mark longrigg

Hi All. Like horse racing, travel and love Bedlington Whippets.
Living a life of leisure and buying records.

[Meeeeee @DonnaDlm71]

Remember Cody Harper, charged with assaulting a female officer in Bham after he was assaulted himself?
Well the charge has been dropped, following review by CPS.
I hate to say i told you it was a terribly unfair arrest, at best) but it really was.
Good for Cody.

[Raja Miah @recusant_raja]

He Kissed Her On The Steps Of Number 10: The Image They Wanted You To See

On Monday afternoon Andy Burnham walked into Downing Street as Prime Minister and the cameras catch him working the crowd outside Number 10. In among the handshakes and hugs there's a kiss for Arooj Shah, until May the leader of Oldham Council. The footage went out live on national television.

I watched it and I wasn't surprised. That's the honest answer. Eight years of doing this and nothing about who stands next to whom surprises me any more. But I want you to look at that image properly, because everything I'm about to tell you sits in court reports and newspapers, on the Combined Authority's own website, and in her own mouth. I don't need to speculate and I never have.

The Record She Cannot Dispute
One of the men closest to her political operation was Mohammed Imran Ali. Everyone in this town calls him Irish Imy. In 2013 he was jailed for assisting Dale Cregan after driving him to a safe house. Cregan went on to murder PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes. The Manchester Evening News has repeatedly described Ali as the getaway driver for the police killer. He is a convicted heroin dealer who has spent most of his adult life inside, the MEN reported his recall to prison, and this year, conviction spent, he was reported to be standing for a council seat in Werneth.

Shah is regularly seen driving round the streets of the town in the passenger seat of a Bentley driven by her friend Irish Immy. I'll leave it to you to speculate where a convicted heroin dealer and viagra salesman who spent most of his adult life in prison got his wealth from.

Now here's the bit people outside Oldham struggle to believe. When Arooj Shah was asked about her relationship with this man, she didn't deny a word of it. She said she couldn't turn her back on people she'd known since childhood. The Spectator wrote this year that the friendship goes back decades. Her own brother is a convicted criminal, and she has acknowledged that herself, on her feet, in the council chamber.

Then there is Zia Hussain. He was convicted for nine years at Bradford Crown Court after admitting conspiracy to kidnap and assault. The court heard his victims were stripped and beaten and tortured with electric clamps and hot wax. When the police arrived, they found blood splattered all over the walls.

I published the photograph of Shah celebrating an election win alongside him. He was wearing a red Labour rosette. Council lawyers wrote to me. It makes no difference. The photograph didn't change. It's still there.

So that's the company. On the record, all of it.

The Man Who Leaned In
People will tell you Monday was only a crowd, that politicians hug people all day. No. At the Combined Authority, every council leader gets their policy brief handed to them personally by the Mayor. Burnham gave Shah the equalities portfolio in 2021. Oldham's voters threw her out of her seat in 2022 and the brief went elsewhere. She got back in during 2023 and Burnham handed it straight back, welcomed her by name in his own announcement as his lead for Equalities and Communities. Council papers show her still presenting work in that capacity through 2024. Then there's the Tackling Inequalities Board, which she chaired while Burnham sat as a member.

Her friendships were national news by then. The voters of St Mary's had already removed her once. Voters in Chadderton a second time. And Burnham looked at all of it, twice, and decided this was the person who should speak for equality across nearly three million people. In a city region where thousands of girls were raped while the institutions he presided over looked the other way.

Burnham didn't stumble into that kiss. He knows who Shah is. With the National Inquiry coming to Oldham, he knows he needs her help.

Why This Belongs Inside The Inquiry
Here's what eight years in this town has taught me. Power in towns like Oldham is assembled through networks. Those networks mobilise votes, and political leaders reward the people who control them with access and influence.

The girls had no network. Nobody delivered anything for them, so nobody in authority ever had a single reason to fear the cost of ignoring them.

The question the inquiry must now answer is whether that influence also bought protection while children were being failed. It has been told to look at police failure and safeguarding failure. Nobody has told it to look at the relationships between political leaders and the people who put them where they are. Monday's photograph is the reason it must.

The former leader of the first town selected for local investigation, who repeatedly voted to prevent a national inquiry and is herself incriminated in Operation Hexagon, wrapped in an embrace by the new Prime Minister, in front of the world, while the record of who stood behind her career sits in the law reports waiting for anyone bothered enough to read it.

Burnham was Mayor while Oldham's children waited for justice. Shah was a political leader he elevated while questions about her associations were already in public view. Both must now be compelled to give evidence under oath. The kiss lasted a second. The relationship behind it took years to build.

I've watched Labour politicians and Pakistanis like Shah nibble samosas and embrace each other for eight years. But this time it is different. This time they did it on the steps of Number 10.

__________

We Did Not Come This Far To Kneel At The Gates Of Number 10.

The campaign to expose the cover up of the industrial scale gang rape of little White girls by bloc postal vote supplying clans of Pakistani men has never depended on the powerful giving us permission.

Just look how we forced a national statutory inquiry that the establishment did everything possible to prevent.

Now comes the harder fight. We must force the national inquiry to call Burnham to account for what happened on his watch. He must be made to answer for his role in the cover up. He must be forced to testify on Operation Hexagon.

As Prime Minister, he will use every tool of government to avoid it. He will have the lawyers, the advisers and the friendly newspapers.

It makes no difference. I have you.

If you believe Andy Burnham must answer for what was done under his authority, stand with me and support the campaign that will see politicians made to answer for what they did.

This is the link to my newsletter. Sign up now.
https://t.co/mZBZnScays

Raja Miah MBE

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

If someone is beat over the head 21 times with a hammer until dead… at her lunch table, there is no way on earth that can be mistaken for a fall or accident. I’m so fed up of misinformation & gaslighting.

[James J. Marlow @James_J_Marlow]

Israel has a special unit focused on eliminating every single man or woman directly involved in the October 7 massacres in Israel and those that held the hostages in Gaza.

They drive around Gaza in their brand new $200,000 flashy cars, but Israel is picking them off one by one.

[Dux Backup @DuxVul2]

The fact no one can find an online presence for him means the government spent a week scrubbing it before releasing his name

[Ronald Cross @RonaldCrossPeru]

Inglaterra descubre que si sigues atacando después de hacer un gol, puedes hacer incluso más goles.

[Robbie Moore MP @_RobbieMoore]

Quite unbelievable.

One of the very last acts of Keir Starmer as Prime Minister has been to reward one of the key blockers of an independent inquiry into grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation across Keighley and the wider Bradford District.

Meet Alison Lowe. She is Labour’s Deputy Mayor for Policing for West Yorkshire.

Keir Starmer made her a Baroness, placing her in the House of Lords, giving her the power to vote on all key national legislation going forward.

For years, Alison refused to back our campaign to get an independent inquiry into grooming gangs across the Bradford District, and only seemingly changed her mind once Baroness Casey’s audit was released on the 16th June 2025.

Alison failed to act when she held the power to do so on one of the biggest national scandals that has haunted communities like Keighley and the wider Bradford District for decades.

And now Alison has been rewarded for it by the Prime Minister with a place in the House of Lords.

It stinks. And it is nothing but a reward for failure and a huge smack in the face to all those victims and survivors who have campaigned for years to have their voices heard through an independent inquiry across the Bradford District.

[Toby Young @toadmeister]

Earlier today a @Guardian journalist sent me this query:

Dear Toby Young,

I'm Aisha Down, a journalist at the Guardian. I'm getting in touch because we're planning to report that the US state department is considering a grant of $5m to Free Speech Union, your organisation, as part of a new grant-making scheme, and wanted to give you the chance to comment. We would appreciate receiving your comment by 14:30.

We are considering reporting the following:

- The grant to the FSU is part of a package to Maga aligned groups that former US officials have condemned as a misuse of public money to seek influence over foreign politics and interfere with democracy.

- It is rare for the US government to fund partisan political organisations in western countries.

- These grants are likely to pose a challenge to Andy Burnham, who has said he will be "very upfront" with Trump about any disagreements.

- These grants - including to your organisation - are "sole source" grants, meaning they are to be awarded without any competitive process. This is unusual for a highly regulated process which usually requires grantees to show they have a track record for handling funds and clear plans for the money.

- This lack of process has been criticised as "outrageous and absurd" by former US officials, and as "gross incompetence" and "horrible stewardship" of US taxpayer money.

- Your organisation does not appear to have a track record of handling grants of this amount.

- We describe your organisation as "a rallying point for “anti-woke” grievance" which "frequently allies itself with rightwing causes" and say that you, Toby Young, appeared on Rees-Mogg's GB news show earlier this month to warn about 'Soviet-style' censorship in the UK.

- The state department says that its grant to FSU will “support campaigns promoting free speech and countering digital overregulation across the UK, Europe and Australia”. The sole-source award is justified “due to FSU’s global network of free speech activists”.

We would like to fully and fairly reflect your point of view and look forward to your statement. Thank you,

--
Aisha Kehoe Down
Senior Tarbell Fellow,
Guardian News and Media

I replied as follows:

It sounds like a pretty garbled story.

Free Speech Union International, which is the umbrella group that FSU UK, FSU Australia, FSU New Zealand, FSU Canada, FSU South Africa and FSU Brazil sit within, has expressed interest in applying for grant funding from the US State Department. This would be to promote the right to freedom of expression in those countries, which, far from being a partisan cause, is a universal human right. But it hasn't submitted a formal application and, consequently, has been awarded no grant from the State Department or any other branch of the US Government.

You've mischaracterised the FSUs, all of which are non-partisan organisations that defend people who get into trouble for exercising their right to feee speech regardless of their political views. The FSU UK, for instance, is currently paying for the legal defence of a protestor who's being prosecuted for holding up a sign saying "I support Palestine Action", as well as a protestor for wearing a t-shirt at a Unite the Kingdom rally for saying "Fuck Islam Christ is King". Yes, we helped Lucy Connolly appeal her sentence -- we thought a prison sentence of over two-and-a-half years for a single tweet was excessive -- but we also tweeted yesterday, condemning the arrest of Heather Herbert and offering our support. Yes, we came to the defence of Nigel Farage when he was debanked, but we've also offered to help the Canary in its recent debanking case. So to describe the FSU UK as a "rallying point for anti-woke grievance" is misleading. We are a rallying point for those who want to defend the right to freedom of expression.

Best,

Toby

The @Guardian then ran this story:

https://t.co/1l4K0PABvM

You be the judge of whether you think this is good journalism.

[Fatbaldbloke @Fatbaldbloke1]

Morning Shitkickers 👋 Rare photo emerges of Andy Burnham with his hand in his own pocket.

[mark longrigg @marklongrigg]

@FlashForFreedom Where is it again?

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Aren’t you the minister for safeguarding women against violence?
And you have to apologise for what you tweeted after a fellow female politician was violently murdered?
Isn’t that a resigning matter?

[mark longrigg @marklongrigg]

@Anita_J_P @PaulPitt1967 @SamuelJJack2 @elbow112 @ChampMcCall RIP Top chap on here

[WeGotitBack 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🇺🇸 @NotFarLeftAtAll]

Justice for Once

Former soldier Matt Styler was cleared of assaulting a police officer during protests in Southampton following Henry Nowak’s death.

Matt Styler, 50, of Orange Grove in Gosport walked free after a brief hearing at Southampton Crown Court.
Styler, a former member of the Parachute Regiment, had previously denied assaulting the officer.

[mark longrigg @marklongrigg]

@Jonfanti Great tip!

[SHAY ✨🇺🇸✨ @Shaykay1717]

Happy Saturday Y’all !!!

This one is my favorite 🫵🏻 👍🏻 😂

[mark longrigg @marklongrigg]

@Jonfanti PP 14 too

[Football Tweet ⚽ @Footballtweet]

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🗣️ ”Someone in Scotland is letting their country down massively.”

You can't disagree with a single word Ian Wright says here.

[mark longrigg @marklongrigg]

@_JIBBER_JABBER_ Last to first!

[mark longrigg @marklongrigg]

@ClammyWynette1 Good luck and smash it!

[mark longrigg @marklongrigg]

@ClammyWynette1 Got some serious girth at the base!