Category: Human Rights

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Labour – your silence on so many issues carries a price

Richard Haviland

I learnt two things about the subject of child grooming gangs on Monday’s edition of The News Agents podcast.  Firstly, there’s no evidence of over-representation of any ethnic group within these gangs. Secondly, some allegations have indeed been ignored because of “cultural sensitivities”. It's right to be horrified by the latter while recognising the vitally important […]

Would you accept this for YOUR child?

Daniel Sohege

When working at Love146UK we researched this. We campaigned against this. Biological age assessments are notoriously unreliable, and incredibly traumatic for children who have been through war and persecution. It is part of a pattern with this government to put immigration enforcement ahead of child protection, though. They are abandoning the very principles of safeguarding […]

How to counter the hostile anti-migrant narrative

Lou Calvey

I get a few messages from lovely people asking for basic information to counter hostile anti-migrant narratives. So I’ve pulled this together to try and cover the typical points – hopefully it helps with those awkward dinner discussions or difficult family members. 1. ‘We can’t help everyone.’ This is often said by otherwise liberal people. […]

Why so nasty?

Mark E Thomas

In 2002, Theresa May famously said to the party faithful, “Yes, we’ve made progress, but let’s not kid ourselves. There’s a way to go before we can return to government. … You know what some people call us: the nasty party.“ Since regaining power, however, it does not seem as though the Conservative Party has been […]

The view through the Overton window must be changed, and fast

Anthea Simmons

This week, under cover of darkness, 100 mature trees were felled in the centre of Plymouth, ripping out the green lungs of a city which had pulled itself up out of the ashes of WWII. In fact, these were the very trees planted to celebrate the city’s rebirth. This act of environmental vandalism has so […]

We CAN talk about morality and compassion and we MUST

Richard Haviland

The aim of so much of the ‘commentary’ which blights today’s UK is to persuade people there is no legitimate public conversation to be had about morality or compassion. To persuade them that there is only “virtue signalling”, “wokery” and “sanctimony”. Once enough people accept that premise, you are in deep trouble. Think about it. […]

If it quacks like a duck… Letter to the editor

Editor-in-chief

Dear Editor, One after the other, political commentators have been lining up to express solidarity with Gary Lineker … “but”, they add, “I wouldn’t have used that language”. Why not? There is enough evidence out there to justify his choice of words, it’s just that it has been drip fed to us so slowly we […]

Let’s kick the lies and myths on migrants into touch

Russ In Cheshire

We all think we’re rational human beings. So let’s put that to a test in a little thread, with sources. This is for those who are in a terrible tizz right now, and think Gary Lineker is actual Satan. “We are taking too many immigrants” There are 281 million migrants globally. https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/wmr-2020-interactive/ We took 90,000. […]

Tories: always spurious reasons to scrap human rights.

Jon Danzig

Once again, the Conservatives are threatening to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. But they’ve been threatening that for many years – and never for good reasons, only spurious ones. Always. Today, the Tories seem ready to jettison our 70-year alignment with the European Convention if that gets in the way of their despicable […]

Is market fundamentalism compatible with morality and religion?

Richard Playford and Mark E Thomas

Traditional Conservative politics, as the name suggests, amongst other things, places a significant emphasis on the conservation of the tried and tested, the reliable, the traditional, and so on. Traditional conservativism prioritizes practical experience over abstract theorizing, and prefers gradual changes, organically developing and emerging from the local community, to sweeping changes imposed from above. For a […]

The migrant dog whistle is blown again…

Jon Danzig

From today, the government has announced, “anyone crossing the Channel will be detained and removed to a safe country within weeks.” To be clear, Home Secretary, Suella Braverman MP, is not talking about those travelling from Calais to Dover with P&O, DFDS, or Irish Ferries. No, she is talking about desperate people, mostly genuine asylum […]

Shamima Begum: a time to confront our prejudices

Lucy-Ann Pope

In John Grisham’s 1989 novel A Time to Kill, ten-year-old Black girl Tonya Hailey is viciously raped, abused and left for dead by two White drunken men in 1980s Mississippi. Defence lawyer Jake Brigance, played by Matthew McConaughey in a film of the same name, takes on the defence of the little girl’s father, Carl […]

A take-down of the top anti-migrant ‘gotchas’

Lou Calvey

Some comments on social media around migrants are so vile – I’m venting in a take down of the top anti migrant ‘gotchas’… God help me. 1. We need security checks!/people in the asylum system are criminals, drug dealers, terrorists, blah blah The asylum system takes years. You the think government aren’t doing background checks […]

A grim fairy tale for our times

Anthea Simmons
a deep, dark wood

Once upon a time, there were some men who made a lot of money from doing things that were wrecking the planet. They had known for ages that they were putting toxins in the air and water, causing global warming and damaging the health of their employees and the general public and the environment, but […]

What is the market fundamentalist agenda?

Mark E Thomas

This is a long post from Oct 2019, and some of what it says would have seemed seem hard to believe back then. But now? Now when we see cuts to public services, the increasing wealth gap, steady defunding of council services, the running down of the NHS and talk of the use of artificial […]

Dozens of child refugees abducted in Brighton. Where is the national outcry?

Jon Danzig

Dozens of children have been abducted by gangs in Brighton, the Observer reveals today. A whistleblower and child protection sources told the newspaper that the children have been taken off the street and “bundled into cars”. The source said that the children have disappeared and have not been found. “They’re being taken from the street […]

2023: time for anger to be channelled and truth to triumph

Anthea Simmons
2023

It would be easy to feel pretty despairing right now. After all, things have got steadily worse. We thought the NHS was at the brink in 2021. We had no idea how much further this callous government was prepared to push it, how much death and misery it would wilfully ignore, while pumping out propaganda […]