Battle for Britain: Fighting the Tory Government’s Vile Ideology

My call to arms for tomorrow’s General Election, urging people to vote tactically to get the Tories out, and also calling for urgent reform of our profoundly unfair and unrepresentative first past the post voting system.

A cross-post, with my own brief introduction, of a powerful open letter to the British home secretary Priti Patel by over 70 medical professionals from around the world, warning of their fears that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, held in Belmarsh maximum-security prison, and facing extradition to the US, may die in prison, and needs “urgent expert medical assessment of both his physical and psychological state of health.”

My condemnation of Priti Patel’s disgraceful attack on Britain’s Gypsy and traveller community, in which she is calling for new powers for the police to be able to immediately confiscate the vehicle of “anyone whom they suspect to be trespassing on land with the purpose of residing on it” – a policy change that the police themselves don’t even want, as they recognise that the main problem is the lack of site provision, a requirement that was repealed by the Tories in 1994. I urge all decent people to rise up against this foul government, and also to be aware of where a far-right drift in government can lead.

Today I’m marking 900 days since I first began posting a photo a day on the Facebook page, ‘The State of London’, on the fifth anniversary of when I first began cycling around London on a daily basis, taking photos in all 120 of its postcodes. Thanks to everyone taking an interest in this project!

The latest news regarding Julian Assange, held at Belmarsh maximum-security prison since April, pending his proposed extradition to the US, to face trumped-up espionage charges regarding WikiLeaks’ work as a publisher, making available classified US documents – including the Guantánamo files, which I worked on with WikiLeaks as a media partner – for which there is a compelling case that the public should be informed. Assange’s role was as a publisher, and his proposed extradition is a chilling assault on press freedoms, and freedom of speech. The UK government shouldn’t be going along with it, but in fact they seem to be working very closely with US officials, and at Assange’s latest case management hearing his conditions of confinement seemed to be taking their toll, as he was frail and often appeared confused.

A link to – and discussion of – my new article for Novara Media, about fundamental problems with a ballot taking place in New Cross for residents of the Achilles Street estate regarding a proposal by Lewisham Council to demolish their homes as part of a new housing development. The main problems are that demolition is environmentally ruinous, and, instead, the estate should be refurbished, but, shamefully, no money is being made available for it by either central government or the GLA. Also included: an analysis of the six ballots that have already taken place in London.

My report about an application for a judicial review, submitted by the NGO Reprieve and the MPs Dan Jarvis and David Davis, regarding the British government’s refusal to hold a judge-led inquiry into the UK’s post-9/11 complicity in torture, first promised by David Cameron over nine years ago, but not delivered.

I report on the Metropolitan Police’s outrageous decision to impose a London-wide ban on Extinction Rebellion protests (gatherings of two or more people), criticism of the move, a legal challenge, and, most particularly, how non-violent direct action has continued, with the numbers attending actions indicating that the Met’s move may have backfired.

As the second week of Extinction Rebellion’s International Rebellion begins, I report on the success of the group’s disruptive tactics, drawing in part on the campaigning group’s co-founder Roger Hallam’s new book, ‘Common Sense for the 21st Century.’

I look at the increasing violence of Brexiteers’ rhetoric regarding the UK leaving the EU, and my fears that the ideological civil war that Brexit represents is being stirred up by the disgraceful Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings into a much more physical manifestation of a civil war, even though Johnson – and his backers – are only really interested in a no-deal Brexit as a way of making huge amounts of money.