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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
It might be worth remembering that Starmer's wife and children are Jewish.
Improbably, I ended up feeling rather sorry for the world's richest man.
He may be the world's richest man, but he's obviously deeply unhappy and mentally troubled. As he had a ghastly childhood with a terrible father and rampant bullying at school he lashes out and has to disrupt everything all the time, no matter how much suffering he causes.
He, Trump and Putin are well-matched in those respects (though I've a feeling that Trump was the bully not the bullied at school).
He may have a million times as much money as I and almost everybody I know do, but we're much happier people, which I suppose is what counts at the end of the day.
Cosmic justice?
On the bullying thing: many people who are bullied at school become bullies, either later in school, or later in life. "He was bullied!" is not an excuse for stuff done decades later.
If he was bullied, then I'd expect him to have learnt a little of how it feels, and not to act the way he is at the moment.
Acting like a bully.
Nobody says being bullied is an excuse for bullying others, but it is certainly an explanation.
There's also a related desperate desire for control, which most well-adjusted people don't have, at any rate to the same extent, but certainly explains why so many damaged people end up as CEOs, Presidents, policemen, etc. It's the flipside of massive personal insecurity.
If you're affected, of course, it's tragic, but if you're not, it just looks pathetic.
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.
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
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.
According to radio 4 they sent 80 emails in a 6 month period (basically one every 2 working days) having been banned from the school premises after challenging the appointment process for the head teacher and “casting aspersions” on the chair of the governors.
While the police may have been heavy handed it does seem like there could potentially be a case to answer on harassment
It's all a bit ‘hurty words’. One email every two days? I get more spam from LinkedIn than that. If you don't like particular emails then block them, don't read them. And the same advice to footballers and MPs.
Depends a bit what was in those emails. The bit we've been told is parents-with-media-connections questioning the way the new head was appointed. Without knowing the rest of the story, we can't tell whether the entirety of the messages was hurty words or worse.
And a school blocking emails from a parent is a plan with many drawbacks. If each of those emails needed a considered reply, that's going to take more management time than a primary school has going spare.
It seems the parents were a nuisance. However, if the content of the emails was abusive, defamatory or in any other way illegal, that would have been mentioned in the complaint and the investigation.
The fact the police dropped the investigation and concluded there was no case to answer suggests there’s nothing much there.
He’s an acquaintance of a friend so I’ll ask my friend to dig for a bit more on this.
To my ear on the Twitter vid he's a credible interviewee.
By his account the arresting and interviewing officers had nothing more than a sketchy written complaint, and no evidence of the alleged crimes whatsoever.
Interesting. Just a finger in the air I didn't like him or trust him and found for the school with costs!! Just a few clues which everyone reads in different ways.....
Why ?
From the reporting this seems to be little more than the school getting annoyed at pushy parents and using the Police against them. There was no crime and no evidence of a crime.
Absolutely. I work in a job where I have to deal with vexatious or abusive emails on a daily basis. With the time wasting ones (my most long running one is from someone who wants his claim to the throne acknowledged) I eventually tell the person that their emails will be read but not answered unless there is something material to add to their case. In the past week I have been called a scumbag and a "leach hanging off the public teat" (I rather liked that one). The only email I've ever reported to the police is one where the sender said they were going to stand outside a government department and start stabbing people.
'Leech' is spelled thus in this context. With a job like that, if you didn't laugh, you'd cry. Sympathies.
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
I actually quite enjoy his spinning Trump Emperor's New Clothes madness into a positive, whilst at the same time sneering at those who just see an orange man naked except for a diaper.
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.
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
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.
According to radio 4 they sent 80 emails in a 6 month period (basically one every 2 working days) having been banned from the school premises after challenging the appointment process for the head teacher and “casting aspersions” on the chair of the governors.
While the police may have been heavy handed it does seem like there could potentially be a case to answer on harassment
It's all a bit ‘hurty words’. One email every two days? I get more spam from LinkedIn than that. If you don't like particular emails then block them, don't read them. And the same advice to footballers and MPs.
Depends a bit what was in those emails. The bit we've been told is parents-with-media-connections questioning the way the new head was appointed. Without knowing the rest of the story, we can't tell whether the entirety of the messages was hurty words or worse.
And a school blocking emails from a parent is a plan with many drawbacks. If each of those emails needed a considered reply, that's going to take more management time than a primary school has going spare.
It seems the parents were a nuisance. However, if the content of the emails was abusive, defamatory or in any other way illegal, that would have been mentioned in the complaint and the investigation.
The fact the police dropped the investigation and concluded there was no case to answer suggests there’s nothing much there.
He’s an acquaintance of a friend so I’ll ask my friend to dig for a bit more on this.
To my ear on the Twitter vid he's a credible interviewee.
By his account the arresting and interviewing officers had nothing more than a sketchy written complaint, and no evidence of the alleged crimes whatsoever.
IMV if there was anything that could be construed as a threat against the school, or its staff, then it blooming well should be investigated. Even something like: "the head should be shot!", which might just be hyperbole, should provoke questioning. Those questions may well lead to no further action, but ignoring that sort of thing might lead to disaster in other situations, where someone says something that proves not to be hyperbole.
The police can face difficult decisions in cases like this. Much depends on what exactly was said in the emails, and I'm unsure the parents might be the most impartial 'witnesses', and you'd need to see the full chain of comments, not just the ones they choose to show. ...
Even if something needs investigation it doesn't need six police officers going to the house and trying to take them out in handcuffs. Whatever these people have done it should be immediately apparent to the school that they're not a terrorist cell
I am told the police turned up mob handed to question a neighbour about a report she had made (and then, curiously, arrested her) so it seems routine. Maybe they could do three times as much work if they turned up in pairs.
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
District Judge Michael Snow said he could “understand why politicians are so fearful” given the “number of attacks on our democracy”.
“The person who resides here is a senior politician,” he continued.
“In the last two years, two Members of Parliament have been murdered.
“Anyone in that situation being aware that there were protesters directly outside their home is likely to be caused distress.
“It is laughable to assert to the contrary.” ... Delivering his sentence, Judge Snow said the trio had been directed to leave the premises but had “continued” regardless.
I'm not a big fan of protesting at people's private homes, here's the law:
If you protest outside someone's dwelling then you have to move on when told to by a police officer who believes you might be causing distress or alarm, if you don't want to be arrested or charged.
Seems like the kind of power that could be abused, but I'm not convinced it was in this case?
Morning All! Intelligence from Bangkok, courtesy of my son, who phoned half an hour of so ago. Everything seems back to normal now, apart from in the area of the collapsed building. His daughter's school was disrupted; lessons stopped and as city transport was in a mess, it took his two daughters ages to get home. Suvarnabhumi, the main Bangkok Airport was briefly closed and he was half an hour late leaving Taiwan. One of his daughters has texted Mrs C to say that some of her friends who live in apartment blocks have cracked walls but no-one seems to be moving out, at least at the moment.
Do we know how long it took for the tremors to go from Mandalay to Bangkok?
I ask because the Sky News reporter was stirring up trouble about Bangkok not receiving a warning..
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
It might be worth remembering that Starmer's wife and children are Jewish.
We are not told what was on the banner, so we can't make our own judgment about whether it was offensive or not. Presumably it didn't pass the test for anti-semitism or they would have been charged with a hate crime. Protesting against the actions of a sovereign state should not be a crime.
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.
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
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.
According to radio 4 they sent 80 emails in a 6 month period (basically one every 2 working days) having been banned from the school premises after challenging the appointment process for the head teacher and “casting aspersions” on the chair of the governors.
While the police may have been heavy handed it does seem like there could potentially be a case to answer on harassment
It's all a bit ‘hurty words’. One email every two days? I get more spam from LinkedIn than that. If you don't like particular emails then block them, don't read them. And the same advice to footballers and MPs.
Depends a bit what was in those emails. The bit we've been told is parents-with-media-connections questioning the way the new head was appointed. Without knowing the rest of the story, we can't tell whether the entirety of the messages was hurty words or worse.
And a school blocking emails from a parent is a plan with many drawbacks. If each of those emails needed a considered reply, that's going to take more management time than a primary school has going spare.
It seems the parents were a nuisance. However, if the content of the emails was abusive, defamatory or in any other way illegal, that would have been mentioned in the complaint and the investigation.
The fact the police dropped the investigation and concluded there was no case to answer suggests there’s nothing much there.
He’s an acquaintance of a friend so I’ll ask my friend to dig for a bit more on this.
To my ear on the Twitter vid he's a credible interviewee.
By his account the arresting and interviewing officers had nothing more than a sketchy written complaint, and no evidence of the alleged crimes whatsoever.
Interesting. Just a finger in the air I didn't like him or trust him and found for the school with costs!! Just a few clues which everyone reads in different ways.....
Why ?
From the reporting this seems to be little more than the school getting annoyed at pushy parents and using the Police against them. There was no crime and no evidence of a crime.
Absolutely. I work in a job where I have to deal with vexatious or abusive emails on a daily basis. With the time wasting ones (my most long running one is from someone who wants his claim to the throne acknowledged) I eventually tell the person that their emails will be read but not answered unless there is something material to add to their case. In the past week I have been called a scumbag and a "leach hanging off the public teat" (I rather liked that one). The only email I've ever reported to the police is one where the sender said they were going to stand outside a government department and start stabbing people.
'Leech' is spelled thus in this context. With a job like that, if you didn't laugh, you'd cry. Sympathies.
It was a direct quote 😉. It sounds snobbish but doing a public facing job doesn't give you a good impression of the education system.
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
It might be worth remembering that Starmer's wife and children are Jewish.
We are not told what was on the banner, so we can't make our own judgment about whether it was offensive or not. Presumably it didn't pass the test for anti-semitism or they would have been charged with a hate crime. Protesting against the actions of a sovereign state should not be a crime.
It was a crime because they of where they were protesting, and not leaving when asked to by a police officer. It had nothing to do AFAIK with what they were protesting about
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
It might be worth remembering that Starmer's wife and children are Jewish.
We are not told what was on the banner, so we can't make our own judgment about whether it was offensive or not. Presumably it didn't pass the test for anti-semitism or they would have been charged with a hate crime. Protesting against the actions of a sovereign state should not be a crime.
Why would they pick Starmer's house? It's not like he could do much about it. He wasn't even PM at that stage.
The whole case seems to be 'we will protest' (fair enough) 'we will protest to the wrong person' (silly, but not a crime) 'we will ignore the police when ordered to leave' (stupid, and illegal as the police can make that decision) 'we are martyrs for free speech' (not buying it).
I can understand in this case that the protest being pro-Palestinian which movement has contained some pretty ugly anti-Semitic traits could be especially intimidating to a household with Jews in it.
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
I actually quite enjoy his spinning Trump Emperor's New Clothes madness into a positive, whilst at the same time sneering at those who just see an orange man naked except for a diaper.
The wankerishness has a long and illustrious history in US politics. The neocons regularly expressed similar sentiments towards Europeans who weren’t 100% behind them during the Iraq invasion.
ETA: people in glass houses though…several British politicians and multiple British journalists said some extremely insulting things about European neighbours in the period from 2016 to 2021.
Morning All! Intelligence from Bangkok, courtesy of my son, who phoned half an hour of so ago. Everything seems back to normal now, apart from in the area of the collapsed building. His daughter's school was disrupted; lessons stopped and as city transport was in a mess, it took his two daughters ages to get home. Suvarnabhumi, the main Bangkok Airport was briefly closed and he was half an hour late leaving Taiwan. One of his daughters has texted Mrs C to say that some of her friends who live in apartment blocks have cracked walls but no-one seems to be moving out, at least at the moment.
Do we know how long it took for the tremors to go from Mandalay to Bangkok?
I ask because the Sky News reporter was stirring up trouble about Bangkok not receiving a warning..
Sorry I had to edit spelling..
I don't, and I haven't seen anything which might give a clue.
Which spelling? And we both missed something else 'hour of so ago'!
A top vaccine official at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was forced out of his job, US media reports.
Peter Marks offered his letter of resignation to Health and Human Services (HHS) officials on Friday, after being given a choice between resigning or being fired.
"It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies," Mr Marks wrote in a resignation letter, obtained by multiple US media outlets, referring to the agency's new leader Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Mr Marks was among the healthcare professionals who helped develop Covid-19 vaccines in the first Trump administration.
Do we all think that whatever the topic header and domestic strife in the UK every PB thread circa 1935 would quickly move to discussing Hitler insanity?
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.
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
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.
According to radio 4 they sent 80 emails in a 6 month period (basically one every 2 working days) having been banned from the school premises after challenging the appointment process for the head teacher and “casting aspersions” on the chair of the governors.
While the police may have been heavy handed it does seem like there could potentially be a case to answer on harassment
It's all a bit ‘hurty words’. One email every two days? I get more spam from LinkedIn than that. If you don't like particular emails then block them, don't read them. And the same advice to footballers and MPs.
Depends a bit what was in those emails. The bit we've been told is parents-with-media-connections questioning the way the new head was appointed. Without knowing the rest of the story, we can't tell whether the entirety of the messages was hurty words or worse.
And a school blocking emails from a parent is a plan with many drawbacks. If each of those emails needed a considered reply, that's going to take more management time than a primary school has going spare.
It seems the parents were a nuisance. However, if the content of the emails was abusive, defamatory or in any other way illegal, that would have been mentioned in the complaint and the investigation.
The fact the police dropped the investigation and concluded there was no case to answer suggests there’s nothing much there.
He’s an acquaintance of a friend so I’ll ask my friend to dig for a bit more on this.
To my ear on the Twitter vid he's a credible interviewee.
By his account the arresting and interviewing officers had nothing more than a sketchy written complaint, and no evidence of the alleged crimes whatsoever.
Interesting. Just a finger in the air I didn't like him or trust him and found for the school with costs!! Just a few clues which everyone reads in different ways.....
Why ?
From the reporting this seems to be little more than the school getting annoyed at pushy parents and using the Police against them. There was no crime and no evidence of a crime.
Absolutely. I work in a job where I have to deal with vexatious or abusive emails on a daily basis. With the time wasting ones (my most long running one is from someone who wants his claim to the throne acknowledged) I eventually tell the person that their emails will be read but not answered unless there is something material to add to their case. In the past week I have been called a scumbag and a "leach hanging off the public teat" (I rather liked that one). The only email I've ever reported to the police is one where the sender said they were going to stand outside a government department and start stabbing people.
'Leech' is spelled thus in this context. With a job like that, if you didn't laugh, you'd cry. Sympathies.
It was a direct quote 😉. It sounds snobbish but doing a public facing job doesn't give you a good impression of the education system.
I used to supply leeches. And yes, back in the day I used to get misspelled requests from the public.
Do we all think that whatever the topic header and domestic strife in the UK every PB thread circa 1935 would quickly move to discussing Hitler insanity?
Do we all think that whatever the topic header and domestic strife in the UK every PB thread circa 1935 would quickly move to discussing Hitler insanity?
Hitler wasn't directly threatening British security in 1935, or at least, didn't appear to be. Regardless of his campaigns of mass murder and racial intimidation it is unlikely most people had him on the radar as a serious threat. He even failed in his first attempt at seizing Austria in 1934.
The parallel with 1936 after the reoccupation of the Rhineland and the forming of the Rome-Berlin axis would be closer.
Morning All! Intelligence from Bangkok, courtesy of my son, who phoned half an hour of so ago. Everything seems back to normal now, apart from in the area of the collapsed building. His daughter's school was disrupted; lessons stopped and as city transport was in a mess, it took his two daughters ages to get home. Suvarnabhumi, the main Bangkok Airport was briefly closed and he was half an hour late leaving Taiwan. One of his daughters has texted Mrs C to say that some of her friends who live in apartment blocks have cracked walls but no-one seems to be moving out, at least at the moment.
Do we know how long it took for the tremors to go from Mandalay to Bangkok?
I ask because the Sky News reporter was stirring up trouble about Bangkok not receiving a warning..
Sorry I had to edit spelling..
I don't, and I haven't seen anything which might give a clue.
Which spelling? And we both missed something else 'hour of so ago'!
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
It might be worth remembering that Starmer's wife and children are Jewish.
We are not told what was on the banner, so we can't make our own judgment about whether it was offensive or not. Presumably it didn't pass the test for anti-semitism or they would have been charged with a hate crime. Protesting against the actions of a sovereign state should not be a crime.
a banner outside the London property that read, “Starmer stop the killing”, surrounded by red handprints
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
It might be worth remembering that Starmer's wife and children are Jewish.
We are not told what was on the banner, so we can't make our own judgment about whether it was offensive or not. Presumably it didn't pass the test for anti-semitism or they would have been charged with a hate crime. Protesting against the actions of a sovereign state should not be a crime.
Why would they pick Starmer's house? It's not like he could do much about it. He wasn't even PM at that stage.
The whole case seems to be 'we will protest' (fair enough) 'we will protest to the wrong person' (silly, but not a crime) 'we will ignore the police when ordered to leave' (stupid, and illegal as the police can make that decision) 'we are martyrs for free speech' (not buying it).
I can understand in this case that the protest being pro-Palestinian which movement has contained some pretty ugly anti-Semitic traits could be especially intimidating to a household with Jews in it.
I don't disagree and I am coming to the opinion that, now I know more about it, it is reasonable. However you have to get right to the bottom of the long Independent piece before it says that they refused to move along when asked to. The other reports quoted here erroneously give the impression they were arrested for protesting or expressing an opinion - whereas if they had done it outside Sir Keir's office, they would have probably been allowed to get on with it. Let's have some better reporting "protesters outside Sir Keir Starmer's family home were arrested for a public order offence which protects people's homes after refusing to move along when asked to by the police". See, it's easy.
Morning All! Intelligence from Bangkok, courtesy of my son, who phoned half an hour of so ago. Everything seems back to normal now, apart from in the area of the collapsed building. His daughter's school was disrupted; lessons stopped and as city transport was in a mess, it took his two daughters ages to get home. Suvarnabhumi, the main Bangkok Airport was briefly closed and he was half an hour late leaving Taiwan. One of his daughters has texted Mrs C to say that some of her friends who live in apartment blocks have cracked walls but no-one seems to be moving out, at least at the moment.
Do we know how long it took for the tremors to go from Mandalay to Bangkok?
I ask because the Sky News reporter was stirring up trouble about Bangkok not receiving a warning..
Sorry I had to edit spelling..
I don't, and I haven't seen anything which might give a clue.
Which spelling? And we both missed something else 'hour of so ago'!
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
It might be worth remembering that Starmer's wife and children are Jewish.
We are not told what was on the banner, so we can't make our own judgment about whether it was offensive or not. Presumably it didn't pass the test for anti-semitism or they would have been charged with a hate crime. Protesting against the actions of a sovereign state should not be a crime.
a banner outside the London property that read, “Starmer stop the killing”, surrounded by red handprints
Here I admit I didn't scroll down far enough, although that banner is clearly not offensive
Morning All! Intelligence from Bangkok, courtesy of my son, who phoned half an hour of so ago. Everything seems back to normal now, apart from in the area of the collapsed building. His daughter's school was disrupted; lessons stopped and as city transport was in a mess, it took his two daughters ages to get home. Suvarnabhumi, the main Bangkok Airport was briefly closed and he was half an hour late leaving Taiwan. One of his daughters has texted Mrs C to say that some of her friends who live in apartment blocks have cracked walls but no-one seems to be moving out, at least at the moment.
Do we know how long it took for the tremors to go from Mandalay to Bangkok?
I ask because the Sky News reporter was stirring up trouble about Bangkok not receiving a warning..
Sorry I had to edit spelling..
I don't, and I haven't seen anything which might give a clue.
Which spelling? And we both missed something else 'hour of so ago'!
Bangcock
Freudian, but I can't see where I did it.
No, it was my spelling mistake. I wouldn't dream of editing other people's posts.
Do we all think that whatever the topic header and domestic strife in the UK every PB thread circa 1935 would quickly move to discussing Hitler insanity?
Hitler wasn't directly threatening British security in 1935, or at least, didn't appear to be. Regardless of his campaigns of mass murder and racial intimidation it is unlikely most people had him on the radar as a serious threat. He even failed in his first attempt at seizing Austria in 1934.
The parallel with 1936 after the reoccupation of the Rhineland and the forming of the Rome-Berlin axis would be closer.
10/10 for pedantry. Should I be looking out for. Washington -Moscow axis? Oh wait, in all but signed treaty, I think I am seeing it now.
Improbably, I ended up feeling rather sorry for the world's richest man.
He may be the world's richest man, but he's obviously deeply unhappy and mentally troubled. As he had a ghastly childhood with a terrible father and rampant bullying at school he lashes out and has to disrupt everything all the time, no matter how much suffering he causes.
He, Trump and Putin are well-matched in those respects (though I've a feeling that Trump was the bully not the bullied at school).
He may have a million times as much money as I and almost everybody I know do, but we're much happier people, which I suppose is what counts at the end of the day.
Cosmic justice?
On the bullying thing: many people who are bullied at school become bullies, either later in school, or later in life. "He was bullied!" is not an excuse for stuff done decades later.
If he was bullied, then I'd expect him to have learnt a little of how it feels, and not to act the way he is at the moment.
Acting like a bully.
Nobody says being bullied is an excuse for bullying others, but it is certainly an explanation.
There's also a related desperate desire for control, which most well-adjusted people don't have, at any rate to the same extent, but certainly explains why so many damaged people end up as CEOs, Presidents, policemen, etc. It's the flipside of massive personal insecurity.
If you're affected, of course, it's tragic, but if you're not, it just looks pathetic.
I guess it is different things for different people. I have certainly heard it said that people who are bullied sometimes become bullies as a consequence, but is it true? I would anticipate it should have the opposite effect.
I was never bullied so I don't know, but as a child I was hit by my father for being naughty and swore I would never do that to my children. I put it down to it being more common in those days (50s & 60s), although since then I have found out that it didn't happen to others of my age and unlike others I was never punished at school, whereas many of my friends were (cane, slipper, ruler, etc), so I couldn't have been that awful as a kid.
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.
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
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.
According to radio 4 they sent 80 emails in a 6 month period (basically one every 2 working days) having been banned from the school premises after challenging the appointment process for the head teacher and “casting aspersions” on the chair of the governors.
While the police may have been heavy handed it does seem like there could potentially be a case to answer on harassment
It's all a bit ‘hurty words’. One email every two days? I get more spam from LinkedIn than that. If you don't like particular emails then block them, don't read them. And the same advice to footballers and MPs.
Depends a bit what was in those emails. The bit we've been told is parents-with-media-connections questioning the way the new head was appointed. Without knowing the rest of the story, we can't tell whether the entirety of the messages was hurty words or worse.
And a school blocking emails from a parent is a plan with many drawbacks. If each of those emails needed a considered reply, that's going to take more management time than a primary school has going spare.
It seems the parents were a nuisance. However, if the content of the emails was abusive, defamatory or in any other way illegal, that would have been mentioned in the complaint and the investigation.
The fact the police dropped the investigation and concluded there was no case to answer suggests there’s nothing much there.
He’s an acquaintance of a friend so I’ll ask my friend to dig for a bit more on this.
To my ear on the Twitter vid he's a credible interviewee.
By his account the arresting and interviewing officers had nothing more than a sketchy written complaint, and no evidence of the alleged crimes whatsoever.
Interesting. Just a finger in the air I didn't like him or trust him and found for the school with costs!! Just a few clues which everyone reads in different ways.....
Why ?
From the reporting this seems to be little more than the school getting annoyed at pushy parents and using the Police against them. There was no crime and no evidence of a crime.
As I said it's nothing obvious. Just my view. He's articulate and well rehearsed. Note the two camera angles and teleprompter. His mini admissions also told of someone who knew how to appear an 'honest John'. His self righteousness felt creepy and I could imagine him being a complete nightmare for the school. But I'm sure that'll be a minority view
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
It might be worth remembering that Starmer's wife and children are Jewish.
We are not told what was on the banner, so we can't make our own judgment about whether it was offensive or not. Presumably it didn't pass the test for anti-semitism or they would have been charged with a hate crime. Protesting against the actions of a sovereign state should not be a crime.
a banner outside the London property that read, “Starmer stop the killing”, surrounded by red handprints
Here I admit I didn't scroll down far enough, although that banner is clearly not offensive
I don't agree actually. It implies he had the power to do something about it, which he didn't (and doesn't even now, for the matter of that) and therefore also implies he was guilty of killing people.
Especially since they put a load of children's shoes outside implying he was killing children.
That's pretty offensive. More stupid, of course, and they are clearly extremely stupid since they actually admitted in court without realising it that they intended to be intimidating by admitting it could be distressing,* but still offensive.
*Formentin, refusing to say it was intimidating, was instead led to say 'I think it could be seen as distressing.'
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.
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
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.
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.
Trump's state visit is going to cause massive issues for the government in this regard. The security required for an unpopular US President will mean the "guidelines" will prohibit demonstrations across a whole swathe of central of London.
The new law mean the police can prohibit a protest if it's too noisy - does that include trying to drown out the US national anthem? This is the real free speech issue in the UK right now.
The Trumpski protest I want to see is 2 miles of onlookers down both sides of the road with a wave of moons following Mr Trump as his motorcade passes by.
Not one to try in Scotland, though. They'd pull in 8365 policemen from somewhere for a moon.
Planning such a protest makes you liable to arrest.
Only protests that the government and police approve of are now legal.
You are eliding concepts to mislead
The government and the police don’t care about the *subject* of the protest
They do care about ensuring the correct safety and other procedures are followed including pre-notification.
That is a reasonable balance between the rights of the uninvolved citizen and the right to protest.
It’s just a different form of not having the right to shout “fire” in a crossed theatre
I think the government do care about the subject of protests, and enforce the law unequally.
You’re right of course. Jews are allowed to be abused while pro-Gaza protestors get away with lots
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
It might be worth remembering that Starmer's wife and children are Jewish.
We are not told what was on the banner, so we can't make our own judgment about whether it was offensive or not. Presumably it didn't pass the test for anti-semitism or they would have been charged with a hate crime. Protesting against the actions of a sovereign state should not be a crime.
a banner outside the London property that read, “Starmer stop the killing”, surrounded by red handprints
Here I admit I didn't scroll down far enough, although that banner is clearly not offensive
Not offensive to suggest that Starmer has blood on his hands?
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
It might be worth remembering that Starmer's wife and children are Jewish.
We are not told what was on the banner, so we can't make our own judgment about whether it was offensive or not. Presumably it didn't pass the test for anti-semitism or they would have been charged with a hate crime. Protesting against the actions of a sovereign state should not be a crime.
a banner outside the London property that read, “Starmer stop the killing”, surrounded by red handprints
Here I admit I didn't scroll down far enough, although that banner is clearly not offensive
Not offensive to suggest that Starmer has blood on his hands?
50,000 dead Gazans might endorse that message.
No smoke, no fire and Jonathan Ashworth would still be an MP if the message didn't resonate.
@Fishing Interesting posts from you today. It is always nice to find common agreement across the political spectrum. I found the same often with @Sandpit .
Morning All! Intelligence from Bangkok, courtesy of my son, who phoned half an hour of so ago. Everything seems back to normal now, apart from in the area of the collapsed building. His daughter's school was disrupted; lessons stopped and as city transport was in a mess, it took his two daughters ages to get home. Suvarnabhumi, the main Bangkok Airport was briefly closed and he was half an hour late leaving Taiwan. One of his daughters has texted Mrs C to say that some of her friends who live in apartment blocks have cracked walls but no-one seems to be moving out, at least at the moment.
Do we know how long it took for the tremors to go from Mandalay to Bangkok?
I ask because the Sky News reporter was stirring up trouble about Bangkok not receiving a warning..
Sorry I had to edit spelling..
I don't, and I haven't seen anything which might give a clue.
Which spelling? And we both missed something else 'hour of so ago'!
Bangcock
Freudian, but I can't see where I did it.
No, it was my spelling mistake. I wouldn't dream of editing other people's posts.
Didn't appear in the final post. And no-one uses the city's proper name, anyway. Far too long.
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
I guess it is different things for different people. I have certainly heard it said that people who are bullied sometimes become bullies as a consequence, but is it true? I would anticipate it should have the opposite effect.
I was never bullied so I don't know, but as a child I was hit by my father for being naughty and swore I would never do that to my children. I put it down to it being more common in those days (50s & 60s), although since then I have found out that it didn't happen to others of my age and unlike others I was never punished at school, whereas many of my friends were (cane, slipper, ruler, etc), so I couldn't have been that awful as a kid.
Sympathies! It's very individual, as you say. I never experienced bullying against myself, and intervened on the one occasion I saw it in school (I was tall and strong so the bully was easily deterred), so I've no real idea, but I imagine people react differently. The difference from the 50s/60s is that it's now seen as bad parenting, whereas back then it seems to have been seen as a normal choice, far from universal but nothing out of the ordinary.
We have Canada voting on April 28th and Australia voting on May 3rd so the new CANZUK alliance might look very different by early May (or it might not as you could easily imagine Carney keeping the Liberals in power and Albanese getting back with Independent help in Canberra).
Some betting opportunities to consider perhaps next month?
On topic, almost all elections are "pocket book" elections inasmuch as how people "feel" economically is a big factor around how they vote. The decisive rejections of Government aren't usually because of a belief the Opposition would do much better but more a perception they couldn't do any worse.
As we now find in many instances they can and do, the option is either to "get the other lot back in" (which is your only option in a rigid 2-party system) or to look elsewhere at the coterie of snake oil salespeople on both and neither extreme (a bit cynical perhaps).
I've raised this many times on here but there still seems to be no practical solution to the issues of stagnant growth and ambient inflation (I seem to recall the UK economy was particularly prone to stubborn inflation). Getting energy prices and council tax rises back to somewhere in the neighbourhood of actual CPI or RPI inflation would be a good start. The notion our energy prices go up so the customers in the countries which own our energy suppliers can see theirs go down (or not rise as much) is a huge bone of contention.
As for local Government finance, notwithstanding the unnecessary costs of pointless re-organisations, the issues of social care, SEN and temporary accommodation costs all remain unresolved - Newham's 8.9% rise in 2025/26 may be part down to overarching incompetence and part down to the same costs as every other councils but the fact remains most people's incomes haven't risen by 8.9% so it's another cost.
I've no statistical evidence but my assertion is we have stagnated since 2008 in terms of living standards. Yes, our assets (primarily but not exclusively property) have appreciated strongly but unless you can release some of that asset (by downsizing) it's not much help. Yet there's plenty of people with plenty of money - I wonder what the take up in ISAs will be in April 2025?
A slow down in Council Tax rises won't happen. They have had 15 years decades of being shredded, which has fed through to quality of localities and services.
Funding is down hugely - perhaps 30% in real terms since 2010.
Agreed and one million local Government jobs lost since 2012 suggests, contrary to what the supply siders would have you believe, there was plenty of austerity going on especially in the Coalition years.
why has council tax soared if they got rid of a million duffers. The clowns could not run a bath.
Mainly social care, but also SEN
Both obligations committed to by central government and then handed off to their local colleagues without new funding streams
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
Just listened to the Today podcast where Nick and Amol interview Dr James Orr, who is Vance's intellectual apologist in the UK. Extraordinary in two ways: Orr, who is bright and clever was clearly delusional about his friend and what is occurring as USA descends into a police state; and the interviewers, by asking several long questions at a time allowed him to evade all hard issues, which Orr did outstandingly well.
Nothing about Orr's analysis made sense of the Trumpian/Vance wish to absorb friendly sovereign territory - Canada and Greenland - into the USA, and Orr was allowed to evade the issue, and many others.
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.
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
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.
Disgraceful and particularly bizarre that we are denying the right of people to peacefully protest other countries' policies.
That’s exactly the point.
They aren’t planning a *peaceful* protest
Well violent protest should not be allowed. Perhaps I've been too hasty but my understanding of the quaker movement is that they do lots of silent sitting down.
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
The alternative is barricading the street which seems to me to be a worse outcome for the general public
Feuerstein is a pretty shrewd industry journalist.
Time for some well targeted UK R&D grants.
Yep. Huge growth opportunity and we already have strong pharma R&D.
Some heroically optimistic Trump economic upsides for Europe:
- cheap avocados and tequila from Mexico, strong bread flour, maple syrup and heavy crude from Canada - brain drain of academics from US universities (and more pertinently a slowdown in the brain drain to US universities) - increased capital investment from Canadian multinationals and their huge pension funds into European assets - growing European defence industry - Lower oil prices, and suppressed inflation if USD weakens and US demand softens
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.
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
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.
A Met spokesperson said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and roadblocks.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”
The force confirmed that a number of houses were also raided on Thursday and Friday as part of the same operation.
Youth Demand said the meeting was intended to be “an opportunity to share plans for non-violence civil resistance actions” and alleged that one of those arrested is a journalist.
The group has made anti-Israel demands central to its messaging, calling for the UK government to cut all trade with Israel and accusing it of enabling genocide. It also wants the state to raise money from “the super-rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said: “It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right.
“The government is facilitating genocide. Thousands of us are horrified.
“We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April.”
The group’s tactics have previously drawn criticism, including from within the Jewish community. In April last year, three activists hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside the home of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Lenorah Ward, 21, Zosia Lewis, 23, and Daniel Formentin, 24, were each handed suspended prison sentences over the stunt.
More arrests followed in July when Youth Demand announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Despite the latest police intervention, the group is promoting another “welcome talk” in Brighton on Monday evening.
I do wonder what crime was broken by flying a banner and leaving shoes on the pavement. Littering?
Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 covers the harassment of a person at their home address if a police officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.
Three people have been found guilty of public order offences after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's house.
Leonorah Ward, 21, from Leeds; Zosia Lewis, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and Daniel Formentin, 24, also from Leeds, were also found guilty of breaching court bail, but had denied all the charges.
It would be helpful if the press routinely told us which crime had been broken when reporting a trial. Even that report just calls it "public order offences". I also don't see how the above would cause "alarm or distress" to Sir Keir but his family probably see it differently. Maybe we need a better method of protecting the pavement outside his home.
It might be worth remembering that Starmer's wife and children are Jewish.
We are not told what was on the banner, so we can't make our own judgment about whether it was offensive or not. Presumably it didn't pass the test for anti-semitism or they would have been charged with a hate crime. Protesting against the actions of a sovereign state should not be a crime.
a banner outside the London property that read, “Starmer stop the killing”, surrounded by red handprints
Here I admit I didn't scroll down far enough, although that banner is clearly not offensive
Not offensive to suggest that Starmer has blood on his hands?
50,000 dead Gazans might endorse that message.
No smoke, no fire and Jonathan Ashworth would still be an MP if the message didn't resonate.
It's extraordinary what'll outerage Sir Keir but not the killing of 50,000 people or 35,000 women and children or even the killing of more people than were killed on October 7th just the last week during a ceasefire
Improbably, I ended up feeling rather sorry for the world's richest man.
He may be the world's richest man, but he's obviously deeply unhappy and mentally troubled. As he had a ghastly childhood with a terrible father and rampant bullying at school he lashes out and has to disrupt everything all the time, no matter how much suffering he causes.
He, Trump and Putin are well-matched in those respects (though I've a feeling that Trump was the bully not the bullied at school).
He may have a million times as much money as I and almost everybody I know do, but we're much happier people, which I suppose is what counts at the end of the day.
Cosmic justice?
On the bullying thing: many people who are bullied at school become bullies, either later in school, or later in life. "He was bullied!" is not an excuse for stuff done decades later.
If he was bullied, then I'd expect him to have learnt a little of how it feels, and not to act the way he is at the moment.
Acting like a bully.
Nobody says being bullied is an excuse for bullying others, but it is certainly an explanation.
There's also a related desperate desire for control, which most well-adjusted people don't have, at any rate to the same extent, but certainly explains why so many damaged people end up as CEOs, Presidents, policemen, etc. It's the flipside of massive personal insecurity.
If you're affected, of course, it's tragic, but if you're not, it just looks pathetic.
I guess it is different things for different people. I have certainly heard it said that people who are bullied sometimes become bullies as a consequence, but is it true? I would anticipate it should have the opposite effect.
I was never bullied so I don't know, but as a child I was hit by my father for being naughty and swore I would never do that to my children. I put it down to it being more common in those days (50s & 60s), although since then I have found out that it didn't happen to others of my age and unlike others I was never punished at school, whereas many of my friends were (cane, slipper, ruler, etc), so I couldn't have been that awful as a kid.
People are not rational. Auden gets it right: 'Those to whom evil is done do evil in return'. So a significant proportion of sex offenders are themselves victims of the same abuse.
Breaking the cycle is critical, which is why unpopular things like religion (and the option of redemption, transformation and forgiveness), rehabilitation (touching unknown depths, the opposite of our prison system), ego reduction (mindfulness) and Greek drama (it's all in the Oresteian trilogy 2400 years ago) all continue to matter.
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
We can't disengage from either, obviously, and will continue to deal with both. It's rather that our relationship with the US is being rapidly redefined, and the end state is unclear.
We have Canada voting on April 28th and Australia voting on May 3rd so the new CANZUK alliance might look very different by early May (or it might not as you could easily imagine Carney keeping the Liberals in power and Albanese getting back with Independent help in Canberra).
Some betting opportunities to consider perhaps next month?
On topic, almost all elections are "pocket book" elections inasmuch as how people "feel" economically is a big factor around how they vote. The decisive rejections of Government aren't usually because of a belief the Opposition would do much better but more a perception they couldn't do any worse.
As we now find in many instances they can and do, the option is either to "get the other lot back in" (which is your only option in a rigid 2-party system) or to look elsewhere at the coterie of snake oil salespeople on both and neither extreme (a bit cynical perhaps).
I've raised this many times on here but there still seems to be no practical solution to the issues of stagnant growth and ambient inflation (I seem to recall the UK economy was particularly prone to stubborn inflation). Getting energy prices and council tax rises back to somewhere in the neighbourhood of actual CPI or RPI inflation would be a good start. The notion our energy prices go up so the customers in the countries which own our energy suppliers can see theirs go down (or not rise as much) is a huge bone of contention.
As for local Government finance, notwithstanding the unnecessary costs of pointless re-organisations, the issues of social care, SEN and temporary accommodation costs all remain unresolved - Newham's 8.9% rise in 2025/26 may be part down to overarching incompetence and part down to the same costs as every other councils but the fact remains most people's incomes haven't risen by 8.9% so it's another cost.
I've no statistical evidence but my assertion is we have stagnated since 2008 in terms of living standards. Yes, our assets (primarily but not exclusively property) have appreciated strongly but unless you can release some of that asset (by downsizing) it's not much help. Yet there's plenty of people with plenty of money - I wonder what the take up in ISAs will be in April 2025?
A slow down in Council Tax rises won't happen. They have had 15 years decades of being shredded, which has fed through to quality of localities and services.
Funding is down hugely - perhaps 30% in real terms since 2010.
Agreed and one million local Government jobs lost since 2012 suggests, contrary to what the supply siders would have you believe, there was plenty of austerity going on especially in the Coalition years.
why has council tax soared if they got rid of a million duffers. The clowns could not run a bath.
Mainly social care, but also SEN
Both obligations committed to by central government and then handed off to their local colleagues without new funding streams
That's the thing with council tax. A bug chunk of it gets spent on a minority of residents. Leaving a majority thinking that they get charged a fortune but see little in return.
Feuerstein is a pretty shrewd industry journalist.
Time for some well targeted UK R&D grants.
Chaos in their drugs market (our industry's biggest export earner) will hurt us too, nonetheless.
This whole US administration is potentially a disaster for Ireland. Not just potential duties on medicines, but any wider retrenchment of US FDI will massively disproportionately hit Irish GDP.
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
We can't disengage from either, obviously, and will continue to deal with both. It's rather that our relationship with the US is being rapidly redefined, and the end state is unclear.
At least with the US there's a fighting chance that things will return to something the previous normal in four years time. There's also a good chance that in two years time Trump will no longer have a compliant Congress.
Just looked at the partial solar eclipse. Through 2 pairs of sunglasses, which probably wasn’t enough to spare me irreparable long term retinal damage, but hey ho.
Just looked at the partial solar eclipse. Through 2 pairs of sunglasses, which probably wasn’t enough to spare me irreparable long term retinal damage, but hey ho.
I don't mind the digger. I am a little perturbed by the stuff on policy (or lack of it) coming out of Reform and the seeming focus on it as a money-making exercise. I don't actually mind people getting rich, but I want their hustles to be bound into the country as a whole prospering. I'm keeping an open mind for the moment.
Kemi has impressed me a little recently (I know) so I'm hoping that she actually does come up with her promised 'plan' and that that becomes the basis for the new Government's programme with Nige just doing Reformy showboating on top.
Morning All! Intelligence from Bangkok, courtesy of my son, who phoned half an hour of so ago. Everything seems back to normal now, apart from in the area of the collapsed building. His daughter's school was disrupted; lessons stopped and as city transport was in a mess, it took his two daughters ages to get home. Suvarnabhumi, the main Bangkok Airport was briefly closed and he was half an hour late leaving Taiwan. One of his daughters has texted Mrs C to say that some of her friends who live in apartment blocks have cracked walls but no-one seems to be moving out, at least at the moment.
Do we know how long it took for the tremors to go from Mandalay to Bangkok?
I ask because the Sky News reporter was stirring up trouble about Bangkok not receiving a warning..
Sorry I had to edit spelling..
I don't, and I haven't seen anything which might give a clue.
Which spelling? And we both missed something else 'hour of so ago'!
Google tells me that P waves travel at 4-8km/s
I think someone said that Bangkok was 600 miles from Mandalay (say 1000 km).
So 2 - 4 minutes - not getting a warning to the public in time is understandable
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.
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
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.
According to radio 4 they sent 80 emails in a 6 month period (basically one every 2 working days) having been banned from the school premises after challenging the appointment process for the head teacher and “casting aspersions” on the chair of the governors.
While the police may have been heavy handed it does seem like there could potentially be a case to answer on harassment
It's all a bit ‘hurty words’. One email every two days? I get more spam from LinkedIn than that. If you don't like particular emails then block them, don't read them. And the same advice to footballers and MPs.
Depends a bit what was in those emails. The bit we've been told is parents-with-media-connections questioning the way the new head was appointed. Without knowing the rest of the story, we can't tell whether the entirety of the messages was hurty words or worse.
And a school blocking emails from a parent is a plan with many drawbacks. If each of those emails needed a considered reply, that's going to take more management time than a primary school has going spare.
It seems the parents were a nuisance. However, if the content of the emails was abusive, defamatory or in any other way illegal, that would have been mentioned in the complaint and the investigation.
The fact the police dropped the investigation and concluded there was no case to answer suggests there’s nothing much there.
He’s an acquaintance of a friend so I’ll ask my friend to dig for a bit more on this.
To my ear on the Twitter vid he's a credible interviewee.
By his account the arresting and interviewing officers had nothing more than a sketchy written complaint, and no evidence of the alleged crimes whatsoever.
Interesting. Just a finger in the air I didn't like him or trust him and found for the school with costs!! Just a few clues which everyone reads in different ways.....
Why ?
From the reporting this seems to be little more than the school getting annoyed at pushy parents and using the Police against them. There was no crime and no evidence of a crime.
Absolutely. I work in a job where I have to deal with vexatious or abusive emails on a daily basis. With the time wasting ones (my most long running one is from someone who wants his claim to the throne acknowledged) I eventually tell the person that their emails will be read but not answered unless there is something material to add to their case. In the past week I have been called a scumbag and a "leach hanging off the public teat" (I rather liked that one). The only email I've ever reported to the police is one where the sender said they were going to stand outside a government department and start stabbing people.
'Leech' is spelled thus in this context. With a job like that, if you didn't laugh, you'd cry. Sympathies.
It was a direct quote 😉. It sounds snobbish but doing a public facing job doesn't give you a good impression of the education system.
Old Viz joke: EdSec Michael Gove complained that 90 per cent of emails he received misspelled the word ‘bellend’.
There is good inflation and bad inflation. That which comes from increased incomes and overheating demand, and that which comes from higher global commodity prices.
The former can be uncomfortable for economists but not bad for working age voters, and quite handy for inter generational equity. The latter - which we had a bout of in 2022 and 23 - is bad for everyone.
We could do with some wage and service sector inflation. It would help to correct the massive wealth transfers of the last decade from working to retired people, encourage business investment in automation, and encourage consumer spending.
Just looked at the partial solar eclipse. Through 2 pairs of sunglasses, which probably wasn’t enough to spare me irreparable long term retinal damage, but hey ho.
Clear view here but not very impressive.
Very overcast and dull here. Like the rest of the time tbh.
Feuerstein is a pretty shrewd industry journalist.
Time for some well targeted UK R&D grants.
Yep. Huge growth opportunity and we already have strong pharma R&D.
Some heroically optimistic Trump economic upsides for Europe:
- cheap avocados and tequila from Mexico, strong bread flour, maple syrup and heavy crude from Canada - brain drain of academics from US universities (and more pertinently a slowdown in the brain drain to US universities) - increased capital investment from Canadian multinationals and their huge pension funds into European assets - growing European defence industry - Lower oil prices, and suppressed inflation if USD weakens and US demand softens
Canadian pension funds are heavily invested in Thames Water afaicr, which must be one of the reasons why the company isn't being allowed to collapse as it should be. I don't really want a load of Canadian 'too important to fail' investment in British assets.
There is good inflation and bad inflation. That which comes from increased incomes and overheating demand, and that which comes from higher global commodity prices.
The former can be uncomfortable for economists but not bad for working age voters, and quite handy for inter generational equity. The latter - which we had a bout of in 2022 and 23 - is bad for everyone.
We could do with some wage and service sector inflation. It would help to correct the massive wealth transfers of the last decade from working to retired people, encourage business investment in automation, and encourage consumer spending.
Feuerstein is a pretty shrewd industry journalist.
Time for some well targeted UK R&D grants.
Yep. Huge growth opportunity and we already have strong pharma R&D.
Some heroically optimistic Trump economic upsides for Europe:
- cheap avocados and tequila from Mexico, strong bread flour, maple syrup and heavy crude from Canada - brain drain of academics from US universities (and more pertinently a slowdown in the brain drain to US universities) - increased capital investment from Canadian multinationals and their huge pension funds into European assets - growing European defence industry - Lower oil prices, and suppressed inflation if USD weakens and US demand softens
Disney Land Paris gets surge of visitors as no one in the right mind would travel to Florida right now.
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.
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
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.
According to radio 4 they sent 80 emails in a 6 month period (basically one every 2 working days) having been banned from the school premises after challenging the appointment process for the head teacher and “casting aspersions” on the chair of the governors.
While the police may have been heavy handed it does seem like there could potentially be a case to answer on harassment
It's all a bit ‘hurty words’. One email every two days? I get more spam from LinkedIn than that. If you don't like particular emails then block them, don't read them. And the same advice to footballers and MPs.
Depends a bit what was in those emails. The bit we've been told is parents-with-media-connections questioning the way the new head was appointed. Without knowing the rest of the story, we can't tell whether the entirety of the messages was hurty words or worse.
And a school blocking emails from a parent is a plan with many drawbacks. If each of those emails needed a considered reply, that's going to take more management time than a primary school has going spare.
It seems the parents were a nuisance. However, if the content of the emails was abusive, defamatory or in any other way illegal, that would have been mentioned in the complaint and the investigation.
The fact the police dropped the investigation and concluded there was no case to answer suggests there’s nothing much there.
He’s an acquaintance of a friend so I’ll ask my friend to dig for a bit more on this.
To my ear on the Twitter vid he's a credible interviewee.
By his account the arresting and interviewing officers had nothing more than a sketchy written complaint, and no evidence of the alleged crimes whatsoever.
Interesting. Just a finger in the air I didn't like him or trust him and found for the school with costs!! Just a few clues which everyone reads in different ways.....
Why ?
From the reporting this seems to be little more than the school getting annoyed at pushy parents and using the Police against them. There was no crime and no evidence of a crime.
Absolutely. I work in a job where I have to deal with vexatious or abusive emails on a daily basis. With the time wasting ones (my most long running one is from someone who wants his claim to the throne acknowledged) I eventually tell the person that their emails will be read but not answered unless there is something material to add to their case. In the past week I have been called a scumbag and a "leach hanging off the public teat" (I rather liked that one). The only email I've ever reported to the police is one where the sender said they were going to stand outside a government department and start stabbing people.
'Leech' is spelled thus in this context. With a job like that, if you didn't laugh, you'd cry. Sympathies.
It was a direct quote 😉. It sounds snobbish but doing a public facing job doesn't give you a good impression of the education system.
Old Viz joke: EdSec Michael Gove complained that 90 per cent of emails he received misspelled the word ‘bellend’.
Would have been even better if they'd spelled 'teat' as 'teet'.
There is good inflation and bad inflation. That which comes from increased incomes and overheating demand, and that which comes from higher global commodity prices.
The former can be uncomfortable for economists but not bad for working age voters, and quite handy for inter generational equity. The latter - which we had a bout of in 2022 and 23 - is bad for everyone.
We could do with some wage and service sector inflation. It would help to correct the massive wealth transfers of the last decade from working to retired people, encourage business investment in automation, and encourage consumer spending.
Bring back boom and bust!
Rachel's on it. Especially the latter.
Is this some kind of a bust?
Not quite yet but I am a lot more pessimistic than her friends in the OBR. It might even start in America this time.
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
China have had since 1949 to fine tune their oppressive state violence. Trump has had his catch up programme in overdrive for the last two months, and I'd say for a wannabe expansionist dictatorial tyrant it's an A* for effort.
Feuerstein is a pretty shrewd industry journalist.
Time for some well targeted UK R&D grants.
Chaos in their drugs market (our industry's biggest export earner) will hurt us too, nonetheless.
This whole US administration is potentially a disaster for Ireland. Not just potential duties on medicines, but any wider retrenchment of US FDI will massively disproportionately hit Irish GDP.
Just looked at the partial solar eclipse. Through 2 pairs of sunglasses, which probably wasn’t enough to spare me irreparable long term retinal damage, but hey ho.
Clear view here but not very impressive.
Very overcast and dull here. Like the rest of the time tbh.
Pure cloudless skies and spring blossom in Tashkent. However I am now suffering double jet lag from Uruguay-UK-Uzbekistan in 3 days so I can barely keep my eyes open. Might do Uganda tomorrow
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.
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
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.
According to radio 4 they sent 80 emails in a 6 month period (basically one every 2 working days) having been banned from the school premises after challenging the appointment process for the head teacher and “casting aspersions” on the chair of the governors.
While the police may have been heavy handed it does seem like there could potentially be a case to answer on harassment
It's all a bit ‘hurty words’. One email every two days? I get more spam from LinkedIn than that. If you don't like particular emails then block them, don't read them. And the same advice to footballers and MPs.
Depends a bit what was in those emails. The bit we've been told is parents-with-media-connections questioning the way the new head was appointed. Without knowing the rest of the story, we can't tell whether the entirety of the messages was hurty words or worse.
And a school blocking emails from a parent is a plan with many drawbacks. If each of those emails needed a considered reply, that's going to take more management time than a primary school has going spare.
It seems the parents were a nuisance. However, if the content of the emails was abusive, defamatory or in any other way illegal, that would have been mentioned in the complaint and the investigation.
The fact the police dropped the investigation and concluded there was no case to answer suggests there’s nothing much there.
He’s an acquaintance of a friend so I’ll ask my friend to dig for a bit more on this.
To my ear on the Twitter vid he's a credible interviewee.
By his account the arresting and interviewing officers had nothing more than a sketchy written complaint, and no evidence of the alleged crimes whatsoever.
Interesting. Just a finger in the air I didn't like him or trust him and found for the school with costs!! Just a few clues which everyone reads in different ways.....
Why ?
From the reporting this seems to be little more than the school getting annoyed at pushy parents and using the Police against them. There was no crime and no evidence of a crime.
As I said it's nothing obvious. Just my view. He's articulate and well rehearsed. Note the two camera angles and teleprompter. His mini admissions also told of someone who knew how to appear an 'honest John'. His self righteousness felt creepy and I could imagine him being a complete nightmare for the school. But I'm sure that'll be a minority view
Caught his soft-ball interview on Times Radio and my instant reaction was 'why is this lying liar lying to me?'
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
Perhaps a better analogy is a rattlesnake living quietly resting under a rock or an out of control elephant with a red hot poker shoved up its bum
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.
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
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.
Disgraceful and particularly bizarre that we are denying the right of people to peacefully protest other countries' policies.
That’s exactly the point.
They aren’t planning a *peaceful* protest
Well violent protest should not be allowed. Perhaps I've been too hasty but my understanding of the quaker movement is that they do lots of silent sitting down.
These weren’t Quakers. They had just rented a room from them
Morning All! Intelligence from Bangkok, courtesy of my son, who phoned half an hour of so ago. Everything seems back to normal now, apart from in the area of the collapsed building. His daughter's school was disrupted; lessons stopped and as city transport was in a mess, it took his two daughters ages to get home. Suvarnabhumi, the main Bangkok Airport was briefly closed and he was half an hour late leaving Taiwan. One of his daughters has texted Mrs C to say that some of her friends who live in apartment blocks have cracked walls but no-one seems to be moving out, at least at the moment.
Do we know how long it took for the tremors to go from Mandalay to Bangkok?
I ask because the Sky News reporter was stirring up trouble about Bangkok not receiving a warning..
Sorry I had to edit spelling..
I don't, and I haven't seen anything which might give a clue.
Which spelling? And we both missed something else 'hour of so ago'!
Google tells me that P waves travel at 4-8km/s
I think someone said that Bangkok was 600 miles from Mandalay (say 1000 km).
So 2 - 4 minutes - not getting a warning to the public in time is understandable
I think there's some sort of inquiry due as to why that public (almost) building in North Bangkok fell the way it did. After all, it wasn't the tallest building the city. Incidentally I wouldn't have liked to be up at the top of the tallest. There's a glass floor out over the street, 1000 feet below, which one can walk on. And several buildings have walkways at quite high levels between neighbours.
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
We can't disengage from either, obviously, and will continue to deal with both. It's rather that our relationship with the US is being rapidly redefined, and the end state is unclear.
I support your thoughts about gaining more autonomy from the US (of course), which is an essential project, though clearly a long term one. However, it's also very clear to me that yours is a temporary political aversion based on Trump and the MAGA right, and that as soon as another plausible Democrat or even a Neocon Republican gets in the door, your desire for British autonomy will evaporate till the next time.
Talking of inflation, the million pounds in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire when it first started in 1998 would be worth about £524,000 today, and the prize would need to be around £1,905,000 to be worth the same today as it was then.
We have Canada voting on April 28th and Australia voting on May 3rd so the new CANZUK alliance might look very different by early May (or it might not as you could easily imagine Carney keeping the Liberals in power and Albanese getting back with Independent help in Canberra).
Some betting opportunities to consider perhaps next month?
On topic, almost all elections are "pocket book" elections inasmuch as how people "feel" economically is a big factor around how they vote. The decisive rejections of Government aren't usually because of a belief the Opposition would do much better but more a perception they couldn't do any worse.
As we now find in many instances they can and do, the option is either to "get the other lot back in" (which is your only option in a rigid 2-party system) or to look elsewhere at the coterie of snake oil salespeople on both and neither extreme (a bit cynical perhaps).
I've raised this many times on here but there still seems to be no practical solution to the issues of stagnant growth and ambient inflation (I seem to recall the UK economy was particularly prone to stubborn inflation). Getting energy prices and council tax rises back to somewhere in the neighbourhood of actual CPI or RPI inflation would be a good start. The notion our energy prices go up so the customers in the countries which own our energy suppliers can see theirs go down (or not rise as much) is a huge bone of contention.
As for local Government finance, notwithstanding the unnecessary costs of pointless re-organisations, the issues of social care, SEN and temporary accommodation costs all remain unresolved - Newham's 8.9% rise in 2025/26 may be part down to overarching incompetence and part down to the same costs as every other councils but the fact remains most people's incomes haven't risen by 8.9% so it's another cost.
I've no statistical evidence but my assertion is we have stagnated since 2008 in terms of living standards. Yes, our assets (primarily but not exclusively property) have appreciated strongly but unless you can release some of that asset (by downsizing) it's not much help. Yet there's plenty of people with plenty of money - I wonder what the take up in ISAs will be in April 2025?
A slow down in Council Tax rises won't happen. They have had 15 years decades of being shredded, which has fed through to quality of localities and services.
Funding is down hugely - perhaps 30% in real terms since 2010.
Agreed and one million local Government jobs lost since 2012 suggests, contrary to what the supply siders would have you believe, there was plenty of austerity going on especially in the Coalition years.
why has council tax soared if they got rid of a million duffers. The clowns could not run a bath.
Mainly social care, but also SEN
Both obligations committed to by central government and then handed off to their local colleagues without new funding streams
That's the thing with council tax. A bug chunk of it gets spent on a minority of residents. Leaving a majority thinking that they get charged a fortune but see little in return.
May be we should have a direct per capita charge that covers the cost of local services. Some kind of community charge?
There is good inflation and bad inflation. That which comes from increased incomes and overheating demand, and that which comes from higher global commodity prices.
The former can be uncomfortable for economists but not bad for working age voters, and quite handy for inter generational equity. The latter - which we had a bout of in 2022 and 23 - is bad for everyone.
We could do with some wage and service sector inflation. It would help to correct the massive wealth transfers of the last decade from working to retired people, encourage business investment in automation, and encourage consumer spending.
Bring back boom and bust!
Rachel's on it. Especially the latter.
Is this some kind of a bust?
Not quite yet but I am a lot more pessimistic than her friends in the OBR. It might even start in America this time.
Feuerstein is a pretty shrewd industry journalist.
Time for some well targeted UK R&D grants.
Yep. Huge growth opportunity and we already have strong pharma R&D.
Some heroically optimistic Trump economic upsides for Europe:
- cheap avocados and tequila from Mexico, strong bread flour, maple syrup and heavy crude from Canada - brain drain of academics from US universities (and more pertinently a slowdown in the brain drain to US universities) - increased capital investment from Canadian multinationals and their huge pension funds into European assets - growing European defence industry - Lower oil prices, and suppressed inflation if USD weakens and US demand softens
Disney Land Paris gets surge of visitors as no one in the right mind would travel to Florida right now.
I have to go to California next week.
If you don’t hear from me please call the foreign office.
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
Perhaps a better analogy is a rattlesnake living quietly resting under a rock or an out of control elephant with a red hot poker shoved up its bum
Or at the next election and a two horse race between Farage and Jenrick, who would I vote for with a gun to my head? Well, probably Farage, as I don't believe British politics has seen anyone quite so evil ( Braverman excepted, which goes without saying) since Alan B'Stard.
Feuerstein is a pretty shrewd industry journalist.
Time for some well targeted UK R&D grants.
Chaos in their drugs market (our industry's biggest export earner) will hurt us too, nonetheless.
This whole US administration is potentially a disaster for Ireland. Not just potential duties on medicines, but any wider retrenchment of US FDI will massively disproportionately hit Irish GDP.
Feuerstein is a pretty shrewd industry journalist.
Time for some well targeted UK R&D grants.
Chaos in their drugs market (our industry's biggest export earner) will hurt us too, nonetheless.
This whole US administration is potentially a disaster for Ireland. Not just potential duties on medicines, but any wider retrenchment of US FDI will massively disproportionately hit Irish GDP.
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
Perhaps a better analogy is a rattlesnake living quietly resting under a rock or an out of control elephant with a red hot poker shoved up its bum
You think China is 'resting quietly under a rock?' In what way?
Improbably, I ended up feeling rather sorry for the world's richest man.
He may be the world's richest man, but he's obviously deeply unhappy and mentally troubled. As he had a ghastly childhood with a terrible father and rampant bullying at school he lashes out and has to disrupt everything all the time, no matter how much suffering he causes.
He, Trump and Putin are well-matched in those respects (though I've a feeling that Trump was the bully not the bullied at school).
He may have a million times as much money as I and almost everybody I know do, but we're much happier people, which I suppose is what counts at the end of the day.
Cosmic justice?
On the bullying thing: many people who are bullied at school become bullies, either later in school, or later in life. "He was bullied!" is not an excuse for stuff done decades later.
If he was bullied, then I'd expect him to have learnt a little of how it feels, and not to act the way he is at the moment.
Acting like a bully.
Nobody says being bullied is an excuse for bullying others, but it is certainly an explanation.
There's also a related desperate desire for control, which most well-adjusted people don't have, at any rate to the same extent, but certainly explains why so many damaged people end up as CEOs, Presidents, policemen, etc. It's the flipside of massive personal insecurity.
If you're affected, of course, it's tragic, but if you're not, it just looks pathetic.
I guess it is different things for different people. I have certainly heard it said that people who are bullied sometimes become bullies as a consequence, but is it true? I would anticipate it should have the opposite effect.
I was never bullied so I don't know, but as a child I was hit by my father for being naughty and swore I would never do that to my children. I put it down to it being more common in those days (50s & 60s), although since then I have found out that it didn't happen to others of my age and unlike others I was never punished at school, whereas many of my friends were (cane, slipper, ruler, etc), so I couldn't have been that awful as a kid.
People are not rational. Auden gets it right: 'Those to whom evil is done do evil in return'. So a significant proportion of sex offenders are themselves victims of the same abuse.
Breaking the cycle is critical, which is why unpopular things like religion (and the option of redemption, transformation and forgiveness), rehabilitation (touching unknown depths, the opposite of our prison system), ego reduction (mindfulness) and Greek drama (it's all in the Oresteian trilogy 2400 years ago) all continue to matter.
I’d have thought it very common for people who are bullied, to internalise that you’re either the one giving the beating, or the one taking it.
Russia is a good example of a society where people who are bullied by superiors take it out on their inferiors.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Feuerstein is a pretty shrewd industry journalist.
Time for some well targeted UK R&D grants.
Yep. Huge growth opportunity and we already have strong pharma R&D.
Some heroically optimistic Trump economic upsides for Europe:
- cheap avocados and tequila from Mexico, strong bread flour, maple syrup and heavy crude from Canada - brain drain of academics from US universities (and more pertinently a slowdown in the brain drain to US universities) - increased capital investment from Canadian multinationals and their huge pension funds into European assets - growing European defence industry - Lower oil prices, and suppressed inflation if USD weakens and US demand softens
Disney Land Paris gets surge of visitors as no one in the right mind would travel to Florida right now.
I have to go to California next week.
If you don’t hear from me please call the foreign office.
🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”
Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
Perhaps a better analogy is a rattlesnake living quietly resting under a rock or an out of control elephant with a red hot poker shoved up its bum
You think China is 'resting quietly under a rock?' In what way?
They just took us to see the “world’s oldest Koran” which is kept here in Tashkent having been brought here circuitously by various tyrants, Tamerlaines and tsars
However I grew suspicious. Is this really the oldest Koran in the world? I checked. It isn’t. The real location of the oldest piece of any known Koran is actually a mild mind boggler
Without googling does any PBer know? It’s a good pub quiz question
They just took us to see the “world’s oldest Koran” which is kept here in Tashkent having been brought here circuitously by various tyrants, Tamerlaines and tsars
However I grew suspicious. Is this really the oldest Koran in the world? I checked. It isn’t. The real location of the oldest piece of any known Koran is actually a mild mind boggler
Without googling does any PBer know? It’s a good pub quiz question
There was one in Serbia for a very long time, not sure if it's still there.
They just took us to see the “world’s oldest Koran” which is kept here in Tashkent having been brought here circuitously by various tyrants, Tamerlaines and tsars
However I grew suspicious. Is this really the oldest Koran in the world? I checked. It isn’t. The real location of the oldest piece of any known Koran is actually a mild mind boggler
Without googling does any PBer know? It’s a good pub quiz question
There was one in Serbia for a very long time, not sure if it's still there.
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.
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
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.
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.
It’s not like Minority Report. If someone is planning to murder their spouse, that is already a crime.
But more importantly, the point of Minority Report is that people were arrested before they had even thought of committing a crime.
How did @Stillwaters know his neighbour was planning to murder his wife before rifling through his Amazon parcels? Presumably he had an inkling but no evidence. Prior to the Amazon raid he wasn't in a position to tell the Feds, now he is, although the authorities might say "duct tape and a brace of Samurai swords are no guarantee of intent". Likewise a fellow in the Tate wearing an orange Tyveck suit and carrying a flask of Heinz 57 varieties isn't necessarily "going equipped", he might be planning a light liquid lunch. So back to our chaps at the Friends Meeting House...
They just took us to see the “world’s oldest Koran” which is kept here in Tashkent having been brought here circuitously by various tyrants, Tamerlaines and tsars
However I grew suspicious. Is this really the oldest Koran in the world? I checked. It isn’t. The real location of the oldest piece of any known Koran is actually a mild mind boggler
Without googling does any PBer know? It’s a good pub quiz question
There was one in Serbia for a very long time, not sure if it's still there.
No. Weirder than that
Ok, having googled it, but not giving the game away, I will admit I would not have guessed that.
And also, isn't it a good job that the funder of the expeditions wasn't involved in alcohol?
They just took us to see the “world’s oldest Koran” which is kept here in Tashkent having been brought here circuitously by various tyrants, Tamerlaines and tsars
However I grew suspicious. Is this really the oldest Koran in the world? I checked. It isn’t. The real location of the oldest piece of any known Koran is actually a mild mind boggler
Without googling does any PBer know? It’s a good pub quiz question
They just took us to see the “world’s oldest Koran” which is kept here in Tashkent having been brought here circuitously by various tyrants, Tamerlaines and tsars
However I grew suspicious. Is this really the oldest Koran in the world? I checked. It isn’t. The real location of the oldest piece of any known Koran is actually a mild mind boggler
Without googling does any PBer know? It’s a good pub quiz question
In the museum that the Green family built? DC?
Hasn't all their stuff been repatriated to Iraq?
N.B. Oh bollocks, I've been drawn into one of Leon's threads within a thread. Good catch Leon, you reeled me in unawares!
They just took us to see the “world’s oldest Koran” which is kept here in Tashkent having been brought here circuitously by various tyrants, Tamerlaines and tsars
However I grew suspicious. Is this really the oldest Koran in the world? I checked. It isn’t. The real location of the oldest piece of any known Koran is actually a mild mind boggler
Without googling does any PBer know? It’s a good pub quiz question
Comments
There's also a related desperate desire for control, which most well-adjusted people don't have, at any rate to the same extent, but certainly explains why so many damaged people end up as CEOs, Presidents, policemen, etc. It's the flipside of massive personal insecurity.
If you're affected, of course, it's tragic, but if you're not, it just looks pathetic.
With a job like that, if you didn't laugh, you'd cry. Sympathies.
I actually quite enjoy his spinning Trump Emperor's New Clothes madness into a positive, whilst at the same time sneering at those who just see an orange man naked except for a diaper.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/victoria-leeds-london-parliament-house-of-commons-b2565437.html
District Judge Michael Snow said he could “understand why politicians are so fearful” given the “number of attacks on our democracy”.
“The person who resides here is a senior politician,” he continued.
“In the last two years, two Members of Parliament have been murdered.
“Anyone in that situation being aware that there were protesters directly outside their home is likely to be caused distress.
“It is laughable to assert to the contrary.”
...
Delivering his sentence, Judge Snow said the trio had been directed to leave the premises but had “continued” regardless.
I'm not a big fan of protesting at people's private homes, here's the law:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2001/16/section/42
If you protest outside someone's dwelling then you have to move on when told to by a police officer who believes you might be causing distress or alarm, if you don't want to be arrested or charged.
Seems like the kind of power that could be abused, but I'm not convinced it was in this case?
I ask because the Sky News reporter was stirring up trouble about Bangkok not receiving a warning..
Sorry I had to edit spelling..
Revenge is a dish best served cold. Very cold!
*( See Jesse Watters's earlier remarks re: " we bombed Japan and now they are our allies".)
The whole case seems to be 'we will protest' (fair enough) 'we will protest to the wrong person' (silly, but not a crime) 'we will ignore the police when ordered to leave' (stupid, and illegal as the police can make that decision) 'we are martyrs for free speech' (not buying it).
I can understand in this case that the protest being pro-Palestinian which movement has contained some pretty ugly anti-Semitic traits could be especially intimidating to a household with Jews in it.
ETA: people in glass houses though…several British politicians and multiple British journalists said some extremely insulting things about European neighbours in the period from 2016 to 2021.
Which spelling? And we both missed something else 'hour of so ago'!
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8r87z8vl0o
A top vaccine official at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was forced out of his job, US media reports.
Peter Marks offered his letter of resignation to Health and Human Services (HHS) officials on Friday, after being given a choice between resigning or being fired.
"It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies," Mr Marks wrote in a resignation letter, obtained by multiple US media outlets, referring to the agency's new leader Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Mr Marks was among the healthcare professionals who helped develop Covid-19 vaccines in the first Trump administration.
Peter Marks pushed out of FDA by RFK Jr.
As much as I’ve been critical of some of his approval decisions, Marks’ forced exit spells doom for the FDA.
This is bad, folks. Really bad.
Biotech and pharma are about to enter the darkest of places.
https://x.com/adamfeuerstein/status/1905794129277210997
Feuerstein is a pretty shrewd industry journalist.
Dear American citizens, whatever you wish more German citizens would have done in 1933, do that now.
https://x.com/Strandjunker/status/1905379784978293203
https://x.com/TheRickyDavila/status/1905492009831596143
The parallel with 1936 after the reoccupation of the Rhineland and the forming of the Rome-Berlin axis would be closer.
a banner outside the London property that read, “Starmer stop the killing”, surrounded by red handprints
I was never bullied so I don't know, but as a child I was hit by my father for being naughty and swore I would never do that to my children. I put it down to it being more common in those days (50s & 60s), although since then I have found out that it didn't happen to others of my age and unlike others I was never punished at school, whereas many of my friends were (cane, slipper, ruler, etc), so I couldn't have been that awful as a kid.
Especially since they put a load of children's shoes outside implying he was killing children.
That's pretty offensive. More stupid, of course, and they are clearly extremely stupid since they actually admitted in court without realising it that they intended to be intimidating by admitting it could be distressing,* but still offensive.
*Formentin, refusing to say it was intimidating, was instead led to say 'I think it could be seen as distressing.'
They aren’t planning a *peaceful* protest
No smoke, no fire and Jonathan Ashworth would still be an MP if the message didn't resonate.
Both obligations committed to by central government and then handed off to their local colleagues without new funding streams
Nothing about Orr's analysis made sense of the Trumpian/Vance wish to absorb friendly sovereign territory - Canada and Greenland - into the USA, and Orr was allowed to evade the issue, and many others.
- cheap avocados and tequila from Mexico, strong bread flour, maple syrup and heavy crude from Canada
- brain drain of academics from US universities (and more pertinently a slowdown in the brain drain to US universities)
- increased capital investment from Canadian multinationals and their huge pension funds into European assets
- growing European defence industry
- Lower oil prices, and suppressed inflation if USD weakens and US demand softens
Breaking the cycle is critical, which is why unpopular things like religion (and the option of redemption, transformation and forgiveness), rehabilitation (touching unknown depths, the opposite of our prison system), ego reduction (mindfulness) and Greek drama (it's all in the Oresteian trilogy 2400 years ago) all continue to matter.
It's rather that our relationship with the US is being rapidly redefined, and the end state is unclear.
Kemi has impressed me a little recently (I know) so I'm hoping that she actually does come up with her promised 'plan' and that that becomes the basis for the new Government's programme with Nige just doing Reformy showboating on top.
I think someone said that Bangkok was 600 miles from Mandalay (say 1000 km).
So 2 - 4 minutes - not getting a warning to the public in time is understandable
After all, it wasn't the tallest building the city.
Incidentally I wouldn't have liked to be up at the top of the tallest. There's a glass floor out over the street, 1000 feet below, which one can walk on. And several buildings have walkways at quite high levels between neighbours.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u44MXP_C3rs
If you don’t hear from me please call the foreign office.
Russia is a good example of a society where people who are bullied by superiors take it out on their inferiors.
But more importantly, the point of Minority Report is that people were arrested before they had even thought of committing a crime.
However I grew suspicious. Is this really the oldest Koran in the world? I checked. It isn’t. The real location of the oldest piece of any known Koran is actually a mild mind boggler
Without googling does any PBer know? It’s a good pub quiz question
And also, isn't it a good job that the funder of the expeditions wasn't involved in alcohol?
N.B. Oh bollocks, I've been drawn into one of Leon's threads within a thread. Good catch Leon, you reeled me in unawares!