Best Of

I had a really nice chat today with a lovely lady on my route

We've had a few brief chats before, but since I last saw her a couple of months ago I noticed on one of her letters that she has a CBE

I looked her up and found she was awarded it for services to health care. She had a long career in the NHS, and after retirement (which she told me today was forced on her by a reorganisation) she had a few other positions including working with the Red Cross in Moscow

She's big into wine; I delivered her a bottle from Hard To Find Wines last week (a NZ pinot noir from a vineyard called, I think, Remarkables, that she and her husband visited 30 years ago when it had first opened)

AND she's big into walking. She's going away on a walking holiday for a week in a fortnight. And the reason she bought the house in Ogbourne is because she walked past it on a Ridgeway walk many years ago

She's a soul mate from a different generation

Talking of ICE, masked up agents pulling a legally-in-USA PhD student off the streets. She wrote a piece in the student newspaper criticising Israel. It's getting nastier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGDVKBdq3Gw&t=179s

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national and PhD student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was arrested outside her off-campus apartment. Then renditioned in violation of a Court Order.
...
Khanbabai said Ozturk had valid F-1 visa status as a PhD student. She has filed a habeas petition in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts for Ozturk’s release from detention.
...
“Unless otherwise ordered by the Court, petitioner shall not be moved outside the District of Massachusetts without first providing advance notice of the intended move,” wrote federal judge Indira Talwani in a three-page order to ICE on Tuesday night.
...
But shortly after the judge made that order, federal authorities transferred Ozturk to Louisiana, according to her attorney.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-03-26/tufts-international-graduate-student-taken-into-ice-custody

The op ed she wrote:
https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/03/4ftk27sm6jkj

Land of free speech my arse.

It couldn't happen here, Oh wait:

https://bsky.app/profile/georgemonbiot.bsky.social/post/3llit6dd7es2u

You think the arbitrary arrest of political dissenters cannot happen in the UK? It already does. www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...

Is there any more reporting on that ?
Your link provides very little detail.

https://www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/news/quakers-condemn-police-raid-on-westminster-meeting-house

It was a meeting of the group "Youth Demand" who rented a room at the Meeting House. They are protesting for a boycott of Israel and for climate action.

https://youthdemand.org/

They are the ones who are “planning to shut down London… for a month straight”, right?

In direct violation of the “just stop oil” legislation?

Sounds like they were arrested while planning a crime rather than exercising their free speech.

And they weren’t Quakers about their worship, they had just rented a meeting room.

Yes, planning a protest is now a crime. Unless of course you are a farmer worried about tax.

Planning a protest in concert with the local authorities and police to meet established guidelines for organised protest in one thing

Planning to obstruct or damage infrastructure is another.

I speak as one who helped plan protests (of the former type) when at university. Generally for causes I opposed.

*I think it was Wellington who said that any damn fool could get 10,000 people into Hyde Park. But it would take a general to get them out, again.

Only protests that the police and government approve of.

What sort of right to protest is that?

If protesters commit crimes of criminal damage then arrest them. Not for thought crime.

So if you are aware that your neighbour is
planning to murder his wife you shouldn’t
intervene because it’s “thought crime”?

That's a bit Minority Report isn't it? Unless he's shared his plans.

Let’s say you accidentally get his Amazon parcel with some black tarpaulin, duct tape, a shovel and a pair of ninja swords…

Or you get invited to his Signal chat with his mistress and a contract killer.