Mick Hartley

Not a very complicated picture: UEFA allows a massive banner accusing Jews of killing children to be part of the ceremony at a game featuring Tottenham, a club associated with Jews, and the next day bans a small sign in the crowd for Jewish captives. https://t.co/67wHaESjJw

— Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) August 16, 2025

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From the article:

The brother of an Israeli hostage was banned from bringing signs demanding his release into a Uefa match a day after it displayed a “Stop Killing Children – Stop Killing Civilians” banner before the Super Cup.

The incident occurred before Beitar Jerusalem played Riga in the qualifying round of the Conference League in Romania on Thursday night.

The signs calling for the release of Rom Braslavski, kidnapped during the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, are said to have displayed messages including: “Bring back Rom”; “I want my brother”; and “The voice of my brother’s blood is calling to me from the tunnels – Bring Rom and the rest of our hostages back home.”

It is unclear who would have blocked the banners, with the ongoing war in Gaza having forced Beitar to play Thursday’s home leg of their third-qualifying-round tie at Romanian club Petrolul Ploiesti’s Ilie Oana Stadium.

Braslavski’s brother, Amir, who travelled to the game, nevertheless called on Uefa to intervene over the “hypocrisy” of a decision made a day after the governing body displayed its own sign on the pitch when Tottenham played Paris St-Germain in Udine, Italy.

He was quoted in Israeli media saying: “We demand that Uefa reverse this shameful decision and allow us to hold his flag and signs until he returns home alive and well.”

A spokesperson for the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) also said: “Rom Braslavski has been held captive by terrorists for nearly two years in conditions deliberately intended to prolong his suffering. To European football, Jewish lives don’t matter.”

From the Telegraph:

A British female sailor has criticised a musical based on her life story after the cast members used their platform to stage a pro-trans fundraiser.

Tracy Edwards made history in 1989 when she captained the Maiden, leading the first all-female yacht crew in the Whitbread Round the World Race.

But she has criticised the musical based on the race, called Maiden Voyage, after cast members used a curtain call to fundraise for a charity that supports transgender inclusion in women’s sports on the night she attended.

Ms Edwards has been public with her opposition to the inclusion of transgender women – biological males – in women’s competitions and changing rooms.

They allegedly chose the night Ms Edwards was in the audience for the show, running at the Southwark Playhouse, to make a public plea for funds.

Footage from the night showed one performer urging the audience on Aug 12 to give to Pride Sports, the “LGBTIQ+ inclusion charity working to make sports a welcoming place for everyone”.

This charity publicly opposed moves to ban transgender women from female competitions, including the FA’s new rules barring trans players from women’s and girls’ football leagues.

Some members of the cast were said to be uncomfortable with Ms Edwards’ positions on women’s rights, sport and her opposition to gender ideology – the belief that self-identification rather than biological sex defines womanhood.

This led to some trouble behind the scenes in the days before a group of cast members made their on-stage appeal, and there were concerns about a potential protest or “nastiness”.

Ms Edwards said: “They had not done it before, or on other dates. It was for my benefit.”

She added: “They are in a little bubble, and I don’t think they think for themselves. They are not activists; they are sheep.

“The irony of spending 90 minutes singing and dancing in celebration of women fighting for their rights in sport, only to trample all over those rights at the end, is off the scale.”

Well said.

Heather Binning, the founder of the gender-critical Women’s Rights Network, said: “Tracy Edwards is an icon for women who proved her mettle in the male-dominated world of sailing with an all-woman crew, astonishing many, and celebrated by many more.

“To use and exploit that achievement is an insult to women everywhere, and particularly to Tracy herself.

“To try to score woke points by making a statement in support of a so-called ‘trans’ project is quite beyond belief.”

On my bike today down the Lea, under the Greenwich Foot Tunnel – north lift out of order, as so often – along the Thames path to Woolwich:

Low in the water, at Three Mills.

New sculpture, by Rasheed Araeen:

View at Bow Locks:

Buddleia by the (green algae) water:

Old pier, Greenwich:

Across to the Docklands towers:

Morden Wharf:

Damien Hirst, "Mermaid":

Damien Hirst, "Demon with Bowl":

Royal Iris, former Mersey ferry, at Woolwich:

Tate and Lyle, across the river:

 

 

The EHRC's Baroness Falkner has intervened in the NHS Fife case. From the Telegraph:

An NHS board has admitted breaking equality rules by allowing a transgender doctor into a women’s hospital changing room without assessing the consequences.

NHS Fife has confirmed it carried out no impact assessment regarding the provision of single-sex changing facilities for staff, the UK’s equalities watchdog has disclosed.

Dr Beth Upton, who was born male…

and still is male

…was allowed to use women’s changing facilities at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, and Sandie Peggie, an A&E nurse, was suspended after challenging the doctor’s presence.

Baroness Falkner, who chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has now said an impact assessment was a requirement to meet the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED).

In an unprecedented intervention, she said the EHRC had ordered the board to produce an assessment, and anticipates it will be published by Sept 30.

She said the watchdog had also made clear that NHS Fife must comply with April’s Supreme Court ruling that trans women are not women for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010….

Lady Falkner said: “Earlier this year, we asked NHS Fife to provide us with information on the provision of single-sex changing facilities for staff and the rights of different groups in the application of these policies. At that point, NHS Fife confirmed no equality impact assessment was available.

“Undertaking an equality impact assessment of relevant policies or practices, and publishing the results, are requirements of the PSED specific duties in Scotland. We believe NHS Fife failed to meet these requirements and told them to carry one out immediately.”

Maya Forstater, the chief executive of Sex Matters, which is supporting Ms Peggie’s legal action, said: “This directive to NHS Fife is an unprecedented intervention from the EHRC and the kind of muscle that has been lacking from regulators across the board since gender ideology first took hold of public institutions.

“While long overdue, this is a clear instruction to NHS Fife – and in fact all employers – that it cannot get away with continuing to flout the Equality Act.”

Tess White, the Scottish Tories’ shadow equalities minister, said: “This damning directive from the EHRC confirms that, on top of being negligent, incompetent and biased, NHS Fife broke the law in relation to the Sandie Peggie case.

“The shameful admission from the health board confirms that Sandie Peggie was hung out to dry from the very beginning of this tawdry scandal simply for standing up for her rights as a woman.”

A bit of a star, is Baroness Falkner.

It's all a bit weird in Australia. As well as the Giggle v Tickle case, there's Jacinta Allen, the Victorian premier, defending the policy of teaching five-year-old kids about how their biological sex may not align with their gender identity, and they may be born in the wrong body. Five-year-olds! All in the name of "protecting kids, strengthening resilience of kids and supporting kids to be who they are across our schools”. It's insane.

Fortunately not all Australians are on board. Psychiatrist Andrew Amos, for one. 

One of the trans rights train's most effective strategies is turning leftist politicians into puppets reciting trans fantasies as if they are progressive facts. This works best when the politician has no idea what they're talking about.

A brilliant example is the angry press conference by Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan where she defends schools teaching five year old Victorians that it is possible to change sex.

The Victorian Education Department curriculum for Year 1 students includes exercises that teach kids it is possible to be born in the wrong body. They train kids to go to their teachers to punish other students who don't share their beliefs.

This turns teachers into cultural enforcers bullying schoolkids into toeing the transgender line.

The idea of being born in the wrong body is a harmful delusion promoted by gender activists to indoctrinate children before they have the emotional and intellectual ability to understand and reject the activists' political agenda.

Every sane adult knows that it is impossible to change sex. That is why the vast majority of adults don't want men playing in women's sports, intruding into women's toilets, or invading protected women's spaces like rape crisis services.

Trans activists know that most of the population find their beliefs bizarre or repulsive, so the activists seize every opportunity to insert them into more normal materials.

There is absolutely no justification for five year olds to be exposed to harmful trans ideology. It is well established that many 16 year olds struggle to understand the ideas associated with gender identity.

It is impossible for five year olds to resist a teacher who forces them to agree that it is possible to change sex. It is immoral for teachers to use children to shame their classmates into that impossible belief.

I do not know if Jacinta Allan shares the delusion that it is possible to change sex, but it is undeniable that she has been forced to defend that delusion by trans activists involved in writing Victorian Education Department curricula.

If the Victorian Education Department can't teach resilience without teaching five year olds they can change sex, then Victorian parents should think twice about trusting them with their kids.

"Immoral" is putting it mildly. It's a despicable betrayal of young children.

After JKR, here's Kathleen Stock on Nicole Sturgeon's ridiculous book:

In the 2010s it was commonplace to hear that such-and-such a prominent woman had “imposter syndrome” — meaning she went through life irrationally feeling as if she was about to be unmasked as a fraud. It seems that the disease goes all the way up to national leaders. In Nicola Sturgeon’s autobiography, Frankly, published yesterday, she describes suffering from it too. “The better I did, the more of an imposter I felt, and the greater the fear of being ‘found out’,” she writes.

Cut to the end.

But while she had diligence in spades, ultimately, she never made a dent in the most pressing national problems — rising drug deaths, falling education standards, terrible public health, violent crime in cities — and that’s partly because, in terms of her capacity to understand the bigger picture, her intellect was always too limited, tempting her towards the superficial gesture as a substitute. If Frankly is anything to go by, then, strictly speaking Sturgeon never did have imposter syndrome. To have that particular malaise, your nagging suspicion you aren’t really up to the task has to be wrong.

Ouch.

The Ilan Halimi memorial tree has been cut down:

Antisemitic vandalism shocked French authorities Thursday evening when perpetrators used chainsaws to deliberately destroy an olive tree memorial honoring Ilan Halimi in Epinay-sur-Seine, prompting municipal officials to file criminal complaints. The commemorative tree was planted in 2011 within a city garden to honor Halimi, a young French Jewish man who was kidnapped and tortured to death in 2006 by Muslim gang members known as the "Gang of Barbarians."

Text:

Ilan Halimi was a 23-year-Jewish Frenchman. On 21 January 2006, Ilan was lured into a trap by a young woman acting as bait. He was kidnapped by an Arab group known as the “Gang of the Barbarians,”. The gang held him hostage for three weeks, subjected him to repeated torture, and demanded ransom from his modest family. On 13 February, rescuers found him in agonizing condition, only partially clothed, handcuffed, bound, burned, and near the railway tracks of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois in Essonne. He soon died in the hospital.

Autopsy Findings: His body bore extensive injuries covering 80% of it: bruises, multiple contusions, a facial wound from a cutter, and two stab wounds under the throat. The pathologist determined death resulted from cumulative torture, exacerbated by exposure to cold and starvation.

Ilan Halimi was held in a basement storage room of a low-income apartment block in Bagneux, a suburb south of Paris. The building was part of a large housing estate notorious for gang activity.

His captors doused him with flammable liquid, burned him with cigarettes, beat him, and left him without adequate food or medical care.

Residents later testified that there was constant coming and going, gang members bringing food, checking on him, and sometimes showing him off to visitors. The “Gang of the Barbarians”, led by Youssouf Fofana, included around 27 members and accomplices, mostly young people from the neighbourhood. Many of them were aware that a kidnapped man was being held and tortured just floors away.

Some residents of the building, including minors, saw him or overheard conversations, yet did not alert the police.

Investigations revealed: At least three women brought him food and participated in humiliating him. Several teenagers were seen bragging about the hostage to peers. Some neighbours claimed fear of retaliation if they spoke up; others shared the antisemitic belief that “Jews are rich” and thus thought ransom-seeking was justified.

The police later criticized this collective silence as a form of passive complicity, a “wall of indifference” that allowed the torture to continue for 24 days.

Authorities later found cigarette butts, DNA traces, and clothing in the basement.

Phone records and witness statements confirmed a constant flow of visitors to the holding site.

The investigation concluded that this was not just the act of a lone sadist but a communal crime, sustained by active cruelty from some and deliberate inaction from others.

From JK Rowling's much-awaited review of Frankly – The twilight of Nicola Sturgeon:

Sturgeon tells us in Frankly that she wants to eradicate misogyny directed at women in the ‘public sphere’, ie, famous people like her and like me, who’re sent sexualised threats and insults. ‘Sphere’ is an interesting word, isn’t it? So very close to ‘bubble.’ While Sturgeon is focused on making sure no hurty sexist words penetrate hers, she’s entirely dismissive of the harms done in actual physical spaces, where she expected nurse Sandie Peggie to deal with a heavy menstrual flood in front of a cosplaying man, and vulnerable female prisoners to accept being incarcerated with trans-identified male sex offenders. The First Minister, with her police protection, her carefully monitored official residence and her chauffeured car just couldn’t see what these bigots were making a fuss about.

But then Isla Bryson burst into the news. Bryson, a convicted double rapist, had decided he was a woman and would rather be incarcerated with the sex against which he’d already committed the most male of crimes. When asked on television whether bald, blonde wig-wearing Bryson was a man or a woman, the First Minister, whose composure and articulacy under fire had, for years, been her most potent political asset, made herself look – and forgive me for employing a PR term here – a complete fuckwit.

But read it all.

Former hostage Danielle Aloni describes how Hamas terrorists told her not to worry if something happened to her, saying they would take care of her daughter, Emilia, if she died.

I can’t imagine a more terrifying proposition.

Former hostages like Danielle are calling to bring… pic.twitter.com/mfXkOqoPOu

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 14, 2025

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"Former hostages like Danielle are calling to bring the remaining hostages home. It is long past time to listen."

Nicole Lampert in the Evening Standard – Why London Jews fear for their future in the capital:

Samson is 13 and has had to get used to antisemitic abuse when he leaves his north London Jewish school, but there was one incident a couple of months ago that still scars him. He was walking towards Belsize Park underground and was lagging behind his friends. “Most of my friends had crossed the road but I was on my own when I was targeted by two guys wearing balaclavas. They did a Nazi salute, they spat on the ground and said, ‘dirty Jew’,’’ says Samson.

“Then they grabbed me by my shirt collar and pushed me against a gate and demanded my phone.” The assault only ended when other people approached the attackers. “The whole episode left me feeling quite shaken up,” adds Samson. This wasn’t the first time he’d been attacked on his way home from school — he’d been spat at on the Tube and called names — just the most violent….

Schools are just one of the many areas in which antisemitism has spiked since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 heralded the start of a new war with Gaza. The Community Security Trust (CST) which monitors anti-Jewish hatred has labelled school antisemitism a particular growth problem, with 107 reported incidents in the last six months. Jewish parents find themselves in a quandary: send them to a Jewish school where they will be safe in the playground but attacked when they leave (41 of those incidents happened during a daily commute) or send them to a non-religious school and hope they don’t get bullied.

Dozens of London Jewish parents have had to remove their children from schools because of antisemitic bullying. Worst of all? It might come from the children but can be seen to be encouraged by the teachers….

A grim read.