Catherine 💙

Not compelled to put all thoughts out there

[Catherine 💙 @mcgurkcath]

@JocksterDJ Definitely thinking about it 😱😂

[Catherine 💙 @mcgurkcath]

@DavidW63 @WiltsAnnabelle Good point!

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

King Charles inherited £650m tax free, gets £354m a year tax free from the tax payer including £132m personal spending money and has an estate worth £22bn that’s never taxed.

Like if he needs a pay cut.
RT if you want the Monarchy gone.

#NotmyKing

[erkan ☪️🇹🇷🇮🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇸🇿🇦🇵🇸🍉 @ErkanYalnErkan2]

🔴Husam Abu Safia is one of 95 doctors sentenced to death by Israel.

His only “crime” was treating and caring for the wounded people of Gaza—people Israel wants dead.

If you don’t want to watch him face execution, share this.

[Sir Norman of Nowhere. 🏴‍☠️ @Normanjam67]

When do they start attacking firefighters for putting out the fires in the wrong houses, or paramedics for helping the wrong sort of people.
This shit with the RNLI is only the beginning unless we stop it.

[Catherine 💙 @mcgurkcath]

@even_thorizon @WulfrunianChris @Carriegusewize Excellent point

[Dr Ahmad Rehan Khan @AhmadRehanKhan]

Elon Musk called The Economist's Editor-in-Chief "a traitor to the West" after a tough interview. For someone who brands himself a free speech absolutist, attacking a respected journalist over difficult questions looks deeply hypocritical.

[Alonso Gurmendi @Alonso_GD]

Meaning they are *not* “illegal migrants” but legal refugees. What kind of reporting is this lol

[Tadhg @TadhgHickey]

Look at their faces. These kids were just sentenced as terrorists and jailed for 22 years. Brits never not at it

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany needed compliant judges to provide a legal veneer to their darkest crimes.

Judge Johnson joins their wretched company. He overturned a jury's conviction of four anti-genocide activists for criminal damage and sentenced them as terrorists instead.

As one their barristers pointed out, the four defendants were initially arrested by police on suspicion of involvement in an act of terrorism. But the prosecution decided not to charge them with terrorism offences because it knew no jury would ever convict them based on the evidence.

Instead the Crown held two trials: a sham one for the jury, and the real one conducted in secret by the judge. That is not justice. It is a show trial worthy of the worst tyrannical regimes.

[nazir afzal @nazirafzal]

Black people are
9 times more likely to be stopped & 7 times more likely to die following police restraint
Twice as likely to be arrested on SAME EVIDENCE
There have been 800+UK Chief Constables,1 was Black
There is a Race issue in Policing & it ain’t the one being protested over

[Oli Dugmore @OliDugmore]

As a minimum, we should scrap interest charged on student debt

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Lady in blue, "Will student loans be the next misselling scandal?" #BBCQT

Oli Dugmore, "My three year course, £9,000 a year for the tuition, on top of that a maintenance loan, I left uni with £37,500 of debt"

"From the day I was charged RPI interest"

"Since I went to uni in 2012, the amount of interest I have accrued is £32,000"

"Was it missold to me when I was told it would cost me £9,000 a year? Yes"

"On top of that its a regressive system"

"If you're wealthy enough to pay the fees up front, you don't get charged interest - if you're rich enough you don't pay the same as me"

"The government changed the terms of the agreement, I call that loan sharking"

Fiona Bruce, "How else would you pay for university?"

Oli Dugmore, "How did you guys pay for it?"

"The state paid for it, didn't they?"

Fiona Bruce, "They did"

Oli Dugmore, "Good enough for you, good enough for me?"

[Matt Kennard @kennardmatt]

They are trying to Russiagate the Epstein files

We have the most braindead commentariat in world

Literal quote from FBI source: “Epstein was close to the former PM of Israel, Ehud Barak and trained as a spy under him”

Marr is running interference here. Our media is compromised

[Catherine 💙 @mcgurkcath]

@lucydahlia @AndyBurnhamGM It is also very stupid and cowardly of him and his “allies”. Labour will not win that seat now, but I doubt they care as long as Starmer isn’t threatened.

[Defend Our Juries @DefendOurJuries]

These are not people serving sentences. They are people awaiting trial. And yet the conditions they describe – prolonged pre-trial detention, restrictions on communication, isolation – are indistinguishable from punishment.

This is where the danger of elastic language becomes tangible. Because when criminalisation is allowed to operate without precision, the process itself becomes the penalty.

https://t.co/6jMepqYAPE

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

Yesterday, I visited my constituent, Amu Gib, who has been detained in HMP Bronzefield without trial since July.

Amu is now on Day 39 of their hunger strike, yet there is complete silence across our mainstream media.

This is an emergency. They must be granted bail, now.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Review judge pulled from Palestine Action hearing at last hour, in patent stitch-up:

The High Court judge who granted a legal challenge to the government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action – the first time in British history a civil-disobedience organisation has been declared a terrorist group, one now treated as on a par with al-Qaeda – has been removed at the last minute.

The judicial review hearing is due to start tomorrow without Justice Martin Chamberlain. He will be replaced with a panel of three judges.

Justice Chamberlain did not suffer any timetabling conflicts. The Justice Ministry declined to offer any explanation for such a highly irregular change.

The outcome of the case will affect thousands of ordinary British citizens who have opposed the government’s anti-democratic proscription decision. They currently face jail sentences, and terrorism convictions, for holding placards saying: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

Some oppose proscription because they believe civil disobedience of the kind used by Palestine Action, which targets arms factories supplying Israel with weapons used to slaughter Palestinian children, is the only effective way to put pressure on the government to stop colluding in the Gaza genocide.

Others hope to make the proscription unenforceable through mass defiance and thereby salvage one of the most fundamental democratic rights – the right to protest – from government assault.

Notably, this is not the first time Justice Chamberlain, who is noted for his independence, has been removed unexpectedly from a judicial review hearing in an Israel-related case. Earlier this year, he was replaced by two other judges after he granted a legal challenge to the government’s continuing sale of parts for F-35 jets to Israel, despite the fighter plane’s use in the killing of many tens of thousands of civilians and the destruction of more than 80 per cent of all buildings in Gaza.

A panel of three judges will now sit in place of Justice Chamberlain.

Dame Victoria Sharp is a from a family with extensive and close ties to the Conservative party. She is the twin sister of Richard Sharp, who was appointed chair of the BBC Board by Boris Johnson, after Sharp had helped secured the Tory prime minister a £800,000 loan. Sharp was later forced to resign. Victoria Sharp is best known for jailing climate activists involved in peaceful protest and for forcing journalist Carole Cadwalladr to pay Brexit donor Aaron Banks £1 million in legal fees after he sued for libel.

Dame Karen Steyn was one of two judges who replaced Justice Chamberlain in the F-35 hearing. She and Justice Males ruled in Israel’s favour, even while accepting that Israel could use F-35s in Gaza in violation of international law.

Sir Jonathan Swift, meanwhile, has a long history of siding with the British state – for eight years he was the government’s top lawyer. In 2023 Swift rejected the appeal of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange against the British government’s approval of his extradition to the US for exposing US and UK war crimes. The US wanted to lock him up indefinitely in a super-max prison.

Through class affiliation, upbringing, education and selection for temperament, senior judges invariably have a bias towards the interests of the British establishment. But some have a stronger bias than others.

It is not hard to understand why Chamberlain has been removed. His earlier rulings on Palestine Action’s proscription indicated that it might be difficult for him to rule in favour of the government.

It is also clear why he is being replaced by three new judges. Backing the government’s redefinition of terrorism – leading almost certainly to the jailing of former senior military personnel, barristers, doctors, priests, Holocaust survivors, and a former adviser to King Charles, all of whom who have publicly supported Palestine Action – risks looking like precisely what it is: a political decision in favour of lawlessness by the British state.

Having a ruling from a panel of three judges is a desperate attempt to create a veneer of judicial authority in support of the actions of an outlaw government.

It won’t work. This already looks like a self-evident stitch-up to extricate Sir Keir Starmer and his ministers from the mess they have made of British terrorism laws – all so they can continue conspiring in Israel’s genocide.

[Catherine 💙 @mcgurkcath]

@RMSupportCS Yeah, not relevant to me

[Catherine 💙 @mcgurkcath]

@RoyalMailHelp Not helpful to hear as a B&B owner who is retiring and moving home that I can’t get mine and my families personal mail redirected. Waited one hour on the phone to basically be told computer says no! Terrible service