Tag: united kingdom

Prince Andrew once again protected by royal protocol: ‘Something is being hidden’ claims expert

Prince Andrew, the third child of the beloved monarch Queen Elizabeth II, has been under the spotlight for quite some time. However, while all members of his family are under constant scrutiny, Prince Andrew’s attention is for a very dark reason.

Indeed, Prince Andrew is tied in with sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. He is also being sued for sexual assault. In 2019, he gave an interview to the BBC which was meant to put this scandal to rest but instead led to him being removed from any royal duties and losing his Royal Highness title.

Now, biographer Andrew Lownie, reveals that government files about Prince Andrew’s activities won’t be released until 2065. But there’s one problem…

The Royal Family doesn’t have to follow rules that apply to any other citizens. In this instance, Prince Andrew is protected by the fact that the Firm isn’t subjected to the Freedom of Information Act.

This Act, passed in 2000, ensures that the public has access to ‘information held by public authorities.’ This means that the public, a biographer included, can legally request to see information from public authorities.

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Prison officer Joanne Hunter who sent X-rated photos to inmate she was having affair with and smuggled cannabis and mobile phone into his cell is jailed for three years

A former prison officer has been jailed for three years for having an inappropriate relationship with an inmate.

Joanne Hunter, 28, conducted the relationship with Connor Willis while working at HMP Forest Bank in Salford.

Hunter – described as ‘naive’ and ‘vulnerable’ in court – believed Willis was ‘in love’ with her and agreed to smuggle packages, including cannabis, into the prison for him. She also sent him explicit photographs, which were later found on her phone.

Manchester Crown Court heard how Hunter, who has a master’s degree in Childhood and Youth studies, began working at the prison in December 2018.

In December 2020, prison authorities received information that she was taking items inside and when she was interviewed by security managers she admitted having a relationship with Willis.

Rachel Widdicombe, prosecuting, told the court how Hunter had agreed smuggle packages into the prison for Willis, one containing a juice carton and another coating a Red Bull can.

Hunter received the packages from an unnamed woman after meeting her at a Tesco supermarket, the court heard. She then smuggled them inside the prison before passing them on to another prisoner – whom she knew as a ‘big player’ and member of crime gang – for Willis. Willis offered to pay her £200-300 for each package, but she refused to take the money.

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Do not heat your homes in the evenings, net zero quango tells public

Millions of families will be urged by a green quango not to heat their homes in the evening to help the Government hit its net zero target.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) said people should turn off their radiators at peak times as part of a wider drive to deliver “emissions savings”.

In a document on “behaviour change” the body recommended Britons “pre-heat” their houses in the afternoon when electricity usage is lower.

It said the move would save families money, but critics suggested the real reason was that renewables will not be able to provide enough energy to cope with peak demand.

The advice is contained in the CCC’s sixth “carbon budget” paper, which sets out how the UK should reduce its emissions between 2033-37.

In it the quango suggests people with electrically powered heating systems, such as heat pumps, should switch off their radiators in the evening.

“There is significant potential to deliver emissions savings, just by changing the way we use our homes,” the dossier states.

“Where homes are sufficiently well insulated, it is possible to pre-heat ahead of peak times, enabling access to cheaper tariffs which reflect the reduced costs associated with running networks and producing power during off-peak times.”

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Why is the Welsh government funding Drag Queen Story Hour?

The Welsh government has clearly learnt nothing from Scotland’s disastrous flirtation with gender self-identification. Welsh ministers are still blithely pushing ahead to make ‘Wales the most LGBTQ+ friendly nation in Europe’, by which they really mean the most beholden to gender ideology. To this end, it has already produced an arsenal of mad policies as part of its LGBTQ+ Action Plan, from the ‘recognition of nonbinary’ identities to ordering public buildings to fly flags representing ‘asexual’ and ‘aromantic’ people. And this week the Telegraph revealed that Welsh government funding was used by Cardiff’s Labour-run administration to pay for a controversial drag act in a children’s library.

In August 2022, Cardiff council paid an undisclosed sum for a Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) event at Cardiff Central Library, using grant money from the Welsh government. The event was hosted by ‘Aida H Dee’, the drag persona of DQSH founder Sab Samuel.

According to DQSH’s website, the purpose of grown men dressing in drag to read stories to kids is ‘to show the world that being different is not a bad thing’, and to provide ‘imaginative role models for children to look up to’. DQSH has certainly proved a hit with many publicly funded bodies, which have booked it on a regular basis. But it has proved less popular with parents and others who argue the performances are inappropriate for youngsters and are trying to indoctrinate children into gender ideology.

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Moment seven officers drag ‘autistic’ girl, 16, kicking and screaming from Leeds home for committing a ‘hate crime’ after she told female cop ‘you look like my lesbian nana’

Police have been accused of heavy handedness after an autistic teenage girl was arrested by seven officers after saying ‘a female officer looked like her lesbian nana’.

The 16-year-old, who also suffers from scoliosis, had been driven to her home in Leeds, West Yorkshire, by officers after midnight when she allegedly made the comment.

She was later dragged away screaming in the early hours of Monday morning having been served a ‘homophobic public order offence’.

The incident was recorded by the girl’s mother who uploaded the footage to TikTok. 

The mother posted: ‘This is what police do when dealing with autistic children. My daughter told me the police officer looked like her nana, who is a lesbian.

‘The officer took it the wrong way and said it was a homophobic comment [it wasn’t].

‘The officer then entered my home. My daughter was having panic attacks from being touched by them and they still continued to manhandle her.’

The footage prompted outrage online, with one social media user writing: ‘I cannot believe my own eyes. Someone in the police force needs to be sacked for this egregious, disgraceful situation.’

Another posted: ‘This is disgusting behaviour by [West] Yorkshire police. And how many officers needed to attend? No small wonder that girl was terrified.’

Andrew Piper added: ‘@West Yorks Police completely unacceptable from the officers in this video. When the officer was informed that the daughter had autism, the comment [from the officer] “I don’t care” is completely inappropriate.’ 

In the footage, two officers can be seen in the hallway of the home, while the girl hides in a corner next to a cupboard. 

The female officer in question, who has cropped blonde hair, can be heard insisting ‘she [the girl] is going to be arrested’.

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Ex-headteacher at school attended by Prince George committed child sex crimes

The former deputy headteacher at the London primary school attended by Prince George and Princess Charlotte was convicted of paying tens of thousands of dollars for photos and videos of children being sexually abused.

Matthew Smith — who worked at the ritzy Thomas’s Preparatory School — was sentenced to 12 years in prison this week for paying more than $85,000 for sexual images of children as young as seven, according to the South West News Service.

The conviction of the 35-year-old former teacher left staff at the school “shocked and appalled beyond measure,” a school spokesperson said.

The $25,000-a-year school, located in Battersea, southwest London, said that Smith has not worked at the school since charges had been brought against him.

The spokesperson emphasized Smith’s brief tenure at the school — just around eight weeks.

“Mr. Smith’s employment at the school, which commenced in September 2022, was terminated with immediate effect when the school first learned of the charges against him in November,” the school said.

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‘Ripper Diary’ Confirmed to be Real?

A controversial memoir suspected of being the diary of Jack the Ripper has allegedly been confirmed to be real.

Discovered in 1992, the book was purportedly penned by a Liverpool cotton merchant named James Maybrick, who confessed in the diary to being Jack the Ripper.

Details surrounding how the book had been found were shrouded in secrecy, leading many to suspect that the diary was simply a clever forgery.

However a new book claims to have successfully traced the origins of the book back to Maybrick’s home and, thus, strengthens the case that he was, indeed, Jack the Ripper.

Researchers looking into the memoir determined that the Ripper suspect’s home was being renovated in 1992.

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From Covert To Overt: UK Govt & Businesses Unleash Facial Recognition Technologies Across Urban Landscape

The Home Office is encouraging police forces across the country to make use of live facial recognition technologies for routine law enforcement. Retailers are also embracing the technology to monitor their customers. 

It increasingly seems that the UK decoupled from the European Union, its rules and regulations, only for its government to take the country in a progressively more authoritarian direction. This is, of course, a generalised trend among ostensibly “liberal democracies” just about everywhere, including EU Member States, as they increasingly adopt the trappings and tactics of more authoritarian regimes, such as restricting free speech, cancelling people and weakening the rule of law. But the UK is most definitely at the leading edge of this trend. A case in point is the Home Office’s naked enthusiasm for biometric surveillance and control technologies.

This week, for example, The Guardian revealed that the Minister for Policing Chris Philip and other senior figures of the Home Office had held a closed-door meeting with Simon Gordon, the founder of Facewatch, a leading facial recognition retail security company, in March. The main outcome of the meeting was that the government would lobby the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on the benefits of using live facial recognition (LFR) technologies in retail settings. LFR involves hooking up facial recognition cameras to databases containing photos of people. Images from the cameras can then be screened against those photos to see if they match.

The lobbying effort was apparently successful. Just weeks after reaching out to the ICO, the ICO sent a letter to Facewatch affirming that the company “has a legitimate purpose for using people’s information for the detection and prevention of crime” and that its services broadly comply with UK Data Protection laws, which the Sunak government and UK intelligence agencies are trying to gut. As the Guardian report notes, “the UK’s data protection and information bill proposes to abolish the role of the government-appointed surveillance camera commissioner along with the requirement for a surveillance camera code of practice.”

The ICO’s approval gives legal cover to a practice that is already well established. Facewatch has been scanning the faces of British shoppers in thousands of retail stores across the UK for years. The cameras scan faces as people enter a store and screens them against a database of known offenders, alerting shop assistants if a “subject of interest” has entered. Shops using the technologies have placed notices in their windows (such as the one below) informing customers that facial recognition technologies are in operation, “to protect” the shop’s “employees, customers and stock.” But it is far from clear how many shoppers actually take notice of the notices.

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Iran 1953: MI6 Plots with Islamists to Overthrow Democracy

In many accounts the C.I.A. is regarded as the prime mover behind the 1953 coup in Iran, yet Britain was in fact the initial instigator and provided considerable resources to the plot, which U.K. planners named “Operation Boot.”

In the early 1950s, the Anglo–Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), or BP as it is now known, was run from London and owned jointly by the British government and private citizens. It controlled Iran’s main source of income and oil, and by 1951 had become, according to one British official, “in effect an imperium in imperio [an empire within an empire] in Persia.”

Iranian nationalists objected to the fact that the AIOC’s revenues from oil were greater than the Iranian government’s. 

Britain’s ambassador in Tehran, Sir Francis Shepherd, had a typically colonialist take on the situation. The declassified files show his writing: “It is so important to prevent the Persians from destroying their main source of revenue…by trying to run it themselves.”

He added: “The need for Persia is not to run the oil industry for herself (which she cannot do) but to profit from the technical ability of the West.”

Of course, Iran was perfectly capable of running its own oil industry. In March 1951 the Iranian Parliament voted to nationalise oil operations, take control of the Anglo–Iranian Oil Company and expropriate its assets. 

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Investigating The Pro-Censorship UK Group Expanding Across The US

America First Legal (AFL) have announced its investigation into a UK-based group known as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

AFL, a non-profit often described as “an alternative to ACLU,” is starting the probe into CCDH – which it refers to as a pro-censorship group that is a party to anti-free speech collusion with the government – by filing several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

We obtained an example of one of the FOIAs for you here.

They are addressed to the US Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of State, and the goal is to obtain any communications they may have had with CCDH, headed by Imran Ahmed.

The basis for looking into the group’s activities in the US is that although based in the UK, it has expanded its “censorship encouraging,” as AFL put it, work to the US as a 501(c) non-profit.

As far as CCDH is concerned, the group is a non-profit and an NGO (non-governmental organization) with nothing but noble intentions – fighting online hate and disinformation.

Ahmed’s professional profile gives a good idea of what exactly CCDH means by that. As per the organization itself, Ahmed is an “authority on social and psychological malignancies on social media, such as identity-based hate, extremism, disinformation, and conspiracy theories.”

As is often the case with those that like to add a layer of opaqueness to their work, “the organization of the organization” here is rather complicated: there are ties with top Labour Party officials, the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a “merger” with another online disinformation crusader called Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN).

Naturally, Covid lockdown opponents were a prominent target, but when it comes specifically to the US, CCDH put not only those critics based in that country, but also Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in its crosshairs, as deplatforming targets.

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