Thursday, 31 March 2022

Auntie Nadine

There have been, and there are, former Prime Ministers who have not been given studies of two hours' duration on the BBC, broadcast at nine o'clock on what used to be called terrestrial television.

Yet over this Tuesday and next, such is being accorded to Mary Whitehouse. The line is that while she was wrong on this or that individual issue, she was right in general, and Britain would have been a much better place today if she had won, but the metropolitan liberal elite ridiculed and no-platformed here in the cancel culture of its day. 

The main voice of dissent was David Sullivan, and he was jaw-dropping in his admission that pornographers had published their material as "sex education" in order to get around the law, exactly as she had been pilloried at the time for having said. Of course, everyone has always known that. But it is now a matter of record.

Meanwhile, a quarter of the BBC's staff are to be from working-class backgrounds by 2027. As you laughed all you liked at Mrs Whitehouse, so you can laugh all you like at Nadine Dorries, but she has put the fear of God into the BBC and its circle. One in four of its staff will now have to come from the working class, which is only a start but which is at least that, and the official line is now that Mary Whitehouse was right.

The Adrian Hilton Challenge: Day 235

Adrian Hilton, I had to Google you, and I still have little or no idea who you are, so when, exactly, have I ever "stalked" you at all, much less "for longer than [you] care to remember"? 

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Chris Grieve Watch: Day 165


I have never heard of you, and I was not in Durham that Thursday evening. Or any evening in that period. I was on a tag.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Adam Langleben Watch: Day 165


I have never heard of you, and "JLM" sounds like a pop group, although not one with which I have ever communicated.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Labour Candidate Watch: Day 196

196 days after the Cabinet reshuffle that called a General Election for May 2023 (even if it may or may not now have been put back a year), there is still no Labour candidate at North West Durham, which in 2019 Labour lost for the first time and by only 1,144 votes.

By contrast, I have been a candidate for North West Durham at the next General Election since even before the last one, fighting to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.  

Or contact nwdclp.campaigns@gmail.com if you wanted permanent austerity at home, if you wanted forever war abroad, and if you did not want a mixed-race MP for this seat. This post will appear daily until someone had proven to be so pro-austerity, so pro-war, and so racist, that even the Labour Party was sufficiently impressed.

The Oliver Kamm Challenge: Day 235

Oliver Kamm, whose signature to this do you claim that I forged? Name the name.

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever been found to have accused anyone of child abuse?

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever called for anyone to be murdered?

And Oliver Kamm, since I am a declared and active candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, are you? If not, why not?

I could go on at very great length, but these questions will do for now.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 235

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 235

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

Since, as private citizens, none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West DurhamI invite each and all of the 12 archbishops and diocesan bishops of the Red Wall dioceses of Birmingham, Hallam, Hexham and Newcastle, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Northampton, Nottingham, Salford, Shrewsbury, and Wrexham, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

And since none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West Durham, I invite each and all the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Franciscan Custos of the Holy Land, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchal Vicar in Jerusalem, the Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Maronite Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, the Syrian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem, and the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Amman, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

The scandalous allegation against me on 2nd March 2020 was recanted under oath at Durham Crown Court on 11th of that month, calling gravely into question my convictions the next day by exposing that key character witness as unreliable, a fact that was not mentioned in closing statements or in summation. Unless, as is widely assumed, the real reason for them is the content of this book, then the sanctions imposed upon me in my absence on 2nd March 2020 are void. I had not received a written apology by 30th September 2021, nor was any such thing to be published in full in The Northern Cross.

Financially, I would then have settled for the reimbursement of my victim surcharges. One would not wish to have to sue the Church. But while I am not yet in a position to act on it, I must now declare my intention in principle to do so. And if I were to be defeated at the next General Election, then I would seek to have that result overturned in the courts on grounds of undue spiritual influence by the Safeguarding Office of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, naming all relevant persons in the court papers. It has come to this.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Wednesday, 30 March 2022

Bound and Gagged

In a final admission that it is never going to win back North West Durham, the Labour Party has written to the Boundary Commission to call for the constituency to be abolished.

In the unlikely event that it ever came up with a candidate, then the first question would have to be, "Why do you want to be the MP for a seat that your party believes should not exist?"

The George Galloway Show

Beginning at 10 o’clock tonight, on George’s YouTube channel. It will quickly attract a seven figure audience, with viewers in more than 100 countries, like The Mother of All Talk Shows. George and I have had our differences, but it is not difficult to see why some people are his professional haters.

Could Oliver Kamm manage that? Could Nick Cohen do so? Could the other Hitchens brother have done so, the one who could not get famous in his own country and so had to take to the United States essentially the same florid Englishman act as Robin Leach’s in Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?

High Value?

A wedge of Michelle Mone's corrupt profits will be kicked back to the Conservative Party, if it has not already been so.

Such are the "high value donors" that the Labour Party bemoans its inability to attract, having been taken from healthy solvency under its last Leader to the brink of bankruptcy under this one.

Oh, My Darling?

It is the "first openly" that gets me thinking. Were Clement Attlee and Clementine Churchill ever seen in the same room at the same time?

Systematic Erosion

Hong Kong under British rule was no beacon of liberal democracy, but it may just about be possible to argue that that was a different time.

In this time, if British judges cannot remain on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal because they cannot enforce the National Security Law, then British judges must also be refusing, or preparing to refuse, to enforce the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act, the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act, the Nationality and Borders Bill, the Elections Bill, the Online Safety Bill, and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

Hong Kong would be better off without judges who did not make that stand, but lawyer Peers who had been valiant in opposition to those pieces of legislation might with credibility volunteer to replace those judges, and not only in Hong Kong.

Quite Contrary

The very BBC is now running a two-part documentary that may as well be called Mary Whitehouse Was Right All Along (Or At Least More Right Than Wrong), and the very Guardian is reviewing it favourably. 

The second part will already be on iPlayer, but I am old-fashioned enough to watch it on BBC Two at nine o'clock next Tuesday evening. That will take us through the 1970s and 1980s, when Mrs Whitehouse pioneered opposition to the Paedophile Information Exchange and to child pornography. Was she wrong? We have already had hints, with her prescient remarks about the general impact of pornography on women and children. Was she wrong about that, either?

As for Mrs Whitehouse's having been right-wing, well, she was a post-War Tory without being a party member, but she enlisted Lord Longford, Malcolm Muggeridge and Trevor Huddleston. She and Margaret Thatcher used each other in order to appeal to their respective bases, which did of course overlap quite a bit, but Thatcherism's free market ideology meant that little ever came of that ostensible alliance.

It was good to hear the admission of Hugh Carleton Greene's sheer vileness out of his own mouth. Everyone now knows what he was covering up, and that went on for a very long time. It is inconceivable that the decision not to charge someone as famous and as well-connected as Jimmy Savile was taken by anyone other than the then Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer. 

To stand as a Labour candidate at the next General Election would be to endorse that decision, raising serious questions about your own sexual interest in children. Any Labour candidate here at North West Durham would be asked those questions by me online, in print, on the airwaves, and on the stump.

Shared Destiny

At the eighth stop on an email line that begins with someone very grand in Washington, D.C., this, by Pepe Escobar, has reached me and, no doubt, tens of thousands of others:

Mariupol, the strategic Sea of Azov port, remains in the eye of the storm in Ukraine. The NATO narrative is that Azovstal – one of Europe’s biggest iron and steel works – was nearly destroyed by the Russian Army and its allied Donetsk forces who “lay siege” to Mariupol.

The true story is that the neo-Nazi Azov battalion took scores of Mariupol civilians as human shields since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, and retreated to Azovstal as a last stand. After an ultimatum delivered last week, they are now being completely exterminated by the Russian and Donetsk forces and Chechen Spetsnaz.

Azovstal, part of the Metinvest group controlled by Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, is indeed one of the biggest metallurgic plants in Europe, self-described as a “high-performance integrated metallurgical enterprise that produces coke and sinter, steel as well as high-quality rolled products, bars and shapes.”

Amidst a flurry of testimonials detailing the horrors inflicted by the Azov neo-Nazis on Mariupol’s civilian population, a way more auspicious, invisible story bodes well for the immediate future.

Russia is the world’s fifth largest steel producer, apart from holding huge iron and coal deposits. Mariupol – a steel Mecca – used to source coal from Donbass, but under de facto neo-Nazi rule since the 2014 Maidan events, was turned into an importer. Iron, for instance, started to be supplied from Krivbas in Ukraine, over 200 kilometers away.

After Donetsk solidifies itself as an independent republic or, via referendum, chooses to become part of the Russian Federation, this situation is bound to change.

Azovstal is invested in a broad product line of very useful stuff: structural steel, rail for railroads, hardened steel for chains, mining equipment, rolled steel used in factory apparatus, trucks and railroad cars. Parts of the factory complex are quite modern while some, decades old, are badly in need of upgrading, which Russian industry can certainly provide.

Strategically, this is a huge complex, right at the Sea of Azov, which is now, for all practical purposes, incorporated into the Donetsk People’s Republic, and close to the Black Sea. That implies a short trip to the Eastern Mediterranean, including many potential customers in West Asia. And crossing Suez and reaching the Indian Ocean, are customers all across South and Southeast Asia.

So the Donetsk People’s Republic, possibly part of the future Novorossiya, and even part of Russia, will be in control of a lot of steel-making capacity for southern Europe, West Asia, and beyond.

One of the inevitable consequences is that it will be able to supply a real freight railroad construction boom in Russia, China and the Central Asian ‘stans.’ Railroad construction happens to be the privileged connectivity mode for Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And, crucially, of the increasingly turbo-charged International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).

So, mid-term, Mariupol should expect to become one of the key hubs of a boom in north-south routes – INSTC across Russia and linking with the ‘stans’ – as well as major BRI upgrades east-west and sub-BRI corridors.

Interlocked Eurasia

The INSTC’s main players are Russia, Iran and India – which are now, post-NATO sanctions, in advanced interconnection mode, complete with devising mechanisms to bypass the US dollar in their trade. Azerbaijan is another important INSTC player, yet more volatile because it privileges Turkey’s connectivity designs in the Caucasus.

The INSTC network will also be progressively interconnecting with Pakistan – and that means the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key BRI hub, which is slowly but surely expanding to Afghanistan. Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s impromptu visit to Kabul late last week was to advance the incorporation of Afghanistan to the New Silk Roads.

All that is happening as Moscow – extremely close to New Delhi – is simultaneously expanding trade relations with Islamabad. All three, crucially, are Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members.

So the grand North-South design spells out fluent connectivity from the Russian mainland to the Caucasus (Azerbaijan), to West Asia (Iran) all the way to South Asia (India and Pakistan). None of these key players have demonized or sanctioned Russia despite ongoing US pressures to do so.

Strategically, that represents the Russian multipolar concept of Greater Eurasian Partnership in action in terms of trade and connectivity – in parallel and complimentary with BRI because India, eager to install a rupee-ruble mechanism to buy energy, in this case is an absolutely crucial Russia partner, matching China’s reported $400 billion strategic deal with Iran. In practice, the Greater Eurasia Partnership will facilitate smoother connectivity between Russia, Iran, Pakistan and India.

The NATO universe, meanwhile, is congenitally incapable of even recognizing the complexity of the alignment, not to mention analyze its implications. What we have is the interlocking of BRI, INTSC and the Greater Eurasia Partnership on the ground – all notions that are regarded as anathema in the Washington Beltway.

All that of course is being designed amidst a game-changing geoeconomic moment, as Russia, starting this Thursday, will only accept payment for its gas in rubles from “unfriendly” nations.

Parallel to the Greater Eurasia Partnership, BRI, since it was launched in 2013, is also progressively weaving a complex, integrated Eurasian network of partnerships: financial/economic, connectivity, physical infrastructure building, economic/trade corridors. BRI’s role as a co-shaper of institutions of global governance, including normative foundations, has also been crucial, much to the despair of the NATO alliance.

Time to de-westernize

Yet only now the Global South, especially, will start to observe the full spectrum of the China-Russia play across the Eurasian sphere. Moscow and Beijing are deeply involved in a joint drive to de-westernize globalist governance, if not shatter it altogether.

Russia from now on will be even more meticulous in its institution-building, coalescing the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), the SCO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – a Eurasian military alliance of select post-Soviet states – in a geopolitical context of irreversible institutional and normative divide between Russia and the West.

At the same time, the Greater Eurasia Partnership will be solidifying Russia as the ultimate Eurasian bridge, creating a common space across Eurasia which could even ignore vassalized Europe.

Meanwhile in real life, BRI, as much as the INSTC, will be increasingly plugged into the Black Sea (hello, Mariupol). And BRI itself may even be prone to re-evaluation in its emphasis of linking western China to western Europe’s shrinking industrial base.

There will be no point in privileging the northern BRI corridors – China-Mongolia-Russia via the Trans-Siberian, and the Eurasian land bridge via Kazakhstan – when you have Europe descending into medieval dementia.

BRI’s renewed focus will be on gaining access to irreplaceable commodities – and that means Russia – as well as securing essential supplies for Chinese production. Commodity-rich nations, such as Kazakhstan and many players in Africa, shall become the top future markets for China.

In a pre-Covid loop across Central Asia, one constantly heard that China builds plants and high-speed railways while Europe at best writes white papers. It can always get worse.

The EU as occupied American territory is now descending, fast, from center of global power to the status of inconsequential peripheral player, a mere struggling market in the far periphery of China’s “community of shared destiny.”

Chris Grieve Watch: Day 164


I have never heard of you, and I was not in Durham that Thursday evening. Or any evening in that period. I was on a tag.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Adam Langleben Watch: Day 164


I have never heard of you, and "JLM" sounds like a pop group, although not one with which I have ever communicated.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Labour Candidate Watch: Day 195

195 days after the Cabinet reshuffle that called a General Election for May 2023 (even if it may or may not now have been put back a year), there is still no Labour candidate at North West Durham, which in 2019 Labour lost for the first time and by only 1,144 votes.

By contrast, I have been a candidate for North West Durham at the next General Election since even before the last one, fighting to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.  

Or contact nwdclp.campaigns@gmail.com if you wanted permanent austerity at home, if you wanted forever war abroad, and if you did not want a mixed-race MP for this seat. This post will appear daily until someone had proven to be so pro-austerity, so pro-war, and so racist, that even the Labour Party was sufficiently impressed.

The Adrian Hilton Challenge: Day 234

Adrian Hilton, I had to Google you, and I still have little or no idea who you are, so when, exactly, have I ever "stalked" you at all, much less "for longer than [you] care to remember"? 

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Oliver Kamm Challenge: Day 234

Oliver Kamm, whose signature to this do you claim that I forged? Name the name.

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever been found to have accused anyone of child abuse?

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever called for anyone to be murdered?

And Oliver Kamm, since I am a declared and active candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, are you? If not, why not?

I could go on at very great length, but these questions will do for now.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 234

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 234

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

Since, as private citizens, none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West DurhamI invite each and all of the 12 archbishops and diocesan bishops of the Red Wall dioceses of Birmingham, Hallam, Hexham and Newcastle, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Northampton, Nottingham, Salford, Shrewsbury, and Wrexham, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

And since none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West Durham, I invite each and all the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Franciscan Custos of the Holy Land, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchal Vicar in Jerusalem, the Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Maronite Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, the Syrian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem, and the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Amman, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

The scandalous allegation against me on 2nd March 2020 was recanted under oath at Durham Crown Court on 11th of that month, calling gravely into question my convictions the next day by exposing that key character witness as unreliable, a fact that was not mentioned in closing statements or in summation. Unless, as is widely assumed, the real reason for them is the content of this book, then the sanctions imposed upon me in my absence on 2nd March 2020 are void. I had not received a written apology by 30th September 2021, nor was any such thing to be published in full in The Northern Cross.

Financially, I would then have settled for the reimbursement of my victim surcharges. One would not wish to have to sue the Church. But while I am not yet in a position to act on it, I must now declare my intention in principle to do so. And if I were to be defeated at the next General Election, then I would seek to have that result overturned in the courts on grounds of undue spiritual influence by the Safeguarding Office of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, naming all relevant persons in the court papers. It has come to this.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Tuesday, 29 March 2022

Bullseye

A fixed penalty notice is £50.

You had to burn a £50 note in front of a homeless person to be let into the Bullingdon Club. You probably still do.

Regime, Change

"Denazification would mean regime change in Ukraine," says the BBC baldly. So Hunter Biden's laptop was real. The biolabs were real; Ukraine is now offering no longer to host American weapons of mass destruction. And now, the fact that the Ukrainian Government and Armed Forces are nests of Nazis is real, too. Just like that.

On the table after all are Crimea, not historically part of the Ukraine, and therefore full of Russians; Luhansk and Donetsk, which Ukrainian Nationalists would like rather more in theory than in practice, since those, too, are full of Russians, having been incorporated into Soviet Ukraine in order to make independence impossible; and constitutional neutrality. Had all of this been said five weeks ago, then there would never have been a war.

As it is, Ukraine has libelled the Red Cross, and the Peace Corps is advising African-American volunteers not to go there or to the refugee camps in neighbouring countries because the supporters of the Ukrainian Government would call them the n-word. And why would Vladimir Putin have poisoned Roman Abramovich? If anyone has, though, then that high-living 55-year-old has made a remarkably speedy recovery.

Museum Peace

Following the wonderful news about the reopening of the DLI Museum, the administration at County Hall in Durham ought also to right the injustice against the Teaching Assistants, and to restore all bus services that had been lost since May 2008, while also addressing the situation, which boggles the minds of visitors from other parts of the country, that the older person’s bus pass did not give free travel until the middle of the morning.

The Liberal Democrats lead that administration. The Conservatives are part of it, as are those Independents from whose ranks any Independent candidate other than me would be drawn at the next General Election here in North West Durham; any candidate of a smaller right-wing party would also probably move in those circles. The administration was installed on the vote of the only Green Councillor. 

Therefore, the Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Green candidates here, plus any other Independent or any candidate of a smaller right-wing party, could expect to be challenged by me both on the Teaching Assistants and on the bus services. But no longer on the DLI Museum. There is some good news after all.

Throws Up All Sorts

Anyone who does not give the one word answer "No" to the question "Can a woman have a penis?" is not a functioning adult.

Nor even a functioning child. Keir Starmer will have been just shy of two years old when he first saw his baby sister in the bath. He has therefore known the difference for 58 years. Moreover, he is married to a woman, and they have two children, one of each sex.

Yet he cannot give this simple question its very simple answer. He is clearly unfit to be Prime Minister. But what of the present Prime Minister? He has never even been asked, "Can a woman have a penis?" It is time that he was.

She Had No Authority There

I was a Parish Councillor for many years, and I have said this from the start about Jackie Weaver. She is everything that is wrong with this country.

The men whom she shut down were elected members. She was some sort of support staffer; it is not even clear why she was there.

But of course she took over, out of an overwhelming sense of her own entitlement, and out of a well-founded expectation of her own way.

That is what public sector middle-class women have been doing to Britain ever since the economic changes of Thatcherism created them as a class.

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was a partial exception, so look what they did to him. Mind you, he let them.

Chris Grieve Watch: Day 163


I have never heard of you, and I was not in Durham that Thursday evening. Or any evening in that period. I was on a tag.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Adam Langleben Watch: Day 163


I have never heard of you, and "JLM" sounds like a pop group, although not one with which I have ever communicated.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Labour Candidate Watch: Day 194

194 days after the Cabinet reshuffle that called a General Election for May 2023 (even if it may or may not now have been put back a year), there is still no Labour candidate at North West Durham, which in 2019 Labour lost for the first time and by only 1,144 votes.

By contrast, I have been a candidate for North West Durham at the next General Election since even before the last one, fighting to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.  

Or contact nwdclp.campaigns@gmail.com if you wanted permanent austerity at home, if you wanted forever war abroad, and if you did not want a mixed-race MP for this seat. This post will appear daily until someone had proven to be so pro-austerity, so pro-war, and so racist, that even the Labour Party was sufficiently impressed.

The Adrian Hilton Challenge: Day 233

Adrian Hilton, I had to Google you, and I still have little or no idea who you are, so when, exactly, have I ever "stalked" you at all, much less "for longer than [you] care to remember"? 

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Oliver Kamm Challenge: Day 233

Oliver Kamm, whose signature to this do you claim that I forged? Name the name.

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever been found to have accused anyone of child abuse?

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever called for anyone to be murdered?

And Oliver Kamm, since I am a declared and active candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, are you? If not, why not?

I could go on at very great length, but these questions will do for now.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 233

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 233

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

Since, as private citizens, none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West DurhamI invite each and all of the 12 archbishops and diocesan bishops of the Red Wall dioceses of Birmingham, Hallam, Hexham and Newcastle, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Northampton, Nottingham, Salford, Shrewsbury, and Wrexham, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

And since none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West Durham, I invite each and all the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Franciscan Custos of the Holy Land, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchal Vicar in Jerusalem, the Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Maronite Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, the Syrian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem, and the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Amman, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

The scandalous allegation against me on 2nd March 2020 was recanted under oath at Durham Crown Court on 11th of that month, calling gravely into question my convictions the next day by exposing that key character witness as unreliable, a fact that was not mentioned in closing statements or in summation. Unless, as is widely assumed, the real reason for them is the content of this book, then the sanctions imposed upon me in my absence on 2nd March 2020 are void. I had not received a written apology by 30th September 2021, nor was any such thing to be published in full in The Northern Cross.

Financially, I would then have settled for the reimbursement of my victim surcharges. One would not wish to have to sue the Church. But while I am not yet in a position to act on it, I must now declare my intention in principle to do so. And if I were to be defeated at the next General Election, then I would seek to have that result overturned in the courts on grounds of undue spiritual influence by the Safeguarding Office of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, naming all relevant persons in the court papers. It has come to this.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Beyond Reasonable Doubt?

Beyond Reasonable Doubt was the title of this week's Panorama.

But without even a parliamentary debate, much less legislation, jurors are now instructed to "disregard" the concept of conviction beyond reasonable doubt. Instead, they are instructed merely to ask themselves, "Are you sure?"

No one voted for this. When is there going to be a Panorama on it?

Opportunity For All

Until the 1980s, hardly anyone had any problem with Labour MPs, Ministers and Prime Ministers who sent their children to private schools. There has never been any Labour Party policy to abolish them, there have hardly ever been Labour Governments, and the ones that there have been have ignored private schools more or less completely. The hypocrisy on education in British politics is that of Conservative politicians who buy their own children out of what, again since the 1980s, has been their highly activist approach to state schools.

But we on the Left should welcome the opportunities presented by the Schools White Paper. It is in the running of state schools that the Liberal Establishment in academia and the media meets the right-wing Labour machine in local government. We ought to be bypassing the weedy brains of the Liberal Establishment and the brainless brawn of the municipal Labour Right, in order to secure the representation that had never been afforded by those who had presumed to speak for our people, but never to our people. Yes, that would indeed involve doing deals with the Tories. We could not possibly get less out of them than we had ever managed to get out of the Keir Starmers of the world.

Monday, 28 March 2022

Worth A Shot

Scrutiny at last of Ukraine, with even the BBC feeling compelled to ask about the shooting of conscripted teenage prisoners of war in the legs. Of course Russia is bad. But that does not make Ukraine good. It is not.

Also being mentioned is the status of Ukraine as the global centre of the surrogacy industry. Next up, one trusts, will be attention to its role in the trade in trafficked women. These two are not unconnected, and the present focus on Ukraine may be the opportunity to point that out.

Meanwhile, the whole thing is heading towards the settlement that Jeremy Corbyn and the Stop the War Coalition have advocated from the start. Ukraine says that it will want "guarantors", although based on the last month it may have trouble finding any. But Russia has its own lined up. China. And very probably India as well.

Black Eyes

Britain is home to people from every inhabited territory in the world, it is ethnically diverse down to every ward, and it has a huge and a rapidly growing mixed-race population. Yet people are reacting with genuine pain to the news that there might be anything worth knowing about Britain's role in the slave trade apart from "We ended it". They truly never knew. Even now, they struggle to believe.

Well, Chesterton said that some things were too big to see. Just as no known descendant of slavery on the North American continent has ever been either main party's nominee for President or Vice President, so no known descendant of the transatlantic slave trade that built the British Empire has ever been a Cabinet Minister in the British House of Commons. Think on.

How The Netherlands Became A Narco State

Senay Boztas writes:

A hit squad compared to a “well-oiled murder machine”. A lawyer and journalist shot on the streets of Amsterdam. A blasé approach to killing the wrong person — there’s even slang for every accidental victim: a vergismoord. Welcome to the Marengo trial, where 17 men stand accused of involvement in six murders, four attempted murders and preparing for six others between 2015 and 2017.

Fear hangs in the air around this court case, telling a tale of a country where the hydra of organised crime has so many heads that it is threatening the very rule of law. When the trial resumed this month, journalists were asked to sign agreements not to name judges or prosecutors, for fear of them being targeted. After reports that co-chief suspect Ridouan Taghi was planning a jailbreak, the streets around the fortified courtroom known as the Bunker are ringed with police cars and trained teams made up of police and soldiers.

The Marengo is only the latest in a series of organised crime trials to shake the Netherlands. This year, Dutch courts are also trying alleged criminal druglord Roger P., accused of turning shipping containers into an underworld prison, with its own gruesome “torture chamber”. Meanwhile, a Marengo side-trial involves motorbike club Caloh Wagoh members charged with shooting dead five people, preparing three other murders and “putting another seven people on the waiting list to be killed”.

“I call The Netherlands a ‘narco-state 2.0’,” says Jan Struijs, chairman of the Nederlandse PolitieBond police union. “We aren’t Mexico, with 14,000 dead bodies, but in our parallel economy, there is an attack on public order and unprecedented numbers of people with personal security — politicians, judges, prosecutors, police staff, journalists — because there is still a serious risk from organised crime. It is a huge problem, being tackled on every front, but we have a long way to go.”

Struijs first raised concerns that this small, well-connected trading nation has “characteristics of a narco-state” four years ago. At the time, there was a muted political response. But then the brother of the Marengo crown witness Nabil B was shot dead and the crown witness’s original lawyer, Dirk Wiersum, was gunned down outside his house. Finally, last July, celebrated crime reporter Peter R de Vries, who had unconventionally agreed to act as Nabil B’s representative, was shot in the head on a busy central Amsterdam street and died of his wounds.

Today, few would argue that increasingly violent crime has clawed its fingers deep into civil society. But as Lieselot Bisschop, criminologist at Erasmus School of Law in Rotterdam, points out, before you can combat the crime, it is important to understand who is involved and how. She and a team of researchers have been looking at the key drug runners’ entry and exit point of Rotterdam port, where last year a Hit and Run Cargo team (HARC) confiscated a record 72,808 kilos of cocaine plus another record of 1,500 kilos of heroin. “Whether it’s a good thing that they are catching more, I don’t know — is more going through anyway?” says Prof Bisschop. “The quantity aspect is always very challenging. It’s a dark number, guesstimates.”

Meanwhile, the Netherlands is apparently a centre of synthetic drug manufacture, with regular busts of “professional” crystal meth and MDMA labs, especially in Noord Brabant. When international police decrypted millions of messages on devices criminals thought were secure — such as Sky and EncroChat, and the Dutch decoded Pretty Good Privacy software for Blackberry’s in the Marengo case — they lit up a web of crime. 

Experts agree the Netherlands’s infrastructure is key for both legal and illegal trade. In their 2020 book, Nederland Drugsland, Dutch police academy professor Pieter Tops and journalist Jan Tromp explored how criminals exploit its efficient ports, good roads, and strong financial and digital infrastructure. “The Netherlands has long been a trading country — not just the harbours but also our high-quality internet environment. We have huge numbers of bankers and our country is central in Europe in terms of all kinds of transport and transit,” says Struijs. “We have huge numbers of imports, which means a lot of drugs are mixed with legal trade, coming in containers of fruit or liquor. Organised crime takes advantage of the legal infrastructure.”

Corruption is another factor. As a nation, the Dutch are keen to make a deal — and regular businesses haven’t always been too fussy about carrying out background checks, as various banking money laundering cases and high tax haven rankings show. The NVB Dutch banking association says an estimated €16 billion in illegally-earned cash washes around each year.

Personal corruption is also a problem in a port 40km long and with 180,000 employees, says Bisschop. “Within Europe, it is definitely the gateway for any kind of trade and probably for cocaine. Over the years, the port has become more physically and digitally secure. We think this has contributed to more pressure on the people in the port. Basically, you need corruption to pull it off — both public and private, not just police and customs but also planners in container terminals. You need someone on the inside.”

So in court, says veteran crime reporter Saskia Belleman, there has been a spate of cases against allegedly corrupt customs staff, shipping and port employees, partly as a consequence of a Dutch gedoogcultuur of looking the other way. There are also concerns about so-called “collectors”, often young men who trespass into the harbour and collect drugs.

Nobody knows if the Netherlands is worse than other European port countries in terms of international organised crime, but its soft drug culture is undoubtedly a weak spot. Although smoking cannabis and coffee shops selling the drug are tolerated, it is illegal to grow commercially. This means that cafes offer a legally tolerated channel for criminal activity, and a training ground for young criminals.

In the Netherlands, it’s become increasingly common to read about the ethnic aspect of organised crime — the so-called “Mocro Maffia” Moroccan-origin mafia which inspired a true crime book and spin-off television series. But Peter Schouten, one of the new lawyers for the crown witness in the Marengo trial, says: “It’s not true that it’s only people with another ‘heritage’. Certain gangs have a kind of micro-organism, a gangland where there’s a lot of the same culture, but there are other gangs arrested, and you read stories saying that the new kingpin is ‘Bolle’ Jos from Brabant.”

It’s hard to measure organised crime, partly because victims don’t always make reports, but ethnic minorities are overrepresented as crime suspects. Statistics Netherlands researcher Maarten Bloem says, though, that “if you correct for age, education level, socio-economic category, there is not much difference between different ethnic origins”. He concludes: “It’s not so much about someone’s colour but the situation in which they find themselves.”

It is unclear whether the segregated, Dutch grammar school system helps contribute to excluding certain groups, too: critics say it selects too young, hammers in socio-economic difference, and makes no account for innately-talented children who speak Dutch as an additional language.

Crime, after all, can be seen as a way out of poverty and an equal opportunities recruiter. So there’s a widespread recognition that long-term crime prevention needs to offer other options, especially to young men in problem districts. There’s a new drive targeting “vulnerable” areas in Utrecht, and projects such as working with the “top 600” criminals and their families in Amsterdam. Meanwhile, international efforts have been led by the mayors of Rotterdam and Belgian Antwerp — where a record 90 tonnes of smuggled cocaine was found last year. They have visited South American counterparts and lobbied governments to ramp up international efforts against organised crime, increase barriers in harbours, and confiscate criminal assets.

In Rotterdam, there are promising signs of public-private cooperation, with busts by the multi-agency HARC, a new Information Sharing Centre, a business integrity initiative, and a “training container” to coach harbour staff in combatting corruption. A long-awaited law banning civilians from the container area is in place to help apprehend those vital ‘collectors’ picking up drugs from containers, while Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb is also enforcing a €2,250 anti-nuisance penalty.

The new Dutch coalition hopes to add to these initiatives. It will start investing specifically in combating crime that “undermines” public order from 2023, ratcheting up to a €100m yearly investment by 2025. In the meantime, the last budget put aside an extra €434m to increase annual budgets for police, judicial organisation and subversive crime prevention, though experts warn that money must not be used to add to the layers of bureaucracy.

Instead, some want a shift in public attitudes on drug taking: as the prosecutor said in the torture container trial, show users the “abhorrent” consequence of their habits rather than perpetuating the permissive, hippy culture of the Seventies. “It’s not done in the Netherlands to point in the direction of drug users,” says Belleman. “If you don’t use drugs, there’s no market. But people who use cocaine at the weekends don’t make the connection between organised crime and their drug use — and if you tell them, they are really offended.”

Perhaps the biggest problem, however, lies in how to prosecute those alleged criminals who are caught. In the mega-Marengo trial, hearings are currently mired in details such as whether the co-chief suspect Saïd Razzouki left his reading glasses behind when he was extradited from Colombia in December, and whether due process was followed in his subpoena.

The accused in the trial deny the charges, and Schouten doesn’t expect a verdict until 2023. “This trial is under an enormous amount of pressure,” he says. “This is about the rule of law, the dyke against injustice, and we must continue to protect this. But there is a lot of fear.” Even when the trial verdict is reached, until words turn to action, that fear is unlikely to go away.

The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Assisted Dying

I know Kevin Yuill very slightly, and he is on fine form here:

The campaign to legalise assisted dying appears reasonable and compassionate. Its advocates claim it would allow us to legally put an end to the unnecessary suffering of those who want to die. As Baroness Meacher – the sponsor of the Assisted Dying Bill currently making its way through the House of Lords – said of helping a friend arrange an assisted death in Switzerland: ‘I was motivated purely by compassion. But in the eyes of the law, my acts made me a criminal.’

Although it looks reasonable and humane, this campaign to legalise assisted dying is anything but. As I will set out below, it is primarily based on fear-mongering; it would undermine the idea of moral equality that regards the killing of an 86-year-old as just as wicked as the killing of a 24-year-old; and rather than liberate the individual, it would destroy his freedom.

Moreover, as the history of the euthanasia movement shows, the undoubtedly genuine compassion of today’s assisted-dying campaigners conceals the disturbing utilitarian and technical view of humanity on which their campaign is ultimately based.

The language of assisted dying

If we are to understand assisted dying beyond the emotive case now made for it, we must pin down the modern terms. Euthanasia – literally ‘good death’ – is where the doctor acts to end life. It can be voluntary or involuntary. Passive euthanasia is death by omission – when doctors, either of their own volition or at the request of the patient, purposefully end treatment, knowing it will lead to death. 

Passive euthanasia might also include a patient refusing food and drink but still being kept comfortable by medical attendants. Such acts are legal almost everywhere. Assisted suicide is when the doctor provides the means but the patient takes the final action. ‘Assisted dying’, or ‘Medical assistance in death’ (MAiD), appears to be a compendium term that might or might not include some of the above.

Indeed, the terminology shifts according to timespan and geography. Little wonder, the terms du jour, ‘assisted dying’ and MAiD become blurrier the closer you look at them. MAiD implies assisted suicide in the United States but in Canada all but a handful of MAiD deaths are euthanasia rather than assisted suicide. The Netherlands, where both euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal, has no qualms about using the term suicide – which is considered offensive in the Anglosphere – in order to distinguish them.

Does the term ‘assisted dying’ help public understanding? No, it doesn’t. In a UK poll conducted in 2021, when asked ‘What do you understand by the term “assisted dying”?’, 42 per cent of Brits polled thought it meant ‘Giving people who are dying the right to stop life-prolonging treatment’ – a right that they already have. When considering that the majority of Brits support the legalisation of ‘assisted dying’, it is useful to remember that much of what they support is already legal.

A fear-mongering campaign

The campaign to legalise assisted dying often plays on people’s fears of how they and their relatives might die. Hence a typical campaigning video by Dignity in Dying, a leading UK-based assisted-dying campaign group, will feature a person dying painfully in hospital, begging the doctor to make it stop. He or she will be surrounded by relatives, who tearfully plead with hospital staff to end it. Many watching such short films will recall the death of a loved one and are genuinely horrified at the prospect that anyone else should have to suffer like that.

But how true is this scenario? Not very. In 2019, the CEO of Hospice UK, a charity that works with those experiencing death, dying and bereavement, publicly chastised Dignity in Dying for the ‘sensationalist and inaccurate’ portrayal of death in a video to accompany its ‘The Inescapable Truth’ campaign.

Dignity in Dying eventually removed that particular video but it is persisting with its scare tactics. It continues to claim that 17 people will suffer as they die every day. What it does not say is that an estimated 1,700 people die every day in the UK. That means, according to Dignity in Dying’s own statistics, that less than one per cent of the population will suffer as they die.

Besides, the focus on averting pain is misleading. In fact, pain does not feature in the top five reasons why people opt for death in nations and states where assisted suicide is legal.

The freedom to die? Is there not a case for justifying assisted dying on grounds of individual freedom and the right to choose? Surely assisted dying is a case of volenti non fit injuria (to one who volunteers, no harm is done)? As Article 4 of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789) had it: ‘Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else.’

John Stuart Mill addressed a similar argument, in relation to the freedom to sell oneself into slavery, in On Liberty. The reasons for doing so, as with asking to be killed, might be entirely virtuous, he argued. For example, someone might wish to sacrifice his freedom for that of his children and be promised remuneration for selling himself into slavery. But, as Mill explains: ‘The reason for not interfering, unless for the sake of others, with a person’s voluntary acts, is consideration for his liberty… But by selling himself for a slave, he abdicates his liberty… The principle of freedom cannot require that he should be free not to be free. It is not freedom, to be allowed to alienate his freedom.’

Suicide, assisted or otherwise, can be seen in the same light, as an alienation of an individual’s freedom. Indeed, death is absolutely destructive of freedom. As Mill would have it, it is not freedom to be allowed to destroy one’s freedom. If we are to regard each individual human life as a good, as something to be valued in and of itself, then we must oppose the destruction of an individual life. To be free to die is no freedom at all.

Lives worth living 

Assisted-dying campaigners often try to separate those who should have the right to die from those who should not. Dignity in Dying, for instance, draws an imaginary line between the ‘dying’ and those who are not dying imminently. According to Dignity in Dying, the ‘dying’ are those who are about to die soon and therefore should be allowed to kill themselves, whereas those with more than six months to live should have no right to kill themselves and strenuous efforts must be made to prevent them from doing so.

The charity, Humanists UK, however, argues that ‘we do not think that there is a strong moral case to limit assistance to terminally ill people alone…’. And campaign group My Death, My Decision also rejects restricting assisted suicide to the terminally ill. Yet even these organisations refrain from campaigning for the right of all competent adults who want to die to be assisted in their suicides. They just draw different lines between those whose lives are worth living and those whose are not.

Moreover, virtually all assisted-dying advocates argue that doctors should ultimately be in charge of the process of deciding who is entitled to an assisted death. Even in Switzerland, where assisting a suicide is legal so long as there is no monetary interest involved, doctors are expected to facilitate suicides.

This is a serious problem. The decision as to whose life is no longer deemed worth living effectively rests with medical authorities or other representatives of the state. It is up to them to decide who should live and who should die.

That is what legalising assisted death means in practice – a declaration that some people, placed in certain categories, lead lives that are less worth living than others. The implications are not only frightening, they also point to the grim past of the euthanasia movement.

A dark history

‘Euthanasia’ is a very modern concept. The word, literally meaning ‘good death’, existed in Ancient Greece, but it referred principally to the idea of living well before death.

Circulating in English from the 17th century onwards, euthanasia acquired its contemporary ‘mercy killing’ sense in the late 19th century. In a paper given to the Birmingham Speculative Club in 1869, someone called Samuel D Williams was one of the first to give it its modern meaning. ‘Why, it must be asked again’, he said, ‘should all this unnecessary suffering be endured? The patient desires to die; his life can no longer be of use to others…’

Some freethinkers did indeed think there was a right to die. The famous secularist Robert Ingersoll, who published a pamphlet in 1894 entitled Is Suicide a Sin?, answered with his own question with a resounding ‘no’: ‘So I insist that the man being eaten by… cancer – a burden to himself and others, useless in every way – has the right to end his pain and pass through happy sleep to dreamless rest.’

Yet Williams, Ingersoll or anyone else at the time never imagined that suicide – a solitary act – should be assisted.

Only in the early part of the 20th century did euthanasia proper come to the fore. In the United States, France, Great Britain and Germany, there were several unsuccessful attempts to legalise euthanasia. This pro-euthanasia campaign emerged against a political background increasingly dominated by eugenics. While ‘Social Darwinism’ implied that the fittest would survive if nature weeded out society’s losers, eugenics favoured active intervention to assist natural selection.

As the German zoologist Robby Kossmann put it at the end of the 19th century, the state ‘must reach an even higher state of perfection, if the possibility exists in it, through the destruction of the less well-endowed individual… The state only has an interest in preserving the more excellent life at the expense of the less excellent.’

In 1913 Roland Gerkan, who was dying from tuberculosis at the time, petitioned the German parliament, asking for those in his situation to be allowed to be dispatched by a physician. He insisted that it be voluntary but insisted ‘examining doctors’ should determine whether or not ‘the patient would recover permanent ability to work’. He further noted that euthanasia should be ‘equally applicable to the elderly and crippled’.

In 1920 Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche published the pamphlet, Permitting the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living. They argued that ‘there are indeed human lives in whose continued preservation all rational interest has permanently vanished’. Psychiatrist and neurologist Robert Gaupp – remembered for his principled defence of a man with Jewish associations in opposition to the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 – was referring to mentally disabled people when he said that it was time to remove ‘the burden of the parasites’.

Such views reached their grim culmination in the Nazis’ infamous T4 Aktion programme – an involuntary euthasia project responsible for an estimated 300,000 deaths of mentally and physically disabled patients between 1939 and 1945. Of course, no one should infer that these brutal killers bear any relation to today’s assisted-dying campaigners – who are, in general, sincerely compassionate in their motivations. But nor should we view the T4 Aktion programme as entirely distinct from the wider euthanasia movement.

These sentiments were not restricted to Germany. In the US, supporters of euthanasia were equally vocal. ‘Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to forget that a human life is sacred only when it may be of some use to itself and to the world’, said the famous deaf, dumb and blind woman, Helen Keller. In the early years of the 20th century, Dr Ella K Dearborn cheerfully called for ‘euthanasia for the incurably ill, insane, criminals and degenerates’.

And in the UK in 1931, Sir James Purves-Stewart, a physician at Westminster Hospital and future member of the Voluntary Euthanasia Legislation Society – the forerunner of Dignity in Dying – called on his countrymen to give euthanasia ‘most serious consideration’ because of ‘a grave menace to the future of the state’ and ‘race’. Another prominent ELS member, the psychiatrist and eugenicist, AF Tredgold, told the British Medical Journal that euthanasia should ‘also be extended to include incurable low-grade defectives. It is true that these would be incapable of consent, but their inclusion would appear to be a logical sequence of the proposal.’ 

Against assisted dying

After the Second World War, and the horrors of the Nazism, the word if not the meaning of euthanasia fell into a certain disrepute. In 1950 a euthanasia proponent writing in the New Republic called for a new terminology: ‘If we call these situations “assisted suicide” rather than “mercy killing”, the moral content would be considerably changed.’ Assisted suicide, though, had to wait until the 1980s to enter common parlance.

Today, of course, the campaign for assisted dying is very different to that for euthanasia before the Second World War. But some of the same utilitarian concerns about certain people being a burden and a drain on resources persist just below the surface of today’s assisted-dying discourse.

For example, in the Netherlands, where euthanasia and assisted suicide have been legal since 2001, mainstream political parties have expressed support for the Completed Life Initiative. Based on a 2010 campaign that boasted 117,000 supporters, the CLI promises euthanasia for those over the age of 74 who are ‘tired of life’. That this age group is also deemed the least productive in society should worry us all.

Then there is the widespread use of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), a measure of a person’s ability to carry out daily activities, free from pain and mental disturbance. This measure allows states to rationalise resources, especially medical resources, according to the ‘quality’ of the years a person might have left.

Proponents of assisted suicide often employ QALY measurements to assert that the lives of people with certain conditions are not worth living. As two researchers argue, ‘denying access to assisted dying means that patients remain alive (against their wishes), and this can often necessitate considerable consumption of resources’.

Legalising assisted dying should not be regarded as a simple step to bring relief to a very few. It is a huge step that will lead to some people’s lives – on physical, or sometimes mental grounds – being deemed not worth living. That is a dire and dangerous situation. There is wisdom yet in the famous old Christian precept, thou shalt not kill.

Chris Grieve Watch: Day 162


I have never heard of you, and I was not in Durham that Thursday evening. Or any evening in that period. I was on a tag.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Adam Langleben Watch: Day 162


I have never heard of you, and "JLM" sounds like a pop group, although not one with which I have ever communicated.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Labour Candidate Watch: Day 193

193 days after the Cabinet reshuffle that called a General Election for May 2023 (even if it may or may not now have been put back a year), there is still no Labour candidate at North West Durham, which in 2019 Labour lost for the first time and by only 1,144 votes.

By contrast, I have been a candidate for North West Durham at the next General Election since even before the last one, fighting to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.  

Or contact nwdclp.campaigns@gmail.com if you wanted permanent austerity at home, if you wanted forever war abroad, and if you did not want a mixed-race MP for this seat. This post will appear daily until someone had proven to be so pro-austerity, so pro-war, and so racist, that even the Labour Party was sufficiently impressed.

The Adrian Hilton Challenge: Day 232

Adrian Hilton, I had to Google you, and I still have little or no idea who you are, so when, exactly, have I ever "stalked" you at all, much less "for longer than [you] care to remember"? 

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Oliver Kamm Challenge: Day 232

Oliver Kamm, whose signature to this do you claim that I forged? Name the name.

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever been found to have accused anyone of child abuse?

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever called for anyone to be murdered?

And Oliver Kamm, since I am a declared and active candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, are you? If not, why not?

I could go on at very great length, but these questions will do for now.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 232

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

This post will appear daily until further notice.