Tag: united kingdom

Two retired Met Police officers are charged with child porn offences after serving chief inspector was found dead before he could also be charged

Two retired Metropolitan Police officers have been charged with child sex offences as part of an investigation into a serving Met chief inspector who was found dead before he could also be charged.

In a statement, the Met said the charges followed a ‘lengthy and complex’ investigation into Richard Watkinson, 49, who was a serving Met Chief Inspector for neighbourhoods policing at the West Area Command Unit.

He was found dead in Buckinghamshire on Thursday, January 12, the same day he was due to answer bail to be charged with conspiracy to distribute or show indecent images of children, three counts of making indecent photos of a child, voyeurism and two counts of misconduct in public office.

The Crown Prosecution Service had authorised charges against him.

His death is being treated as unexplained but not suspicious and an inquest has opened and adjourned.

Met officers found Watkinson’s body having attended the address following welfare concerns.

He had been suspended from duty following his arrest in July 2021.

Jack Addis, 63, of no fixed address but from Perthshire, Scotland, and Jeremy Laxton, 62, from Lincolnshire, will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, February 9.

Addis has been charged with conspiracy to distribute or show indecent images of children. He was arrested in November 2021.

Laxton has been charged with conspiracy to distribute or show indecent images of children, three counts of making indecent photos of a child, possession of prohibited images of a child, possession of extreme pornographic images and intentionally encouraging or assisting an offence (misconduct in public office). He was arrested in September 2021.

They both left the force over a decade ago.

The alleged offences took place between January 1, 2018 and September 20, 2021.

Commander Jon Savell, said: ‘Chief Inspector Watkinson was facing extremely serious and concerning charges, as the result of a painstaking and thorough police investigation.

‘Before this matter came to light, we had no previous information about these allegations or to indicate the officer posed any risk to the public.

‘He had not faced any other criminal or conduct matters during his Met career.

‘He had been suspended from duty since his arrest.

‘Two other men were also arrested during the course of the investigation and have been charged, their matters will now progress through the courts.’

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UK’s online censorship bill has amendment that targets non-citizens

The UK’s messy Online Safety Bill, that its authors say is designed to protect children from online harms, keeps causing controversies and rifts – but also continues to “grow” through amendments, some of which observers find difficult to decipher.

A recent one aims to prevent children from accessing content that would inform them about what might turn into dangerous ways to cross the channel between the UK and France.

Specifically, the amendment speaks about crossing the English channel “with the aim of entering the UK in a vessel unsuited or unsafe for those purposes,” and references a popular way in which illegal immigrants have taken to enter the country.

But now, the question is being asked, who do UK’s legislators think they are legislating for? The bill would impose legal requirements in the country, but the amendment suggests that it would somehow be used to restrict access to certain content to those outside it – and, it seems, mostly non-citizens.

This is far from the only example of contentious or just baffling provision in the proposal. This week, the draft caused a “rebellion” staged by members of parliament from the ruling Conservative party.

Namely, close to 50 Conservative MPs had an amendment of their own – one to add the possibility of imprisoning social media execs, in case their platforms are found not to be adhering to the bill’s provisions to protect children from content such as child abuse, suicide and self-harm.

If found guilty, under the future law, these high ranking representatives of tech companies would be put in jail for up to two years, the amendment said.

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British Protest 15-Minute Cities Where They Will Become Prisoners of the State

Fifteen-minute cities are popping up everywhere, and the World Economic Forum is wildly enthusiastic about them. Last year it was announced that Paris, France, would become a 15-minute city, and now the British city of Oxford is next. However, outraged Brits are fighting back.

As reported previously at RAIR Foundation USA, the city council has announced that it will divide Oxford into 15-minute neighborhoods or small 15-minute towns billed as “greener, cleaner and safer.” To further seize control of people’s lives, Globalists are pushing the false idea that these “green” cities, which make services accessible to residents within 15 minutes of their homes, will “save the planet” and help all humanity.

Instead, they are nothing more than a way for them to restrict, coerce, fine, punish, surveil, and limit the fundamental right of freedom of movement for residents. For example, residents are not allowed to leave your 15-minute city by car more than the allotted times a year. Otherwise, you will be fined. In addition, the government will track and control your every movement through your smartphones & facial recognition technology.

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UK Doctors Have Doubled Antipsychotic Prescriptions To Children And Youth: Study

Despite the lack of evidence of the safety of antipsychotics in children, who are smaller in size and still rapidly developing, the number of prescriptions to English youth has doubled between 2000 to 2019, a study suggests.

The researchers from the University of Manchester examined over seven million children and adolescents aged three to 18.

They discovered that youth prescriptions of antipsychotics – drugs used to treat major mental illnesses, such as autism, schizophrenia, and ADHD – increased from 0.06 percent to 0.11 in the past two decades.

While the percentage is small, co-author and senior research fellow at the University of Manchester Matthias Pierce said that the higher prevalence of these disorders, as well as a growing trend to prescribe antipsychotics by clinicians, is concerning.

“However, [it] will help clinicians to evaluate the prescribing of antipsychotics to children more fully and will encourage them to consider better access to alternatives,” Pierce said.

Antipsychotics have been associated with long-term side effects, including sexual dysfunction, infertility, and weight gain leading to diabetes.

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British officials were in favour of ‘whacking’ Osama Bin Laden nine months before 9/11 terror attacks, newly-released papers show

Britain was ‘all in favour of whacking’ Osama Bin Laden at least nine months before 9/11.

The readiness to target the Al Qaeda chief was mentioned in a briefing to Tony Blair ahead of a dinner with Bill Clinton. 

The then-PM’s foreign affairs adviser Sir John Sawers laid out points the ex-US president ‘may raise or which you might want to ask about’.

Sir John briefed on the US’s likely response to the bombing of USS Cole, which killed 17 US sailors, off Yemen and discussed possible air strikes.

Sir John said the US ‘won’t launch strikes until they have a smoking gun.’ He added: ‘We’re all in favour of whacking [Bin Laden], but need a bit of notice and a chance to influence the timing.’ Bin Laden was eventually killed by the US in 2011.

Sir Tony had a famously close relationship with Mr Clinton, whose presidency ended in January 2001, and the files also reveal No 10’s initial nerves about how to handle his successor George Bush.

Soon after Mr Bush’s election, Britain’s ambassador to the US Sir Christopher Meyer warned of a potential ‘cultural clash’, the files show.

He wrote to Sir John and Downing Street chief of staff Jonathan Powell about a conversation with US trade representative Bob Zoellick ‘who spent most of dinner giving advice on how the prime minister should handle Bush.’

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Documents concerning JFK’s death revealed that the British were warned 25 minutes before the assassination

Documents related to JFK’s assassination were supposed to be made public in 2017. However, Donald Trump, president at the time, decided not to release all the documents.

There was pushback from the CIA, FBI, and other agencies to stall the release of the documents due to the potential reveal of national security secrets to the public.

However, some documents were released from the National Archives and one piece of surprising information came out.

In the declassified documents released in 2017, a memo from the CIA to the director of the FBI was dated November 26, 1963.

The memo revealed that an anonymous call was made to a British newspaper, The Cambridge News, on the day that JFK was killed. The anonymous caller said that Cambridge News should call the American Embassy in London because there was going to be some big news. The call took place 25 minutes before JFK’s assassination.

The more interesting aspect of the case is that when the current Cambridge News was notified, they claimed that they had no record of the person who took the call from their end. They also had no record that it had ever happened.

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Are Climate Lockdowns Beginning? An English County Will Require Permits to Drive Through Other Neighborhoods

In early December, the County of Oxfordshire, in England, voted to begin intensely filtering traffic in certain parts of Oxford between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.  This is slated to begin sometime in 2023, upon completion of some existing transportation projects. Right now, the local government says that there will be a six-month trial of using the filter system, and at the end of the trial period, there will be a vote as to whether or not it should be continued.

Six portions of Oxford will be restricted from private vehicles during this time period. Residents can travel freely in their own areas. However, attempting to enter a different restricted area using a private vehicle will require a permit. Violators will be subject to fines of £70 (about $85).  

How will this be enforced? 

Contrary to some internet speculation, there are no plans to erect physical barriers. People will still be allowed to walk, bike, or take public transportation wherever they want. Vehicle usage will be monitored with Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras, the same technology that has been around for more than 20 years to collect money remotely on toll roads. The ANPR cameras will also enable the county to issue permits to private drivers to make a limited amount of trips within the city within the restricted time frame.

Critics all over the world, including Australia Sky News host Rowan Dean insist that this is a gross violation of freedom of movement, and will lead us down the slope to a medieval world with an autonomous nobility and a peasantry tied to the land.  

Supporters reply that this is simply an attempt to remedy Oxford’s notoriously horrible traffic. What are we supposed to think? What’s actually going on?

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UK government asked Twitter and Facebook to “tweak” algorithms during Covid

Former United Kingdom Health Secretary Matt Hancock, self-styled as an official who was at the forefront of Britain’s battle against Covid, didn’t seem to feel like he had done enough in 2020 and 2021, so he felt compelled to milk the pandemic cow by writing a book about that “battle.”

But he wasn’t laboring alone, since he had a co-author, Isabel Oakeshott, who reports say is actually opposed to Hancock’s policies and is a lockdown skeptic.

And now, Oakeshott, who had access to official records and Hancock’s notes exchanged with “all the key players in Britain’s Covid-19 story” – as the book’s blurb states – has penned her own “story,” an article based on the collaboration published by the Spectator, whose content draws from the material used for the book.

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Warning From UK: Technocracy And The Global Technate Are Imminent

Over the last couple of years the question of technocratic governance has become a talking point in Western society. The debate concerns the degree to which qualified experts should influence or possibly even control policy.

Largely due to disillusionment with the political class, many people are broadly supportive of this idea. It is therefore crucial that we understand that technocratic governance is just one aspect of technocracy.

A Technate—technocracy applied to the whole of society—is not limited to technocratic governance. It goes much further and is a new and distinct sociopolitical construct.

A Technate vs Technocratic Governance

During the pseudopandemic, prominent members within the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) were not just providing advice, they were seemingly leading policy. People like Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance were “seen,” by millions of TV viewers, to be driving government decisions. The accompanying mantra from UK politicians was that they were “led by the science.”

People have assumed that this is technocracy. It is not and it is vital that we understand the full, horrific implications of genuine technocracy.

If we look closer at this relationship between the expert—the technocrat—and the politician during the pseudopandemic, it is perhaps more accurate to say that the science was cherry picked by the politicians because it supported their policies. That being said, policy that is genuinely led by technocrats is not unusual in the West, especially monetary policy.

The political and economic response to Covid-19, on both sides of the Atlantic, exemplifies technocratic influence and control. For example, the economists and the financiers in the central banks—the “experts”—committed European Union (EU) taxpayers’ to fund policies without any meaningful oversight from the politicians.

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The UK plots to ban private messaging

UK’s media regulator Ofcom will get more surveillance powers than spy agencies under the Online Safety Bill, according to a legal analysis by the Index on Censorship organization.

The legislation would allow Ofcom to force tech companies to clamp down on “child abuse” and “terrorist content” by ending end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger and force all communications to be scanned.

Human rights lawyer Matthew Ryder, in a legal opinion commissioned by Index on Censorship, said that the powers that Ofcom would be afforded by the bill allow “allow the state to compel [tech companies] to carry out surveillance of the content of communications on a generalized and widespread basis.”

The regulator would not need prior authorization before making a demand to a tech company to scan messages and there would be no independent oversight over how the regulator uses its powers.

Ryder added: “We are unable to envisage circumstances where such a destructive step in the security of global online communications for billions of users could be justified.”

Communications by journalists, whistleblowers, and victims would no longer be safe. Additionally, it is not clear if Ofcom would make public the demands it issues or whether it would keep them secret.

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