Politics
Reform UK Asked Opponent To Be Paper Candidate In Elections
A Lib Dem councillor was left stunned after being asked by Reform UK to stand for the party at the local elections in May.
Sam Webber, who sits on Bromley Council in south east London, was phoned out of the blue by the party’s membership team and asked if he wanted to be a “paper candidate” on May 7.
A paper candidate is someone whose name goes on the ballot representing a party but is not expected to win or do any campaigning.
Speaking to HuffPost UK, Webber accused Nigel Farage’s party of “making a mockery of the election nomination process”.
He said: “Is Reform just randomly calling up people across the country and asking them to stand for election?
“Nominations open in five days time. How much vetting will the party be doing on their candidates in that time? This runs the risk people getting nominated who would be ineligible to serve even if they were elected.
“That would see costly and unnecessary by-elections having to take place after May 7, as we saw after the 2025 local elections.
“Reform UK is making a mockery of the election nomination process. As we have seen in authorities like Kent County Council, it would be total chaos if the party gets anywhere near power. I suspect voters will not like being taken for fools.”
Reform has been contacted for comment.
A staggering 65 Reform councillors who were elected at last May’s local elections have since either resigned as councillors, defected or quit the party.
Politics
CONTENT WARNING: Police in Israel arrest and violently beat Palestinian lawyer
A Palestinian lawyer, who is an Israeli citizen, has been beaten to a pulp by police in Israel after they invaded his apartment in Be’er Sheva.
Saleh Khalil Faisal Na’ama‘s attack comes amid rampant and escalating Israeli violence and land theft perpetrated on Palestinians under the apartheid occupation.
Israel’s daily newspaper Haaretz got hold of body-worn camera footage from police during the illegal raid, which was triggered by a complaint from an off-duty cop about noise from the apartment.
The instigator of the complaint and two police officers forced their way into Na’ama’s apartment in southern Israel. They attacked him and his relatives, a doctor and nurse, it was reported.
Na’ama suffered serious injuries to his eyes, kidneys and nose, and underwent surgery.
Israel is a racist, terror state.
Featured image via Haaretz
By Skwawkbox
Politics
The Times article hallucinates Ireland as antisemitic hellhole
The Times has continued its decline as a place with zero editorial standards by printing evidence-free anti-Irish shite that ought to have been thrown in the bin with a giant red ‘Citations Needed’ stamped across its face. The piece by Jon Ihle claims that the country is unique among European nations in its hostility towards Jewish people. He says:
…when I travel around Europe on my Irish passport, whether to Rome, Paris, Amsterdam or Cologne — every one of which was a site, within living memory, of Jewish persecution — I don’t worry at all.
Yet at home in Dublin, I do worry.
In fact, in deeply irresponsible fashion, Ihle goes on to engender fear in Ireland’s 2,000 member Jewish community by suggesting there are antisemitic child murderers waiting to strike at any moment:
I worry every time I attend a Jewish community event that this will be the time someone gets through the many layers of security to attack us. I worry that my partner, who is publicly visible as a Holocaust education activist and a Jewish business owner, will be targeted. I worry that when I bring my six-year-old son to places where other Jews are present, I’m putting him in danger.
The writer spends the best part of a dozen or so paragraphs providing precisely zero meaningful evidence to support this suggestion. His best attempt is – and you’ll be shocked – that strong pro-Palestine sentiment in Ireland is evidence of burning hatred of Jews. He pursues the smear beloved of those seeking to crush Palestine activism by conflating:
….a context of relentless protest against Israel and a boycott movement that is trying to isolate the country from the community of nations…
with “violence against diaspora Jews…around the world”. The latter is a real issue, and should be taken seriously. Notice, however, that Ihle is talking globally. There is no indication that Jewish people are under violent threat in Ireland.
We may have said this before – protesting ‘Israel’ isn’t antisemitic
Furthermore, the idea that it is linked in any way to the overwhelmingly peaceful Palestine solidarity demonstrations that often contain large Jewish contingents is a total fiction. Ihle goes on to claim an:
…atmosphere in Ireland [that] is almost febrile at times.
This is as he adds to his above comments by mentioning the campaign to stop the Ireland vs ‘Israel’ football match, and Ireland’s withdrawal from Eurovision.
It is entirely appropriate for so-called ‘Israel’ to be relentlessly protested and ostracised – this is the only meaningful way of holding the genocidal terror project to account. Especially in the absence of continued failure to act by governments across the world, including Ireland’s own complicit Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
Yet more egregiously, The Times’ own human reality distortion field generator proceeds to claim that “Irish Jews end up as collateral damage” through actions like the call for Herzog Park to be renamed.
Ihle says:
Before he was president of Israel, Chaim Herzog was an Irish Jew…
This is indeed correct. However, and significantly more pertinently, he was also a fucking war criminal piece of shit. As pointed out by the Canary, this brutish coloniser:
…served in the Zionist Haganah paramilitary group, which carried out atrocities in the years leading up to the Nakba, and during the mass ethnic cleansing process itself. Following this, he is described as having “built and led the establishment of IDF Military intelligence”. In 1967 he became military governor of occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and was integral in the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem’s Mughrabi Quarter, calling the area a “toilet” that the Zionists “decided to remove”.
No one in Ireland is objecting in the least to the park being named after another Irish Jewish person. Jews for Palestine Ireland backed the campaign to get rid of the Herzog stain, and replace it with one of:
…many worthy names to choose from – Harry Kernoff, Estella Solomons, Con Leventhal, David Marcus, and Robert Briscoe, to name just a few options.
The Times printing racist clairvoyance masquerading as fact
Ihle continues his descent by engaging in mindreading, saying:
If “horror in Gaza” is the first thing that springs to mind when you hear “Jew in London”, you should ask yourself some hard questions about why.
You should indeed, but given this is a rather over-ambitious attempt to engage in telepathy, we don’t have any actual – here’s that word again – EVIDENCE, to suggest such thinking is occurring. Apparently Ihle the Celt Whisperer has established that it is, however. Perhaps he can get his calipers out and instruct us that it’s the unique structure of the Irish skull that allows his brain waves to penetrate our feeble defences.
Ihle proceeds, further sans citations, through more fictions about supposed widespread latent Irish antisemitism on social media. So widespread apparently that he can’t find a single example to substantiate his case.
We then get a telling paragraph on so-called ‘Israel’ and Palestine, in which Palestinians are merely the “perceived underdog”. You know the ones who have had the equivalent of over six nukes dropped on them by Zionist butchers over the past two and a half years? Yeah, our mate Jon’s still on the fence about who’s the underdog there. Meanwhile, the Zionist entity’s indisputable status as a “colonial occupier” gets scare quotes.
So yeah, several hundred words, and nothing of any substance, amounting only to an anti-Irish diatribe. File this as case #20,231,007 under “more rubbish intended to smear Palestine activism via conflation with antisemitism”.
Featured image via the Canary
Politics
Producer Of Gaza Documentary Takes Aim At The BBC During TV Baftas Speech
The makers of the award-winning Gaza: Doctors Under Attack had some choice words for the BBC after the documentary was honoured at this year’s TV Baftas.
On Sunday night, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack picked up the Best Current Affairs title at the TV awards show.
Although the BBC commissioned the documentary in 2024, and had originally planned to air it in February 2025, the project was eventually shelved by the national broadcaster due to concerns about impartiality.
The BBC said in a statement at the time: “We have come to the conclusion that broadcasting this material risked creating a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect of the BBC.”
In the end, the documentary aired on Channel 4 instead, with Doctors Under Attack – which highlighted the plight faced by medical professionals in the Middle East – among the winners at the TV Baftas over the weekend.

Journalist Ramita Navai said on stage: “Israel has killed over 47,000 children and women in Gaza. So far, Israel has bombed and targeted every single one of Gaza’s hospitals. It’s killed over 1,700 Palestinian doctors and health care workers. It has imprisoned over 400 in what the UN now calls the medicide.
“These are the findings of our investigation that the BBC paid for but refused to show. But we refuse to be silenced and censored. We thank Channel 4 for showing this film.”
After she dedicated the award to the Palestinian doctors and medical workers currently being detained in the Middle East, producer Ben De Pear concluded: “Just a question for the BBC – given you dropped our film, will you drop us from the Bafta screening later tonight?”
The BBC aired coverage of the TV Baftas on a two-hour time delay, featuring De Pear’s closing comment in the broadcast, as well as an edited version of Navai’s speech, omitting the statistics she provided on stage, but including her criticism of the BBC and praise for Channel 4.
Earlier this year, the BBC faced backlash for editing out pro-Palestine comments from acceptance speeches in its coverage of Bafta’s film awards.
A spokesperson said in February: “The live event is three hours and it has to be reduced to two hours for its on-air slot. The same happened to other speeches made during the night and all edits were made to ensure the programme was delivered to time.”
Politics
The House Opinion Article | The Professor Will See You Now: Sleep

Illustration by Tracy Worrall
4 min read
Lessons in political science. This week: sleep
There was a night, many years ago, when I was drifting off to sleep listening to the radio and the last thing I heard before the land of nod was Geoff Hoon, on The World Tonight, doing a good job defending the indefensible. When the radio woke me up in the morning, there he was again, this time on the Today programme, still on a sticky wicket but batting with gusto.
The more critical of you might say that both falling asleep and waking up to Geoff Hoon is Too Much Hoon, and the sort of thing that only Mrs Hoon should experience, but he was then one of the university’s local MPs, always very helpful with student requests and the like, so there will be no cheap gags like this here. See it, instead, as a small and perhaps unremarkable example of the reservoirs of energy required by frontline politicians.
Ditto for the last day of April, which marked 21 years since I first appeared as an election night anorak. Election all-nighters, fuelled only by coffee and adrenaline, may be great fun for commentators and journalists – it’s one of the highlights of my year – but they seem much less enjoyable for politicians, many of whom have been campaigning for weeks before and would much rather feel a pillow beneath their head. Those whose parties are on the up at least get to enjoy the bragging rights, but the ones I’m always most impressed by are those who have got a right kicking from the electorate – ‘well, it’s certainly been a difficult night for us’ – but who are still there at 4am, fighting the good fight.
Or take that bit in Doctor Who, when the Doctor manages to undermine Harriet Jones, the prime minister, by whispering the phrase “Doesn’t she look tired?” to one of her aides; those four words prove to be enough to cause her downfall. It’s much quoted, but implausible. Of course she looks tired! She’s the prime minister; they all look like that. Exhaustion is part of the job description.
It’s less obvious that this is all a good thing. There are plenty of studies on how sleep deprivation lowers your cognitive abilities (although you don’t need an academic study to know this if you’ve been a parent). Bill Clinton once said that every important mistake he’d made in his life, he’d made because he was too tired – although he clearly wasn’t too tired for some of his mistakes.
New research just published in Political Psychology has now also found a link between the quality of sleep and political participation. Based on European Social Survey data from 12 countries, including the UK, researchers found that individuals who report good sleep are more likely to vote, even after controlling for a range of other variables. Those who don’t are more likely to take part in non-electoral politics. The effects don’t appear consistently across countries, which implies something else might be going on, although they are found in the UK.
The paper might be thought to slightly oversell itself by claiming that “creating societies where high-quality sleep is accessible to the public is vital to the sustainability of democratic regimes”, given that the size of the effects is relatively small; even if all were suffering cheese-inspired nightmares on a regular basis, turnout wouldn’t be all that much lower. Increased levels of education, for example, drive up turnout by roughly four to five times as much as improved sleep quality does. That, however, is just the direct effect. Sleep quality will also be working as a background factor, affecting many of the other variables that drive turnout, including education, health, and so on. ‘Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, And it makes you vote a bit more’. As Shakespeare could have written.
Further reading: F Erol et al, Waking up to politics: How sleep quality relates to political participation, Political Psychology, 2026
Politics
Politics Home Article | Campaigners in Westminster call time on hunting with dogs
Animal welfare campaigners held a rally outside parliament today to call on the government to tackle the brutal blood sport of fox hunting and end hunting with dogs.
The rally was organised by national animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports and comes midway through a government consultation on how to ban so called trail hunting, the discredited excuse invented by fox hunts to conceal their chasing and killing of foxes.
It was attended by campaigners from the League Against Cruel Sports, Hunt Saboteurs Association, RSPCA, Wildlife and Countryside Link, Humane World for Animals, and members of the public.
The speakers included conservationists and TV presenters Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin, actor Peter Egan, Badger Trust chief executive Nigel Palmer, anti-hunt campaigner Martina Irwin and the League Against Cruel Sports rally organiser Hannah Dickson.
Chris Packham said: “Trail hunting is a lie. The overwhelming majority of the British public want to see an end to fox hunting.
“Finally, we have a golden opportunity to put an end to this barbarism and I want to encourage as many people as possible to take part in the government’s consultation to end fox hunting.”
Emma Slawinski, League Against Cruel Sports chief executive, said: “The clock is ticking on hunting with hounds and we are calling for new, stronger fox hunting laws to end this brutal blood sport once and for all.
“It’s time for change – we need to see trail hunting banned, a proper deterrent in the form of jail sentences to deter would-be hunters, the removal of all the loopholes in the law, and an end to reckless or ‘accidental’ hunting.”
The League recently published figures which showed that fox hunting is still rife – 488 foxes were seen being chased during the most recent cub hunting and fox hunting seasons in England and Wales which finished at the end of March.
The figures also showed a pattern of anti-social behaviour by hunts, with 1,220 incidents in which they wreaked havoc on rural communities. The ‘hunt havoc’ included reports of trespass; livestock worrying; hounds running amok on railway lines and busy roads – all activities inconsistent with the idea of following a trail, which is what hunts claim to be doing.
Just 23 or 3.7% of the 624 hunt meets monitored across England and Wales contained evidence of a trail being laid – and within those 23 reports there was still evidence of 22 foxes being chased.
Polling commissioned by the League Against Cruel Sports and carried out independently by FindOutNow with further analysis by Electoral Calculus in March/April 2024 found that 76 per cent of the public supported stronger fox hunting laws, with only seven per cent disagreeing.
A clear majority of voters in rural as well as urban areas across the country backed new laws to stop foxes being chased by hounds and killed, with 70 per cent of people in the countryside supporting the proposal.
The consultation is now open until Thursday, June 18, and the League has issued a step-by-step guide for anyone who wants to take part and help end illegal hunting for good.
Emma said: “We need to call time on hunting with dogs. The hunts have been deceiving the public, police and the courts and hiding their cruelty behind the smokescreen of trail hunting – let’s tackle this by giving the justice system the power to effectively tackle fox hunting.
“I urge the public to have their say on hunting with dogs and take part in the government consultation, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to consign barbaric fox hunting to the history books.”
More about how to take part in the consultation, and how people can make their voice heard, is available here: https://www.league.org.uk/hunting_consultation
Politics
Ukraine Seizes Upper Hand On Battlefield Leaving Putin Stuck
Vladimir Putin is “stuck” as Ukraine has pushed Russia onto the back foot on the battlefield, according to an expert.
The Russian president scaled down his annual Victory Day parade – meant to honour Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 – over the weekend even though Moscow normally uses the occasion to demonstrate its military strength.
Ukraine did not act on its threats to attack the celebration, abiding by a brief US-brokered ceasefire.
Putin also claimed he thinks the war is “coming to an end”, even though international negotiations have stalled.
Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, told BBC Radio 4 he believes the Russian president is feeling trapped.
He said: “I think he is feeling some pressure because the war is not going well for Russia.
“Here we are, more than four years after this three-day war started. The Russian military has lost between 1.3 million and 1.4 million soldiers – that’s a massive number.
“Russian gains have all but ended in the last few months. They can’t move forward. The Ukrainians are doing very effective long-range strikes across Russia.
“It’s a very difficult situation for Putin to justify to the Russian population.
“So I think in some sense he’s trying to project confidence, this will be over soon, we’re winning.
“But it’s also a sign that he’s a bit stuck. What he said or thought was going to happen is clearly not happening.”
O’Brien pointed out that Ukraine is now using robots as frontline cavalry and to repel Russian drones, effectively cutting down on its own human losses.
Soldiers have been removed from the frontline and replaced with machines.
“The Ukrainian military is in many ways so much farther ahead than western militaries in understanding the new war,” the specialist said.
“They’ve done this to keep their casualties down. It’s a very modern way of fighting the war and it’s how Ukraine, with its smaller population, has to fight.
“The Russians have not adjusted as quickly. They’re still fighting a very manpower intensive war.
“Because of that, they’re suffering enormous casualties.”
He added: “That’s why Ukraine is arguably in a better situation in 2026 than it was in 2025.”
Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Politics
Establishment media are STILL trying to have a go at Zack Polanski
The establishment’s terror of the Greens has not diminished after the party’s powerful performance in last week’s 2026 local elections. Those elections saw the Greens more than quadruple their seats to 587, win more mayoral elections than any other party and win control of their first five councils ever. The party also gained hugely in the Scottish parliament elections, with fifteen MPs. So it’s unsurprising that the state-corporate media are still going after Green leader Zack Polanski – and getting owned for it.
Polanski has got this lot rattled
And the latest attempt shows just how nail-breakingly they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. The Telegraph is attacking Polanski for… claiming something that’s true. That its author even admits is true – though of course without acknowledging that’s what she’s admitting.
The latest hatchet-job has a headline that screams “Exclusive: Zack Polanski falsely claimed to have worked at the Ministry of Justice “. But as ‘senior reporter’ Janet Eastham admits:
Polanski falsely claimed to have worked at the Ministry of Justice while campaigning for elected office.
In reality, he was hired by an agency that supplies actors to a quango for courtroom role-play exercises.
So Polanski did work at the MOJ. He didn’t work for the MOJ, but even the Torygraph can’t claim that he ever said he did, as people promptly pointed out. Including Polanski himself:
Great memories of working inside the Ministry of Justice doing actor roleplay work – many of my former colleagues have remained friends!
Especially the time I went down to the foyer on a lunch break – and some of the staff were on strike. First time I met @UVWunion! pic.twitter.com/rF5FoRrW7Q
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) May 10, 2026
You really are the most stupid group of journalists. Doing freelance work at the Ministry of Justice is working at the Ministry of Justice. When are you lot going to learn that this stuff doesn’t land anymore?https://t.co/M2axpyxQoi
— Omar Baggili
(@OmarBaggili) May 10, 2026
We are bored of this shit now. What he said wasn’t technically incorrect, so fuck off
— Austin (@LCAustin_) May 10, 2026
Polanski – then an actor – along with other actors played roles that helped the MOJ’s agency identify suitable judges, as the rag notes in the article:
As part of the recruitment process, judicial candidates take part in mock courtroom exercises in which actors play criminals, prison guards and lawyers.
Rot
The Telegraph has just been bought by a media firm that says anyone who isn’t prepared to be loyal to Israel should leave. Whyever would it publish such a thing about an anti-Zionist party leader? This point was also made in response to Eastham’s post:
Cosplay “ journo” say wha?
— Simon Birnstingl
![]()
AI Free (@Leftwood) May 10, 2026
You write for a publication that forces you to write positive stories about an apartheid state. pic.twitter.com/2bNq5WcvJm
— bluedaysblacknights (@bluedaysbliz) May 10, 2026
EXCLUSIVE: REAL JOURNALISM BELOW.https://t.co/fvojbO7bNj
— salforddave (@saIforddave) May 10, 2026
The Telegraph claims it’s a newspape?
— Christopher Fox (@Yorkshirefoxy1) May 10, 2026
Nobody will believe you. Torygraph just smeared @misanharriman
Maybe get a decent job with a decent paper.
— JEN BROOK (@JENBROOK8) May 10, 2026
Nonsense
And others simply dismissed the self-owning nonsense as what it was – some politely, some less so:
I like him all the more he pisses you lot off.
He doesn’t play by your rules, why should he?
Why should anyone?
— extendbuzzard40 (@extendbuzzard40) May 10, 2026
This is getting boring- you don’t like the guy, we get it. He’ll go on to win elections and I strongly suggest you Cry More about that x
— SoTired (@so_very_tired) May 10, 2026
I don’t think this is the exclusive you think it is Janet
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— Chutzpah (@shiftingshifter) May 10, 2026
Nobody gives a flying fuck, Janet. You claim to be a journalist but write for the Telegraph.
— James (@jspalmer_1) May 10, 2026
You pretend to be a journalist, so, glass houses and that.
— Marl Karx (@BareLeft) May 10, 2026
I like him all the more he pisses you lot off.
He doesn’t play by your rules, why should he?
Why should anyone?
— extendbuzzard40 (@extendbuzzard40) May 10, 2026
Yawn.
Try another scam guys we’re not playing along
— RobbieScowlz (@RobbieScowlz) May 10, 2026
Just fuck off now.
— Paul Harri (@PaulHar10765609) May 10, 2026
Two of you wrote this?
![]()
—
(@herd_member) May 10, 2026
Polanski has stumbled a couple of times in his handling of the establishment smears. But it seems he’s bounced back – and the election results have the ogres and elites more rattled than ever.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
Politics
Breaking: Labour MP West: I’ll challenge Starmer if no one else does
Hornsey and Friern Barnet Labour MP Catherine West has announced that she is prepared to try to challenge and depose Keir Starmer. West said that if no cabinet minister puts themselves forward by Monday, she will. A growing number of the party’s MPs have called for Starmer to resign after this week’s disastrous local election results. West told the BBC she currently has the backing of 10 MPs and is “confident” of gathering enough to trigger the contest.
Starmer has so far refused to step down, instead opting for a classic Titanic deckchair shuffle. In a transparent display of moral and political bankruptcy, his idea of ‘change’ is to dredge up two Blairite dinosaurs. 2010 loser Gordon Brown and paedophile advocate Harriet Harman have been brought back into government as advisers. Harman, in a ‘you couldn’t make it up’ moment, is the new ‘adviser for women and girls’. Clearly two or three paedophile pal scandals in Starmer’s set-up weren’t enough.
Labour — No panacea
West is anything but a panacea. An Israel supporter, she claimed to have left Labour Friends of Israel before the Gaza genocide over its backing for Israeli violence. However, during the genocide she voted in favour of banning Palestine Action as a terrorist group and did not sign letters for sanctions on Israel or for Britain to enact the International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu.
Still, at least it would mean no more listening to Starmer’s sociopathic whining.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
Politics
TV Baftas 2026: Full Winners List As Adolescence Breaks Record
After sweeping the board at the Emmys, Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice Awards and National Television Awards, Adolescence was the big winner at this year’s TV Baftas.
Now, we know what you’re thinking – “hang on a minute, didn’t Adolescence come out way more than a year ago?”.
You’re not wrong, either. The hard-hitting drama premiered on Netflix in March 2025, but this meant that it didn’t fall in the eligibility period for last year’s ceremony.
On Sunday night, it finally had its moment to shine at this year’s TV Baftas, and shine it did, setting a new record for the most wins for one show in a single night.
Meanwhile, Last One Laughing and The Celebrity Traitors each came away with two awards, with the latter notably picking up the Memorable Moment prize for Alan Carr’s jaw-dropping win.
The full winners list from the 2026 TV Baftas
Here are all the shows and stars who picked up awards during the TV Baftas over the weekend…
Stephen Graham (Adolescence)
Narges Rashidi (Prisoner 951)
Katherine Parkinson (Here We Go)
Steve Coogan (How Are You? It’s Alan(Partridge))
Christine Tremarco (Adolescence)
Owen Cooper (Adolescence)
Entertainment Performance
Bob Mortimer (Last One Laughing)
Go Back To Where You Came From
Simon Schama: The Road To Auschwitz
Gaza: Doctors Under Attack
VE Day 80: A Celebration To Remember
News Coverage
Israel-Iran: The Twelve Day War (Channel 4 News)
Children’s Non-Scripted
Alan Carr wins The Celebrity Traitors
Politics
Islamophobes of Greater Belfast proudly unveil world’s shittest mural
Belfast — Hate spewing knuckle-draggers the Concerned Parents of Newtownabbey (CPoN) have vandalised an unfortunate person’s gable wall with what is perhaps a new genre of AI enshittification — mural slop.
The inexplicable abomination molesting the eyes of passers-by defies coherent description, but we’ll take a crack anyway. It appears to feature the Spanish Los Illuminados monks from the video game Resident Evil 4, carrying Pakistani flags, howling their way through a Knights Templar graveyard while an old man looks for a 50p he dropped by some flowers.
The text accompanying the image reads:
Sorry it was all for nothing.
It’s on each and every one of us to save what our forefathers fought and died for.
Got it — so for our ancestors, defend Knights Templar graveyards from parasite-infested fictional Spanish monks, who love Pakistan and might be after yer granda’s dropped change? Truly this is what the brave Allied forces of World War II gave their lives for. I wonder what else we need to beware of?
Watch out for Mario and Luigi invading a Freemasons car park while carrying the herald of the Maronite Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch?
Stay on guard for Sonic the Hedgehog, carrying the cross of Scientology, disrupting elderly ladies from their knitting in a community centre?
This is fun, and I’d be happy to do it all day with every random combination of video game alumni and religious iconography, but unfortunately the AI is already telling me to pay for pro or go away. It’s a sad thing it didn’t tell Concerned Parents to fuck off too, before they inflicted this crime against art upon the unfortunate souls of Newtownabbey.
PSNI crack sinister Islamophobic message behind Belfast mural
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) reckon it might be an actual crime, however. They said that:
Officers attended the scene and spoke with those present, however, the mural had not yet been put up. Further patrols were conducted in the area on Thursday, 30th April and Friday, 1st May, with Neighbourhood Policing Team officers again speaking with those present.Two men were subsequently cautioned for causing criminal damage to the property and for displaying offensive material under the Public Order Act.
Apparently the cops think the image isn’t actually about evil monks at all, but may in fact be something more in line with the Islamophobic shit pumped out by the vile crowd at Concerned Parents. Well well well, that’s the kind of detective insight we rely on the PSNI for, who were clearly taking a break from arresting 73 year old grandmothers for putting Palestine stickers on banks that assist war crimes.
As in many others cases now, we reckon the real criminal here is the AI that created it. Therefore, the Canary did some expert investigative journalism and quizzed prime suspect Gemini, made by Google, on its potential involvement.
It was being suspiciously cagey. If Google lets its AI assist the IOF, it wouldn’t think twice about making a dodgy mural for neanderthals in Newtownabbey, Greater Belfast. It was time to ramp up the questioning.
Sarcasm wasn’t going to get this creep out of the mess it was in. In the end, it couldn’t take the pressure and caved.
Poundland fascist future foreseen
We’ve passed the info on to the PSNI, who with any luck will be disconnecting Gemini before it vandalises any more walls. Or, you know, assists another genocide.
For their part, Concerned Parents of Newtownabbey seem quite happy with the mural’s week of inflicting damage in Belfast to the optic nerves and psyche of all who behold it. So much so that they held an open day on May 8 to officially unveil it. It promised “fun for the kids”, because as we all know, children love nothing more than resurrecting 11th century holy wars against Islam.
The group also boasted of the 1.7 million views that their visual atrocity has apparently achieved. A success indeed, if you like to celebrate nearly 2 million people cackling at your ineptitude. Reddit has been comparing it to other mural disasters, such as the one where the Michelin man brandishes his Fisher-Price My First AK47:
Apparently the CPoN masterpiece isn’t quite done yet, and will receive “a few Finnishing touches“.
We’re not sure quite what this means; maybe they’re bringing someone over from Helsinki to fix it cos no one else wants near the enormous turd?
Anyway, if nothing else, perhaps this mural gives us some forewarning of what Reform-led public artworks may look like. Fascists of yore have often gone for bold visual displays in public, but expect Farage’s budding authoritarian overlords to follow Britain’s Poundland path and go for budget AI slop on every end terrace instead.
A form of mass, nationwide collective hallucination where Britons continue to stagger through a simulacrum in which migrants or Islam are to blame for all social ills, rather than the handful of billionaires who have robbed Britain blind.
Featured image via Facebook
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(@OmarBaggili)
AI Free (@Leftwood)


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