Politics
Why did Starmer’s disabled brother die poor?
Just when you thought Keir Starmer couldn’t get any lower, he’s now using the death of his brother as a justification for cutting benefits.
Starmer puff piece in the Mirror
Writing exclusively for the Daily Mirror, Starmer shares that the “system failed” his brother. Starmer says that Nick, who died on Boxing Day 2024:
had difficulties learning when he was growing up. He spent much of his life drifting from job to job in real hardship.
The system didn’t work for him. There are millions in the same boat. Held back by a system that doesn’t work for them.
So you’d think, with this in mind, that Starmer would be pledging to do more for disabled people who struggle to keep a job or can’t work at all.
Instead, he pushes out a fluff piece totalling just 364 words that. Like most things that come out of Starmer’s mouth, it has absolutely no substance.
There’s also the fact that the Mirror gave the Prime Minister the space to publish this absolutely nothing article, just bigging himself up, when for the past week he’s been clinging onto Number 10 by his nails. It’s a highly suspect move for a supposedly working-class paper.
Using his dead disabled brother for sympathy
Despite his brother being a disabled man who, apparently, lived in poverty, Starmer’s little PR piece doesn’t mention disabled poor people at all.
Obviously, he has time to swipe at Reform, even though the Labour-run DWP is already implementing nearly all the things Reform proposed for benefits in their economic plan.
He also found space to brag about lifting the two-child cap, which he and ministers could’ve lifted a year and a half ago but instead chose party politics.
However, as the Canary has previously reported, lifting the two-child cap can’t be all the government does. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that if the government only relies on the child cap lifting and does little else, poverty will only fall by 1% by 2029.
It’s a bit rich that the prime minister is using his dead, poor disabled brother to gain support at a time when Labour threatens to leave millions more in the same position. Under Starmer’s Labour, the DWP plan to half Universal Credit “health” element for new claimants.
There are also longterm plans to move it over to PIP, despite the fact that PIP has nothing to do with being unemployed.
The government is also hell-bent on getting disabled people back into work, whether or not they actually can. And whilst they’re doing that, they’re gutting support for disabled people in work.
Why did his brother die poor when Starmer’s rich?
So it’s absolutely vile that Starmer is using his brother’s death to rehabilitate himself, whilst if he weren’t related to him, he’d sooner spit on him than help him.
But that’s what I can’t get my head around, because it makes no sense that his brother did die in “virtual poverty”. Starmer’s a millionaire for fucks sakes. Nick died at the end of 2024, but in the tax year leading up to April 2024 alone, Starmer made £152,225.
I know family can be stubborn and proud, but something isn’t adding up here. I’m not doubting that Starmer is grieving for his loved one, but if this is true, Starmer’s basically admitting he let his brother die poor.
But that says it all about the way Labour and Starmer see disabled people. Why should disabled people expect real, life-changing support, when they obviously just aren’t trying hard enough with the bare minimum. In Starmer’s world even his own family don’t deserve to live if they can’t jump through every hoop the DWP throws at them.
Featured image via the Canary
Attendees at the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) Postgraduate Open Day Event had a more memorable experience than expected on 18 February. A group of PETA supporters stormed the famous Octagon inside the Queens’ Building bearing signs that read, “QMUL: End Cruel Sepsis Experiments,” and chanting, “Sepsis experiments should be cruelty free.”
Cruel experiments
The action is part of PETA’s ongoing campaign calling on the university to stop tormenting mice in cruel and useless sepsis experiments, which consistently fail to lead to effective treatments for humans. Activists previously crashed a meeting of the QMUL Senate to draw the attention of university leadership.
PETA senior campaigns manager Kate Werner said:
Prospective QMUL students should know that the university is using their tuition fees to torture and kill terrified mice in cruel and pointless experiments that have done nothing to advance human health.
PETA urges QMUL to stop wasting animals’ lives on these cruel experiments and switch to cutting-edge, animal-free research that actually helps humans.
More than 150 drugs have successfully treated sepsis in mice, yet none have been effective in treating humans. Despite the well-documented failure in using mice to model human sepsis, QMUL experiments are cutting open terrified mice and puncturing their intestines to leak faecal matter into their bodies.
Experimenters noted that some mice experienced severe sepsis, which can include major organ failure and abject suffering. Data from some of these experiments has been published in papers that were later retracted by the publisher because data and conclusions were deemed ‘unreliable’.
Mice are intelligent, complex, and social individuals who experience a wide range of emotions. They become attached to each other, love their families, and easily bond with their human guardians – returning as much affection as they receive.
PETA encourages everyone to urge Queen Mary to heed the scientific evidence and join other institutions, including the University of Kent, that have committed to non-animal methods in sepsis research.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits. For more information, visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
Featured image via PETA
WASHINGTON – Four years after launching an invasion to seize neighboring Ukraine in a matter of days, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin can no longer replenish the tens of thousands of soldiers he is losing per month, has watched his ground offensive grind to a halt and has escalated a war-crime campaign to instead kill civilians. None of it has convinced President Donald Trump to drop his tacit approval of the invasion.
Rather than resume defensive weapons shipments to Ukraine that had existed under predecessor Joe Biden or further pressure Putin economically to end the biggest and deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, Trump is instead still leaning on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to give up the territory that Putin wants.
“Ukraine better come to the table fast, is all I’m telling you,” Trump told reporters Monday night on the flight back from his South Florida country club, Mar-a-Lago. It was a repeat of the warning he gave Zelenskyy on Friday as he left for his three-day golf weekend: “Well, Zelenskyy is going to have to get moving. Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelenskyy is going to have to get moving, otherwise he’s going to miss a great opportunity. He has to move.”
In reality, Zelenskyy has repeatedly accepted US calls for a ceasefire while negotiators work out a final peace agreement, while Putin has rejected that concept as he continues to kill and maim Ukrainian civilians with missiles and drones.
Those attacks and deaths have surged dramatically in the year since Trump took office last January. In Biden’s final year in the White House, there were 13,897 missiles and drones launched at Ukraine by Russia, or 38 on an average day, according to figures compiled by the Institute for the Study of War. In Trump’s first year back in office, there were 57,333 missiles and drones, or 157 per day – a 300% increase. The escalation coincided with the cutoff of new US military aid to Ukraine under Trump.
To experts and analysts, Trump’s choice to pressure Zelenskyy rather than Putin is simple: He sees Ukraine as weaker and therefore easier to coerce.
“Trump wants any kind of deal he can get that results in a ceasefire, hoping this will be evidence for his Nobel Peace Prize campaign,” said John Bolton, one of Trump’s national security advisers during his first term and now a target of Trump’s Justice Department. “He doesn’t care about the substance of an agreement, just getting one.”
Jim Townsend, who has worked at both the Pentagon and Nato and is now an analyst with the Center for a New American Security, said Putin knows Trump will never truly pressure him.
“Putin will keep stalling until he gets his way, either by Trump forcing Zelenskyy to the table or by some battlefield victory, which doesn’t look likely either,” Townsend said. “So he will always demand his maximalist position, knowing Zelenskyy will never agree and that irritates Trump, who squeezes Zelenskyy even more.”
To Russia With Love
Trump White House aides did not respond to HuffPost queries. At a news briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, asked about Zelenskyy’s comment that it was unfair to demand concessions of Ukraine but not Russia, repeated Trump’s frequent lie that the US was bankrolling Ukraine’s defense under Biden.
“The president views this entire situation as very unfair, not just for Russians and Ukrainians who have lost their lives, but also for the American people and the American taxpayer who were footing the bill for this war effort before President Trump put a stop to it,” she said.
In fact, America’s allies in Western Europe have provided more in both military and financial assistance to Ukraine since the invasion started four years ago.
Trump’s statement on Monday night was in keeping with numerous other remarks Trump has made since returning to office. During the infamous visit by Zelenskyy to the Oval Office a year ago, Trump essentially blamed Ukraine for getting invaded and chided Zelenskyy for starting a war against a larger and more powerful neighbor.
Last June, in response to a Ukrainian attack on a Russian airfield, Trump again sided with Russia.
“They gave Putin a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of them last night,” he told reporters.
Trump, who at the time of the invasion called Putin a “genius” and “savvy” and later claimed while campaigning for office that his great relationship with Putin would let him end the fighting on his first day back in the White House, has instead failed to convince the dictator to make any concessions.
Heading into an August meeting with Putin in Alaska, Trump claimed there would be “consequences” for Putin if he did not agree to a ceasefire. Trump literally rolled out a red carpet for Putin and honored him with a flyover of military jets. Putin did not agree to a ceasefire and suffered no consequences.
And last month, Trump boasted that Putin had agreed to his request not to attack Ukrainian cities and towns for a week because of the extreme cold weather. Putin continued the attacks throughout the entire period, after which Trump claimed Putin had honored his pledge.
Trump, nevertheless, continues to boast of his “relationship” with the murderous dictator whose actions in 2023 led to war crime charges by the International Criminal Court. In late August, he showed off a photo of himself and Putin that Putin had sent him. More recently, he has hung a large photo of the two of them in the West Wing.
“Trump looks more and more impotent,” said Fiona Hill, a Russia expert who served on the White House National Security Council in Trump’s first term. “Which is more why he wants Zelenskyy to give it up, to capitulate.”
The de facto tilt away from Ukraine and toward Russia was tacitly acknowledged by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to the Munich Security Conference last weekend, where he skipped a meeting to discuss Ukraine with traditional U.S. allies. His visit there was highlighted by a speech in which he emphasized a “blood and soil” Christian nationalist message regarding the bonds between the United States and Europe, rather than the one of shared values of individualism and freedom that sprang from the European Enlightenment that American leaders have historically praised.
That new approach was then punctuated by visits to Hungary and Slovakia, which are currently led by the most pro-Russia leaders in Europe. Rubio, who seven years ago warned about Hungarian leader Viktor Orban’s turn toward autocracy, on Monday gave him the endorsement of the U.S. government in his coming election.
His remarks and his itinerary worried Europeans and their leaders, who see Russia’s invasion of Ukraine not as a faraway problem, but a potential preview of what might happen to their own countries.
In response to a query, State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott insulted HuffPost but did not address why Rubio had visited only pro-Russia leaders after his Munich visit and why he had endorsed Orban.
“S.V. Date is a low IQ, anti-Trump clown masquerading as a blogger,” Pigott wrote in a statement. “The secretary met with dozens of leaders from all across the world last weekend in Munich, including Volodymyr Zelenskyy. To claim they were all pro-Russian is an idiotic and bizarre claim. In addition to his historic speech at the Munich Security Conference, Secretary Rubio visited European allies in the region.”
It was not immediately clear what made Rubio’s speech “historic.”
Putin’s Four-Year-Old Quagmire
Ironically, Trump’s continued insistence that Ukraine give away its territory to get a ceasefire comes as its army has increased the lethality of its strikes against Russian troops in Ukraine. According to both Zelenskyy and outside analysts, Ukraine’s military is now killing and injuring more invading soldiers each month than the 35,000 or so that Putin is able to conscript to replace them.
“Increased losses on the battlefield and declining, expensive recruitment likely contributed to the loss rate finally exceeding recruitment rate,” said Kateryna Stepanenko, a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of War.
In a report last month, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that Russia, since the invasion began in 2022, has suffered 1.2 million military casualties, including as many as 325,000 deaths. In contrast, the United States lost 47,434 service members over a decade in Vietnam and 6,897 over two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As a result, Putin has implemented an involuntary draft in some areas of Russia as well as increased his reliance on mercenaries from Central Asia, Cambodia, Pakistan and Africa, among other places.
“There are all kinds of people who are getting press-ganged into going to the front,” Hill said.
Leaders of several African nations, in fact, have publicly called for Putin to stop recruiting young men — who are frequently getting killed quickly after deployment — from their countries.
Last week, Kenya’s Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi, who called the recruitment of Kenyan nationals “unacceptable and clandestine,” announced a trip to Moscow to discuss the matter.
Experts also doubt that Putin’s decision to increase his attacks on civilians in their homes and workplaces will have the intended effect of wearing down their will.
“This is like the blitz bombing campaign… he wants to punish them and pummel them,” Hill said. “What it does do is make the people under bombardment more willing to resist.”
“His offensives don’t take much ground and the price is high for what he does take,” Townsend said of Putin. “So hitting Ukrainian civilians and the energy grid is his weapon to hit Zelenskyy domestically, hoping to get the people riled up and moving against Zelenskyy. That tactic didn’t work for Hitler against the Brits and I don’t think it will work with Ukraine either.”
Trump’s affinity for Putin, now manifesting itself in his war of conquest, is decades old. Trump publicly tried to befriend the dictator in 2013 and spent years, including the period when he ran for president in 2016, trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
In that election, Trump willingly accepted and used Russian assistance as he campaigned against Democrat Hillary Clinton, even though he knew it was coming from Russia. He later stood beside Putin at a news conference in Helsinki and said he believed Putin’s denials of interfering in the election over his own intelligence agencies’ analysis.
To this day, Trump continues to call the investigation into that election interference a “hoax” that has also unfairly impugned Putin’s good name.
It was the look of terror in Hannah Spencer’s eyes that was most telling. There she was, the gurning Green candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election in Greater Manchester, being asked the simplest of questions. What was the cause of the Manchester Arena bombing of 2017? Her face froze into a rictus of fear. She stuttered but the words clogged in her throat. She couldn’t believe it – she was being pressed on live TV to say a word that her morally supine kind have sworn never to utter in public. Islamism.
It gets worse. Her gentle interrogator was Matt Goodwin, the Reform UK candidate in Gorton and Denton. After Ms Spencer spouted the usual kumbaya bullshit about how Manchester ‘came together’ after the arena atrocity, he quizzed her again. Okay, fine, but ‘why are [these] things happening?’, he asked. Then came what will surely rank as the dumbest reply of 2026, a remark that should make Spencer cringe in ignominy every time the memory of it invades her mind. It’s ‘because people like you are dividing people’, she told Goodwin.
He was startled. So was everyone else whose brains haven’t yet been fried by that moral spinelessness that gets dolled up as ‘progressivism’. ‘So I’m responsible for the Manchester Arena bombing?!’, he said. ‘That’s not what I’ve just said’, Spencer protested. But it is what you said. You were asked why Britain has been rocked by such sadistic acts of misanthropy as the slaughter of teens at an Ariana Grande concert, and instead of giving the correct answer – which is that our nation is ailed by the pox of Islamist militancy – you said it’s because people like Goodwin have hot takes on immigration, etc.
This is a serious matter. That a candidate in a Manchester by-election cannot tell the truth about the murderous ideology that caused such suffering and sorrow in that great city is profoundly troubling. Twenty-two people were butchered that night, 22 May 2017. Ten were under the age of 20. The youngest was an eight-year-old girl. Their crime? Enjoying pop, being free, being British. That was why Salman Abedi – say it, Hannah: an Islamist terrorist – laid waste to their lives. This was an act of Islamist savagery against the city that Orwell called ‘the belly and guts of the nation’.
To refuse to name the homicidal creed that motored that massacre of innocents is a betrayal of the dead and the survivors. Ask yourself: if it had been a neo-Nazi bloodbath, do you think Ms Spencer would have held back from saying the word ‘Nazi’? If the killer had been a devotee of the knackered old National Front, do you think Spencer would have squirmed in her seat when asked why that atrocity happened? Of course not. She’d have shouted from the rooftops the names of those poisonous ideologies. But when it comes to Islamism, there’s a conspiracy of silence. ‘Islamism’ is the equivalent of ‘Voldemort’ to our chickenshit chattering classes – a taboo word never to be uttered lest it turn thick oiks into an ‘Islamophobic’ mob.
That’s the thing: Spencer’s physical inability to form and say the word ‘Islamist’ is not unique to her. The entire cultural establishment has excised that word from its vocabulary. In the immediate aftermath of the arena atrocity, the mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, would only call the killer an ‘extremist’. As Morrissey quipped, ‘An extreme what? An extreme rabbit?’ When then UKIP leader Paul Nuttall described it as an Islamist attack, the then leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, branded his words ‘completely outrageous’. So the Greens have form when it comes to snivelling self-censorship in the face of the Islamist mass murder of working-class children.
At points, the establishment has even sought to institutionalise its craven dread of the i-word. In 2020, three years after the barbarism in Manchester, counter-terrorism police openly discussed dropping the term Islamist ‘when describing terror attacks’. And instead of saying ‘jihadist’, perhaps we should say ‘terrorists abusing religions motivations’, the cops mused. Rolls off the tongue. In the end they scrapped their demented Orwellian plans to erase the word Islamist in the service of the state’s sainted ideology of ‘diversity’. They probably clocked that such brutish speechpolicing was unnecessary. After all, the elite is stacked with fainthearted finger-waggers who are more than happy to bark ‘Bigot!’ at any mortal who dares to name the ideology that has slain a hundred souls in Britain these past 20 years.
A nauseating mix of classism and paternalism motors the elites’ memory-holing of Islamism. They fear that the ‘gammon’ – the working classes – will be whipped into a Muslim-baiting frenzy if any derivation of the word ‘Islam’ is used in relation to terror attacks. And they have a deep patrician impulse to protect Muslims from offence. Quite why our Muslim citizens would feel offended by a frank discussion of the scourge of Islamism is anyone’s guess. From their distant sanctums of lazy correct-think, these people cannot see that the white working classes and the Muslim working classes have a shared interest in driving the poison of Islamist dogma from their communities.
The Green Party has a particular problem. It is now the chief candle-carrier for that most suicidal strain in British politics – the Islamo-left. Its ranks are stuffed with bigots who celebrated the fascistic slaughter of 7 October 2023 and who call rabbis ‘animals’. The Greens are currently flirting with the idea of branding Zionism a form of racism, which would further isolate Britain’s already beleaguered Jews, a large majority of whom identify as Zionists. And Hannah Spencer has given an interview to 5Pillars, the vile, pro-Taliban website that frequently platforms neo-fascist lowlifes like Nick Griffin. Imagine calling Matt Goodwin ‘divisive’ when you rub shoulders with such despicable people. Next year is the 10th anniversary of the Islamist slaughter of Manchester kids. If you’re still refusing to speak the truth about that anti-British abomination, then you should be nowhere near Manchester’s levers of power.
There is a not particularly funny joke that is sometimes told in legal circles about why a law student failed to finish his coursework – because he had no conviction. With rare exceptions lawyers aren’t renowned for their sense of humour but I can’t help thinking someone, at the highest levels of our justice system, is having a right laugh at my expense and those who have loyally supported me over the past six years.
I’m talking about the Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC – a sitting member of the Scottish Government’s cabinet who was nominated by Nicola Sturgeon to that post in 2021, five months after I was acquitted.
For those unfamiliar with my case, I offer this brief summary. In March 2020 I made a short video on my mobile phone that was two minutes and thirty eight seconds in length. I hadn’t planned to make the video when I went out for a walk in a field near my home. But I was annoyed and wanted to articulate that annoyance, although at the time I recorded it I wasn’t intending for it to go much further.
Later that night, just before turning in, I uploaded it to my YouTube channel on a closed, unlisted link and then posted that link to my Twitter account that, at the time, had a modest 1000 or so followers. I then forgot about it.
Little did I know that short mobile phone video would result in me facing initially a criminal trial, then a five year legal battle in the highest civil court in Scotland and now, most likely, an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
In that very short video, I expressed my disdain for the complainers and conspirators, male and female, who were still trying to destroy the reputation of Alex Salmond, despite the fact he had been fully acquitted at the High Court just a few days before I made that video.
So what did I say? What possible criminal offence could I have uttered in less than three minutes that would result in the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, then led by Ms Bain’s predecessor James Wolffe, despatching five Edinburgh detectives to raid my home, confiscate all of my tech and then bring me to trial where I potentially faced a year’s imprisonment if found guilty.
The video simply highlighted my opinion that if the complainers continued with their efforts against the former First Minister, ignoring the judgement of the High Court that had acquitted Alex, and they persisted in this campaign behind a veil of anonymity, then eventually, one way or another their identities would become widely known.
In evidence produced at the High Court the complainers themselves made plain that they could undertake this politically motivated campaign by exploiting the legal protections that rightly exist to protect actual victims of sexual assault. Their cynical and stated exploitation of this important protection not only continued to damage Alex’s reputation but also undermined wider confidence in those actual victims of such assault whose identities to deserve to be protected from the wider public.
That aspect is one of the more egregious and nefarious undertaken by the complainers and those who coordinated them in what has become the Alex Salmond saga.
As Sheriff Patterson concluded at Jedburgh Sheriff Court, “I do not accept [the comments made in the video] would cause a reasonable person fear and alarm. The video contained an opinion, nothing more.” He accepted my defence team’s motion of “no case to answer” and the prosecution case was dismissed and I was fully acquitted.
But such is the lunacy of Scotland’s once-revered independent legal system that my only hope of a subsequent remedy for this wrongful prosecution would have come if I had been jailed in January 2021. Only then would I have a legal route to seek compensation.
As Fergus Ewing MSP, former Scottish Government Cabinet Secretary and Minister noted in Holyrood just last week (see from 17.08), that situation is plainly “absurd”.
After my acquittal I instructed Solicitor Advocate Gordon Dangerfield – easily the most tenacious and dogged lawyer I have ever come across – and Andrew Smith KC to act on my behalf and in May 2025 we finally secured two full days of legal debate with the aim, on our side, of moving to the “proof stage”. That would potentially have enabled “certain facts”, as Alex Salmond put it following his acquittal, to see the light of day.
After these hearings we waited for Lord Lake’s considered written judgement, which was finally published on 5th February 2026. It is 31 pages in length and narrates, for the most part, all the legal issues around my case in some considerable detail before coming to a conclusion on whether I could proceed to the proof stage and what would have been the “juicy parts”.
Myself and my legal team were confident we could prove that there was clear malicious intent behind the decision to prosecute me in 2021. However, as Lord Lake makes plain in his conclusions, my case cannot proceed because of legislation passed by the UK Parliament.
The Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, section 170 provides that prosecutors are immune from liability for malicious prosecution in summary proceedings like mine, where the person suing was not imprisoned.
In his written submissions to the court, my solicitor advocate posed these questions about that provision: “On what rational basis is a prosecutor liable for malicious prosecution only if imprisonment has been imposed on the person suing? … Is it compatible with Article 6 for there to be no remedy for a person seeking to sue and caught by the terms of section 170?”
Our answers to those questions had already been given almost four years earlier in our letter before action to the Lord Advocate, lodged as a production with the court. Section 170 was, we said, “incompatible with Article 6 of the European Convention in that it fails to provide a remedy when a wrong is committed”.
Lord Lake has now agreed. In a formal declaration in his judgment he has found section 170 to be “inconsistent with the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Article 6 (right to a fair hearing), as it is an unjustifiable restriction on a pursuer’s right to have a determination of the merits of his claim that he was the subject of a malicious prosecution”.
That is an incredible statement in its own right, but Lord Lake continued: “Nothing has been brought to my attention to indicate why, notwithstanding the submission of no case to answer being upheld, it could be said that there was a case fit to try. It therefore appears that in the circumstances, the decision of the sheriff to sustain a submission of no case to answer indicates that there was no objective reasonable and probable cause [for bringing a prosecution].”
He then conducted his own analysis of the evidence and concluded: “Whether on the basis of the view taken by the sheriff at the trial or an examination of the evidence available in relation to the requirements of section 38 [the statutory breach of the peace provision under which I was prosecuted], viewed objectively there was no reasonable and probable cause to commence the prosecution – no case fit to be put before a court.”
In other words, Lord Lake is saying that if it was not malice that lay behind the decision to prosecute me, then what was it? In effect, he is laying out the basis of my claim and that it has clear merit. Indeed, he concludes in terms that “the requirements for a case of malicious prosecution against the Lord Advocate … are admitted, established, or the subject of relevant averments” in my pleadings before the court, and that I should be able to go to proof on them.
However, my claim cannot continue because the law stands at present is inconsistent with ECHR and my rights to a fair trial.
Now you might think that conclusion would have been a welcome one for our Lord Advocate because it effectively brings an end to my legal claim against her.
But on Monday 16th February 2026 the Lord Advocate took the decision to appeal Lord Lake’s decision to the Inner House of the Court of Session, the highest civil law court in Scotland. It is a fair assumption that the Lord Advocate is not best pleased by the ruling, not least because it leaves the door wide open for us to proceed with an application to the European Court of Human Rights.
Given Lord Lake’s very strong judgement substantively in my favour, albeit having been forced to dismiss my claim, we are confident of getting a very sympathetic hearing in Europe.
However, one consequence (intended or otherwise is hard to say) of this decision is that we now face unexpected additional court costs.
From the start, it has been clear that the Crown Office, led by the Lord Advocate, has sought to grind us down and price me out of this important legal case. Through the sheer generosity of my supporters in both my initial criminal trial and later in this civil case, we have kept up the fight.
Some have argued that it might have been easier for me to have simply walked away after my acquittal in 2021. They have misjudged me.
For simply offering an opinion in a 158-second video that initially hardly anyone viewed, I had my home raided, my mobile and laptop taken and all of my digital fingerprint forensically scrutinised in what was evidently a fishing expedition. Even after this, so weak was their case they had to amend my initial charge and hope they could jail me under a catch-all breach of the peace.
The publicity, generated by the complainers who didn’t even wait for the initial police report to be actioned, was relentless and highly critical of me personally, causing huge reputational damage that ultimately saw me lose contracts amounting to tens of thousands of pounds. As so often in modern Scotland the process was the punishment, but if they had succeeded I would also have been in prison for a year, for uttering a short opinion on legal proceedings that had been concluded and were of huge public interest.
Senior Counsel for the Lord Advocate during his pleadings at last May’s Court Of Session hearings before Lord Lake made no effort to hide the real agenda; to send a chilling effect across all those who had criticised the complainers.
This is not how actual justice systems are meant to function or how a state prosecutor should be conducting public affairs. Their actions are, as many within the criminal justice system have already noted, brought the entire system into disrepute, but still they continue.
This week I have reluctantly relaunched my financial appeal to get us over this next hurdle. We are genuinely optimistic about our chances but we cannot do that without support.
It has already become a landmark and historic case but we need one big final push. Hopefully then, the joke and the last laugh will be on Scotland’s malicious state prosecutor.
Cllr Steve Harden is the Shadow Cabinet Member for Environmental Services on Rushmoor Borough Council.
Where should councils draw the line between education and enforcement in our communities? Education has an important role to play, but without enforcement it is failing to protect the cleanliness of our country.
I have noticed a worrying decline over the last couple of years in the cleanliness of our nation’s streets. Most back alleys or local fields have some kind of fly-tip, or you find yourself walking through the woods and seeing a bag of dog mess that someone has flung into a bush. I really don’t understand why people make the effort to pick it up, bag it and then throw it into the closest bush when a perfectly good bin is waiting nearby. Everywhere you look, litter seems to fill our streets.
Since being elected as a councillor, I have carried out multiple litter picks with colleagues and local residents, but there are only so many times volunteers can pick up the same litter that magically appears a couple of days later in the exact same spot.
In a council meeting last year, I reviewed our local plan, which seemed to be littered with ways to get more volunteers involved, asking them to pick up the where Labour is failing. While across the county we support volunteers and are grateful for the work they do, how can it be fair that more services are cut while more is expected of people constantly cleaning up their area?
Of course, like many, I believe people should carry out social responsibility, helping to keep their area clean and reporting offenders. When it becomes a part-time job, we know we have an issue.
Nowhere can this be seen more than in my own borough, Rushmoor, where litter-pick teams are going across the borough cleaning up other people’s mess. However, a recent council meeting made me wonder: where do we draw the line between education and enforcement?
In Rushmoor, if you drop litter, you can be certain you will not receive a fine if spotted. Why? Because our Labour council has decided the focus should be on educating people, not enforcing. This isn’t a hidden policy at Rushmoor; at just our last council meeting, Labour councillors were proud to announce that no fines had been issued to offenders.
Now you may think that perhaps there aren’t the resources to enforce, but Rushmoor, alongside many councils in the country, has a dedicated enforcement team patrolling areas looking for offenders. While they “educate” litterers, more and more volunteers are called into action to pick up the slack. Enforcement is not anti-community; it supports the dedicated volunteers going out every day and the law-abiding majority. Let me be clear: this is not a criticism of volunteers, whose time, effort and commitment are invaluable, but of councils using goodwill as a substitute for proper enforcement.
Fly-tipping across the county is another major issue. Fly-tipping incidents in England are now at their highest recorded levels. I was pleased to see that the Conservatives are calling for legislation to come forward to increase the maximum fine, currently £1,000 for those caught. This would make a huge difference in our area, helping to reduce this fly-tipping plague.
Despite many councils needing to reduce cleanliness services in this year’s budget due to inflation, National Insurance rises and, in some cases, the “fair funding review”, Labour-run councils like ours seem to be focusing on schemes that give the illusion things are improving when reality says something different. Labour here in Rushmoor created a pilot scheme called Walk This Waste.
The idea was that a van would drive around Rushmoor asking people to carry their fridge freezer or oven to the van for removal. This scheme cost thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Worse still, the scheme failed to reduce fly-tipping and, in some instances, increased it. I suppose it was slightly better than their reported idea of placing skips on major roads through the borough.
I, for one, agree with educating people on keeping the borough clean, putting waste in the bin and not falling to the temptation to fling a poo bag into a bush (however strong that may be…). However, it must be done in conjunction with enforcement. I myself have worked with local schools and taken part in local litter picks with all ages, which does bring a great community spirit. However, if Labour continues to forget enforcement, sadly people will often take the easy option.
If we believe in pride in our country, then we must also believe in caring for it – and that is why Conservatives should be leading the call to clean up Britain.
Most (87% of) doctors say this winter has been busier than usual for minor health concerns, according to research commissioned by Asda Pharmacy, with nearly a third (31%) spending more than an hour every day treating conditions that could be safely managed in pharmacies.
The same survey found 77% of GPs say minor conditions are putting unnecessary pressure on surgeries.
The issue isn’t patients seeking help unnecessarily, the pharmacy suggested, but instead that they just don’t know where to go for their ailments other than their GP.
It makes sense: NHS England’s Pharmacy First initiative only started in January 2024, and if people have had no reason to go to the doctors in this time, they may not be aware that there are other options available to them for minor ailments and prescription-only medications.
What is Pharmacy First?
Pharmacy First enables people to get certain prescription medications directly from a pharmacy, without the need for a GP appointment.
This initiative frees up GP appointments for those who needs them most, as well as improving access to safe and quality healthcare.
NHS England explained: “Community pharmacies offer a more convenient way to access healthcare that includes support with healthy eating, exercise, stopping smoking, monitoring your blood pressure, contraception, flu and covid vaccinations.”
If you’re feeling nervous about seeing a pharmacist or even just a little unsure, rest assured that it is often a very reliable, helpful service and in fact, the public perceptions of community pharmacy survey found that over 90% of patients who sought guidance from a community pharmacy within the past year reported receiving good advice.
What are the conditions you can see a pharmacist for?
Asda Pharmacy have launched ISSUE IS, an awareness campaign designed to help families quickly recognise when Pharmacy First is the right choice.
‘ISSUE IS’ is a simple, memorable acronym covering common conditions pharmacists can treat:
I – Infected insect bites
To help drive change, Asda has partnered with TV doctor Dr Hilary Jones to encourage the public to rethink where they go first when everyday illness strikes.
Dr Hilary Jones said: “Too many people still don’t realise how much their local pharmacy can do. Pharmacists are trained healthcare professionals who can assess symptoms and provide NHS treatment for common conditions.
“Pharmacy First helps patients get seen faster and reduces pressure on GP surgeries – and Asda’s ISSUE IS campaign makes it easier than ever to know where to go first.”
If former royal, and mate of serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was hoping for any public sympathy after his arrest this morning – on his birthday – he’s going to be sorely disappointed.
The family of Virginia Giuffre, Andrew’s most well-known victim, welcomed the arrest as a sign that no one is above the law:
At last, today, our broken hearts have been lifted at the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty,” Giuffre’s family said in the statement given to CBS News.
However, Windsor was arrested on suspicion of ‘misconduct in a public office’. Knowing the British state, this was more likely linked to his leaking of secrets to Epstein than his abuse of trafficked and potentially under-age girls. But the offence carries a potential life sentence, so there’s that.
Andrew gets birthday wishes
If sympathy is in short supply, mockery isn’t – and many were wishing Andy a delighted “happy birthday” – while also pointing out the vileness of him being arrested for passing info to the rapist instead of for his crimes against the victims:
Happy 66th birthday, Andrew.
Trafficking and sexual abuse allegations against Andrew — no arrest.
Alleged misconduct in public office? Arrest.
No wonder women don’t trust the police. pic.twitter.com/rUFSRLAmie
— Dr Charlotte Proudman (@DrProudman) February 19, 2026
Happy Birthday Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor pic.twitter.com/9R1Ixm0kIb
— Manxy (@Manxy) February 19, 2026
Happy Birthday Andrew you crock of shit! 🤣
— Mark Hopkins (@Hopperz1980) February 19, 2026
Just to wish Andrew a Happy 66th Birthday………. 👀 pic.twitter.com/BFLIaueIp1
— Peter Hulbert (@Peterhulbert195) February 19, 2026
Happy 66th birthday Andrew! May you rot in prison for what you did to those kids! Evil bastard! pic.twitter.com/cli4SSFhSc
— 👑LMJ👑 (@Jonsey_8) February 19, 2026
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been arrested after a complaint about sharing confidential material with Epstein.
Here. We. Go.
If Britain can arrest a Royal, the US should get it together and arrest Trump and every other person involved with Epstein’s child trafficking ring pic.twitter.com/e7XCiSvF2c
— Kelly (@broadwaybabyto) February 19, 2026
And of course, it didn’t take long before AI was eagerly used to imagine the scene:
Happy birthday ex Prince Andrew 🥳🎈🥳 pic.twitter.com/hwldcaN8jI
— Jackson2244 (@PatriotWoman22) February 19, 2026
Happy Birthday to the jailed prince $Andrew #PrinceAndrew #EpsteinFiles @realDonaldTrump @elonmusk
ASDvJ3koPUMqx8e4mdYi7r5mhBPZbJe4GEtfNaRVpump pic.twitter.com/BKWxoxAqJM— george hacker (@GHacker98613) February 19, 2026
Sources say the Police sang Happy Birthday to Andrew once they booted the door in 😂 pic.twitter.com/99cIyzDMp0
— *LittleChic ❤️❤️❤️ (@_Littlechic_) February 19, 2026
Happy 66th Birthday to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor! 🎉
Gift from the police: Arrested for misconduct in public office over Epstein secrets.
Cake, candles, and cuffs what a royal party. 🥳👮♂️
Sweating yet?#PrinceAndrew #Epstein pic.twitter.com/5tdqlo5NFY
— Sarah White (@advancesarah) February 19, 2026
No accountability
More seriously, others pointed out how little accountability there has been so far for anyone implicated in Epstein’s crimes:
🚨 BREAKING: Prince Andrew taken into custody
We will post the full arrest counter and all verified updates shortly.#PrinceAndrew #Breaking pic.twitter.com/XzMW63ku1R
— Index Stats (@indexstatshq) February 19, 2026
And if Windsor was hoping the fam might be a bit more supportive, those hopes were quickly dashed. Brother Chuck fell over himself in his haste to distance himself – but still no word for the victims:
King Charles issued the following statement regarding the arrest of his brother Andrew.
Extraordinary and unprecedented! pic.twitter.com/VHHZWrag9N
— Lori Spencer (@RealLoriSpencer) February 19, 2026
Maybe Charles is hoping his ‘hot potato’ act will make us forget he funded his brother’s out-of-court payment to Giuffre. But the British state and its corporate media enablers will certainly do their best – and no doubt focus on ‘Randy’s secret-leaking as a handy distraction from the establishment’s involvement in the rape, murder, and trafficking of children and young women.
For more on the the Epstein Files, please read the Canary’s article on way that the media circus around Epstein is erasing the experiences of victims and survivors.
Featured image via the Canary
The Green Party in south-west Wales has been in touch to voice its continuing opposition to the DARC radar project. The installation would use the same site that campaigners originally defended successfully in the 1990s. Back then the group of locals took the name Pembrokeshire Against the Radar Campaign. Now a lively and interactive website declares:
Well now for the great news. PARC is back, baby. We’re here with a new generation, a new purpose, and a fight we are ready to win.
Under the name PARC Against DARC, the group has the backing of Plaid Cymru as well as the Greens and some members of the Liberal Democrats and Labour and an array of pressure groups. However, it remains strictly non-partisan.
Ceredigion Penfro Green Party statement on DARC
To a lot of people it appears that the world has reached a point where lots of things need fixing. The Green Party has always advocated co-operation and diplomacy over fighting.
It is therefore angry at plans by the US to build 27 giant radar dishes on Pembrokeshire’s St David’s Peninsula. The sole aim of this development is for the US to have total control over space.
Amy Nicholass, Ceredigion Penfro number one candidate for the Senedd Elections, is in outright opposition to this development. She says:
The DARC proposals are a disgrace. It benefits no one except the government of the US. When the US tells us to jump, the Westminster government simply asks how high.
We need to put all our efforts into creating lasting peace, not allowing anyone to recreate Cold War tactics where none of us feel safe.
Peace is at the heart of Welsh culture. The US and Westminster should come and learn from us.
There are other, more immediate dangers associated with DARC, the purpose of which is to track and destroy enemy satellites. Should any of these satellites be destroyed, it will leave behind a lot of space debris. That can make it more dangerous for other satellites, such as for weather forecasting or telecommunications, to continue their orbits.
It is vitally important that local people have a say on matters such as this large development. A local campaign group called PARC Against DARC is very concerned about the effect it would have on the tourism industry in Pembrokeshire.
These campaigners describe St David’s Peninsula as a:
true jewel-in-the-crown natural wonder and headline Welsh tourism industry attraction.
Nicholass agrees. She argues for more local power to determine large planning considerations. Nicholass also says:
We in the Green Party understand how precarious the world feels to a lot of people. We can feel grateful to live in a part of the world that is peaceful but this plan brings world disorder very close to us.
We all share this one planet and we need to be part of the conversation on how to stand up for each other in a peaceful way.
Featured image (artist’s impression) via PARC Against DARC
Amid the furore over the soon-upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election, you’ll probably have noticed mentions of the fact that the constituency was only created in 2023.
With this electoral boundary redraw came the fourth highest index of change — i.e. upheaval in voting makeup — in the entire northwest.
This article provides a brief overview of the ways in which that electoral makeup has (been) changed in Gorton and Denton. Beyond that, it’s also a reminder that our democracy is never as simple as ‘one individual, one vote’. Where that vote comes from carries enormous weight — and that ‘where’ is always a fluid quantity.
The newly minted constituency
The Parliamentary Constituency for England redrew the electoral boundaries in 2023, including those of Gorton and Denton.
The new constituency was first contested in the 2024 general elections, with Labour’s Andrew Gwynne taking the seat. Gwynne took a comfortable 18,000 votes, that’s 13,000 ahead of both Reform and the Greens.
Before that point, the area included portions of the former Manchester Gorton and Denton & Reddish seats. Oh, and Burnage Ward — previously of Manchester Withington — thrown in to boot.
The constituency is now made up of two distinct lobes, connected in the middle by Reddish Bridge. The westward half, nearest Manchester itself, includes Gorton, Belle Vue, Levenshulme, and Burnage. Meanwhile, the eastward Tameside portion comprises Denton and Haughton Green.
Demographic makeup
There’s also an unequal split between the number of voters in Gorton and Denton respectively. In 2024, the Manchester wards boasted 55,000 registered electors to the Tameside’s 26,000.
As such, roughly two in every three voters in the constituency fall on the more urban-liberal Manchester side. Of these, 42% of voters have a university background, 42% are white, and 40% are Muslim.
Meanwhile, the Tameside section has a far higher white and UK-born population, at 83% and 86% respectively. A further 30% of the Tameside voters hold typically working-class semi/routine jobs, far higher than the national 23.5% average.
As such, we might expect the Denton populace to be more open to Reform’s populist anti-migrant messaging. By contrast, Gorton may see more of a shift to the Greens. This is especially true given that the Workers Party of Britain and Your Party – otherwise potential pulls for the Muslim vote – have stood down.
Electoral history
For what it’s worth, the electoral history of Gorton and Denton’s tributary constituencies is about as red as they come. However, given the collapse in support for Labour under Starmer, that doesn’t necessarily mean a great deal.
Manchester Gorton, for its part, has remained stoically Labour-led from 1935 to its abolition in 2024. The Lib Dems managed to grab a third of the vote in 2005 and 2010, campaigning against the Iraq war, but fell off again in 2015.
Meanwhile, Denton and Reddish was itself created in 1983. Whilst it has also remained a Labour safe-seat since its inception, the Parliamentary Labour Party has typically enjoyed a much smaller margin of the vote. It has consistently averaged just above 50% of the share, rising above 60% in just three elections.
By contrast, UKIP took took third place in 2015, with 18.7%, and the Greens never made it over 4%.
Finally, Bunrage ward voters previously belonging to Manchester Withington make up around 16% of what is now Gorton and Denton. In stark contrast to much of the Northwest, Withington once tended weakly Conservative.
After swinging more strongly to Labour in the 1980s, Withington then flipped Lib Dem. Again, at the time, a large number of Muslim voters turned their backs on Labour due to Blair’s warmongering in Iraq.
The shadows of war
The fact that it’s anti-war sentiment among the Muslim electorate that has previously threatened Labour’s hold on the Gorton and Denton area is significant. Labour has once again haemorrhaged support among Muslims in recent years due to its enthusiastic support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
As such, and quite unsurprisingly, campaign group The Muslim Vote has now thrown its weight behind the Greens in Gorton and Denton, stating:
Muslim voters, alongside many others in the constituency, will play a decisive role in this by-election. This moment must result in the defeat of both Labour and Reform through unity behind a single, credible candidate.
On this occasion, we believe the Green Party offers the strongest opportunity to win, and we urge them to work swiftly with local communities, while calling on all other progressive and independent alternatives to stand aside to give the best chance of delivering a clear break from politics as usual and putting the community first.
With the two halves of Gorton and Denton breaking down into more uni-educated urbanites and strong Muslim representation in one half, and a higher proportion of the white working class in the other, the by-election could prove a study in the shifting allegiances of the groups Labour previously took for granted.
As such, what would once have been a Labour by-election shoe-in is proving a testing ground for the UK’s polarised politics — and a more multi-party system as a whole.
Featured image via the Canary
Tunisian filmmaker of The Voice Of Hind Rajab, Kaouther Ben Hania, has refused to accept an award from Berlin’s so-called ‘Peace Gala’ over its ‘perfuming’ of Israel’s genocide. Ben Hania’s film won the award for “Most Valuable Film” at the ‘Cinema for Peace’ festival on 16 February.
The ceremony’s organisers invited warmongering former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and gave an award to former Israeli general Noam Tibon. Tibon is an advocate of military expansion in his “beloved state of Israel” and oversaw murders of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Ben Hania gave a speech after her award was announced, but said she was not taking the trophy because the event was providing “political cover” for genocide and acting as a “perfume sprayed over violence so power can feel refined”, “denigrating protesters” and “reframing mass civilian killing as self-defence”:
She continued:
The Israeli army killed Hind Rajab; killed her family; killed the two paramedics who came to save her, with the complicity of the world’s most powerful governments and institutions…I refuse to let their deaths become a backdrop for a polite speech about peace.
Hania said she would accept the award for The Voice of Hind Rajab “with joy” only when peace is “rooted in accountability for genocide.”
Featured image via the Canary
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