Best Of

Utterly disgusting, that Villa decision.

Ban Jews from supporting their club because people are so racist they might not be safe? What a disgraceful victim-blaming attitude.

Villa are a crap club with wankers for fans.

The West Mids Police are a disgrace.

Not sure how much this is Villa's fault.

The Police much more to blame.

If Villa and the Police can't ensure safety it should be relocated to be played in another country that can keep fans safe.

I never said it was Villa’s fault. I just made an observation about the club and its supporters.

Macabi Tel Aviv fans are not always the peace-loving soccerballists some on pb imagine.

Some football supporters have a tendency towards bad behaviour.

That’s hardly news. Even my beloved Birmingham City has the odd one or two pre-disposed towards violence including one of my former Managers

This is the lot who were chanting such lovely things over in Amsterdam? Something about there being 'no schools in Gaza' and 'may your village burn' also quite a bit of wishing death to Arabs? One can't understand why the police wouldn't want them in Birmingham.

Would our PBers who dislike the Gaza protests also defend this bunch of extremists?

As a supporter of a club with a reputation for violent fans it is only a small minority who engage in such stuff. No it is not right or defendable but why just single them out if this is the issue.

Why just ban the Israeli teams supporters.

What about England fans who sing ‘2 world wars’, ‘no surrender to the IRA/Taleban’ or the song about German bombers ?

Celtic and Rangers fans with their sectarian chants about the North of Ireland.

Why not ban other clubs with equally awful fans. In Newcastle when they were last in the champions league the opposition fans hardly disnguished themselves as model supporters. No one calls for bans on them.

Are the chants and actions of the Maccabi fans really equivalent to England fans chanting the classics? I think I would share your view if we hadn't seen what they got up to in Amsterdam. They have form, are universally known to be pretty horrible and Birmingham is not the place for it.

Plenty of European teams fans are. ‘Universally known’ to be scumbags.

So if the fans are that bad why were they not banned from away games full stop ?

If there is a problem it should be dealt with by UEFA and why should all fans be punished for the actions of a minority. Anyway in Amsterdam the home supporters were hardly blameless.

We’ve had Italian and east European fans with far right leanings not banned.

I don't know why they weren’t banned for it. Of course the footballing precedent is to ban all fans if enough cause trouble so this situation is not unique to the Israelis. And yes the Amsterdam fracas was not just Maccabi fans but they didn't help themselves, I remember that they were cheering during a minutes silence for flood victims, more of a Millwall approach to international relations.

England fans boo other nations National Anthems.

Guess that’s just patriotism

I detest booing other nations anthems. Want to,show how patriotic you are? Sing your own one loudly.

Utterly disgusting, that Villa decision.

Ban Jews from supporting their club because people are so racist they might not be safe? What a disgraceful victim-blaming attitude.

Villa are a crap club with wankers for fans.

The West Mids Police are a disgrace.

Not sure how much this is Villa's fault.

The Police much more to blame.

If Villa and the Police can't ensure safety it should be relocated to be played in another country that can keep fans safe.

I never said it was Villa’s fault. I just made an observation about the club and its supporters.

Macabi Tel Aviv fans are not always the peace-loving soccerballists some on pb imagine.

Cute victim-blaming there.

That's not the reason they're being banned, though, is it?

Galatasaray fans and other clubs fans aren't always peace-loving, but they're not banned.

This episode is as shameful a moment for modern Britain as I can remember.

"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed."
I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system.
What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.

The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.

But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).

I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.

About the only person I have seen worth following on this is David Allen Green, who, IMO brings us up to date as far as can be done today:

https://davidallengreen.com/2025/10/what-the-chinese-spying-case-witness-statements-reveal/

The only thing I would add is that in guessing what lies behind it all, Ockham's razor + common sense + cockup + our dependence on China + the need to complexify and spread possible blame fairly thinly between anyone who matters, supplies the necessary material.

That's kind of what I expected following the exchanges at PMQs yesterday. I think it is tolerably clear that it is the DPP and the CPS that have got questions to answer here, not the government. Starmer confused things somewhat moaning about the delay in bring the 2023 Act into force but that really is not the point. The point is that there was sufficient evidence to meet the 1911 test at the time of charging AND at the time the decision was made not to proceed. The CPS were simply wrong to drop the prosecution.

You’ve broken so many hearts with that post.

"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed."
I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system.
What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.

The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.

But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).

I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.

I work in IT, in banks.

The official position, provided to banks openly, was that China was on the list of state actors who were

- infiltrating finance
- Stealing info
- Engaging in electronic espionage
- Setting up and testing attacks on infrastructure (usually through proxies)

It’s been that way for years.

Everyone knows this.

Hell, when a cheap laser cuter at a communal workshop crashed when we didn’t connect it to the internet… no one was surprised that was because it was forwarding all designs cut to an IP address in China. That waste than a decade ago.

We fixed the laser cutter by getting it to send DXF that weren’t the designs. Generated from stills in a movie, IIRC.

“He said while there was sufficient evidence when charges were originally brought against the two men, a precedent set by another spying case earlier this year meant China would need to have been labelled a "threat to national security" at the time of the alleged offences.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0ex172rxwzo

What I don’t understand is why that is the case? It seems an oddly specific requirement. And the failure appears to be on the CPS not saying, “We need these exact words.”

Every minister, shadow minister, and government department concerned with such matters, should be shouting from the rooftops that China is a threat to national security.

Everyone needs to understand that China is a massive threat to national security, the biggest threat we’ve faced since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.