Palestine Action defendants are facing sentencing as terrorists despite being convicted of criminal damage, lifted reporting restrictions reveal.
After reporting restrictions were lifted on Tuesday, Middle East Eye is now able to report for the first time that the court will seek to add a “terrorism connection” to their charges at sentencing - a fact that was kept secret from the jury.
Reporting restrictions also barred media from revealing that the defendants had been prohibited from explaining the motivations for their involvement in the raid to jurors.
Prior to the initial trial, the judge had ruled to remove the defence of lawful excuse on the charge of criminal damage, which meant the activists could not argue that the damage they caused was legally justified to prevent greater crimes being committed by Israel’s military in Gaza.
Half of the UK parliament is chosen by the monarch. The other half is chosen through the problematic and undemocratic first past the post voting system. UK streets have CCTV everywhere. UK libel laws are extreme. The state-owned media defends pedophiles and transphobes, while the private media focuses on gossip and lies rather than reporting on the news (on top of also defending transphobes and pedophiles, of course).
It’s time for people to admit to themselves that the UK, especially England, is a dictatorship.
No.
Yes.
It’s not the CCTV you want to worry about. The CCTV is overwritten regularly and typically goes nowhere. It’s the internet-connected stuff you wanted to worry about, and the blanket surveillance by Google and meta. Carrying a smartphone and worrying about CCTV while you post pictures of yourself where LLMs can scrape them is utterly irrational.
No, just a half-police state. But at least you tend not to get murdered by the police for being black in charge of a vehicle in the UK, and the healthcare is free.
This, though, this is AWFUL and they went OUT OF THEIR WAY to deny these people justice. If you deny the defendants the right to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you have denied them justice.
So you’re just going to pretend that the house of lords don’t exist?
The House of Lords appointment process is bizarre. Parties sell the seats to political donors, the church still seats lords and the monarch has influence but not control over the process. They also just reformed out the last hereditary peers. Its not entirely democratic but not that monarchist either. Its probably best described as an oligarchist institution imo.
The House of Lords Appointments Commission was established in 2000. It is independent and separate from the House of Lords. The Appointments Commission recommends individuals for appointment as non-party-political life peers. It also vets nominations for all life peers, including those recommended by the UK political parties, to ensure the highest standards of propriety. Members can be suggested by the public and political parties. Once approved by the prime minister, appointments are formalised by the King.
That’s somehow even worse and more corrupt than I thought it was.
I think thats a somewhat fair take, but its definitely not a system dominated by the monarch. The ruling political and economic classes are in the drivers seat.
I’m not going to pretend that the monarch chooses them. The prime minister chooses them and has done for a looooooong time.
yes, it is the CCTV. Because there is no way to verify by yourself that the recordings don’t get transmitted or processed for their contents all the time.
that’s a huge assumption. that kind of people don’t usually complain about CCTVs.
Some of the other errors in your post have been pointed out already, but i wanted to mention one additional one - there is no state media in the UK
as for camping it a dictatorship, you’ve got good comic timing on that one
BBC
Yes, i figured that’s what you meant. I assume that your knowledge of the BBC is as well-informed as your knowledge of the House of Lords.
The BBC is not state media
“The Chairman and the non-executive members for the nations are appointed by HM The King on the recommendation of Ministers while the other members of the Board are appointed by the BBC through the Board’s Nominations and Governance committee.”
“The BBC is primarily funded by a compulsory annual TV license fee paid by UK households.”
That’s a state media, regardless of what it may view itself as.
Edit: Also, I wasn’t wrong about the House of Lord being dictatorial. The things I was wrong about was the complexity of the dictatorship. Instead of it all being chosen by the monarch, some of it is chosen through bribes, some by theocrats and some by politicians. None of the seats are directly chosen by the people, like in a democracy, and that was the whole damn point!
State media means that the government has editorial control, which it does not with the BBC. If they were they wouldn’t have broken stories around the Pincher scandal which was the downfall of the Johnson government, for example
And state media is funded by the state. As you correctly quoted, the BBC is funded by the public
As with your comments on the Lords, it seems like you’ve heard some reactionary soundbites and regurgitated them as fact because they fit into your world view, rather than taking the time to learn how the things you’re criticising actually work and forming your opinion from there