Introducing Spotlight Bitesize – a snapshot of interesting news stories, presented in a short catch-up style format in order to save time and to help bring our readers up to speed on the most talked about topics this week. All sources are included for those who like to dig a little deeper.
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1) Has Labour become irrelevant? Jolyon Maugham QC makes a good case (4min video)…
2) Shocking poll results for Starmer’s leadership has Labour centrists frothing at the mouth but not at Starmer, oh no, they’re actually proposing the purge the left from the party because apparently, Starmer’s failure is the fault of lefties? (12min video)…
3) Ex-LibDem leader, Nick Clegg, now Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs, announced today that Facebook will be suspending Donald Trump’s account for two years. Worth noting that Twitter permanently banned Trump from their platform.
4) European Court of Justice backs Tesco staff fighting for equal pay. The court declared that EU law can apply in equal pay claims. This follows a Supreme court decision in March that allowed Asda shop workers to compare their roles to people working in Asda distribution centres, for the purposes of equal pay.
5) Former Tory MEP says Muslims deliberately excluded from internal inquiry into Islamophobia within the Tory party. Sajjad Karim said the report was a “whitewash”, that the Tory complaints procedure is “not fit for purpose” and that Boris Johnson is pursuing an “English nationalist agenda”. Karim explains that various Tory activists had provided “a number of accounts” of Islamophobia, and that he had personally experienced Islamophobia himself “both at a local level and at a parliamentary level”. The problem “permeates right the way through” the party, he explained.
6) Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, alias Tommy Robinson, at a Zio-Nazi rally. As Tony Greenstein rightly put it “What does it say about the pro-Israel demonstration that Tommy Robinson, the ex-member of the holocaust denying BNP and a virulent Islamophobe, is welcomed onto it? Still when you’re defending Apartheid you can’t be too choosy about the company you keep!” (2min video)..
7) Simon Cowell pulls out as judge on ‘X Factor Israel’. Simon is said to have been a supporter of Zionism but it’s now been reported that members of Cowell’s staff had raised “legitimate concerns” with the producers over his participation following the recent violence between Israel and Gaza that killed 255 people, including 66 children. (2min video)…
8) 16 British Armed personnel referred to ‘Prevent’ – the UK’s anti-terrorism programme – for far-right extremist activity. A new report reveals that the vast majority of Prevent investigations are to do with ‘far-right activity’ and that the far-right are attracted to the British armed forces.
9) FLASHBACK: Highly respected veteran BBC journalist, Jeremy Bowen, was telling us about the influence of the Israel lobby on the BBC well over a decade ago. Perhaps if we’d listened to him then, so many young innocents wouldn’t have died in the many lethal criminal Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since then? A little background for you – The IDF actually tried to kill Bowen at least twice. In May 2000, Bowen and his crew came under fire from the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Bowen survived but his fixer and driver were killed and Bowen suffered post traumatic stress disorder for some years after. Then in May 2008, Bowen and his camera operator came under fire again in Mount Lebanon.
10) Snowden was right! Denmark’s Defence Intelligence Service (FE) collaborated with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on top European politicians (including German Chancellor Angela Merkel) during the Obama/Biden administration. This includes accessing text messages and phone conversations. The BBC is reporting that German, French, Swedish and Norwegian officials are known to have been targeted. Of course it’s entirely possible they might have targeted others as well, including the UK. Exposing the workings of a rogue state put a target on Edward Snowden’s back and if Snowden hadn’t managed to find refuge in Russia things would have gone badly for him. Just a shame that Assange didn’t find better refuge.
11) Free Palestine Protestors scaled the BBC building in Manchester last Saturday. Protestors wanted to express their anger over the BBC’s bias coverage of the recent violence between Israel and Palestine. In fact, free Palestine protests took place all over the country and attracted hundreds of thousands of people but the BBC and other mainstream platforms chose not to cover them. Why?
12) 150 school kids abducted by gunmen on motorbikes from an Islamic school in Nigeria last Sunday. Another story that didn’t make it into the corporate media or even, as far as I can tell, onto the main news channels. I guess it’s only considered news worthy if the abductors claim to be Muslim?
13) Fife Tory Cllr, Michael Green, charged with 2 child sex offences that took place in 2006 and 2011 in the Glenrothes and Leslie areas. Green has been suspended by Scottish Conservatives while he’s under investigation.
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