum public support inside and outside the court of session at Parliament House, Edinburgh on 12 January from 9am.
Unfortunately we will not be able to go ahead if we do not raise sufficient funds. The crowdfunder has got us into court, but needs to supercharge to get us further. Please do help:
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/scottish-challenge-to-proscription/
I know these are the most difficult of times. But that is why we have to keep fighting. The sums needed to mount a successful legal challenge to the power of the state can be eye-watering. But we are the many. Every penny helps, but please do not cause yourself hardship. You can contribute via the crowdfunder above or via these methods:
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The post Hunger Strikes and Court Cases appeared first on Craig Murray.
I did not anticipate that an open public meeting in Salisbury itself would be 95% sceptical of the official Novichok hoax - but it was.
Thanks to UK Column for putting this on. I hope you find it enlightening - there is information which goes beyond my previous articles on the subject. In about a week there will also be a film of our tour of the key sites in Salisbury.
The video settings prevent me from embedding it but you can watch it here.
https://youtu.be/3K9jUOYsga0?t=1464
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My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.
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The post The Skripal Novichok Hoax appeared first on Craig Murray.
It is probably no bad thing that health struggles have delayed my writing up Your Party's extraordinary Liverpool founding conference. Perspective is definitely helpful to process something unique.
Personally, I could not help but be struck by the number of participants who approached me as regular readers of my blog, certainly well into three figures. I did scores of selfies and even signed several booklets. The very large majority of these - and you may be among them - were very enthusiastic about the experience of the conference.
They loved the feeling of a new beginning, of taking the fight to Blue Labour and Reform, of openly espousing socialist principles and policies. They enjoyed the more heated debates over party structures as evidence of functioning and lively democracy. They were uplifted by the speeches of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, by Shockat Adam and Ayoub Khan, and by the guest speakers from European left parties.
I felt some of this myself. The speeches were indeed uplifting, and the heated arguments were the bit I enjoyed the most, where it felt that the opinion of members mattered.
But all of that was to ignore the undercurrent of extreme factional infighting that had dogged the formation of the party, and resulted in only 45,000 joining out of the 850,000 who had signed up to register their interest.
I am not going to rehearse the history of conflict and infuriating dispute between Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn that led up to the conference. But the continuation of this into the founding conference itself was a petulant betrayal of the good people who are working to put together a new Left party.
That Sultana and Corbyn could not find it in themselves to just stand side by side on the stage together, smile and wave for five minutes for the photographers is pathetic. The power play on the eve of conference to expel members of the Socialist Workers Party, Counterfire and other socialist groups, in such a way that many did not find out until they were in Liverpool, was extraordinary.
This is what happened. Broadly speaking the organisation of the party has been in the hands of factions broadly aligned to Jeremy Corbyn. The founding draft documents state that the Alliance MPs are the steering committee of the party. There has so far been no democratic input from members in control of the party.
While the conference was to adopt a constitution setting out a new Central Executive Committee and its election, there was no provision for any interim democratic input until that executive is elected - probably five months from Conference. A number of left wing groups were therefore planning to propose that the conference itself should elect a temporary steering committee, to run the party until the executive elections.
The last minute expulsions were a reaction against those who were believed to be leading the plan to elect a temporary committee from the conference. Other measures were also put into effect to stop it - for example it was imposed that no points of order could be made from the floor, that no motions or amendments could be expressed from the floor, and burly security men were brought in to impose this "order" on the hall.
Now I should make plain all of this bothers me. I did not know of any plan, but I would have voted that conference should elect an interim committee. I deeply dislike the way that decisions are being made with nobody knowing who makes them, and on what authority.
The prime example of this is the decision to expel people. Nobody seems able to say who made this decision, and on what authority. To be plain, it was not only members of the SWP affected. Three friends of mine have been expelled, for reasons I simply cannot fathom.
Similarly, it is impossible to know who selected what could be debated by conference. There were indeed heated debates - but the agenda was set and the wording decided by invisible and unnamed people, drawing on divided up "Assemblies" which were always designed to produce no clear democratic outcome.
So, for example, the proposal that MPs should receive a workers' wage and give the rest of their salary to the party was not chosen for debate, despite being the most popular in the online poll.
The leadership suffered a hefty defeat over dual party membership, with members voting strongly in favour. The one man one vote system of online voting for all members that was used, I strongly support. But the dual party membership debate is a precise example of the abuse of control of the agenda.
The two options were both drafted by the leadership which opposed dual party membership, and you were given two choices. The first choice was no dual party membership. The second choice was dual party membership, but only with a list of parties to be decided by the Central Executive Committee and agreed by Conference.
As there is no such list yet, and indeed no executive committee yet, all those expelled who come from the SWP and other organisations, remain expelled at least until Conference in Autumn 2026. This was against the strong sentiment of the Conference.
So I could not shake off the awareness of all this counter-productive machination and could not enjoy the conference. I find all this distasteful, and highly reminiscent of the worst behaviours of the Labour Party. I have to state I left Liverpool with a lower opinion of both Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana than I turned up with.
We had one informal and one more formal meeting of the Scottish delegates, and that was indeed more unified and more hopeful. There will be a Scottish Conference in Dundee in February 2026.
There are two central questions for the Scottish conference - will Your Party Scotland be fully autonomous, and will it support Scottish Independence? Just for me personally, those are fundamental questions governing my membership of this new entity. My feeling is they will be resolved in the positive. But they are not by any means the only questions for me.
I will I think be much happier if these issues of power and control get resolved and we finally get to talk about policy. I was never likely to enjoy a conference where sessions are called "constitution" and "standing orders".
The problems of the party are self-reinforcing. The failure of the mass membership to materialise means that small groups of already dedicated political activists on the left have disproportionate influence within the party at present. I see and understand the problem the leadership is trying to counter - but you can't suppress democracy because you don't like the membership.
It is absolutely essential that a party arises to the left of Labour - there is a huge space there - and opposes both neoliberal economics and Imperialist foreign policy, while openly countering racism. I therefore really want Your Party to succeed. I also want it to support the dismantlement of the irredeemably imperialist UK state.
I think there is still hope Your Party will fulfil these roles. I shall continue to work for that. There are a great many good people in Your Party. In a time of dizzying change and fragmentation in British politics, we have to do what seems right at this moment.
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The post Your Party, and Its Conference appeared first on Craig Murray.
"The policewoman attacked by a sledgehammer" has been the constant refrain of the government against Palestine Action. A couple of days before the judicial review of the proscription in England, and despite fierce reporting restrictions on the trial, the prosecution released to the media highly edited video footage from the current trial in Woolwich Crown Court of six activists accused of the attack inside Elbit Systems' Filton factory on August 6 2024.
While that video has fuelled tens of thousands of Zionist troll posts on social media, the remarkable thing is that it is almost impossible to establish what it shows.
In fact, had it been put out without the prosecution narrative, nobody would have discerned that is what they were looking at. It shows chaotic fast-moving footage from bodycams.
The first sledgehammer seen is plainly in the hands of a security guard - as testimony in the trial, ignored by the MSM, has explained.
Here are some key facts:
- Every single prosecution witness who gave evidence about the melee was obliged to change their statement when confronted by the defence with video evidence which contradicted it. This included much more video than was released by the prosecution.
- The prosecution produced a misleading account of the number and location of CCTV cameras in the factory. They were obliged to present a new map showing more cameras.
- The video evidence was left in or given into the hands of Elbit. A search of Elbit's premises in November 2025 found the USB sticks of video in their Metropolitan Police evidence bags in Elbit's safe.
The last fact is simply astonishing. The evidence collected and apparently correctly bagged by the police had simply been handed over to Elbit, apparently for over a year. This is only a part of a much wider collusion between Elbit and the UK state, including the police.
One of the key demands of the Palestine Action hunger strikers in other cases - of whom I will write further shortly - is the full release of correspondence between Elbit and UK authorities including the counter-terrorism police, which has been partially released and in very heavily redacted format.
Judge Johnson has directed the jury that the events in the Filton trial predated the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist action and they must not allow that subsequent development to influence them in any way.
There are six defendants in the current Woolwich trial, allegedly members of the "overt group" or "red group" who entered inside the facility to do damage, while a second "black" or "covert group" allegedly carried out a noisy distractive action.
Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin are charged with aggravated burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder.
In addition Samuel Corner is charged with grievous bodily harm with intent, an offence potentially resulting in life imprisonment.
I must at this stage congratulate Real Media, who have been doing a wonderful job of reporting the key events in the trial. As is to be expected, the mainstream media has published nothing except what has been served up to them on behalf of the prosecution and the state.
I am going to publish some key extracts that give you an idea of what has been going on:
Extract from the cross examination of Elbit security guard Mr Shaw:
After a break for lunch, it was time for Mr. Shaw to be cross-examined by defence barristers, beginning with Mr. Menon, who first asked him whether he knew at the time of the incident that "Elbit Systems is Israel's largest weapons manufacturer". The prosecution immediately objected, and Judge Johnson told Menon that if he wanted to ask questions like this they would need to have a discussion about it later. Mr. Menon requested an answer from Mr. Shaw, but the judge insisted he move on. The context appeared to be that Menon went on to ask whether the guard was aware of Palestine Action's protests and actions against the company, and whether he'd been given specific training in relation to protest. Shaw said he'd received verbal instruction to call police and to intervene if it was safe to do so.
Menon then went on to the first interaction, after the van had been seen and heard hitting the shutters. There was then a very confused exchange in which Shaw was adamant he had had a struggle with an Arabic-looking man wielding an axe, prior to the point at which he is seen in footage running at someone and hitting them several times with an umbrella and bringing them to the ground. His recollection didn't seem to be backed up by evidence, and Menon reminded him he'd told the jury earlier about a man with an axe, but he maintained that in his mind that was a separate incident before what we saw on video. He was asked whether any injuries he received had occurred inside the factory, and he affirmed they had all happened before he went in, that is, he didn't receive any contact from anyone in the 'red team'.
Barrister Mr Wainwright, acting for Samuel Corner, picked up on the answers just given. In Shaw's witness statement (given later in the day after the event) he had referred to just one incident outside the building, but now seemed confused as to whether there were two. He agreed there didn't seem to be any evidence of two incidents.
Moving on, once he was in the building, we'd seen Shaw running towards people wielding his umbrella. His evidence had suggested he was threatened and attacked - he also said the group had tried to get him to open a door to give them access to offices. On reviewing the footage and under cross-examination he conceded they were telling him to leave, to 'fuck off', and not to give them access. He was also shown footage of Samuel Corner leading the way and showing him how he could go out via the shutter - a female, thought to be Kamio, also asks him if he's OK and tells him he needs to go because he is bleeding. Mr. Shaw concedes what is being evidenced, and also that he then followed Mr Corner who had begun smashing a toilet area, and tried to trap him in there by holding the door for a while before deciding to go outside. Shaw agreed that no-one in the building had struck him.
Extract from cross-examination of security guard Mr Volante
In evidence yesterday, Volante had claimed that Kamio approached him with an angle grinder. He was shown footage in which she actually appeared to be holding a sledgehammer, while it was Volante himself who appeared to hold an angle grinder in one hand and a small hammer in the other, and was swinging them. Ms Hammad accused Volante of being very angry, causing one of the activists, Mr. Devlin, to tell him to 'calm down'. The guard said he was 'animated' rather than angry, wasn't using the tools as weapons, and was attempting to disarm the intruders. It can be seen that that Mr. Devlin is actually unarmed. Kamio is seen moving around with a sledgehammer, and then using it to smash up some computer equipment. Volante agrees that at no point is she seen with an angle grinder, let alone threatening him with it.
Barrister for Zoe Rogers, Ms Mogan shows footage of Volante in the corridor with a whip in his hand screaming at Ms Rogers and others that they were "being recorded". Mogan reminded him that he was aware of previous Palestine Action protests aimed at damaging Elbit equipment, and that yesterday he had said he had grabbed a sledgehammer off Mr Devlin. Playing footage, it seemed to show him actually seizing the sledgehammer off Zoe, and she gets flung towards a wall. It also looks like he is then holding the sledgehammer with its head out in front of him, and Zoe picks up another sledgehammer from the floor, struggling with its weight and turning through 360 degrees as he approaches her with his hammer in front of him.
Yesterday Volante told the court that her hammer made contact with him, but now he accepts that that wasn't in his statement to the police, and that it may not have done. Ms Mogan suggested he had swung his sledgehammer at Zoe, showing some more footage, in which the shadow of the hammer appeared as though raised, and Zoe covering her face in response. He had already accepted that he had kicked Mr Devlin, and he now acceded that Zoe might have "thought" that the hammer would hit her, but maintained he hadn't swung it at her. Volante also agreed that, although his BWV was no longer recording at that time, it was "possible" that Ms Rogers ended up on the ground.
Mr Morris, barrister for Jordan Devlin, then asked Mr Volante to acknowledge that police officers had shown him unedited footage from his own BWV a few days before trial, and asked whether he noticed anything additional to what he'd described in his original statement at the time, especially that when he entered the building he clearly had one of the whips in his hand. Volante said he hadn't noticed that. Mr. Morris suggested that Volante had run down the corridor with whip in hand, screaming at Mr. Devlin who was unarmed, and inquired whether Volante had used any de-escalation training, rather than engaging in force on first contact with Devlin and Rogers. Morris asked whether he was registered with the Security Industries Association (SIA) and whether their training included hitting someone in the face with the handle of a sledgehammer. Volante said that any such contact was unintentional and that that was why he also hadn't mentioned it in his police statement.
Mr. Morris showed the court a screenshot from footage, that appeared to show contact described, and then handed out several photos of injuries that Mr. Devlin had sustained. One shows a round red mark that Mr. Morris suggests is the shape of a sledgehammer head. Volante is also asked about any conversation they had in the struggle, and whether when they were face-to-face, he had tried to bite Mr. Devlin on the neck. He said Mr. Devlin had likened the struggle to Star Wars and that he was a rebel or Jedi to Mr. Volante's empire, but that no bite had occurred.
After the struggle in the alcove, the next time Devlin and Volante engaged was when the police had arrived. Volante denies he hit Devlin in the face with the edge of the hammer, but admits he then put him in a choke hold, which under further questioning he reveals he learnt from martial arts training which he'd done when younger, reaching a blue belt in JuJitsu but only a white belt in TaeKwondo. Volante described the manoeuvre as a 'rear naked choke hold', which could be dangerous if not administered properly. He is shown a further photograph of marks to Devlin's neck, but says he hadn't caused those. A police BWV video sequence is shown where Mr. Devlin attempts to stand up, and Volante uses the handle of the sledgehammer against his neck to force him back down. A disagreement ensues, in which Volante claims he was defending himself and trying to prevent Devlin from grabbing the sledgehammer, while Morris argues that Devlin poses no threat at the time and Volante was performing an aggressive and dangerous act. Another photo showed Devlin's bruised face and black eye, corresponding to the side of his face that Volante was accused of hitting. Volante admits that he struck him and that he fell back.
Footage shows Devlin telling the police Volante had assaulted him and pointing at his face. Mr. Morris also notes to the court, that although referred to throughout as Scottish, Mr. Devlin's accent is actually Northern Irish.
Now we have extracts from the cross-examination of a third security guard. Mr Luke:
After a short break, Mr Menon cross-examines Mr. Luke and takes him through the footage once more. He agrees that the first woman is holding a whip and he seizes it off her - and although he claims she used it against him there doesn't appear to be video of that. While he's grappling with the woman who originally held a sledgehammer, the other woman hands her hammer to the male and runs off somewhere. After a bit more confusion, Mr. Luke agrees that the next time he sees the two women, it is after what Menon describes as Mr. Volante's 'Incredible Hulk' moment, and that they remain on the ground compliant until they are arrested by police.
Samuel Corner's barrister, Mr. Wainright, then speaks to Mr. Luke pointing out that several of his assertions have turned out to be wrong. He was wrong about the sequence of events, he was wrong that a female passed a sledgehammer to a male who tried to use it against him. In his police statement Mr. Luke said he disarmed two women of a sledgehammer and an angle grinder, but later accepted this was wrong too. Mr. Wainwright took Luke through footage once more and showed that he had mixed which of the two males had the sledgehammer, which direction they had come from, and indeed whether anyone had actually tried to hit him.
Ms Hammad (for Leona Kamio) tried to clear up confusion of the order of events, and particularly at what point Mr. Luke had actually switched his camera on. He had said he started recording after hitting the panic button in the control room, but Ms Hammad showed footage that appeared to show him entering the warehouse from the loading bay area before that. She suggested that he had had some sort of tussle with one of the females at that point (before switching on his BWV) and then he went to the control room. Mr. Luke was adamant this was not the case. Ms Hammad finished her questioning by asking him whether he had been hit by the woman with the sledgehammer - he said he thought it had grazed him, but accepted it hadn't hit him. Ms Hammad suggested he had merely grabbed it.
Next, Ms Oborne asked some questions about the allegation that Fatema Rajwani had a bag of fireworks and was intending to throw one at him. Taking him through his BWV footage once more, he acceded there didn't appear to be any bag, or possibly any fireworks, and that in fact Ms Rajwani had taken a simple flare out of her pocket.
Now we have an extract from the evidence of a policeman, PC Buxton, under cross-examination:
The barrister reminds Buxton that when he entered the building there was loud noise and a horrible smell, and then shows the officer some video of the confrontation between the security guard and the intruder. The guard (Volante) is seen pushing the handle of the sledgehammer against the brown-haired male's neck, and Buxton is asked if he remembered seeing that - he said he didn't remember it. Wainright (who acts for Mr. Corner, the blonde man) shows footage showing Corner swing his hammer in order to hit the hammer held by the guard, and Buxton accedes that is what it looks like.
Next, Buxton is seen in the footage using his spray, and he agrees that Corner is not wearing any eye protection at that moment. Wainright asks him about the struggle with the brown-haired male on the floor, and about the moment that Corner returns. Buxton had given a video statement a couple of days after the incident, in which he describes Corner swinging the sledgehammer, and saying that although he wasn't absolutely sure if it had hit him, he thought it probably had, because he remembered feeling pain, and because a bruise appeared a few days later. Mr. Wainright remarks that the officer also hadn't mentioned damage to the radio in any earlier evidence, and Buxton agreed that it could have been away from his body on the floor somewhere.
Mr. Wainright also asked the jury to note that in Buxton's evidence he said "I remember a horrible scream" which referred to the point at which one of the women was tazered.
Mr. Morris (acting for brown-haired Jordan Devlin) then takes over cross-examination, and asks Buxton to look once more at the footage, this time slowed down. When the video first shows the three people in red, Mr. Morris asks the officer whether he had noticed the security guard on his right holding a sledgehammer. He replies that he can't remember. He was also asked when he'd first seen the footage and whether it was before writing his first statement. After challenging Mr. Morris as to whether it was a strike or whether it was a push that the guard administered with the sledgehammer on Devlin's neck, Buxton does agree that his statement claimed the sledgehammer was in Devlin's hands, but now realises that it was the guard who was actually holding it. The barrister asked the officer whether he knew why the guard had a sledgehammer, and he answered that he didn't.
Now, it is not in dispute that the Palestine Action team entered the factory with sledgehammers and other equipment, intending to damage machinery and weapons in order to disrupt Israeli arms supply. It is also not in dispute that a policewoman, Sergeant Evans, was injured. But how she got injured, how the melee developed and who hit who is a key question.
What is evident from these exchanges is that the security guards and police are unreliable witnesses.
It is not merely that their evidence differs from what is shown by the video cameras.
It is that, consistently, their sworn evidence is untrue in a way that always makes the Palestine Action activists more aggressive, and themselves more passive, than in fact was the case.
Whether this is malicious, or merely the natural tendency of the human brain in a chaotic and scary situation to see things in the way it wishes, is not immediately evident. The answer to that will become plain when the defendants give evidence, and we start to see whether they too gave accounts inconsistent with the video evidence.
There is also the question of major gaps in video recordings and of the cameras in the "alcove" where much of the action took place apparently producing no footage, as so often happens when convenient to the authorities.
The cross-examination about the police handling of the video evidence is also highly revealing, here with PC Grant:
Menon asked her to confirm that Elbit had sole control of the footage and the system for two days - she agreed, but said the recordings on the system would have been the same and there was no evidence they had edited anything. She confirmed that she had not asked Elbit about the footage from cameras 22-25 until "much later" and that they were "quite shocked when I pointed it out".
The name of her contact at Elbit Systems has been withheld from the defence barristers and he is known as Witness A. Grant was asked about her contact with him and referred her to email correspondence between them. On 11th Aug she'd sent an email headed 'CCTV update Saturday' stating that the police hadn't checked the frame rate of all the cameras, just dipping in to get an interview, but she was concerned that " There's a huge opportunity for the defence counsel to use the gaps and jumps to their advantage".
It is hard to imagine a plainer admission that a serving British police officer saw her primary duty as helping Israel's largest arms manufacturer to secure convictions, rather than establishing the truth.
Menon asked why on earth the police were chatting with Israel's largest arms manufacturer about what the defence counsel might do. She replied it was just her experience there was potential for that and that the system was so bad she was concerned about possible future incidents.
One of the other defence barristers picked up the baton, asking about the supposed independence of the police, and about the integrity of independent investigation and storage of exhibits. They referred to a police search of a safe at Filton carried out on 22nd November just before the trial, which found a number of USB sticks in Metropolitan Police evidence bags. Ms Grant said she was not aware of that. But one of the bags had written on it "provided to Elbit Systems by PC Grant." The officer said the only stuff they'd given back was the material offloaded to create space. She said she couldn't recall the labelling of the bag, that it wasn't normal practice and couldn't understand it at all.
….Mr Wainwright asked PC Grant whether she'd been made aware that the security guard Mr. Volante had run into the factory towards one of the defendants with a whip in his hand, and there was another incident in which a security guard used a sledgehammer. He asked her whether she'd searched for footage of that. She said she'd been told about it when she was there, but didn't look for it specifically as she had downloaded everything that happened in that hour and a half between 3 and 4.30am. She couldn't remember seeing a security guard with a whip.
Mr. Wainwright showed an image of the view from C24, asking if she'd looked at that footage and whether she'd seen Volante running with a whip in his hand and screaming. Ms Grant said that if the camera had been operating properly regarding the frame rate, she'd have seen it, but had made no notes of frame rates etc. Asked about C28, and the security guard running into the alcove, she was asked whether she'd seen that or made any notes on it. She said she couldn't remember. Effectively it wasn't her job, and she handed all the footage over to her Sergeant, Ken Crawley.
And this from the cross-examination of Detective Constable Hammersley from the Counter Terrorism Police:
Mr. Morris noted that Hammersley had made several statements over the past year, but only the latest, served during this trial, mentioned that he was a 'viewing manager'. He said that he hadn't thought it relevant. Mr. Morris then showed the unedited clip of Mr. Volante running in with the whip in his hand and asked Hammersley why he hadn't put this in the compilation. The response was that the technician Sarah Bentley had a degree of autonomy in what went in. Asked whether the edit was deliberate Mr. Hammersley said no.
After a busy week of traveling I had intended to attend the start of the defence case on Wednesday, but the trial was suspended due to a juror suffering a bereavement. I therefore only managed to attend the trial in person on Thursday morning, with the evidence of the first defendant, Charlotte Head.
Again, Real Media have done a superb job of covering Charlotte's testimony. I would add only a few atmospherics.
This was my first time back in Woolwich Crown Court, attached to Belmarsh jail, since it hosted the first week of Julian Assange's extradition proceedings six years ago.
The area is still as bleak, the weather still cold, wet and windy, and the court as unremittingly gulag worthy, as six years ago.
I was slightly worried on arrival that I did not have a passport on me, but as in proceedings at the High Court it was not required for entry. When I had attended the Assange hearings here they had insisted on passports and entered everyone's details. They had also attempted to confiscate notebooks and pens in the public gallery. This Filton trial however was much more normal.
The courtroom is a mirror image of that used for the Assange case. The six accused were seated in a glass box at the back, spaced out evenly perhaps two metres apart from each other. The public gallery is raised at a mezzanine level, running down the left-hand side of the court, but completely sealed off with security glass. The courtroom sound is piped in to the public gallery through loudspeakers.
We could not see the jury, who are directly below the public gallery. Judge James Johnson, in his long wig and scarlet gown, presided from a dais. There was plainly great tension between the judge and the various defence counsel (each defendant having a team). I have never seen a judge spoken to with such obvious intonation of disrespect. Johnson's face repeatedly flushed as crimson as his robe.
Some of the highest drama in this trial consists in the discussions on admissibility of evidence when the jury is sent out. This was again the case on Thursday when I was there. Unfortunately reporting restrictions prevent me from telling you what this is about, until the trial is over, when I shall have much to say.
Charlotte Head was plainly extremely nervous. Before moving from the glass case to the witness box, she vigorously shook out her arms and particularly her hands to relieve the tension, and did so as though unaware she could be observed. At several points she was visibly struggling to collect herself.
She did however come over as intelligent, competent and concerned. How far the jury can connect with people coming from an activist background and sensibility will be a key factor in the outcome.
The key point of Head's very full evidence is that absolutely at no point was violence against people planned or envisaged. As at similar actions the expectation was that the security guards would not physically intervene and that they would have 20 minutes or so to cause property damage before the police arrived.
In the event it had all instead escalated extremely quickly.
This trial is a real ordeal for the female prisoners. Their journey in the extremely uncomfortable prison van from Bronzefield Prison takes between three and five hours each way, every day. On a typical day they are awoken at 5:30am and do not get back into their individual cells until 10:30pm, with only the limited lunch at Woolwich Crown Court as hot food; this five days a week.
It is also important to highlight the injuries Jordan Devlin suffered from the security guards. This from Charlotte Head:
Andrew Morris (representing Jordan Devlin) asks Ms Head to look at the photograph of Devlin's right arm, and asks her whether when she attended court on 13th August had she seen his injury. She said he had a pure black bruise all over one side, "like nothing she'd seen before", over mostly his ribs and underarm. He also had a bad black eye. Shown another picture of his face, she confirmed that's what it looked like, but said she was so shocked about the body bruising that she hardly remembered the eye.
These are noted in this description of the agreed facts of the case between prosecution and defence:
Mr Devlin's numerous injuries were recorded and on the following evening the custody officer authorised his escorted transfer to hospital, noting that large bruises were forming which Devlin said were caused by a sledgehammer.
The defendants were moved to Hammersmith Police Station the next day, and a list of Devlin's injuries were recorded there, which included hight shoulder tricep area was swollen, injuries to both wrists and his right cheek, a bump on his head, black right eye, bruised shins, thighs, and left arm, a bruised right elbow, and his left pectoral.
You will recall the police did not think Mr Devlin's injuries worth noting in their statements. In addition to which one female activist, Leona Kamio, was twice tasered, the second time "by accident" while prone and restrained.
Remember this is a case in which the prosecution narrative has been put forward as fact by both the Home Secretary and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Where there has been so much said by senior figures to the defendants' detriment, the running sore of the matters to be kept from the jury become still more problematic.
It is also simply remarkable that the prosecution's highly selective and edited video evidence has been put into the public domain and has notably affected the public narrative, but that the defence video evidence may not be made public.
But then I gave up on expecting justice from the system long ago. Happily juries often represent the last defence of a true spirit of fairness.
The trial continues. Do follow on Real Media - the state and corporate media will never give you the truth of it.
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My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.
Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.
Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.
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The post The Filton Trial appeared first on Craig Murray.
I am confident that over 2 million people in the UK have shared thoughts on the Genocide in Gaza that are stronger than anything Natalie Strecker has expressed.
I am quite certain that I am one of those 2 million.
Yet Natalie Strecker, an avowed pacifist, today faces up to ten years in prison under the Terrorism Act when the verdict in her case comes in.
Strecker is charged with eliciting support for Hamas and Hezbollah, based on 8 tweets, cherry-picked by police and prosecutors from an astounding 51,000 tweets she sent, mainly from the Jersey Palestine Solidarity Committee account.
The tweets were rather rattled off in court and referred to occasionally again in whole and in part. There may be minor inaccuracies not affecting sense, but this is the best reconstruction of those tweets that I can make (they were not displayed to the public):
"People will be individually resisting: otherwise we would be asking them to submit to genocide on their knees"
"Solidarity with the people of Lebanon and Hezbollah has the right to resist in international law, I remind you the occupier does not, and are legally obligated to try to prevent Genocide."
"Solidarity with the resistance. In the same way that the resistance fought the Nazis in Europe, we must support the fight against the Nazis of our generation".
"Resistance is their legal right under moral and international law. If you don't want resistance, then don't create the circumstances which require it. Solidarity with the Resistance."
"This nonsense our nation has descended into, where one side is committing genocide, and the other is proscribed for fighting it. I believe Hezbollah may be Palestine's last hope".
"Hamas the resistance did not break out of their concentration camp to attack Jews as Jews. We can debate whether armed resistance is legitimate. Of course there should be no attacks on civilians."
"I am sick of the MSM propaganda about "Hamas-run health ministry figures". Hamas is the government in Gaza. Every health ministry in the world is run by its government."
"Are you awake? So it is down to ordinary people like you an me to end it. We must take our power back. Join me in solidarity with the people of Lebanon and Palestine. Solidarity with the Resistance."
That is it. The prosecution case is that these tweets, both collectively and individually, amount to an invitation of support for Hamas and Hezbollah resulting in up to ten years in jail in Jersey, or 14 years in jail on the UK mainland.
The prosecution explicitly stated, and the judge notably intervened to make sure that everybody understood, that it is the offence of supporting terrorism to state that the Palestinians have the right to armed resistance in international law.
Judge John Saunders interrupted the prosecution to ask whether they were saying that he would be guilty of support for terrorism if, in a lecture, he told an international law class that Palestinians have the right to armed resistance in international law.
After some kerfuffle when faced with such an awkward question, the prosecution replied that yes, it could be the offence to tell law students that.
I should point out, at risk of dying in jail, that the Palestinians are beyond doubt an occupied people in international law, and equally beyond doubt an occupied people have the right of armed resistance.
To state that the Palestinians have the right of armed resistance in international law is not in the least controversial as a statement of law. A few Zionist nutters would try to differ, but 95% of international lawyers on this planet would agree.
I assume by perfectly logical extension that this means the prosecution must believe it is a terrorist crime in UK law, for example, to quote UN General Assembly Resolution 37/43, which:
2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle;
3. Reaffirms the inalienable right of the Namibian people, the Palestinian people and all peoples under foreign and colonial domination to self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without outside interference;
It is also worth stating that on Friday the prosecution stated, in these precise words, that "Resistance is synonymous with Hamas and Hezbollah" and that any support for, or justification of, Palestinian resistance is support for a proscribed organisation.
To repeat, there are millions of people in the UK who have stated stronger things than the tweets above. Including me. And, as the defence pointed out repeatedly, just eight tweets had been found after hundreds of hours of police time, and found amidst tens of thousands of other tweets on the Middle East, hundreds of which specifically urge non-violence.
So why are the police doing this to Natalie? Why did six armed police storm her apartment and rouse her at 7am a year ago, seizing all her electronics and papers, arresting her and not allowing her to have a pee without leaving the bathroom door open so she could be observed?
This is where the story gets very dark indeed.
This is not a local Jersey initiative.
The prosecution is directed from London and Alison Morgan KC, senior Treasury counsel (UK government lawyer) is seated beside the local prosecuting counsel, openly puppeteering him every step of the way.
So why has the UK government chosen Jersey to prosecute a local pacifist whose statements provide possibly the weakest case of support for terrorism that has ever been heard in any court in the Western world?
The answer is that here in Jersey there is no jury.
Facing this charge on the UK mainland Natalie would have a jury, and there is not a jury in the UK that would not throw this self-evidently vindictive nonsense out in 5 minutes.
Why is it worth the time and expense for Whitehall to send Alison Morgan KC here to direct a weak case against somebody who is obviously not a terrorist?
The plain answer is that this is a pilot for what they can get away with on the mainland when they abolish juries in such trials, as "Justice Secretary" David Lammy has announced that they will indeed do.
In Jersey the system is inherited from the Normans. The judge sits with two "jurats" or lay magistrates. They determine innocence or guilt. These come from a pool of 12 permanent jurats. In practice these are retired professionals and frequently have strong connections to the financial services industry.
What the jurats emphatically are not is Natalie Strecker's working class peers of a kind who would be represented on a jury. I strongly recommend this brief article on the corruption of Jersey society by a man who was for 11 years the Government of Jersey's economic adviser.
The judge, Sir John Saunders, seems a decent old stick in a headmasterly sort of way. He has told the court that "Mrs Strecker's good character is not in doubt". On Friday he stated that this was "A very difficult and in many ways a very sad case for the court to deal with. But I have to construe it according to strict legal principles".
In the Palestine Action proscription case, as I reported, counsel for the UK government openly stated "We do not deny that the law is draconian. It is supposed to be". In the mass arrests of decent people over Palestine Action, people have understood what a dreadfully authoritarian law the proscription regime is.
An intelligent observer cannot sit in Judge Saunders' courtroom without realising that he thinks this is a dreadful law, but accepts that it is his job to enforce it. He reminds me of the caricature of the lugubrious headmaster stating "This is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you".
In effect, Alison Morgan and the UK government are attempting through this prosecution to make even the most basic expression of support for Palestine a serious criminal offence. Remember that a terrorism conviction destroys your life - it almost certainly brings loss of employment, debanking and severe travel restrictions.
The International Court of Justice has decided that Israel has a real case to answer on Genocide, and most experts believe that Israel is committing Genocide. In Natalie's correct image, the UK government is trying to make it a terrorist offence to say anything other than that the Palestinians should quietly submit to Genocide on their knees.
The danger is that the hubris of lay magistrates will lead the jurats to try cleverly to construe Natalie's comments as support for terrorism in line with the government's wishes. Natalie has, however, one defence in Jersey not available in mainland UK: here in Jersey the prosecution has to show intent - that she intended to cause support for terrorist organisations.
The prosecution has also relied on the extremely wide definition of support adopted in UK terrorist cases, that "support of" merely means "expression of agreement with".
In defending the tweet about Hamas-run health ministry figures, Natalie Strecker's counsel Mark Boothman countered this rather well when he said: "there is no offence of causing people to think less badly of Hamas"
I confess however I am slightly puzzled that I have not heard the defence argue that the prosecution positions are grossly disproportionate violations of freedom of expression in terms of Article X of the European Convention of Human Rights.
I would have thought, for example, that was the natural thing to say in response to the prosecution's contention that it would be a crime for a law lecturer to tell his class that the Palestinian people had the right of armed resistance in international law.
The verdict was decided yesterday afternoon between the judge and jurats. It will be presented in full written judgment in an hour's time.
This is a truly horrifying case for Natalie, who cannot afford to lose her job with a Jersey government agency and most certainly does not wish to be jailed. I pinch myself to be sure that this is all really happening.
It is a truly horrifying case in terms of what the Starmer government intends to do on the mainland in further criminalising support for Palestine.
I do not support Hamas nor Hezbollah, being opposed to theocracy. But for it to be illegal to discuss the Genocide in Gaza and the role of these two organisations, unless you do it absolutely without either context or nuance, is Orwellian.
Western dissent is also a victim of the Zionist Genocide.
———————————
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The post The Terrifying Case of Natalie Strecker appeared first on Craig Murray.
In the last three days I have been in London at the judicial review of Palestine Action and today I am in Jersey for the terrorist trial of Natalie Strecker. I made a brief impromptu speech outside the High Court, in intervening to try and stop some people in wheelchairs from being arrested as "terrorists", and I am as proud of that couple of minutes speech as I am of any work I have done. This afternoon I am flying from Jersey for the Your Party founding conference in Liverpool.
Unfortunately I am really struggling with bronchitis and just haven't had the energy to write it all up in the evenings as I intended. All of this activity is funded by subscribers so obviously this is wrong. I do hope to be able to catch up soon.
You can catch that brief speech at 7 minutes here.
The post Resisting Authoritarianism appeared first on Craig Murray.
The Scottish judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action - funded so far by readers of this blog - has been simply shelved by delay tactics that plainly break the Scottish legal system's own rules.
Our case was ruled competent for us to serve the petition on the UK government. They replied in the last hour of their two-week deadline. The court itself then had a two-week deadline to grant a judicial review, or to call a hearing on whether to grant it.
Instead the judge has simply sat on it, preventing a judicial review by administrative delay.
This is the absolutely plain rule the court is breaking:
The permission stage
58.7.—(1) Within 14 days from the end of the period for lodging answers the Lord Ordinary must—
(a) decide whether to—
(i) grant permission (including permission subject to conditions or only on particular grounds);
(ii) grant an extension to the time limit under section 27A of the 1988 Act; or
(b) order an oral hearing (for the purpose of making those decisions) to take place within 14 days.
The emphasis is mine but the word "must" is obviously very important here!
The extraordinary thing is that our legal team is struggling to come up with actions we can take to force the court to act. The judges can freeze this out for a very long time.
The absurd proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, and the appalling legal consequences on freedom of expression and in criminalising thousands of highly respectable citizens as terrorists, has faced the state with a dilemma which, at least in Scotland, it prefers not to resolve head on.
In Scotland, the prosecuting authorities have therefore written to over 20 activists charged for wearing T-shirts with the slogan
"Genocide in Palestine, Time to take Action"
offering to drop charges if they accept a prosecutorial warning.
In Scotland, this warning does not involve an acknowledgement of guilt (unlike a police caution), but sits on your record for two years and can be used against you in future court cases. All twenty-plus individuals we know of who have been offered the warning have responded by saying they will not accept the warning. The state's attempt to dodge the court cases is therefore not working.
I am also hearing of activists charged for holding the Defend Our Juries signs saying
"I oppose Genocide, I support Palestine Action"
being offered deals on non-custodial outcomes in Scotland if they accept guilt, but as such prosecution deals are dubiously legal I have not yet fully managed to stand this story up.
But what is plain to me is that the authorities in Scotland are determined to keep both the judicial review of the proscription, and individual terrorist cases from the proscription, out of court.
The reason for this is that there is no confidence the Scottish judiciary, let alone Scottish juries, will uphold the proscription. The whole farce is falling apart on the basis of societal resistance to this draconian governmental overreach. This resistance runs vertically through the classes in Scotland.
I am currently in England for the judicial review of the proscription in the High Court of England and Wales. Here a different approach is being taken. They have simply switched the judges at the last minute to load the dice for Israel.
Judge Chamberlain granted the judicial review, a decision which was upheld by the Court of Appeal. As I have previously reported, he has a reputation for independence from the state, having even called MI5 out for producing dishonest evidence. I found his manner in court rather overbearing, but that self-confidence is perhaps needed to take anti-Establishment positions as a High Court judge.
Chamberlain plainly was expecting to hear the case. He has handled it all the way through, it was scheduled according to his diary, and just eight days ago he was still corresponding with counsel as the judge in the case. He has been replaced by a horror show of top Zionists. Judge Swift is the poster boy of security-service controlled judges, with a history of pro-government decisions in the Assange and Rwanda cases. He was a lawyer for the security services for many years and stated in interview that they were his favourite clients.
Swift was forced to recuse himself in the Graham Phillips case, when it was discovered he had been secretly meeting to discuss the case with the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, one of the parties, without informing the defence. That is judicial behaviour so bad I cannot begin to describe the magnitude of it.
Here is what I wrote about Swift on 21 February 2024:
The blocking of Assange's appeal was done by Judge Swift, a judge who used to represent the security services, and said they were his favourite clients. In the subsequent Graham Phillips case, where Mr Phillips was suing the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) for sanctions being imposed upon him without any legal case made against him, Swift actually met FCDO officials - one of the parties to the case - and discussed matters relating to it privately with them before giving judgment. He did not tell the defence he had done this. They found out, and Swift was forced to recuse himself.
Personally I am surprised Swift is not in jail, let alone still a High Court judge. But then what do I know of justice?
Another of the new panel for the Palestine Action case is Judge Karen Steyn, who ruled that UK export of F35 parts was legal even though they may end up being used in Israeli attacks on Gaza. Steyn ruled that such decisions were political and a matter for ministers and not for the courts - an attitude which the government are evidently confident she will continue in the Palestine Action case.
Dame Victoria Sharp, who will chair the judicial review, is a puzzle. Completely integrated in the top Tory Establishment, her twin brother Richard gave a large personal loan to Boris Johnson and shortly thereafter, and doubtless by total coincidence, was appointed by Johnson as chairman of the BBC.
Richard Sharp has long been associated with Zionist super-donor Trevor Chinn. They served together as advisors to Boris Johnson while he was Mayor of London. Victoria Sharp moves in an entirely Zionist and high-Tory milieu, but I must say that I was struck by her honesty and good sense in the Assange hearings. Perhaps, from the Establishment point of view, Israel is a subject on which she will be "safer".
I have no doubt whatsoever that the last-minute change of judging panel is a panicked effort by the government and its deep-state controllers, to seize control of the narrative, following the carefully timed and illegal public release of highly edited and confused police footage of the Filton action.
It may prevail with this immediate panel, but will not prevail in London in the longer term. Meanwhile, we have in Scotland to continue to press the courts to stop hiding and to face the burning questions highlighted by this crazed authoritarianism in the name of Israel.
———————————
My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.
Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.
Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.
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The post Judicial Malfeasance and Palestine Action appeared first on Craig Murray.
In fascist lockstep, the entire British media, broadcast and print, corporate and state, is leading with a Ministry of Defence press release about a "Russian spy ship" inside "British waters".
No British media appears to have been able to speak to anybody who knows the first thing about the Law of the Sea.
Here are the facts:
The Exclusive Economic Zone extends 200 miles from the coastal baselines. The Continental Shelf can extend still further, as a fact of geology, not an imposed maximum.
On the Continental Shelf the coastal state is entitled to the mineral resources. In the Exclusive Economic Zone the coastal state is entitled to the fisheries and mineral resources.
For purposes of navigation, both the Continental Shelf and Exclusive Economic Zone are part of the High Seas. There is freedom of navigation on the High Seas. Foreign ships, including foreign military ships, may come and go as they please. Nor is there any ban on "spying" - exactly as there is no restriction on spying from satellites.
The Territorial Waters of a state extend out to just twelve miles. These are subject to the internal legislation of the coastal state. There is freedom for foreign vessels, including military vessels, to pass through them but only subject to the rule of "innocent passage" - which specifically rules out spying and reconnaissance. In the territorial sea, vessels have to be genuinely just passing through on their way somewhere, otherwise they may need coastal state permission for their activity.
The Exclusive Economic Zone is subject to the rules of the coastal state only in relation to the reserved economic activities to which the state is entitled. Scientific research is specifically free for all states within the Exclusive Economic Zone.
The Russian ship Yantar has been just outside the UK territorial waters. It is therefore under "freedom of navigation" and not under "innocent passage". It is free to do scientific research.
I don't doubt it is really gathering intelligence on military, energy and communications facilities. That is what states do. The UK does it to Russia all the time, on the Black Sea, the Barents Sea, the Baltic, and elsewhere. Not to mention 24/7 satellite surveillance.
It is perfectly legal for the Yantar to do this. Personally I wish the entire world would stop such activity, but to blame the Russians given the massive levels of surveillance and encirclement they suffer from NATO assets is simply ludicrous.
Not to mention the ultimate hypocrisy that the UK has been flying intelligence missions over Gaza every single day and feeding targeting information to aid the Gaza genocide.
The UK's allies blew up Russia's Nord Stream pipeline. The UK is now accusing the Yantar precisely of scouting this same kind of attack - which we endorsed when the pipeline was Russian.
For example HMS Sutherland, accompanied by Royal Fleet Auxiliary Tidespring, and two other NATO warships penetrated 160 miles into Russia's Exclusive Economic Zone and lingered 40 miles from Russia's Severomorsk naval base. There was no pretence they were doing anything other than gathering intelligence and sounding out defences.
In armed forces media the UK boasted it was an assertion of freedom of navigation. Yet we harass the Russian vessel equally on the High Seas for exercising its freedom of navigation.
That was also perfectly legal. The idea that the same activity is worthy when we do it, but a pretext for war if the Russians do it, is so childish as to be beyond ridicule. But there is not one single mainstream journalist willing to call it out.
As this photo of HMS Somerset illegally threatening the Yantar on the High Seas shows, forcing it into dangerous moves, the aggression is not from the Russians. That British jets illegally buzzing the Yantar have been met with lasers designed to disrupt attacks. That is not the Russian aggression John Healy claims. The nonsense about dazzling pilots' eyes is sheer invention.
Unless the plane is extremely, extremely low or a very long way away it is a physical impossibility to shine a laser into a pilot's eyes in a modern warplane, from below in a ship. The pilot won't be looking at the ship out of the window, but will be looking at his screens and the image from the cameras under the plane. These might be disrupted by the lasers - and a perfectly valid and sensible defensive measure that is too.
This is the Eurofighter Typhoon.
Imagine it in the skies way above you and look at its body, particularly the front end - how would you get line of sight on the pilot? You couldn't. Lasers only go in straight lines.
Most sinister of all is the universal state control of media that gets every single mainstream outlet booming out the propaganda narrative, all entirely without question.
This war talk is of course the normal refuge of extremely unpopular governments. But it is part of a wider tightening of the grip of the military-industrial complex on the state. Starmer is committed to increasing military expenditure by tens of billions of pounds a year, while imposing austerity on the rest of the economy. In Scotland, we are told that the closure of major industrial sites like Grangemouth and Mossmorran will be compensated by opening new weapons factories.
Beating ploughshares into swords.
The rise of domestic racism and authoritarianism is accompanied by the increase in militarism and the desire to portray Russia and China as enemy states with whom we are already in a state of proto-war. The state has a mainstream media which is showing itself willing to pump out even the most thin propaganda to this end with no interrogation whatsoever.
Western democracy has already died. Not everybody has yet noticed.
———————————
My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.
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Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.
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The post The Beat of the War Drums appeared first on Craig Murray.
Scottish Independence is an extremely attractive prospect to states at the United Nations, and for reasons that you might not expect.
Every state knows that the current UN structure is outdated and indefensible, with five states - US, China, Russia, UK and France - having a permanent seat and a total veto on the Security Council.
US abuse of the veto directly to continue the Gaza genocide has been flagrant and caused outrage.
Africa and South America have no permanent representation or veto. The prominence of the Imperial powers of the UK and France is anachronistic.
The difficulty is, that any change to the veto is subject to veto. So there has been stalemate, and during the genocide in Gaza the UN itself has been outraged, maligned, abused and practically useless.
States, and particularly the entire developing world, are desperate for a lever to crack open the P5.
Scottish Independence is that lever.
There is an entirely false assumption that England and Wales (assuming the Welsh have not also escaped occupation) would be the successor state and automatically take the UN P5 seat. That is absolutely wrong. It is in fact extremely unlikely that England would retain its P5 status.
Here are some of the reasons why:
1) Russia assumed all of the national debt and all other obligations of the former Soviet Union. This was a fundamental requirement for successor state status.
In the 2014 referendum and since, the UK government has made it crystal clear England would not do this and would seek to offload debt onto Scotland.
2) Russia left its nuclear and chemical weapons facilities in situ in the other CIS states. The nuclear weapons in Ukraine and the chemical weapons in Uzbekistan were then dismantled under international supervision.
There is no indication London would leave Trident in Scotland to be dismantled under international supervision.
3) The other CIS states all specifically agreed, under the Vienna Convention on Successor States, that Russia would be the successor state and specifically agreed that Russia would take the P5 seat.
There is no requirement for Scotland to do this - and indeed international recognition of Scotland may depend on not doing it, because the large majority of states want a lever for P5 reform.
4) Russia taking over the P5 seat was subject to a "no objections" mechanism in a letter to all General Assembly states from the Secretary General, enclosing Yeltsin's letter of claim. There were no objections.
There would certainly be objections to England.
5) Russia had huge international sympathy, as the Soviet Union split amidst hopes for a new era of world peace.
By contrast the UK is extremely unpopular. It is viewed by the large majority of states in the world as complicit in Genocide. The attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are not forgotten.
Do not underestimate the resentment caused by the massive cut in UK aid budgets under austerity. Starmer's echoes of racist rhetoric have not gone unnoticed. The EU no longer can be counted on for automatic support.
Any attempt by England to take over the P5 seat would, after objections to the Secretary General's letter and at the UN Credentials Committee, have to go to the UN General Assembly. There England would lose the vote. Even if it did succeed, the change would need to be approved by the Security Council - and, with the most delicious irony, would be subject to Chinese or Russian veto.
If England were not accepted as the successor state, the P5 reform question would perforce be blown wide open. How it would be shut again is unpredictable. Most conservative would be to substitute a new P5 member - such as India, Brazil or South Africa. A regional grouping may be used as a replacement, such as the African Union. Or best of all the entire system would be shaken up.
I have been thrice this year to the UN discussing why Scottish Independence is important with various national delegations. All of the above ramifications scan instantly through the mind of diplomats as soon as I mention Scottish Independence and P5 status. Which is why I can put my hand on my heart and tell you I am yet to encounter a single negative reaction.
It is vital to understand that, though states operate within a framework of international law, in introducing Scottish Independence to the decolonisation committee as a concept, this is a political question amongst states and not in any sense a judicial process. That is a fundamental misunderstanding.
I have never heard anybody contend that Scottish Independence can be achieved through the United Nations without support for it in Scotland. That is a ludicrous Aunt Sally that is used to denigrate what I am doing at the UN in combination with Liberation Scotland and Salvo.
But once Scottish Independence is declared in Scotland, we are going to need the support of the international community. I have never believed that London will willingly relinquish Scotland's resources, and I still do not believe it. Independence will have to be achieved in the teeth of London opposition, through robust assertion and control at home and recognition abroad.
Here the work at the UN is vital.
At the UN Security Council, the UK permanent seat was already on a shoogly peg. Scottish Independence gives it a tug. The world is cheering.
———————————
My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.
Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.
Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.
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The post UN Reform and Scottish Independence appeared first on Craig Murray.
As Godfather to Prince William, heir to the British throne, Prince Charles chose his close friend and adviser Laurens van der Post. A paedophile.
Van der Post raped a 14 year old girl who had been given into his care for the sea voyage from South Africa to London. He then installed her in a flat in London as his mistress, but abandoned her when she became pregnant age 15 (though he sent a monthly payment). She was not the only one. The victim later stated that van der Post was "sick" and "he knew how to pick his victims".
In a sycophantic authorised biography of then-Prince Charles written thirty years ago, Jonathan Dimbleby wrote that "for Prince Charles there was a missing dimension", that he felt his life lacked a spiritual awareness. At age 25 Charles sought out Van der Post after reading his books, and Van der Post became his spiritual Guru. Charles continually sought his advice and absorbed his mystic teachings. Not only is Van der Post William's Godfather, he gave marriage counselling to Charles and Diana and was a frequent guest at Highgrove, Sandringham and Balmoral. On his death Charles initiated the Van der Post Memorial Lectures, held inside St James's Palace.
There is a question which will run throughout this article, which is how much did people know? In the 1970s and 1980s it was not public knowledge that Van der Post was a paedophile. But then Charles was not the public. Then, as now, if somebody becomes very close to the heir to the throne with frequent access to Royal palaces, they are going to be under close investigation by the security services.
I find it wildly improbable that the security services did not find out about Van der Post's predilection for young girls and that he had been paying the expenses of an illegitimate daughter originally fathered on a young teenage mother. There is also the question of Van der Post's wider lies. It is possibly neither here nor there that in fact Van der Post had only ever spent a fortnight with The Bushmen of the Kalahari when he penned his famous book, full of lies and plagiarism.
But that he was actually a Lieutenant (and at times acting Captain) rather than a Lieutenant Colonel as he claimed, would have been instantly discovered. It is worth noting here that Van der Post's famous military memoir, which became the film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence starring David Bowie, was massively embellished, not just in terms of his rank.
The Royalist defence of Charles' associations rests, rather peculiarly, on the claim that any huckster and paedophile can just get entry to the Palace inner circle without any checks. That is just not true. What appears to be true is that paedophilia was treated as a peccadillo.
Before Van der Post, the man credited by all biographers as the greatest influence in shaping Charles' character was his great uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten. Born in Austria as Prince Louis of Battenberg, Charles can hardly be blamed for Mountbatten, who was thrust upon him as a child.
I hope not too literally.
Mountbatten was a paedophile, which was an open secret in upper class society - including the diplomatic service - long before his death. He benefited from the lifetime protection of the inner Royal circle, which was absolute in his lifetime. It has only become mainstream acknowledged in the past very few years.
That is deliberately phrased as "acknowledged", not "knowledge" - there was not a Fleet Street Editor in 50 years who did not know; they just did not publish it. Mountbatten's paedophilia was fuelled by his access to underprivileged children, from New Delhi to Rabat to Kincora Boy's Home.
Mountbatten spent more time with Charles in his childhood and early adulthood than Charles' own parents did, including encouraging and coaching him to have as much sex with as many "non-marriageable" girls as possible, and providing a venue for it in his homes. After he died Charles said, "Life will never be the same now that he is gone". It is not a stretch to think that Van der Post - whom he first met four years before Mountbatten's death - filled the emotional void.
A 1944 FBI dossier described Mountbatten as "a homosexual with a perversion for small boys". This was two years before his appointment as Viceroy of India, where the open debauchery of the Mountbattens was an open secret in high-level Indian society.
It is worth noting that in this period his military aide-de-camp was one Willie McRae. I have always believed that the murder of McRae by the British state was related to his knowledge of Mountbatten and elite paedophile rings: in this context McRae's ties with Irish Nationalists may be relevant, as they assassinated Mountbatten over the abuse at Kincora.
In Mountbatten's case there is no doubt at all that the security services knew all about his paedophile, and covered for him.
So at the death of van der Post in 1996, Charles had lost two men he viewed, exclusively, as guides and spiritual mentors, and from whom he took the most intimate personal device. There is nobody else who fits this description. Both were extremely vicious and calculating paedophiles, shielded by class privilege from the consequences. So, in 1996, to whom did Charles turn as his new "mentor"?
Jimmy Savile was introduced to a 17-year-old Charles in 1966 by Mountbatten, who vouched for him. The official story is that Mountbatten had met Savile through military veteran fundraising.
You can believe that was the primary shared interest of two prolific paedophiles, if you so please.
Savile cultivated the relationship long-term, and by the 1980s was corresponding assiduously with Charles, which continued for over 20 years. Savile was yet another person to whom Charles turned for marriage counselling. In scores of letters, it is always Charles seeking Savile's advice and adulating him. There is no record of Charles using the word "mentor" to describe his relationship with Savile, but Diana literally stated that Savile was a "sort of mentor" to Charles.
I presume I do not have to explain that Savile was throughout this period one of the most prolific paedophiles in British history. It is widely believed the royal cachet helped to protect him from prosecution. A huge amount was known to the police, to BBC managers and to various other branches of the British establishment, but Savile was untouchable.
In 2000 Charles constructed a chapel at his home at Highgrove, and a stained glass window in it commemorates Laurens van der Post. Before that window, Charles kneeled for long prayer vigils with his new spiritual guide, Bishop Peter Ball - who was also a friend of Jimmy Savile. It was Savile who introduced Ball to Charles.
Rather like Epstein, Ball was a known paedophile who had got off the first time without incarceration. He had, in 1993, accepted a police caution for a ceremony in which he had forced a 17-year-old novitiate, Neil Todd, to kneel naked in the snow for hours, whipped him, and then forced him to perform a sex act. The police also investigated at that time numerous other allegations, including two very similar ones.
The decision to caution was taken on the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service. As the Independent Inquiry into Child Abuse Report 2022 primly noted (p.378):
The first report on the Anglican Church investigation - The Anglican Church Case Studies 1. The Diocese of Chichester 2. The Response to Allegations Against Peter Ball Investigation Report - was published in May 2019. It considered the Diocese of Chichester, where there were multiple allegations of child sexual abuse, and whether there were inappropriate attempts by people of prominence to interfere in the criminal justice process after Bishop Peter Ball was first accused of child sexual offences.
I cannot, though, identify the passage referred to of the Diocese of Chichester Report.
Yet immediately after this, and for the next 17 years, Charles provided Ball with rather splendid rent-free accommodation on Charles' estate. Ball was suspended by the Church of England as a priest and, astonishingly, Charles asked him to officiate at services and perform the Eucharist at his personal chapel in Highgrove, as reported in the Church Times. Ball was frequently in his company and was a personal guest at Charles' 2005 wedding to Camilla.
In 2015, Charles gifted Ball £20,000. This was said to be simply a friendly gesture - exactly why is unclear. Charles is very definitely not known for personal generosity.
In 2015, Bishop Ball was finally convicted of 12 horrific instances of sexual abuse of boys and young men, all under the guise of religious ritual. Prince Charles put out a public denial that he had interfered in the 1993 decision not to prosecute. My surmise is that he had not done so directly, but rather let it be known through others. That is how it works.
The BBC actually reported that:
Ball's court case heard that a member of the royal family - who has never been named - was among a host of public figures who supported him when he avoided charges in 1993.
The article goes on to carry this extremely over-specific and narrow denial from the Crown Prosecution Service:
The Crown Prosecution Service has publicly stated that it had neither received nor seen any correspondence from a member of the Royal Family when Ball was under investigation in 1992-93.
Note this very deliberately does not rule out a word in the ear at a function, a phone call, or - as it would be done - getting a friend known to be close to Charles to give the message.
Charles in fact in 1997, two years after his police caution, told Ball that he would directly intervene against Ball victim Neil Todd. "I will see off this horrible man if he tries anything again," Charles wrote to Ball.
Todd did not live to see Ball ultimately convicted. He committed suicide in 2012. This was convenient for Ball, but there were plenty of other victims who testified in 2015.
I have no doubt the Royal Family will have known about Uncle Louis's sins - he had an official entourage and was plugged in to the system. The immediate civil servants and close protection officers always know everything. I have already explained why I do not believe van der Post's paedophilia was unknown. That goes double for Savile - about whom authorities had a huge amount of knowledge, but whose royal connections were a key part of his protection.
While there is no doubt whatsoever Charles knew about Bishop Peter Ball, Ball's royal circle protection appears to have broken the surface.
To the best of my knowledge and belief, I do not know any paedophiles - but none of us can be absolutely certain we do not. Of one thing, however, I feel extremely confident. The four most-valued advisers in my life, the people whose advice I have most craved and to whom I have turned in times of crisis, are not all paedophiles. I should be astonished if any of them were.
You just can't have your four closest non-official life guides as paedophiles by accident. You just can't. It has been put to me that Charles, by nature of his role, knows vastly more people than ordinary folk. That may or may not be true (there is a counter-argument about privilege and protection). But if it were true, it does not improve things. If there is a much larger-than-normal pool from whom Charles could have chosen, it makes it even weirder he chose four prolific paedophiles.
To be clear, prolific paedophilia is extremely abnormal behaviour.
What I do not understand is why paedophilia appears so prevalent and attractive to politicians and the ruling class. People who have much more power and wealth than the rest of us, have the ability (rightly or wrongly) to get attractive adult consenting partners more easily. So why do they, apparently in disproportionate numbers, seek to prey on the young and defenceless?
It is more than time we got rid of the Medieval system of monarchy. That will not solve the corruption of corporate interests controlling the state, or redress the appalling inequality of wealth. It will not even do much to end elite class paedophilia. But as one clear demonstration of the rotten nature of British society, the tale of the King's four paedophile mentors is extremely instructive.
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The post The Four Mentors of King Charles appeared first on Craig Murray.
The UK government - in the undistinguished shape of Baroness Smith of Cluny, Labour party hack, youngest daughter of John Smith and Advocate-General for Scotland - has responded to the court in our request for a Scottish judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action.
The Government asks that the judicial review be denied on 6 grounds:
1) That I have no legal standing.
The Government does not accept that I previously participated in any Palestine Action activity or expressed support for Palestine Action:
"The Petitioner's averments relating to his alleged support for Palestine Action and alleged participation in protests organized by Palestine Action are not known and not admitted."
They evidently were not able to read these articles!
2) That the Petition is unnecessary as it duplicates proceedings in England.
This is the classic unionist stance. It ignores the fact that the High Court of England and Wales is not superior to the Court of Session in Scotland and there is precedent for a judicial review in both jurisdictions coming to different decisions on the same facts and circumstances. (The Miller and Cherry cases on Boris Johnson's prorogation of parliament).
3) The Petition has no real prospect of success.
This contradicts (2) because in the English case both the High Court and Court of Appeal specifically rejected this argument in granting a judicial review. So the UK Government is arguing both that the English case makes this case unnecessary - and that the English courts are wrong. This seems rather peculiar.
4) The Petitioner's averments being irrelevant et separatim lacking in specification, the Petition should be dismissed.
This is effectively the same argument in 3, and again it was dismissed by the English Court of Appeal.
5) Yvette Cooper was under no duty to consult anybody at all before proscribing Palestine Action
Yet again, this is rehashing argument which the UK government spectacularly lost in the English Court of Appeal. Indeed, there judicial review was granted into three separate grounds of faulty process through failure to consult.
6) That Article X and XI of the European Convention of Human Rights (freedom of speech and freedom of assembly) are not engaged because of the exception for terrorism.
Once more, this is a ground on which they failed to block judicial review in the Court of Appeal in England, because the question of whether Palestine Action can properly be considered a terrorist group, and whether the effect on freedom of speech and assembly is disproportionate, are arguable grounds before the judicial review.
So in short I am confident at this stage. The only grounds on which they did not already lose in England are the question of my standing, and the question of whether a Scottish judicial review can be held when one is being held in England.
On my standing they have made a mistake in disputing that I had taken part in any action organised by Palestine Action or urged people to support it. But even if that were not the case, Walton vs Scottish Ministers established that a person with a genuine interest in a subject of wide public concern has standing.
As Lord Reed stated in that case: "The rule of law would not be maintained if, because everyone was equally affected by an unlawful act, no-one was able to bring proceedings to challenge it".
On whether there can be a Scottish judicial review when one is already granted in England, it is not surprising that the government wishes to challenge this. It is an assertion of Scotland's separate rights and jurisdiction. For decades it was simply accepted that the High Court of England and Wales was responsible for judicial review of matters which - like the proscription of Palestine Action - affected the whole of the UK.
I think I am right in saying that Boris Johnson's prorogation of parliament was the first time an action had been separately judicially reviewed in both England and Scotland. There the English courts found for Boris Johnson (i.e. the government) and the Scottish courts found against him. I do not think it at all improbable that the Scottish review will ultimately find the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful while the English review will find for Yvette Cooper.
Then either the UK government will have to go to the Supreme Court (whose existence is an abnegation of the Treaty of Union), or Palestine Action will be legal in Scotland and banned in England. In the prorogation case the government went to the Supreme Court and lost - it agreed with the Scottish judges.
We wait now for a court date. I am sorry to say this but we do need to ask for donations to continue this forward. It is a very expensive thing to do. One thing the government relies on is that it has unlimited resources and we do not. If we can spread the burden across enough small contributions, we can do it.
Every penny helps, but please do not cause yourself hardship.
You can donate through the link via Crowd Justice, which goes straight to the lawyers, or through this blog.
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/scottish-challenge-to-proscription/
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The post UK Government Opposes Application for Scottish Judicial Review of Palestine Action Terrorist Proscription appeared first on Craig Murray.
The draft Your Party constitution is for a highly centralised, London-based party which echoes the Labour Party. It "devolves" - they literally use the word - power from the centre to non-autonomous entities in Scotland and Wales.
We need a Federal party - a completely different approach - where authority lies with the members, and is granted to the executives firstly of the Scottish, Welsh and English parties, and then to the Federal executive, as the members wish.
The current draft reflects the British nationalist ideal that the UK is essentially England and that Scotland and Wales are some sort of add-ons for which special provision must be made. Therefore there are supposed to be Scottish and Welsh subsidiary - not equal - parties, whereas England does not have a separate party but is presumed to be the main body of the organisation.
Scotland and Wales are treated separately as "nations" while England isn't. It is just assumed to be identical with the party as a whole. This is typical of the unthinking Anglocentrism of the authors.
I do not see how any Scot can respectably subscribe to the party on its currently drafted constitution.
I have therefore sent my written suggestion for Amendment to a true Federal format.
This is the original:
This is the amendment which I have submitted:
The draft constitution does not include the north of Ireland at all. I do not know if the party plans to operate there. I assume the omission means not.
I would urge members - not just those in Scotland and Wales - to support this fundamental change in the way the party is structured. Unless there is a genuine federal structure, Your Party will be dead in the water in Scotland. The pledge it will not be a "branch office" needs to have concrete form.
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The post Urgent - We Need a Federal Your Party appeared first on Craig Murray.
I am taking the plunge into Your Party. My worries remain about its centralist tendencies and lack of democracy, but I will work against those from within.
Your Party is not a unionist party. It does not yet have a policy on Scottish Independence. I shall of course be striving for it actively to support Scottish Independence. I feel fairly confident that this will succeed.
The Left in Scotland is overwhelmingly pro-Independence, just as the Right is overwhelmingly anti-Independence. There do exist Scottish unionist socialists, but they are a small and shrinking minority. It may turn out they are disproportionately represented in Your Party, but I do not believe that is likely to be the case.
More to the point, for years opinion polls have shown that at least a third of Scottish Labour voters support Independence. There is now a major and consistent gap in opinion polls between support for Independence - averaging around 52% - and support for the SNP - averaging around 31%. 21% of Scottish voters support Independence but will not vote for the SNP. That is a significant source of potential support for a viable alternative pro-Independence Party.
It is worth recalling that ten years ago support for the SNP and support for Independence were very tightly correlated. That is now absolutely not the case, for the simple reason the SNP pays no more than lip service to Independence.
A Corbyn-linked, pro-Independence Party in Scotland would have the capacity to destroy the Scottish branch of the Labour Party - which is already in deep trouble and polling around 15%.
There have been a number of attempts to provide a home for the Independence voters disillusioned with the SNP. The Scottish Greens currently show good polling figures, but they are a rather strange party, entirely separate from the English Greens, and far more interested in gender issues than in anything else.
I was a member of the Alba Party until the leadership made very plain I was unwanted, for reasons that don't seem any more profound than their personal ambitions. While led by Alex Salmond, Alba was the obvious vehicle for Independence support, but since his demise it has torn itself apart. There are others - including the Independence for Scotland Party and Liberate Scotland - which contain some great people, but are currently very small.
Your Party can become a vehicle for a socialism that, as part of its universal commitment to anti-Imperialism, supports Independence for Scotland and Wales and supports the reunification of Ireland. I see that as a transformative position in British politics and a truly radical response to the need for fundamental change in the British state.
I might add that I have never heard Jeremy Corbyn express any personal opposition to Scottish Independence. He supports self-determination and anti-Imperialism around the globe and supports Irish reunification. I think those who note he did not support Scottish Independence whilst leader of the Labour Party are being obtuse. It was not the position of his party. He now has a different party, and I am very confident he would follow the party position.
The rather shadowy leadership cadre of Your Party is anxious to fudge the issue by adopting a policy of "the right of the Scottish people to decide". This is basically to say that they support a second independence referendum. That is slightly useful, but it is a peculiar abnegation of responsibility - and very easy to say in the knowledge Westminster will not agree.
Of course the Scottish people have the right to decide. That must be the starting point for any socialist party. But that is not a policy. You might as well state that the people have the right to decide whether utilities should be renationalised. Of course they do. But our policy is to renationalise utilities.
A party that just says "we believe in the will of the people - whatever that may be. We don't actually have an opinion" is not much of a political party.
Which leads me on to the question which I think is driving Your Party's lack of discernible structured democracy and voting process so far: Israel.
The leadership seem desperate to avoid a commitment to a single state of Palestine, from the river to the sea. The reason for this is that Jeremy is still surrounded by the same group of "soft" zionists who wrecked his leadership of the Labour Party, by continually attempting to placate the zionist lobby through apology after apology. They committed expulsion after expulsion of lifelong antiracists and socialists.
The preferred formula of proponents within Your Party of the Bantustan two-state solution is: "Let the Palestinian people decide". Often accompanied by the plausible-sounding "it is not for us to decide for the Palestinian people".
The problem is of course the Palestinian people have a gun to their head. Literally. They have no free will to decide anything. And of which Palestinian people are you going to take the word? Universally reviled Abbas and the Palestinian Authority? Some US-installed puppet administration under the Gaza fake Peace Plan?
No. The only solution any socialist should support is a Palestine free, from the river to the sea. Then it should indeed be for the Palestinian people to decide. Within the free, secular, democratic state of Palestine for which we should strive - and which now has more support from the people of the world than ever. If the free people of Palestine voluntarily then decide to give some land for a Jewish ethno-state, so be it.
Finally, it seems to me that Your Party needs to support massive socio-economic change.
Late-stage capitalism has resulted in inequalities of wealth which are simply staggering. These are not the natural order of things. They are a result of deliberate, state-imposed structures, including the creation of currency within the banking system, the state paying banks interest on currency of which the state itself licensed the creation, taxation structures where the burden of payment falls upon the poor, enterprise ownership structures that promote wealth accumulation, and a housing market tending to ever-greater concentration of capital and the permanent subservience of working people to a landlord class.
The economic changes required are profound. The Greens have adopted one idea I have consistently promoted: limits on CEO pay and benefits relative to the workforce. They have I think suggested 10 x the average salary in the enterprise, whereas I suggested 8 x the lowest salary in the enterprise, but it is the same policy.
Rather to my amazement there was a really good editorial in the Observer yesterday suggesting some policies that directly start to tackle a number of the problems I have outlined, not least the state borrowing its own currency from the banks.
I used to favour a modified capitalism where share ownership lay largely with workers, but as states have evolved into far more complex financial systems where huge volumes of financial transactions do not relate to the purchase of goods and services, that approach is now only a small part of the answer, and the role of the state needs to increase. I am not sure I have quite finished reconciling this with my libertarian instincts, nor yet fully integrated those parts of modern monetary theory which are self-evidently true. But I am working on it.
To return to Your Party, I profoundly distrust the "Assemble" model of meetings split up into little groups. These avoid votes or any genuine effort to actually determine the will of the meeting. Instead they give the power of divining the "consensus" to unseen central figures. I have been told this system combats patriarchalism. That is obvious nonsense - I am pretty sure you will find patriarchs behind the curtains, dictating what was "decided" by the touchy-feely groups. And if they are matriarchs, that would be no better.
The national Conference is to be on the basis of sortition. The key question is this: Who gets to be there without going through the sortition process? How many and who are they? That seems to me essential to know. I have already seen direct evidence that a very large number of the little political groups who are dictating matters behind the scenes will avoid sortition by being present as "stewards". As though stewards could not have been forthcoming from among those selected by sortition.
There are also officially going to be "VIPs" not subject to sortition. Who chooses them? Will a list be published?
The sortition itself, according to the documents circulated to members, will be fixed to make sure groups are fairly represented. What sort of groups? Ethnic? Gender? Political? This undermines the entire basis of sortition itself.
I have the deepest possible reservations about the manipulation of "democracy" within Your Party. But there are bound to be teething troubles at the start, and while there is plainly a huge amount of plotting for control, I don't see anything we the members - and I am now one - cannot sweep aside as we get the party going.
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The post I Have Joined Your Party appeared first on Craig Murray.
This is more video of me than anybody would ever want to see, but here are three interviews I did over the weekend.
The first covers the legal action against the proscription of Palestine Action, Starmer's summary courts for peaceful protestors charged with "terrorism", UK and US efforts to legalise the Israeli occupation of Gaza through the UN Security Council, and French colonial occupation of New Caledonia.
The second covers the campaign to further the cause of Scottish Independence through the United Nations.
and the third covers the Gaza Trump peace plan and the future of the "ceasefire"
Should anyone have the time to download and clean up the YouTube transcripts I will gladly post them (they usually have a lot of errors).
Fundraising for the challenge in the Scottish courts to the proscription of Palestine Action is not going as fast as I would hope. Through all routes it is totalling £13,120, which will just get about get us to the starting line but not much further. The freedom of thousands of peaceful protestors could hang on this action, so please donate if you can, though as ever we do not want anyone to cause themselves hardship.
We now have a crowdfunder which pays money direct to the legal team. I understand that most people of goodwill have donated and donated to numerous causes in these terrible times. If you cannot donate, please help by spreading the crowdfunder.
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The post A Quick Intellectual Canter appeared first on Craig Murray.
Those charged with terrorism for supporting Palestine Action will have no jury in trials limited to 36 minutes each, with prison sentences up to six months. These are the plans for Starmer Courts for mass trials of anti-Genocide protestors.
The plans are devised by Justice Michael Snow. He is the epitome of judicial prejudice. When Julian Assange appeared before Snow in the first hearing after being dragged from the Embassy, Snow called Assange a "narcissist" even though Assange had said nothing but to confirm his name, and no evidence had been led.
Snow has now decreed that those 2,000 people charged under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act with supporting Palestine Action, will be tried in batches of five at the rate of ten people a day - giving 36 court minutes for each defendant. This is a farce, a spectacle of mass show trial. The 36 minutes includes both prosecution and defence cases and cross-examination.
At a scheduling hearing on Wednesday, one of the accused, 72 year old Deborah Wilde, objected that these trials would be far too short to present a proper defence.
Snow snapped back "I'm satisfied that the time is sufficient. I am not going to give more time. Your only remedy is the High Court".
As I am sure Snow realises, ordinary people cannot afford to go to the High Court. The worrying thing is that the trials will be held before judges including the appalling Snow, with no jury.
Here is the relevant part of Section 13 of the Terrorism Act.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this draconian legislation is that arousing suspicion is actually the offence. It does not matter if the suspicion turns out to be well-grounded or not. The suspicion could be totally wrong, but if you aroused the suspicion on "reasonable grounds" in a policeman's head, you are guilty.
It is an offence of strict liability. Your intent is not considered; you may have been most concerned to stop a Genocide, or to oppose the destruction of free speech. Judge Snow and his ilk will not care. They only want to know if some half educated cop suspected you of supporting a terrorist organisation. There is no jury to whom you can explain your actions - and which would be highly likely to sympathise.
I have seen it, as an offence of strict liability, likened to possession of Class A drugs. But actually it isn't. The correct analogy would be a crime where the offence was arousing a suspicion you possessed Class A drugs, whether you actually had any or not.
The experience of watching 2,000 upstanding citizens, most of them elderly and many of them infirm, hustled through this slaughterhouse queue of mass justice and into prison, with little opportunity to defend themselves, will be a defining moment in the UK's headlong slide into fascism.
The best available way to fight this ridiculously unjust process which has been directly opposed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, by Amnesty International and by Liberty, is through the legal challenge to an absurd and oppressive law. This is being done in both England and Scotland, which are separate jurisdictions. I am the "petitioner" in the Scottish case.
There are precedents for different decisions in the different jurisdictions. The Scottish courts found Boris Johnson's prorogation of parliament illegal; the English courts, legal. Ultimately the Supreme Court decided in favour of the Scottish courts. It is also possible that Palestine Action should simply operate legally in one jurisdiction and not the other - the law is frequently different in the two countries. The rationale of the legal case is explained here.
We desperately need funds. We now have a crowdfunder which pays money direct to the legal team. I understand that most people of goodwill have donated and donated to numerous causes in these terrible times. If you cannot donate, please help by spreading the crowdfunder.
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The post 36 Minute Trials and No Jury - Starmer's Fascist Mass Courts appeared first on Craig Murray.
I stopped here randomly yesterday and thought just that.
This is planet Earth at 51°32'24"N, 0°8'35"E.
(otherwise known as Hedgemans Road in Dagenham)
Why does it look like this?
» There are houses because humans need shelter.
» There are roads so traffic can drive around.
» There are pavements so pedestrians can avoid traffic.
» It's not a jungle because we're not in the tropics.
But that's all a bit generic.
Why specifically does it look like this?
» There's a huge city here rather than agricultural land because London became the capital of Britain many centuries ago due to its strategic location on the Thames estuary facing mainland Europe.
» There's suitable building land here because the underlying geology is river deposits atop a layer of solid clay.
» There are houses here because they were built in 1925 prior to the introduction of the Green Belt.
» There are no fields here because they were built over to create the Becontree estate.
» Becontree became housing thanks to section 41 of the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919 which stated that "where the London County Council are satisfied that there is situate within the area of a metropolitan borough land suitable for development for housing, the county council may submit a scheme for the approval of the Local Government Board for the development of such land to meet the needs of districts situate outside the area of such borough".
» The Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919 came into being because Christopher Addision was elected MP for Shoreditch in 1918, became Minister for Housing and pushed for much improved social housing because "you cannot expect to get an A1 population out of C3 homes".
» The estate got the go-ahead on 18 June 1919 because the London County Council's Standing Committee on the Housing of the Working Classes resolved to build 29,000 dwellings within 5 years, of which 24,000 were to be at Becontree which at the time was a vast undeveloped site with good rail connections.
Fair enough, but why specifically does it look like this?
Why is Hedgemans Road long and straight and precisely here?
» Hedgemans Road is one of the key spine roads added to the Becontree estate in the mid 1920s to support the growth of an emerging estate.
» At its eastern end Hedgemans Road followed an old footpath across the fields from Gale Street to a pub on Church Elm Lane, on a direct line to Dagenham village.
» It's a straight road because it runs close and parallel to a railway, which is straight.
» The railway is straight because in the 1880s the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway built a direct line east via Upminster as a shortcut to skip the previous estuarine route via Tilbury.
If the railway had been built on a different alignment, or Dagenham's 13th century church had been located somewhere slightly different, Hedgemans Road wouldn't quite go this way.
And why do the houses look like they do?
» The houses look like this because they were part of 'Dagenham section 6', the sixth neighbourhood to be developed on the Becontree Estate.
» Plans for 3- and 4-bed cottages in Section 6 were designed by the London County Council Architects department at County Hall and signed off by G. Topham Forrest, Chief Architect, on 11th February 1925.
» If I'd taken my photograph quarter of a mile further down the road the houses would have been in section 6a instead, approved on 10th November 1925, thus slightly younger and slightly different.
I know all that because I found a webpage showing the estate's original hand-drawn plans because the internet is brilliant.
» The original houses are still here because all Hitler's bombs landed elsewhere.
» There are a variety of porches because Margaret Thatcher introduced Right to Buy for council houses in 1980.
» There's a park here, slotted into a 60m gap in the long row of houses, because the Gores Brook passes under the road and even in the 1920s they knew not to build on a flood plain.
» There's a traffic island here because there's a park here because there's a river here.
» There are cars parked on the pavement because car parking wasn't a priority in the 1920s so the council have subsequently tarmacked over the original grass verges.
» There's a bus shelter because route 145 has been coming this way since 17th February 1937.
» There's a sign on the lamppost saying "Warning to buses - Low Trees" because a double decker got its roof sliced off half a mile up the road in 2024.
» There are lampposts because a previous local authority believed it was important for residents to be safe after dark.
» There are street signs high on the lampposts because that's a very 'Borough of Barking & Dagenham' thing.
Fundamentally...
» Hedgemans Road is habitable because the climate is maritime temperate.
» It's habitable because it lies above the current sea level (nine metres above, for now...)
» It's habitable because it's not covered with ice because the last Ice Age ended 11,000 years ago.
» It's habitable because world superpowers have never exploded a significant number of nuclear weapons in anger.
» It's habitable because our planet has a breathable atmosphere.
» It's habitable because life evolved 3¾ billion years ago.
» It's habitable because rocks coalesced around a metal core orbiting the Sun 4½ billion years ago.
And yes that's a bit specious, if entirely true.
But mainly Hedgemans Road is here because former fields beside a convenient railway line proved the ideal solution to rehousing London's poorest after WW1.
Have you ever stopped and wondered why somewhere looks like it does?
Crystal Palace has an amazing subway. Wow, just look at those pillars! All this lies just beneath the main road where you can't see it. Actually you can see it at monthly open days and there was one yesterday. A lot of people walked round and took lots of photos and went wow. The results of Stage 1 of the restoration project are certainly impressive.
The news for retired people
Doing much on Tuesdays? Thought not. Well now you can fill your gaping weekday void with a trip to the amazing Crystal Palace Subway. You'll need to book a free ticket online before you go so hopefully your inkjet printer still works. It's in Crystal Palace very close to the bus station. The opening hours are 11am-1pm so don't worry, you can use your freebie travelcard to get here. Sorry no lifts, but the two long staircases do have handrails. The Crystal Palace Park Trust are painfully aware that the site isn't step-free and are trying to do something about it, but squeezing lifts into a heritage Victorian structure is both expensive and administratively difficult. Also no refreshments, but given there are no toilets that's probably just as well.
The news in bullet points
• 1865 Subway opens • 2019 Subway funding secured
• 1954 Subway closes • 2024 Staircases restored
• 1955+ Subway decays • 2024 Courtyard covered over
The news for people scrolling endlessly downwards
The news for rail geeks
Crystal Palace (Low Level) station was opened by the WEL&CPR on 10th June 1854 to cater for traffic to the newly relocated Crystal Palace. Services were operated by the LBSCR. Pax faced a steep climb to reach the summit of Sydenham Hill so the LCDR promoted the CPSLJR to construct a branch from Peckham Rye via Nunhead to a new terminal station above the park. Crystal Palace (High Level) station opened on 1st August 1865 with four platforms optimised for mass arrivals, linked via subway to the main attraction. The station was renamed Crystal Palace High Level and Upper Norwood on 1st November 1898. In 1925 the branch was electrified as part of an SR scheme with trains operating every 20 minutes to Holborn Viaduct. Traffic dropped considerably after the palace was destroyed by fire 1936 and the spur line closed permanently on 20th September 1954, since when nothing of any interest has happened.
The news for photographers
The subway is patently photogenic. You really can't go wrong with a symmetrical Byzantine-style fan-vaulted ceiling with tiled brick pillars. It's really all a case of where to stand to frame the perfect shot. Arguably you want orthogonal for the perfect horizontal composition but arguably an oblique shot across multiple pillars works best. Almost certainly you want the better-lit eastern flank unless you prefer the more atmospheric gloom of the west side. Landscape rather than portrait, obviously. But oh my word trying to get the money shot is frustrating! In an appalling lapse of protocol other people are allowed to walk around the subway willy-nilly and they're forever getting in the way. You line up an appealing angle and then some imbecile lumbers into shot and lingers, ruining everything. Your viewfinder may look clear but there's always some berk ready to stick an arm in or, worse still, the appearance of a group of dodderers with no realisation that you'd really like them to move on. Why do tourist attractions insist on allowing commoners with smartphones into photogenic spaces without impressing on them the importance of holding back for the professionals?
The news for clickbait
Secrets don't come much bigger than a creepy crypt in Crystal Palace that literally nobody has heard of. What on earth am I going on about, right? Well, folks - grab yourselves a cuppa, make yourselves comfy, and allow me to explain. The Crystal Palace Subway is an actual subway that connects a station that isn't there any more to a glass palace that isn't there any more, how bonkers is that! Whiskery Londoners would once take day trips here, rather than heading to The Picturesque Market Town Near London That Has Just Been Named The Most Desirable Place To Live In Britain. And to cross the main road they used a subway that looks like a caliphate's brothel from Mission Impossible 5, exiting via secret tunnels that amazingly are still there! Who knew?
The news for event organisers
Got a wedding coming up, or a drinks reception in need of a unique setting? Then why not consider the Crystal Palace Subway, the newly-renovated heritage space not just on the edge of zone 3 but technically under it too. This unique event platform was formerly a fleeting underpass for Victorian daytrippers but because it's got an amazing roof it accidentally creates the perfect all-weather venue for your next bespoke gathering. Admittedly the impressive end is quite dark and leaks a bit, but it's OK because big money has been spent on a new roof over the outside bit so you could comfortably host a concert or a cocktail party here now. Book today!
The news for would-be volunteers
Open days at the Crystal Palace Subway rely on the goodwill of members of the Friends of Crystal Palace Subway and the Crystal Palace Park Trust. Join them and you too could attend in a coloured tabard, guiding visitors towards points of interest and explaining the sites history over and over again. You could also get involved in the ongoing renovation project, perhaps raising funds or maybe trying to work out where the water ingress is coming from (as was pretty obvious during yesterday's downpours). It's generous amazing people like this who improve the cultural fabric of our capital and give the rest of us somewhere pretty to photograph for fifteen minutes. Next opportunity 17th February... which is another Tuesday sorry.
Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, well-connected, municipal-focused, mixed heritage, excellent retail opportunities, refreshment-adjacent, no hilly bits, a bit of a stroll, won't take long. So here's a recently-curated heritage walk down Watford High Street, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same.
Either download the leaflet before you go or check the excellent information boards by the Pond and St Mary's Church.
At least one of the 17 stops made me go "hang on, what?!", and I used to live here.
Watford's Heritage Trail
1) Watford Town Hall
A fine Art Deco town hall built for the new municipal borough in the late 1930s. The architect was Charles Cowles-Vosey (who also designed the very similar Friern Barnet Town Hall). The long brick façade includes a concave curve that faced the town's focal roundabout, then rather smaller, and on top is a lantern clock tower. The building is still closed for lengthy upgrade works which plan to open up surplus office space to community use. One day the Museum of Watford will reopen inside, and on it drags.
EastEnders used to use the Town Hall to double up as courtrooms and as a register office.
2) The Colosseum
Originally the Assembly Rooms, this has long been Watford's premier music venue. Recently reopened after a lengthy refit and is looking rather splendid. Coming soon, Jason Donovan, Suzi Quatro and Justin from The Darkness. Its acoustics are nationally renowned, hence it was used to record the soundtracks to the Sound of Music, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.
Of all the performances I've seen here, Captain Pugwash probably beats The Spinners.
3) Watford Central Library
Of 1928 vintage and feels it inside, although there's now a cafe in a side room which has yanked it into the 21st century a bit. Street art combo MurWalls have painted a whopping head and shoulders of Sir Elton John on the side.
They don't have Watford's Heritage Trail leaflets, alas, but they do have activity sheets for children to follow along.
4) The Peace Memorial
Comprises three copper statues - 'To The Fallen', 'Victory' and 'To The Wounded'. The plinthed trio is splendidly evocative despite being designed by a sculptor from Oxhey, this because Mary Bromet had been a student of Auguste Rodin. They used to stand outside the Peace Memorial Hospital but were shifted round the back of the town hall after road widening in 1971.
The Peace Memorial Hospital oversaw the town's health from 1925 to 1985 and whipped off my toenail in 1973. It's now the Peace Hospice.
5) The Pond
The one feature generations of Watfordians would recognise. Once a natural pond at the top of the High Street where horses and market animals would drink. More recently a stepped ornamental pool shallow enough to revel in should Watford FC ever win anything. Very much a pigeon magnet.
Behind is the vacated Pryzm nightclub, formerly Top Rank, Bailey's, Paradise Lost, Kudos, Destiny and Oceana.
6) Monmouth Place
This fine multi-chimneyed building was built in 1928 and these days houses restaurants and bars. It's obviously Mock Tudor, but what's not obvious is that the herringbone brickwork is Genuine Tudor, the materials having been rescued from Cassiobury House (built 1546, demolished 1927).
The grounds of Cassiobury House, once the seat of the Earl of Essex, now form glorious Cassiobury Park.
7) Monmouth House
I'd always thought this was just another Tudorbethan row of shops but no, it's a 400 year-old Grade II listed building! It was commissioned in the 1620s by Sir Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, while he was living nearby at Moor Park. Carey was a courtier when Elizabeth I was on her deathbed and it was he who rode to Scotland to tell James VI he was also now James I. His widow moved here in 1639, and her downstairs rooms now host an Italian restaurant, slime parties and stainless steel cookware demonstrations.
Look out for the fire insurance mark above Fratelli's awning.
There's then a quarter-mile jump from the Pond cluster to the St Mary's cluster. Personally I would have included the late medieval timber-framed shop that houses Jackson's jewellers, also the late Georgian bank that's now Five Guys restaurant, also Gibson Butchers (home of the famous Gibsons sausages as seen on Celebrity Ready Steady Cook), but for some reason the trail skips all those.
8) Anthony Joshua Gold Letter Box
After the 2012 Olympics sixty postboxes were painted gold to commemorate the achievements of local champions. Anthony grew up on the Meriden Estate in Garston, was educated in Nigeria and Kings Langley Secondary School, and triumphed over other Olympians in the super heavyweight class./
This is one of three postboxes commemorating gold medals in boxing, the others being in Hull and Leeds.
12) St Mary's Parish Church
This flint and stone church is Watford's oldest surviving building, being substantially 15th century. It has a Hertfordshire-type tower with a turret and lead spirelet, also bells that bong every quarter hour. Visitors are welcome to potter inside, with the main interest being two substantial 17th century tombs in the Essex Chapel, all ruffs, marble drapery and pointy beards.
The churchyard is Watford's largest central open space, and the next five are all found there.
15) St Mary's Square Millennium Feature
A new town centre square opened here on a raised platform in December 1999. At each corner is a pillar topped by two sculpted faces. According to a plaque these represent 'different aspects of Watford and five twin towns and their Festivals', which must have made sense at the time but the intended meaning has swiftly dissipated.
Watford's twin towns are Mainz, Pesaro, Nanterre, Novgorod and Wilmington. I went on German exchange to the first of these.
10) Fig Tree Tomb
St Mary's churchyard has several stonking old tombs, this one the focus of a legend that drew many Victorian sightseers to Watford. It's said an atheist buried here had claimed that if God existed a tree would germinate inside their tomb. A fig tree duly grew up from the tomb dislodging the lid, attracting the aforementioned pilgrims, until the cold winter of 1963 finally killed it off.
The tomb was restored in 2013 so you'd never guess any of this.
11) Gravestone of George Doney
George was captured in Gambia in the 1760s, sold into slavery and brought to Cassiobury House where he spent 44 years as a servant. He's believed to have been well thought-of and well treated, but lived only two years as a free man after slavery was abolished in 1807.
It's believed George is the black servant pictured in the unfinished painting Harvest Home by JMW Turner.
13) Elizabeth Fuller's Free School
Opened in 1704 as a charitable enterprise, Elizabeth's school was "For the teaching of 40 poor boys & 14 poor girls of Watford in good literature & manners". The school continued after her death thanks to carefully planned endowments and broadened its education, eventually leading to the creation of Watford Grammar School for Girls in 1907 and Watford Grammar School for Boys in 1912. I only went to one of these, so thanks Liz!
The old school building is currently occupied by Office On The Hill who specialise in leasing out deskspace in listed buildings.
14) Bedford Almshouses
Yet more ridiculously old buildings in a town many people believe to be a modern creation. This row of timber and plaster almshouses was built in 1590 for "8 poor women to be chosen from Watford, and from Langley & Chenies in Buckinghamshire". Following centuries of continuous occupation they were nearly demolished in 1928, but saved when townspeople collected sufficient funds for repairs.
It took until the 1960s for the sculleries to be made into kitchenettes, and until the 21st century before residents got showers and baths.
16) Hornet Sculpture
The trail doesn't go to Vicarage Road but it does include this giant wasp added at the foot of Queens Road in 2001. Watford FC gained the nickname The Hornets after they switched to a yellow and black strip in 1959.
Had the sculpture been added earlier I suspect it would have scared the willies out of me when I went into what was then Woolworths, now McDonalds, for coloured pens and pick'n' mix.
17) Atria Centre
Watford's huge town centre mall opened in 1990 as the Harlequin Centre, a double decker monster than now stretches round to what used to be Charter Place. M&S are still here but John Lewis have long since scarpered, their once prestigious space now occupied by Dunelm, Poundland, Peacocks and B&M. New owners renamed the mall intu Watford in 2013, which everyone hated but thankfully they went bust and it was renamed atria Watford, and people also hated that so last year the council saw sense and renamed it the Harlequin again.
The trail finishes here, and I certainly had my eyes opened in a couple of places. Thanks Watford, thanks for everything.
And it was born here, above an Italian cafe in Soho.
The man who first demonstrated television was John Logie Baird, a former engineering apprentice from Helensburgh. And although there are other places that can plausibly claim to be TV's birthplace, including a terraced street in Hastings, a hill in north London and Selfridges, most people agree that the decisive moment was a demonstration given to journalists in Frith Street on 26th January 1926.
Baird might never have made it to London had he not been a sickly boy. When WW1 broke out he wanted to enlist but was refused due to ill health, so took a job with the Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company helping to make munitions instead. In 1923 he moved to the south coast for the good of his health because it had a warmer climate, renting rooms at 21 Linton Crescent in Hastings. Here the first television signal transmitting equipment was constructed, with component parts including a hatbox, tea chest, darning needles and bicycle light lenses. The first image to be transmitted was the shadow of a St Johns Ambulance medal with a distinctive spiky outline, an item still on display at Hastings Museum. But his tinkering proved dangerous, and although a 1000-volt electric shock thankfully resulted in nothing worse than a burnt hand, his landlord duly asked him to vacate the premises.
Baird moved to London in November 1924 in the hope of showing off his burgeoning invention, setting up a workshop in the attic at 22 Frith Street. Amongst those who dropped by was Gordon Selfridge who invited Baird to give demonstrations of his device in the Palm Court during his store's upcoming Birthday Week celebrations. He gave three shows a day to long queues of spectators, each invited to peer down a funnel at outlines of shapes transmitted from a separate device a few yards away, including a paper mask which Baird would make 'wink' by covering the eyehole. At this stage Baird's 'Televisor' was still electro-mechanical, the images formed by spinning discs with doubled-up lenses and perforated rectangular holes. But spectators were impressed, and Baird earned a much-needed £60 to plough back into his enterprise.
By October 1925 Baird had honed his processes sufficiently to be able to transmit an image with gradations of light and shade. Initially he used a ventriloquist's dummy called Stooky Bill, this because it had greater contrast than a human face and also because it wouldn't be harmed by intense heat or possible exploding glass. Later, somewhat over-excitedly, he invited a 20 year-old office worker called William Taynton to come upstairs and become TV's first human subject. William wasn't keen but an appearance fee of half a crown persuaded him to pick through a jungle of wires, sit in front of blazing hot lamps and stick his tongue out, for just long enough that Baird exclaimed "I've seen you, William, I've seen you. I've got television at last!" When the time came for a blue plaque to be unveiled outside 22 Frith Street in 1951, it was William they invited back to do the honours.
Then on 26th January 1926 came the first official demonstration to members of the press. Journalists and guests from the Royal Institution were invited into Baird's workshop in small groups and first shown the dummy on screen, then each other's faces transmitted from a separate room. Only one visitor got too close to the discs and ended up with a sliced beard. Most of those present weren't especially impressed and failed to realise the significance of what they'd just seen, but The Times followed up with a short article two days later.
Members of the Royal Institution and other visitors to a laboratory in an upper room in Frith-Street, Soho, on Tuesday saw a demonstration of apparatus invented by Mr. J.L. Baird, who claims to have solved the problem of television. They were shown a transmitting machine, consisting of a large wooden revolving disc containing lenses, behind which was a revolving shutter and a light sensitive cell. It was explained that by means of the shutter and lens disc an image of articles or persons standing in front of the machine could be made to pass over the light sensitive cell at high speed. The current in the cell varies in proportion to the light falling on it, and this varying current is transmitted to a receiver where it controls a light behind an optical arrangement similar to that at the sending end. By this means a point of light is caused to traverse a ground glass screen. The light is dim at the shadows and bright at the high lights, and crosses the screen so rapidly that the whole image appears simultaneously to the eye. (The Times, 28th January 1926)
These days 22 Frith Street is home to retro cafe Bar Italia. It's been owned and run by the Polledri family since 1949, a coffee-squirting dynasty who also run the Little Italy restaurant nextdoor. The stone floor was laid by their uncle Torino, a terrazzo mosaic specialist, and the counter was one of the first in London to be graced by an original Gaggia machine. Once a magnet for mods on scooters Bar Italia has attracted many famous names over the years, notably Rocky Marciano whose huge poster has pride of place behind the counter. You could thus celebrate today's centenary with an espresso and a slice of pizza in the photo-bedecked interior, or risk sitting outside below the neon sign with a froth and cheesecake combo.
Number 22 also displays a Milestone plaque erected by The Institution of Electrical Engineers citing "the world's first public demonstration of live television". Below is a much newer plaque citing this as an accredited World Origin Site. I first saw one of these inside the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum earlier in the month, earned for the discovery of penicillin, but whereas that was designated WOS 0001 the invention of television only ranks 0037. I believe they're unveiling it officially at 2pm this afternoon, even though it was perfectly visible over the weekend.
Baird was a highly driven inventor and entrepreneur and went on to develop prototypes for all sorts of forward-looking formats. In 1927 he came up with 'Phonovision' (image recordings onto 78 rpm gramophone records) and 'Noctovision' (infra-red TV). In 1928, amazingly, he demonstrated both colour television and stereoscopic (3D) television. His ultimate aim was television broadcasting via the BBC, beginning experimental transmissions of 30-line television in 1930 and delivering the first outside broadcast (from the Derby) in 1931, not that anyone was yet watching.
But in 1932 EMI started to provide serious competition, developing their own pioneering electronic television camera called the Emitron. The government's Television Advisory Committee ultimately recommended that both Baird's 240-line mechanical system and Marconi-EMI's 405-line electronic system be developed as alternatives for the proposed new London television station. And so it was that when broadcast TV first launched at Alexandra Palace on 2nd November 1936 the two systems alternated one week each... Baird second.
It rapidly became clear that the Marconi system was far superior and Baird's was dropped after just three months. Baird also suffered when his studios were burned in the fire that destroyed the Crystal Palace, and his company went into receivership when all TV broadcasting was suspended at the start of WW2. He carried on inventing at home in Sydenham, vastly improving his system for colour television, until his laboratory was made unusable by bomb damage. Alas ill health caught up with him and he died after a stroke at the age of 57, just one week after the BBC restarted television broadcasts in 1946. You can't see his final home in Bexhill because it was replaced by a block of flats in 2005, but Baird does have an impressive number of plaques across central London and SE26.
It's not always easy being first, and after early televisual success John Logie Baird saw his star wane and fade. But it's still him we remember for making possible one of the key transformative inventions of the 20th century, even though barely anyone watched his first efforts. It took ten years to get from Stooky Bill to BBC TV's opening night, then another two decades before the widespread adoption of TV sets in British households and two more until colour television took hold. But 100 years on almost all of us have a TV set at home and effectively another in our pocket, and all because a Scotsman came to London and cleverly spun some discs.
deej's bus spot
It's been another super Superloop Saturday and the channel's been out on the decks! Woop to the SL11, the big red express rocking the hood from North Greenwich to Abbey Wood.
Head to TikTok for all the reels of buses driving past and the full-length route videos, also more shots of buses driving past and route videos in the opposite direction. We got you covered!
Bit sad the Mayor didn't rock up but seems he only does weekdays. Not even Bus Aunty made an appearance. But BusTokker09 was there, also Jings, Markie, Rizzo, Dr Kilt, Denzel, the Carshalton Crew, Axeman Joe and some excitable 8 year-olds with their dads. Check out all their channels too, goes without saying.
I can't lie, the worst thing was they didn't even send the right vehicles.
What we expect on Day One is a pristine fleet in red and white, fully branded. What we got was old red Wrightbus Eclipse Geminis drafted in to cover for the lack of NB4Ls. These vehicles had plates like BG59FXD and BV10WVG which makes them 2010 vintage, so hardly the gleaming start Sadiq promised. Like Rizzo said, "Man these vehicles are older than I am!" Our first bus was so ancient that the driver had to hop out of his cab to try and nudge the front door open.
Thing is, the SL11 is due to run with electric double decks. But they're not arriving until later in the contract so the plan was to stopgap with New Routemasters instead, recently turfed off the SL3. But even they're not ready so instead we got doddery diesels making up at least 80% of the fleet. I don't think I saw more than three Boris Buses in SL11 livery all day. "Who even was Boris?" asked Rizzo, "the Mayor has only ever been Khan in my day."
Obvs we waited long enough to catch a proper SL11 with the white top and red bottom. When it came it had the proper blobby diagram on the side, also maps inside for the SL11 and N472 which is the nightbus version. But we were only on board for two minutes going nowhere before the driver chucked everyone off. I didn't hear why because like everyone I had my chunky headphones on. So we all piled off and had to get a scuzzy old bus instead, and someone from a rival crew got the front seat and that was my westbound reel wrecked.
Best thing about the SL11 is how often it is. The old 472 was only every ten minutes but this is every six, and ten an hour is massive! It means you're never far away from catching one, unless you're at a stop where it doesn't stop in which case you could be proper far away. It also meant there was none of the usual Day One riots as all us hormonal spotters piled onto the same top deck, because there was so many top decks to go round. Great vibes!
Bus statz by Jings The SL11 is the most frequent Superloop route!
every 6 minutes: SL11
every 8 minutes: SL4
every 10 minutes: SL8
every 12 minutes: SL1, SL2, SL3, SL5, SL9, SL10
every 15 minutes: SL6, SL7
The SL11 is the most 5th most frequent TfL bus route!
every 5 minutes: 18, 38, W7
every 5-6 minutes: EL1
every 6 minutes: 29, 41, 86, 158, 207, SL11, W3
every 6-7 minutes: 5, 73, 137, 141, 279
I can't lie, a lot of the SL11s were mostly empty. Every six minutes does seem well generous, even for shoppers piling from Thamesmead to Woolwich. But it was proper great to sail past all the stops in Thamesmead North where the 472 used to stop and the SL11 doesn't. Ha we watched them put their arms out, and ha we whizzed straight past. It's their own fault for living near a bus stop they should have realised might be skipped one day.
Also the roadworks between Charlton and Woolwich are pretty rad. There's like a mile and a half of orange barriers and narrow carriageways, also lorries and diggers, also long wide trenches where unhelpful street furniture used to be. It's all so cyclists can have a safer ride, also Markie on his e-scooter. But it means 18 months of nasty disruption, no cap, and that totally slowed the bus down.
But it was still pretty fast. Jings says the 472 used to take an hour off-peak and the SL11 is now timetabled for more like three-quarters. We actually did North Greenwich to Abbey Wood in 37 minutes flat, although that's before everyone in southeast London climbed in their cars and drove to the shops so we imagine it was slower later.
Disappointingly no freebies. In the old days the jobbers in pink tabards appeared on day 1 and handed out maps and advice, even pin badges. Rizzo has all the pin badges on his rucksack. This time nothing, not even a smiling nod towards the bus because I guess TfL is skint now.
Anyway you don't want words you want vids, better still vids to an urban beat with occasional words superimposed on top. All our favourite streams are on our own channels, including the full ride and the one Tokker sped-up after filming buses turning into the stand. Sorry for the five minutes of glare when LTZ1851 was driving into the sun, but we had to include it for completeness. If you're proper old, like over 30, you might also want to look at the photos the greyhairs with big lenses spent all day taking.
We don't yet know when the gang will next be together IRL, no firm info for the SL12's yet been spilled. But see you probably over Easter for a ride to the godforsaken estuary edge in Rainham, all faithfully recorded in portrait mode and watched by almost ten of you. Bring on the Havering Loop!
One of the things I'm passionate about is Havering, which is my borough, not being tied to the Mayor of London, and I would like Havering to be more of an independent borough, and Nigel has said to me that Havering would have that choice, so we could actually be independent from Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London and the City Hall bureaucracy, so I'm really keen on that.Well of course he'd say that.
Andrew has always been an Essex boy at heart, despite being born a year after his beloved borough of Romford was absorbed into Greater London. Hence he's been fighting a one-man battle to get Havering absorbed back into Essex ever since becoming an MP in 2001, pleading with all the governments of the day to let them back in. His latest wheeze was an adjournment debate last May entitled Havering Borough and Essex Devolution, a valiant attempt to take advantage of upcoming administrative reorganisation and whisk Romford out of London's orbit altogether.
Now is the time to consider Havering's future. With devolution for what is termed Greater Essex now being implemented, this must surely be the right moment to examine a change that would give the people of Romford, Hornchurch, Upminster and Rainham hope that we could be part of something that better suits our local needs and goes with the grain of our historical identity.Evidence he presented to Parliament included:
» My house has a Romford, Essex RM1 postcode.QED.
» My home telephone number has a Romford, Essex 01708 dialling code.
» The church where I was christened and confirmed falls within the diocese of Chelmsford, Essex.
» Essex county cricket club is our local cricket team, and we support it strongly.
» Romford football club are part of the Essex senior football league.
» Romford golf club is part of the Essex Golf Union.
» Our local bowling clubs for Romford, Gidea Park and Hornchurch all fall under the Essex County Bowling Association.
» The Bedfords Park visitor centre in the historic Essex village of Havering-atte-Bower is managed by Essex Wildlife Trust.
» Our water supply comes from Essex and Suffolk Water.
The Minister for Local Government and English Devolution threw polite cold water on the proposals, pointing out that plans for reorganisation are restricted to the shire counties and Romford isn't in one.
It is currently not envisaged that the boundaries of Greater London will be changed, or that the proposed Greater Essex mayoral combined county authority will be expanded, although the latter would be possible at a later date should it be locally desired and should statutory tests be met. (Jim McMahon)But imagine a future in which a Reform government takes power and a Reform government is keen to please a Reform MP with his greatest desire. What might be the consequences if Romford, Rainham and Upminster were no longer in London?
London would look different.
A huge lump would be chopped off London's eastern edge, reducing the area of the capital by 7%. The easternmost point in London would become the Dartford Creek flood barrier rather than a muddy field far beyond the M25. London would be five miles narrower than before. One-sixth of London's Green Belt would vanish overnight.
London would lose 260,000 residents, reducing its population by just 3%. It'd become a younger city, a more left wing city and a less white city. A greater proportion of its residents would rent. It might also become a happier city because the moaners had left.
Havering becoming an independent borough would remove a large hospital from London, also a windmill, 18 secondary schools, seven miles of motorway and three Parkruns.
Havering would no longer have to follow what Andrew calls the Mayor's woke agenda. It'd remove the borough from ULEZ which would please its drivers no end. Residents would also no longer have to pay the Mayor of London's precept, currently £490 for a Band D property, but might end up paying more to a devolved authority once the rest of London's support was removed.
And what would TfL do? They'd still carry on running trains here, just as they operate trains in Herts, Bucks and Essex. But it'd look odd if they carried on supporting the Liberty line, given that the runt of the Overground would be entirely outside London. Also there'd be thirteen bus routes expelled entirely into Essex (165, 193, 248, 252, 256, 294, 346, 365, 370, 372, 375, 496, 498), none of which TfL would be obligated to operate and which a new Essex authority might not feel able to support. Havering's bus network could significantly deteriorate.
The London Loop would need redrawing, condensing the last four sections into a shortcut down the Rom valley.
The Freedom Pass (and 60+ Oyster) would no longer apply to Havering. That'll be why Andrew pre-emptively introduced the Transport for London (Extension of Concessions) Bill in Parliament last year. This would "Require Transport for London to enable any local authority in England which is served by a Transport for London route, or by a route to which a TfL concessionary scheme applies, to opt into concessionary fare schemes, including the Freedom Pass." Obviously it stands no chance, but a later Reform government could definitely push it through just to piss London off, so watch this space.
Finally, people who go on and on and on about Romford being in Essex would finally shut up because it would be.
Of course we're unlikely to get a new national government before 2029, so Andrew potentially getting his own way is a long way off. Also local government reorganisation in Essex should have been completed by then and nobody's going to want to do it again. Also the next City Hall election will have taken place a year earlier and the new Mayor might no longer be a Labour bogeyman.
It's never going to happen, Andrew's administrative wet dream will not manifest in real life. But imagine if it did. Residents of Havering might find out they lose more than they gain, and Londoners might be delighted to see the back of them.
Bronze award ✅
Silver award ✅
Gold award ✅
This is the page on public transport in Tower Hamlets.
The first sentence, fair enough.
Tower Hamlets is well connected with its tube, bus and train links across the borough to the City and the West End.But then...
It is also served by the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) - the only fully accessible railway in the UK - and is home to City Airport.City Airport is in Newham, not Tower Hamlets. Nobody's checked this for a while.
Check before you travel made easier by TfLNobody says "computers and mobiles" any more, this is quite old.
Jubilee line passengers can now receive the latest travel news direct to their computers and mobiles by signing up for travel alerts and weekend-closure-emails from the Transport of London website.
The site also gives details of longer term line and station closures, as well as tools to help passengers 'grab' live content for their personalised iGoogle homepage, Facebook or MySpace profile, blog or website.Nobody mentions iGoogle or MySpace profiles any more either. iGoogle was a thing between May 2005 and November 2013. MySpace is still a thing but slumped in general public perception in 2009, having launched in 2003. As for TfL providing widgets to personalise blogs and websites, that stopped years ago too.
The drive comes as work to improve the Jubilee line is set to continue over the Christmas holiday period.And that should properly help date this page. The Jubilee line had multiple closures in December 2005 to aid the introduction of seven carriage trains, also a full line closure for three days after Christmas in 2009.
Checking the Tower Hamlets website via the Wayback Machine, it seems Christmas 2009 is when the guff about iGoogle and MySpace was added.
I therefore assert that the text on this page of the Tower Hamlets website hasn't been updated for over 16 years.
I wonder if anyone can find anything older (and similarly out-of-date) on this or any other local government website.
For my second alphabetical visit to unsung suburbs we're off to Bexley, appropriately enough, where three Bs are strung out along two miles of road beyond Eltham. Blackfen, Blendon and Bridgen were still hamlets 100 years ago, then the building of Rochester Way and railway electrification triggered substantial residential growth. The A2 now hugs all three close, hence a local reliance on car culture, but I buzzed from one B to the next on foot instead.
B is for Blackfen
Blackfen is the largest of the three, inasmuch as its possible to divide up the amorphous suburban sprawl hereabouts. The name means 'dark-coloured marshy district', which is hardly a ringing endorsement but originally all this was woodland and farmland rather than real estate to flog. A few cottages existed near what's now the main crossroads and also a pub, The Woodman, which opened to serve rural drinkers in 1845. It'd be plausible to believe the current building was the original were it not for the date on the front, 1931 being the year development ignited locally. So keen were the owners to maintain trade that they built the new pub behind the old one before demolishing it, which has proved fortuitous because there's now room for an enormous beer terrace out front plus a row of timber sheds sponsored by Beavertown.
The pub's owners have renamed it George Staples Sidcup, this because George Staples was the original publican in 1845 and because nobody's heard of Blackfen.
Blackfen has a lengthy run of shops, one end a proper redbrick parade circa 1938 and the other a more motley assortment of independent businesses. The motor trade features heavily should you need a used white van or alloy wheels, also haircare and schoolwear should your littl'un need togging out. The busiest cafe appears to be inside the Community Library, which is as it should be. Shops which provide an insight into the local population include a pie and mash shop, two funeral directors and Tonics!, a self-professed retro menswear shop for former mods, scooterists, skins, casuals or rudeboys. My favourite throwback is 1950s bakery J Ayre, not just because they display an 01 telephone number on the exterior but because they still bake gypsy tarts, and if BestMate ever needs a lift I drop in and buy him some from his childhood local. He also remembers when the Co-op was a Safeway, indeed Bexley's first large superstore, but not when it was the Odeon cinema before that.
So quickly was Wellington Parade erected that they didn't wait to demolish all of Mr Gwillim's cottage, which is why you can still see its roof perched atop Bulldog Windows and Oscar's chippy.
If it still feels relatively quiet round here that's because urban planners chose not to add a junction to the A2 when the dual carriageway was upgraded in 1969. This calms the local streets somewhat, of which Days Lane is a repurposed country lane and Wellington Avenue one of the first new roads. It's a very Bexley thing that most houses have a garage round the back accessed via a lowly communal drive, the lack of garages up front allowing the developers to fit more houses in. At the heart of all this is The Oval, an eye-shaped green faced on one side by a lengthy Mock Tudor shopping parade. It's one of my favourite outer suburban foci, a genuinely attractive retail curve providing a desirable focus for the surrounding neighbourhood. It's also great for local branding, hence includes the Oval Cafe, Oval Brasserie, Oval Fish Bar, Oval Pet Centre and Oval Village convenience store.
A road behind The Oval is called The Triangle, should I ever be looking for a series of geometric streets to review.
Blackfen's such a 1930s construct that it contains only four locally-listed buildings, and just one of these is over 100 years old. My favourite is the small concrete block behind the bus stop at the foot of Wellington Avenue which has a periscope-like metal vent protruding from its roof. It's actually an air raid shelter, and I'd hope there's a much larger space beneath the verge because you'd barely get two bunkbeds inside what's visible. Note the brief brick wall erected just in front of the entrance, a simple insurance policy that would have helped shield those inside from direct blast damage. Also locally-listed is the rare Edward VIII pillar box at the eastern end of Tyrell Avenue, accessed via a thin concrete footbridge across the tarmac chasm of East Rochester Way. The folk whose semis face the A2 direct have deliberately chosen Blackfen's shortest straw.
If you're local (or just interested), Blackfen Past and Present is an excellent online resource that puts most London suburbs to shame.
B is for Blendon
Heading east Blackfen blends invisibly into Blendon, Bexley not being a borough that erects neighbourhood signs. The name originally means "the farm of the people who live by the dark water", again suggesting there's something a bit gloomy about the groundwater round here. Blendon does have a junction onto the A2 so is inherently more car-focused, including two roundabouts, a Shell garage and a large Audi showroom. Most conspicuous is what looks like an abandoned chapel but is actually a small cottage with a spire on top, a folly first plonked here in the 1760s on the edge of Danson Park. It was designed by Capability Brown to cap the view across the lake from the big house, but that line of sight's now blocked off by three rows of houses and a dual carriageway leaving Chapel House looking somewhat forlorn.
The dry cleaner at number 266 retired last year and her son is reopening the premises as a micropub called The Dog House in the spring.
The other out-of-place building by the roundabout is a turrety cottage, recently sold. This used to be the West Lodge for a large crenelated villa, Blendon Hall, built in 1763 as a country retreat set in extensive landscaped grounds. In 1929 the estate was inevitably sold off for housing, and because nobody wanted to buy the mansion in the middle it was demolished four years later. Walking the 88 acres today you'd never guess these upmarket avenues were once a rich man's parkland, although the twin lines of linden trees at the foot of The Avenue are actually a leftover from a path linking the Boat House to the Bath House. As for the lakes, formed by damming a local stream, they've since been filled in and replaced by two dippy cul-de-sacs called Beechway and The Sanctuary. Whilst virtually all of the houses here are big semis the estate also includes a few art moderne anomalies, one pair curved and the other not, and why on earth did they not build more than four of these architectural beauties?
In 2007 a small hole opened up in a garden on Beechway, and when an archaeological team went down they found a narrow waterproof chamber that once ran the full length of the Hall.
B is for Bridgen
The last of the trio, and least well-known, is Bridgen. Like Blackfen and Blendon it was originally a small hamlet, and it must still exist because TfL once produced a bus spider map for it. In its day it would have been a brief run of cottages where the road climbs a sudden rise, and still forms a noticeable break in the continuum of 1930s semis. One building looks like it was formerly a shop, one cottage displays a plaque dated 1827 and the flinty hall at the top of the hill is Bridgen's old infant school. Again there used to be a Georgian mansion here (a "handsome and spacious" pile called Bridgen Place) and again no trace remains because the estate's been turned over to housing. As for the pub on the corner, this started out in the 17th century as the Anchor and Cable, became the Blue Anchor in the 18th and is now just The Anchor. Alas in 1928 it was completely rebuilt because the Dartford Brewery realised a yokel-hole was totally inappropriate for hundreds of suburban incomers, so these days they serve smothered steak and spirits rather than a slice of Stuart history.
One particular inn sign once led locals to nickname the pub The Snake and Pickaxe.
There is a bridge in Bridgen where the road to Bexley Village crosses the River Shuttle, a brief span originally called Gad Bridge. You can still slip off the road here and follow the river into what's left of Bexley Park Woods, passing what I consider to be southeast London's finest earthy meanders. Amid the trees on the north bank, best approached in sensible footwear, is a slab-topped concrete culvert out of which flows the half-mile Bridgen Stream. That's the buried river which once fed the lakes back at Blendon Hall, and here's where it joins the Shuttle which earlier drained the lower slopes of Blackfen. These three Bs really are connected and not just by road, by water too.
The 132 bus also passes through Blackfen, Blendon and Bridgen, should you want to experience all of this in seven minutes flat.
Pub quizzes in Rutland
Sunday: The Royal Duke, Oakham (1st Sunday of the month); The Old Pheasant, Glaston (last)
Monday: The Catmose Club, Oakham; The Fox, North Luffenham
Tuesday: The George & Dragon, Seaton (1st); The White Lion, Whissendine (1st); The Crown, Uppingham (alternate)
Wednesday: The Grainstore, Oakham (1st); The Hornblower, Oakham (1st); The Wheatsheaf, Oakham (3rd); Royal Oak, Duddington (last), The Sun Inn, Cottesmore (last)
Thursday: The Plough, Greetham; The Black Bull, Market Overton (last); The Vaults, Uppingham (last); The Horse & Jockey, Manton (occasional)
England's least busy motorways: M181, M45, M49, M48, M50, M180, M58, M271, M67, M69
Times when 'London will be hit by five days of snow' according to Time Out
27th January: starting at 6am on Tuesday until 9am
27th/28th January: from 10pm and go on until 9am on Wednesday
29th January: from 12am until 10am
29th/30th January: watch out for the white stuff from 11pm on Thurs night until 10am
31st January/1st February: one final flurry from 11pm on Saturday lasting until 9am on Sunday
The largest settlements in Greenland by population
20,000: Nuuk
4000-6000: Sisimiut, Ilulissat
2000-4000: Qaqortoq, Aasiaat, Maniitsoq
1000-2000: Tasiilaq, Uummannaq, Narsaq, Paamiut, Nanortalik, Upernavik
Aircraft that entered passenger service 50 years ago today: Concorde (LHR → BAH, CDG → GIG)
Number 1 albums whose titles were 5 letters or less
1960s: Help
1970s: Ram, Hello, Tusk
1980s: Duke, Sky 2, Dare, Shaky, Fame, War, True, Touch, Alf, So, Bad, Faith, Blast, Wild
1990s: Doubt, Seal, Stars, Diva, Up, Jam, Suede, Janet, Very, Come, Songs, Pulse, Life, Older, Load, K, Spice, Glow, Blur, Pop, Ultra, Blue, Five
2000s: Rise, Play, Crush, Music, Kid A, Iowa, The ID, Fever, Let Go, G4, X&Y, Ta-Dah, Magic, Konk, Forth, JLS, Echo
2010s: Lungs, Loud, MDNA, Sing, Ora, Babel, Red, Home, AM, Prism, Girl, Stars, III, Title, Views, Blond, Walls, Human, Now, Si, Love, Amo, Lover, Kind
2020s: Calm, Edna, Disco, Weird, WL, Sour, Donda, FTHC, Crash, We, XXV, N K-Pop, Guts, I/O, Tangk, Yummy, Gary, Brat, GNX, Music, Koko, More, Idols, Play
21st century years with 53 Mondays: 2001, 2007, 2012, 2018, 2024, 2029, 2035, 2040, 2046, 2052, 2057, 2063, 2068, 2074, 2080, 2085, 2091, 2096
Presenters of over 200 episodes of Play School
Still with us: Carol Chell, Johnny Ball, Chloe Ashcroft, Miranda Connell, Fred Harris, Don Spencer, Lionel Morton, Carol Ward, Carol Leader, Floella Benjamin, Stuart McGugan, Derek Griffiths, Ben Thomas
No longer with us: Rick Jones, Brian Cant, Julie Stevens, Sarah Long
Atolls of the Chagos Islands: Blenheim Reef, Diego Garcia, Egmont Islands, Great Chagos Bank, Peros Banhos, Salomon Islands, Speakers Bank
Radio 1 weekday daytime DJ lineups
1967: Tony Blackburn, Pete Murray, Jimmy Young, Simon Dee, Dave Cash, Pete Brady, Don Moss, David Symonds
1976: Noel Edmonds, Tony Blackburn, Paul Burnett, David Hamilton
1986: Mike Read, Simon Bates, Gary Davies, Steve Wright, Bruno Brookes
1996: Chris Evans, Simon Mayo, Lisa I'Anson, Nicky Campbell, Mark Goodier
2006: Chris Moyles, Jo Whiley, Colin & Edith, Scott Mills
2016: Nick Grimshaw, Clara Amfo, Scott Mills, Greg James
2026: Greg James, Rickie & Melvin and Charlie, Matt & Mollie, Katie & Jamie
Anagrams of Scottish cities: Owlgags, Hungerbid, Rebeaned, Denude, Rimfunneled, Neversins, Threp, Tingirls
Countries whose flags are formed of equal stripes
2 horizontal: Indonesia, Monaco, Poland, Ukraine
3 horizontal: Armenia, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Gabon, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Russia, Sierra Leone, Yemen
3 vertical: Andorra, Belgium, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, France, Guinea, Ireland, Italy, Mali, New Caledonia, Nigeria, Peru, Romania, Saint Barthelmy, Saint Martin
4 horizontal: Mauritius
Most popular names for pets
Cats: Luna, Bella, Milo, Simba, Nala, Oreo, Willow, Tigger, Daisy, Loki
Dogs: Poppy, Luna, Bella, Daisy, Teddy, Milo, Ruby, Rosie, Alfie, Buddy
London boroughs I've shagged in: Barnet, Camden, Croydon, Hackney, Lambeth, Newham, Islington, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Westminster
Crisp brand launches
1968: Quavers, Pringles
1970: Wotsits
1971: Chipsticks, Hula Hoops
1973: Ringos
1974: Skips
1975: Frazzles
1976: Discos, Squares
1977: Monster Munch
Zone 2 stations without TfL services: Brixton, Deptford, Drayton Park, East Dulwich, Essex Road, Herne Hill, Loughborough Junction, North Dulwich, Nunhead, Putney, Queenstown Road (Battersea), South Bermondsey, St Johns, Wandsworth Town
Most profitable UK companies
1990: BT, BP, Shell, British Gas, Hanson, BAT, Grand Metropolitan, ICI, Glaxo, BTR
2025: Shell, BP, HSBC, Tesco, Lloyds, Unilever, AstraZeneca, Rio Tinto, Vodafone, J Sainsbury
Months by length
28 or 29 days: February
30 days: April, June, September, November
30 days 23 hours: March
31 days: January, May, July, August, December
31 days 1 hour: October
Scottish monarchs (1057-1603): 6 Jameses, 3 Alexanders and Roberts, 2 Malcolms and Davids, and 1 Donald, Duncan, Edgar, John, Margaret, Mary and William
First trains on weekdays
Circle: 0439 Hammersmith - Aldgate
Piccadilly: 0449 Osterley - Heathrow T4
District: 0442 Ealing Common - Ealing Broadway
Central: 0456 Loughton - Epping
Metropolitan: 0500 Wembley Park - Baker Street
Hammersmith & City: 0502 Barking - Hammersmith
Jubilee: 0505 Wembley Park - Stratford
Northern: 0512 East Finchley - Mill Hill East
Bakerloo: 0515 Stonebridge Park - Harrow & Wealdstone
Victoria: 0521 Seven Sisters - Brixton
Waterloo & City: 0600 Waterloo - Bank
26 MPs elected in the 1826 General Election: Clinton James Fynes Clinton, William Tyrwhitt-Drake, Thomas Tyrwhitt-Drake, Thomas Assheton Smith II, Wilson Aylesbury Roberts, Horace Beauchamp Seymour, Charles Kemeys Kemeys Tynte, Fulk Greville Howard, Peregrine Cust, Edmund Pollexfen Bastard, Sir Denham Jephson-Norreys, Samuel Trehawke Kekewich, Major-General Frederick Ponsonby, Charles Delaet Waldo Sibthorp, William Huskisson, Frank Frank, Gibbs Crawfurd Antrobus, Lancelot Shadwell, Abel Rous Dottin, Wadham Wyndham, Bingham Baring, Dugdale Stratford Dugdale, Masterton Ure, Pownoll Bastard Pellew, Sir John Poo Beresford, Horace Twiss
Because Andrew Rosindell was never your normal Conservative.
This is Andrew's constituency HQ in Romford.
It's called Margaret Thatcher House and it's in Western Road, just behind the Mercury Mall.
Outside are four big posters of Andrew, two plaques and five flags. Andrew is a self-confessed flag fanatic and Chair of the Flags and Heraldry All-Party Parliamentary Group, so it's no surprise to see a proliferation of poles outside the building. Two Union Flags hang from the building itself while the central red, white and blue is flanked by a St George's cross and the flag of Essex. Andrew is 100% convinced that Romford should be in Essex, even though it hasn't been since before he was born, and last year spoke lengthily in Parliament proposing that "Havering Belongs in Essex - Not Greater London". Andrew also loves to use the coat of arms of the long-defunct Municipal Borough of Romford so it appears on his poster amid the flags... and also in pride of place above the front door.
Margaret Thatcher came to open the building on 17th March 2005 after the previous Tory HQ burnt down. She was described on the day as "a bit frail", but still got stuck in with a shovel to plant a tree in Coronation Gardens. The blue plaque by the door isn't official, it says Romford Conservative Association around the edge, but it does describe our former PM as The Rt. Hon. The Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven L.G. O.M. F.R.S. because it's a very Andrew thing to be properly correct about official titles. Also the opening day just happened to be Andrew's birthday, which I doubt was a coincidence, and last March his constituency colleagues threw him a special St Patrick's Day party at which he danced to Steps in front of several portraits of the Iron Lady. They won't be hosting one again.
As yet the posters of Andrew haven't been removed because it takes time to react to a sudden defection. Andrew's done a much swifter job on his own website, however, which he took down yesterday and it now redirects to his page at parliament.uk. Here's some of what you're missing.
• Andrew's interest in politics started from a young age, joining the Conservative Party at the age of fourteen. He was elected Chairman of the Romford Young Conservatives at sixteen and went on to become a Councillor for the Chase Cross Ward in 1990.Even in 2002 Andrew was being described "a right-wing populist", so it's not hard to see why he might have switched to Reform. It is a tad self-serving though, having been elected as Romford's Conservative MP at every election since 2001 and now suddenly jumping ship to the right-wing party furthest ahead in local polls. Seemingly the straw that broke the camel's back is the ongoing controversy over handing back the Chagos Islands, but not the fact the government are doing it, just that the Conservatives aren't doing enough to stop them.
• Andrew belonged to a small group of Conservative 'Spartans', who voted against the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement each time it was put before the House.
• "I recently conducted an MP's Opinion Poll, receiving responses from over 400 residents in the Romford constituency. An impressive 94% of participants voted in favour of granting Havering independence from City Hall. This is a clear mandate from our community, signaling the desire for change and self-determination."
• Known as one of Westminster's most patriotic M.P.s, Andrew has always believed the Union Flag should be proudly flown from all public buildings across the U.K.
• "The 'woke' agenda has made its way into so many of our national institutions, businesses, the Church, our media and universities. I believe it is time to address this, which is why I am launching the Romford 'Woke Watch' initiative - a platform designed for local people to voice their concerns and combat this growing self-loathing by an elite minority."
• In 2022, he launched a campaign to play the National Anthem on BBC every evening, unfortunately they have not done so yet but GB News now play it at 6am each morning before live programming commences.
However, the time has come to put country before party. The failure of the Conservative Party both when in government and more recently in opposition to actively hold the government to account on the issue of Chagossian self-determination and the defence of British sovereignty, represents a clear red line for me.Also I note that even at the 2024 election, Andrew was promoting himself with a leaflet that made no mention of the Conservative party.
It's very Rosindell to write M.P. as a proper abbreviation.
It's very Rosindell to include two Union Flags and a St George's Cross.
It's very Rosindell to include the coats of arms of the Municipal Borough of Romford, Hornchurch Urban District and Essex.
And it's exceptionally Rosindell to include the names of 14 places within the constituency drilling down to increasingly archaic settlements.
These are the geographical extremes of Andrew's constituency, namely Havering-atte-Bower, Ardleigh Green, Crowlands and an unnamed neighbourhood near St Leonard's Hamlet.
The photos show...
N) a proud village sign draped with a backward England flag
E) a throwback bakery with a window full of warm sausage rolls
W) a glum pebbledash terrace with a flat on the market for £235,000
S) a house on Acacia Avenue with a recently-erected double-flagged flagpole
This is potential Reform territory on all fronts.
The big question is how many other London constituencies might switch to Reform too. The latest poll suggests seven more are currently on track to flip to Farage, all of them in outer east or southeast London.
Labour → Reform
Barking
Bexleyheath & Crayford
Dagenham & Rainham
Eltham & ChislehurstConservative → Reform
Hornchurch & Upminster
Old Bexley & Sidcup
Orpington
No General Election is due for three years and an awful lot could happen before then, plus don't underestimate the impact of tactical voting. More likely perhaps is that another Conservative MP will defect, what with the political momentum currently running that way, rather than risk being voted out further down the line. Andrew Rosindell may not be the last London MP to shake Nigel Farage's hand outside Westminster, but he always looked the most likely to defect and oh look, he now has.
At a later station I looked around the platform and at least half the waiting passengers were carrying a bottle of water. Several were carrying nothing apart from a bottle of water, as if it's the sole essential when they travel. Some had their bottle tucked into the pocket of a bag or rucksack so it was always available. The well-planned ones had refillable bottles, often fairly expensive-looking, but the majority were carrying a plastic bottle they'd either brought with them or bought along the way. I checked the vending machine on the platform and it contained far more bottles of water than any other drink, so plainly this stuff sells.
And as yet another teenager lifted yet another container of clear liquid to their lips I thought "can these people really not go very long without a sip of water?"
You don't need to drink water frequently, I checked. What you do need to do is drink enough.
» The government recommends that people should aim to drink 6 to 8 cups or glasses of fluid a day.You also need to drink regularly enough to avoid dehydration, thirst and darker urine.
» National guidance is that you should drink around 6-8 glasses a day (roughly 1-5-2 litres).
» As a guide, the government recommends 6 to 8 cups or glasses a day.
» Adults need to drink around 1.5-2 litres of fluid a day.
» The key is to start drinking in the morning and continue to do so regularly throughout the day.These aren't rigid rules, and some people with health issues may need to drink more.
» Make sure you have enough things available to drink throughout the day.
» Remember to drink regularly to keep thirst at bay.
» The more exercise you do, the more you'll need to drink.But although I can find plenty of advice that carrying water with you is a good idea, I can't find anything that suggests you need to sip from it frequently. Where did this idea come from that taking little swigs every few minutes is the healthy thing to do?
» You may need to drink more fluids if you're pregnant or breastfeeding.
» Older people often don't drink enough.
It might be from companies that make bottled water in an attempt to sell you more of it. It might be that some people are overly keen to keep thirst at bay. It might be a commonplace misreading of "regularly" for "frequently". It might come from marketing campaigns with a full-on 'hydration' focus in an attempt to make their product feel more essential. It might be that people find comfort in swigging water in much the same way that a cigarette or vaping settles them. It might just be because everyone else is doing it.
Obviously you can not drink for several hours and suffer no ill effects. An hour's abstinence is perfectly fine, even four or five hours without a drop touching your lips because you're getting on with your life. Overnight we drink nothing for ages while we're asleep and nobody recommends setting the alarm for 4am for a quick glug.
» When I was at school all we had to drink each day was a small beaker of water with our lunch, and we all turned out fine.Were it summer the risk of dehydration might be tangible but it's mid-January for heaven's sake, suggesting bottle-carrying is a reflex action rather than a necessity. It ought to be possible to go without for a few hours, say while travelling from one building with a tap to another building with a tap, rather than effectively being addicted to swallowing on the way.
» I went out for seven hours yesterday and drank nothing, and sure the first thing I did when I got home was get a drink but where's the harm?
» People who keep popping into shops for water are no healthier than those who don't, just poorer.
» The human race didn't die out before the concept of hydration was invented, do get a grip.
And yet sippy people are everywhere, clutching their bottles and entirely beholden to the contents. But why?
London's next dead bus
472: North Greenwich to Abbey Wood
Location: southeast London, outer
Length of journey: 9 miles, 40 minutes
The 472 is one of London's 100 busiest bus routes and carries 6 million passengers a year. It dies this weekend. It's run from North Greenwich to Thamesmead since the Jubilee line extension opened in 1999, and was extended to serve Crossrail at Abbey Wood in 2022. It has five days left.
It's being replaced in its entirety by a new Superloop route, the SL11. Previous Superloop launches have included renumberings of existing routes and reductions in frequency for parallel routes, but this is the first time an entire route's been killed off. It is true that the SL11 will follow the same route as the 472, one twiddle round Woolwich town centre excepted. But because it's an express service it won't be stopping everywhere, skipping 25 of the 472's existing stops, and if one of those is your local you're about to see a worse bus service than before.
I listed 20 downsides to the new arrangements last March when the SL11/472 consultation first launched so won't plough through them again. But I have been out for a last ride with a list of the about-to-be-extinguished stops, so can bring you a list of the places that are due to suffer most when the 472 is deleted.
(between North Greenwich and Charlton station it's all good, the SL11 only skips three stops)The SL11 will be a strange limited stop bus, sometimes stopping almost everywhere and sometimes stopping barely at all. For many it should mean faster journeys but my commiserations if you live along one of the skipped bits because you won't be cheering next weekend. Expect some very pissed off Charltonites and Thamesmeaders next week, and excited smiles from everyone else whizzing straight past.
Charlton to Woolwich: Inexplicably the SL11 will skip eleven stops between Charlton station and Woolwich station, a distance of two miles. It's great if you want an express journey but less good inbetween where the number of buses per hour drops from 21 to 15. It's much worse if you're travelling to/from North Greenwich because only the 180 does that, hence a cut from 11 buses an hour to just 5. Also there are cycleway-related roadworks along this entire stretch until spring 2027 so good luck trying to run an express service through that.
(between Plumstead and West Thamesmead it's all good, the stops are already a long way apart and the SL11 stops everywhere)
Thamesmead Town Centre: Impractically the SL11 will skip the stop closest to where all the shops are. It'll still stop before and after, but from next week the stop closest to Aldi and Iceland won't be served by any buses heading round the outer Thamesmead loop.
East Thamesmead: The 472 currently stops five times around the loop in the eastern half of Thamesmead. But the SL11 will only stop once, at the very far end, which is great if you live there and a right pain if you don't. Those not fortunate enough to live near Eastgate are about to lose their sole quick connection to Woolwich and North Greenwich, and will also see a 58% cut in direct buses to Abbey Wood station (from 12 buses an hour to 5).
Also hello to the muppets who put up route change posters at affected bus stops. They've put up two, one with details of new route SL11 and the other warning "Route 472 will not run". But nowhere on either of the posters have they mentioned the key fact that the SL11 is essentially identical to the 472, just with several stops missed out.
The 472 poster includes the advice "During the daytimes please use alternative bus routes including routes 177, 180, 229, 244 and 401." Alternative routes might also include the SL11 but they haven't mentioned that, nor shown it on the map, just a lot of tangled coloured lines for the aforementioned five routes. There is some smallprint on the map which says "New Superloop express route SL11 serves some stops previously served by route 472" but that's not as explicitly helpful as it could be.
Ideally they could have made different posters for different stops en route with targeted advice rather than broad waffle. At the very least they should have made two different posters - one to display at stops the SL11 will still call at and another for everywhere it won't. But TfL's Map Generation Department only bothers to make one variant these days and slaps it up everywhere, either because they're cash-strapped or because they can't be bothered to inform the public properly.
An occasional series in which I miss a bus, decide to walk to the next stop but then spot something interesting in a place I've not been to before.
Hanger Hill is an actual hill in north Ealing with a crest 70m above sea level. Ealing Broadway's more like 35m, for comparison. The name comes from the Old English word hangra meaning a wooded slope. There used to be a big mansion at the summit called Hanger Hill House, built in 1790 and home to local landowners the Wood family. When they moved away a gelatine entrepreneur's son moved in - Sir Edward Montague Nelson - who in 1901 became Ealing's first Mayor. The house then became the clubhouse for the local golf course but was demolished in the 1930s as part of a swish estate repurposing the fairways for housing. Nothing to see here.
The country lane crossing Hanger Hill was called Hanger Lane, indeed still is, although it's no longer a sylvan rural backwater but a seething stretch of the North Circular. Such are the differences a century makes. At the foot of the northern slope is the concrete maelstrom of the Hanger Lane roundabout, also the subway-infested Hanger Lane station, but today's post is more interested in what's up top. I understand the view's quite good but to see over the trees and rooftops it helps to be on the top deck of a bus and as I said I missed mine, so saw nothing.
What first drew my attention was Hanger Hill Park, mainly because it had a lot of contours and some impressively varied old trees. Normally when you find diverse conifers in a scenic setting it means this was once a rich man's garden, but in this case it's just because Ealing Borough Council took their landscaping duties seriously when they opened the park in 1905. The hilltop ridge has acidic sandy soil so was deemed ideal for leylandii and giant redwoods, whereas oaks were better suited to the clay at the foot of the slope. The newest addition to the park is Hanger Hill Tiny Forest, a brief arc of assorted saplings now just over one year old. There are about 40 such mini-woods across London designed to encourage wildlife, community engagement and children's curiosity, hence the benches here can double up as an outdoor classroom.
A substantial portion of the park is occupied by the Hanger Hill outpost of the London Footgolf Centre. This used to be a pitch and putt course but the 18 undulating holes are now used for sequentially kicking a football around (1755 yards, par 65) because that's a sport these days. They say it's ideal for birthday parties, stag dos, corporate team building and school trips, but by the looks of it the target audience is sporty 20-somethings who'd otherwise be playing football and/or golf. The 'clubhouse' is an ugly retro hut with no indication whatsoever of opening times, just a lot of boards advertising the ice creams they'd sell should the building ever be unlocked. Checking the website you can't book online you can only ring up, and it seems if you simply turn up with your own football for a guerilla round in midwinter nobody will notice and you can save £12.
Hillcrest Road is well named and dominated by what looks like a lofty watchtower. It's not, although there was once a lookout here called Mount Castle Tower (supposedly Elizabethan) which in the 1780s was used by the Anglo-French Survey as the northernmost vertex of a trigonometric chain linking London to Paris. It survived as a tearoom until 1881 when it was demolished to make way for Fox's Reservoir, a storage facility named after the Chairman of the Grand Junction Waterworks Company (Edwin G Fox) who officiated at the opening ceremony. A considerably larger reservoir was built across the road in 1889, boosting the burgeoning suburbs of Ealing by delivering a clean water supply, hence the water tower that dominates the skyline. Still there, still doing its job.
Fox's Reservoir was drained in 1943 to prevent German bombers using it as a highly reflective nocturnal navigation aid. The council duly bought the space (and the surrounding ancient woodland) and it's been a nature reserve since 1991, providing a contrasting adjunct to Hanger Hill Park. Being flat it's ideal for sports pitches so if you turn up on a Saturday morning it'll be swarming with footballers from Acton Ealing Whistlers, the local youth football club. An ancient track called Fox Lane runs alongside, while a former field-edge footpath called West Walk runs quarter of a mile downhill towards the throbbing metropolis around Ealing Broadway station. Look, the first crocuses are already emerging, winter must have turned a corner.
I thought I'd seen it all at this point so planned to escape on a 226 bus. It's Hail and Ride around here, but when I stuck my arm out the driver totally ignored me leaving me adrift at the top of Mount Avenue. And that's when I stumbled upon this extraordinary house name. Wow, I thought, here are two neighbours who really don't get on.
Let's call the disputing parties X and Y. Mr X moved into Mount Avenue in 2014, buying up a plot behind the main row of houses to build a modern home. In 2016 he wanted to add a new garage so Mr and Mrs Y let him knock down part of their back fence on the understanding he'd put it back later. He didn't, so 10 months later they went ahead and rebuilt the fence themselves. Mr X was livid, convinced the new fence was six inches closer than it should have been. He accused the Ys of erecting the fence on top of his drainage pipe, they accused him of laying his pipe on their land in the first place, and both sides embarked on a legal slanging match accusing each other of trespass.
By the time the case reached court in February 2020 Mr and Mrs Y had spent £10,000 in related costs and Mr X had spent £60,000 on legal fees. If you find your neighbour aggravating it clearly helps to be a millionaire property developer with bottomless pockets. I haven't been able to determine the outcome of the case because it seems the media only reported on the trial, not the verdict, but I can tell you that the sign saying 'Boundary Dispute House' appears in the front garden of Mr and Mrs Y. The neighbours on the right of the photo weren't part of the dispute, although one of their upper windows is emblazoned with weird distrustful signs so goodness knows what's going on there. Also if you try to check on Google Street View it turns out this entire section of Mount Avenue is missing, so perhaps give thanks that you don't live anywhere as furiously litigious as this.
You really never know what you'll stumble upon if you miss your bus.
The barber shop at the Bow Roundabout has moved.
Billy's Barbers used to be underneath Sky View Tower facing away from the road.
It's now underneath City West Tower facing the roundabout.
The new shop is significantly more visible.
I expect business will be brisker.
Background
» The Capital Towers development opened in 2017. The apartments in its 34- and 14-storey towers were sold mainly to foreign investors. At the time I wrote "At ground level are half a dozen commercial spaces which could be used as offices or presumably as shops. Given that the only retail successes within five minutes walk are a McDonalds drive-thru and a tiny corner shop, I don't rate their chances of being rented out.... but we'll see."
» In 2023 the first unit to be occupied by a shop was Sky Local, a convenience store under the tallest tower. Then came Current Wigs, an artificial hair emporium occupying unit 3 underneath the smaller tower. Then came Billy's Barbers.
» Billy's Barbers leased a unit that can't be seen from the road and which hardly anyone walked past. You'd only spot it if you lived here or were trying to take a minimal shortcut to Cooks Road. The shop was often empty, but Omar and Ali did sometimes seem to have a clientele.
» This was Billy's Barbers' third shop (other branches are in Stratford and on the Isle of Dogs).
» The prime unit facing the roundabout was first occupied in May 2024 by a dry cleaners. At the time I wrote "The new shop is called Gold Dry Cleaner, a name announced in red letters stuck somewhat wonkily above the door, and appears to consist of a bloke and a few machines in a mostly empty room." I didn't rate their chances of success, not least because their windows were emblazoned with spelling errors.
» A few months ago Gold Dry Cleaner moved out.
» This week Billy's Barbers moved in.
Observations
» The shop's much more visible, especially to anyone walking round the roundabout or heading down to the Lea towpath.
» The doorway is seriously unwelcoming but it's early days yet.
» They've moved the original signage from round the corner which means the street number in the corner is now wrong (it says 8, it should be 6).
» They haven't yet moved the table football table out of the old unit, nor the microwave oven.
» If anyone's thinking of taking out a lease on the old rear-facing unit I'd strongly advise against. comments
This is a 467 bus at Meadowview Road in Ewell.
The bus runs hourly and no other routes stop here.
So I wondered how many London bus stops only get an hourly service.
Obviously Ewell isn't in London so this doesn't count.
Indeed only 30% of the route is in London.
Indeed the 467 is proportionately TfL's least Londony bus (as previously blogged).
There is a very short stretch of the 467 in Chessington where the 467 is the sole bus route, but the only bus stops are in Surrey.
So we can discount the 467.
The TfL bus routes with an hourly frequency (or worse) are: 146, 375, 385, 389, 399, 467, H3, R5, R8, R10, U10, W14.
If we check all the sections where these are the only bus routes, we can make a definitive list.
(I've ignored school buses and mobility buses)
London bus stops with an hourly service (or less)
146: Keston Church, Holwood Farm, New Road Hill, Farthing Street, North End Lane
375: Chase Cross, Bower Park School, Kilnwood Lane, Bower House, Havering Green, Samantha Mews, Dame Tipping School, Liberty Cottages
385: (Hail & Ride only)
389: Underhill
399: St Albans Road, Hadley Green, Dury Road, Hadley Wood Station
467: (all outside London)
H3: (Hail & Ride only)
R5/R10: Pratts Bottom
R8: (Hail & Ride only)
U10: Ickenham Station, Neats Acre, Field Way, Woodville Gardens
W14: The Forest, Eagle Pond, Elmcroft Avenue, Woodford Station, Spencer Close, Hillside Close, Heronway, Bush Road comments
London has many dull plaques, but I think this might be the most inconsequential.
It appears on platform 1 at Surbiton station.
And it "remembers" the news kiosk.
It was clearly a nice news kiosk but there's nothing about what it looked like, nor why it was important, nor who ran it, nor why it might have been special. We do discover it dated from 1940, closed in 2016 and ended up in Wareham on the Swanage Railway. But the plaque entirely underplays anything that may or may not have been remarkable, it just doesn't say.
The news kiosk used to be here in front of the refreshment room (now a Nero Express cafe). The wall has photos of swirly milky coffees and this plaque, and I do wonder how many people ever look at it. Maybe they do and think "ah yes, the Surbiton News Kiosk" with a nostalgic sigh, but I've never seen anyone do it.
In case you're interested I've done some digging...
• I've found a photo of the kiosk here.
• I've also found a photo of the kiosk when it was open.
• The newsagent from 2010 to 2016 was John Greig, who'd previously worked at Taylor News outside the station.
• John waved goodbye to kiosk life so he could take up a new job as a platform supervisor at Effingham Junction.
• John blamed several factors for damaging his business: i) the rent on his kiosk being raised, ii) a Sainsbury's opening on the station forecourt, iii) free Metro newspapers.
• In its heyday the kiosk sold 300 Daily Mails every morning, but by 2016 that was down to 25.
• In 2016 the top selling newspapers were 1) The Sun, 2) The Times, 3) Daily Mail, 4) Daily Telegraph, 5) The Guardian
• In 2007 the kiosk was rebranded 'R. Glass' when it appeared briefly in the film Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
• SW Trains wanted to demolish the kiosk to make more room for passengers at the foot of the stairs.
• I haven't found a photo of the kiosk at Wareham station.
It's enormous, indeed the largest single structure built into the River Thames since Bazalgette's initial work, and if you stand on Waterloo Bridge you can easily see how much it sticks out. Better to approach from Blackfriars Bridge however, partly because you get a much closer top-down view but also because a new staircase finally reconnects the pavement to the embankment below. They really want you to come down here and enjoy the new public realm, which makes a nice change after almost a decade of not being able to walk along this side of the riverbank at all. On the descent you can get up close to the floral ironwork beneath the main span and then, before you enter the Embankment proper, go peek at the massive bobbly intervention underneath the bridge. The Fleet used to emerge here from a piddly sluice but the entire riverbed's now been capped to ensure no brown sludge ever escapes again.
This is the thin end of the wedge so also the least decorous, but there are still several odd-shaped benches where you can rest and take in the riverside ambience. Part of the space is being taken up by a long pedestrian ramp descending from above and this has created an extensive undercroft sealed off by unpolished metal panels. A set of public toilets has been tucked away in the centre - yet to open - but the remainder is a mysterious secret lair from which workmen pushing barrows occasionally emerge. The ramp up top is a more tempting entrance for most visitors, passing a totem with all the project's background info before stepping down directly onto a long planted terrace. This maze of beds includes 71 young trees and its design is supposed to 'reference the path of the lost River Fleet' from woodland to meadow to marsh, although I confess I couldn't see it myself.
Scattered around the Embankment are five large black sculpted forms called The Stages, created by Nathan Coley. They're varied, dark and slabby, in some cases sheer surfaces and elsewhere something you can actually walk on. They also have names, so the thin pillar near the bridge is Kicker, the pair beside the river wall are Twins and the longest wiggle is Zigzag. The tallest sits in a stepped pool and is called Waterwall, so I assume it's meant to double up as a dribbly cascade for children's summer frolics. Best not imagine the actual liquid barrelling underneath on its way to Beckton Sewage Works. I liked the basalt quintet more before I read the associated artbolx (including claims that the 'playful and interactive assembly' creates a 'lyrical happenstance'), but they integrate well and I concur that the larger platforms could indeed double-up as a venue for cultural programming.
Along the former Embankment wall are several bronze lions with large mooring rings in their teeth. They're 1868 originals by Timothy Butler and line a mile of river, encouraging the urban legend that if the water level ever reaches the lions' mouths then London will flood. It won't happen here because they've been relocated from Bazalgette's original walls, but this has provided a rare opportunity to get up close to a leonine London icon rather than simply staring down from above. The uppermost lion has been nicknamed 'Roary' whereas the others await comical christening. Check the side of the westernmost lion for the plaque unveiled by King Charles when he visited in May to mark the tunnel's completion. The row of electronic bollards alongside has not yet had to be raised because the pavement connection remains a fenced-off worksite while final snagging works continue.
At the broad swooshy end of the Embankment the scale of the engineering becomes clearer. There's easily enough space here for an audience to watch a small performance or for stalls to be set-up for some organised event, even to play five-a-side kickabout. Look down and the reason for the lack of intermediate infrastructure should become clearer, it's because the paving is liberally scattered with rectangular access covers. They're needed because this public realm is really just useful camouflage for an awful lot of critical pipework above the main shaft, hence the phenomenal number of recessed slabs - I lost count around 70. The ribbed rotunda on the nearside has too small a diameter to cover the invisible drop shaft and according to original plans was intended to house a control cabin, but will perhaps end up as the inevitable cafe.
The western tip is where you'll find three twisty columns, more grey than black, a signature artwork also found at other Tideway sites along the Thames. They're actually ventilation shafts - best not think for exactly what - and their edges are inscribed with hard-to-read lines from commissioned verse by Dorothea Smartt. Ridiculously the poems are only available as graphics on the Tideway's website 'due to artistic restriction and copyright', whereas anyone can stand beside the sculpt-trumpets and read "The Furious Fleet flows red with Roman blood, Boudica battles bravely." Meanwhile alongside this poetic trio is a small raised terrace, large enough only for a few tables, and also a dead end so its purpose appears to be as a viewing platform. Maybe it'll be cappuccinos only later.
The Bazalgette Embankment is a welcome addition to the City of London's longstanding lack of public open space and a cunning solution to the problem of how to hide a former construction site in plain sight. It's also a veritable trip hazard throughout with so many steps, seated areas and changes of level around the central flat piazza that I anticipate a regular slew of accidents. I suspect the Embankment will look at its finest on a sunny day but I loved the glistening sheen created during yesterday's horrendous rain, weather which fortuitously discouraged other visitors and permitted me to create an album of essentially vacant photographs. Also I understand there's only one more of these riverside protrusions yet to open to the public, so when King Edward Memorial Park in Stepney joins the throng I should probably go out and catalogue all seven.
» 25 photos of the Bazalgette Embankment
So I drew some maps.
I've been meaning to do this for a long time.
The first Wenzel's bakery was opened by Peter Wenzel in Sudbury Hill in 1975. This became the epicentre of the expanding Wenzelverse. But at the time it was just a single shop with no aspiration towards dough domination.
It's hard to determine how and when the chain first expanded, but there are ways to dig back. It seems Wenzel's first launched a website in 2008 - all very minimal - and by searching back within the Wayback Machine I can see what the store list was.
Our stores are in Pinner, Northwood, Joel Street, Harrow, Rayners Lane, Sudbury, North Harrow, Wealdstone, South Harrow, Ruislip and Watford.Joel Street is in Northwood Hills, if you were wondering.
So just the 11 stores in 2008.
Here they are on a map.
>Wenzel's is very much a northwest London bakery at this point, with the majority of stores in or around Harrow along the arms of the Metropolitan line. The original Sudbury Hill store is the black star at the bottom of the map. The only real outlier is on Watford High Street in Hertfordshire. It's taken the brand over 30 years to get to this point, and if you'd never been to the northwestern suburbs you'd never have noticed them.
Let's jump ahead to 2016, ten years ago.
There are now 34 Wenzel's bakeries, still with a Metropolitan line focus but now with a greater spread beyond. The business has crept closer to central London with stores in Wembley, plus a bold move into a unit inside Baker Street station. To the south the three lone wolves are Greenford, West Ealing and Yiewsley. To the northeast there's a new cluster around Edgware and a distant store in Radlett. And to the northwest there's Rickmansworth and also Little Chalfont, the first Wenzel's beyond the M25. It's a statement of intent...
On to 2021, five years ago.
That's quite an expansion! There are now 72 Wenzel's bakeries, essentially a doubling, as the chain exerts its dominance over northwest London. There's been a spread into north London, also a nudge closer to the centre. Proper Home Counties outposts now exist in High Wycombe, Aylesbury, Luton and Stevenage. However nothing's opened south of the M4, also Wenzel's is still avoiding east London where rival chain Percy Ingle has just gone bust.
The Essex star isn't in Chigwell or Loughton but in Debden, which is much more target audience. There are also two further eastern stores I've had to chop off my map, one in Romford and the other in Brentwood. It turns out the Wenzel's I saw yesterday has been there for a while, indeed it opened exactly five years ago in January 2021.
It's now 2026 and blimey.
There are now 111 branches, very much no longer confined to the old Middlesex stomping ground. The bakery has now reached commuter towns like Basingstoke, Billericay and Basildon, even Guildford and Woking, in its search for fresh markets to tap.
But what I've not shown you are the additional dozen openings that lie off the edge of even this expanded map, for example the northernmost Wenzel's is now in Northampton. More extraordinarily they've opened bakeries along the south coast in Portsmouth and Southampton, even Bournemouth and Poole, almost 100 miles from the original store in Sudbury Hill. Many of these farflung extras are actually in out of town retail parks rather than on high streets, thus catering for a somewhat different clientele. You can check the spread on my summary Google map, it's got all these branches on.
Finally here's the map I really wanted to draw - the expansion of Wenzel's 1975 → 2008 → 2016 → 2021 → 2026.
This is a bakery chain on the up, both expanding its coverage and also filling in the gaps. No wonder Peter Wenzel received an official Outstanding Contribution to the Baking Industry accolade at the Baking Industry Awards last year.
There's still a lot further Wenzel's could spread, so if you haven't seen the orange bakery in your town yet it might be on its way. But I note that London south of the Thames appears to be resolutely and deliberately out of bounds (which reminds me, I really should draw some Coughlans maps one day).
Location: St Mary's Hospital, Praed Street, W2 1NY [map]
Open: 10am - 1pm (Mon-Thu only)
Admission: free
Two word summary: antibiotic genesis
Five word summary: where Fleming spotted lifesaving mould
Website: imperial.nhs.uk/about-us/what-we-do/fleming-museum
Time to set aside: less than an hour
A lot of us wouldn't be here (or have been born at all) without antibiotics. The first of these was penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington on 3rd September 1928. That's his laboratory on the second floor, in the protruding bay beside the main entrance just above the brown plaque. This tiny room is part of a museum devoted to telling the story of both discovery and discoverer, a very small museum that's essentially a hospital stairwell and a few rooms off it, which since 2023 has been free to enter. If you can get in.
Alexander Fleming was born in Ayrshire in 1881, not far from Kilmarnock, and moved to London in 1895 to take up a job as a shipping clerk. In a quirk of fate an uncle died and left him a bequest which allowed him to enrol at medical school. In a quirk of fate he joined St Mary's teaching hospital mainly because it had a good water polo team. Fleming did outstandingly well in his studies and was all set to become a surgeon but no vacancy was available, so in a quirk of fate accepted a temporary post in the Inoculation Department. He loved the work so stayed on, and twenty years later a carefully observed quirk of fate would make his name.
The entrance to the museum is a brown door just behind the hospital's ornamental gates. You have to press the button alongside to gain access, chatting via a semi-intelligible intercom to one of the volunteers upstairs. It's a very stiff door so might not open easily even after they've triggered the release (expect similar tugging issues on the way out). Entry is via an evocatively institutional stairwell tiled in green and ivory which curls upwards towards reception, and which is shared with maternity services because this is a working building. A volunteer will then lead you up one further flight to the room where the discovery took place. Be aware there's no lift, it being impractical to adapt an authentic listed building to modern accessibility standards.
During WW1 Fleming spent time at a military hospital in France where he observed how many injured amputees died for want of an effective antiseptic, so focused on this area of research when he returned to Paddington. His first great success came in 1921 when he observed that mucus wiped from his nose dissolved bacteria on a petri dish. It turned out this was because it contained our body's own natural antiseptic, also found in tears and egg white, which Fleming named lysozyme. He was very proud of this discovery, even much later in his career, but lysozyme didn't help cure the fiercest germs and so his search went on.
The second floor room where the discovery took place has been restored as it would have been in 1928 with dishes, brown bottles, stoppered test tubes and a microscope, all arrayed along a wooden bench in front of the window. Looking down Fleming would have been able to watch the traffic passing on Praed Street, and today you can additionally see a pharmacy in the shop opposite which feels particularly appropriate. A separate cabinet in the corner of the room contains medals, awards and other congratulatory ephemera from later in Fleming's life. You can't get right up close to the bench because only the volunteer gets to cross the divide and tell you all about it, then helpfully answer your questions. The room is also subject to the museum's widespread 'No photography' policy which is why I can't show you what it looks like.
On the crucial day in 1928 Fleming had been away for the summer and, fortuitously, some of his earlier dishes hadn't been cleared away. One showed unusual patterns where a mould on one side of the dish had inhibited the spread of staphylococcus on the other. Nobody's quite sure where the spore came from, only that it floated in randomly on the air, quite possibly from the fungi-focused laboratory downstairs. "That's funny," said Fleming to his junior colleague Merlin Price, a Welshman who arguably spotted the peculiarity first. The secretion was initially called 'mould juice' and Fleming tested it on a few of his colleagues to see if it cleared up their infections. It proved encouragingly lethal to certain microbes and not to humans, but also very hard to isolate and stabilise so the groundbreaking work essentially stalled.
After breathing in the atmosphere of the laboratory the volunteer will lead you up to the screening room on the third floor and press play on a ten minute film. This tells the full Fleming story complete with archive footage, including a speech Sir Alex gave in the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh on the 25th anniversary of the discovery. I learned a lot but the flickering presentation had all the nostalgic quality of a film I might have been shown in a science lesson on a wheeled-in telly, so I sat through the black and white credits to see when it was made. It turned out to be a 1993 production, the same year as the stairwell was turned into a museum with the aid of money from the drugs giant SmithKline Beecham, who plainly haven't been back to update it since.
In 1938 researchers from Oxford University were drawn to Fleming's work, initially via his discovery of lysozyme, but soon realised that penicillin could be considerably more useful. Howard Florey and his colleagues were eventually able to test it on a few critically injured patients and reverse their infections, but couldn't generate enough supplies to ultimately prevent their deaths. It being wartime the team needed to turn to America for the means to mass produce penicillin on commercial terms, and by 1944 it was being used on the front line to save countless lives. Fleming, Florey and a biochemist on the team called Ernst Chain were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945 "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases".
The final room is 'the exhibition', a circuit of 19 information boards telling the whole story from Fleming's birth to the present day, assuming the present day is 1993. It's highly informative and all the better for lacking the flashy screens and sparse text that would likely be the presentational style were the display ever redone. The central section explains how bacterial resistance has always been an issue and how scientists have attempted to keep pace, initially by attaching cunningly similar but non-identical molecules to the penicillin nucleus. But essentially the exhibition is a celebration of the ground-breaking discovery made downstairs when a sequence of quirks of fate led a former water polo player to spot a mould that helped make medicine hugely safer.
After your visit don't head round the corner for a proud pint in the Sir Alexander Fleming pub because it's closed.
Also I can confirm there's no real need to troop down to the Chelsea Embankment to see the blue plaque on Fleming's home at 20a Danvers Street, although I did anyway and got very wet in the process.
If you really do want to track down Fleming's legacy then a trail leaflet has been produced complete with several maps. But it's probably best to stick to the museum itself where the curator and associated volunteers do a fine job of explaining what they can in an outdated space where history was made... on that bench there, just up the road from Paddington station.
Here's my updated map.
Enf
3 Harr
3Barn
3Hari
3WFor
3 Hill
3Eal
3Bren
3Cam
3Isl
3Hack
3Redb
3Hav
3 Hou
3H&F
3K&C
3West
3City
3Tow
13New
9B&D
3
Rich
3Wan
3Lam
3Sou
3Lew
3Grn
3Bex
3 King
3Mer
3Cro
3Bro
3 Sut
3
And that's because I visited every single London borough yesterday.
I have never before visited all 33 boroughs in one day.
I rode 28 trains, two trams and two buses.
I ventured outside the station gateline in all cases.
It took a long time.
As usual I invite you to guess how long it took before I reveal all.
Fortuitously it was a whole number of hours, so you have a decent chance.
I started my All Boroughs Odyssey in Romford.
Hour 1
0:00 Just by standing outside Romford station I can tick off HAVERING (1).
0:06 Chadwell Heath is an excellent station for borough-visiting. The ticket hall is in REDBRIDGE (2) and the pavement outside is in BARKING & DAGENHAM (3)
0:28 I continue west via Crossrail to Forest Gate which is in NEWHAM (4). The smell of baked goods from the Hovis factory is very pleasant. It's only a short walk up the road to Wanstead Park to join the Suffragette line.
0:48 A simple switch at Blackhorse Road, stepping out into WALTHAM FOREST (5) to admire the black horse mosaic. Then disaster strikes - the Victoria line is part suspended and the next train is 30 minutes away! The platform is full of confused passengers wishing a member of station staff would make a useful announcement. The next train is now 39 minutes away! An automated message urges everyone to take care because surfaces may be wet. The next train is now 32 minutes away! (thankfully the display was lying and the next train was only 3 minutes away, but phew that could have wrecked everything)
0:56 Everyone changing between tube and rail at Tottenham Hale has to step out through a gateline into HARINGEY (6). It's been a profitable first hour.
Hour 2
1:14 ENFIELD (7) is the first annoying borough requiring an 'out and back' train journey. But I've got very lucky with timings because a half-hourly train to Meridian Water is due. The new station is still surrounded by empty space containing hardly any flats.
1:32 The Victoria line remains buggered but I can still get a train to Finsbury Park. This is in ISLINGTON (8), and simply by crossing two roads I can spend a few seconds in HACKNEY (9).
1:42 All change at Highbury & Islington for the Mildmay line. Grrr, it's a maximum 9 minute wait.
Hour 3
2:12 Alight at Brondesbury because that's in BRENT (10).
2:13 Cross the road because that's in CAMDEN (11). Then cross back and catch a 189 bus to Cricklewood.
2:20 Great, that's done BARNET (12). Now all I need is a quick bus to Willesden Town, five minutes max.
2:21 Aaaagh the 460 bus is on diversion. The announcement doesn't say where to and dinging the bell to alight has no effect. Oh god we're going back towards where I just came from. I check an app and it turns out the diversion is an extra two miles because of a burst water main. The bus would eventually have reached Willesden Town but thankfully I manage to persuade the driver to drop me at Kilburn instead. Bullet dodged.
2:54 Finally up the Metropolitan line to Harrow-on-the-Hill in HARROW (13).
Hour 4
3:05 Switch from a Watford train to an Uxbridge train. I have to go as far as Eastcote to enter HILLINGDON (14), one of today's tougher boroughs.
3:15 I just missed a Piccadilly line train at Eastcote so I have to wait for the next one at Rayners Lane.
3:39 Acton Town is another useful borough-ticking station because immediately outside is EALING (15) and just round the corner is HOUNSLOW (16).
3:55 Hammersmith, obviously, is in HAMMERSMITH & FULHAM (17). Hurrah, I'm finally halfway and it's only taken four hours.
Hour 5
4:06 RICHMOND (18) is a bit of a pain, so I've chosen to visit it by walking across Hammersmith Bridge and then straight back again, all on foot.
4:24 District line to Earl's Court, walk out onto the street to get KENSINGTON & CHELSEA (19). Then re-enter station and walk straight onto a Wimbledon train, perfect.
4:43 Nip out at Southfields to get WANDSWORTH (20). I could have nipped out at East Putney but I was at the front of the train.
4:53 A productive run ends at Wimbledon for MERTON (21). Now for the last annoying 'out and back'.
Hour 6
5:05 KINGSTON (22) can't be done on a TfL train so I've boarded a Hampton Court train to New Malden. The high street still has poppies on some lampposts.
5:37 And back to Wimbledon to catch the tram, which is by far the easiest way to visit SUTTON (23). I pick Beddington Lane but could have picked Therapia Lane instead.
5:53 The tram is obviously ideal for CROYDON (24), in this case West Croydon. I've got lucky because a Southern train to Victoria is in the platform.
Hour 7
6:15 Up the very long staircase at Crystal Palace for BROMLEY (25), then back down the very long staircase for an Overground train.
6:30 I've got lucky again because another Southern train is right behind us, so nip out at Forest Hill for LEWISHAM (26), then nip back in.
6:54 I've reached London Bridge just as the rush hour begins, but thankfully everyone's going the other way. That's SOUTHWARK (27) done and only six more boroughs to go.
Hour 8
7:05 An easy one-stop ride to Waterloo East, then a bit of a hike to neighbouring Waterloo to get LAMBETH (28). I'd prefer to catch the Waterloo & City line but unfortunately I still have to go to Westminster first.
7:15 One stop on the Sponsored Lager line takes me to Embankment (where yes they've fixed the incorrect map). Poke my head briefly above ground for WESTMINSTER (29).
7:32 Change from the Northern line to Crossrail at Tottenham Court Road and hop along to Farringdon. The quickest way up to the CITY OF LONDON (30) is at the Barbican end.
7:42 What I should have done at Canary Wharf is stop and come up for air. But I've already been to TOWER HAMLETS (31) because I live there, so I awarded myself a free pass for that one.
7:58 The Elizabeth line terminates at Abbey Wood which is convenient because the station straddles my last two boroughs. The street outside is in BEXLEY (32), and if you walk just round the corner before the Post Office you enter GREENWICH (33). And that's a two minute walk so my All Boroughs Odyssey has taken eight hours precisely.
I'm sure eight hours is beatable although I wasn't aiming for a record, just hoping to get to the finish. It was a 'slippery surface' day across the London transport network anyway. I nearly had very bad luck with line closures and bus diversions but on the whole my planned route worked out pretty well, with only a few changes of plan when an unexpected train offered a fresh alternative. Also I walked seven miles, climbed the equivalent of 70 flights of stairs and read two-thirds of a novel so I wasn't completely wasting my time.
I don't recommend trying to visit every London borough in one day because it's a bit knackering and ultimately pointless. But I have now completed an extraordinary achievement, and best of all I have no need to ever do it again.
Here's how I'm doing so far in 2026.
Enf
2 Harr
2Barn
2Hari
2WFor
2 Hill
2Eal
2Bren
2Cam
2Isl
2Hack
2Redb
2Hav
2 Hou
2H&F
2K&C
2West
2City
2Tow
12New
8B&D
2
Rich
2Wan
2Lam
2Sou
2Lew
2Grn
2Bex
2 King
2Mer
2Cro
2Bro
2 Sut
2
It's only 12th January and I've been to every borough at least twice.
That is very good going.
What's more I've been to every borough exactly twice.
(other than Tower Hamlets where I live and Newham which I live five minutes from)
This is arguably the greater achievement.
It took some doing.
For example I'd been to Southwark, Lewisham and Bromley twice by 3rd January, then wasn't allowed to go back again.
For example this weekend I still had nine outer London boroughs to visit but had to get there without setting foot in an inner London borough.
n.b. my rules for visiting a borough are that I have to set foot in it - standing on a station platform or riding through on transport don't count.
My 2026 visits include a tour of SE26, both ends of the 222 bus route, the London New Year Parade, exploring Aldborough Hatch, a yomp across Richmond Park, riding the Waterloo & City line and visits to Arnos Grove, Barking, Belvedere, Colindale, Haggerston, Morden, New Malden, North Greenwich, Northwick Park and Upminster. I like to travel.
And at the other end of the scale there are Londoners who haven't been to all the London boroughs, not even once.
I wonder if that's you.
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I AM A LONDONER AND THERE ARE BOROUGHS I'VE NEVER BEEN TO comments Your most unvisited: Barking & Dagenham, then Havering, then Bexley, then Sutton
It'd be hard never to have visited Westminster, Camden or the City of London. If you've walked along the South Bank you've done Lambeth and Southwark, if you've crossed Tower Bridge you've done Tower Hamlets, if you've done the museums you've done Kensington & Chelsea, if you've been to Battersea Power Station you've done Wandsworth and if you've shopped at Westfield you've done Newham and/or Hammersmith & Fulham. Further out if you've been to Wembley you've done Brent, if you've flown from Heathrow you've done Hillingdon, if you've visited Richmond Park or Hampton Court you've done Richmond, if you've been to Wimbledon you've done Merton and if you've been to Greenwich you've obviously done Greenwich.
But some boroughs are much easier to miss. Havering's so far east most Londoners have no need to visit. Harrow and Enfield are easily skippable if you live south of the river, similarly Kingston and Bexley if you live north. Barking & Dagenham seemingly has nothing to entice visitors from further afield. A lot of Londoners couldn't tell you where Redbridge or Sutton are, let alone think of a reason to go. There are all sorts of reasons why peripheral boroughs might go unvisited, even after several decades of living in the same city.
My hunch is that Bexley, Harrow, Havering and Sutton are the boroughs least visited by other Londoners, but we'll see if your comments back that up.
I wasn't always the roaming globetrotter I am now, indeed when I introduced my random jamjar feature in 2004 I was in some cases breaking new ground. Even so I'd been to most of the boroughs before I moved to London, aided by growing up at the end of the Metropolitan line and having family in Croydon, Waltham Forest and Enfield. A concert at Crystal Palace took care of Bromley, a wedding in Fulham ticked off Hammersmith & Fulham and a rail replacement bus must have delivered Havering. I couldn't tell you which was the last of the 33 boroughs I eventually visited but it wouldn't surprise me if it was Sutton, dullest of the suburbs.
Obviously most Londoners go about their days without giving a damn where the borough boundaries are. You have to be a bit of an administrative nerd to know that crossing the Old Street roundabout takes you from Islington into Hackney or that one side of Kilburn High Road is Camden and the other in Brent.
But some people do deliberately go out to visit the lot. In 2018 Ollie O'Brien did all 33 boroughs by bike and train in 9 hours 25 minutes and wrote up his exploits here. David Natzler went one better and placed artwork at all the triple points, the places where three boroughs touch, and Richard Gower has a fabulous photographic summary of the results. Maybe you went out and did something alternatively specific, or at least kept track of your travels over a longer period of time.
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I KNOW I HAVE DEFINITELY BEEN TO ALL 33 LONDON BOROUGHS comments special comments box
I'M NOT A LONDONER BUT I KNOW WHICH BOROUGHS I'VE NEVER BEEN TO comments
For all other comments, including "I'm not sure which boroughs I've never been to", please use the ordinary comments box at the end of the post.
It's obviously entirely unnecessary to have visited all the London boroughs but, as I hope I've made clear over many years, the suburbs contain much that's fascinating so if you've never been you're missing out. Maybe this should be the year that you fill in your gaps - even Barking & Dagenham and Sutton have their moments! It shouldn't take long unless you've been extraordinarily parochial, indeed some of us have been to all 33 twice in twelve days flat.
