Not a boy at all (apart from how all blokes are), and no longer in Frinton. I'll be avoiding any verified account that appears to be rage baiting for $$
Harwich, England
Joined December 2008
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Nick Bond retweeted
This is extraordinary from Laura Kuensberg. Polanski answered her questions but rejected her chosen framing. That's meat-and-potatoes stuff for combative interviewing.
It is very telling she reaches for this one interview to illustrate some broader anti-truth/populist politics - but says nothing about how we had a Labour Party leader/PM in Keir Starmer who lied, constantly, repeatedly, and flagrantly - who invented a political character from whole cloth to dupe the Labour membership. He lied on TV constantly - big lies, small lies, serious lies and frivolous lies. And he followed on from Boris Johnson, another fabulous liar, who made his career on changing the subject and dancing around questions, much to the delight of Kuensberg and the media class, who treated him with affection and kid gloves on his path to power.
I think it's obvious that Kuensberg just doesn't like or support progressive politics. That's fine. But don't try launder that into a ham-fisted critique saying the left has a problem with journalistic inquiry - and don't imply bad faith and dishonesty, when it has been progressives who called out the honest truth of Israel's genocide in Gaza while the establishment laundered it as "self-defence" or repeated nonsense about human shields.
Hi @bbclaurak,
Zionism has resulted in the bombing of children & the killing of tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza.
Again - the actual controversy is the Labour Government are arming that & the BBC 'debate' if it's racist.
How's that for answering the question?
Nick Bond retweeted
This morning I searched "genocide" on the BBC News app.
Not a single article on Gaza in the results shown below.
And if you think we're just talking about perceived @BBC bias towards Israel, consider this:
@KarishmaPatel99 – resigned over Gaza coverage, exposing serious editorial failures.
@bbounenni – BBC North Africa correspondent who resigned, citing his professional conscience.
111 BBC journalists – anonymously backed an open letter condemning the corporation's Gaza coverage and editorial decisions.
400+ media figures, including Miriam Margolyes, Alexei Sayle and Mike Leigh, demanded the removal of BBC board member Robbie Gibb over impartiality concerns.
Ramita Navai and @bendepear – publicly condemned the BBC for shelving Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, subsequently broadcast by Channel 4.
Akinola Davies Jr – had his words "Free Palestine" edited out of the BBC's BAFTA broadcast.
And in recent weeks, we've seen even more extraordinary examples.
@bbclaurak's hostile interrogation of @ZackPolanski over the Green Party's Zionism motion, repeatedly challenging his position while he attempted to bring the discussion back to the suffering of Palestinians.
@vicderbyshire interrupting @BernieSanders as he condemned Israel's extremist government, stepping in to remind him that Israel would deny being extremist.
It's fucking endless.
The BBC continues to suppress language that accurately describes Israel's actions, stifles critical commentary, and amplifies Israeli officials and pro-Israel commentators, while Palestinian voices are marginalised or silenced altogether.
Those defending Israel are given a microphone. Those challenging its actions face hostile interrogation.
At what point do we stop calling this perceived bias and start demanding serious institutional complicty in war crimes?
Who holds the BBC accountable when the institution tasked with scrutinising power is itself protecting it?
#GazaGenocide #FreePalestine
Nick Bond retweeted
If she reports immediately, she's accused of trying to ruin a famous man's career.
If she waits, she's accused of inventing it years later.
If she tells nobody, she's accused of having no corroboration.
If she tells friends, she's accused of spreading rumours.
If she continues working in the same industry, she's accused of not being sufficiently traumatised.
If she leaves the industry, she's accused of being bitter about her failed career.
If she liked the man, she's accused of regretting consensual sex.
And if she disliked him, she's accused of having a grudge.
You CANNOT win.
Nick Bond retweeted
Britain flew over 600 spy flights over Gaza and built 15% of every F-35 that bombed it. The Labour government says no inquiry is needed into its role in Israel’s genocide.
We, the public, disagree. 80,000 have signed our petition. At 100,000, MPs debate it or explain why not.
Sign:
petition.parliament.uk/petit…
Nick Bond retweeted
this is why I love working at @VanityFair
yesterday, I saw half our staff clustered around our fashion correspondent's desk poring over this photo. As José puts it, "The image has several discrepancies. The style and make of the Chanel Flap bag is inconsistent with others the brand has sold, and the Valentino shoes in question appear askew in proportion; their straps have several punched holes that the authentic Valentino style does not."
AI image detectors confirmed that yes, Olivia Reingold used an AI-generated image to make her point, without a drop of disclosure. Wild!!!!
vanityfair.com/story/midterm…
Nick Bond retweeted
The Bank of England has raised interest rates to 4%, supposedly to tackle inflation.
There is just one problem with this decision. The Bank knows that much of the inflation we are suffering is being driven by rising oil and energy prices, largely resulting from conflict in the Middle East.
It also knows that raising interest rates cannot reduce those prices.
So why is it doing this?
The answer is that the Bank believes it must suppress demand elsewhere in the economy to compensate for rising energy costs.
In other words, it is deliberately making mortgages more expensive, increasing business borrowing costs, discouraging investment and reducing household spending power.
And all this when people are already struggling with higher energy bills. That is problem number one.
There is, however, another problem. Higher interest rates increase costs for businesses, which can then feed through into higher prices. They can, in that case, add to inflation rather than reduce it.
The Bank is imposing economic pain to address a problem its chosen policy cannot directly solve.
That is not sound economic management. It is the consequence of an economic dogma that refuses to recognise the difference between inflation caused by excessive demand and inflation caused by supply shocks.
When will we learn?
Nick Bond retweeted
Dan Hodges says Israel supporters like him need to reflect.
This is a man who said Palestinian kids can just go to hell.
Dan now realises the US is going to turn on Israel.
That Gaza will be recorded as an abomination.
And that he will be damned.
Nick Bond retweeted
Let's be absolutely clear. Trump's Republicans have paid a HUGE price for a foreign policy that put Israel's interests ahead of American citizens.
I hope Andy Burnham is paying attention.
People do not want their governments prioritising a foreign nation over their own people.
Nick Bond retweeted
Pimlico Plumbers boss Charlie Mullins is a union-busting rightwing donor who pretended his workers were 'self-employed' so he didn't have to give sick pay or paid leave. He's just the sort of 'wealth creator' I'd be entirely happy to see leave Britain.
Nick Bond retweeted
There is widespread confusion among Democrats this morning, after they accidentally won the US midterms despite their best efforts to lose. They now face their worst nightmare: enthused voters who actually expect something from them.
They are weighing up whether to condemn James Talarico and Abdul El-Sayed for giving people false hope, or pretend to be just like them. Perhaps the smart move will be to take the credit, just like that kid who pushes a train in that meme. Whichever way they go, there’s no denying this is awkward.
Ordinarily, Democrats prefer a tiny majority, so they can assign two bad cops to block every bill they introduce. Now they’ll either have to not introduce bills or pray that Trump vetoes them. Given the President spends half his time sleeping and can’t even finish his sentences, this is a risky strategy.
There is every chance that Americans end up with something good entirely by accident. I wouldn’t even rule out Trump forgetting to veto the release of the Epstein files. As you can imagine, the corporate donors who own both sides have steam coming out of their ears.
Democrats were so determined to lose that one of them endorsed a Republican to stop a Muslim from taking Michigan. Unfortunately, 60% of Michigan’s Jews turned out to be antisemites and voted for Halal law and Sharia meat. Chuck Schumer and Haley Stevens are losing their fucking minds.
It’s fair to say neither side wanted a blue wave to sweep across the US. Unfortunately, the Republicans’ strategy of saying a load of racist stuff and doing endless war backfired. Americans are only in favour of those things when they can afford fuel and groceries. Now that everything’s getting expensive, they are going cold on the whole imperialism thing.
President Trump was left scratching his head, wondering how he lost so badly, despite winning the Iran war 27 times this year. I don’t have the heart to tell him that Pete Hegseth lied. After all, he’s still mourning Lindsey Graham who could only watch on from hell as the results came in.
Without Lindsey Graham’s presence, the axis of evil is falling apart. The warmongers don’t even know who they are anymore. The result broke John Bolton so badly that his moustache crawled away and said it’s getting a divorce.
Bolton criticised Trump for his forever war in Iran and for surrounding himself with yes men. Given that he’s never seen a war that didn’t arouse him, this is deeply troubling.
The Republicans are facing a major identity crisis. If they’re no longer the party of paedophilia and genocide, what else can they offer? They’ve even lost the ability to cheat properly. They somehow lost the seats they’d gerrymandered, and to make matters worse, someone forgot to flip the voting machines.
We saw state after state change colour after people who normally prefer the greater evil chose the lesser one. Even Texas turned blue, despite scientists insisting this was physically impossible. It was supposed to be one of the three laws of the universe. You can’t go faster than light, Trump can’t be trusted around school girls, and Texas can’t turn blue.
For the longest time everyone just accepted this is how reality works. Now the Democrats have taken every office in Texas: Senator, Governor, Lt Governor, Attorney General, Land Commissioner, Comptroller of Public Accounts, Agriculture Commissioner, Railroad Commissioner, and all four Supreme Court Justices.
I can’t bear how embarrassing this must be for Elon Musk who tried desperately to buy Texas for $212 million. Turns out this was the biggest waste of money since he spent $40 billion to rename Twitter, only for everyone to keep calling it Twitter. Imagine being the world’s richest man, owning the most powerful propaganda tool in history, and still no one listens to you.
At least it’s all bad news today. Israel has disputed the claim that Iran achieved regime change in the US, after it successfully installed AIPAC Shakur as House Speaker. If anyone can let Democrat voters down as badly as President Biden, it’s Hakeem Jeffries.
The first black House Speaker in US history has already announced his determination to be the worst black House Speaker. Americans are terrified this might inspire Kamala Harris to do another presidential run.
Nick Bond retweeted
Why has The Telegraph made this the main headline of the US elections?
Because they want to whip up anti-Muslim terror among their readership.
Just a disgusting little racist rag!
Nick Bond retweeted
I have been holding my tongue about something that happened during the Ohio gubernatorial race. I refused to speak while the election was underway because I did not want my words mistaken for an attempt to influence anyone’s vote.
But now that the election is over, I have something to say.
For nearly twenty years, my ministry has taken me among the homeless, the abused, the exploited, and the forgotten. I have sat with victims of sexual violence and witnessed the lifelong wounds of childhood trauma.
What Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign did to Amy Acton was among the most morally repulsive things I have witnessed in American politics.
They took a woman whose stepfather was indicted for raping her when she was twelve years old and featured her mother, from whom she had been estranged for nearly fifty years, in a political advertisement attacking her credibility.
The advertisement challenged Acton’s account of her childhood without mentioning the sexual abuse allegations or the circumstances of that estrangement. When people expressed their horror, the campaign defended it.
Imagine examining another person’s childhood suffering and fractured family relationships, then deciding those wounds might help win an election.
Anyone who has worked with survivors of childhood sexual abuse understands the painful realities of denial, betrayal, shame, and estrangement. A child growing into a successful adult does not erase what happened. Nor does a parent’s denial make that suffering disappear.
I find it equally disturbing that an elderly mother, whom Acton herself described as unwell, was brought into this spectacle. Whatever her own struggles or responsibility for the past, exploiting that fractured relationship was grotesque.
To everyone who defended this, consider the message you sent to survivors. To the young woman whose family refuses to believe her. To the man who has carried the shame of childhood abuse for forty years. To the frightened child who has yet to tell anyone.
What did you teach them about the value of their suffering?
I am a priest. I believe in repentance, forgiveness, and redemption. But none of those things requires me to pretend that deliberate cruelty is anything less than a grave moral failure.
Your political allegiance does not absolve you of moral responsibility. You do not get to set aside your conscience during an election and retrieve it afterward.
If your loyalty requires you to defend the exploitation of a childhood sexual abuse survivor, your loyalty has become an idol. And if your conscience cannot recognize the wrong here, examine what political tribalism has done to it.
This is not about Republicans or Democrats. We have a choice as a people: continue excusing cruelty from our preferred political camp, or summon the courage to condemn it wherever it appears.
Amy Acton deserved better. Every survivor who watched this unfold deserved better.
And God help us if we have reached the point where winning an election matters more than protecting the dignity of a wounded human being.
Nick Bond retweeted
Fact check: Labour are arming a genocide.
Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband offer apologies over Gaza - but continue to arm a genocide.
Labour call those who oppose the genocide - even those of us who are Jewish - antisemitic.
More and more people see through this absolute charade.
Nick Bond retweeted
This is how you manufacture consent.
People need to go and actually read the government website to see the full set of proposals.
Mahmood has slightly softened the first version of her insanely draconian plans, and now its being spun as a win for progressive Burnhamism.
But Mahmood's packages in totality are the most hardline and unfair reforms to immigration and asylum rules in a generation, and bake in discrimination against poorer immigrants doing the social necessary by low-paid jobs that make society function.
It is extraordinary to pretend that anything is 'softening' when the journey to full rights and settlement has been made longer for nearly every category of immigrant - except ultra-wealthy arrivals, who will get expedited settlement.
The plan for asylum seekers still sees their status reviewed every 30 months. People who arrive 'irregularly' or through 'clandestine' means will have to wait up to 30 years for settlement. Safe and legal routes have new, hard caps, which will inevitably push the vulnerable into seeking irregular routes to feel safe.
This package is more severe, and more unfair, than anything promised by the Tories.
Nick Bond retweeted
To put in perspective the UK's new crackdown on a largely non-existent antisemitism problem in schools, remember that more than 2,000 young British Jews are believed to have headed off to Israel to help its military commit genocide in Gaza.
The government has done nothing to stop them going. Meanwhile, British police have been repeatedly handed details of potential war crimes suspects but so far have failed to investigate, arrest or charge any of them.
Powell, the UK’s education secretary, has told Sky News: “I don’t think that our schools should be a place where it’s about making protests and statements about geopolitical events around the world.”
And yet only a year ago her predecessor, Bridget Phillipson, who set up the Bell review, was filmed in British classrooms with primary schoolchildren waving Ukrainian flags.
Despite Powell’s new prohibition, many Jewish pupils will continue to be encouraged by their schools to identify strongly with the foreign state of Israel – a state almost permanently mired, in the worst possible way, in “geopolitical events”.
If it is important for British children to identify with and support Ukraine’s white children through their suffering, why is it not possible – why is it antisemitism – for British children to similarly identify with and support the brown children of Gaza as they go through far greater suffering?
It is hard to imagine an answer that is not racist to its core.
Whatever the government claims, these double standards are not driven by principle. They are not about antisemitism. This is about protecting Israel.
Burnham entered office apologising for how his predecessor, Starmer, “got it wrong” at the outset of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.
But his government is now doubling down on what Labour got equally wrong in the years leading up to the genocide – when it dedicated its energies to crushing the section of the party led by Corbyn that was warning of Israel’s deeply racist character and of what it was likely to do to the Palestinians.
The gencoide has vindicated Corbyn and the left in the most horrifying manner possible.
No matter. As with the current attacks on Zack Polanski of the Greens, none of this is really about antisemitism. It is about Israel.
It is about the British establishment and the billionaire class protecting their interests both in the war industries Israel is so central to and in the oil-rich Middle East, where Israel acts as the West’s attack dog.
This is about crushing dissent to prop up a crumbling western political order, led by a greedy, belligerent narcissist in the White House, as it is afflicted by collapse on every front: economic, environmental, political and social.
Dissatisfaction and unrest are growing. Violence is simmering. Bullying children into saluting the Israeli flag will not halt the decline. It simply underscores how much the “liberal” western order has lost the plot.
This is an extract from my latest article A new UK hierarchy of racism will gag Israel critics from Westminster to the playground. Find a link to the rest in the reply post below ⬇️
Nick Bond retweeted
It's shocking to see 'low-wage care workers' portrayed as a drain on the welfare state. They're doing essential jobs and the only reason they claim benefits is that the fat cat private equity bosses that own care homes don't pay them enough to live on.
Nick Bond retweeted
Private equity is a remarkable innovation. You buy a functioning company, load it with debt, sell its assets, fire half the staff, collect millions in fees, and when it collapses, explain how creative destruction makes capitalism so fucking efficient.
