Steve Weatherill

Looking for an ideal picture book for a beginning reader? Baby Goz is back! The playful patterned language has lost none of its charm. I had actually forgotten his wonderful Knock, knock! Who's there? entry into the world... Red Reading Hub jillrbennett.wordpress.com

Ukraine shot down 140,000 Russian missiles, drones and aircraft over 4 years — including 44,000 Shahed-type drones now hitting US bases in the Middle East. Ukraine sent 200 advisers to the Gulf. Trump's response: "The last person we need help from is Zelenskyy" — The Times. 1/

Boris Johnson calls for the arrest of the Israeli ambassador and Mossad operatives based in Britain.

@misanthropeyrk @nice_cuppa Because they are local to an area where Jews live, not nationwide.

@nice_cuppa So why are 85% of their patients Jewish when only 0.3% of the population is Jewish?

The first thing any first responder does before saving a life is ask if the patient is Jewish or not. Then they put it in a little spreadsheet just in case a c@nt like this ever asks this question on x.

@joshxhowie @JaydaBF You can donate at the go fund me set up to replace the ambulances for EVERYONE’S benefit! gofund.me/0e735b144

I have a lot of journalists following me and I am imploring you, if you are writing about the antisemitic attack in Golders Green, *please* emphasise these two things: - Hatzola is a volunteer-driven, no-cost service that is *entirely* self-funded. It relies 100% on private donations and community fundraising rather than government or public NHS funding. - While operating in largely Jewish areas, it services Jews and non-Jews equally. You may not deem it necessary to include this information, and in a perfect world it would not be. However, these are the two lies being spread by antisemites in order to justify the attack and use it to spread even more hostility against the Jewish people. Please include these facts.

Update on David Collings exhibit at Margate’s Joseph Wales gallery. Kent police sergeant just called. He told me: no action to be taken. The pictures (a few below) are in his view ‘criticism of the Israeli state’. He said ‘because some Israelis happen to be Jews it doesn’t mean it’s antisemitic’. He said: ‘you’re obviously very passionate’. (Thereby dismissing my complaint). I tried to tell him that he was perhaps not best judged to evaluate antisemitic content if his view was that this was not ‘Nazi imagery’ but ‘criticism of the Israeli state’ and could he possibly send someone who knew more about this stuff. ‘No police officer is an expert in racism’, he told me, oddly. I gave him some friendly, if ‘passionate’ advice: sometimes ‘criticism of the Israeli state’ overlaps with anti-Semitic content and incitement. This is one such case. I’ll be complaining - please join in. Case 21-0938 I always want to believe the best of the polite agents of the law on the other end of the phone. But this well-spoken man telling me that hail of swastikas and blood and Jews was nothing but ‘criticism of the Israeli state’ is why we are where we are, why Jews don’t expect anything from the police, and how we find tha Kent police are exactly in tune with Matthew Collings.

@JChimirie66677 @georgegalloway

Well, George, you would say that. You have spent the better part of four decades saying it, in one form or another, about every regime and terror organisation that set itself against the West and against Israel. You saluted Saddam Hussein's courage and indefatigability. You glorified Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah at the Al Quds rally in London, saying it out loud and on the record. You personally handed cash and vehicles to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza in 2009, telling the assembled press conference: this is not charity, this is politics. You carried a Palestinian passport issued by Hamas. You described the October 7th massacres as a concentration camp breakout and called the terrorists who carried them out fighters. You have been photographed with Hamas leaders on multiple occasions. You built your entire political career on the Islamist-Left alliance, founding Respect with the Socialist Workers Party in what Nick Cohen accurately described as a coalition between the Trotskyist far left and the Islamic far right. Your electoral success in Rochdale was hailed as a huge victory by Nick Griffin of the BNP, which tells you everything you need to know about the political territory you now occupy. Iran's right to defend itself. Let us examine what that defence looks like. Iran built and funded Hezbollah, which has spent thirty years embedding itself in Lebanon and firing rockets into Israel. Iran built and funded Hamas, which carried out the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. Iran built and funded the Houthis, who have been attacking international shipping for over a year. Iran supplied the drones and ballistic missiles Russia has been using to kill Ukrainian civilians. Iran plotted twenty assassinations on British soil in two years. Iran hit RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. Iran has massacred over thirty thousand of its own citizens who dared protest against the regime. It has hanged dissidents in public, executed gay people and imprisoned women for removing their hijabs. This morning Iran fired ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint US-UK base in the Indian Ocean, revealing a missile range far exceeding what it had publicly declared, putting virtually every capital in Europe within reach. That is the regime whose right to defend itself you are asserting. You are not a defender of the oppressed, George. You are a consistent and lifelong defender of whoever happens to be pointing a weapon at the West and at Jews. The record is too long, too detailed and too thoroughly documented to be dressed up as principle. Christopher Hitchens, who knew you well, said you were one hundred per cent consistent in your support for thugs and criminals. He was right. You have not changed. The thugs and criminals have simply run out of road. "You described the October 7th massacres as a concentration camp breakout and called the terrorists who carried them out fighters. You have been photographed with Hamas leaders on multiple occasions."

Iran has the right to defend itself.

@KNEECAPCEOL Yeah. About that. Your rich boy poverty safari is really pissing Cubans off. x.com/magjorgecastro…

@JoosyJew They are all on a Jolly in Cuba.

Today, I had the misfortune of stumbling across a PSC “Free Palestine / Don’t Bomb Iran” march. If there were 150 people there I’d be surprised. I’ve seen this same march post Oct 7. There were 000’s back then. The remnants are Palestinianism’s bedraggled - old ‘Socialist Worker’ bods (what you’re picturing is exactly correct), the results of cousins marrying, locals who look like they haven’t eaten fruit for years, occasional students with watermelon t-shirts or Salvador Dali moustaches (and that’s just the women), the standard drum player, the megaphone moron belting out the old classics, the customary wheelchaired Tankie, and a man on crutches. Every Pallywanker rally has a man on crutches. More black and white scarves than a Newcastles United home game, and a genuine odour of loneliness. It was a sad affair, from the once glorious hate marches of 2024. Outside the Central London gold-standard of “Free Palestine” get-togethers with all the big shots, Palestinianism on UK streets is a spent force. The passing public ignored them, or pushed through oblivious if they needed to cross the street. It’s done. “Free Palestine” fatigue is real and the dream of destroying Israel is dead. All that’s left is a collection of sullen individuals looking for a few hours of activity on a Saturday before Michael McIntyre's The Wheel on BBC One at 6:45pm. Nebachs.

BREAKING: It’s now confirmed that yesterday’s arson attack on a drone manufacturing plant in Pardubice, Czechia had nothing to do with the Israeli defense tech company Elbit Systems as initially claimed. The drones were being produced for Ukraine. Several attacks have been carried out by “anti-Israel activists” against European defense companies which provide weapons to Ukraine. It seems that Russian security services are using a combination of agents and anti-Israeli useful idiots in Europe to attack companies selling or donating weapons to Ukraine. 🇨🇿🇺🇦

He did exactly what he said he would do. Below was two days before the horrific massacres of his own people Jan 8th & 9th - by order of the Supreme leader - set in motion by Ali Larijani - and carried out by Police chief Radan. It is hard for us to fathom in the West that this brazen evil could be broadcast so publicly. History teaches us that another group were similarly public about their intentions. Nazi policies were widely available to the population. Berlin Radio pronounced the mass-execution of Jews in Białystok and the burning of synagogues in July 1941. Numerous speeches allude to the destruction of Jews. Hitler made a prophecy January 1939 about the destruction of all European Jews. He publicly referenced his prophecy at least four times in 1942. Hitler's emphasis on the prophecy during the height of the Holocaust meant that it was generally accepted as a shared ideal among German secular society. The vast majority of Iranians inside and outside the country completely and utterly reject the idea that even a single protester should have been killed and remain vocal about it especially while the digital blackout inside Iran continues. War is a catastrophe. But there is a bigger one lying ahead: if this regime is not gone for good after this calamitous conflict. #IranIsraelUSAWar

COMING APRIL 1, 2026 ANOTHER SOUL SAVED Vienna, 1941 Once in a generation a woman emerges whom history can’t forget #Holocaust #WWII #histfic

You can now experience Rob Gotobed live in the comfort of your own home as the stand-up comedian narrates his hilarious book, The Canyons Of Rob Gotobed’s Overactive Mind. Very funny and guaranteed to make you lol!! Amazon: amzn.to/4obJSd0 Apple: bit.ly/3K6WdB9

@ZackPolanski, Iran fired two ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, the joint US-UK base in the Indian Ocean. Neither hit their target but the significance goes far beyond this engagement. Diego Garcia is a 4,000 kilometres from Iran. Iran's foreign minister said last month that Iran had limited its missile range to 2,000 kilometres. That was a lie. And the implications of that lie are ones that every European leader, every Green Party politician and every opponent of this operation needs to confront. Missiles that can reach Diego Garcia can reach virtually every capital city in Europe. London. Paris. Berlin. Rome. The threat you are demanding Britain appease just revealed it can hit further than anyone publicly acknowledged. Now let's address who started this war since you seem confused. Iran built, funded and directed Hezbollah for thirty years. Iran built, funded and directed Hamas, which carried out the October 7th massacres. Iran built, funded and directed the Houthis, who have been attacking international shipping for over a year. Iran supplied the drones and ballistic missiles Russia has been using to kill Ukrainian civilians. Iran plotted twenty assassinations on British soil in two years, every one of them thwarted by British security services. Iran hit RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. Iran has been blockading the Strait of Hormuz, collapsing Gulf oil exports by sixty per cent and driving up the energy bills of the British households you claim to represent. And lest we forget what this regime does to its own people: it has massacred over thirty thousand of its own citizens who dared to protest against it, hanged dissidents in public, executed gay people and imprisoned women for removing their hijabs. This is not a government that deserves the benefit of the doubt. It is a theocratic killing machine that has been at war with its own people and the wider world simultaneously. Iran started this. It has been starting it, in one form or another, since 1979. On the promise of a parliamentary vote: Starmer made that commitment as Labour leader running for his own party's leadership in 2020. He was not Prime Minister. He had no constitutional authority to bind future governments. The convention, as he has explained, is that votes apply to offensive deployments of troops, not defensive operations conducted at speed. You know this. You are citing it anyway because it is the only procedural argument left when the substantive ones have collapsed. You lead a party that has never condemned Hamas. Never condemned Hezbollah. Never condemned the Iranian regime that funds both and has just fired ballistic missiles at a British base. Your concern for British military personnel and civilians rings hollow this morning. The regime you have consistently refused to condemn just tried to hit a base housing British forces. That is the context in which your statement lands. And it lands very badly indeed. "This is not a government that deserves the benefit of the doubt. It is a theocratic killing machine that has been at war with its own people and the wider world simultaneously."

The President of the United States just recorded a campaign video for Viktor Orban. From the Oval Office. Orban – the man blocking EU aid to Ukraine, maintaining warm ties with Moscow, and systematically dismantling Hungarian democracy for fifteen years – needed a boost ahead of his April election. So Trump sent one. “A very big hello to CPAC Hungary.” Reagan would have needed a drink.

Putin underestimated Zelensky, and that played a cruel joke on him. He never considered Zelensky his equal — and still doesn’t. And that is Putin’s main mistake. To this day, Putin sees Zelensky as a comedian, an actor who accidentally won the presidential election. And that is his second mistake. Putin never managed to understand how and when the evolution of Zelensky happened — from comedian to politician, from politician to president, and from president to the leader of the Ukrainian nation. And these changes happened instantly — at 5 a.m. on February 24, 2022. Putin and the Russian intelligence services were convinced that Zelensky would not have the courage to stand up to the Russian army. In Russia, they were counting on his weakness and inexperience. Especially since Putin had an example before his eyes — Viktor Yanukovych, who in 2014 abandoned the country and fled to Russia during the Revolution of Dignity. Zelensky did not do that — he stayed in the president’s chair. The war revealed the true qualities he had all along. Since the beginning of the war, Volodymyr Zelensky has addressed the people every day, often recording these messages on an ordinary smartphone. The background is not always perfect, the lighting is not always good — but the sincerity he shows is worth a great deal. That sincerity is present even in the smallest details. Zelensky is not concerned with how he looks. He is concerned with one thing — to explain, to clarify, to support, and to help people understand his decisions. Putin cannot love anyone; he can only envy, rage, and fear. He was absolutely convinced that a man with as little political experience as Zelensky would not withstand the pressure of the Russian army for long. That Zelensky would be broken by the political situation in the country, economic problems in Ukraine, relentless criticism from bots and opponents, as well as scandals provoked by his enemies, pseudo-friends, and “well-meaning” advisors. None of them could believe that Zelensky had changed — that he had become a true wartime president. That he challenged Putin, who constantly pushed him toward capitulation. But that did not happen and will not happen, because many have already given their lives for Ukraine’s freedom and independence. Time has passed. The war has reached Russia and will soon leave Ukraine. Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have turned Putin into a real old clown, writhing in the arena — but the audience is not laughing. Over the years of the war, Putin has withered and shrunk, visibly declined; his speeches now provoke only confusion and ridicule. This angers him, but the fact remains: the exact opposite has happened to Putin compared to Zelensky — degradation. From the president of a powerful country, he has turned into a joke and a laughingstock. That is how he will remain in history. Even in this humiliation, he is capable of nothing more. And Volodymyr Zelensky will remain a historical figure — and a victorious president.

Time to open something special in 2026! Get ready to continuously laugh out loud! From the absurd to the hilarious, this Rob Gotobed comedy book delivers the wildest humour that’ll have readers of all ages giggling and questioning their sanity. bit.ly/4aKC3WU

@itsjohncrotty How many years is that John? How many would still be alive?

That was covered in the response I sent you Steve If you don’t have the decency to read the replies, why interact? ‘In 2013 Ireland gave an amnesty to those deserters, the intention being to avoid any suggestion their WW2 service was seen as a problem. Again, newspapers relayed this as a pardon for ‘the men who fought Hitler’, claiming they had been targeted or unduly treated. Absolute nonsense. Any decent journalist or historian could have searched the then declassified archives, like below, and seen Ireland was pro-Allies in WW2, and a child could work out the action the government took was a massive reduction for desertion’

This poster from the Anti-Partition of Ireland league, 1949, has an interesting backstory De Valera and his Irish Government favoured the Allies exclusively in WW2, giving immense covert aid in violation of neutrality. But they would not endorse Britains partition of Ireland by openly siding with the UK After the war, it was always the intention to vigorously campaign to end the partition of Ireland, which is exactly what they did. The anti-partition league was set up with cross-party support in 1945. But - their chances were scuppered in advance by clever political manoeuvring by Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and America diplomat, David Gray Churchill & Roosevelt were initially angry about Irish neutrality. As the war progressed, the secret service fed back the reality - Ireland was helping the Allies so much, it was neutral in name only 9% of the Irish population flocked to the UK war effort, zero to Germany, while the government gave total material support, granted access, conducted spying and much else. MI5’s end of war report stated ‘Ireland was of more use neutral’ But the reality of this support being secret was not known to the general public, and there was a public perception of Irish inaction. This was cleverly exploited by Churchill to diminish any public support for ending partition. Roosevelt was satisfied to see the power of the Irish-American lobby reduced. Churchill told an American luncheon he saw ‘little but an ineffective and inglorious role for Mr. De Valera’ at wars end. He took his shot, using his victory speech to claim Ireland had ‘frolicked with the Germans’ - a gross slander he was aware was untrue. This built on earlier falsehoods. A request to have the German Legation in Ireland closed had been made knowing it would have to be refused, or it would violate neutrality. MI5 files declassified in 1999 show the request was made against their wishes, because they were working with Irish secret services to spy on the location and plant misinformation. It what ahead anyway. Why? To put on record an occasion of seeming ‘support’ or ‘softness’ by Ireland, to stoke public dissatisfaction Public opinion in America & Britain had already been swayed by frequent fake press reports, like claims of Ireland supporting Germany by ‘refuelling u-boats’ and other fairytales. This wasn’t helped by de Valera’s ill judged call to the German diplomats home on Hitlers death, an action his enemies could term ‘Nazi support’ where none existed. Churchills ‘frolic’ claim was the nail in the coffin Irish efforts to end partition post-war were unsuccessful. Doomed from the start by political posturing. Some today still believe the falsehoods regarding Irelands true role in WW2, a testament to the power of propaganda Partition remains, to be resolved only by democratic majority - the opposite of how it came to exist

Hegseth announces that Ukraine is cut off. Serving Putin is the core focus of the Trump administration.

Yesterday, I told Piers Morgan that the regime would force female soccer players to appear on national TV and praise them under threats against their families, essentially holding their loved ones hostage. Today, they did exactly that. And as if that wasn't enough, they also executed our wrestling champion, Saleh Mohammadi. 💔 #Iran