Humza Yousaf has accused Foreign Secretary David Lammy of racism for meeting with an Israeli minister as part of efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. The Telegraph has more.
The former First Minister compared Israeli military action to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but claimed the Foreign Secretary and Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, would not engage in the same way with Vladimir Putin or Sergey Lavrov, Moscow’s Foreign Minister.
He said the “only conclusion” to explain the different approaches was that the British response was “rooted in racism” because of the idea that “Arab lives simply do not matter to the same extent as European lives”.
The accusation of racism from Mr. Yousaf, who has said he intends to work to bring about international peace after he leaves politics next year, was branded “offensive and naïve” by the convenor of Holyrood’s cross-party group on Israel.
Mr. Lammy met with Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s Foreign Minister, in Israel on Sunday. The Labour politician said he had stressed the need for an “immediate ceasefire”, the lifting of aid restrictions on Gaza and the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas in the October 7th 2023 attacks.
Both ministers later posted an image of them smiling and shaking hands on social media, with Mr. Lammy also meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority.
In comments to the National, a pro-independence newspaper, Mr. Yousaf accused Mr. Lammy of attempting to “cover-up” the meeting, despite the Foreign Secretary posting about it on his account on X, formerly Twitter.
He claimed it was “shameful” to meet with the Israeli Government and to “pose for photographs with the Government whose head is wanted by the International Criminal Court”.
Mr. Yousaf said: “I wouldn’t expect David Lammy to be posing, smiling with photographs with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister.
“I wouldn’t expect Keir Starmer to be shaking hands and hugging Vladimir Putin. We wouldn’t expect any engagement at that senior level.”
He added: “The only conclusion one can draw with why the Israeli Government and the people of Gaza are treated differently is that it has to be rooted in racism.
“Arab lives simply do not matter to the same extent as European lives, and that to me is an indictment of the sad state of humanity that we currently live in.”
Worth reading in full.
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“We don’t save a lot relative to oil and gas, but I would still recommend any house with a heat pump also gets solar panels,” he says.
The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one.
I wonder if they save anything at all relative to gas?
Of course not! It’s interesting they didn’t factor in anything to do with long term maintenance and ultimately asset replacement – clearly they believed a mechanical device would simply work ‘forever’ which is naive at best. It shouldn’t be too much work to drop an oil fired boiler back in there, or gas with a propane tank setup.
Solar panels are a revenue stream “thanks” to feed-in tariffs whereby as mandated by Government, electricity retailers must pay more per kWh by a substantial margin for electricity fed-in than electricity supplied.
That’s why the economics are favourable.
We other lucky consumers pay for this by higher charges in our bills.
Mr and Mrs Watts will need megawatts if they want to keep warm.
I guess the government is already preparing a solution for them in the form of “voluntary” euthanasia.
The Inuit would use ice flows. Environmentally friendly.
Fewer ice floes in Buckinghamshire…
Mr and Mrs Watts – another fine piece of nominative determinism!
But yes an absolute unfolding nightmare.
Harsh fact of life – Conning yourself into installing a cheat pump is worse than being conned onto installing a cheat pump by state-sponsored scammers.
No substitute for a hydro-carbon powered boiler, when you take into account purchase price, cost of house-upgrading and the state-sponsored highest unit electricity price in the world.
Whilst they might not be on the gas grid, many have lpg tanks as an alternative to oil.
Still that’d be admitting you made a mistake with the heat pump in the first place…
Cause: “they did enjoy an advantageous scheme of selling the power they generated from solar panels back to the grid”
and
Effect: “the cost of electricity has soared”
The power from solar panels was of no use to the power companies, but they were forced to pay for it anyway.
Sunken cost fallacy ( trademark of government’s COVID and Nut Zero policies, to name but just two ) … Invested so much in this [scheme, technology, policy, emotive virtue ], can’t pull out now.
Solar panels will save us. And a vegan diet.
Sigh …. I am an emphatic person, but it’s being stretched awfully thinly recently … Awfully …
No comment
We just upgraded our oil boiler for less than £5k. Add a tank.
Sorted.
One day there may be millions of pensioners living in houses with failing or failed heat pumps that they cannot possibly afford either to run or replace or obtain loans to do either
I won’t be one of them. They can keep their heat pumps.
Me neither…they can shove them along with the electric vehicles!
I don’t want to see any old person struggling due to affordability to heat their home. That said, it’s hard to have sympathy with anyone who falls for this ‘saving the planet’ bo11ocks. Anyone who installs a heat pump, or solar panels, or buys an electric car because they think they’re being ‘green’ is buying one for completely false and non-existent reasons, which is where my sympathy ends.
“We had a reporter up from the local paper asking us about our solar panels and our heat pump,” recalls Mr Watts.
So since 2008 I and others have had money taken out of our pockets via taxes and via hidden charges on our energy bills to line the pockets of Mr and Mrs Watts so they can have reduced costs whilst mine and others’ go up and up.
Sympathy for them? I should co-co.