Hoopie

Views my own and written with respect.

[Ameer Kotecha @Ameer_Kotecha]

This is a good example of how the law prioritises the rights of asylum seekers over the public good.

A mother of three comes from Gaza as a refugee.

The courts rule she can bring in her EIGHTEEN (!) relatives.

Most don’t speak English.

Most will require social housing.

Not to mention schooling, healthcare and all the rest.

The situation in Gaza is pretty grim. I’ve been at Kerem Shalom in the Gaza envelope and seen it. But we cannot take in every person stuck in some war-torn bit of the world. Our naive generosity will be the ruin of this nation

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Sentencing Without Consequence: The Brighton Case Exposes The State's Real Position

At Hove Crown Court on Wednesday, three men were sentenced for a gang rape on Brighton beach so calculated that the prosecutor described them as devoid of humanity. Ibrahim Alshafe and Abdulla Ahmadi were jailed for twenty one years each. Karin Al-Danasurt, who filmed the attack while encouraging it, received eighteen years and six months. All three will serve a further six years on licence.

The victim told the court what those numbers cannot capture. "They destroyed my life that night," she said. "No matter how hard I scrub it, I still feel dirty." She described watching Al-Danasurt film while the other two laughed at her.

One sentence in the reporting deserves more attention than it has received. The prosecution told the court to reach its sentencing decision without regard to the possibility that any of the three men might one day be deported. That is not a commentator's inference about how the asylum system functions. It is the Crown's own instruction to a judge, on the record, in a rape case. Even at the point of sentencing men convicted of an entirely predatory attack, the state cannot ask a court to assume they will ever leave the country.

I wrote in April, at the time of conviction, that the case exposed something larger than three individual men. All three had been housed in Home Office-approved hotel accommodation in Horsham. Two met on a small boat crossing from France. The government of the day was, on that same day, in Dunkirk signing a deal worth hundreds of millions of pounds and calling it a breakthrough. I argued then that the accommodation contracts, running years into the future, told a truer story than the press conference. You do not sign long-term housing arrangements for a problem you intend to solve.

Wednesday's sentencing hearing confirms that argument from an unexpected source. It was not made by a critic of the system. It was made by the prosecutor within it, cautioning a judge against assuming the machinery of removal would ever engage. If the Crown itself cannot rely on deportation as a live possibility in a case this severe, the claim that failed asylum seekers who commit serious crimes face meaningful consequences beyond prison collapses under its own evidence.

None of this diminishes what happened to one woman on a beach in October. It explains why the conditions that produced it remain in place. Men arrive by unauthorised routes, are housed by the state in ordinary communities, and the system built to assess and remove those with no right to remain operates so slowly and so unreliably that even its own prosecutors will not promise it works. The victim in this case will carry what was done to her for the rest of her life. The system that housed her attackers will carry no equivalent weight.

A state that cannot guarantee removal even after a rape conviction has not built a deterrent. It has built a waiting room. The public was told in April that the Dunkirk deal represented control. Wednesday's hearing suggests the opposite: that control was never really on offer, and that the government's own lawyers know it. Parliament should demand an account of how many convicted foreign offenders like these three are actually removed each year, and publish the answer before another beach, another woman, another verdict.

"Karin Al-Danasurt, who filmed the attack while encouraging it, received eighteen years and six months."

[Lorin Bell-Cross @lorintbc]

Former director of BBC Television Danny Cohen told the JC: "It is very disappointing to see the incoming prime minister give one of his very first interviews to Gary Lineker, who left the BBC after sharing a post about Zionism which depicted a rat - an animal the Nazis used to depict Jews. 

"To make matters worse, Mr Burnham failed to challenge Lineker’s description of the conflict in Gaza as 'genocide'. This is an unproven claim which fuels antisemitism in Britain. 

"All of this sends a deeply worrying signal to the Jewish community.”

[Nikki da Costa @nmdacosta]

In the Mirror @jessphillips backs the Parliament Acts Plan and appears to argue the Assisted Dying Bill will make women safer.

Expert witnesses found the opposite: this Bill will deepen silence and leave abused women more vulnerable. 7 specific aspects that sacrifice women...

1. Victims of coercive control rarely disclose abuse. Prof Jane Monckton-Smith (expert in domestic homicide) testified that victims are often so entrapped they will deny coercion even when asked directly. Some refuse help even after being hit with a hammer. The Bill has no mandatory police/social services checks, and the panel has no power to request such information. Doctors only need to be 51% sure, with no real scrutiny of abuse history. The Bill does not even require doctors to ask 'Why' someone wants to end their life.

2. Healthcare professionals routinely miss signs of abuse. Over 50% of domestic-abuse-related deaths involve healthcare professionals failing to spot it (Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse). Dr Mulholland, Royal College of GPs said "significantly more training" than what is currently proposed is needed.

The Bill's remote video/audio assessments makes this worse, including the provision that pre-recorded material can be used - experts called them "entirely inadequate" to detect coercion or a perpetrator off-camera. Lord Falconer has admitted that the Bill allows virtual assessments to be the default.

3. Abused women already get later diagnoses due to isolation and neglect. By the time they meet the 6-month terminal prognosis, they're deeply vulnerable. Perpetrators can weaponise a terminal diagnosis to make victims feel like a burden "undeserving of treatment." The Bill and the sponsors are clear that motivation is irrelevant so long as someone meets the basic criteria.

4. It creates a new route to mask homicides. The Bill permits the initial assessment for an assisted death to be organised by a partner, or someone else, and a proxy can sign the consent forms for the individual. Professor Monckton-Smith warned that the largest category of homicides where a crime scene is staged to divert attention is intimate partner homicides staged as suicides. She warned the committee that introducing a formal, medicalised route for premature death completely changes the context, potentially "assisting... the perpetrator" by allowing them to legally achieve the death of their victim without leaving a murder scene.

5. The Bill explicitly removes coronial oversight. Former Chief Coroner Thomas Teague KC called this a "retrograde step" — suspicious deaths that would trigger investigation will now be buried, losing vital data on domestic abuse.

6. Women face unequal pressures and the Bill does not require any assessment of unmet need. The EHRC highlighted women's disproportionate unpaid caring roles and weaker support networks, which can push them towards assisted death as the "practical" option. The EHRC said the Government had paid insufficient attention to this in the impact assessment. The sponsors have rejected the Royal Colleges' request that there should be an assessment of unmet need before someone is approved for an assisted death.

7. Disabled women are at extra risk, particularly because the Bill empowers ANY doctor to raise ending the patient's life. Disability Rights UK notes disabled women are four times more likely to die by suicide - many simply waiting for proper care and support. Disabled people already face systemic assumptions from healthcare professionals regarding their quality of life and allowing doctors to initiate discussion - particularly with no requirement to address unmet need - compounds this. The dangers are compounded for those with learning disabilities and highly suggestible patients.

11th September is a de facto vote for the Parliament Act Plan. Are MPs willing to abdicate all responsibility and agree that the Bill can be forced into law 'as is', no matter what?

[Nikki da Costa @nmdacosta]

Even this NHS doctor - who admits euthanasia and motivation to free up “another bed in the hospital” - says the assisted dying bill will do nothing to enhance the doctor-patient relationship and warns of doctors’ “emotional detachment”. The Bill is NOT safe 1/

[Mosab Hassan Yousef @MosabHasanYOSEF]

“I killed myself to give the Palestinians a state.”

Bill Clinton

They turned down 97% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and land swaps.

Yet the world still pretends the only obstacle to peace is Israel.

Watch.

[Hoopie @Hoopie1261]

@CharlotteCGill The problem is
- they've no idea who they're letting in. All are undocumented
- they're accepting tribes with medieval thought processes that were at war with other imported tribes, in their own countries
- war has been normalised for them

[Hoopie @Hoopie1261]

@christopherhope It is us tax payers who should be awarded the honour, not Starmer

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

If you inject money into an economy completely controlled by a terrorist group, where do you think the money ends up eventually?

Labour: can't pay for our own defence, can give another £10m to Hamas.

[Looking for Growth @lfg_uk]

"ED MILIBAND IS OUT OF TOUCH"

New polling REVEALS that JUST 1 in 5 Labour voters have no worries about Miliband as Chancellor.

Even worse... 8 in 10 think he should prioritise getting bills DOWN over Net Zero.

Will he listen to the COUNTRY?

[Britain Unbound @BritainUnbound]

All four of these potential EU accessions, if they ever actually happen, would result in increased membership fees from net contributors, and reduced returns for those contributors.

That is not our opinion - that is the determination of the EU itself.

Brexit benefit.

[Maurice Cousins @MDC12345678]

The bottom line is that, over more than two decades, the Conservative Party drifted further and further from its own principles, nowhere more clearly than on climate and energy policy.

Had it listened to Margaret Thatcher, it might never have ended up in the position it found itself in by 2024.

Net Zero’s equity-based framework, combined with an energy policy that sacrifices prosperity, proportion and national security, violates almost every principle she set out.

[Net Zero Watch @NetZeroWatch]

Do not be fooled. Ever the Machiavel, @Ed_Miliband is making a small tactical concession to gain control of the Treasury. He is not a pragmatist.

Approving one North Sea project does not change his destination. It merely changes his route to power.

As Chancellor, he would control the taxes, subsidies and spending decisions needed to turn the statutory Net Zero target - which means demand reduction, fewer livestock, lower red meat and dairy consumption, major land-use change and tighter constraints across car use, aviation, shipping and industry - into the organising principle of the whole British economy.

He has no mandate to deliver any of this.

[Hoopie @Hoopie1261]

@Julie0930439847 @nmdacosta It's strange the focus is on euthanasia & not on universal access to palliative care - and yes I have personal experience of terminal illness, hospice care and the Dutch euthanasia service - in which my aunt woke up in pain & distress and waited an hour for another dose.

[Hoopie @Hoopie1261]

@UKLFI @ICJPalestine @IDF Well done.

[UK Lawyers For Israel @UKLFI]

Judge Goldspring, Chief Magistrate for England & Wales, has ordered @ICJPalestine to pay full legal costs of £82,130 of British-Israeli dual national whom they tried to prosecute for serving @IDF, finding serious of lack of candour by ICJP: https://t.co/921X0FWPQh

[IanG @IanGee2023]

@Keir_Starmer Did I miss you condemning this riot in London last week? I can't seem to find it.

[Aizenberg @Aizenberg55]

Claim: Israel targeted Gaza’s healthcare workers

Reality: Hamas & PIJ confirm that dozens of healthcare workers at its medical facilities were military commanders

24 examples below, many more to add to this thread

[Hoopie @Hoopie1261]

@JohnSimpsonNews They're concerned by unverified Hamas led 'evidence' but not by sex offences & coercion by NGOs within Gaza itself? That's ironic.

[Hoopie @Hoopie1261]

@Keir_Starmer @andyburnham the calibre of your MPs is questionable at the best of times, but this - from the Minister supposedly in charge or safeguarding women is utterly & profoundly wrong. She should resign.
@LindsayHoyle_MP

[Natalie Fleet MP @NatalieFleetMP]

Apologies for offence caused by my earlier tweet, which I’ve now deleted. My thoughts are - as they have always been - with Ann Widdecombe’s loved ones at this awful time.