The August riots disappeared from the headlines long ago. The Ministry of Justice stopped reporting on the progress of the prosecutions a month ago. Perhaps people stopped caring, but the system still rumbles on. This week the BBC reported that Derek Heggie, a former boxer from Carlisle has decided to plead guilty, although it’s not clear from the report whether he has pleaded guilty to an offence under the Malicious Communications Act or a lesser offence. According to Cumbria Crack, Derek faced two charges. The first was that he “sent an electronic communication of an offensive nature”. This communication was “two YouTube videos which, court papers show, made reference to grooming gangs and also the prophet Muhammad”. The BBC reported that in a video Heggie said “young white girls are being raped by these grooming gangs”. The second charge was that he sent “grossly offensive electronic communications, via YouTube between the same dates, with intent to cause distress and anxiety”. These communications took place between August 2nd and 8th, and by the 9th Heggie was under arrest and up before a magistrate. Based on what’s been reported, I’m struggling to understand what offence has actually been committed.
You might think he wouldn’t have said he was guilty unless he was. But decisions on pleas aren’t made in a vacuum. Heggie has been remanded since his arrest in August. That means for the past four months he has been held in prison despite not being convicted. This seems peculiar. According to the Bail Act, defendants can be remanded if the courts believe they may not return for their trial, may commit another offence, attack someone, or seek to obstruct the course of justice. Prison isn’t pleasant for anyone, but it’s often particularly tough for inmates being held on remand. I spent the first half of my prison sentence at HMP Wandsworth, a jail with a very high remand population. I noticed that men awaiting trial or sentencing often struggled more with their mental health. An unknown future is often much harder than the certainty of a known sentence to serve.
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When fantasy and reality meet, there is only one winner.
Absolutely marvellous news. What a grand way to start the weekend.
Oh dear, never mind. Next WEF toss pot please.
Couldn’t agree more 👍
One does have to worry about the 72k who are left…
1/3 are Muslim.
1/3 LGBTQZ+++.
1/3 Retarded.
Any Scottish at all?🤣
Not known as the Special Needs Party for nothing..
😀 😀 😀
Muslim number far too high. Glasgow neds and Dundee tossers increase the retarded by 100% and the number of Queers is about right
There have been so many final nails in the SNP coffin, like their idea to criminalise what people say in their own living rooms under absurd Hate Speech Laws, or the Named Person Scheme, whereby a government appointed person like a teacher or other professional would observe and report back to government on the “welfare” of each child up to the age of 16 (or maybe 18). Yet Scots still backed this anti English, Anti Tory bunch of eco socialists that wanted to pour concrete in oil and gas wells, in a kind of scorched earth pact with the commy Greens. But I am so glad to see that Scots have finally been aroused from their sleepwalking, and it took this insidious gender garbage to awaken them.
“But I am so glad to see that Scots have finally been aroused from their sleepwalking”
I hope you are right but the jury is still out on this as far as I am concerned.
“aroused from their sleepwalking” does not imply that the party is over for the SNP. I don’t for one second take that for granted. But I speak to a lot of SNP supporters, and what I see is that they mainly vote SNP because they HATE tories.. They think somehow that if they get away from Westminster and run off with the Germans that they will be in control of their own affairs. —-They could not be more wrong. All they would be in the EU is Local Administrators putting in place diktats from Brussels. They have blinkers on when it comes to all the Gender, Hate Speech absurd eco policies that wants rid of oil and gas. All they see is “I hate tories”. These same people used to vote Labour, till they fell out of love with Blair, so they started to vote for the only other bunch of socialists available. The SNP ——I am hoping that these parasites are now on the way out, but I never assume.
As a person living in Scotland for the last 30 years and was in politics – you are spot on and you most probably live in Scotland to know that. Peopl ‘Down South’ have no real concept of the anti English feeling that permeates throughout Scotland. The support for SNPs has no logic whatsoever, and particularly when one looks at the policy debacle in education, health and commerce – it is almost entirely driven by being anti English and anti Tory.
Good points.
“absurd Hate Speech Laws, or the Named Person Scheme, whereby a government appointed person like a teacher or other professional would observe and report back to government”
Or witch finder general, as he/they/them used to be known! 🧙♀️
Best news since stepping down!
I would argue that the parties have all become ‘uniformly left-wing organisations’ instead of right-wing ones. Otherwise, he is correct: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/10/the-party-is-over/
“… Those who lead political parties – and here comes my promised perception – believe they don’t actually need members any more. Almost nobody attends hustings meetings, nobody reads leaflets and nobody engages with canvassers. Elections are now fought almost entirely through the mainstream media, and online.
For the modern campaign, parties need paid PR practitioners and they need paid troll farms. They don’t need little old men and women going door to door, other than once or twice for a candidate photocall.
The members, bluntly, are redundant old nuisances in the eyes of the political class. Nobodies who presume a right to have a say in party policy which should be dictated by the professionals.
Nor do they need the members’ subscription money. Starmer is delighted to have shed hundreds of thousands of Corbyn supporting members, to pursue instead corporate and billionaire money. The SNP Conference in Aberdeen was simply a festival of corporate lobbying. The Tories have always run on dark money in huge tranches.
Then there is the ever increasing largesse of Short money – taxpayer funds which the political class have awarded themselves to fund their party administrations. This state funding of political parties is one of the very worst innovations of my lifetime and fundamental to the development of our careerist and unprincipled political class.
The UK’s political parties are becoming uniformly right-wing organisations which represent a very narrow spectrum of views – those of the corporate sector and billionaire donors; who also of course own the mainstream media, which thus has precisely the same narrow spectrum of view.
This is a fundamental change in what a political party is – it no longer is a free association of citizens holding a common political outlook and working to elect representatives to support that philosophy. This great change in society – which renders western “democracy” entirely meaningless – is being consolidated before our eyes.
The destruction of Corbyn and his member-supported left-wing programme is mirrored in the destruction of Truss and her member-supported right-wing programme.
Nobody is allowed any longer to put forward any programme that is not within the narrow and entirely unimaginative confines of the professional political class.
An election that pitched Corbyn against Truss would offer voters a real choice between two radically different visions of society, with the Lib Dems as an option for those who liked neither. That would be a real democracy. But it is not to be permitted to voters.
Irrespective of what Labour and Conservative Party members would like to offer, the electorate is likely to be presented with Sunak or Starmer, two people so close in political outlook and policy there really is little point in turning up to vote. In Scotland you can choose the SNP, with the same basic economic policies and no genuine desire to change much on the constitution.
This of course links to the ease with which the “markets” were able to destroy the Truss/Kwarteng mildly radical economic policy. Be in no doubt the “markets” would have done precisely the same to Corbyn/McDonnell. Again, no actual political choice that deviates from our unseen masters is to be permitted.
That is a much larger subject, for another day.”
“…. becoming uniformly right wing organisations…. ” Really, is that how you see it? I hope I don’t come across you when out driving on the ‘right’ side of the road!!
“Ms. Sturgeon insisted her 89-year-old party was experiencing “growing pains” during the contest.”
Sounds more like dying pains to me!
Everything comes to she / he / they who wait…or not, in some instances 😂 🤣
I bet she’s feeling cranky and rankled.
Meanwhile these members will get to vote for the next leader of the party who are still in charge. The Scottish people still have to put up with whatever nonsense the SNP + Greens come up with until the next election. The ill effects of that partnership will linger for sometime.