Sam Howson

What a phenomenal conversation with @dzniringiye - please let us know what you think. youtu.be/DNYlXjKwvZw

Let the rational prevail

"No, I don't subscribe to this 'kindness' - I'll tell the truth instead." I spoke at the Cambridge Union last night about LGBs, children's safety and women's rights. Full video here:

@mills998904 @JChimirie66677 Those previously in power were bent, those in power are bent, those who will gain power are bent. Irrespective of party, culture, religion, nationality or region.

Andy Burnham became Health Secretary at the end of the Brown Government. The Blair/Brown had already mortgaged off the NHS assets with their PFIs, which the NHS is still paying g off. But does anyone remember Burnham standing in front of cameras and bemoaning the fact that he just had to sell off the Hitchinbrook Hospital. Labour have always found it convenient to blame the Tories for wanting to sell off the NHS but the truth is they never did, Labour did. Burnham tried to blame the Tories in the HoP, and Nick Clegg, Coalition Deputy PM: Nick Clegg fielded Prime Minister’s Questions today, during which he noted that Labour’s shadow health secretary Andy Burnham is “the only man in England who has ever privatised an NHS hospital”. Mr Burham complained that Nick had misled the House of Commons over the issue of Hichingbrooke Hospital, accusing him of “sheer inaccuracy”. The Lib Dem leader lost no time in responding: Dear Andy, I see that you raised a Point of Order in the House of Commons and that you accused me of “sheer inaccuracy”. I am always happy to confirm the accuracy of what I have said. You said that “when the previous Government left office there was still an NHS bidder in the competition.” That is simply not true. These are the facts. On 26 March 2010, that is before the General Election and while you were still Health Secretary, the three organisations shortlisted for the contract to run Hinchingbrooke Hospital were Circle Health, Ramsay Health Care UK and Serco Health – all of which are non-NHS organisations. The NAO report of the bidding process published on 8 November 2012 clearly states that in December 2009 there were only 3 bidders left in the process – Circle Health, Ramsay Health Care UK and Serco Health. It says on page 20 that the “the two NHS trusts involved both withdrew at early stages of the process.” When making your Point of Order, you may have been referring to the fact that the Serco bid included working with the Peterborough and Stamford NHS Foundation Trust. Given it is clear that the actual bidder was Serco, I suggest that you are stretching the boundaries of accuracy to their very limit. As you can see, I very much stand by what I said at Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons today. You asked if I had inadvertently misled the House of Commons. I would suggest that by misquoting what I said, it may be you who has inadvertently misled the House of Commons. Given that the facts are as I have outlined above, I wonder if you would be prepared to set the record straight yourself? Nick Clegg

Ambition Before Accountability. The Pattern Burnham Hopes You've Forgotten Andy Burnham is positioning himself as the man who will change Labour for the better. The outsider who understands working people. The mayor who got things done. Before Westminster accepts that narrative it should examine the one thing Burnham has been consistent about throughout his career. When institutional failure has required a reckoning, he has commissioned a review, expressed anger and moved on. The reckoning never comes. Start with Mid Staffordshire. As Health Secretary from 2009 to 2010 Burnham personally recommended the trust for Foundation Trust status on the basis of four lines of information. Between 400 and 1,200 more patients died at Stafford Hospital than would have been expected. He and his predecessor Alan Johnson rejected 81 requests for a full public inquiry sitting in public across their combined tenures. The Francis Inquiry, which Burnham resisted, found systematic failures. David Nicholson, the NHS chief, told that inquiry that the level of detail Burnham required before recommending Foundation Trust status was surprising because usually ministers would expect much more. The HuffPost analysis published at the time concluded that looking at the witness statements it was difficult not to reach the conclusion that Burnham was guilty at best of incompetence, at worst of gross negligence. Burnham's response was to stand before Parliament and accuse the government of failing to respond adequately to the Francis Report. The report he never wanted. About the trust he had recommended. Then comes the Augusta inquiry. Operation Augusta was a Greater Manchester Police investigation into a grooming gang of up to 100 members who abused at least 57 children, some as young as 12. It was closed before Burnham's mayoralty. But when MPs wrote to him challenging him on the failures documented in the subsequent review, his response was described in Hansard as supine. He accepted the lack of resources argument without challenge despite Greater Manchester Police having gained over 1,000 additional officers in the years the operation ran. There was, in the words of MPs who examined his reply, no sense of injustice. The minutes from the GMP meeting where the decision to close Augusta was taken had disappeared. The minutes from Manchester City Council had disappeared at the same time. The IOPC subsequently concluded it could not determine who took the decision or why because records were missing and former employees were unwilling to cooperate. The Rochdale review he commissioned identified 96 men still deemed a potential risk to children who remained at large. Nobody has answered the question of what his mayoralty did to locate and prosecute them. Not Burnham. Not any of the MPs now championing him for Downing Street. The pattern is not accidental. Mid Staffordshire. Augusta. Rochdale. In every case the same structure. Institutional failure. Review commissioned. Parliamentary challenge answered inadequately. Unanswered questions buried under the next announcement. The man presenting himself as the antidote to institutional evasion has spent his entire career practicing it. Now he seeks to represent Makerfield. Reform is ahead in polling for the seat by 46 to 35 percent. Labour lost 20 councillors in Wigan last Thursday while Reform gained 23. The seat being handed to him is no longer the safe Labour fortress it once was. If he loses it his leadership bid ends before it begins. If he wins it the questions above will follow him to Westminster. The political class preparing to crown him has not required him to answer those questions once. It will not start now. Changing the leader without changing the culture of institutional evasion reproduces the problem with a more popular face attached. Britain has been here before. It knows how it ends.

Disappointing but not surprising. CofE and its nested interests. Classic reputation management wethinks... Please share widely.. @churchofengland @lambethpalace @sandfordawards @PassionPix @Channel4 @cathynewman Private Eye. No 1675. 15-28 May.

@drstevelewis @HattyCalbus Rather than the C of E initiating restitution and amends, it eventually went to court, where justice hasn't been done. And victims along with a community of people have continued to be diminished.

@samhowson @HattyCalbus A man right at the centre of the conservative evangelical world abused his power and his people.

Justice “denied or delayed by church leaders” again. telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/1…

Jess Phillips: I have never worked with a male politician is as big an ally and who has helped me move the tides of power on violence against women and girls more than Keir Starmer. (03-12-2025)

Style over substance: @TheGreenParty councillor drives petrol-guzzling Lamborghini share.google/Sa8jriLY8d1HDS…

@nofilmschool Sarah Conner

Who’s your favorite movie mom?

Why didn’t Farage just declare the £5m personal gift from Harborne which, a few months before becoming an MP in 2024? The rules state new MPs "must register all their current financial interests, and any registrable benefits (other than earnings) received in the 12 months before their election within one month of their election". The rules also say "both the possible motive of the giver and the use to which the gift is to be put should be considered", adding "if there is any doubt, the benefit should be registered". Farage insists it was a purely personal gift and that he didn’t need to declare it

Anyone else inspired? disclose.tv/id/oiqu766wq4/

@MikeStarkers And w/o any liberal Christian heritage.

Crazy results here in the London Borough of Richmond following the local elections: 54 out of 54 councillors are now Lib Dems, all elected by a huge margin. Like North Korea, but with canapés.

Gary MacArthur gave 15 years of his life to Sainsbury’s in West Wickham, south-east London. He wasn’t some troublemaker. He was the worker who stayed late to make female colleagues feel safer. The worker who performed CPR on the store’s only security guard after he suffered a suspected stroke. The worker who had already previously LOST TEETH after being punched by a thief while trying to protect the store. But after tackling an allegedly aggressive repeat offender known for targeting the branch and stealing bottles of Moët, Bollinger and Veuve Clicquot Sainsbury’s sacked him for gross misconduct. This was after colleagues screamed there was an “aggressive Champagne thief” in the store. According to reports, the shoplifter later smashed bottles and hurled them at staff. Yet Gary MacArthur a man who dedicated 15 years of loyalty, protected colleagues and even helped save a life that same day — was told he should have acted only as a “visual deterrent.” Absolutely disgusting. Supermarket workers are being punched, threatened, abused and terrorised by repeat shoplifters on a daily basis… yet the staff who actually step in to protect colleagues and customers are the ones losing their jobs. Gary MacArthur at Sainsbury’s. Walker Smith at Waitrose. Sean Egan at Morrisons. Gavin Ramsay at Asda. Decades of loyalty thrown away because they refused to stand by while thieves ran riot. What kind of country are we becoming where the people trying to protect others lose everything… while the criminals walk straight back out onto the streets?

@Rgt71Robert I've not spoken to anyone deeply affected by an abusive individual or environment in the C of E who experienced any kind of life affirming amends in their interaction with the church's safeguarding body(s). By the time it gets to safeguarding it isn't relational it's functional

66 recommendations for CofE Safeguarding change. 66 makes us one off the Mark of the Beast. 66 ….. just one of the embodiment of evil. Yet again another completely excoriating report into our safeguarding culture in the Church of England 66 recommendations for the Church of England’s own National Safeguarding Team. Let it sink in..66. This is a judgement: Not on a tiny struggling parish trying to keep the lights on. Not for an exhausted priest or volunteers in a deprived community. Not for the people endlessly told to “improve compliance” Rather it is judgment in our national safeguarding structures themselves. And that raises some very uncomfortable questions. And it needs all of us to take notice, to listen to stand up to demand change. If the NST itself requires this level of recommendation and restructuring, what exactly has been demanded for years of survivors, clergy, dioceses, and parishes in terms of “confidence” and “trust”? If the centre itself lacks capacity, clarity, and consistency, who has really been carrying the safeguarding burden all this time? Because it certainly hasn’t been equally shared. Poorer parishes, overstretched clergy, survivors, and frontline safeguarding officers know that. This is awful. And let’s ask the much much harder question plainly: can safeguarding ever be truly independent while remaining embedded within the very institution whose reputation, liabilities, and internal culture it is also required to protect? No it can’t. No it can’t. This is why so many of us have kept saying the safeguarding crisis was never simply about process. It was about power and culture. Who holds it. Who protects it. Who fears losing it. And who gets sacrificed when institutions become defensive. 66 recommendations do not describe a few isolated mistakes. They describe a system under strain. They also describe the utter lack of leadership that there has been over the past number of years. The present Bishop of Saint Edmundsbury and Ipswich, who was in charge of that culture needs to take responsibility for it. Joanne Grenfell needs to resign. Just like Justin Welby - although he had to be pushed before he went - she needs to show that this lack of responsibility has its consequences for those who were in charge. Otherwise no change will happen. Because for bishops there is never any cost. That then the cost is borne by victims and survivors that the very same bishops even refuse to meet with. And the Church now has to decide whether it wants real safeguarding reform. Real reform that redistributes power and accountability. Real reform that really puts victims and survivors at its heart Real reform that is simply truly Christian, truly Christlike and stands with and raises up the abused. Another round of managerial language, branding exercises, and institutional self-protection dressed up as change simply will no longer do. What would Jesus do? Who will Jesus stand with? Or will you walk by on other side? churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/…

@CaolanReports Great work. 🇺🇦

I confronted the russian ambassador at Venice Biennale because no one else did. In the last 24 hours russia bombed city centres & a kindergarten. Dozens murdered in the streets. The russian pavilion here is filled with free champagne & art to whitewash their war crimes.

This is brilliant.

Former software engineer at Apple is whistleblowing She says whenever Apple launches a new phone, they would push an update to older iPhones with malware to slow them down. This pushes people to upgrade “I used to be a software engineer at Apple, and with every new phone that was released, malware was installed on the older phones to make you have to update, so your phone's not just glitching. It's doing that on purpose. Share before it's deleted” She’s telling the truth, this was proven in court The 2017 “Batterygate” scandal, where Apple was caught deliberately slowing down older iPhones through software updates Apple was caught red handed doing this they even admitted it in court Apple released iOS updates that intentionally throttled and reduced CPU performance. This caused phones to feel slower, glitchy and laggy Apple’s stated reason: To prevent unexpected shutdowns caused by aging lithium-ion batteries

Anyone else noticed Royal Mail not delivering letters most days now, like being served a short pint in a Wetherspoons?