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August 15, 2024 - 10:00am
In May 1971, on The Dick Cavett Show, the theatre director Jonathan Miller had a prickly encounter with the Conservative politician Enoch Powell. He rebuked Powell for raising concerns about integration, culture clashes and social disruption, claiming that the Tory MP and others were creating a problem where none needed to exist. In Miller’s account, ordinary Britons would barely notice any downsides of immigration in their day-to-day experience — unless those like Powell primed them to regard it as a problem. Better for politicians not to discuss it at all, like a Victorian paterfamilias refusing to mention money in front of the servants.
Miller’s preference for suppressing and marginalising popular scepticism about immigration, over actually considering the issue, is widely shared in the modern ruling class. We now have a perfect demonstration of the pernicious effects of this approach, in the extraordinarily harsh prison sentence just handed down to a 53-year-old woman from Cheshire who made an unpleasant and antagonistic comment on Facebook about blowing up a mosque.
Julie Sweeney’s remarks were not a serious threat, by any stretch — a point conceded by the prosecution — and have since been deleted. She is also a carer who has never been in trouble with the law before, but off she goes to prison for 15 months, a fate routinely avoided in modern Britain by serious criminal offenders.
The Starmer state is determined to manage the discourse, in quite unpleasant and brutal ways if necessary. The threat of jail time for crude expressions of anti-immigration or anti-Islamic feeling is the iron hand in the velvet glove of the “Don’t Look Back In Anger” sentimentalism that follows mass-casualty terror attacks or knife rampages. While many of the convictions related to the recent disorder are reasonable and just, it’s hard to escape the impression that the establishment is flailing wildly in its response, with the result that miscarriages of justice are occurring.
Why is this happening? Several trends are coming to a head. The first is a very long-term one, whereby the entire moral basis of the British state has changed. The days when, in A.J.P. Taylor’s phrase, “a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the postman”, have vanished. The state now regards itself as the overseer and regulator of social interaction — a schoolmistress making sure that all the children play nicely together and sanctioning those who are reluctant to do so. The Covid-19 pandemic gave the state a renewed crusading ardour, a reinvigorated justification for its mastery over the rest of us.
Meanwhile, we are still trying to work out what role social media plays in this dynamic. Sweeney, like so many before her, seems to have fallen afoul of what some theorists call “context collapse”. That is, the way in which comments made within the norms and expectations of one environment are judged by those of a different environment. She clearly regarded her comment about mosques as a throwaway line, an expression of frustration and exasperation with no wider significance. The police and courts have decided, for their own reasons, to understand them in a different way — a perverse way, it must be said.
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SubscribeMeanwhile Jess Phillips gets away with a half apology rather than being charged. It’s definitely who you know in Starkers brave new world.
I saw a poll showing Labour has lost 6 point to Reform. Prime Minister Farage will set things right. Pun intended.
She has a husband. One wonders what kind of male masochist would set himself up for time with her. And yes, my dear Starmer censors, this is misogyny and hate speech. Have fun!
Phone snatching is illegal but not Mike snatching when the head of the Met does it.
Not just her though is it?
Lee Dunn pleaded guilty to sending a grossly offensive message at Carlisle Magistrates’ Court on 12 August 2024 and was jailed for eight weeks.
Janet Potter, Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor for CPS North West, said: “This conviction should be a stark reminder to so-called keyboard warriors: online actions have consequences.
Let those on UnHerd beware.
Let those on UnHerd beware.
Unherd is the last forum where some kind of sanity prevails. Let’s pray they don’t allow themselves to be intimidated by these little Hitlers.
Inflammatory comments are usually pulled fairly quickly, but it’s a blunt instrument. Perfect example: comments by a certain individual (and responses to them) made following the article on the Cass Report yesterday.
The severity of sentencing in the case discussed in this article is, in my.opinion, itself inflammatory, in that it will further stoke the fires of injustice felt by those who took to the streets, however misdirected and inchoate their anger. Giving them a focus will come to be seen as a huge mistake.
Yes, I agree LL. I think as far as posts like this lady’s go, the instrument of shame would have been more effective. Naming and shaming rather than jailing.
This would also have been smarter on the part of the state, as there is no risk of inflaming the situation even further.
I have expressed the view that the problem with severe sentences for violent offences and destruction of property is that the rioters were lulled into a false sense that a bit of rioting would be overlooked judging from reports of the Harehills and other recent riots.
That the police have here adopted a different policy may well be a necessary correction, provided it is to be consistently applied in future and there is no return to a softly softly approach when different ethnicities are involved in riots, violence and destruction of property.
However, insults should not be subject to criminal sanctions and even incitement to violence should be treated proportionately so that a common sense view should be taken in sentencing as to whether the remark was in fact likely to incite violence. The remarks of some obscure individual with few followers likely to be swayed by some inflammatory remark should be approached differently to someone with a more significant public standing whose words might in fact inspire actual criminal activity.
The inflammatory words of this obscure individual hardly seem to merit the extent of punishment dealt out to her. The problem is that when a similarly inflammatory remark is made by a less obscure individual and there is seen to be either no response or a very mild response – particularly if it is uttered by a leftist or minority ethnic individual – then the sense of outrageous unfairness and lack of proportionality will only lay the groundwork for future violent eruptions.
I wonder how much effort is going into discovering who committed the hoax widely circulated online and by the MSM, about the 100 marches by the Far-Right, which precipitated a large police operation, fomented a lot of hate, and led to multitudes of leftists giving the police some point to their afternoon. Worse than anything Julie did.
Don’t hold your breath on that one, Denz.
That is assuming the state does not want to inflame the situation further. It may be that it considers some riotous disorder a small price to pay in order to distract people from noticing it’s new policies being put into action, and to further demonise opposition as ‘far right’.
There’s no question we’ve all been talking much more about the riots over the past two weeks than we have about little children being randomly attacked in the most brutal way possible, and killed, by first and second generation immigrants.
The full statement:
‘Janet Potter, Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor for CPS North West, said: “This conviction should be a stark reminder to so-called keyboard warriors: online actions have consequences.
“The Crown Prosecution Service has worked around the clock to ensure those involved in any way, in the current disorder are hauled before the courts as quickly as possible.
“This type of social media offending will not be tolerated. Those who take part in online offences will be brought to justice swiftly.’
“involved in any way, in the current disorder:” ANY way? Is it no longer an element of a crime that it violate specific provisions of a law forbidding such-and-such an action?
And do we no longer distinguish action from speech? (Is all disliked speech equivalent to shouting fire in a crowded theatre?)
These creepy words come from a man who knows perfectly well that no action of his will ever have any penal consequence for him. If I were to list all the Chief Constables who ought to have been demoted, sacked, prosecuted, or, like Cressida d**k, never been promoted at all (Before she proved a disaster as London boss copper, d**k had been responsible for the police slaughter of Jean Charles de Menezes), we should be here till tomorrow. Chief constables lead a charmed life. The day one of them was found with 50,000 pictures of naked children on their computer, you can bet your life that the prosecutors would decide that there were no grounds for prosecution. Cowardly, bullying scum.
P.S. The amusing alteration in Dame Cressida’s family name is not my work, but a computer correction. Evidently even the computer is ashamed of her.
Niall Gooch is a public sector worker
Well, well, there’s hope for us yet! Not much, probably, but still …
Great article.
There needs to be some kind of standard. Can the crown prove these comments incited violence? People say crappy things online all the time. They’ll have to build a bunch of prisons to house all the trolls on the internet.
The frightening thing is that prosecution and judge didn’t seem to have to, and were at one with government, police, most newspapers, and all broadcasters.
And on recent and comparable disorders which were followed by no legal consequences, there was a similar unanimity of opinion.
Should I start to fear a knock on the door because of this post?
Imagine, all it took was to use a single label, ‘far-right’, and yet any mention, let alone evidence, of any political plot has been singularly absent from the reports so far.
Far right just means you reject the Marxist ethos of Progressivism.
The police state of Britain only needs to incarcerate random cases to instill fear among the oiks. Grievance Studies types would call it the principle of the panopticon.
Or, as we say in Southeast Asia, ‘kill a chicken to scare the monkeys’.
I’m not so sure. You only need to jail a couple of people, and the rest will dare not speak their minds. If you don’t believe me, look at the levels of compliance to ludicrous mask mandates etc during Covid. This is the end of any kind of free speech.
But they will speak their minds across kitchen tables and in pubs. It is galvanizing working class people concerned about mass immigration. There children will hear the conversations an realize Labour is now the enemy of the common people. It will drive them towards Reform and a better future.
Historically, where such suppressions have previously occurred, it was often the children who turned the parents in.
Pubs have closed. Families have broken apart and new families aren’t being started. The schools run classes to find out what parents think and social workers stand ready to visit those who express non-conformist views across the kitchen table. State employers police not just what is said in work but police social arrangements outside of work too. The law and courts are stretching statute and common law to the limit to crimimalise political criticism. And the police will visit you and your family to “discuss” non-criminal speech and writings.
“The Miller doctrine is dead in the water.”
You what Niall?
Jonathan Miller was a promulgator of what has become Wokery.
He may be dead, but his ideas have now borne fruit.
You need to read that bit again.
I read it again, and you are correct to draw my attention to it. Thank you. I read it now as Niall just being wrong. Miller’s ideas are not dead. Wrong certainly, yet are everywhere in the public sector, These riots have changed nothing, except to bolster the Wokist authoritarian agenda.
North Korea Kier.
The Government was clearly worried that the riots would be contageous. Indeed, they were: it was the weak response to the Harehills riots that encouraged the later rioters to believe they could get away with it.
But all crime is contageous. The police and prosecutors decide to ignore shoplifting and, surprise, surprise, shoplifting increases. Online fraud is ignored and, surprise, surprise, online fraud becomes endemic. Ignore rioting by one group and, surprise, surprise, other groups will take it up.
Disciplinary action must be applied consistently to be effective, as any teacher can tell you. Taking an inconsistent approach, apparently dictated by the ethnicity or polirical views of the offenders, can only end in tears.
The Government was clearly worried that the riots would be contageous.
But not worried enough to do something about the policy that predictably led to the uproar. It’s not as if no one warned that this go badly.
Well one assumes you are referring to the previous Govt as a little unreasonable to expect a Govt 4wks in to sort their inheritance. But here’s why it wasn’t sorted – large tracts of the Right don’t want to sort it, they want to use it.
“What you cannot enforce, do not command.”
Hear hear. Spot on.
27 arrests related to Harehill. As you should know given the interest you’ve taken the issue related to Roma families and child protection issue. Disorder flared up with a Muslim councillor taking a prominent line in calming the situation – you can see the footage.
Nonetheless concur that such events can be contagious which is why a very firm approach has to be taken now and applied to all such disorder when contagion a more serious risk.
Of course if we get into ‘consistency’ a number of minority groups will draw attention to the disproportionate stop and search stats and the difference in sentencing evident too. Consistency needs to be just that.
27 arrests. How many actually charged?
Can the government and their minions not see that they are the baddies? How is that possible? What stories do they tell themselves? Surely they have read – or at least heard of – 1984. It is beyond belief that this is happening in the land that created human rights and the rule of law.
And yet, elsewhere in today’s UnHerd, another writer has divided up protestors into three groups of disparaging description, so I guess it’s just as easy to dismiss Powell’s warning today as it was back then, when it should have been acted on.
In the meantime, won’t some powerful legal firm come to the defense of Julie Sweeney and this egregious abuse?
It was also instructive to see the number of readers who just didn’t get – either via comments or via downvotes – the similar point i made about “divided up protestors into three groups of disparaging description“.
I don’t mind downvotes – or perhaps i just express my views rather too trenchantly for some tastes. I imbibed that from birth via the water flowing off the rain-soaked Pennines… through millstone grit.
No powerful legal firm would dare.
First the vitriol they would attract form all right thinking sections of the media and establishment would be more than they could bear.
Second, they could potentially loose a lot of business if their right thinking clients take offence.
Third, they are part of the elite and share all the same prejudices and so probably consider that the sentence was lenient
It’s the cab rank principle ER. Doesn’t quite work the way you contend. they have to take the next case.
You do realise that you are talking nonsense, again. Don’t you ever get tired of it?
Law firms do not have the cab rank principle. They can pick and chose who they act for. One magic circle firm allegedly interviews prospective clients rather than it being the other way round.
The Bar has (or used to have) the cab rank principle but it is easily enough avoided. You can always get a barrister but often not your first, second or third choice.
Any firm taking the case would almost certainly doing it pro bono which means that they would have to step-up and volunteer. Powerful legal firms view pro bono work as a marketing exercise and only take cases that have the right profile. They would run a mile from this one. On the other hand the lads who broke the nose of a policewoman at Manchester airport maybe.
Perhaps not a legal firm to help her, but there is the Free Speech Union which has lawyers involved.
No. In Machiavellian terms we have a Government of ‘foxes’, great at words and spin, poor at courage and action. To foxes there is no self reflection because the recognition by other foxes is all that matters.
The alternative would be a Government of ‘Lions’ – I am not sure that there would be any more self reflection although the outcomes would be different. Not necessarily better, just different.
Just remember the Government, of any stripe, is not your friend.
That’s why I don’t bother with party politics anymore: I was quite active in the 90s and during the first GWB term, but left the GOP during Bush’s second. They’re all snakes.
Trump was always a New York liberal. He just misunderstood that the Democrats hate democracy and are far from liberal. I always loved the Truman truism: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”. I would add, if you think government isn’t your enemy, you don’t know history.
On your last philosophical point – need to read Hobbes ‘Leviathan’. We all dislike Govt until we desperately need it
And you AB, you’ve never lumped folks into some crude categorisation?
And good to know you are staunch defender of Human Rights – just on that you support therefore the ECHR and the treaty underpinning? Apols and I can’t deduce from your comment how consistent you personally may be on the matter but it has been somewhat remarkable to see so many comments about human rights from some who on another matter want to remove them.
“the British state has to take upon itself the role of intercommunal peacemaker and arbiter”
Yes, but only in one direction. It’s like the schoolmarm had a particular favorite who was allowed to bully and pick on his classmates at will, while the classmates were punished for defending themselves, or even for complaining about their treatment.
It’s always sensible to be cautious. Today it’s lighting the chiminea, tomorrow it’s the Reichstag.
As much as we all hate online trolls and attention seekers, this is simply too far. God bless the 1st Amendment.
“Sweeney, like so many before her, seems to have fallen afoul of what some theorists call “context collapse”.”
I’d also say she suffered from a “common sense collapse” – why on earth would you commit something like that to writing and publish it?
I write some controversial stuff on here, but there’s nothing I wouldn’t stand by if I was called out on it. It’s about using your freedom responsibly and understanding that there are limits. That’s also why I don’t use a pseudonym (which I think is against commenting guidelines anyway). Keep it accountable.
In Austrian German there’s a brilliant saying: “Jedes Schrifterl a Gifterl“. It expresses that every piece of writing has the potential to be toxic and damage its author. It’s usually used in the context of bent politicians covering up their tracks on dodgy dealings – but it seems kind of apropos here.
While I think it’s right for the state to (metaphorically) slap a bit of common sense back into people who clearly don’t think about what they are saying/doing – jailing this lady seems harsh, even as a deterrent.
When you consider it against the background of a state that can’t control its borders, mend its roads, or ensure that its citizens can see a GP in a timely manner, it looks dystopian – with more than a whiff of desperation.
Miller’s preference for suppressing and marginalising popular scepticism about immigration, over actually considering the issue, is widely shared in the modern ruling class.
Maybe. Alternatively, the ruling class knew exactly what the foreseeable consequences would be – because the consequences were foreseeable – and moved ahead anyway.
Ya think ? (rhetorical) Or maybe you are wrong and the doctrine and deliberate policy being systemically implemented over the English channel and the Rio Grande and wherever else is one of “and to hell with the consequences foreseeable or otherwise , there is a bigger picture here, doncha know ? ” or , now we are there , perhaps even ” we quite like these consequences …. but keep stum on that as many of our citizens aint gonna see it that way “
In the ‘lefties are the good guys’ corner, Nick Lowles, chief executive of Hope Not Hate, falsely tweeted that
“Reports are coming in of acid being thrown out of a car window at a Muslim woman in Middlesbrough. Absolutely horrendous”. Of course that was blamed on ‘right wing thugs’. Inflammatory but he hasn’t been prosecuted. Two Tier Kier likes it that way.
That was obviously false from the moment it was posted – a Jussie Smollett-level hate hoax. We all know that acid attacks are exclusive to certain minorities, and not from the ‘Far Right’.
Whoever posted it online should be prosecuted.
The prison system is already so overcrowded that they are releasing offenders who have served only 40% of their sentences. Are they going to release a violent offender in order to incarcerate this keyboard warrior? Jailing this woman is an over reaction – it would have been enough to convict and bind her over to keep the peace.
That first amendment is looking pretty good right now. If you Brits want I’m sure we can find some room for you over here in the states. Of course I already see some of you justifying this as being totally okay so I guess many Brits just have a taste for boot leather. Of course that explains why all the totalitarian distopyian fictions from Brave New World to V for Vendetta seem to happen in Airstrip One.
I wasn’t aware that “Judge Dread” was British.
Judge Dredd was based in the US but created by Brits.
“In Miller’s account, ordinary Britons would barely notice any downsides of immigration in their day-to-day experience — unless those like Powell primed them to regard it as a problem”.
Watched the discussion, thanks for the link, but this is not an accurate summary of what Miller said. His claim is that Powell, as a politician, can choose to tell people that immigration is frightening or that it is not frightening and that given his position as a politician (these were evidently more deferential times) people would believe him and follow where he led. Miller exhorts Powell to be a thought leader in favour of a multi-ethnic Britain rather than opposed to it. Allowing for leadership to have a real world effect is not quite the “pas devant les enfants” policy suggested above.
Both Miller and Powell come across as dreadfully pompous – particularly Miller’s high academic opening gambit distinguishing “empiricism” from “rationalism” and Powell’s initial obnoxious refusal to let Miller speak during “my show” – however, given that our era has “influencer” as a job title, who am I to gripe?
It is noticable that both Miller and Powell were capable of thinking on their feet and engaging with new arguments put by the other – e.g. Miller’s “immigrants from the land of the dead” metaphor for the elderly – rather than sticking to a script or staying “on message”. Also that the debate remained friendly, a reminder of a time when political opponents believed that they could come to a solution via rational (or empirical) argument.
Rational? Empirical? Oh, have you not heard, philosophy has been de-colonised. 😉
“the British state has to take upon itself the role of intercommunal peacemaker and arbiter, like the imperial administrators of yesteryear.”
Historically this has been the fate of every ethnically divers country
I notice the writer did not quote the offending message. Is this because even repeating it might put you behind bars?
He didn’t quote the original post because it is very obviously a criminal threat and sharing it would have totally undermined his argument.
Wrong. Reporting of a threat is not inherently a threat. Context is everything.
Still it’s depressing how often this view is taken and we are not told the ‘shocking criminal’ statements that were made. But then again the purpose of the sentence is a warning to us plebs to just shut up and do as we are told.
Making threats to blow things up and kill people is not protected speech anywhere and the US 1st amendment would not have protected this criminal.
I take it you would consider a minimum 15 year sentence for inciting mass murder would be appropriate for the Labour Councillor currently under arrest.
Jail time is absolutely appropriate for making death threats.
Not sure where you get 15 years from…
As anjem choudary was given life for inciting mass murder over several years I thought 15 years was proportional but, in reflection, I agree. The labour councillor should receive the same punishment.
It is a shame Starmer was not so quick to prosecute those Pakistani Muslims who raped girls and did not support Ann Cryer MP when she raised the issue in 2008. If the Labour Party had supported Ann Cryer rather than ostracise her, then much anger would not have risen.
Having spoken to lady who lived on a Bradford council estate where the Police ignored the Pakistani’s involved in drug dealing plus white detectives not speaking Urdu or thinking it was important to do so, I am surprised the riots did not start earlier. It is not appropriate for a man to interview a Muslim woman if she is alone and as some do not speak English, women detectives should be able to interview them in their native tongue. The Police only speaking to community leaders is woefully inadequate , they need to be able to interview everyone. They also need to to know the trends in Islam over the last 60 years or so and in the Muslim World in general.
Once the murder of the three girls had taken place the Chief Constable and local Inspector should have been out side the homes of the families making sure no riots occurred.
The first duty of the Police is prevention of crime.
Police Whistleblower Shares Horrific Story (youtube.com)
Perhaps the greatest ” Elephant in the room” is the unsaid? Nowhere now does one ever read comments or observations about different peoples from different parts of the globe, and their different abilities? For example, the plethora of Irishmen in horse racing, Finns in rallying, East Africans in marathon running, how Americans and Britons dominated the golden era of pop music through the 1960s and 70s, how the ” rich lists” have such a disproportionate number of Jewish and Indian peoples, as do hedge funds and those who built the US IT sector?
The lack of industry, commerce, democracy, and road and other building development in Africa? The financial and commercial growth in East Asia, and the lack of commercial development in Gulf countries bar oil and that that oil and gas provided?
According to the intentions of our new government, and existing legislation, is illustrating these facts ” racist” or more accurately ” racialist”?
Whenever I have the misfortune to travel by air, I always have to hand, carefully researched statistics on aviation terrorism, and love to point out to security staff that there is one particlar group of peoples who have perpetrated well over 90 pc of all these crimes, and ask as to why this is not taken into account? I point out that not every single motorist breathalysed, so what is the difference? In the past 4 years I have had the airport police called 3 times, and been threatened with being banned from boarding my flight!
Francis, let me refer you to the Tim Marshall books on geography, and its effects on populations. Some ideas from them; look at the northern hemisphere temperate Eurasian land mass, stretching from Western Europe to easternmost Asia, the sub-tropical southern borders to the sub-arctic north. It’s easily navigable on foot, horse, or by simple boat. Its stable climate and plentiful resources – energy, food, water, building materials, metals – etc, and diversity of climate permit the growth of societies, cities, and cultures, interacting, trading, competing, merging, warring, the hothouse of human development. Almost every complex written language originated within it. It has no equivalent in the southern hemisphere, and the barriers of great oceans and deserts largely isolated it from sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, and Australasia/Polynesia, whose peoples were unable to participate in, contribute to, or benefit from social, cultural, technological developments, and the growth of documented knowledge and ideas. Peoples within Eurasia at times led, at others were subservient, but all learned from all the others, or opted out and fell behind: China, the Ottomans, Islam, for instance. Those outside developed very differently, living generally precarious, resource-poor lives, at the mercy of climate, predators, diseases, and conflicts, and without the benefits of the growing body of knowledge, a long term connection to their past, and a sense of experience and historical cause and effect that written language confers. Suddenly exposed to several thousand years of human development when the European explorers and colonists arrived it’s no wonder that their cultures and psyches were adversely impacted, as ours would be if ‘super humans’ arrived whose technologies, knowledge, and cultures not only beyond anything we knew, but anything we ever imagined. Would we resent inferior status or slavery, try to cling to our culture and resist theirs, resort to ’emollients’? Of course we would.
I expect that 90% group is a religious rather than ethnic one. And some new believers can be the most radical.
To provide some context to the prison sentence imposed on this woman for posting an emotional inflammatory post to a pretty restricted circle on Facebook these are recent statistics on how many convictions it usually takes to get jail time for various offences:
“For every offence type other than drugs, the number of previous convictions that criminals had before they were jailed has increased compared with 2007.
People jailed for burglary had on average 26 previous convictions for any offence. Those jailed for robbery typically had 14.5 previous convictions. For assaulting a police officer, it was 19.6 convictions. Possession of an offensive weapon it was 14, theft 26, and sexual assaults five. For breach of an Asbo, it rose to 38.3.”
The woman concerned had never had any convictions and was most unlikely to inspire anyone to blow up a mosque.
On the one hand we have had repeated limp wrested enforcement of the law followed by an absurd overreaction because repeated failures to enforce the law has encouraged a whole swath of repeat offender of one sort or another to riot, culminating in this foolish woman (the carer to her elderly husband) to be ripped from her home and presumably some recidivist having his sentence shortened to enable her to take an expensive place at his Majesty’s pleasure.
Justice may be blind but it should not be arbitrary.
Overall agree but justice should not be blind which is why the Statue of Justice at the Old Bailey is not blindfolded.
Now if a idiotic Muslim posted an equivalent Unherd and it’s regulars would be baying for the law to step in. And if the context was a set of Muslim riots – even more so.
Suspect she’ll get early release, maybe even sentence reduction on Appeal, but lesson will be learnt and transmitted. Sometimes law and order, which we all need preserved, requires examples be set.
Australia (still a democracy, hanging on by a thread) looks on in horror at what the UK has become.
This is going to end very badly.
I wonder if there would be an ‘…..extraordinarily harsh prison sentence….handed down to a [insert as appropriate]…. who made an unpleasant and antagonistic comment on Facebook about blowing up a Christian Church…’
I somehow suspect not.
Nothing shall be written that isn’t first state approved… 1984 here we come
We’re still talking about the motivations of the rioters but not the motivation of the killer that truly caused the riots. A man who has now ruined countless lives with his evil actions.
I wonder how long before UK citizens start seeking political asylum in the US and Canada? Some might balk at Canada but we will have a solid freedom loving Conservative government in 18 months.
The State is not flailing wildly. It knows exactly what it’s doing and is determined to crush dissent. Presumably, cases like this will end up before the British Supreme Court, which will have a lot of work to do.
The Tories responded to rebellion in Britain’s inner cities by cracking down on knife crime after 2011. A certain period of relative peace on the streets followed during Johnson and Cleverly’s tenure at London City Hall.
Now the discourse is set by London Mayor Khan. Urban minorities are prioritised yet street crime is through the roof.
If these political criminals have declared war on the working class, then the latter should be brave and fight right back.
T S Eliot had Eliot say in the ” Cocktail Party” Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important and are absorbed in an endless struggle to to think well of themselves”.
Orwell said the left wing middle class had contempt for physical courage, patriotism, British culture , had little contact with physical reality and had a shallow self righteousness.
The vast increase in people readings humanities degrees who undertake jobs of little worth mean they are desperate to find value in their lives. They achieve this by finding people who they consider are morally and intellectually inferior and make themselves feel important by dictating to them what to think, feel and do.
Nazism and communism and any from of collectivism are job creation schemes for people of little worth but who wish to feel imporatant by controlling other peoplers lives, hence censorship.
In WW2 , there was fifteen year old girl undertaking a job worthy of being awarded the George Medal and eighteen year olds being awarded the DFC in the Battle of Britain.
Geoffrey Wellum-www.dai4films.com – YouTube
A census was taken ” 8 of 10 teachers did not know what was the Battle of Britain !”.
How many people actually perform a job which is worthwhile who are part of the modern day ” Establishment ?” and humanities educated middle class. Those who maintain the infrastructure- road, rail, telephone, broadband, electricity, gas, water, sewage, those in construction, and industry are too busy undertaking worthwhile jobs to tell others how to live their lives.
We’re a step closer to an authoritarian police state it seems.
How does our broken culture affect the collective security of Western nations?
I wrote the below comment in response to a Spectator article “China goes for gold in South-China Seas” (1) as a former refugee to Australia from a communist country horrified of the law, the basis of civilisation becoming obsolete.
#ididnotstaysilent
I integrated into the spirit of what Australia’s men & women gave their lives for over the centuries, not the actual might=right exhibited by Australia’s traditional police criminality, lack of functional law-enforcement. Like Katharine Birbalsingh integrated into the spirit of classical British education, not its 21st century mutation.
—
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” – Peter Drucker.
Strategy + physical assets + sick culture = false security.
China’s, Russia’s & Iran’s culture is homogeneous, their values are clear & reflected in their expectations of what is right or wrong. Unlike the US’ & her Western allies’. See what is happening in the UK.
In addition to the undermining of what is right or wrong via many decades of white guilt in Western countries, the US has a major vulnerability in Australia’s hidden tradition of lawlessness, given our geographic location.
Australia likely never had functional law-enforcement, has evidently never been able to control information, rogue government/military insiders or technology.
Crime hiding is so perfect in Australia, I lived within a 10km radius 1988-2008 in leafy Melbourne suburbs, prior to the stalker ex-coworker’s onslaught of crimes against me in 2009 & knew nothing about crimes.
I’d thought Australia was a country of law & order, until I became an instant & concurrent adversary to Victoria Police / other government arms & to organised crime gangs like the MARCUCCI, by trying to report the stalker’s crimes.
No one would know how many crime gangs like the MARCUCCI exist.
I was only 1 of at least 7 of the stalker coworker’s concurrent targets just from the Victorian Electoral Commission 2009-2012. Thousands of crimes against me don’t show up in any statistics – over 5,000+ days & nights, in some 24-hour periods there are dozens of crimes I am forced to endure in physical & cyber-space. The MARCUCCI have dozens of members – I lost count after 50 bikers in one of their displays of vulgar brutality. You do the Maths.
Routinely blocking even public servant witnesses’ reporting attempts of crimes punishable by 10 years in jail means decades of incremental learning being missed about e.g. technology used in crimes. I gave up trying to report any crime in 2018. Our crime statistics are less than the tip of the iceberg. Another facet of false security.
Beware: the value of government guarantees about the digital ID, the security of YOUR data in government databases is the equivalent of Clare O’Neil’s grasp of cyber-security!
In spite of my thousands of desperate public interest disclosures since I stopped silently waiting for the stalker to grow bored of crimes against me in 2015 as per expert advice in lieu of anyone trying to stop the stalker’s crimes, horrified of the law becoming obsolete, meaning the basis of civilisation disappearing, or perhaps because of my desperate disclosures, the MARCUCCI / Mick GATTO keep exhibiting their gluttony of vulgar baseness, their ability to violate the Geneva Convention against crime witnesses like me, in our own homes, via remote means, without any risk of prosecution.
Remotely induced physical harm incidents against me started in 2019, when I declared self-representation at court, as Victoria Police forced me to fight in an admitted silencing attempt about crimes I witnessed as a public servant (Business Analyst, Victorian Electoral Commission, 2009-2012), crimes I continue being forced to endure, crimes that often involve technology not known to civilian experts at the time (2), let alone there being a deterrent via the law.
Victoria Police tried to entrap me twice, while they were forcing me to fight at court & were flashing their uniforms participating in some of the crimes in broad daylight that they were trying to silence me about, via the court case.
I won anyway, likely thanks to the complacency of Victoria Police, their expectation of everyone succumbing to violence / hopelessness sooner or later. They did not account for the price I paid / I continue paying for the privilege of living in a Western country.
My last, forced war-crime experience less than 3 hours ago in my home, on my own, behind locked doors.
I am writing this comment at 10:04am on 18 August 2024.
I have owned my home in Clare O’Neil’s electorate since 2001.
I never even dated the stalker ex-coworker.
I only know the MARCUCCI via their childish crime frenzies – “Lord of the Flies” on steroids.
Crimes violating the Geneva Convention I was forced to experience overnight again a half a dozen times or more – I stopped counting or documenting details, stopped trying to report any crime in 2018 – include variants of “transcranial direct current stimulus (DARPA)” (3) & voice/sound-to-skull incidents.
There is no point in trying to move. The MARCUCCI & beneficiaries of their risk-free criminality like Mick GATTO, the Mongols, Comanchero, Hells Angels, etc. will always know where I am via their access to government databases & technology their victims’ taxes are paying for.
#ididnotstaysilent
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(1) https :// www .spectator .com.au/2024/08/china-goes-for-gold-in-south-china-seas/
(2) https :// blog .avast .com/exploiting-air-gaps-avast
(3) https :// www .darpa .mil/program/next-generation-nonsurgical-neurotechnology
The British police has been mobilised willingly for partial political aims, and specifically against one community. This can only mean a huge amount of violent social division ahead.
Personally, I don’t think the UK has been closer to revolution for centuries. It seems only a matter of time before the civil disobedience reaches a point where the government falls, particularly this one.