Connect with us

UK News

Greens must take immediate action against antisemitism in party, says Lucas | Green party

Published

on


The former Green leader Caroline Lucas has called for the party to take immediate action against candidates who have made antisemitic comments or posts, following a series of cases before Thursday’s elections.

Lucas, who led or co-led the party for six years and served as its first MP, said that while the number of such cases was limited, they could not be ignored.

“Statements that have now come to light from a handful of @TheGreenParty candidates are totally unacceptable & require immediate action,” she wrote on X. “There’s no place for antisemitism or any hate speech in the party. This is a society-wide problem and needs to be rooted out wherever it’s found.”

Zack Polanski, who now leads the Greens in England and Wales, has disowned candidates highlighted for antisemitic comments. However, Labour has accused the party of acting too slowly to suspend or remove them.

The issue was highlighted last week after two Green candidates for Lambeth council in south London, Sabine Mairey and Saiqa Ali, were arrested on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred online.

Screenshots of Ali’s Instagram account indicated she had posted an image of an armed man wearing a headband of the banned Islamist group Hamas, along with the slogan: “Resistance is freedom”.

Another screenshot indicated that Mairey had shared a post which included the text: “Ramming a synagogue isn’t antisemitism. It’s revenge.” Both have been suspended by the party.

Among other cases, the Greens are investigating Brian Capaloff, a candidate in Waltham Forest, north-east London, over allegations he posted on X using an anonymous account to speculate whether last week’s stabbing of two Jewish men in north-west London had been deliberately staged by Zionists.

Also under investigation is Joe Belcher, a candidate in Walsall. He was suspended by the Greens when running for a West Midlands parliamentary seat in the 2024 election after posts emerged in which he suggested Hamas might have been paid by Israel to carry out the 7 October 2023 attacks.

Under the Greens’ highly decentralised system, local parties have considerable power, including over who they select as candidates. The party argues this can make it slower to suspend candidates than is often the case for other parties.

Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Polanski condemned any antisemitic comments, saying this was “not an abstract idea” for him. “As a Jewish person, those comments disgust me. It’s important that we let the disciplinary process take its place, and that’s exactly what we have,” he said.

He rejected the idea this was something especially prevalent in the Greens: “I don’t believe we have a particular problem compared [with] wider society and other political parties.”

Polanski said he disowned candidates who had made such comments. Asked if he would “tell people here today: don’t vote for them, they don’t stand for you”, he replied: “That’s right.”

A Green spokesperson said: “Caroline Lucas is right – there’s no place for antisemitism or hate speech in any party. She acknowledges that unacceptable comments have been made by just a small number of the 4,500-plus Green party candidates in these local elections.

“Where there are examples brought to our attention that do not align with the values of the Green party, we are looking into them, and in some cases candidates have already been suspended. We are investing in strengthening our vetting procedures to prevent inappropriate candidates slipping through the net.”



Source link

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

UK News

David Guetta and Sia’s song Titanium got me through my fertility treatment | Dance music

Published

on


At the end of 2011, party season was under way but I was in no mood for festivities. Two years into fertility treatment, my body was pumped full of synthetic hormones and felt like a pin cushion, while my head was filled with both the fragile hope of having a baby, and the exhaustion of failed clinical attempts to do so.

I was in my late 20s. I met my husband when I was 22; we got married when I was 25. “I want to have kids young,” I’d told him. It was a feeling I’d harboured since my teenage years. But I’d also had the nagging sense that it might not come easily to me. As it turned out, my intuition was right. Approaching 28, I was a regular on the infertility merry-go-round.

I was recovering from my second miscarriage that year when I heard Sia’s raspy voice on the car radio belting out words that sounded emotionally weighty for an electronic dance number – her David Guetta collaboration, Titanium.

It’s not a song I would have necessarily rated or listened to again – I’m more likely to play 00s R&B and hip-hop – but it came at the perfect time in my life. I had forgotten how days felt before fertility drugs and the diarised cycles of administering them. I’d been constantly wearing a brave face and cramming in hospital appointments before and after work, going about my job through a fog of longing and hormones. It had left me in a “cry on the bedroom floor” kind of a heap. I needed something to drag the hope back into me.

I turned the radio up and listened to the lyrics: “I’m bulletproof, nothing to lose / Fire away, fire away.” It felt as if it was talking to and about me, issuing a riposte to all those shots of disappointment that had been fired our way. As Sia’s vocals ascended through the chorus with Guetta’s soaring synths – “Ricochet, you take your aim” – I cried, but I felt myself gaining power with her, too. “You shoot me down, but I won’t fall / I am titanium.” Those were the words I needed to hear.

I felt like a puppet pulled upright again. I streamed it on repeat in the days that followed. I might not have been able to face the work Christmas party but I wasn’t going to languish on the bedroom floor any more.

Over the next months, I spent a lot of time in my car, travelling to work and to fertility appointments to get my blood tested, hormones measured or insides scanned. Listening to Titanium became routine. Each time, its cinematic surge had the same empowering effect and I’d turn up the volume, wind down the windows and defiantly sing along in my terrible voice so it could wash over me.

The following May, when my husband and I headed to the clinic for another IVF embryo transfer, I let it motivate me; when we drove back from scans confirming we were six weeks, then 12 weeks pregnant, I celebrated with it. As I nervously made my way through my pregnancy, I turned to it when I needed the boost.

In January 2013, our first son was born. Today, he is the eldest of three: his brother arrived 15 months later, via IVF too (the last of our fertilised embryos) and four years later, another brother, without fertility treatment. We consider ourselves unspeakably lucky; for many, the outcome is not the same.

In our family, everyone knows Titanium is my fight song. It’s the only big commercial dance hit on my playlists, and a marker of something I overcame.

My kids call me in whenever it streams or plays on TV. When I made my husband a playlist for our 15th wedding anniversary, it’s the song that represented our 2011. And the other week, when he was out with friends, he sent me a voice note from the bar: he’d recorded it playing in the background.

There’s something all-consuming about fertility treatment: you view life only through the filter of your efforts to get pregnant. If you’re lucky, the filter lifts. It did for me, but the fight song remained. So, now, elsewhere in life, when I need a shot of strength and find myself alone in the car, down goes the window and on it goes.



Source link

Continue Reading

UK News

Parents 'facing uncertainty' as SEN children left without school places

Published

on



Amy Gibney says she is one of eight families at her child’s school to find out that they don’t have a place for next year.



Source link

Continue Reading

UK News

Edinburgh airport reopens after security alert but passengers warned of ‘knock on’ effect | Scotland

Published

on


Edinburgh airport reopened on Saturday morning after parts of the terminal building were evacuated on Friday night because of a security alert.

An explosive ordnance disposal team was sent to the airport to investigate what Police Scotland described as a “potentially suspicious package” discovered at about 6.50pm on Friday.

An evacuation was ordered and a police cordon was set up, with roads closed.

Passengers faced disruption as result of the operation and the airport warned that schedules would continue to be affected on Saturday.

In a statement at about 3am on Saturday, the airport confirmed it had reopened and would work to restore normal services as quickly as possible.

“Following investigations by specialist teams, the airport has now reopened.

“This incident will have knock-on impacts throughout today and staff are working hard to address these and support passengers.

“Operational teams are continuing to work to restore normal services as quickly as possible.

“Please check with your airline for the latest information on your flight.”

The statement did not provide an update about the examination of the suspicious package.



Source link

Continue Reading

Trending