10 years ago my wife, the mum of our kids & the MP for Batley&Spen was killed by a far right extremist.
At anniversaries I try to be optimistic about the future. But not this time. In the ten years since she was killed we have gone backwards & I fear our democracy is now at risk
Call you old fashioned? Alright, old-fashioned, @PatrickChristys, let us go through the decades you prefer.
The 1960s: Ian Brady and Myra Hindley tortured and murdered five children, buried them on Saddleworth Moor, and recorded their screams on tape.
The 1970s: Peter Sutcliffe murdered 13 women with hammers and screwdrivers across Yorkshire.
Dennis Nilsen began strangling young men in his London flat, dismembering them, boiling their skulls on his stove, and flushing the remains down the drains.
The 1980s: Michael Ryan shot 16 people dead in Hungerford. Fred and Rose West were raping, torturing, and dismembering women and girls and burying them under their house in Gloucester. Their own daughter among them.
The 1990s: Two 10-year-old boys abducted a toddler from a shopping centre in Liverpool, tortured him, and bludgeoned him to death with bricks and an iron bar.
Thomas Hamilton walked into a primary school in Dunblane and shot 16 five-year-olds and their teacher. Harold Shipman was murdering his patients by the hundred.
The 2000s: James Watt and his family enslaved a man for a decade, tortured him with baseball bats, air pistols, boiling water, and pit bull attacks, then decapitated him and dumped his body in a lake.
Mathew Hardman, 17, murdered a 90-year-old woman, cut out her heart, placed it on a silver platter, and drank her blood.
The 2010s: Derrick Bird shot 12 people dead across Cumbria.
Thomas Mair shot and stabbed an MP in the street while shouting "Britain first".
The 2020s: Jemma Mitchell decapitated her friend, stored the body for two weeks, and drove 200 miles to dump it.
Those are the decades you prefer. And for each decade there are 20 other equally horrific incidents.
And here is the thing, old fashioned Patrick. According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, violence, burglary, and car crime have fallen by close to 90% since the mid-1990s. The ONS confirms that violent crime is two-thirds lower now than in the 1990s.
The country you live in today is measurably, statistically, dramatically safer than the one you are nostalgic for. That's not an opinion, it's a fact.
And I am not even touching Glasgow and its past knife crime epidemic.
So, which decade was better, Patrick? Tell us.
When is everyone going to realise that social media isn’t a tool for freedom of speech.
It’s a tool being used by the rich and powerful to radicalise the world en masse.
Divide and conquer is being implemented at scale like we’ve never seen.
We’re all falling for it. Wake up!
Over the last 36 hours, we have witnessed the very soul of Nigel Farage — his essence.
It has been over a month since he went into hiding, since serious questions began to be raised over his undeclared £5M donation.
A month since he appeared in front of TV cameras or underwent any questioning at all.
At 8am yesterday morning, Farage released a video, from a field somewhere, calling for rage. Calling for an end to the mythical two-tier policing.
Make no mistake, those were very carefully chosen words — he understood what he was unleashing, and his wish was granted last night in Southampton.
On Tuesday, the Home Secretary made a statement to the House regarding the murder of Henry Nowack. There was, as always, an opportunity to question Shabana Mahmood — was Nigel Farage in attendance?
No, of course not.
Today, Farage was granted a question at PMQs — the showpiece spectacle of the political week in which the country's news and politics fanatics tune in to watch — was Nigel Farage in attendance?
Yes, of course he was.
He had somehow found his way into work after missing 77 separate votes in Parliament because … he would, at least for three minutes, be the centre of the country's political attention.
His question was about the murder of Henry Nowack and the violence that erupted [on his command] last night, but he would not condemn it or call for calm.
Instead, he 'suggested' that this rioting might escalate.
This afternoon, he has performatively written to the BBC because someone on Newsnight dared to accuse him of inciting the violence — playing his perpetual victim card. Again.
And there we see the soul of Nigel Farage — a craven, desperate for attention, evil, petty and pointless man.
END RANT.
Die gleichen Bürger aus dem Video, die in UK die Trümmertruppe Reform von Nigel Farage wählen, wählen bei uns AfD. Die haben überhaupt keine Ahnung was Überreich bedeutet. Schön, dass jemand ihnen das mal vor Augen hält.
Did not expect a question that starts out 'Do you think before you speak?' to go so well. A+ question from Charlotte Harpur A++ response from Eileen Gu.
Konstantin Kisin straight up lying on #bbcqt
Douglas Alexander: “When Fraser Nelson put it to you that Rishi Sunak is absolutely english… you said “he’s a brown Hindu, how is he english?”
Kisin: “No that’s not what I said...”