Description: Large outdoor crowds and curious onlookers in flag-draped buildings watch as a procession of soldiers and tanks march and drive through the streets of Knightsbridge during the London Victory Parade on July 19th, 1919.
Just seen a doctor on twitter talking about 2 year plus waiting lists, a teacher talking about 2 years of not being fully staffed…
Basic public services are falling apart and we are allowing this to happen. The Tories are gutting everything and will no doubt later swoop in and privatise.
Yes it’s covid, but it’s not just covid - the problems were there in 2019 too, but now everything is worse and covid is a convenient excuse.
The opposition are embarrassing. Labour should be running rings around the Conservatives.
We need rid of the Tories and Labour need to actually propose an alternative.
Covid is the new Brexit, something the Tories can blame whenever they suck at government.
The alternative isn’t going to come from party politics, mate.
For “Tories” read “GOP” and it’s the same in the U.S.
and why we should all be concerned about prison time for peaceful protestors.
By Ceri jones
Fracking splits opinions, but even more so today. It’s true that, for the time being at least, we need hydrocarbons. Regardless of partial or ‘some day’ alternatives in the energy mix, right now we’re dependent on affordable sources of dirty energy.
But today marks the first time since 1932 that an environmental protester has been sentenced to jail .
Anti-fracking protestors held red roses in support of the men.
Fracking in the UK
Energy company Cuadrilla was granted a licence to drill for shale gas near Preston New Road in the north of England in October 2016. Operations kicked off to construct a fracking pad at the site near Blackpool in January 2017, then on 25 July a convoy of lorries moved in to deliver drilling equipment.
While many members of the local community were up in arms over the decision, four protestors took direct action by climbing on top of lorries – Simon Roscoe Blevins from Sheffield, Richard Roberts from London, Richard Loizou from Devon and Julian Brock from Torquay.
Unable to proceed, the lorries came to standstill and the men sat tight, supplied with food, drinks and blankets by other protestors. Of course, this couldn’t last forever and eventually Loizou descended, closely followed by Blevins and Roberts, and Brock the following day. All were arrested.
Sentencing protestors
Today in Preston Crown Court, Judge Robert Altham sentenced Blevins and Roberts to 16 months in prison, Loizou to 15 months in prison, and Brock to a 12-month suspended sentence, a hefty price for a combined 276 hours sitting atop lorries.
Altham said that, despite their serious concerns for the environment, the defendants saw the public as “necessary and justified collateral damage”. This collateral damage was reported by prosecutor Craig MacGregor as travel disruption, disruption to local residents and loss of trade for businesses over a period of less than four days. However, this translated to police costs and loss of money for Cuadrilla – the biggest factors – totalling £12,000 and £50,000 respectively.
Reminding the court of citizens’ rights to peaceful protests, and that no persons or equipment were damaged, Kirsty Brimelow QC, representing Roberts, pushed the men’s good intentions and said, ‘It is relevant that there is a huge amount of scientific study that points to the damage of increasing climate emissions,’ and she indicated intergovernmental climate panel findings that climate change would displace 75 million people by 2035 and lead to the extinction of one in four species by 2050.
Your opinion on fracking
Whatever your opinion on fracking, an open dialogue cannot be had unless all factors are taken into account, including our urgent and growing need for energy security and that studies have proven that fracking produces radioactive waste.
Added to this, local authority Lancashire County Council opposed the drilling and more than 300 protestors have been arrested since operations started. So it seems that those most likely to be affected by the fracking are the ones not being allowed to exercise their freedom of speech, or had their concerns fall on deaf ears.
Whereas, the government and Cuadrilla stand to earn a great deal of money in their determination to tap that gas.
Industry, economy, business - when is it ever simple? However, it’s essential to keep the conversation open to find a better way to power the country without compromising the people prepared to protect it.
Bad things are happening in the UK. I made a video about the situation and how to fight against it.
Essentially, the government is trying to push through a bill that will effectively ban all protest. This is a human rights violation, although they insist that it’s not.
You could get a prison sentence of up to 10 years for any protest-related action that the Home Secretary Priti Patel deems “impactful” or “causing serious annoyance”, such as sitting in a road, spray-painting a monument or making too much noise.
Furthermore,the proposed bill gives the Home Secretary the power to amend the law afterwards without parliamentary approval. This gives her unprecedented control over any and all protest and is dangerous for democracy.
In this video I discuss the bill, why it is so sinister and how we can fight against it. If you found this video helpful, please share it with others and encourage them to act! Share with your UK friends!
I’ve made a list of resources you can use, including MP email templates. I will be updating it with new info as the situation changes.
As of now (March 16th 2021, 22:38), the bill has passed its Second Reading, meaning that it will now be scrutinised and amendments will be proposed. If you are in the UK, write to your MP and ask them to either propose amendments that will scrap the anti-protest elements of this bill, or support specific amendments, such as this one by MP Bell Robeiro-Addy. Also,sign Netpol’s petiton asking UK to protect protest rights.
Please spread this information. The Conservative party wants to turn the UK into a police state where only their opinions are heard. We cannot allow them to get away with this.
Announcing Jew in the City’s 2015 Orthodox Jewish All Stars!!
Baroness Rosalind Altmann, U.K. minister of pensions; Ahmed Zayat, owner of American Pharoah, the first Triple Crown-winning thoroughbred racehorse in thirty-seven years; and Ilana Wernick, Emmy winning co-executive producer of the hit TV series Modern Family, are among 10 individuals who have been named 2015 Orthodox Jewish All- Stars by Jew in the City, the organization dedicated to re-branding Orthodox Judaism to the world through digital media.
This diverse and accomplished group also includes Jeremy England, a 33- year- old physicist and professor at MIT who some in the scientific community refer to as ‘the next Darwin’ on account of his brilliant mathematical theories and explanations of the origins of life; Lawrence Burian, general counsel, secretary, and executive vice president for The Madison Square Garden Company; Zahava Reisman, founder of Sarah Chloe Jewelry, who has built a devoted following of the Hollywood elite in six short years; Gregory Zuckerman, an award-winning business reporter for the Wall Street Journal; Gail Hoffman, the treasurer of Columbia University; Norm Eisen, who served as the United States Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011-2014; and Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg, a 2014 CNN Hero who created Kids Kicking Cancer (in which he combines therapy and martial arts to help children fighting disease).
When interacting with the government you often have to provide a title from a preset list of options. Many people prefer to use no title, or a gender-neutral title: government bodies should offer gender-neutral options e.g. “Mx”, as well as the option to use no title at all.
[Image: a screenshot of a green and grey progress bar from the petition website showing that the petition has 292 of 10,000 required signatures.]
This is so important, and for a few minutes I wasn’t going to promote it, because I already have Mx on all my government paperwork and records. But then I realised that if this gets to 10,000 signatures, the Government will have to release an official statement saying that titles aren’t legally binding and that they already accept Mx on records.
That would be a HUGE victory for nonbinary people and people who don’t want to indicate a gender with their title. So please, if you are in the UK or might have followers who are, consider reblogging this. <3
As encouraging as the 809 candidates pledging support were, the 33 of them that actually got elected didn’t include the 2 Lib Dem MPs who previously showed the most support for nonbinary people in parliament.
This means that it’s important that those 33 who were elected are kept to their word and asked to show active support, and that more MPs are told why these issues deserve consideration.
