We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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“How citizen science is tracking changes in shorelines around the world” is a report in the Guardian by David Hambling. He writes,
The shoreline changes with the weather. Tracking these changes over time is a labour-intensive task, and an army of citizen scientists with camera phones is a great asset.
The CoastSnap project started in Australia in 2017 and has spread to beaches worldwide. You may have spotted the setup while out walking along the coast: a cradle to rest your phone on while taking a picture and a sign explaining where to send the snap.
Large waves and high tides remove sand from a beach, while gentler conditions deposit sand and build the beach up again. Sandbars migrate in and out, and change shape with the waves and tides. Some shifts are temporary, some permanent. CoastSnap enables researchers to follow these changes day by day.
This project sounds as if it could be a very useful contribution to science.
The sentence above took me about three seconds to type. Then I reached my limit of pretending that I had not immediately thought about whether the results might prove embarrassing to all those in the Guardian who had made dramatic predictions of the sea level rising due to global warming. As regular readers know, I am a “lukewarmer”. I think man-made global warming almost certainly is happening, but that it is a problem that can be mitigated, not a catastrophe, and that many of the things governments are doing – for which read “the things governments are forcing ordinary people to do” – in order to combat global warming are catastrophes.
Nineteen years ago, in 2007, Anthony Watts of the climate blog “Watts Up With That”, which takes a sceptical line on man-made climate change, posted this:
“My summer project – a national weather station audit”
I remember a talk in the spring where Jim Price of CSU had to interrupt (at the behest of a couple of folks that felt a comment about the sun’s role in climate change studies was being ignored was “biased”) the Chico observatory series, Cosmic Hike to give us all a tongue lashing on why Global Warming is “good science”. I asked him a question in front of everybody about how well biases in measurements at weather stations had been accounted for (Jim’s on the IPCC committee) and he said that they had been “carefully accounted for and considered”. I didn’t believe him then, even less now.
Ok back to my summer project. Thanks to Quammen’s inspiration, I got busy putting together a website called www.surfacestations.org for the purpose of doing a nationwide, and hopefully a worldwide audit on the viability of the weather stations used in climate research.
To seed the effort, I’ve been driving around Northern California photographing and logging weather stations, and blogger Russ Steele from Grass Valley has been helping do surveys too. You’ve seen some of them in my blog posts titled: How not to measure temperature.
Some, like Marysville, are just unbelievably badly biased, and to be blunt, the data they produce is simply useless. Yet, they are part of our “official” climate temperature record, and the data is in fact used in the computer models.
So Monday, I go live with the www.surfacestations.org website showcasing some of the US Historical Climate Record sites which is the major framework that global warming science is built upon.
The reaction was immediate and visceral in the science blogosphere. I’d hit a nerve. Some posters called for my “removal”, not knowing that I’m not funded by grants, nor employed by a government agency. I’m funding all this myself, out of my own pocket. I had to chuckle. Some called me an amateur, others said I would taint the outcome, some just ranted (I think maybe Tasker joined in). Many questioned why such an effort was needed at all. The reaction to taking photographs of weather stations to document their conditions raised a stink I never could have predicted. Why? How can something so simple raise so many hackles? Aren’t many climate scientists saying “case closed” and “no more debate”? How could a few pictures threaten this established science?
I must admit that my attention has wandered away from the global warming issue in the years since then. I know that a lot of volunteers did go around taking photos of weather stations, and that a report was produced, and, I think, an updated report a few years later. I couldn’t quickly find links to these reports on Wattsupwiththat.com, but that’s not what this post is about. My point is that the sweet, optimistic sentence that I could hardly wait to get past typing so I could get to the controversial stuff is actually true. The CoastSnap project is potentially a very useful contribution to science. And so was the Surface Stations project. And it’s a damn shame that both of them are seen as belonging to a side.
Could a good use of AI be to somehow statistically verify the results of these and similar “citizen science” projects, so that people from all sides could trust the announced results?
“What comes next: A fairer approach to primary assessment” is a paper by the Institute for Public Policy Research, a progressive think tank.
Here’s the IPPR’s own summary of its report:
We set out four recommendations for immediate implementation from the 2027/28 academic year.
Recommendation 1: The Department for Education should establish an independent ‘statutory accessibility and bias audit’ for all key stage 2 assessments.
Recommendation 2: The Department for Education should remove the Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) test.
Recommendation 3: The Department for Education should change how results are published and reported by:
– ending the publication of school-level key stage 2 results, which would also end the publication of school-level league tables
– using rolling averages (for instance, three- or five-year averages) of attainment data from the department and from Ofsted for internal monitoring and inspection.
Recommendation 4: The Department for Education should introduce a competency framework for pupil results in place of scaled scores.
However, reform must go further to build a truly equitable system that properly supports disadvantaged pupils. Therefore, we also set out a further recommendation to act as the foundation of a longer-term, more significant reform to primary school assessment.
Recommendation 5: The Department for Education should introduce a random sampling approach to assessment across years 3–6.
Emphasis added.
In a post last August called ‘Fake polling as a “short term social experiment”’, I discussed how a company called Median Strategies deliberately released fake polling data that put progressive Francesca Hong ahead in the primary to find the Democratic nominee for governor of Wisconsin. In that post I said, “Polls are frequently wrong, they are sometimes skewed by the political biases of the people who set the questions and interpret the answers, but they are not generally made up.”
I stand by that “not generally”, but I, um, might have to downgrade my estimate of the notgenerallyness. There’s been another one. Via a tweet from Geiger Capital:
“WEDGEWOOD POLLING, an experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry, makes this public statement.
Why We Did This
Having previously worked in the polling and research sector, we watched as the public’s trust in polling eroded alongside a rise in unverified, low-quality methodology. We wanted to test a simple hypothesis:
How easy is it for an entirely fabricated polling firm to gain traction, be taken seriously, and expose how little scrutinization exists in media and public commentary?
The short answer: Far too easy.”
UPDATE: The plot thickens. G. Elliot Morris of the polling aggregation site Fifty Plus One tweets, ‘We were investigating Wedgewood for faking their data and emailed them for comment this morning, ahead of publishing the findings tomorrow. They are trying to cover up their fraud with the “we were doing a social experiment” excuse.’
Fifty Plus One’s statement begins:
On Tuesday, Oct. 20, FiftyPlusOne reached out to Wedgewood Polls, a self-professed polling firm, with a request for comment on an investigation we had conducted into their alleged survey research. They did not respond to our request, but instead posted a public statement on social media admitting that they had been fabricating data. They also reached out directly in social media DMs minutes before publishing their memo with an official comment: “Fuck you,” plus the name of an individual not affiliated with FiftyPlusOne.
Their statement alleges that FiftyPlusOne, the New York Times, and other poll aggregators did not conduct appropriate vetting of their firm prior to aggregating their polls; this is false. We reached out to them to ask who they were and confirm the methodology statement on their website. We were given two names, Jack Sims and Andrew Prater. We were able to independently confirm that Sims had previous experience in the polling industry and reviewed their methodology statement in detail. It is not atypical for a pollster to leave an existing firm, form their own, and self-fund some surveys to build reputation; we had no reason at the time to believe this case was any different. Wedgewood operated as if it were a legitimate polling firm, including collecting money from donors to conduct crowd-funded polls, and sharing raw survey data (which we now have confirmed was fraudulent) with FiftyPlusOne on Oct. 15, 2026.
Below is the article that we intended to publish tomorrow, Oct. 21, 2026. We had given Wedgewood until midnight to respond to our questions. We have lightly edited the piece to acknowledge Wedgewood Polls’ admission of guilt.
“Pro-Palestine environmental activist accused of ramming Australian MP”, reports the Telegraph:
The man accused of repeatedly ramming a car into an Australian MP has been identified as a pro-Palestine and anti-logging activist who was known to police.
Brendan Nugent, 43, allegedly drove his Toyota Landcruiser into Helen Haines on Monday afternoon, pinning her against a car outside her electorate office in the northern Victorian town of Wangaratta.
Dr Haines, 65, underwent a leg amputation on Tuesday after being critically wounded in the attack. Doctors at The Alfred hospital in Melbourne were working to save her other leg.
[…]
Mr Nugent and Dr Haines, an independent MP in the seat of Indi, were known to each other – and he had previously praised her publicly on social media for her pro-environmental stance.
But his online history charts his shift from environmental campaigner to outspoken critic of Israel. Both he and Dr Haines have regularly publicly condemned the Australian government’s response to the war in Gaza.
One News Australia has a detailed account of the suspect’s posts on social media over several years: “Suspect Brendan Nugent named as police investigate radical activist history in alleged attack of MP Helen Haines”.
By 2024 Nugent’s posting had changed from being overwhelmingly concerned with environmentalism to including posts like this one supporting the Houthi attacks on shipping:
If that link disappears, it consists of the words ‘”Unjustifiable attacks”? They are trying to stop more mass murder of innocent people, mass murder that you are assisting with. You know they are only targeting ships that are supplying the genocide.’ followed by a bizarre AI-generated picture of a turban-wearing giant rising out of the sea cradling a container ship under one arm. A bit Orientalist, I thought. And biceps don’t work that way.
I was surprised that Nugent’s posts under the username “@NotLaoTzu” still appear to be visible on Twitter. Perhaps it was because, as the One News Australia report says, that ‘At 1:12am on Tuesday, Drew Pavlou posted that the car “appears to be owned by Brendan Nugent”, about eight hours before The Australian named him.’ Drew Pavlou describes himself as a “Western civilisation enjoyer” on Twitter. I had come across his name before. He is getting a lot of stick for having released Nugent’s name before the Australian authorities did. I am usually a stickler for due process, but given that Pavlou’s identification of Nugent was correct, and that Nugent was arrested seconds after the crime – he was pulled out of his car and detained by a brave bystander, local barber Ricky Jeffries – I’m really not that worried that an innocent man might be being defamed.
“Protester wears burqa to deny concealing identity”, reports the BBC:
A protester has appeared in court wearing a burqa to deny a charge of wearing the Islamic religious garment to conceal his identity during a Hampshire protest.
Timothy Miller, 76, of Sherwood Avenue in Hedge End, Southampton, was arrested in relation to the anti-migrant and anti-racism demonstrations in Portsmouth city centre on 12 September.
During the hearing at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, he lifted the veil while holding a black handbag as he confirmed his identity.
The handbag was a nice touch.
When asked how he pleaded, Miller replied: “As I am in every police camera, I am not guilty”.
A pleasing paradox. Agree or disagree with his politics, Mr Miller has given a masterclass in the application of Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals, numbers four, five and six:
4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”
6. “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”
Dominic Green of the Washington Examiner supplies more detail,
A female police officer confronted Miller about his clothing. “It’s because I’m converting to Islam and I’m gender-fluid,” Miller explained, waving a beefy and boldly exposed hand with feminine grace. “I’m not here to make trouble.”
Three years ago today, Gazan civilians – not themselves Hamas, just Palestinians taking advantage of an opportunity – abducted Shiri Bibas and her children Ariel aged four and Kfir aged nine months. They were held in captivity for an unknown amount of time before being murdered. The children were probably strangled. Hamas, wishing to be part of the Bibas story, eventually held an elaborate public ceremony, complete with jubilant children dancing on stage, before releasing coffins labelled as containing their dead bodies, along with a coffin containing the body of another murdered hostage, 84 year old Oded Lifshitz. The ceremony was arranged with much forethought. Somebody even took the time to make little plaques to put on the coffins of Shiri Bibas and Oded Lifshitz saying, “Date of arrest: October 7th 2023”.
Date of arrest. Their own words. That’s how they think.
*
Related posts:
Shani Louk was half German – some thoughts
Kemi Badenoch MP, one of the contenders to be the next leader of the Conservative party, recently and astonishly caused controversy by saying ‘Not all cultures are equally valid’. I agree with this statement. Some cultures are worse than others. Now that ISIS is gone, Hamas-ruled Gaza is probably the most horrible culture currently present on Earth. Please note that this makes absolutely no difference to the obligation of Israel to adhere to the laws of war, even against an enemy that does not. It just lets the Israelis know what to expect from Gaza if they do not defeat Hamas.
Should we conclude that the Palestinians, or the Gazans, are an accursed people by nature? No. There is a dark mirror to the past in the fact that Shani Louk was half German. In living memory Germany fell as low as any nation in human history. Let us not delude ourselves that the attempted extermination of the Jews was carried out by the Nazi party alone. A brave but tiny minority of Germans who were not Nazis sheltered Jews, a larger minority at least did not report their suspicions that their neighbours were doing so, and the majority obeyed the Nazis so long as they remained in power.
Who would have dreamed eighty years ago that one day the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin would be illuminated with an image of the Star of David to remember Jews murdered in a pogrom? Yes, a mere symbol, but a true symbol – Germany re-joined the family of nations decades ago. What brought about this change? The complete military defeat of the Nazi regime. Cynics observe that the change did not happen until after the defeat. Optimists observe that it did happen after the defeat.
How will you be celebrating International Women’s Day?
“Is Israel Weaponizing the Tragic Deaths of the Bibas Children?”
“Green party votes to adopt policy that equates Zionism with racism”, reports the Guardian.
Members voted at the party’s annual conference in Brighton to back a motion that calls for Zionism, the movement for a Jewish state, to be “treated as any other form of racism”. It passed by 1,022 votes to 813.
It has been publicly opposed by four of the party’s five MPs, although Zack Polanski, the leader of the Greens in England and Wales, has said he does believe Zionism is a racist idea.
The motion, which is now formal policy, calls for a single Palestinian state in place of Israel, “with equal rights for all”.
Adrian Ramsay, one of the MPs and a former party co-leader, said after the vote that he was “deeply saddened” by the decision, and that the idea of endorsing a single Palestinian state did not match Green commitments to self-determination.
In earlier voting, an amendment ensuring other parts of Green policy were updated to take account of the motion was backed. Three other amendments, including one that said the motion should not be used to “pressure, proscribe or discipline members based on affiliation with Jewish community institutions”, were voted down.
The text of the motion includes this passage:
4. The Green Party affirms the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self
determination, including the right of the Palestinian people to resistance and
liberation from Israeli occupation, domination and subjugation, and acknowledges
that the struggle to achieve that liberation by all available means under
international law is legitimate.
The Guardian article also says,
While the proposers of the motion argue it will not be used to discipline Jewish members who support Zionism, it is understood that some members are consulting lawyers over whether the policy could be challenged.
Adam Wagner KC, the barrister who led a case which concluded that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour broke equalities laws over antisemitism, said that such a case would have a good chance of success.
“I think there is a strong risk that the motion as passed contravenes the Equality Act 2010, which applies to political parties, as it will discriminate against and harass people who hold Zionist beliefs and Jewish people more generally,” he said.
“Zionism, defined in the broad sense of supporting the establishment, development and protection of a Jewish nation state in its ancestral homeland, the land of Israel, is likely to be a protected belief under the Equality Act 2010.”
There should be no “protected beliefs”. Though I would strongly advise Jewish Greens, and decent people of any religion or no religion to get out, I support the right of any political party to be whatever it chooses to be. What the Green Party of England and Wales has now chosen to be is a Muslim sectarian party.
The triumph of the various “Gaza Independents” in the 2024 election demonstrates that in the modern UK, a Muslim sectarian party whose main interests lie outside the UK can win seats in Parliament. Nonetheless the victory of this motion at the Green Party conference has made a hitherto quite successful strategy of entryism into a previously existing British party too obvious.
EDIT: In this short video clip, Lubna Speitan, the proposer of the “Zionism is Racism” motion, says
“We will continue until we dismantle Zionism from the world – from every country, from every place. They will be shunned. And, inshallah, that time will come when they are opposed, when they are hunted in the same way as the Nazi oppressors were. This is justice. We will obtain freedom. It won’t happen without force.”
Here’s a topical joke from The Ministry of Wit:
In case the link disappears, it says “Co-pilots must not stab the pilot. This is called assault.” It is parodying a Home Office leaflet called “Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK: a guide for asylum seekers” (non-illustrated version here), which helpfully explains on page 5 that “In the UK, both people must say ‘yes’ to sex. This is called consent.”
To be fair to the Home Office, given that the top ten countries from which asylum seekers come are, in order, Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Turkey* and Vietnam, there is a need to educate many men from the first eight of these countries that in the UK women have the legal right to refuse sex. In those eight countries marital rape is not a crime. The furore about the leaflets was because they reveal that the government knows damn well that education on sexual consent is particularly necessary for men from Muslim countries. It just doesn’t want to say so because the official ideology is that all cultures are equal. There is an ongoing legal case concerning the government’s reluctance to reveal crime figures analysed by nationality of offender.
It came after the Centre for Migration Control (CMC), a think tank, asked the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to reveal the total number of convictions broken down by nationality and offences for the seven years under freedom of information laws.
The MoJ initially refused, saying that to gather the data would be too expensive and that publishing the information could lead to the identification of individuals in breach of their rights to privacy.
Both arguments were rejected by the information watchdog. However, The Telegraph revealed last month that David Lammy, then justice secretary, sanctioned legal action seeking to overturn this ruling.
Opposition parties claimed the MoJ’s actions amounted to a “cover-up”.
One of the first political demonstrations I ever attended, over forty years ago, was in defence of refugees and asylum seekers. I still have great sympathy for those who seek freedom from oppression, such as Iranian Christians fleeing the Islamic Republic, and for the genuinely moderate Muslims – the almost comical over-use of that phrase does not mean they do not exist. But the current UK asylum regime is an illustration of the old medical saying that “the dose makes the poison.”
*My auto-correct tried to change “Turkey” to “Türkiye”. No.
David Harewood wrote a piece called “I have seen with pride how British overseas aid saves children’s lives. That is why I say cuts should be reversed”. He describes, movingly, how while visiting a hospital in Sierra Leone,
… I noticed a UK aid sticker fixed above a tiny incubator. Inside was a premature baby fighting for breath. Nearby stood oxygen equipment that staff explained had been funded through UK support. I learned that when power outages struck the hospital, as they often did, that equipment helped keep vulnerable newborns alive.
Being in the presence of these sometimes inconceivably small children, seeing the UK aid sticker labelled across the incubators that were keeping them alive, emotion completely overcame me. It was not only sadness. It was pride. Pride that people in Britain, most of whom would never meet that baby or their family, had helped make survival possible. Seven years later, that moment remains one of the most impactful of my life.
Many years ago, I turned against foreign aid – well, against most government-to-government foreign aid except immediately after natural disasters. How can I justify such a stance? Don’t I want premature babies in Sierra Leone to have incubators? I do want it. I want it very much. But take a look at this graph comparing the change in GDP per capita in current USA dollars of Sierra Leone and South Korea from 1960 to the present. In 1960, South Korea was at $158.8, a little higher than Sierra Leone’s $142.0, but still desperately poor. The next year South Korea’s figure ($94.2) was actually lower than Sierra Leone’s $142.3. I don’t know why that sudden year-on-year dip in South Korea’s wealth happened or if the effect were even real, but there can be no possible doubt about the reality of what happened over the next six and a half decades. The GDP per capita of the Republic of Korea is now $36,227.0, forty-three times higher than that of Sierra Leone, which is $846.7.
I want Sierra Leone to have incubators the way South Korea has incubators.“The Republic of Korea (South Korea) maintains excellent maternal and newborn health outcomes through its advanced healthcare system. With a maternal mortality ratio of approximately 8.1 deaths per 100,000 live births and a neonatal mortality rate of approximately 1.3 deaths per 1,000 live births, the country ranks among the world’s safest for childbirth.” South Korea did receive some foreign aid in the 1960s and 70s. Then it stopped. The country is now a donor rather than a recipient. Sierra Leone has received orders of magnitude more aid, and it has never stopped. In terms of things you can point to, like the incubators Mr Harewood saw, no doubt all that aid did some good. But in terms of that which is not seen, I believe that aid did more harm than good. The unceasing torrent of money made it less likely that Sierra Leone would do as South Korea did and so get South Korea-like outcomes.
So I’m not a fan of foreign aid. You knew that. Bet you didn’t know until you saw the headline to this post that Guardian readers are scarcely more enthusiastic about it than I am. Here are the top-level comments to Mr Harewood’s article ordered by number of recommendations:
misterrusty
27 Sep 2026 8.51
133
If Africa, which is 3 times the size of Europe stopped all the tribal infighting, it might become rich enough to support itself. The question is why a continent with such huge resources is so poor it has to rely on aid.
–
aunib
27 Sep 2026 9.07
120
We’re currently running a 4% GDP deficit and the interest on our debt is £110B a year. Charity is for surplus cash, and our government doesn’t have any of that at the moment.
–
Manchotte
27 Sep 2026 8.52
110
But the question remains: when will these African countries be able to support themselves? Sixty years since independence and they are still relying on British aid. Where did all the £100 billion go? apart from Swiss bank accounts!
–
Firtree
27 Sep 2026 9.26
92
Can someone please explain to me how it is okay for the government to borrow 10s of billions every month to keep us afloat while giving a big chunk of of it to others for free?
–
Bathreader
27 Sep 2026 8.50
83
Foreign aid is laudable but has to take its place with other priorities.Defence is the urgent priority after years of underspend.
–
The Guardian does its best to hide this preponderance of aid-sceptical sentiment among its readers by taking all eight of its “Guardian picks” from among the pro-aid comments, but anyone who sorts by “recommends”, as most people do, cannot fail to note that it is only on the sixth comment down that we finally reach one that is unambiguously in favour of foreign aid.
Edit: if the link to the graph comparing historical GDP per capita for the Republic of Korea and Sierra Leone is too much for your browser, you can generate it yourself by going to the World Bank “GDP per capita” page, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD , and entering both “Sierra Leone” and “Korea, Rep” into the search bar.
“BBC removes 11 Mitchell and Webb comedy sketches from iPlayer,” reports the BBC.
You want to see the sketches more, now, don’t you? Thank you, “Basil the Great”.
Edit: And here’s the Civil War re-enactors sketch, courtesy of Giop Saus on YouTube.
Season 2 of “That Mitchell and Webb look” was made in 2007. At that time, TM&WL’s style of comedy was seen as mildly left wing and definitely anti-racist. They certainly saw themselves that way. Almost twenty years later, the Civil War sketch is genuinely thought-provoking comedy. Within the context of the sketch, I instinctively get why Mitchell’s character stops the re-enactment after Webb’s character says, “I am going to kill you with this big machete” in an African accent. I think the fake accent coupled with a portrayal of motiveless savagery tips it over to being racist (remembering that the whole thing is a act within an act, and the man waving the machete is portrayed as being frightfully worried that his portrayal of a “real” Sudanese machete-waver might be racist). But if asked to point out exactly why the whole idea of white British people re-enacting the Second Congo War is racist, my hand does several mid-air circuits without ever quite coming in to land. Why is it perfectly OK for a man to put on a great big wig and wave a sword about in order to play a Royalist officer in the English Civil War but not OK to put on a great big wig and wave a machete about in order to play a militia leader in the Second Congo War? Is it because the re-enactor played by Webb is white and presumably is descended from ancestors who might well have fought in the English Civil War but no one (so far as I know) looking like him fought in the Second Congo War? If so, would it be equally unacceptable to have a black British re-enactor play the Cavalier – as seems to be the fashion these days?
Related post: The fact that a British person’s ancestors were not British is not shameful and need not be concealed
“Dear Ed Sheeran, fence-sitting is so last century: musicians can no longer opt out of politics”, writes Zoe Williams in the Guardian.
Macklemore, both onstage and in his own statement, has rebuffed the argument that voicing support for Palestinians and criticising Israel and its actions in Gaza and the West Bank is antisemitic. (In 2014, he apologised for a costume he wore on stage, which critics said was antisemitic, saying: “I respect all cultures and all people.”)
So musicians “can’t” opt out of politics, but political opinion journalists opting out of either stating their own opinion as to whether Macklemore’s grotesque “Jewface” costume shown in this BBC article from 2014 might be a teensy-weensy bit anti-semitic, or of linking to a picture of it so that readers can decide for themselves, is just fine, apparently.
Macklemore should be free to throw Nazi salutes while prancing in his fake black beard and prosthetic hooked nose. He should be free to insult the general public’s intelligence and flatter his own public’s bigotry by saying with a smirk that he had no idea that anyone might think he was caricaturing a Jew. Zoe Williams should be free to pretend that she didn’t see the pictures in that BBC article despite having taken her “which critics said was antisemitic” line straight from it. And I’m free to say that for Zoe Williams, who was once longlisted for the Orwell Prize, to write an article demanding that Ed Sheeran take a side while averting her own eyes from blatant racism and concealing it from her readers makes her a worthy successor to Squealer.
97 of them were murdered by Muslim terrorists.
Here is a list of terrorist incidents in Great Britain this century, stating the ideology behind the attack, its date, the place it took place, the name usually given to the attack, and the number of victims killed.
Irish Republican – 09 September 2000 – MI6 HQ, London – MI6 rocket launcher attack – 0 killed.
Irish Republican – 04 March 2001 – BBC TV Centre – BBC TV Centre car bomb – 0 killed.
Irish Republican – 03 August 2001 – Ealing – Ealing car bomb – 0 killed.
Islamist – 07 July 2005 – London Transport system – 7/7 bombings – 52 killed.
Islamist – 21 July 2005 – London – 7/7 copycat bombs – 0 killed.
Other – 18 January 2007 – Various – Start of Miles Cooper letter bomb campaign – 0 killed.
Islamist – 30 June 2007 – Glasgow Airport – Glasgow airport attack – 0 killed.
Islamist – 14 May 2010 – East Ham – Stabbing of Stephen Timms MP – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 29 April 2013 – Various – Start of Pavlo Lapshyn terrorism campaign – 1 killed.
Islamist – 22 May 2013 – Woolwich – Murder of Lee Rigby – 1 killed.
Irish Republican – 10 February 2014 – Various army recruitment offices – Start of New Irish Republican Army parcel bomb campaign – 0 killed.
Islamist – 18 February 2016 – Rochdale – Murder of Iman Jalal Uddin – 1 killed.
Extreme Right – 16 June 2016 – Birstall, West Yorkshire – Murder of Jo Cox MP – 1 killed.
Islamist – 22 March 2017 – Westminster Bridge, London – 2017 Westminster attack & murder of PC Keith Palmer – 5 killed.
Islamist – 22 May 2017 – Manchester Arena – Manchester Arena bombing – 22 killed.
Islamist – 03 June 2017 – London Bridge – 2017 London Bridge attack and Borough Market stabbings – 8 killed.
Extreme Right – 19 June 2017 – Finsbury Park, London – Finsbury Park attack – 1 killed.
Islamist – 15 June 2017 – Parsons Green, London – Parsons Green tube bombing – 0 killed.
Islamist – 14 August 2018 – Palace of Westminster – 2018 Westminster car attack – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 16 March 2019 – Various – Vincent Fuller racist attacks – 0 killed.
Islamist – 29 November 2019 – London Bridge – 2019 London Bridge stabbings – 2 killed.
Islamist – 09 January 2020 – Whitemoor Prison, Cambridgeshire – Whitemoor prison stabbings – 0 killed.
Islamist – 02 February 2020 – Streatham, Lambeth, London – 2020 Streatham stabbing – 0 killed.
Islamist – 20 June 2020 – Forbury Gardens, Reading – 2020 Reading stabbings – 3 killed.
Islamist – 15 October 2021 – Liegh-on-Sea, Essex – Murder of David Amess MP – 1 killed.
Islamist – 14 November 2021 – Liverpool Women’s Hospital, Liverpool – Liverpool Women’s Hospital bombing – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 30 October 2022 – Dover – Dover firebomb attack – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 02 April 2024 – Hindlip, Worcestershire – Attack on asylum seeker at Hindlip – 0 killed.
Islamist – 02 October 2025 – Heaton Park Synagogue, Manchester – Manchester Synagogue attack – 2 killed.
Islamist – 31 December 2018 – Victoria Station, Manchester – Manchester Victoria station attack – 0 killed.
Islamist – 29 April 2026 – Golders Green Synagogue, London – Golders Green Synagogue attack – 0 killed.
The list was compiled from these Wikipedia pages:
List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain in the 2000s
List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain in the 2010s
List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain in the 2020s
I have excluded from the count the three young girls murdered in Southport by Axel Rudakubana because although he was charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 for possession of ricin and a military study of an Al-Qaeda training manual, I am not convinced his motive was political. I have also excluded the killing of Anne Widdecombe from the count because the suspect is awaiting trial and the presumption of innocence applies. If these two cases were included, the proportion of terrorist murders this century that were carried out by Muslims would be 97/104; 93% rather than 97%.
I do not blame innocent Muslims for the crimes of their co-religionists. I do not claim that all or most Muslims are terrorists. I honour those many Muslims who have fought against Islamic terrorism, at horrendous risk to themselves and their families. I do not deny that there are other sorts of terrorists out there, including those who seek to murder Muslims. But 97 out of 100 is a very high proportion.
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