Civil Liberty

British holidaymakers will have to pay hundreds of pounds for Covid tests if they want to take a trip abroad this summer under plans announced by the Government on Friday.

Travellers who want to visit countries on the safe “green list” will still be expected to pay for gold standard PCR tests on their return to the UK at around £120 each – an extra cost of almost £500 for a family of four.

People who have been fully vaccinated will still be required to take the PCR tests on or before the second day of their arrival back in the UK because of Government concerns that “green list” countries could still harbour new Covid variants.

Every pecksniff in the land is going to be arguing for keeping – as “useful” no doubt – every restriction possible. Here, £500 for leaving the country is going to discourage quite a lot of travel, isn’t it? Someone will start justifying it for the climate……

The egregious Sewell report only bolsters those who want to discredit antiracism
Alana Lentin

We do want to discredit antiracism as it is currently practised, yes…..

Why aren’t we calling the Capitol attack an act of treason?

Possibly because if we do then we have to go hang the abseiling lesbians.

Treason being a fairly serious charge, rather larger than just monstering a legislature in session.

Covid passports designed to return life to normal in Britain might not be ready until the autumn, The Telegraph can reveal.

If they’re developing systems that won’t even be ready until the dangers have passed then they’re not going to take that boot of the face of human society, are they?

Remember, ID cards after WWII, someone had to sue the government to get them to stop insisting upon them…..

Already, the Conservatives have announced plans to introduce a bill to make photo ID mandatory from 2023 for all UK-wide and English elections. There’s no obvious need for it: there was only one conviction for “personation” fraud in the UK in 2019.

ID cards are, of course a vile idea. But that we convict few of personation is not an argument against them. For the absence of the convictions is not evidence of the absence of the crime. It’s evidence – possibly – of the absence of the ability to convict for it.

We shouldn’t have to repeat this: Americans have the right to insult those in charge, from President Biden to a local councilman, and, yes, even an armed policeman. Yet this bedrock right to vent our spleens against officials is now being challenged.

Unless you want to deny white privilege, institutional racism, claim that gender and sex are different things, one variable the other not……and so on…….

The Education Secretary on Thursday night condemned the “threats and intimidation” that a teacher has faced after he was suspended for showing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed in class.

Gavin Williamson said that the protests outside a West Yorkshire school on Thursday were “completely unacceptable”, adding that teachers are allowed to expose pupils to “challenging or controversial” issues.

His statement came after dozens of protesters gathered at the gates of Batley Grammar School on Thursday morning, forcing the school to advise students to stay at home while police officers stood guard.

The 29-year-old Religious Studies teacher is said to have shown the image to pupils during a lesson on Monday. On Thursday night, he was understood to be in hiding after police raised concerns for his safety when he was named online.

Yep, the parents are indeed allowed to protest. Just as others would be if there was a remake of Pisschrist in art lessons.

It’s the reaction that comes next that matters. Will be defining…..

The CAB has previously criticised Pride in London for not being inclusive enough, with Stonewall pulling out of the parade in 2018 because of the event’s perceived lack of diversity.

The mass resignation follows Pride in London’s decision to allow the Metropolitan police to apply to take part in the procession at the annual parade, following calls to ban them at the height of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. During deliberations, the CAB recommended in a report that the police not be allowed to march as a group in the parade.

We must be diverse by insisting that folks who are different cannot take part?

The story quoted a leaked extract of a video call between Raab and staff in his department in which the foreign secretary said it was possible the UK could strike trade deals with countries whose human rights records breached the European convention on human rights (ECHR).

For, of course, the contention is that both countries are breaching ECHR rights by not being woke.

And, well, is there any Council of Europe member that hasn’t lost a case about such rights?

Tanzania’s president, John Magufuli, one of Africa’s most prominent Covid-19 deniers, has died after a two-week absence from public life that prompted speculation that he had contracted the disease.

No, not that, this:

Government officials had insisted Magufuli was working normally and that citizens should ignore “hateful” rumours coming from abroad. Police arrested four people since last week on charges of spreading false information about the health of political leaders.

Did you know that it is actually illegal in France to call a public servant an ignorant fuckwit?

Ngo crosses the line into truly despicable when he downplays the murders of Heather Heyer by white nationalists in Charlottesville and Black teenager Trayvon Martin by vigilante George Zimmerman. Every act of violence by antifa, meanwhile, is described so meticulously and ominously that Herr Goebbels would have been proud.

In no way do I make that allusion flippantly. Maligning the opposition was central to the Nazi strategy, and it is critical to today’s far-right extremists. Ngo’s intention here seems not just to discredit antifa, but to run a diversionary tactic for Patriot Prayer and other groups that are far more dangerous than their leftist counterparts. He calls the Proud Boys a “pro-Trump fraternity,” as if they were just J. Crew-clad beer pong aficionados instead of racist thugs.

Having made the Goebbels comparison I shall now go on to malign the opposition…..

The UK must retain a strong independent broadcasting regulator or risk echoing America’s “ultra toxic media environment”, the BBC journalist Clive Myrie has warned.

With Ofcom’s role under new scrutiny and suggestions that former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, previously sceptical of the value of media regulation, could be appointed as its chair, the news anchor will use a pre-recorded speech, to be streamed on Thursday evening, to make the case for “a clear and transparent set of rules and guidelines that everyone can follow and everyone can see”.

While some observers warn that the regulator is no longer fit for purpose and must adapt to better deal with new digital media, Myrie used the Sir Harold Evans Memorial lecture to defend the fundamental purpose of the model.

Arguing that as a regulated public broadcaster, the BBC “helps bind the country together” he said that in the US “it’s the opinion hosts who can mould and shape minds”, leading to a “trust deficit” that “has serious consequences for the fabric of US society, and the future of American democracy”.

How are we to monster the public into the correct beliefs if any bugger is allowed to say whatever?

Changing the law to force people to show photo ID to take part in UK elections

This is just the ID card thing all over again. We have specific photo ID cards for specific things – drivers’ licences, passports and so on. We don’t have a citizen ID card. But the powers that be have wanted to have one for decades now. This is just another attempt to shoehorn one in.

No. Fuck off.

Sam Mole, 20, from Kettering, Northamptonshire, first tweeted at Dan Levene after the journalist tweeted his opposition to antisemitic chanting during matches at Stamford Bridge. Replying to a tweet from Levene which stated that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, Mole said: “And unfortunately one of them killed wasn’t you.”

However, a judge ruled that he could not be charged for sending racially or religiously aggravated malicious communications because Mole was on holiday in Australia when he sent the tweets. Consequently, the alleged offence falls outside the jurisdiction of UK law.

Objectionable, vile, etc etc, but liberty does mean that pinheads gain the freedom to be pinheads.

Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite charged with aiding Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse, has offered to renounce her UK and French citizenship in an attempt to secure bail.

The offer to surrender her foreign citizenship is the latest attempt by Maxwell’s lawyers to secure bail for their client. Maxwell, 59, has been denied bail twice, with a judge deeming her to be a flight risk.

Dunno about the French but the British attitude is that whatever you tell J. Foreigner once a Brit you’re always able to come back.

Sorta but not quite exactly.

You can be stripped of UK citizenship but not really give it up.

Alex Salmond has cancelled his testimony to a Holyrood inquiry after a dossier of claims he made against Nicola Sturgeon was heavily censored following pressure from Scottish prosecutors.

Opposition MSPs said that the Scottish Parliament was left facing a “credibility crisis” after Mr Salmond’s written submission was finally published by the legislature on Monday, only to be pulled Tuesday morning, on the eve of his scheduled appearance.

The Crown Office expressed “grave concerns” over the publication of the evidence, believed to relate to a court order that prevents publication of information likely to lead to the identification of complainers in Mr Salmond’s criminal trial.

A redacted version of Mr Salmond’s dossier, with around 500 words deleted, was released on Tuesday afternoon.

Can they all lose?

The international community should not keep rubber-stamping these illegitimate outcomes in the name of maintaining a supposed peace. The consequence of doing so is to continue the exclusionary systems of government that fly in the face of demographic and political changes.

Governance in much of Africa is shit. So, we want colonialism back? Whitey comes to do the governing?

“It was the last straw,” said Mize, 57, an advertising copywriter from Orlando whose youngest twin daughters are now 19. “Insurrection at the Capitol, images of the police officer with his head being crushed, individuals dressed as Vikings on the floor of the Senate… we’re not going to call this normal. [Publix] are a private company and it is their business how they want to contribute their money, but it’s also my right to decide where I want to spend my dollars.”

You should spend your money how you wish. That is how you tame and direct your suppliers.

A Hamas-run Islamic court in the Gaza Strip has ruled that women require the permission of a male guardian to travel, further restricting movement in and out of the territory that has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since the militant group seized power.

The left will edge away from the Palestinian cause, right?

It’s a funny old fight for democracy, isn’t it? We must not allow someone to run in an election because they might win:

Donald Trump could run for president in 2024 and unleash a violent mob on the US Capitol once more unless he is convicted, Democrat prosecutors at his impeachment trial claimed.

Prosecutors said Mr Trump had shown “no remorse” for inciting a mob to attack the seat of US democracy on Jan 6 and would “do it again” if given the chance.

They said it could be “only just the beginning” of political violence in America and the “threat was not over”. His supporters had been following the “orders of their commander-in-chief,” they said.

On the third day of the trial Jamie Raskin, the lead prosecutor, said: “Is there any political leader in this room who believes that if he is ever allowed to get back in the Oval Office, Donald Trump would stop inciting violence?

Of course, he could only win if a plurality of the voters actually voted for him, which is why he must be banned from running, to save democracy.

It’s all rather Soviet really, anyone can run, course they can, but only if they already support The Party. After all, no one rational would not support The Party…..