Misha Voikhansky

🇵🇸 'This is not life': Rain heaps more woe on displaced Gazans Heavy rain has flooded tens of thousands of displaced Gazans' tents in the war-devastated territory, according to Palestinian authorities, leaving them without shelter. Displaced families have been fleeing their camps in parts of Gaza City and in central and northern areas of the territory

It is shameful that the world failed to prevent genocide, failed to shelter Gaza's civilians from Israel's bombs, and is now failing even to lift the blockade on basic supplies that would protect children and their families as rain floods the camps of displaced people across Gaza.

Germans seem to get a lot less shit for the Holocaust than white English people do for ending the slave trade.

I am glad the Church of England has spoken out. The concerns being raised about this legislation must not go unanswered. I urge the leadership of every faith community to make their voices heard. Muslim communities, for example, will share many of the same concerns about the implications for prayer, religious teaching, religious guidance and the ability to express and uphold deeply held beliefs. This demands an urgent, open and properly informed national debate. Faith leaders must speak up now, before legislation with such far-reaching implications becomes law. The prospect of the state legislating into matters of prayer, religious belief and the expression of faith is not something society should sleepwalk into. This risks setting a profound precedent. Once the state begins extending its authority into the home and the practice of faith, where will that intervention end? Abusive and coercive practices should be robustly addressed through existing laws, strengthened where necessary to protect those who are vulnerable. But that must not become a justification for state interference in ordinary family life, religious teaching and the freedom to practise one's faith.

Has anybody ever noticed that Russia only interferes in the elections that go the 'wrong' way?

Having a fertile imagination, I can imagine a group not dissimilar to Patriot Platform finding out where certain judges reside and protesting outside, possibly even forcing them into hiding. It will elicit stern condemnations from the PM, various luminaries and pompous Times columnists (none of whom have ever uttered a peep about a certain Batley teacher). They will lecture the public on the rule of law while they continually throw the book at dissenters - while there'll be no noticeable change in the number of violent offenders and nonces walking free. I imagine this will not be very well received by the great unwashed, who will find such moralising from the establishment to be, shall we say, unconvincing. I wouldn't even be surprised if court cases themselves were disrupted when certain cases are brought before certain judges. This will, of course, be denounced as "far right thuggery". This is the point where society begins to fall apart, because law and order is only held together when the machinery of the state has legitimacy and moral authority. You can immediately see the problem here. We have a government that virtually nobody wants, a system that is adept at freezing out challengers, biased and corrupt courts, two tier justice, and a politicised police force that has completely lost the respect of the public to the extent that it is little different to an occupying force. Consequently, normally law abiding folks such as myself, will not find much sympathy for the powers that be. I don't believe that Danny Tommo is far right, and at this point, I don't particularly care if he is. His views are closer to my own than seemingly any sitting judge, who will place the rights of paedophiles and rapists ahead of our right to safety. This, in case you were unaware, puts us on a trajectory towards civil unrest. The justice system is corrupted and incoherent beyond repair, and can only win back the confidence of the general public when its verdicts reflect the values of the law abiding. If judges are the ones seen to be causing more harm than "far right thugs" then the social contract is dead. Since the powers that be are incapable of acknowledging their role in bringing this unhappy situation about, it can only escalate from here, and I know of nobody in a rush to condemn it. I certainly won't.

When you're given lines at Harrow

There remains no doubt in my mind that 7th October entirely justifies the scope and scale of the military action Israel took in Gaza subsequently.

Accountability isn’t for everyone. The safest thing to do would be to demote these head teachers and find someone less neurotic to take their place. #dutyofcare

My 90 yr old dad was rushed into hospital with on going gallbladder issues. His pre op has been cancelled twice already. He has been moved bed 4 times, in the process losing his hearing aid charger, making it very difficult for him to hear properly, & causing extreme stress. It has now been found. But, every time he was moved he missed food order so was offered sandwiches. Better than nothing but not ok for several days. Friends have now brought in cooked food. He had an operation & they missed removing the main stone, but put in a stent. He will go back into surgery today or tomorrow to get that stone. I’m grateful for his medical treatment & the caring staff, but this is a man who’s still working at 90 contributing to society (still coaching swim kids), was a member of our armed forces, where he lost an eye, & never taken a handout, ever! Our NHS is utterly broken.

William Buick is one of the reasons why racing is and will die in this country. No one will interview him and ask what he was doing and no one will call him out . Punters just have to accept it. @RacingTV @itvracing

The summer of 1976 ran fifteen consecutive days over 32 degrees, and a British child could walk into any kitchen in the country and find nothing in it he was able to eat. Not nothing in the house. Nothing he could eat. The fridge held ingredients: milk, a bit of bacon, the end of Sunday under a plate, butter, a lump of cheese going hard at the edge. The cupboard held flour, tea, tins and sugar. Every item in that room needed an adult, a pan and a decision, and the adult had a running order and no interest in your opinion of it. Sweets and crisps existed, obviously. They were not in the house. They were in the shop, bought one at a time with your own money if you had any, and eaten on the pavement within ninety seconds. Keeping a week of crisps in a cupboard would have struck your mother as a peculiar thing to do with money she did not have. So eating happened three times, at fixed hours, sitting down: - breakfast, cooked, before anyone left the house - dinner at midday, at home or in a canteen - tea at five or six, cooked Ask at four and you were told you would spoil your tea, and that was the end of the conversation. Which is how children went out of the door after breakfast in that heat and came home at teatime having eaten nothing at all, and not one adult thought it worth remarking on. Three meals inside eleven hours, then thirteen hours with nothing, every night of the hottest summer any of us can remember, in a country with no name for it, no watch that mentioned it and no opinion about it whatsoever. Then it moved indoors. The multipack. The family bag. The vending machine in the corridor. The forecourt open till ten. And the packet turned out to be an excellent mood regulator, which is exactly what it was built to be. Bored on a wet Tuesday, flat after a bad shift, sitting on your own with the telly going, and there is something within arm's reach designed by a food scientist to answer that precise feeling in under a minute. Boredom in 1976 got a bike, a job that wanted doing, or a cup of tea and whoever else was in the room. Every parent now standing over an untouched dinner is losing an argument to a bag opened at four o'clock. Your mother never had to win that argument. She decided what came into the house, and she has been replaced by a multipack.

The fact that there is a "debate" about stopping benefits for foreign nationals shows how insane British politics has become. We should never have provided a penny in benefits to anyone who is not a British citizen in the first place! I say that as someone who lived in Britain for many years as a foreign national.

As we approach five years since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, we asked 5Pillars readers and viewers for their thoughts on the country five years on. 96% said they believe the Taliban have overall done a good job and that Afghanistan is in a better place now than before. Just 4% believe things were better under NATO occupation and that the Taliban have failed. Social media poll based on 730 responses.

Nobody who thinks the Taliban are a great bunch of lads should be anywhere near this country.

🚨 NEW: Reform UK has pledged to scrap PIP and the health element of Universal Credit for working-age adults Only people with severe disabilities would receive cash payments to save £50bn a year on benefits

The only person responsible for Jason Arday's death is Jason Arday. He was a liar and a fraud who was rightly exposed for what he really was by academics and journalists who were simply doing their job. No one forced Arday to make up lie after lie about his life. He chose to do that. And he did it for financial gain and to bask in the applause it brought him. He used those lies to deceive people into giving him a job he didn't merit, a lucrative book deal he didn't deserve,  as well as fame and adulation he didn't earn.  And when he was found out, he called in the police and expensive lawyers to shut his accusers up, and his failed students who complained were branded as racist. Cambridge University and Jesus College enabled this liar by lauding him as brilliant when he wasn't even mediocre. They should ask themselves why they put their DEI religion above the need for fairness in their appointments processes, above the needs of Arday's students and, most importantly, above the truth. Arday's family and friends should ask themselves why they chose not to speak out to expose his lies which they must have known to be untrue.  The police should ask themselves why they thought it acceptable to investigate an academic and a journalist simply for asking questions about Arday's fraudulent CV.  The BBC and Arday's many other deluded cheerleaders should ask themselves why they were so desperate to believe Arday's outlandish claims in the face of all the evidence. The thousands of the great and the good in academia, politics, media and law who signed the Good Law Project letter backing Arday should ask themselves why, without any justification, they outrageously branded Arday's critics as racists who just wanted to bring down a successful black man because of the colour of his skin. All of these people made their own contributions to Jason Arday's life. And arguably all of them contributed in some way to his decision to take his own life when his fantastical claims were finally exposed for what they really were: lies. The idea that those who exposed Arday as a lying fraudster are to blame for his death is as laughable as it is outrageous.  The idea that Arday was "hounded" to his death is absurd. He chose to tell every single lie himself and he even chose to continue those lies in his resignation letter from Cambridge. He is not the victim. He is the perpetrator. The claim that Arday's downfall was only a front page story because he was black is also ridiculous. He chose to tell the lies that made him a front page story in the first place.  I feel sorry for those who loved him. It is very sad that he has chosen to take his own life rather than face the consequences of his own actions, which should have resulted in a criminal conviction for fraud.  But actions have consequences. This isn't about right and left. It's about right and wrong.