ANOTHER grim week for the country, culminating in the ghastly Galloway’s win in Rochdale, as if Gaza had not already been brought to the House of Commons.
The newsletter version of this post went to press before Rishi Sunak warned the nation that democracy was under threat (as if we didn’t know – it has been for a while, thanks to the last few Conservative administrations) and made his virtuous call for unity. I’ve said it before and will say it again – there’s none so blind as those who cannot see. In the words of a WhatsApp friend: ‘How dare Sunak employ the same tired old false equivalence argument, equating a handful of former BNP members, “far right extremists”, with the thousands of Islamist extremists who belong to designated terrorist organisations with a clear mandate to obliterate Israel and the Jewish people?’
Indeed. Tweeters, set off last night by ‘Maddie’ in reply to an Allison Pearson tweet, made hay of it:
‘Yes, who are the “far right” please? Anxious to know so that I can protect myself from them . . .’
You and me? I asked. That was trumped by a spate of hilarious comments that followed. They will make you laugh. ‘I will let you know when I find them’ was one, accompanied by a gif of a chap with a magnifying glass. ‘Under your bed’ was another. I loved this one: ‘What far right activity are you indulging in today? Driving a car? (tick). Drinking milk? (tick).’
At least us ‘far righters’ have not lost our sense of humour. But ‘Bearded Codger’ is not far wrong: The far right, he said ‘are those who subscribe to ideals and policies which in days gone by would have been seen as uncontroversial, middle of the road . . . such has been the leftward shift of politics such people have been left isolated’.
Not while TCW stays around they aren’t; not while we are able to remind Sunak and his administration that they have but reaped what they have sown, as Andrew Cadman’s open letter to our cowardly MPs last week did. Though it did make me wonder how long it is before TCW is made a proscribed organisation. We had a taste of it when we were banned by the mobile phone companies for five months in the summer of 2022, courtesy of the British Board of Film Censors who were tipped off, we believe, by Whitehall.
Another thing our weak leader doesn’t get is that is they who have undermined and betrayed democracy. His is the party of government that went to war with their own people – who locked us up, made reckless and risky vaccination a condition of exit, introduced hate crimes, allowed the police to become a woke enforcer and be captured by Islamists and Black Lives Matter while crime went rampant; it is they who imposed ruinous Net Zero policies on the basis of XR-type climate cult zealotry that has ended up with 15-minute cities and ULEZ. Ever further State control and the undermining of family life, faith and freedom. Yes, our democracy is under threat and the Prime Minister, whatever his personal social conservativism, has done nothing to defend it.
But that is what we constantly do on TCW, and last week our writers didn’t disappoint or pull their punches. Liz Hodgkinson fired the starting gun with questions about Dr Rachel Clarke of Breathtaking fame, the sentimental ITV agitprop drama that MSM critics had gushed over. Not us. Then Kim Rye struck a chord with her question, ‘Are the Tories scared of Sadiq?’ as well as with her impassioned ‘message from the edge of the cliff’. Equally heartfelt was Allison Pearson’s cry out for British Jews. Horrified by Parliament’s abject surrender to tyranny, she’d written the article for the British Friends of Israel’s October Declaration but when I asked her if we could republish it on TCW she agreed instantly – just when I really needed some cheering up. Who didn’t?
I hadn’t been able to get over how supporters of Hamas’s terror regime are being allowed to continue their harassment and disruption in the heart of London. It’s so depressing that as a nation we’ve succumbed to such bullying. Who, I’ve been wondering, has been co-ordinating it all? Who are the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) organising the demos and who is paying? Who (in Parliament or the Crown Estates) agreed to their projecting their message on to Big Ben? Someone must have since the Met Police have assured us it was not illegal. So at TCW we decided to do some sleuthing, since no one else appeared to be, and contacted a company that specialises in projecting advertising slogans and the like on to big buildings. And guess what they told us?
‘Big Ben is actually the only place in the UK (that we are aware of) where it is illegal to project on to. You have to get written permission from the Speaker of the House otherwise it is an arrestable offence. For this reason it is not a site that we offer to clients.'(my italics)
So either the Met was wrong and the law was broken, or Sir Lindsay Hoyle (or perhaps the Crown Estates?) to add to his other dreadful decisions, did agree to it. A PMQ or written question to James Cleverly is in order. The Home Secretary might also be interested in doing some further checks on the shadowy PSC and who they are in partnership with. We did some research on that too. According to NGO Monitor, ‘The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign does not include any financial data, donor information, or sources of funding on its website, reflecting a complete lack of transparency and accountability.’ Furthermore, the site reports that in 2015 the Co-operative Bank closed the PSC’s bank account ‘because of fears that money could inadvertently be funnelled to illegal groups in Gaza. Following advanced due diligence checks on the anti-Israel group’s account, the bank said it was not satisfied that it would not be used to aid prescribed [sic] activities in the Palestinian territories’. What had the bank found out that spooked them into this action, I wonder?
Needless to say, once again last week we saw ministers’ wrath being directed at the wrong people. Penny Mordaunt outdid herself (no easy task) with her attempted denunciation of one of the very few truth-tellers in that shameless House, see here.
As Andrew Bridgen said, it speaks for itself. Patronising, smug and above all dim: not just the problem of Mordaunt but so many of them. I was bewailing this with Angus Dalgleish on the phone last week – the ‘dim Dames’ was a phrase that popped up. You know, the ones that inhabit the upper quango echelons, public health and government science advisory bodies.
Thankfully, one of the most dangerously stupid of them, Dame June Raine, is on her way out. Under her tenure, as we all know, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) watchdog authorised unsafe and ineffective vaccines, risked public health and caused untold vaccine damage. So you might expect me to be thrilled by the news that a cross-party group of MPs and peers has finally called for an urgent investigation into the MHRA over an apparent lack of action on covid jabs, despite knowing of risks for months before issuing official warnings. Well I am, sort of, and indeed hats off to its co-chair Graham Stringer, the honourable and thoroughly decent Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, whose letter is a good one. But, and this is the huge but, why has it taken so long? I have repeated this again and again, I know, but we at TCW began reporting on the MHRA’s turpitude as far back as July 2021, and have never stopped sharing the damning evidence that others refused to acknowledge, let alone do anything about. At least we have an archive to prove that we raised these issues way back.
Which brings me back to our output from last week. We do keep on eye on the USA where we have a quite wonderful, informed and erudite writer in Bernard Carpenter. His latest devastating account of the gloating Biden regime’s targeting, arrest and prison abuse of the Capitol protesters from January 6, 2021 – this is no more, no less than America’s own gulag – will shock you deeply. The so-called Democrat representatives of the free people are presiding over an unprecedentedly corrupt administration and, let’s not mince words, sheer amorality – or, if you will, evil. It simply doesn’t get properly reported here. (You have to turn to the ‘far right’ Epoch Times or the ‘far right’ Zero Hedge for the truth.) We can only pray that Donald Trump wins through to put an end to it.
Finally, there is always a high point in my TCW week. This time for me it was receiving Rick Bradford’s independent analysis of how the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shrank last year’s excess death figures. He is clever. It is brilliant and as for me – well, I am just a complete sucker for such brain power.
