Recognition

Live facial recognition it is, then. To be used by those who were eight times more likely to stripsearch black children, the same ones repeatedly in 30 per cent of cases, and by whom black children were also disproportionately likely to be handcuffed, Tasered, or shot. Shot.

And having been bought in from those who had perfected it in the Gaza to which Pope Francis had bequeathed his popemobile in order to turn it into a mobile clinic for children. A year after his death, that vehicle has been so refitted that it could provide vaccinations and trauma care to 200 children per day. Yet it remains on display in a glass case outside an ice cream parlour owned by the Church in Bethlehem. Those who will be recognising all of our faces refuse to allow it into Gaza.

In the United States, those old clients of Peter Mandelson, in whom Jeffrey Epstein had invested and who had unrecorded meetings with Keir Starmer while Mandelson was Ambassador to Washington, feed data from the Department of Health and Human Services to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In Britain, as well as a £240 million military contract that was granted by direct award, they already provide the NHS Federated Data Platform right when Shabana Mahmood was setting up her own National Police Service.

Neither Mahmood nor Wes Streeting, whose correspondence with Mandelson bespoke a very close relationship indeed, should be allowed anywhere the Leadership of anything. There must be no question of the digital ID that was being proposed, in partnership with all of the foregoing, by the Tony Blair Institute, which is the Institute of the man whose Political Director and Spokesperson for the first five years after he left office was Matthew Doyle, and which is the Institute of the only British member of the Board of Peace of Donald Trump, that head of an insider trading syndicate based on peace and war, life and death.

And therefore, while the ban on smartphones in schools is welcome, there must be no ban on social media for the under-16s, which could not work without digital ID for everyone, and which would deny adolescents the formative experience of their generation internationally, together with any ideology other than that of the schools and of the Epstein Class media.

Happy Saint George's Day

Like Saint Andrew's Day, Saint David's Day and Saint Patrick's Day, today ought to be a public holiday throughout the United Kingdom. Yes, that was a Labour manifesto commitment in 2017 and in 2019. But even then, I had been saying it for more than 20 years. Admittedly, that was also true of several other things that were in the Labour manifestos of 2017 and 2019. Saint David's Day, Saint Patrick's Day and Saint George's Day are all in these Islands' incomparable spring and early summer, while a public holiday throughout the United Kingdom on Saint Andrew's Day would at least go some way to precluding anything to do with Christmas before 1 December. Away with pointless celebrations of the mere fact that the banks were on holiday.

It is amazing how many people assume that because there is a legend about Saint George, then he himself must be a purely legendary figure. He is not. The Tomb of Saint George has become a shadow of its former self in his maternal hometown, which is now known as Lod, and which is the location of Israel's principal airport. But at what those involved insist is also his birthplace against the stronger claims of Cappadocia, it was once a major focus of unity between Christians and Muslims in devotion to the Patron Saint of Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt before, and as much as, the Patron Saint of England and a very large number of other places. But three quarters of those who practised that devotion were violently expelled in 1948. On what remains, see here.

Saint George's Flag goes back to the fourteenth century in England, although it is far older than that in many other places, having been the ensign of the Republic of Genoa from perhaps as early as the tenth century. The King of England had to pay an annual tribute to the Doge of Genoa for the protection that flying it afforded to English ships in the Mediterranean. But in England, it had long fallen into almost complete desuetude until 30 years ago.

Before Euro 96, although nearly everyone incorrectly called it something else, the English regarded the Union Flag as their national flag without any complication. It was not even a question. In my childhood, no one would have had any idea what Saint George's Flag was outside certain ecclesiastical circles that were obscure even in the 1980s, but around which I did happen to grow up. The 1966 World Cup Final is probably on YouTube. Check which flag most of the English fans were waving. The present Medieval revival was initiated 30 years later, which was in my adult lifetime, to sell bad beer to football's new middle-class audience, who were the only people who could still afford the tickets. Or the beer, for which we should substitute the products of the Taybeh Brewing Company. That revival predates devolution or anything like that. But we do have it now. It can be used to advantage.

For example, 1 April was the second anniversary of the deaths of James Kirby, James Henderson and John Chapman. While those British veterans were unarmed and delivering humanitarian aid, the Israeli Defense Forces bombed them three times to make sure that they were dead, using British-made Elbit Hermes 450 drones, and using intelligence from the over 600 nightly reconnaissance missions flown for the Israelis, yet free of charge to them, from RAF Akrotiri. From today, raise in their honour both the Union Flag and the Palestinian flag, flanking in England the flag of the Patron Saint both of England and of Palestine, as well as of the Lebanon where his statues were being demolished by the IDF in what one can only assume to be an expression of the same Judeo-Christian values that caused the IDF to desecrate and destroy the calvaire of the almost entirely Maronite Catholic village of Debel. The IDF claims to have replaced it, but that replacement has been by the Italians serving with UNIFIL. The UNIFIL against which the IDF has been known to deploy a chemical weapon.

For The Despatch

Dan Carden has just been on Newsnight, saying that Olly Robbins should not have been sacked. Keir Starmer, “will take us into the local elections, when the public will be consulted.” Ouch.

What reason did Starmer give the King to prorogue Parliament? Unless it was to avoid the Ukrainian rentboys trial that will begin on Monday, then it was a lie. That would put us back in September 2019, and it would once again be time to #StopTheCoup.

Conversations About Other Roles

What job would you give Matthew Doyle, and why? Jonathan Brash has been on GB News to call for Keir Starmer to resign, while on The World at One, Polly Billington refused three times to say that she trusted Starmer’s judgement. Starmer has lost even Peter Mandelson’s giant, handpicked intake of 2024. Including, in Brash, Mandelson’s latest successor as the MP for Hartlepool. And it’s still only Wednesday.

Yet there will be no Prime Minister’s Questions next week, or indeed at all before the King’s Speech on 13 May. Parliament is to be prorogued next Tuesday, one day into the Old Bailey trial of Roman Lavrynovych, Petro Pochynok and Stanislav Carpiuc. When it came to drugged up arson on empty buildings that the attackers could not identify, then how much is there? A lot, I expect. But there is nothing else like this.

Even before Donald Trump took out their rivals, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had vast interests in energy, engineering, construction, shipbuilding, automation and telecommunications, and enormous influence over the bonyads, which are fabulously rich and economically pivotal religious charities. This small fry stuff is just not them. Disgruntled Ukrainian rentboys, on the other hand. So to speak. Except that the fry is not small when it is the Prime Minister.

Wisdom and Hope

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea is arguably the worst dictator in Africa today.

The Holy Father delivered this, with the English translation here, not merely in his presence, but directly to him.

Donald who?

Smoke Alarm

That 17-year-old had no idea what Hebrew script or a menorah was. He just fancied setting fire to an empty building in the middle of the night for a laugh. Was he on drugs? Heaven forfend. And how common is this? Many people might be very surprised, since most of these incidents never made the news, as in itself would be a story.

But the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the big winner from Donald Trump's intervention in an Iran where that Corps had previously faced significant rival powerbases, does not go around paying teenagers to throw bottles of accelerant through windows with no one behind them. Even if it did, though, then why would it have any wish to do so in Britain, since this was "not our war"?

If it is firestarters that you want, then be at the Old Bailey from Monday 27 April, when the trial of Roman Lavrynovych, Petro Pochynok and Stanislav Carpiuc is due to start. Lavrynovych faces three charges of arson with intent to endanger life, while Pochynok and Carpiuc each face one count of conspiracy to commit the same.

The alleged targets were Keir Starmer's rented out house, his old flat from way back, and his old car that he had sold to a neighbour. Who would know that much about someone else? Certainly not a casual acquaintance. So this trial will either be the story of the year, or the story of the year will be the fact that it was not.

Stand Clear

It is not worth considering how much it would cost to automate the 163-year-old London Underground, and there would still have to be staff on board for safety purposes. If the existing staff were overpaid, then exactly how little ought they to be paid instead? And why, exactly?