Chas Lister

flyin' fang farrier; past aviator, motorcyclist, occasional aerobatic up-screwer, still making people smile - in the professional sense !!

[Chas Lister @chasbite]

@benonwine A disengaged, uniformed quangocrat who lives and works in the high up rarified atmosphere of an ivory tower where ticking boxes is mission critical

Empathy is a dirty word

Professional Neutrality is never possible with his like in charge

[Chas Lister @chasbite]

@JSS779 Cool? Wot even in a 33 year-old vintage aircraft? 😉

[Dougie Brimson 🎬 🇬🇧 🇮🇱 @dougiebrimson]

9 years ago today, @roylarner41, without any consideration for his own safety, single handedly took on 3 armed terrorists at #BoroughMarket saving countless lives.

He never received any medals and is yet to receive any compensation for his injuries. Shameful.

#LondonBridge🇬🇧

[Chas Lister @chasbite]

@NJ_Timothy @jfoster2019 While I appreciate that email is the default nowadays this is a sufficiently important matter that a hand-delivered letter to the upper house would add gravitas to the argument

[Chas Lister @chasbite]

@bbcnickrobinson @BenWallace70 @BBCr4today The world is a better place with the likes of AY and despite the fact that you are merely a simple Down trodden hack, I would include your good selves on the program along with such thoughtful MPs in the same complementary category

So young in every sense

[WasAcop @WasAcop]

🚨Chief Constable Alexis Boon on the death of white British teenager Henry Nowak:

“We have said we are sorry for handcuffing and arresting Henry at that time.”
Stone-cold corporate “we”. As Chief he personally doesn’t have to apologise? Pathetic.

Yet in the Chris Kaba case he rushed out a personal video:
“Firstly, I would like to offer my heartfelt condolences to the family of Chris Kaba. I can’t begin to imagine what they’re going through.”
Personal “I”, full emotion for the Black suspect.

Why the two-tier condolences, Chief?

White victims get the soulless brush-off while others get the heartfelt treatment?

Disgraceful double standard.

#TwoTierPolicing #TwoTierBritain #JusticeForHenry #HampshirePolice #AlexisBoon

[Chinook Crew Chick @chinnychick]

😔💔😢

[Chas Lister @chasbite]

@BBCPolitics @bbclaurak Well done,@bbclaurak
How you kept your cool remains a mystery of your professionalism

The rest of us would’ve been smirking at the former FM as we suggest “ you’re ‘avin a larf!! ”

[Chas Lister @chasbite]

@jollygandt @BBCPolitics @brawday Anyone else smell strange AI from a foreign source?

[Suella Braverman @SuellaBraverman]

Henry Nowak was brutally murdered in Southampton, not very far from Fareham & Waterlooville.

But the police initially treated him like the aggressor simply because he was white. And his murderer, Asian.

Hampshire Police’s response has been wholly inadequate given that an innocent man was tragically killed and police officers very possibly put his life at risk.

To me, this looks like racism- against a white man.

I have written to Hampshire Police demanding that the body cam footage be released.

No cover ups.

Public confidence demands full transparency.

[Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson]

Well, @HantsPolice
Is it true it was two WOMEN officers who handcuffed and mocked Henry Nowak as he lay dying?
An eighteen-year-old student, helpless and treated like scum in his fear and panic.
Dear God.
No excuses.
Where is the bodycam footage?

[Robert Jenrick @RobertJenrick]

Since the murder of Henry Nowak there has been stony silence from the Government.

Not a peep from the Home Secretary.

Not a word from the Prime Minister who is normally quick to respond to deaths involving the police, both in the UK and abroad.

Remember the spectacle of him ‘taking the knee’ over George Floyd’s death? He won’t even say Henry Nowak’s name.

Henry’s death constituted a national scandal. An 18 year old, robbed of his future on a night out in Southampton after being brutally stabbed 6 times with a 21cm long ceremonial sword. Instead of helping him, the police initially arrested him as he bled to death after he was accused by his attacker of racial harassment. Henry was treated not as the victim, but as the criminal.

His murder could not have been more monstrous; the police response more shameful. 

So why has this appalling injustice been met with a collective shrug by politicians in Westminster? With the exception of a couple of us including Henry’s local MP, Jen Craft, it has not been raised in the House of Commons.

I asked the Home Secretary to launch an investigation into the police’s conduct and a debate on two-tier policing - needless to say I was rebuffed. 

The silence can be explained by the fact that most politicians are more interested in showing their supposed virtue by favouring minority communities at the expense of the majority. So they look away at injustices perpetrated by minorities, lest it colour the multicultural illusion they have that the country is a harmonious melting pot. And they ignore prejudiced laws and the conventions of so-called ‘anti-racism’ which lead to discrimination against the majority. 

The trial of Henry’s killer, Vickrum Digwa, may be over, but the questions are only just beginning.

Why did the police arrest Henry based on one allegation he had made a racial slur - something the prosecution described as a “wicked lie”?

Why was Henry’s handcuffing and arrest considered a priority for the police when he was in a critical condition?

Why do perceived racial sensitivities consistently appear to shape how the police enforce the law these days? 

The police have now apologised. But ‘sorry’ doesn’t cut it. Not remotely. Heads must roll for such a catastrophic failure. The bodycam footage must be released. And the police’s “anti-racist” training programmes need overhaul.

We can’t go back in time and undo what has been done. Henry’s family and friends will live with this forever.

But his tragic death should be a turning point. A clarion call for the authorities to act in a colour-blind way - treating people under the principle of equality before the law.

[Chas Lister @chasbite]

@JonA2i The state education system in the UK have questions to answer despite their ‘Best efforts’

[KeyserSosse @KeyserSosse]

30th May, 2009

Lance Corporal Nigel Moffett, aged 28 from Belfast, of The Light Dragoons, and Corporal Stephen Bolger, aged 30 from Cromer, of The Parachute Regiment, were killed by an explosion on patrol near Musa Qaleh, Helmand Province

Lest we Forget these brave men 🇬🇧

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Henry Said Please, Brother, I Can't Breathe. Nobody Took The Knee.

Henry Nowak lay bleeding to death in the middle of a Southampton street on December 4th 2025. He had been stabbed four times with an eight inch ceremonial knife by Vickrum Digwa, a man who had told arriving police officers that Henry had racially abused him. The officers believed the lie. They handcuffed the dying eighteen year old, ignored his pleas for help and placed him under arrest. His final words were please, brother, I can't breathe. He was pronounced dead at 12.37am.

Digwa has now been found guilty of murder. His mother hid the murder weapon. His father was at the scene. The prosecutor described the racism accusation as a wicked lie about a dying man. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary is under investigation by the police watchdog. The deputy chief constable has apologised. Henry Nowak's family will never be the same.

George Floyd died on May 25th 2020. He said I can't breathe as a police officer knelt on his neck. His death triggered global protests, the toppling of statues, a worldwide movement and politicians across the Western world taking the knee in solidarity. Keir Starmer took the knee. Angela Rayner took the knee. Premier League footballers took the knee. Corporate boards issued statements. Institutions commissioned reviews. The machinery of progressive outrage ran at full power for months.

Henry Nowak's final words were the same as George Floyd's. The institutional failure that produced his death was equally documented. The officers who handcuffed him while he bled internally did so because decades of anti-racism training had conditioned them to treat a racism accusation as the primary fact requiring response. His killer knew it and used it. The prosecutor called it his trump card.

No march. No knee. No statement from Starmer. No statement from Rayner. No institutional review of the anti-racism training that produced those officers' response. Elon Musk called it unconscionable and pledged legal action. The political establishment that mobilised for George Floyd has said nothing about Henry Nowak.

The question is not why George Floyd's death mattered. It did and the officer responsible was convicted of murder. The question is why Henry Nowak's death has produced silence from the same people, the same institutions and the same political movement that found their voice so readily in 2020.

The answer is not complicated. George Floyd's death could be made to serve the progressive narrative. Henry Nowak's cannot. His killer deployed the progressive framework, the racism accusation, as the instrument of murder. His case does not vindicate the ideology of anti-racism training. It exposes it. A young man died because the officers sent to save him had been so thoroughly conditioned by that ideology that they handcuffed him on the word of the man who had just stabbed him.

The same long march through the institutions that produced a National Police Chiefs Council declaring structural and institutional discrimination operates at all levels within British policing, a Police Race Action Plan embedding anti-racism training across every force in England and Wales, a Louise Casey report condemning the Metropolitan Police as institutionally racist and a College of Policing that redesigned its entire disciplinary framework around racial sensitivity has produced officers so conditioned by that ideology that they handcuffed a dying eighteen year old boy because his killer said the magic word. The training worked. That is the most disturbing observation of all.

Henry was a soft gentle soul who lit up a room. He was eighteen years old. He said please, brother, I can't breathe. He deserved better than the ideology that killed him and the silence that followed.

"The answer is not complicated. George Floyd's death could be made to serve the progressive narrative. Henry Nowak's cannot."

[KeyserSosse @KeyserSosse]

Remembering the legend Lieutenant Colonel H Jones VC OBE

Killed in action on 28th May, 1982 during The Battle of Goose Green

Lest we forget "H" and the brave men who fell and were injured too at Goose Green 🇬🇧🙏

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Keir Starmer Published His Rebuttal to Tony Blair Today. He Should Have Checked the Energy Bills First.

Tony Blair does not deploy the word "delusional" carelessly. Writing this week, the only Labour leader to have won three consecutive majorities, described his successor's government as suffering from an almost infinite capacity for self-delusion and lacking a coherent plan. It is the sharpest intervention in British politics this year. Starmer responded today with a Substack essay. He should have read his own energy brief before he published it.

The essay is accomplished. The structure is disciplined. The personal passage about his late brother is well-judged and clearly sincere. On the deficit between Blair's era and his own inheritance, he makes fair points. But the piece has a problem that no amount of political fluency can paper over. It describes a Britain that does not exist.

Starmer claims the British economy is outperforming its G7 peers. He claims that investing in clean energy is strengthening Britain's agency over energy markets and taking control of bills on behalf of working people. He invokes Jensen Huang of Nvidia as evidence that Britain is on the cusp of becoming an AI superpower. He says North Sea oil and gas will remain part of Britain's energy mix for generations.

Britain has 1.5 days of gas in reserve. Energy bills rose by £200 before the Iran war started, against Miliband's pre-election promise of bills £300 cheaper. They rise a further 13 percent in July, adding £220 to the average household's annual bill. OpenAI paused a £31 billion data centre investment eight weeks ago, citing his government's energy costs specifically. And on the same evening that Labour MPs were whipped to vote against new North Sea licences, his government quietly issued a trade licence permitting the import of diesel and jet fuel derived from Russian crude oil. That licence, GBSAN0004, is not time-limited as ministers suggested. It is of indefinite duration.

Starmer argues that North Sea oil has no discernible impact on the global price of oil and gas and is a depleting resource. Both things are partially true and together they are deployed to justify a policy that has left Britain more exposed to global energy markets than any comparable nation. The argument that domestic production cannot affect the global price is an argument against energy security, not for it. Norway, drawing from the same geology, has built the world's largest sovereign wealth fund on a resource Starmer describes as strategically irrelevant.

The most telling passage in the essay is the one on artificial intelligence. Starmer writes that Britain is widely recognised as a growing and sovereign AI player and that investment is flowing into the country. He does not mention OpenAI. He does not mention that Ofgem has warned that the data centres required for AI will demand more energy than the entire country currently consumes. He does not mention that Britain's industrial electricity prices are among the highest in the developed world. He cites the Nvidia chief executive and moves on.

Blair's charge was not that Starmer lacks values or effort. It was that the government lacks a coherent plan and that Labour has a historic tendency to mistake activity for strategy. Starmer's rebuttal lists activity. It counts childcare savings and NHS waiting list reductions and interest rate cuts. What it cannot do is explain why, in the middle of the worst energy crisis since 1973, Britain has 1.5 days of gas, the highest wholesale energy prices in Europe and an Energy Secretary who opened the door to Russian oil on the same night he closed the North Sea.

Blair called it self-delusion. Today's essay does not refute that charge. It illustrates it.

[Chas Lister @chasbite]

@JonA2i I assume it’s the OSD for the regular training role

[Chas Lister @chasbite]

@JonA2i Do we know why the T2 is a 2034 In service date ?

[Chas Lister @chasbite]

@JonA2i One of the reasons the government refuses to get involved in the Gulf is the inevitable outpouring of UORs which would accelerate all these semi complete projects in a jiffy eg W’Tl

If Trump had simply waited for Iran to attack the US he could’ve invoked article Five!!