mcbab retweeted
Unbelievably, Iran (yes, Iran) has just been elected to the UN Committee that sets the priorities for women’s rights, counter-terrorism and peacekeeping. This, the country with an almost uniquely violent record of brutalising women, executing peaceful female protesters and of course sponsoring very widespread terrorism.
Equally unbelievably, the UK nominated Iran and although the voting is secret, we must assume it subsequently voted for Iran in the General Assembly. This is the same UK that is nominally run by PM Andy Burnham who declared only a few weeks ago that “we will always stand with the underdog and take what action we can to support them.”
If the young women of Iran who dare to remove their headscarves, or sing, or engage in peaceful protest to press for basic democracy aren’t the underdog in their battle with a vicious and murderous regime… who then is an underdog?
I can’t exaggerate how ashamed I am of my country. I’m sickened and repulsed by what it has become. I barely recognise it. Burnham should hang his head in utter shame.
And as for the UN, it has come to embody institutional corruption and gaslighting on a global scale.
It put China, Qatar and Cuba in charge of the body charged with protecting human rights worldwide.
It put China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan (all of which crush/ban NGOs in their own countries) in charge of the body that decides which civil-society groups and NGOs get UN accreditation and access.
It put Syria (under Assad) in charge the body that promotes education, culture, and press freedom.
How long must this continue? The UN has no credibility whatsoever and should be stripped back to the basics- a debating chamber for the big global issues of the day. And nothing more.
How can anyone defend this?
mcbab retweeted
Today is the day. David vs Goliath. Today we go to the High Court for our landmark judicial review against the Government. We have been shocked at the arguments being advanced by the Home Secretary in defence of its failure to implement key recommendations made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). These arguments include, that The Maggie Oliver Foundation does not have standing to bring this challenge on behalf of children, that the Government is under no obligation to implement child protection measures, and that the public at large cannot rely upon promises made by the Prime Minister and Ministers that are made in Parliament.
The Government's legal defence raises fundamental questions about public trust, accountability and whether promises made to survivors following public inquiries mean anything at all.
At the centre of the judicial review are 20 key recommendations issued by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) proposed to better protect children across the UK from sexual abuse. These include properly collecting data relating to child abusers and victims of abuse and exploitation, ending the use of pain-inducing restraint techniques on children in custody and regulation of staff in children’s homes.
We are concerned that more effort and public money appears to be going into defending a challenge designed to ensure these critical improvements in child protection are made than into implementing them.
The simplest example of this is this – if the Government had implemented the first recommendation of the IICSA, there would have been no need for a further three-year, £65 million public Inquiry (The Statutory Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs).
WHO IS ALLOWED TO ASK THE QUESTION?
The Secretary of State is a challenging whether The Maggie Oliver Foundation and our founder and Chair, @MaggieOliverUK , have standing to bring the case at all.
This raises a deeply troubling question.
If organisations representing survivors and working every day with the consequences of child sexual abuse are not entitled to ask why promised child protection measures have not been implemented, who is?
The Government is trying to exclude from the debate the very people closest to the consequences of these failures.
For years survivors have been told to come forward. Speak up. Tell the truth. Many have done so at enormous personal cost, but now the Government says they, and those who represent them, cannot object to failures to protect children. Their voices must be silenced.
This challenge was never about politics. Governments of all stripes have let down children. It is astonishing that the Government's first argument in this judicial review is that victims can have no voice.
If organisations representing survivors, and survivors themselves, cannot ask why promised child protection measures have not been implemented, who can?
IF GOVERNMENT DOESN'T HAVE TO ACT, WHAT IS THE POINT?
A central plank to the Government's defence is that ministers are under no legal obligation to implement recommendations made by public inquiries.
If that is right, why spend hundreds of millions of pounds on public inquiries if Government is just going to ignore what they find? We genuinely struggle to understand how anyone can think that is acceptable.
Millions are spent, years of hearings are had, victims pour out their hearts, findings and recommendations are made, promises are made by Government and then broke – but when someone has the temerity to ask why those promises haven't been kept, the Government's response is we never had to keep our promises.
If that is right, the Government must be open about it, and explain to the public why they hold expensive public inquiries at all.
IICSA took seven years, heard from more than 7,000 survivors, cost more than £200 million and made twenty recommendations intended to protect children. But the Government now says, we have no obligation to fulfil its promises to implement recommendations to protect children.
CAN POLITICIANS DENY THEIR PROMISES MATTER?
We are also challenging the Government's position regarding promises made by the Prime Minister and ministers following publication of IICSA's recommendations.
Repeated assurances that action would be taken have been made by senior politicians across successive governments.
The Government's defence includes arguments relating to parliamentary privilege. In effect the Government say that The Foundation cannot rely upon ministerial promises made in Parliament, and that such promises cannot give rise to expectations about future action.
If the public cannot rely on promises made in Parliament, what can they rely on?
Survivors and the public hear ministers make promises.
They hear repeated assurances that lessons have been learned and change will follow.
They build their expectations around those promises.
Many survivors have spent years believing ministers when they said action was coming.
To now be told that those promises cannot be relied upon is not just a legal argument, it is a fundamental betrayal of the trust survivors (and children across the UK) were asked to place in the process.
Trust works both ways.
Survivors are asked to trust public inquiries with the most painful experiences of their lives.
Governments should not then be able to argue that survivors cannot rely on the promises they receive in return.
WHILE GOVERNMENT ARGUES, CHILDREN ARE STILL BEING ABUSED
Government figures show that approximately 2 million children have been sexually abused since IICSA published its recommendations in October 2022.
That astonishing number must not be lost amidst legal arguments and the Government’s technical defences. This case is about the protection of all British children.
What shocks us most is how much ingenuity and effort has gone into finding reasons not to act.
Imagine if half of the same energy had been invested in implementing child protection measures.
Imagine if the resources currently being spent defending this case had instead been spent protecting children.
How many children might already be safer?
While well paid Government lawyers argue, children are still being sexually abused.
That is the reality we cannot lose sight of.
This case was never about clever legal arguments.
It is about whether promises made to children and survivors mean anything at all.
The Maggie Oliver Foundation will not be silent on that question.
mcbab retweeted
Breaking: Antonia Romeo appointed as Cabinet Secretary
Romeo’s record:
• At the Home Office since April 2025 – more than 65,000 illegal migrants have entered Britain on her watch
• Dubbed the “Queen of Woke” at DIT – weekly emails on Trans, Non-Binary & Bi Visibility days
• Senior responsible officer for disastrous MoJ probation privatisation costing £100Ms
• Civil Service "Gender Champion" - blogged about "male allyship", supported Stonewall, campaigns on menopause awareness (while leading MoJ/Home Office/Dept for Trade)
• Accused of bullying in NYC & at DIT
• Urged staff to add pronouns, watch trans film Seahorse, flew the Trans flag over HQ
• Told officials to “double down” on supporting the BLM agenda
• Promoted Guardian articles attacking Brexit
• Allowed civil servants to attend Tai Chi & calligraphy workshops during office hours
• Oversaw Brexit trade department – delivered mostly roll-over EU deals, no US deal
• Led MoJ - oversaw overcrowded prisons, court backlogs, mistaken releases
• Spent £31k of taxpayer money on transatlantic flights while commuting NYC–London + £100ks on kids' schooling
She is will now become Cabinet Secretary, a role Dominic Cummings says has “100x, perhaps 1000x” more real power than the average minister.
At least she will be the "first female" to do the job, a fact the media will focus on while ignoring the above.
👇👇👇👇me too
The media is obsessed with slimeball celebrity predators- latest allegations are against David Walliams - while Maggie Oliver has to sue the government to get action for tens of thousands of victims of Pakistani rape gangs.
I know which story I think is more important.
@MaggieOliverUK
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mcbab retweeted
Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Govt funded NGO, had to remove their ad campaign whereby grandparents were asked to seek consent before hugging their grandkid.
Our Govt virtue signals instead of implementing real policies to protect vulnerable victims.
Meanwhile, 2 vulnerable women, one with a learning disability, & the other her mother of 89 yrs found themselves living with a penniless & homeless man from Chad. What this a case of adult grooming? This question was not addressed during the trial.
Hasan Ali Goran, from Chad, was convicted of murdering 89 yr old Josie Ray by strangling & smothering her. She was covered in bruises.
He had 11 previous convictions, including 2 convictions for assault including the production of an article during an assault & spent 6 months in jail; 3 for public order; 1 for failing to appear in court; 2 for road traffic offences; and 1 for committing criminal damage.
This is a dreadful case where the authorities, including the Gardai, social services, hospital personnel failed to safeguard these vulnerable women, despite repeated interventions & despite his previous convictions.
@OCallaghanJim @MichealMartinTD
mcbab retweeted
This is a direct consequence of the pandering to the pro-Pal mob by @tcddublin @tcdglobal over the past few years. The leadership and the board need to reflect urgently
Former President Biden was swarmed by pro-Palestinian protesters during a visit to Ireland. Police said two demonstrators were arrested after objects were thrown as the former president's motorcade drove away. abcnews.link/uV9AI4z
mcbab retweeted
During her campaign and inauguration, Catherine Connolly @PresidentIRL pledged to be a "president for everyone" and an inclusive leader representing all citizens:
‘President Catherine Connolly's decision to answer only in Irish made some people in the room feel excluded and actively undermined her stated goal.
She said everyone would be welcome at the Aras, regardless of their proficiency. They may be welcome, but there is apparently no guarantee they will understand.
There were real-life consequences of this decision yesterday.
Several journalists could not report what the President had said.
I ended up helping them to translate several answers, as well as checking translations produced by Al services.
It is not difficult to get people excited about Irish.
But it is very easy to make people feel that Irish is not for them.’
mol.im/a/16282759
mcbab retweeted
Britain has been put on notice.
Thirteen American states, including Florida, Georgia and Ohio, have written to our ambassador in Washington threatening economic retaliation over Ed Miliband's sanctions on Israel. They accuse Britain of aligning itself "with the objectives of terrorist organizations".
I've read the letter, and the footnotes are even more alarming than the headline.
Twenty-one states already have laws barring contracts with companies that boycott Israel, or pulling public money out of them. The trade weapon the attorneys general cite is Section 301, the very provision Trump used to slap tariffs on China. And under a 1977 American law, a US company that obeys Britain's sanctions could end up breaking American law.
The best part? To make their case, they quote a British law back at us: the Protection of Trading Interests Act, passed by Margaret Thatcher's government to stop Washington bullying British firms.
Thatcher's Britain stood up to America to protect British business. Miliband's Britain has turned a large chunk of America against it.
Slow handclap, Ed.
My latest. Link in first reply.
mcbab retweeted
Only one side wears masks.
Tonight this aggressive pro-Pal got in the face of a Jewish man and started going for a woman who was filming his vile outburst. He did the SAME THING outside Downing Street recently. Jews pointed him out to police today who did nothing. Very poor @metpoliceuk.
mcbab retweeted
I wonder if the amazing woman is his wife, who makes and sells jumpers to bourgeois anti-capitalists for hundreds of euros?
People derided Mary Whitehouse all those years go when she spoke out about low standards on TV. Now we see where allowing those low standards have led us
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mcbab retweeted
Hard to disagree with anything Hillel writes. Imagine in the UK if a political party en masse turned their back on the King during the State opening of Parliament.
Or walked out of a major event where 'G-D save the King' played.
🤮 Disgraceful Behavior by Arab Joint List in the Knesset.
Members of the Arab Joint List walked out of the Knesset plenary during the singing of Hatikvah, Israel's national anthem.
As I said last week, the fact that these people are in the Knesset is pure insanity.
They shouldn’t even be allowed to be citizens of Israel!
To become an American citizen, you need to pledge allegiance to the United States of America.
Israel should be no different.
A person who is disloyal to the state of Israel should not be a citizen, let alone a member of the parliament.
A person who can’t condemn Hamas or October 7 should be behind bars, not in the Knesset. 
This is truly insane behavior, and the epitome of suicidal empathy.
People will claim this is racist. I call it common sense.
To be clear, this has absolutely nothing to do with their ethnicity. Anyone who is disloyal to the state, Jewish or Muslim, should not be in Israel’s parliament.
Period. Full stop.
mcbab retweeted
Protesting an orchestra because half the musicians are Arabs and half Jews, and they want it to be all Arabs and no Jews.
If the police kept us any further apart you might as well draw an equator between us.
I honestly don’t know how Israelis can bear this
Some of the members of the Joint List and Raam walked out of the Knesset plenum during the Israeli national anthem today at the swearing in.
Honestly, I support this being a disqualification. This behavior is vile whether you are happy with the state or not. You don’t go serve in a democratic parliament and then refuse to even show basic respect for a national anthem cause you hate the state you literally get your paychecks from.
Nobody is forcing them to sing it.
Despicable conduct.
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mcbab retweeted
Has anyone applied for an emergency debate in the Commons?
Will the renowned foreign policy experts Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart be making an “emergency podcast”?
DR Congo sentences 66 soldiers to death for being 'cowards' bbc.in/48JM8mg
mcbab retweeted
Here's my @Telegraph column, 'No Lucy Powell, we all knew Brand was toxic in 2015'
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/11…
The appointment of Lucy Powell as Education Secretary by Andy Burnham managed the near-impossible in making Bridget Phillipson seem missed. Powell is not only wrong about almost everything in her own department; she also manages to be wrong about everything else. And, as in her comments on Tuesday about Russell Brand, often grotesquely wrong.
Powell has defended then Labour leader Ed Miliband’s appearance on Brand’s YouTube interview show in 2015 by asserting: “We weren’t in the social media age at the time – where you could maybe search things up and see allegations about somebody at the time.”
Leave aside the idiotic suggestion that social media was insignificant in 2015, Powell’s defence of Miliband rests on a warping of history that is so outrageous it is a new low even for her.
One of the biggest news stories of 2008 was Brand’s suspension by the BBCafter leaving a series of revolting sexual messages on the answerphone of the actor Andrew Sachs about his granddaughter. He had already been sacked by radio station XFM for reading out pornography on air. You would have had to be living in a cave not to know about this.
Then in 2013, in a broadcast interview, Brand “joked” about raping a woman and then murdering her: “I raped someone once,” he said, to laughter from the audience. He went on: “I killed her after.” In his 2010 memoir he wrote that he had spat in the face of a prostitute: “What kind of man was I? Treating women in this way? If this is what I’m telling you, can you imagine what’s being left out?”
Brand had not, of course, been convicted of sexual assault or rape, but he was widely seen as toxic and as he sought to reinvent himself as a political guru – the reinvention that Miliband sought to take advantage of by appearing on his show – there were any number of pieces and social media posts (yes, social media, Ms Powell) that pointed out Brand’s pride in his misogyny.
Powell’s assertion that no one knew what Brand was like is a form of attempted gaslighting – a pathetic, impossible, stupid form of it, but attempted nonetheless, seeking to pretend that something that was near-universally known was unknown.
Then again, Powell has a history of grotesque comments. Last May, she appeared on Any Questions, days after a Channel 4 documentary on grooming gangs. Asked by a fellow panellist whether she had seen it, she replied: “Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now do we?” and then: “Let’s get that dog whistle out shall we?”
Powell also claimed that the Manchester Arena suicide bombing which killed 22 people had nothing to do with Islam. After the murders, she was asked by the BBC: “How serious is the problem of Islamist radicalisation in Manchester?” She replied: “I’m not sure that this is the right moment to totally go into that, because I don’t even want to ascribe what has happened to the Islam faith.”
She also denied the clear evidence of links between the bomber, Islamist radicalism and some mosques, telling the Manchester Evening News: “I’m particularly worried about that kind of narrative that somehow there’s areas or hotspots of Manchester that are hotbeds of radicalisation.”
Powell’s defence of Miliband’s appearance with Russell Brand is revolting. But it is entirely, as it were, on brand for her.
mcbab retweeted
This account of what happened to Josie Ray and her daughter Mary at the hands of this man and at the hands of the agents of this state is both shocking and shameful. A man was allowed land into a publicly owned house where an 89-year-old woman and her adult daughter, who has an intellectual disability, were the sole tenants. And despite the world and his mother and every relevant state agency, including the Gardaí, knowing there was a serious problem with this man being anywhere near these women, despite his refusal to leave, they weren’t able to drag him out and stop him going anywhere near these two vulnerable women. In fact, it seems, the only person who was threatened at all by the agents of the state, was the 89-year-old woman, who was threatened multiple times with losing her home because SHE was in breach of her tenancy, because this man had decided to takeover her home.
She was so terrified of him, after being in hospital, she refused to go back to her own home until he was gone.
And instead of making sure that this monster of a man was duly gone, so Josie Ray could return to her own home after being in hospital, what did the state attempt to do as a solution?
They attempted to find a place in a nursing home for Josie Ray, not a plane seat on a flight back to Chad, with a kick up the arse for this pig of a man.
When you get to 89, it’s most people’s dream to be able to pass away at home in your own bed. That’s probably what Josie had expected before Hasan Ali Gori decided to takeover her home.
Instead, she spent her last months terrorised in her house and her last minutes terrified and fighting for her life against this man.
If there isn’t a full enquiry into the role of state agencies in the eventual murder of Josie Ray, I am going to be very angry.
Will this state ever consider women’s safety and dignity ahead of a man’s desires? Truly, women in Ireland, especially those who are vulnerable through age or disability, are second class citizens.
In the months before 89-year-old Josephine 'Josie' Ray was murdered in her own home, several State agencies became involved in trying to address the presence of Hasan Ali Gori in the property
rte.ie/news/2026/1110/159870…
mcbab retweeted
Labour’s Lucy Powell, trying to explain why she was complicit on Ed Miliband interview with Brand in 2015, says a)it was before social media; and b) there was no easy way of checking on people in these days.
Which is strange since a) she’d been on social media since 2009 and by 2015 it was in full swing; and b) Google has been available since 2000.
Other than that her explanation is entirely credible.
Russell Brand: The shameful truth about those who turned a blind eye
youtu.be/5hfFwqW_e9s?si=2gXy… via @YouTube
mcbab retweeted
Oh Luce! Don’t you have an 18-year-old blue-haired intern who can show you how to delete tweets pre social media?
I've said it before, but come and spend a couple of hours with me in Manchester @rustyrockets You might get a different perspective.