Bobbydog

When I can't get to Church I light a virtual candle. Above is a link for a website where you can do this too if you so wish. One small candle leads to many lights and hopefully by doing this we can brighten the lives and many others in this World and maybe the next too - link updated now and access via header

SOME REPLIES:

Starmer during Prime Ministers Questions Time today. Some replies below:

OPINION Here's why Keir Starmer's child safety pitch is really about watching you

By Bev Turner Published: 09/06/2026  - 18:32

Here's why Keir Starmer's child safety pitch is really about watching you – Bev Turner |GETTY

For a Government that still valiantly claims to have a "special relationship" with Washington, Labour is again on the receiving end of some blunt messages from Donald Trump's America. The President has yet again criticised Britain's expanding online safety regime, questioned whether UK regulations are becoming a threat to free speech and raised fresh concerns about British demands for access to encrypted data. Trump's allies in Congress have openly warned the UK against what they describe as "backdoor spying" on American citizens through Britain's surveillance laws. 

Thank God for America, fighting for the freedoms of Brits – the irony of this is profound, given that we are a few weeks from July 4 and America's Independence from the UK. We should be grateful that they are still on our side – just.

While Washington is asking whether Britain is becoming way too comfortable monitoring what people say and do online, Keir Starmer has unveiled a proposal that would once have sounded less like policy and more like the plot of a dystopian thriller. Standing on stage at London Tech Week, the Prime Minister gave Apple, Google and the rest of Silicon Valley three months to introduce controls that would prevent children from taking, sharing or viewing nude images on their devices. Failure to comply, he warned, would see the UK Government step in and do it for them. "This Government will not stand by while children are put at risk online," he declared. "Today, I am calling on the tech companies to introduce device-level controls to prevent children from taking, sharing or viewing nude images. And if they don't act, we will."

Even when he is trying to be tough, Starmer sounds weak, and, of course, keeping kids safe online should be a shared ambition, but selecting something so roundly utopian means that any naysayers can be quickly accused of being against child safety itself. It's a classic totalitarian diktat – create a problem, generate fear, and clamp down on it "in everyone's interests". But the entire debate hinges on two deceptively innocent words: "Device-level".

Because once you look beyond the emotional manipulation and marketing dross, the reality is shocking.

If a system is going to identify one inappropriate image on your phone, it must first examine every image on your phone. Every image.  It may be that you sent a picture of a dodgy mole on your backside to the doctor, or your child's self-harming marks to a concerned counsellor, or even just a selfie trying, or your new swimsuit.

Under the excuse of "protecting kids" from perverts, they will create a world in which all content has the potential to become public – or criminal.

The technology industry has a name for this already: "client-side scanning", and you are the client – but you don't get to opt in or out. In simple terms, it means software sitting inside your device, inspecting content before it is encrypted and sent anywhere. Imagine employing an alarm fitter to secure your front door, and as you get the rundown of how it works, a government agent is sitting on your sofa taking it all in. Technically, the alarm still works. Practically, your privacy has already gone out of the window.

Apple experimented with precisely this type of system in 2021, before abandoning it following widespread criticism from privacy experts and security researchers who warned about the implications for encrypted communications. End-to-end encryption exists specifically to prevent intermediaries from inspecting your private messages and files. "Client-side" scanning neatly sidesteps the entire principle by moving the inspection process to your own device before encryption ever takes effect.  The encryption survives, but privacy is consigned to history – remember, this will never be rowed back on. Governements that gain extra powers never hand them back.

It is truly shocking to observe how casually this idea is now being discussed.

A decade ago, the suggestion that governments might encourage phone manufacturers to install software capable of reviewing every image on every handset would have been laughed out of a policy conference. Today, thanks to an authoritarian government in lockstep with a sleepy, compliant media; global institutions; academics; and agencies, it is presented as common sense: "to keep the kids safe." It's grotesque and over-reaching, and luckily, millions of British people are starting to piece together the socio-political conditions that were supposed to remain invisible. View it as a Government fitting every home in Britain with a smoke detector that also happens to record conversations, then insisting only "those with something to hide" need worry.

Of course, we're assured adults needn't be concerned and ministers say that the restrictions will only apply to children, leaving adults free to switch them off. There's just one catch: to prove you're an adult, you'll need to verify your identity. In other words, the escape route from surveillance requires another layer of surveillance. To disable controls on a device you purchased, own and pay for, you must first prove your identity to someone else.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood dismisses concerns entirely. She insists this is about preventing exploitation, coercion and sextortion, not monitoring private devices. The technology already exists, she says with absolute certainty – companies simply need to activate it. "There is no reporting, no data collection, no monitoring, and no images leaving the device", she says. For now, I say.

But this confidence might land more comfortably if it wasn't coming from the same Government currently embroiled in a bitter dispute over demands for access to encrypted cloud data. 

Remember, this is the Government that reportedly issued Apple with a secret Technical Capability Notice demanding access to encrypted iCloud backups. Apple responded not by complying but by withdrawing its strongest encryption protections from the UK market altogether rather than create the capability requested.  That legal battle continues. History teaches us that the snoopers and censors are never the good guys. Many privacy advocates simply don't buy the assurances. They have shown us their hand and trust is gone.

The European Union spent years wrestling with its own proposal for large-scale message scanning, eventually known as "Chat Control". The scheme ran into fierce resistance from privacy campaigners, cybersecurity experts and lawmakers concerned about the implications for private communications. Germany, with its unique historical experience of state surveillance, proved particularly sceptical. Its justice minister compared blanket scanning to routinely opening every letter in the post just in case one might contain something illegal. Signal, one of the world's most secure messaging platforms, indicated it would rather leave certain markets altogether than compromise encryption.

And if this really is about protecting kids, why not demand that phone companies make existing child safety controls (already fitted by the way!) more hack-proof and easier to use – as a matter of urgency?

Most smartphones already contain extensive child-safety features, they are just unfathomly difficult to master and easy for tech-savvy children to hack! This would require no legislation or nationwide infrastructure. But it would also require no mass identity verification...and that it what the government really wants.

History shows that surveillance powers rarely remain confined to their original purpose. A capability introduced to tackle one social problem inevitably attracts interest from officials seeking to solve another. Today's target is child protection but that woud quickly morph into Tomorrow it would be "misinformation" and "harmful content" – whether that is a Reform UK manifesto or a feminist statement against trans rights. Pick your political panic – whatever is deemed that day's virtue signalling hot topic - you had better be on the right side of every argument or the wrong screenshot of a meme, could see you on trial without a jury in a court with an AI judge. It sounds like madness..but the pace of change is so immense right now that it is entirely imaginable. Once the machinery exists, the temptation to widen its remit will become irresistible. And that's the question no journalist is posing to the Government. Why should citizens trust any of them when they have spent years pushing for greater access to private communications when it promises that this time, the surveillance infrastructure will only ever be used for the purpose it currently has in mind?

Honouring soldiers feels performative when the truth about Lee Rigby's murder is avoided

By Lee Cohen Published: 22/05/2026 - 15:13

Thirteen years after Lee Rigby’s murder, the Government still refuses to confront the Islamist ideology that killed him, writes the US columnist

On May 22, 2013, Fusilier Lee Rigby, a 25-year-old British soldier and father, was hacked to death in broad daylight on a London street by two Islamist converts, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. They ran him down with a car, then attacked him with knives and a cleaver while shouting about revenge for British military actions in Muslim lands. This was not random violence. It was a deliberate act of Islamist terrorism targeting a symbol of British service and sovereignty. Britain’s response over the past thirteen years reveals a deeper failure: an institutional reluctance to name and defeat the ideology responsible. 

As an American observing Britain’s struggles, I see a nation that honours its soldiers in rhetoric but undermines their sacrifice through policies rooted in denial, multiculturalism dogma, and fear of “Islamophobia” labels.  Rigby’s killers were British-born or raised converts radicalised within Britain. They acted on an explicit Islamist worldview that views Western soldiers and civilians as legitimate targets in a global religious conflict. Yet successive governments, media outlets, and cultural elites have treated such attacks as aberrations disconnected from the pattern of Islamist extremism.

The facts remain stubborn. Adebolajo and Adebowale were inspired by al-Qaeda ideology. They cited Muslim deaths in “Muslim lands” as justification — an “eye for an eye” declared openly to bystanders and cameras. Intelligence services had prior interest in the pair, yet systemic gaps allowed the attack.

The murder previewed a shift toward low-tech, lone-actor or small-cell Islamist violence that has recurred: vehicle rammings, knife attacks, and plots against military and public targets.  Thirteen years on, the threat persists. As of May 1, 2026, the UK national terrorism threat level stands at SEVERE, meaning an attack is highly likely. Islamist extremism remains the primary threat, accounting for the bulk of MI5’s counterterrorism caseload—around 75 per cent in recent assessments.  MI5 and police have disrupted dozens of late-stage plots in recent years. In 2025 alone, significant convictions included life sentences for Islamist plotters targeting Jewish communities in Manchester, with weapons and IS-inspired plans aimed at mass casualties.  Other cases involved converts planning attacks on synagogues, hospitals, and festivals, alongside ongoing prison radicalisation and online grooming.

Honouring soldiers feels performative when the truth about Lee Rigby's murder is avoided |MoD/PA/Metropolitan Police

These are not isolated incidents. Reports document around 39,000 Islamist extremists on MI5’s watchlist out of a total of nearly 43,000. Arrests and custody figures for terrorism-related offences remain elevated, with Prevent referrals continuing at scale. 

Yet public discourse often defaults to vague “extremism” framing or false equivalences that dilute the distinct religious-political driver of Islamist violence.  This approach echoes the immediate aftermath of Rigby’s murder, where initial reactions emphasised mental health or foreign policy grievances over the killers’ clear ideological statements.This denial serves no one, least of all Britain’s Muslim communities, who reject terrorism, or military families who lost a son, husband, and father. Rigby’s widow, mother Lyn Rigby, and young son Jack (now a teenager) carry the personal cost. 

The Lee Rigby Foundation, established by his parents, supports bereaved forces families through caravans, Lee Rigby House in Staffordshire, and ongoing memorial rides in 2026 honouring fallen personnel.  Jack has fundraised for charities like Scotty’s Little Soldiers, turning grief into service. On this anniversary, tributes highlight the enduring pain and calls for a dedicated memorial day, yet mainstream coverage often feels muted compared to the scale of national reflection such an attack deserves. 

Britain’s post-Rigby approach - expanded surveillance, task forces, and occasional crackdowns - has delivered tactical successes in foiling plots. However, it has fallen short strategically. 

Mass migration without rigorous assimilation expectations has contributed to parallel societies where Islamist ideas can take root. Official inquiries and reports, including Baroness Casey’s 2025 audit into group-based child sexual exploitation, highlight persistent issues with grooming gangs. 

Data gaps remain glaring: ethnicity is unrecorded for two-thirds of perpetrators nationally, despite local evidence in places like Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire showing disproportionate involvement of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds. Victims, often vulnerable young girls, were failed by authorities wary of “racism” accusations. Recent government funding increases for investigations are welcome, but critics note they may fall short of addressing the full scope. 

Broader cultural tensions compound this. Perceptions of two-tier policing—where certain protests or ideologies receive softer treatment—fuel public distrust. 

Foreign fighter flows to Syria and Iraq in the 2010s, returns, and ongoing radicalisation pipelines demonstrate the limits of current integration policies.  Sharia-influenced patrols in some areas and protests that appear one-sided in prioritising foreign causes over British cohesion point to eroded cultural confidence. Elite reluctance to defend core Western values—individual liberty, secular law, and national loyalty—has left a vacuum. 

As an American, I recognise parallels in U.S. experiences. Post-9/11, America confronted Islamist terrorism with greater ideological clarity, even amid imperfections and debates over civil liberties.  We learned that ideology matters: treating jihadist violence primarily as mental illness, foreign policy blowback, or generic “extremism” invites repetition. 

Britain risks the same slow erosion through chilled free speech under hate speech concerns, demographic shifts outpacing integration, and a hesitancy to enforce sovereignty on borders and deportations of radicals.

Rigby died wearing no uniform that day, yet he was targeted precisely because he represented the British Army and, by extension, Britain itself. Thirteen years later, true remembrance demands more than annual tributes or foundation work. It requires rejecting denial, enforcing assimilation in immigration and citizenship policy, prioritising deportation of those who reject British values, reforming prisons to curb radicalisation, improving data collection on threats like grooming, and restoring unapologetic defence of British identity and sovereignty. 

SARAH VINE: Poor Henry Nowak died like a dog on the pavement and not one officer tried to save his life. We all know the reason why... it's tearing this country apart

By SARAH VINE, COLUMNIST PUBLISHED: 20:55 EDT, 2 June 2026 | UPDATED: 20:55 EDT, 2 June 2026

Overwhelming sadness. Heartbreaking, gut-wrenching helplessness and rage. That is what I felt when I saw the footage of that poor boy, Henry Nowak, dying like a dog on the pavement.No one should perish like that.Surrounded by hostile strangers – the police and his killer – without a kind word or a gentle touch, handcuffs on his wrists, mockery in his ears, blood filling his lungs. ‘I’ve been stabbed’ he gasps. ‘I don’t think you have, mate,’ scoffs one of the officers, his voice dripping with contempt.

Can you imagine the heartbreak for this teenager’s parents and family? Their son dying at the hands of a cowardly brute, a thug who had left his house carrying not one but two ceremonial knives: a liar and a fantasist who, in a venal attempt to save his own skin, ensured that Henry was denied even the tiniest crumb of comfort in his final moments, and whose lies might have prevented his victim’s life from being saved.

The Nowak family’s dignity and restraint in the face of such narcissistic evil are nothing short of heroic. To have to sit in court alongside the relatives of this creature, to have to tolerate his supporters, despite all the evidence, still playing the race card, requires hearts of oak. ‘How can you say they’re not racist?’ screamed a young Asian woman as the killer, Vickrum Digwa, was led to the cells. An elderly man in a turban hurled insults at Henry’s lawyer, calling him a ‘f****** bean-head’. How? How dare they? They too must have seen this footage. Have they no compassion, no humanity, no shame? Apparently not. It’s clear the Digwa clan see themselves as victims. As his mother awaits sentencing for her part in Henry’s death (she was found guilty of trying to stash the murder weapon back at the family home), they issued a statement.

Teenager Henry Nowak died after being stabbed, with handcuffs on his wrists, blood filling his lungs, and mockery in his ears from the officers at the scene

The Nowak family’s dignity and restraint in the face of such narcissistic evil are nothing short of heroic, writes Sarah Vine (Pictured: Henry with his father Mark)

Police treated Henry with a lack of urgency after his killer, Vickrum Digwa, told them of a potential racist incident. Such is the power of the ‘R’ word, our columnist observes

They apologised in a perfunctory manner for ‘the pain and suffering the Nowak family has had to endure,’ then quickly added: ‘We love Vickrum. We will continue to love him.’ They then issued another apology to the Sikh community ‘for our son’s actions which have unfairly brought the community into disrepute’. As if that’s what matters. Seriously? It would be better if they said nothing at all.

I defy anyone to watch the footage of that poor boy drowning in his own blood and not be overcome with emotion.

Henry’s dying plea – ‘I can’t breathe’ – as his killer claims a non-existent eye injury and lies that his victim ‘hasn’t been stabbed’. At this, the officer replies, ‘I know, but we have to check, don’t we?’ – as if Henry’s suffering were nothing more than an inconvenience.

The officers handle him roughly, dragging him across gravel and pulling his hands behind his back to cuff him. Did that hasten his death, put extra strain on his already damaged lungs?

They read him his rights, but already he seems unresponsive. I know it was dark and a fast-moving situation, but still. What must that poor boy have felt as the darkness closed in? Just a kid: not much younger than my own son. He too is a student; he too likes a night out; he too has an older sister. The world is full of Henrys, young men just starting out on life’s journey. None of them deserve his fate.

People have drawn parallels with the George Floyd case in America, the one that sparked worldwide riots and the whole ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Ordinarily, I would say such comparisons are invidious, but I’m afraid there are undeniable similarities here.

Floyd’s last words were also ‘I can’t breathe’, which became a rallying slogan for the protests. Given that, you might have thought Henry’s killing would provoke a similar sense of outrage. But strangely, all the usual suspects, the rent-a-mob Corbynistas, the ‘anti-fascist’ agitators, the woke warriors and Sunday Sandinistas suddenly seem otherwise engaged.

The problem, you see, is that Henry’s death doesn’t fit their narrative – because he was white. And white people can’t ever be victims of racism – or of other ethnicities.

That’s why no one believed Henry when he said he had been stabbed. That’s why not one of the attending police tried to save his life until it was far too late. It’s almost as if, in the minds of these officers, a potential racist incident was far more urgent and more serious than a potential murder. Henry repeatedly tells them he’s been stabbed, but the only voice they hear is that of his killer. Such is the power of the ‘R’ word. This was not responsible policing, it was ‘suicidal empathy’ in action: the logical conclusion of a mindset that casts certain groups as victims and assumes others are always the aggressor.

It’s the kind of cultural and racial profiling that is tearing this country apart.

Henry’s treatment by the police is a terrible metaphor for the way our society has been warped by the toxic culture wars that have dominated over the past decade. This injustice is not just an awful, one-off misunderstanding but part of a clear, undeniable pattern that goes to the heart of why so many people feel marginalised, misunderstood, victimised – and why Britain is slowly falling apart at the seams.

I wonder what would happen if people took to the streets in protest? Inevitably, they would be cast as ‘far-Right’ and ‘racist’ for daring to speak out about the death of a white teenager at the hands of an Asian man.

Some might even find themselves arrested and imprisoned, and politicians would no doubt call for ‘calm’, as the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood did yesterday.

At the time of the Floyd riots, Keir Starmer made an impassioned speech about this career criminal and infamously ‘took the knee’ along with his deputy Angela Rayner. Half the parliamentary Labour party did the same on a grass lawn outside the Houses of Parliament.

Henry’s death merited little more from Starmer than a lukewarm post on X bemoaning ‘knife crime’. The obvious truth is that Britain’s police and courts now operate a two-tier justice system.

Situations are not assessed or responded to on the basis of evidence, but according to a system of pre-existing assumptions and deep-seated bias. Henry’s case is shocking – but far from isolated. ‘Cultural sensitivities’ have been a mitigating factor in the way crimes are handled for years now, from the Pakistani rape gangs to the Manchester Arena bombers (security guard Kyle Lawler told the inquiry he had a ‘bad feeling’ about the terrorist Salman Abedi but did not approach him for fear of being branded a racist) and more recent cases still.

Yes, in the past, the police and courts have been guilty of racial bias. But we have come a long way since the days of Stephen Lawrence’s murder in 1993 and the mishandling of the case against his killers, which led to the Macpherson Report six years later and the branding of the Metropolitan Police as ‘institutionally racist’. This newspaper was instrumental in finally bringing two of Stephen’s killers to book, and in highlighting the flaws in the system that led to them almost escaping justice. Now that pendulum seems to have swung too far the other way, and our country is facing a new threat.

If our politicians, police and judiciary don’t step up and restore some sort of balance, the resentment and rage that ordinary people feel will continue to fester – and become a cancer that rots us from within.