Tag: united kingdom

New Laws Could Force Cyclists to Get Licence Plates and Follow Speed Limits

Under newly proposed regulations, cyclists in the UK may soon be forced to comply with speed limits and required to have license plates or some other way to identify themselves at all times.

The transport secretary told the Daily Mail that we should not “turn a blind eye” to cyclists who break road laws, speed and “bust red lights” and “get away with it” https://t.co/DJm8iCmMgA

— Sky News (@SkyNews) August 17, 2022

According to media reports, the government is planning to conduct a review of the legislation governing bike riding in the country. Some people believe that cyclists should be subject to the same laws as automobiles.

The review will also examine whether or not bicycles should be required to have insurance in order to utilize public roadways.

With the rules that are now in place for automobiles, drivers are responsible for any bumps on the road they have and required to carry full insurance in order to drive on public roads.

Cyclists, on the other hand, are not subject to this responsibility.

Conservative MP Grant Shapps, who is also Secretary of State for Transport, has said that he backs changes to the laws to make cyclists more accountable.

“Somewhere where cyclists are actually not breaking the law is when they speed, and that cannot be right, so I absolutely propose extending speed limit restrictions to cyclists,” Shapps said.

“I don’t want to stop people from getting on their bike, it’s a fantastic way to travel, and we’ve seen a big explosion of cycling during Covid and since,” he continued.

“But I see no reason why cyclists should break the road laws and be able to get away with it.”

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69 Years Ago Today, the CIA Conspired with the UK to Overthrow Iran on Behalf of Big Oil

Today marks the 69th anniversary that the west carried out a coup in Iran that destabilized the county by overthrowing the country’s democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, and installed a CIA groomed dictator.

What was once considered a conspiracy theory is now a fact as the government has since admitted to carrying out Operation Ajax that was planned by the CIA in conjunction with MI6 in the UK to exploit the Iranian people and steal their oil on behalf of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) – the British state-owned oil company established in 1908 with this objective in mind and the forerunner of today’s global oil conglomerate BP.

As TFTP reported, the State Department released a trove of documents that give insight into the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup d’état that led to the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq.

Those declassified documents, titled “Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Iran, 1951–1954,” provide a notable difference from the State Department’s 1989 version of the coup, which left out any involvement from American and British intelligence.

A memorandum from Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles to President Eisenhower, dated March 1, 1953, serves as a reminder that internally, “the elimination of Mossadeq by assassination or otherwise,” was used as a method in repairing ties with Iran, restoring oil negotiations, and stopping a “Communist takeover.”

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Nationalising the power supply plays right into the Great Reset’s hands

There’s a lot of talk about energy prices in the UK right now. And a lot of talk about what to do about them. The record profits reported by oil companies this year have fuelled a lot of outrage – both in the press and the public – and politicians are lining up to suggest a solution to this problem.

One solution often mooted is nationalising – or re-nationalising – energy suppliers.

The UK’s Trade Union Congress was among the first to call for it, going so far as to publish a costed report claiming the whole process would cost just 2.85 billion pounds. Former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has publicly supported the measure.

The Soros-funded openDemocracy thinktank published a piece just today headlined “What nationalising energy companies would cost – and how to do it”, which heavily cites the TUC report.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to “temporarily” re-nationalise companies that “fail to lower bills”. Even the Telegraph – the Telegraph – is taking the suggestion somewhat seriously.

The current Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has publicly ruled out nationalisation, in favour of a plan to spend £29 billion on, essentially, paying people’s extortionate energy bills for them. But since this is over ten times the alleged cost of nationalisation, Labours position is such a weak opposition it may as well be an endorsement.

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Army Veteran Arrested by ‘Politicised Police’ for Posting LGBT Pride Flag Meme on Facebook

In scenes akin to those traditionally associated with authoritarian regimes, police in Britain were filmed arresting a military veteran for posting a meme critical of woke gender ideology on Facebook.

“Is this the Gestapo? What has gone wrong in our country?” the veteran questioned as he was being placed in handcuffs by three officers in broad daylight outside of his suburban home.

The incident was captured live on video on Thursday by Reclaim Party leader Laurence Fox, who chastised the Hampshire Constabulary officers for acting as an “anti-British politicised police force.”

“They serve a protected ideology… if you criticise the new woke ideology, you criticise the Pride movement, you end up in cuffs, whether you have served this country and have long medals for distinction and good service, you will end up in cuffs for expressing a perfectly legal view,” he told the live audience on social media.

The veteran, at the time left unidentified for privacy purposes, was apparently arrested for reposting a satirical meme from Fox of four Progress Pride flags together to form a swastika.

The meme, which resulted in a Twitter suspension and calls for police investigations against the actor turned anti-woke campaigner last month, was described by Fox as a commentary on how Pride Month is “enforced with a sense of hectoring authoritarianism”.

Despite the veteran saying that he had reposted the meme from Fox, the police chose not to arrest the Reclaim Party leader for the same post.

In the footage, one officer was heard justifying the arrest by saying that “somebody has taken offence” to the “homophobic” post shared on Facebook.

The arrest comes less than a week after the College of Policing issued national guidance telling officers to focus on actual crimes rather than intervening in “debates on Twitter”.

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Brits could lose passports for using drugs

Recreational drug users in the UK could soon be stripped of their passports or driving licenses under a series of new laws proposed by the Home Office on Monday.

In the document titled ‘SWIFT, CERTAIN, TOUGH New consequences for drug possession,’ the Home Office proposes introducing three tiers of punishments for possession of illegal drugs such as cocaine and cannabis. 

The penalties vary from being forced to pay for a drug awareness course to being issued with a hefty fine, and could even result in the loss of an offender’s passport and driving license.

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UK lawmaker John Penrose proposes dystopian idea to give citizens a truth score on social media

British Conservative Party lawmaker John Penrose, has proposed an addition to the UK’s controversial internet censorship bill, dubbed “The Online Safety Bill,” which continues to get even more Orwellian with each new proposed amendment.

Like something out of dystopian fiction, Penrose, the MP for Weston-super-Mare, has proposed that the government forces online platforms to maintain a score of how truthful a person is, determined by their past statements.

“The purpose of this section is to reduce the risk of harm to users of regulated services caused my (sic) disinformation or misinformation,” the proposal states, with a typo that shows just how much care goes into the wording of legislation that wipes away citizens’ freedoms.

The proposal says that every user that produces online content, including “comments and reviews” and who receives a certain number of online views, which is to be determined by the UK communications regulator, should have their content indexed and assigned a truth score.

The person’s speech is then to be “displayed in a way which allows any user easily to reach an informed view of the likely factual accuracy of the content at the same time as they encounter it.”

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UK communications regulator tells tech platforms to prepare for online censorship bill before it’s even passed

The Office of Communications (Ofcom), UK’s broadcasting and telecommunications authority, has issued a roadmap for tech companies to start preparing to implement the Online Safety Bill.

That’s despite the fact that the bill is still in parliamentary procedure and is yet to pass.

In fact, Ofcom refers to this democratic procedure, the outcome of which should be unknown until MPs vote on the proposal, as a mere technicality: “A countdown to a safer life online.”

Ofcom announced the roadmap document on Twitter, saying that it has presented its plans for the first 100 days of acting as online safety regulator – for when it starts overseeing the implementation of a law that does not yet exist.

And many civil and digital rights advocates are adamant that it should not exist, referring sometimes to the bill as “a censor’s charter.”

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BRITISH “WATCHDOG” JOURNALISTS UNMASKED AS LAP DOGS FOR THE SECURITY STATE

Events of the past few days suggest British journalism – the so-called Fourth Estate – is not what it purports to be: a watchdog monitoring the centers of state power. It is quite the opposite.

The pretensions of the establishment media took a severe battering this month as the defamation trial of Guardian columnist Carole Cadwalladr reached its conclusion and the hacked emails of Paul Mason, a long-time stalwart of the BBC, Channel 4 and the Guardian, were published online.

Both of these celebrated journalists have found themselves outed as recruits – in their differing ways – to a covert information war being waged by Western intelligence agencies.

Had they been honest about it, that collusion might not matter so much. After all, few journalists are as neutral or as dispassionate as the profession likes to pretend. But as have many of their colleagues, Cadwalladr and Mason have broken what should be a core principle of journalism: transparency.

The role of serious journalists is to bring matters of import into the public space for debate and scrutiny. Journalists thinking critically aspire to hold those who wield power – primarily state agencies – to account on the principle that, without scrutiny, power quickly corrupts.

The purpose of real journalism – as opposed to the gossip, entertainment and national-security stenography that usually passes for journalism – is to hit up, not down.

And yet, each of these journalists, we now know, was actively colluding, or seeking to collude, with state actors who prefer to operate in the shadows, out of sight. Both journalists were coopted to advance the aims of the intelligence services.

And worse, each of them either sought to become a conduit for, or actively assist in, covert smear campaigns run by Western intelligence services against other journalists.

What they were doing – along with so many other establishment journalists – is the very antithesis of journalism. They were helping to conceal the operation of power to make it harder to scrutinize. And not only that. In the process, they were trying to weaken already marginalized journalists fighting to hold state power to account.

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High-ranking Nigerian politician Ike Ekweremadu, 60, and his academic wife, 55, are charged with plotting to bring a child from Nigeria to the UK for organ harvesting

The Nigerian couple arrested on suspicion of plotting to harvest the organs of a child in the UK are one of the west African nation’s most high profile politicians and his wife, MailOnline can reveal today. 

Ike Ekweremadu, 60, a People’s Democratic Party politician for 19 years who was once Deputy President of the nation’s senate, was held with Nwanneka Ekweremadu, 55, in Britain this month.

Mr Ekweremadu has been an elected senator at the Abuja-based parliament since 2003 after moving into politics after years as a lawyer. His wife, five years his junior, is an academic and doctor and also a major public figure in Nigeria. They are believed to have four adult children.

They are both charged with conspiracy to arrange or facilitate travel of another person with a view to exploitation, namely organ harvesting. The have been remanded in custody and will appear at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court today.

The Metropolitan Police has said the child, who is under the age of 18, at the centre of the alleged plot is in care. Organ harvesting involves removing parts of the body, often for cash and against the victim’s will.

Scotland Yard has not given the gender or the age of the child – or the location of the arrests. But given the suspects are appearing in court in Uxbridge, it is likely they were held at the nearby Heathrow Airport. 

Ekweremadu has been in the UK for at least the past fortnight having met with members of the Nigerian community in Britain in Lincoln around ten days ago. 

He tweeted: ‘It was a pleasure and an honour to receive a letter of appointment by the University of Lincoln, UK, as Visiting Professor of Corporate and International Linkages. I also got a highly treasured gift – a copy of the Magna Carta. It was created in 1215, about 807 years ago’.

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British security state collaborator Paul Mason’s war on ‘rogue academics’ exposed

In his covert assault on antiwar scholars, “left-wing” journalist and security state collaborator Paul Mason enlisted an academic snitch who knew his targets well.

In the latest installment of The Grayzone’s ongoing investigation into the anti-democratic, security state-influenced activities of Paul Mason, we look at how one of Britain’s most prominent alleged left-wing journalists and an ever-expanding cast of covert helpers targeted scholars who dared challenge establishment narratives on the conflict in Ukraine.

Amidst his campaign to neutralize the UK antiwar left, Paul Mason declared in an email to several academics willing to inform on and undermine their own colleagues: “the far left rogue academics is who I’m after… The important task is to quarantine their ‘soft’ influencers and expose/stigmatise the hard ideologists.”

Mason’s fishing expedition was conducted in apparent coordination with Andy Pryce, a senior British intelligence official involved in a series of malign information warfare and censorship initiatives.

The journalist’s key academic enabler, self-styled counter-disinformation researcher Emma Briant, not only helped further his campaign to target antiwar figures, but furnished bogus claims about one individual which appears to have inspired a BBC smear piece on academic critics of the established narrative about killings of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha. Many of those she snitched on considered her a colleague and even a comrade.

Rather than own up to the activities exposed by the leaked emails, Briant has engaged in lawfare, threatening The Grayzone with a formal “cease and desist” demand. Sent by her lawyer on June 10th, the filing falsely charged that Kit Klarenberg, one of the authors of this article, played a direct role in the “misappropriation” of private communications.

Briant’s legal counsel went on to threaten that his client would seek a “prohibitory injunction” to prevent further reporting on the leaked material, if not launch a claim for compensation due to “damage to her career and reputation,” if this outlet failed to comply with the demand.

Briant’s attempt to muzzle The Grayzone is understandable, for as we will see, she has a lot to hide. 

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