Inside Croydon

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@JasonForCroydon @VeoliaUK @FMConwayltd Pity you didn’t tell @Veolia that before handing them a hefty new contract after sacking them less than two years earlier for performance failures. Dodgy deals from a dodgy Mayor insidecroydon.com/2025/11/17/bin… #Croydon #CroydonInCrisis

Last week I met with Scott Edgell from @VeoliaUK and John Holliday from @FMConwayltd to make clear my expectation that Croydon residents receive the best possible service and value from our contractors. We discussed raising standards, tackling fly-tipping, improving street cleanliness and using innovative approaches to support a cleaner and safer borough. Veolia manage our waste services and FM Conway maintain our highways network, so it is important we continue working closely with them to improve the look and feel of our neighbourhoods and secure better value for residents as we restore pride in Croydon.

“My name is Amos Goldberg. I am an Israeli Professor of Holocaust Studies. For nearly 30 years I have researched and taught the Holocaust, genocide and state violence. And I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what’s happening now in Gaza is a genocide. A year ago when October 7th happened, like all Israelis I was in shock. It was a war crime and a crime against humanity. 1200 people - more than 800 of them civilians - were killed in one day. Children and the elderly were among those taken hostage. Communities were destroyed. It was outrageous, traumatizing, personal. Like most Israelis, I know people who were killed, who lost loved ones or whose loved ones were taken hostage. But immediately afterwards came Israel’s response and within weeks thousands of civilians were killed in Gaza. It took me some time to digest what was unfolding before my eyes. It was agonizing to confront that reality. I was reluctant to call it a genocide. But if you read Raphael Lemkin – the Jewish-Polish legal scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ and was the major driving force behind the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention – what is happening in Gaza now is exactly what he had in mind when he spoke about genocide. It does not need to look like the Holocaust to be a genocide. Each genocide looks different and not all involve killing of millions or the entire group. The United Nations Genocide Convention explicitly asserts that genocide is the act of deliberately destroying a group in whole or in part. Those are the words. But there does need to be a clear intent. And indeed, there are clear indications of intent to destroy Gaza: Israel’s leaders - including the prime minister and the minister of defence - and many high-ranking military officers, media personalities, rabbis, as well as ordinary soldiers were very open about what they wanted to achieve. There were countless documented incitements to turn the whole of Gaza into rubble and claims that there are no innocent people living there. A radical atmosphere of dehumanization of the Palestinians prevails in Israeli society to an extent that I can’t remember in my 58 years of living here. Now that vision has been enacted. Tens of thousands of innocent children, women and men have been killed. Over a hundred thousand were wounded. There is a near total destruction of infrastructure, intentional starvation and blocking of humanitarian aid. There are mass graves and reliable testimony of summary executions. Children that were shot by snipers. All the universities and almost all hospitals are gone. Almost all the population is displaced. There have been numerous bombings of civilians in so-called ‘safe zones’. Gaza does not exist anymore. It is completely destroyed. Thus, the outcome fits perfectly with the stated intentions of Israel’s leadership. Lemkin - that scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ - described two phases of a genocide. The first is the destruction of the annihilated group and the second is what he called ‘imposition of the national pattern’ of the perpetrator. We are now witnessing the second phase as Israel prepares ethnically cleansed areas for Israeli settlements. And therefore, I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly what a genocide looks like. We don’t teach about genocides in order to realize it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and to stop it. But like in every other case of genocide in history right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the world. But reality cannot be denied. So yes, it is a genocide. And once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent.” - Statement to Led By Donkeys, December 2024 - Photo: Parliament Square, London, 8.40am, 4th December 2024

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insidecroydon.com/2026/05/21/pol… #Croydon @metpoliceuk @MirrorPolitics @DailyMail

Thank you Selhurst Park!!! See you in Leipzig - let’s go❤️💙

I arrived as a stranger and I will leave as a South Londoner 🥹

"What he's managed to do with the squad that he has is nothing short of sensational" Is Oliver Glasner Crystal Palace's greatest ever manager? 🦅

Spurs away last season was the hottest I’ve ever seen in a football ground. I’m expecting the Arthur to make a bold bid to break that record today. Turned down £500 for my ticket. Must be totally mad but no regrets.

PAUL HOLDEN STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO INTERVIEW WITH JOSH SIMONS ON BBC NEWSCAST Yesterday, BBC Newscast published a lengthy, forty-minute interview with former Cabinet Minister Josh Simons MP. The interview addressed how Simons, as a director of @LabourTogether, had appointed a firm called APCO Worldwide to investigate me and my colleagues. I was not told by the BBC ahead of the broadcast that the episode was being recorded or aired. I was not approached to respond to the lengthy comments made about me or the small anti-corruption organisation, @ShadowWorldInv1 , that I run with my colleague @andrewfeinstein. Andrew, who is also repeatedly mentioned, was also not approached for comment. I only found out last night, when a friend texted me, that the person who hired a major multinational reputation management firm that produced a despicable and defamatory report on me and my colleagues, and who reported me on the basis of these false and defamatory reports to the UK’s security services, was being given forty minutes to give his version of events on a major podcast published by our national broadcaster. To be clear, the BBC has NEVER - not once - approached me to comment on a story that is, ultimately, about me, my investigations, my family and my colleagues. They did not approach me when the story first broke, and they did not approach me for this episode. If the BBC had done so, I would have raised several issues with the way in which matters related to me were discussed. For example, Simons repeatedly stated in the interview that he instructed APCO to investigate whether my reporting or sourcing derived from a ‘hack’ of the Electoral Commission. The word ‘hack’ is used eight times in the interview. At no time was it acknowledged in this discussion that this allegation – that I might have received hacked materials – is entirely false, and I have repeatedly proven it to be false. Following the broadcast, I contacted the BBC to complain and to raise serious issues with the broadcast. I was contacted by the Newscast editor, Sam Bonham, to say the BBC would update the Newscast episode and further reporting to reflect some of my concerns. This has not yet happened with regards to the podcast, although I note some online reporting finally reflects a very small and limited sampling of my comments. I will wait to see if amendments and updates will follow. If they do not, I will be escalating this matter to OFCOM. In the interim, I have decided to share the full statement I provided to the BBC, which is produced below: I would like to put certain things on the record. First, my reporting on Labour Together and Morgan McSweeney was entirely factually accurate and based on impeccable, legal sourcing. My sourcing has been reviewed by multiple media outlets, who confirmed the authenticity and legal provenance of my sources. Revelations based on my book, The Fraud, has subsequently been covered widely across the mainstream media, including in multiple front-page scoops, in outlets such as The Times, Daily Mail, The Guardian, The National and ITV. The stories I produced in 2023 and 2024, and which prompted Labour Together's investigation into me, were subject to extensive editorial and legal checks. They were, I believe, entirely accurate reporting on matters of profound public interest, which included raising concerns about the character of powerful individuals like Morgan McSweeney. Considering the recent Mandelson affair, I believe I have been entirely vindicated in attempting to alert the public about McSweeney's past, including how McSweeney made use of £700,000 in funding that he unlawfully failed to declare to the Electoral Commission to procure power and influence for himself and Sir Keir Starmer. Second, Josh Simons states that he never intended for APCO Worldwide to investigate me or my journalistic colleagues. However, a copy of the contract between APCO Worldwide and Labour Together, addressed to Simons, has now been published. The contract sets out a scope of work written in plain English. It states that APCO will 'investigate the sourcing, funding, origins of a Sunday Times article as well as upcoming works by authors Paul Holden and Matt Taibbi.' The contract then states that the aim of the APCO investigation will be to 'provide a body of evidence that could be packaged up in the media in order to create narratives that would proactively undermine any future attacks on Labour Together.' The contract then sets out a range of potentially invasive investigative methods that will be used to generate this 'package', including 'financial investigations' and 'human intelligence investigations.' I provide the full text of this contract below. This contract is clear. APCO were hired to investigate me to produce materials that would 'proactively undermine' my factually accurate, public interest reporting. They would use a range of investigative techniques to do so. APCO then did exactly as was suggested in the contract, using these investigative methods to "investigate" me. This investigation has caused me and my family significant anxiety and distress. Third, Josh Simons was provided with a report called Operation Cannon. It is the result of a lengthy investigation into me and my colleagues by APCO Worldwide. I have seen a copy of this report. It makes a series of extremely defamatory and utterly false allegations against me. It identifies my home address and sets out private information about my family. I cannot express how profoundly shocking, outrageous and defamatory this report truly is. Simons may claim he never intended for APCO to investigate me, but on receipt of this despicable report, he then chose to use it. He submitted sections of the report to the National Cyber Security Centre to convince them to investigate me. The Guardian has published the email correspondence in which Simons repeated some of the substance of the allegations in the APCO reports. Fourth, multiple media freedom advocacy organisations, including the NUJ, have strongly criticised the APCO investigation and these related matters. They have all, to my mind correctly, strongly criticised Labour Together and APCO for investigating journalists producing factually accurate reporting in the public interest. Finally, I am still reviewing the Newscast interview. I will be responding in due course and I hope that the BBC will, this time, give me the platform to set out what really happened and why. Text of Contract Between Labour Together and APCO Worldwide, addressed to Josh Simons Dear Mr Simons We are pleased that you have selected APCO Worldwide Limited (“APCO”) to provide the following scope of work (“services”) during Term: APCO will devise a concise strategy to aid Labour Together. APCO will investigate the sourcing, funding and origins of a Sunday Times article about Labour Together, as well as upcoming works by authors Paul Holden and Matt Taibbi – to establish who and what are behind the coordinated attacks on Labour Together. The approach should provide a body of evidence that could be packaged up for use in the media in order to create narratives that would proactively undermine any future attacks on Labour Together. The material can also inform any future legal strategy that Labour Together might wish to pursue against any of these parties. The work will include: • Open Source Investigations (OSINT): Recovery and Preservation of Evidence • Human Intelligence Investigation (HUMINT): Recovery and Preservation of Evidence • Financial Investigation: Forensic Accounting Focus • Digital Forensics Investigation: Recovery and Preservation of Evidence • Stakeholder Outreach • Media Packaging and Dissemination

Correlation is not causation but facts are facts. @thenerve_news has also established that Harbourne has poured an extraordinary £30m into British politics! In just 6 years. This is a story not just about Farage, but Johnson too. 4/

Come Together.

The Lib Dems often complain they don't get enough media coverage (and they have a point). In the case of the David Campanale judgment I suspect they're glad about that. I'm sorry I missed the story last month. It's a blistering indictment of the Lib Dems from top to bottom.

🟠 Has any senior Liberal Democrat, or any Lib Dem MP, commented on the Campanale judgment, or apologised to him?

🟠SUTTON & CHEAM: I should have included this last month: London County Court decided David Campanale suffered 5 counts of "unlawful religious discrimination" when Lib Dems deselected him as candidate & replaced him with Luke Taylor: insidecroydon.com/2026/04/30/sut…

patreon.com/posts/special-… #Gardening #Cooking #Vegetables @rivercottage

@owenjonesjourno @nowt2tweet Steve Reed and his Labour Together mates have been trying to gag whistleblowers and journalists for years, as @StarmertheFraud will confirm insidecroydon.com/2026/05/20/vot… #Croydon #TheLabourFiles @PrivateEyeNews

@charliemansell @owenjonesjourno @nowt2tweet @StarmertheFraud @PrivateEyeNews Charlie. With all due respect, you worked for David Evans, who received stolen data and failed to comply with his legal obligations. Evans, Steve Reed and @CroydonLabour’s Stuart King all acted unlawfully. What are YOU going to do about it?

@InsideCroydon @owenjonesjourno @nowt2tweet @StarmertheFraud @PrivateEyeNews Raises new issue over data protection of big "legal leaks" which may contain sensitive material on quasi-judicial processes (eg fraud & domestic violence victims etc) that have nothing 2 do with "the politics" so journalists may want 2 explain handling 2? x.com/charliemansell…

Wow. We now have proof that the Labour Together smear scandal goes to the very top of Labour.

@InsideCroydon @PatsyGroomer @SteveReedMP @StarmertheFraud @Direthoughts We must be tough on Steve Reeds, and tough on the causes of Steve Reeds.

@plutotlabarbie @PatsyGroomer Does that include @SteveReedMP ? insidecroydon.com/2026/04/27/min… @StarmertheFraud @Direthoughts

Anyone associated with Labour Together should immediately be disqualified from holding public office.