Saint Simeon's Pillar No More

We are all supposed to be delighted that Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham has taken Aleppo. I do not know where to begin.

Just for once, has anyone thought of giving responsibility for foreign policy to someone who knew, well, anything at all?

Happy Saint Andrew's Day

Like Saint George's Day, Saint David's Day and Saint Patrick's Day, this should be a public holiday throughout the United Kingdom. Away with pointless celebrations of the mere fact that the banks are on holiday.

Yes, that was a Labour manifesto commitment in 2017 and in 2019. I am very glad that it was. But 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.

God Save The King? Well, will he save the rest of us? But justice for the name of Alex Salmond. We really can do that.

The King's Great Matter

As the Coronation Oath reads: "Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?" "All this I promise to do," replied the King.

Thus, within the meaning of the Oath, is the same thing said in four different ways. "The Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel" are defined as "in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law," which is defined as "the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England," which are defined as "all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to [the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge] or any of them."

Those rights and privileges are of course defined by Parliament. Within the understanding of the Coronation Oath, whatever Parliament defines as the rights and privileges, mostly in relation to incomes and property, of the Church of England's clergy are the only meaning of the settlement of the Church of England, thus the only meaning of the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law, and thus the only meaning of the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel.

The King is therefore bound by the Coronation Oath precisely and solely to sign whatever Parliament puts in front of him. That, and that alone, is his sworn duty as monarch. This has always been thoroughly repugnant to many. For as long as anyone has checked, then there have been at least as many Recusants, Dissenters and Nonconformists as there have been members of the Church of England, and there are now vastly more, albeit within an extremely secular society at large.

The status of the late Queen as Defender of the Faith did not preclude Royal Assent to assisted suicide in Canada or New Zealand, both of which retain the title. Pope Leo X did confer the title Fidei Defensor on Henry VIII, but in its present form it derives from its conferral by Parliament on Henry's son, Edward VI, meaning that, again, the Faith to be Defended is whatever Parliament says that it is. "Defender of the Faith" tellingly remained part of the Royal Title of the Irish Free State throughout that State's existence. Not that it has ever been peculiarly British or English; various monarchs have used it in various times and places, and Popes have conferred it on a number of people.

For example, Catherine of Aragon was a Defender of the Faith in her own right. A generation into his revolt, Martin Luther supported Catherine against Henry VIII. As did William Tyndale, who effectively went to the stake at Vilvoorde rather than return to an England that he did not regard as having really become Protestant at all. Like Luther, Tyndale had no truck with some king who wanted to get divorced because he had got his bit on the side pregnant. The robustly Protestant supporters of Lady Jane Grey sought to write Elizabeth as well as Mary out of the Succession, since while Mary was a Catholic, Elizabeth was a bastard. People who took Protestantism seriously, including as an international movement, lost a Civil War in England.

The reality of that defeat would be brought home for the first time in living memory, as the reality of the defeat of the Catholic England that held sway for a millennium would be brought home for the first time in a good two generations, when Royal Assent was granted to assisted suicide, not in defiance of the Coronation Oath, but pursuant to it, and not in spite of the King's status as Defender of the Faith, but because of it. Put not your trust in princes. Do not necessarily try to get rid of them. But put not your trust in them.

Needling Doubts

And so begins the buyers' remorse for assisted suicide, with the pitiful excuse that "Second Reading is a just a vote on the principle", which it is not. 23 Conservative and three Reform UK MPs voted for this Bill, while three Conservatives abstained. If they had all voted against it, then there would have been a tie, 304 votes each, and by convention the Speaker's casting vote is for the status quo.

More Labour than Conservative MPs voted against this Bill, but the 23 Conservatives who voted for it were decidedly high status, including all three of that party's most recent Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, among other grandees. The Health Secretary voted against, but the last Conservative Health Secretary voted in favour. The Tory Deep State is right behind this.

As for Reform, at 60 per cent, its support for assisted suicide was slightly higher than Labour's, and included both the Deputy Leader and the Chief Whip. The Labour Chief Whip also voted for it, but the Labour Deputy Leader voted against. Labour MPs with undeniably working-class backgrounds or below were far more inclined to oppose this, as were those sitting for less well-off constituencies. Across parties, but heavily concentrated on the Labour benches as they are, MPs from visible ethnic minorities were especially likely to be opposed, and black women were most especially so, with Diane Abbott, Florence Eshalomi, Paulette Hamilton and Dawn Butler making four of the most powerful speeches against. The Liberal Democrats voted overwhelmingly in favour, and the Greens unanimously so, but all five of the Independent Alliance, and all but one of the seven MPs who lost the Labour Whip over the two-child benefit cap, joined most of Labour's remaining Left in the No Lobby.

Some people sincerely cannot imagine that egregious abuses might ever happen to them. But things could not look more different to those who had lived their whole lives being silenced, ignored, marginalised, ridiculed, discriminated against, and not uncommonly a lot worse. MPs from comfortable antecedents, but who nevertheless represented such communities in numbers too predominant locally to be able to brush aside, also have a very different perspective from those whose constituencies contained either only "a few", or few enough to be able to pretend that that was the case.

But what of the Conservative votes against? Again, Kemi Badenoch (who had previously professed herself in favour of the principle), Saqib Bhatti, Suella Braverman, James Cleverly, Claire Countinho, Helen Grant, Alan Mak, Gagan Mohindra, Ben Obese-Jecty, Priti Patel and Shivani Raja would have had their own reasons. But while someone like Danny Kruger may have been motivated by faith, as some Labour and other MPs also were, that is extremely unusual in upper-middle-class white people these days.

Rural areas are not bastions of social conservatism in this sense, if at all. Sitting for the deep countryside did not preclude support for this Bill on the part of many Labour MPs and very many Lib Dems. Half of the Greens' seats are there. As are all of Plaid Cymru's, and three of that party's four MPs voted for this. For all Nigel Farage's personal vote, if Reform's overwhelming support had not visibly blotted its copybook with Donald Trump, then a good many Conservative MPs would conclude that they, too, were off the hook.

Even Ann Widdecombe, who as Reform's only Privy Counsellor would probably be its first Peer by the time that this Bill reached the House of Lords, has taken to the airwaves to opine that she would not have been opposed to this measure if only it had had the right "safeguards", a subjective judgement on the part of each individual parliamentarian. Farage has said that he might change his mind if Britain left the European Convention on Human Rights, thereby establishing that he might change his mind.

All the talk is of a rough ride at committee stage, leading to the possibility of rejection at Third Reading because initially supportive, mostly Labour MPs' concerns had not been allayed. But I have an awful suspicion that everyone is looking in the wrong place.

Strictly Off The Record: Day 41

If you are Douglas McKean, then Oliver Kamm is convinced that you and I are one and the same. I hate to have to tell you that I have never heard of you. He first contacted me about this at lunchtime on 4 July, so General Election day was obviously slow on The Times, and he has promised to involve the Police, from whom I have heard nothing. Anyone with news of any developments, do please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Strictly off the record, of course.

Also please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com with any news on the case of Fr Timothy Gardner OP, which was supposed to have been heard at Newcastle Crown Court in July, but of which I can find no trace. While this is not the only arrow in my quiver, unless Fr Gardner was convicted, then the latest accusations against me have absolutely no credibility, and nor does the propensity evidence that alone secured my conviction in 2020, to breach of the suspended sentence for which I wrongly pleaded guilty in 2021, leading to my imprisonment. Fr Gardner's non-conviction is not the only thing that could vindicate me. But it would do so. Any information would therefore be most gratefully received. Again, strictly off the record, of course.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Justice Delayed: Day 147

Even assuming, and it was far from clear, that the Crown had presented any evidence whatever on the morning of Wednesday 19 June, then no later than the afternoon of Thursday 20 June, I would have been found not guilty unanimously in the time that it took to walk to the jury room and send a note to the judge. On Monday 6 November, the only Prosecution witness did not turn up, having been suspended from the Police. Since then, he has been "asked to resign" because of his conduct of my case. On Friday 14 June, my barrister formally complained.

Lo and behold, on the morning of Sunday 16 June, enough Police Officers turned up at my door to take down an al-Qaeda cell, and behaved roughly as if that were what they were doing. Everyone is laughing, and not at me. Late that night, a nonsense additional charge, quite different from the stated grounds of the arrest, was added, with no expectation that it could possibly stick, but in order to postpone what would have been that week's open-and-shut acquittal. Be at Durham Crown Court on Wednesday 26 February 2025, almost exactly two years, although we dispute the timeline, after the original complaint was allegedly made. When I shall be found not guilty. But the process is the punishment.

Rather than embarrass itself any further, the Crown did not even ask for me to be remanded. Nor did it dispute that the Police had found nothing on my laptop or on my phone, even though the latest allegation therefore cannot be true. And nor did it dispute that its only witness had been sacked from the Police because of my case, or that this latest action against me was a revenge attack for my barrister's complaint, both of which are now on Monday 17 June's record of Newton Aycliffe Magistrates' Court, as is the cleanliness of my devices, of which the Police are nevertheless keeping possession, requiring me to replace them at considerable expense.

I wish that my solicitor had used such terms as "Mafia hit" and "punishment beating". I am using them now. This is a punishment beating for the sacked policeman. And it is a Mafia hit by some Fredo Corleone, because the latest complaint was supposedly made before I had withdrawn from the General Election, a withdrawal that has rendered it pointless in its own terms. Other than the unpaid position to which I was elected unopposed well over a year ago, and which has therefore been kept vacant ever since, I have no intention of contesting another election to public office.

Welcome to the Starmer State, which institutional Britain has treated as the status quo since Keir Starmer became Labour Leader. I am not the only dissident that it persecutes, and things are already getting an awful lot worse now that Starmer is Prime Minister.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 506

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Sarah Kilmartin, Jenny Holmes, Sir David Behan, and Sr Una Coogan IBVM.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Fr Christopher Hancock MHM, Canon William Agley, Catherine Dyer, Canon Martin Stempczyk, Canon Peter Leighton VG, Maureen Dale, and Tony Lawless.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Andrew Grant, Kirsty McIntyre, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Petra Scarr.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The CPS Challenge: Day 506

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of its organised persecution of the opponents and critics of Keir Starmer, which is its principal national priority.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union on a programme including disaffiliation from the Labour Party, a proposal that would be hugely popular two years into a Starmer Government.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a thinktank 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.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually also a fortnightly satirical magazine.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from taking journalistic, political or other paid work for fear of losing my entitlement to Legal Aid.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service out of the same racism that has caused it to refuse to prosecute the Police Officers in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

And I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to incite my politically motivated murder, a murder that the CPS has already decided would never lead to any prosecution.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Board, currently Monica Burch, Stephen Parkinson, Simon Jeffreys, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan, and Kathryn Stone.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the CPS senior leadership, currently Tristan Bradshaw, Dawn Brodrick, Mike Browne, Steve Buckingham, Matthew Cain, Gregor McGill, Grace Ononiwu, and Baljhit Ubey.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, currently Simon Jeffreys, Stephen Parkinson, Michael Dunn, Deborah Harris, and Dr Subo Shanmuganathan.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Nominations, Leadership and Remuneration Committee, currently Kathryn Stone, Stephen Parkinson, and Monica Burch.

And each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the 279 members of staff of the CPS North East Area, by definition including, but not restricted to, Chief Crown Prosecutor Gail Gilchrist, and the Area Business Manager, Ian Brown.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 1210

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.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 1210

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.

And I invite each and every Member of Parliament whose constituency fell wholly or partly in County 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. 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.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

A Good Day To Bury Bad News

The first of Keir Starmer's Five Missions, and central to Labour's General Election campaign, was to give the United Kingdom the highest economic growth in the G7.

Today, that aspiration was formally abandoned.

Black Friday

There were exceptions, but the Labour and ex-Labour Left voted heavily against assisted suicide, while MPs from visible ethnic minorities were also far more likely to do so. All of the Independent Alliance voted against, as did all but one of those who lost the Labour Whip over the two-child benefit cap. The exception was John McDonnell. Once a renegade ex-seminarian, I suppose. By stark contrast, not only did all four Greens vote in favour, but so did three of the five MPs from Reform UK, 60 per cent, a slightly higher percentage than Labour. Rupert Lowe did so because 892 of 1,181 people in a straw poll of his constituents told him to. He is not a Burke.

Once this was over, then who still would be? If the King signed this, then even I might become a republican. I have always said that the monarchist and the republican arguments were each rubbish in its own terms, so the case for change had not been made. But after this? The late Queen signed absolutely everything, and Royal Assent was also granted to assisted suicide in Canada, in New Zealand, and at state or territory level over much of Australia. The monarch even retains the title "Defender of the Faith" in Canada and New Zealand. There as here, it is either obviously quite meaningless, or it means something utterly repugnant. You cannot be a figurehead of nothing. There is no such thing as mere symbolism. The symbolic is not mere.

Seconds after this vote, the Government Whip on duty's objection blocked consideration of the Children's Hospices (Funding) Bill. That Whip was Christian Wakeford, who had just voted in favour of assisted suicide. The blocked Bill's sponsor was the whipless scourge of child poverty, Ian Byrne, who had just voted against it. But he intends to bring it back on Friday 24 January. We shall be watching.

Further Information

Louise Haigh's case is very odd. Only a conditional discharge for that? There is a more to this. But it is absolutely inconceivable that anyone was made a Cabinet Minister without the Prime Minister's being aware of her previous criminal conviction.

Haigh said that she regretted having nominated Jeremy Corbyn for Leader, and while it would be too much to hope that she now regretted that regret, she really ought to. Keir Starmer has now humiliated her twice for the sake of a company that, only in 2022 and not the many years ago that Starmer has suggested, fired 800 crew without warning, replacing them with agency staff working longer hours for less pay, in some cases below the minimum wage.

All of that was illegal at the time, yet the CEO, Peter Hebblethwaite, defended it both before a joint session of two Select Committees of the House of Commons, and in writing to the then Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps. Neither Hebblethwaite nor anyone else has ever been prosecuted. P&O is in fact state-owned, just not by this state. DP World is owned by the Emirate of Dubai. That is of course one of the United Arab Emirates, where trade unions are illegal, and another of which was recently banned by Statute from buying two small-circulation newspapers and a tiny-circulation magazine in Britain. We are now, however, expected to regard the UAE as one of the souls of moderation in the Middle East. And so to Starmer and DP World.

DP World also owns the Port of Southampton, which is the second largest container terminal in the United Kingdom, and the legal name of which is now DP World Southampton. DP stands for Dubai Ports. Isn't capitalism patriotic? So much for Taking Back Control. But whatever has made possible the outrage at P&O, then it is not Brexit. In 1972, could balaclava-clad private security guards have wielded handcuffs and teargas as they evicted workers from their workplaces, which for the duration of their work were also their homes, with absolutely no notice whatever? All of the anti-union legislation was enacted while Britain was a member of what was really always the EU, and the biggest ever attack on British workers' rights, the Trade Union Act 2016, was brought to us by the Prime Minister who not only campaigned for Remain, but who resigned when Leave won.

We may have seen nothing yet, though. Even Angela Rayner's heavily diluted workers' rights are not to come into effect for at least two years. After this, believe in any of them when you saw them, and not a moment before. And never, ever, ever entertain the notion that the foreign policy stuff, in practice usually but not always about the Middle East, had little or no connection to bread and butter politics at home.

Meanwhile, Heidi Alexander was Shadow Health Secretary in Corbyn's ill-advised first Shadow Cabinet. She effectively scuppered the NHS Reinstatement Bill that would have prevented and reversed the Blairites' signature domestic policy of NHS privatisation. She was the first Shadow Cabinet member to resign. Later becoming Deputy Mayor of London for Transport, she delivered an increase in fares, delays, complaints, and strikes, as well as the Elizabeth Line three and a half years late and more than four billion pounds overbudget.

Having been promised her latest job by Starmer weeks ago, Alexander will now replace the partial renationalisation of the rail service with some ghastly "public-private partnership", allow the cost of the senior citizen's railcard to increase by even more than the present 16.6 per cent, allow bus fares to increase by even more than the present 50 per cent, abandon the reregulation of the buses, and build a third runway at Heathrow, also by means of a PFI or some such, just as the railways' rolling stock was always going to remain in private hands, adding exorbitant rent to every ticket. Where is that money going? To whom?

See also HS2, PPE, Test and Trace, the Rwanda Scheme, the arms companies, and everything else that is very good at kicking back to politicians while employing retired top brass. That includes the newly abandoned Bibby Stockholm. We have been paying £400 million per year to rent that 48-year-old engineless barge, which cannot be worth more than a few million pounds. Whatever happened with Haigh's mobile phone in 2013, it is the very least of our worries.

To Correct The Record

Yuan Yi Zhu writes:

Before MPs voted to support the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, Kim Leadbeater, who has sponsored the bill, rose on a point of order.

There were murmurs in the House. Then Leadbeater said, a little sheepishly, that she wanted to correct the record. She had wrongly implied that serving members of the judiciary had indicated they support the bill. The Judicial Office had written to her, telling her off; and now she was repenting at the eleventh hour.

It was a fitting conclusion to a debate that has been, from beginning to the end, characterised by falsehoods. Still, MP after MP stood up and thanked Leadbeater for the way she had conducted the debate.

I say this is Leadbeater’s bill, but it is perhaps more accurate to say this is Dignity in Dying’s bill. The Voluntary Euthanasia Society (as it used to be known) has for almost a century tried to legitimise the principle that lives can be ended when they’re not worth living.

Ahead of the vote, Dignity in Dying, flush with money, advertised on a massive scale. They plastered Facebook with ads. They covered the walls of Westminster tube station with posters showing people jumping in joy to celebrate being able to kill themselves. (There is at least one suicide attempt every week on the underground network.) Dignity in Dying knew this vote was their best shot at legalising assisted dying in a century, and they held nothing back

In parliament, Leadbeater has not behaved much better. She and her supporters knew from the beginning that too much debate on this issue was dangerous. She waited until less than three weeks before the vote before she released the text of her bill. When it was impossible to scrutinise, she was telling every gullible media outlet that her bill would have the strongest safeguards in the world.

There was no way, she and her allies said, that Britain would become like Belgium, where depressed teenagers can now legally take their lives with the help of doctors. Or the Netherlands, where disabled toddlers are now involuntarily euthanised. Or Canada, where disabled people are regularly asked by doctors whether they want to be euthanised. No, Britain would be different, of course.

Then, when the bill was released, it turned out that Leadbeater’s world-beating safeguards were about as useful as a chocolate teapot. The bill says that assisted dying will require sign-off from two doctors, the second of whom is meant to be ‘independent’. In reality, the first doctor will be allowed to pick and choose the ‘independent’ doctor. If the independent doctor disagrees about going ahead, the first doctor can simply pick another.

Leadbeater has repeatedly argued that one of the safeguards in her bill is a required sign-off from a High Court judge. In reality, our overworked family courts are not going to have the time to properly scrutinise thousands of assisted dying requests a year. And the wording of the bill means judges will not even have to hold a hearing before making their decision. It is hard to understand what the purpose of this ‘safeguard’ is – except perhaps to make wavering MPs feel better about voting in favour.

Often during the assisted dying debate it became apparent that the bill’s supporters had no idea about its shortcomings. Many did not appear to have actually read the bill.

Christine Jardine, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, fumbled so badly at answering the most basic questions about it on Newsnight that she stopped making media appearances for her side for weeks. Another supportive MP, Tony Vaughan, confused the High Court and the Court of Protection, and accused his critics of ‘hair-splitting’.

A few years ago, Canada was all the rage among assisted suicide’s promoters in England. Once the horrors of its Medical assistance in dying (MAID) regime had been laid bare before the world, the death lobbyists switched to Oregon as their go-to example. In the House today, MP after MP stood up to say that Oregon was an example of best practice.

In Oregon, there are reported cases of people being given ‘assisted suicide’ for anorexia, sciatica, arthritis, complications from a fall and, incredibly, a hernia (we do not know the precise details of these cases because medical files are destroyed after death). Yet this was the system our legislators wanted to replicate.

Many MPs, in five- or ten-years’ time, will claim sheepishly that ‘we didn’t know this would happen’, or ‘we didn’t vote for this’ when the disabled and the vulnerable are killed. But MPs cannot be allowed to claim ignorance.

They were warned, they knew exactly what would happen and they will have to assume moral responsibility for every single wrongful death that the Leadbeater bill will cause. History will not be kind to them.

Eliminated By The Corporate State

Paul Knaggs writes:

When Louise Haigh stepped down as Transport Secretary this morning, the official story was one of past mistakes catching up with the present. A decade-old spent conviction, already disclosed when she joined Keir Starmer’s team, was suddenly splashed across headlines, and just like that, one of Labour’s brightest rising stars was out. But this resignation doesn’t feel like justice or accountability—it reeks of something far more calculated.

Haigh’s fall comes suspiciously soon after she dared to call out P&O Ferries, the “rogue operator” infamous for its ruthless treatment of British workers. Her stance put her on a collision course with both her boss, Starmer and DP World, P&O’s Dubai-based owner, a corporate heavyweight that just happens to be dangling a £1 billion investment over the UK government. In the age-old battle between corporate interests and political integrity, it’s clear which side won.

The official narrative paints Haigh as someone unfit for high office, her past misstep weaponised to destroy her credibility. Over a decade ago in her twenties, she made an error in reporting a work phone stolen—a “mistake” she explained and for which she has already faced consequences. A spent conviction she had fully disclosed to Starmer way back in 2020. Yet, this trivial and spent conviction, irrelevant to her current role, was dredged up at a time that feels more than coincidental. Why now? Why her?

Haigh stated in her resignation letter:

“As you know, in 2013 I was mugged in London. As a 24-year-old woman, the experience was terrifying. In the immediate aftermath, I reported the incident to the police.

“I gave the police a list of my possessions that I believed had been stolen, including my work phone.

“Some time later, I discovered that the handset in question was still in my house

“I should have immediately informed my employer and not doing so straight away was a mistake.”

Ms Haigh appeared at Camberwell Green Magistrates’ Court six months before the 2015 general election, after making a false report to officers that her mobile phone had been stolen.

It’s understood her conviction is now classified as ‘spent’.

It’s hard not to draw parallels between Haigh’s principled stance against P&O and the timing of her downfall. This is the same P&O that sacked 800 workers by pre-recorded Zoom call in 2022, a scandal so brazen that even its CEO, Peter Hebblethwaite, admitted he’d do it all again.

P&O’s fire-and-rehire tactics didn’t just involve unscrupulously sacking workers only to offer them a new contract on new, less favourable terms. No, P&O Ferries dismissed nearly 800 ferry workers and replaced them with cheaper overseas agency workers in 2022. Sacked P&O crews replaced by ‘Indian seafarers paid £1.80 an hour’ union claims.

Haigh’s condemnation of P&O was no more than what the government itself had declared in press releases about “rogue employers.” Yet she went a step further, calling for a boycott—a line too far for those prioritising corporate appeasement over worker justice.

This affair also highlights Labour’s internal contradictions under Starmer. The same government that touts protections for workers and pledges to rectify P&O-style scandals baulks when corporate donors push back. It’s no coincidence that Haigh was one of the only left-wing voices in a centre-right-dominated cabinet—her principled stance was always going to be inconvenient for a leadership increasingly attuned to pleasing boardrooms.

By resigning, Haigh leaves a cabinet devoid of pushing for public ownership, standing up for workers, and confronting exploitative practices, it’s back to business for Starmer in the literal sense. Her departure feels less like the consequence of a moral failing and more like a reminder of the dangerous ground walked by anyone who dares challenge entrenched power.

The bigger question is what Haigh’s ousting signals about our political priorities. Are we really okay with a system where integrity and accountability are punished while the perpetrators of genuine exploitation—whether it’s rogue employers or complicit governments—carry on unchecked?

Mick Lynch of the RMT called Haigh’s departure a loss for workers and passengers alike, praising her vision for a publicly accountable transport system. But Lynch’s words also underscore a bitter truth: this isn’t just about one minister’s career. It’s about the ease with which corporate power can influence the direction of a government and the willingness of political leaders to sacrifice their own to avoid rocking the boat.

If Haigh’s resignation teaches us anything, it’s this: no matter how hard you work or how principled you are, in a system designed to prioritize profits over people, you’re expendable the moment you step out of line. And for all the talk of Starmer’s Labour being a government of change, this saga suggests otherwise—a government as eager as any other to bend the knee when big money calls the shots.

Haigh deserved better. More importantly, so did the workers and passengers she fought for. But in this fight, as in too many others, it seems the wrong people are paying the price. 

What we witnessed was not a resignation. It was a public execution—a demonstration of how power truly operates in modern Britain.

The corporate state does not negotiate. It eliminates.

Not The Same Country We Were Yesterday

Tim Stanley writes:

Well, there you have it: the British parliament votes in favour of assisted dying, bringing us up to date with Oregon and the Third Reich. We are not the same country we were; we do not rest on the same moral foundation. Rarely was the obvious question asked, “why did we not do this before?” Because for all the misery, muck and hypocrisy around dying – and, yes, morphine helps it along – we long stuck to the principle that the state does not take innocent life. No longer.

It was a good debate. The argument for assisted dying was largely anecdotal, but those are some damn good anecdotes. Kit Malthouse spoke of a constituent who, unable to take the pain anymore, laid down on a railway line.

It would have been hard to resist such pleas to end suffering; the problem is that the suffering that will follow legalisation, by its nature, cannot be attested to because it hasn’t happened yet. Relatives will push the elderly to die early; money will be made; the wedge will thicken; and the British health service being so poor, this will come to be seen as a patriotic or desperate alternative to substandard care.

As I said on Politics Live this week, my mother lives with long-term pain. Contrary to the image of angels in white coats, we’ve found many doctors to be rude and uncaring; the bureaucracy is hellish. She’s lucky: she has me to fight for her. Were she poor and alone, and were she ever given a terminal diagnosis, who’s to say she wouldn’t take the suicide pill just to avoid the NH-bloody-S?

This point was raised most forcefully by Labour MPs, which was impressive. Had we a Tory majority, the debate would’ve likely been about philosophy; with a Labour majority, it was about poverty and inequality. MPs such as Diane Abbott made the case that the state is so impoverished that we cannot guarantee patients a fair choice between palliative care and dying.

Someone very clever observed to me that the debate divided, on the Right, conservatives from libertarians; on the Left, socialists from progressives. Conservatives and socialists listen to constituencies most worried about legalised suicide – religious voters, the poor and the disabled. But they also share a vision of the human being as rooted in community, whose welfare is all our responsibility. They emphasise security over liberty.

Individualist MPs of the libertarian or progressive kind, favour maximised autonomy – and frequently spoke in terms of choice, almost to the point of separate-from-moral-concern. I quote Alicia Kearns’ warning to religious critics of the Bill: “Supporting the choices of others does not diminish compassion”, i.e., you can be personally against something, but acknowledge or validate the right of others to do it.

But this is nonsense. A rational human being cannot support the rights of others to harm the community, such as murder; to promote bad choices, such as encouraging self-harm; or step back from someone in physical and mental anguish with the blessing that it’s “their body, their choice.” Their body, to lift from St Paul, is part of a whole; the body of mankind.

If you see someone standing on a bridge, thinking about jumping, you don’t just give them a sympathetic smile, do you? Or perhaps some people do. One feels the disagreements with members of one’s own tribe more strongly than with those on the other side – and a kind of fury bubbles up in me whenever I hear libertarians speak, because for every liberal Tory in the House of Commons, that’s one more seat that’s been denied to a philosophical conservative.

I return to the comparison with Nazi Germany, which others will find distasteful, because its crimes were involuntary. But it, too, proclaimed death could be healthcare, and necessary and kind. And it was in revulsion against Nazism that in the decades since the 1940s we got rid of the death penalty, wrote human rights laws, recognised the disabled as full citizens and promoted peace.

It is the postwar consensus, as social democratic as it is Judeo-Christian, that is crumbling – giving way to something consumerist and atomising.

An Incendiary Device

George Monbiot writes:

It’s the testimony we’ve long been waiting for. On Monday, at the undercover policing inquiry, the man whose cruel and disgusting deceptions have come to epitomise the “spy cops” scandal will be questioned. Many of us are hoping for answers, not least because his story suggests a closing of ranks across the British establishment. Even if you think you’ve heard it all, some of the details in this column will take your breath away.

Bob Lambert worked for the Metropolitan police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in the 1980s and 1990s, first as an undercover cop infiltrating environmental and animal rights protests, then as operational controller of the squad, supervising other spy cops doing similar work. In the course of his undercover assignments, while posing as a radical activist called Bob Robinson, he deceived four unsuspecting women, innocent of any crime, into starting relationships. He stole his identity from a dead child.

With one of the women, Jacqui, he fathered a child. Two years later, he vanished. She discovered his true identity by chance more than 20 years later, and has yet to recover from the devastating shock. She says she feels “raped by the state”. The person she loved and trusted was a ghost. “I feel like I’ve got no foundations in my life …. your first serious relationship, your first child, the first time you give birth – they’re all significant, but for me they’re gone, ruined … I was not consenting to sleeping with Bob Lambert, I didn’t know who Bob Lambert was.”

When he sat with her as she went through 14 hours of labour, she later wondered, was he being paid overtime? His abandoned son was also traumatised by the discovery of who his father really was. According to another former spy cop, Peter Francis, when Lambert was his manager, he advised Francis to wear a condom when sleeping with activists.

These fake relationships were standard practice in the team of spy cops Lambert ran. The officers used similar seduction techniques, built similar falsehoods about their lives and used similar methods for destroying or abandoning the relationships when they were redeployed. It looks like a refined, state-sanctioned grooming operation. As Helen Steel, another woman deceived by a spy cop, remarked, “there weren’t any genuine moments – they were purely manipulative and abusive. …. it was as if he set out to destroy my sanity.”

We now know that Lambert and other police spies repeatedly lied in court when they were arraigned as “activists” on minor charges, using their fake names to maintain their cover. They withheld crucial evidence from the trials of genuine activists, whom they had stitched up: the courts were not informed of their role. As a result, many environmental campaigners have now had their convictions overturned.

Both in parliament and by another witness to the inquiry, Lambert has been accused of acting as an agent provocateur and planting an incendiary device in a Debenhams department store in Harrow that caused £340,000 worth of damage. Lambert has denied this.

The spy cops, among many other unlawful intrusions, used their relationships to gain access to privileged information: discussions between defendants and their lawyers that are legally confidential. Among the lawyers whose advice was compromised was a young Keir Starmer.

The great majority of the people being spied on were peaceful activists who presented no danger to democracy or human life. Many were involved in campaigning against corporate abuses. Some of the spying, like Lambert’s infiltration of a campaign against McDonald’s, looks like policing on behalf of corporate power. But even that was not the worst of it. Police spies were also used to infiltrate the campaign for justice for Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager murdered by racists in 1993, whose case the Met, as a result of institutional racism, failed properly to investigate. Police spies were allegedly deployed to find “dirt” that could be used to smear Stephen’s family. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC, now the Independent Office for Police Conduct) found that Lambert “played a part” in the intelligence gathering by spies inserted into the Lawrence campaign.

None of the spy cops have suffered legal consequences, though activities such as identity theft and entering homes without a warrant are illegal. Their pensions remain intact, they have kept their medals and commendations. On Tuesday at the inquiry, Belinda Harvey, one of the women deceived into an 18-month relationship with Lambert, damned him as a “cruel and manipulative” liar. But the authorities see him differently. In 2008, Lambert received an MBE for services to the police.

After retiring from the police, Lambert reinvented himself as a right-on lecturer on community engagement, Islamophobia and counter-terrorism. He obtained prestigious positions at Exeter, London Metropolitan and St Andrews universities. Astonishingly, he received the London Metropolitan position after being exposed as a police spy. As I have a connection with St Andrews, I joined the campaign calling for the university to take action. But it stonewalled us. Scandalously, in my view, the university’s then principal, Louise Richardson, remarked: “I think hiring people who have had real-world experience in an institution which is teaching counter-terrorism is entirely legitimate … I’m not going to get involved in what people do privately whoever they are.” When the real-world experience a university values consists of deceiving, abusing and destroying innocent lives, you have to wonder what the disqualifications would be. The issue was resolved only when Lambert, as the Stephen Lawrence revelations began to emerge, resigned.

Such closing of ranks seems almost ubiquitous. Richard Walton, the commander accused with Lambert of involvement in spying on the Stephen Lawrence campaign, retired just after the IPCC concluded he would have had a “a case to answer for discreditable conduct”, avoiding potential disciplinary proceedings. Did he shuffle off into obscurity? No. He authored a report by the dark-money junktank Policy Exchange, calling for stricter penalties for environmental protesters. His recommendations were adopted by the government and incorporated into the draconian 2022 Police Act. So while the spy cops face no consequences, peaceful protesters, on his recommendation, now receive massive prison sentences.

We know this went all the way to the top. The SDS, for which the police spies worked, was funded by the Home Office, and fell under the supervision of several home secretaries. Despite being a victim of spying himself, Starmer, in his later role as director of public prosecutions, has been accused of presiding over a major cover-up of spy cop activities. To this day, the police refuse to release the files their spies compiled, like the Stasi, on the innocent people they deceived. It is hard to escape the conclusion that official life in this country is rotten to the core.

National Audit

David Hencke writes:

The announcement that the National Audit Office cannot sign off the Whole of Government Accounts – the gold standard for recording every penny spent by the UK Government – because of billions of pounds of unaudited local authority cash is a culmination of a scandal that began in 2018.

That was the year the now defunct Conservative-controlled Northamptonshire County Council became the first authority to go bankrupt for over two decades. The council which boasted one of the lowest council taxes in the country decided to privatise every service and reduce the staff working for them to just 200 people.

But instead of saving millions, the council ended up having to sell nearly everything it owned, lost control of its finances and went bankrupt owing over £1 billion.

Prime Minister Theresa May called in a retired local government executive to investigate the council who decided it was not rescuable and it was abolished and replaced by two new unitary authorities covering the county and abolishing all the district councils in the county.

At same time other local councils – which had a faced nearly a decade of Conservative government cuts and rising costs for education and social services, started investing in increasingly risky developments to create new income streams.

This sparked a fresh wave of bankruptcies in 2020, starting with Labour controlled London borough of Croydon and quickly followed by Conservative-controlled Thurrock council and Labour controlled Slough Council. The collapse of the councils was triggered by financial mismanagement of these schemes which instead of providing more cash, drained their budgets.

Local councils were also hit by the Covid pandemic and money used by local government has still not been properly audited.

But the scale of the problem was masked from central government by two decisions taken by leading Conservative figures. Eric (now Lord) Pickles took the decision as Local Government Secretary to abolish the Audit Commission in 2015 as part of the Government’s agenda of scrapping “red tape”. Now this body checked and monitored local government finances every year, produced value for money reports and made sure there was no backsliding even in the smallest parish council.

Instead, the auditing of local councils was seen as a private sector activity and left to the market. Unfortunately the big audit firms were not keen on bidding for the work when they could work for big private corporations instead, and councils had difficulties getting anyone to audit them, which then caused a backlog.

Gove when appraised of this problem, as Levelling Up Secretary, was incredibly slow in taking action. He thought about introducing a new slimmed down version of the Audit Commission in 2023 to retake control of the situation but never introduced any legislation to create the new body. Rishi Sunak did no better as PM – using the bankruptcies of Birmingham and Nottingham councils as a political football by claiming it was because of “Labour mismanagement”. This ignored evidence from the Local Government Association that it was affecting councils of all political colours.

The present parlous situation was handed over to the Labour government and work is starting to get some of the councils audited. But as the National Audit report just published shows, it has a long way to go. It is also leaving the Treasury not knowing the full picture with 187 councils out of 426 in England still unable to produce accounts to the government for the financial year 2022-23. Meanwhile only 10% of the councils have sent in audited accounts. It has also affected the accounts of Whitehall ministries which use local government services. Last year both the Ministry of Justice and Department for Culture, had their accounts qualified because they could not produce any data from local government.

Until now, outside local government and the Commons select committee monitoring local government itself, the only people who have been raising the seriousness of this issue have been the National Audit Office and the Commons Public Accounts Committee.

But it looks like Labour could tackle it by introducing radical reform of local government as announced this week by abolishing the second tier of councils and creating big unitary authorities with elected mayors like Manchester and Liverpool. Events would have turned full circle. Labour’s plans – though emphasising democracy rather than tackling bankruptcy – would mean a national solution not that far different from Theresa May’s one-off solution for dealing with errant finances in Northamptonshire.

Strictly Off The Record: Day 40

If you are Douglas McKean, then Oliver Kamm is convinced that you and I are one and the same. I hate to have to tell you that I have never heard of you. He first contacted me about this at lunchtime on 4 July, so General Election day was obviously slow on The Times, and he has promised to involve the Police, from whom I have heard nothing. Anyone with news of any developments, do please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Strictly off the record, of course.

Also please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com with any news on the case of Fr Timothy Gardner OP, which was supposed to have been heard at Newcastle Crown Court in July, but of which I can find no trace. While this is not the only arrow in my quiver, unless Fr Gardner was convicted, then the latest accusations against me have absolutely no credibility, and nor does the propensity evidence that alone secured my conviction in 2020, to breach of the suspended sentence for which I wrongly pleaded guilty in 2021, leading to my imprisonment. Fr Gardner's non-conviction is not the only thing that could vindicate me. But it would do so. Any information would therefore be most gratefully received. Again, strictly off the record, of course.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Justice Delayed: Day 146

Even assuming, and it was far from clear, that the Crown had presented any evidence whatever on the morning of Wednesday 19 June, then no later than the afternoon of Thursday 20 June, I would have been found not guilty unanimously in the time that it took to walk to the jury room and send a note to the judge. On Monday 6 November, the only Prosecution witness did not turn up, having been suspended from the Police. Since then, he has been "asked to resign" because of his conduct of my case. On Friday 14 June, my barrister formally complained.

Lo and behold, on the morning of Sunday 16 June, enough Police Officers turned up at my door to take down an al-Qaeda cell, and behaved roughly as if that were what they were doing. Everyone is laughing, and not at me. Late that night, a nonsense additional charge, quite different from the stated grounds of the arrest, was added, with no expectation that it could possibly stick, but in order to postpone what would have been that week's open-and-shut acquittal. Be at Durham Crown Court on Wednesday 26 February 2025, almost exactly two years, although we dispute the timeline, after the original complaint was allegedly made. When I shall be found not guilty. But the process is the punishment.

Rather than embarrass itself any further, the Crown did not even ask for me to be remanded. Nor did it dispute that the Police had found nothing on my laptop or on my phone, even though the latest allegation therefore cannot be true. And nor did it dispute that its only witness had been sacked from the Police because of my case, or that this latest action against me was a revenge attack for my barrister's complaint, both of which are now on Monday 17 June's record of Newton Aycliffe Magistrates' Court, as is the cleanliness of my devices, of which the Police are nevertheless keeping possession, requiring me to replace them at considerable expense.

I wish that my solicitor had used such terms as "Mafia hit" and "punishment beating". I am using them now. This is a punishment beating for the sacked policeman. And it is a Mafia hit by some Fredo Corleone, because the latest complaint was supposedly made before I had withdrawn from the General Election, a withdrawal that has rendered it pointless in its own terms. Other than the unpaid position to which I was elected unopposed well over a year ago, and which has therefore been kept vacant ever since, I have no intention of contesting another election to public office.

Welcome to the Starmer State, which institutional Britain has treated as the status quo since Keir Starmer became Labour Leader. I am not the only dissident that it persecutes, and things are already getting an awful lot worse now that Starmer is Prime Minister.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 505

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Sarah Kilmartin, Jenny Holmes, Sir David Behan, and Sr Una Coogan IBVM.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Fr Christopher Hancock MHM, Canon William Agley, Catherine Dyer, Canon Martin Stempczyk, Canon Peter Leighton VG, Maureen Dale, and Tony Lawless.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Andrew Grant, Kirsty McIntyre, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Petra Scarr.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The CPS Challenge: Day 505

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of its organised persecution of the opponents and critics of Keir Starmer, which is its principal national priority.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union on a programme including disaffiliation from the Labour Party, a proposal that would be hugely popular two years into a Starmer Government.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a thinktank 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.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually also a fortnightly satirical magazine.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from taking journalistic, political or other paid work for fear of losing my entitlement to Legal Aid.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service out of the same racism that has caused it to refuse to prosecute the Police Officers in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

And I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to incite my politically motivated murder, a murder that the CPS has already decided would never lead to any prosecution.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Board, currently Monica Burch, Stephen Parkinson, Simon Jeffreys, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan, and Kathryn Stone.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the CPS senior leadership, currently Tristan Bradshaw, Dawn Brodrick, Mike Browne, Steve Buckingham, Matthew Cain, Gregor McGill, Grace Ononiwu, and Baljhit Ubey.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, currently Simon Jeffreys, Stephen Parkinson, Michael Dunn, Deborah Harris, and Dr Subo Shanmuganathan.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Nominations, Leadership and Remuneration Committee, currently Kathryn Stone, Stephen Parkinson, and Monica Burch.

And each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the 279 members of staff of the CPS North East Area, by definition including, but not restricted to, Chief Crown Prosecutor Gail Gilchrist, and the Area Business Manager, Ian Brown.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 1209

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.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 1209

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.

And I invite each and every Member of Parliament whose constituency fell wholly or partly in County 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. 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.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

How We Keep Going

Luke Akehurst is my MP. Like me, he became physically disabled in adult life. It could happen to anyone. I guarantee that he has been told, "I don't know how you keep going." And, "If I were like you, I'd kill myself." And, "If I had a dog like you, I'd have it put down."

Today, he will be invited to enshrine those attitudes in the Statute Law, along with the comparable attitudes to the depression that his predecessor and close ally, Kevan Jones, has, as have I.

Using the hashtag #AssistUsToLive, the protest and vigil will be on all social media platforms from eight o'clock this morning. It will be held in person on College Green from 9:30.

That's Life

Esther Rantzen and her family are still peddling her publicity material from 40 years ago. But she was not part of the Constitution then, and she is certainly not now. For that, we must look elsewhere.

If the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill were given Second Reading with fewer than 326 votes in the House of Commons, then it ought to be refused Second Reading in the House of Lords. It is a Private Member's Bill, and it does not give effect to anything in the manifesto of the party than won the General Election, so unless the majority of MPs had voted for it, then Peers should throw it out.

Only today, we have the scandal of the Single Justice Procedure. Yet we run the risk of giving that same courts system the power to have us killed by the NHS, which is likewise the State, the same State that has been forcing autistic children into padded rooms, throwing them to the floor, restraining them by the neck, and leaving them to sit in vomit.

Adultery and desertion were not criminal offences, but by recognising them as grounds for divorce, society used to express its disapproval of them. We have lost that, and we are on the verge of losing, in the criminalisation of its assistance, our societal disapproval of suicide.

Tomorrow is Friday, so a number of MPs will be absent on constituency business. Usually, that might have done. But not this time. What will they be doing that was more pressing than life and death?

Deliver The Fresh Start?

Keir Starmer would not repeat to Parliament Rachel Reeves's promise to the CBI not to increase taxes in the Parliament, but Kemi Badenoch, whose party is now three points ahead in the polls, would not promise the CBI that she would reverse Reeves's increase in employers' National Insurance contributions. It is not a real disagreement.

Meanwhile, Andrea Jenkyns was, and presumably still is, an undying fangirl of Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of Net Zero. Johnson was a very big spender long before Covid-19. He even lifted the requirement that jobs in Britain be advertised first in Britain, making him the most pro-immigration Prime Minister in living memory, if not ever, although admittedly only because Liz Truss never got into her stride. Johnson was closer to Stonewall than any Prime Minister before or since. The lockdowns were Johnson's. The Northern Ireland Protocol was Johnson's. The war in Ukraine was Johnson's. If Reform UK is now the party of Jenkyns, then it is the party of all of that.

I Implore You To Vote Against This Bill

Call me an old school hack, but before I head off for a little afternoon’s Thanksgiving that the Puritans left England, and tribute to a man whose fondness for the grain made me as proud a godfather as his prodigious learning did, I have sent this email to my MP:

There are always supposed to be safeguards. Where assisted suicide has been legalised, decriminalised, or effectively permitted, then, with little or no further legislation, it has been extended to conditions such as chronic pain, which I have; limited mobility, which I have; clinical depression, which I have; and material poverty, to which I am not a stranger, as we disabled people disproportionately are not.

The legalisation of assisted suicide would give to a High Court judge in the Family Division such power over life and death as no judge in this country had enjoyed since the abolition of capital punishment. My paternal grandfather was born before such working-class men could vote. My maternal ancestors included African slaves, Indian indentured labourers, and Chinese coolies. We who come off the lower orders and the lesser breeds, and especially those of us who are disabled, know perfectly well who would be euthanised, and how, and why.

There is no argument from bodily autonomy, since anyone who might request assisted suicide would by definition have lost that by then. Life expectancy is notoriously difficult to predict, coercive control is notoriously difficult to identify, elder abuse is only beginning to be recognised as endemic, and it cannot fail to raise suspicion that most so-called mercy killings are of women by their male partners.

Procedurally, a Private Member’s Bill is wholly inadequate to the task of legislation that would require such scrutiny as this would need. Every day, there is more news of the baleful condition in which the previous Government left the public services, especially the NHS and the justice system. The Health Secretary and the Justice Secretary are both opposed to giving the NHS the power to kill people on the authority of a judge. This is not a debating society motion on the principle of assisted suicide. This is a very specific Bill, and a profoundly flawed one. Unless one were absolutely convinced of the case for this specific Bill, then really would have to vote against it. I implore you to do so.

Strictly Off The Record: Day 39

If you are Douglas McKean, then Oliver Kamm is convinced that you and I are one and the same. I hate to have to tell you that I have never heard of you. He first contacted me about this at lunchtime on 4 July, so General Election day was obviously slow on The Times, and he has promised to involve the Police, from whom I have heard nothing. Anyone with news of any developments, do please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Strictly off the record, of course.

Also please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com with any news on the case of Fr Timothy Gardner OP, which was supposed to have been heard at Newcastle Crown Court in July, but of which I can find no trace. While this is not the only arrow in my quiver, unless Fr Gardner was convicted, then the latest accusations against me have absolutely no credibility, and nor does the propensity evidence that alone secured my conviction in 2020, to breach of the suspended sentence for which I wrongly pleaded guilty in 2021, leading to my imprisonment. Fr Gardner's non-conviction is not the only thing that could vindicate me. But it would do so. Any information would therefore be most gratefully received. Again, strictly off the record, of course.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Justice Delayed: Day 145

Even assuming, and it was far from clear, that the Crown had presented any evidence whatever on the morning of Wednesday 19 June, then no later than the afternoon of Thursday 20 June, I would have been found not guilty unanimously in the time that it took to walk to the jury room and send a note to the judge. On Monday 6 November, the only Prosecution witness did not turn up, having been suspended from the Police. Since then, he has been "asked to resign" because of his conduct of my case. On Friday 14 June, my barrister formally complained.

Lo and behold, on the morning of Sunday 16 June, enough Police Officers turned up at my door to take down an al-Qaeda cell, and behaved roughly as if that were what they were doing. Everyone is laughing, and not at me. Late that night, a nonsense additional charge, quite different from the stated grounds of the arrest, was added, with no expectation that it could possibly stick, but in order to postpone what would have been that week's open-and-shut acquittal. Be at Durham Crown Court on Wednesday 26 February 2025, almost exactly two years, although we dispute the timeline, after the original complaint was allegedly made. When I shall be found not guilty. But the process is the punishment.

Rather than embarrass itself any further, the Crown did not even ask for me to be remanded. Nor did it dispute that the Police had found nothing on my laptop or on my phone, even though the latest allegation therefore cannot be true. And nor did it dispute that its only witness had been sacked from the Police because of my case, or that this latest action against me was a revenge attack for my barrister's complaint, both of which are now on Monday 17 June's record of Newton Aycliffe Magistrates' Court, as is the cleanliness of my devices, of which the Police are nevertheless keeping possession, requiring me to replace them at considerable expense.

I wish that my solicitor had used such terms as "Mafia hit" and "punishment beating". I am using them now. This is a punishment beating for the sacked policeman. And it is a Mafia hit by some Fredo Corleone, because the latest complaint was supposedly made before I had withdrawn from the General Election, a withdrawal that has rendered it pointless in its own terms. Other than the unpaid position to which I was elected unopposed well over a year ago, and which has therefore been kept vacant ever since, I have no intention of contesting another election to public office.

Welcome to the Starmer State, which institutional Britain has treated as the status quo since Keir Starmer became Labour Leader. I am not the only dissident that it persecutes, and things are already getting an awful lot worse now that Starmer is Prime Minister.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 504

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Sarah Kilmartin, Jenny Holmes, Sir David Behan, and Sr Una Coogan IBVM.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Fr Christopher Hancock MHM, Canon William Agley, Catherine Dyer, Canon Martin Stempczyk, Canon Peter Leighton VG, Maureen Dale, and Tony Lawless.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Andrew Grant, Kirsty McIntyre, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Petra Scarr.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The CPS Challenge: Day 504

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of its organised persecution of the opponents and critics of Keir Starmer, which is its principal national priority.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union on a programme including disaffiliation from the Labour Party, a proposal that would be hugely popular two years into a Starmer Government.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a thinktank 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.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually also a fortnightly satirical magazine.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from taking journalistic, political or other paid work for fear of losing my entitlement to Legal Aid.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service out of the same racism that has caused it to refuse to prosecute the Police Officers in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

And I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to incite my politically motivated murder, a murder that the CPS has already decided would never lead to any prosecution.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Board, currently Monica Burch, Stephen Parkinson, Simon Jeffreys, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan, and Kathryn Stone.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the CPS senior leadership, currently Tristan Bradshaw, Dawn Brodrick, Mike Browne, Steve Buckingham, Matthew Cain, Gregor McGill, Grace Ononiwu, and Baljhit Ubey.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, currently Simon Jeffreys, Stephen Parkinson, Michael Dunn, Deborah Harris, and Dr Subo Shanmuganathan.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Nominations, Leadership and Remuneration Committee, currently Kathryn Stone, Stephen Parkinson, and Monica Burch.

And each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the 279 members of staff of the CPS North East Area, by definition including, but not restricted to, Chief Crown Prosecutor Gail Gilchrist, and the Area Business Manager, Ian Brown.

This post will appear daily until further notice.