Liverpool

A £250m bypass planned to go through a Merseyside country park has been scrapped in the budget.

The proposal for a dual carriageway through Rimrose Valley Country Park in south Sefton was first announced in 2017 to improve access to the Port of Liverpool.

In budget documents released today, the Transport Secretary said the A5036 Princess Way scheme would not progress as it was “unfunded and unaffordable”.

Bootle’s Labour MP Peter Dowd, whose constituency includes the port, said: "Rimrose Valley is a green lung for my constituents and the last thing we wanted was a road to be built through it."

He added: "We now have to ensure that the work to develop a long term, environmentally sustainable alternative continues."

The suspect accused of murdering three girls in Southport is facing new charges of possessing terrorist material and producing the highly toxic poison ricin, police have announced.

Axel Rudakubana, 18, will appear at Westminster magistrates court on Wednesday charged with producing the biological toxin and having a document titled “Military studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants – the al-Qaida training manual”.

Serena Kennedy, the chief constable of Merseyside police, said the murder of the three girls – Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven – was not being treated as a terrorist incident. She said no evidence pointing to a terrorist motive had been discovered.

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Ricin was discovered at Rudakubana’s home in the village of Banks, about 5 miles from Southport, in early August, days after the attack. Kennedy said there was no evidence that ricin was present at Hart Space, the scene of the knife attack, and that counter-terrorism police had “not declared the events of 29 July as a terrorist incident”.

She said: “At this time, counter-terrorism policing has not declared the attack on Monday 29 July a terrorist incident. I recognise that the new charges may lead to speculation.

“The matter for which Axel Rudakubana has been charged with under the Terrorism Act does not require motive to be established. For a matter to be declared a terrorist incident, motivation would need to be established.

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The Guardian understands 2,000 riot officers are on standby on Tuesday, fearing the disclosure of the new charges could trigger potential unrest. Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, who are days away from learning which of them will become the new Conservative party leader, immediately issued statements raising concerns about the approach of the police and Labour government.

Jenrick said the attack was of “immense public concern” and that people “had a right to know the truth straight away” but that he was “seriously concerned that facts may have been withheld”.

He added: “Any suggestion of a cover-up will permanently damage public trust in whether we’re being told the truth about crime in our country. Keir Starmer must urgently explain to the country what he knew about the Southport attack and when he learned it.

“Across the board the hard reality of mass migration is being covered up. We need the truth – and we need to change.”

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Neil Basu, the former head of the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, also condemned Jenrick, saying such comments might jeopardise justice. “This is irresponsible, and repeating the mistakes of others, failing to calm a very volatile situation which we faced this summer.

“I think he is stupid, he’s trying to win an election, and he is trying to whip up support among his base. He has made a stupid mistake.”

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/19123370

Merseyrail’s Maghull station has emerged victorious in the national grand final of the World Cup of Stations 2024, securing the title of Britain’s best railway station.

Forty-eight stations across the country battled for glory before the Sefton station beat finalists King’s Lynn and Dorridge in Friday’s decisive public vote to claim top spot.

This year’s World Cup of Stations celebrated the diverse businesses found in train stations across the country, highlighting facilities such as delis, florists, and cafes that enrich local communities and economies.

Maghull’s success is largely attributed to both its fantastic station team and to its popular café, ‘The Coffee Carriage,’ which opened in 2024. Founded by two local entrepreneurs, the café quickly became a community hub, offering a range of hot drinks, artisan bakes, and a welcoming atmosphere that has drawn both regular commuters and residents.

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The competition, organised by Rail Delivery Group, saw participation from stations across Great Britain, with more than 72,000 votes cast in previous years. Maghull now joins the ranks of past winners, including Wemyss Bay (2023), Stourbridge Junction (2021), and Huddersfield (2019).

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/18439911

Residents reported seeing flashing lights in the sky as production work began at Canal Street, St Helens, at the former Pilkington Watson Street Works.

Oblik Productions confirmed to the Star in September that filming for a Second World War Netflix film called The Immortal Man.

An article on whats-on-netflix.com suggests that the project is a 'Peaky Blinders' film.

It says that a "long-awaited Peaky Blinders movie" entitled The Immortal Man is soon heading into production and will be "set during World War II".

It says Cillian Murphy will reprise his role as Tommy Shelby from the hit TV series.

The article adds that Tim Roth is also among the cast members to have been confirmed, and it was reported that Tom Hardy has signed on for the movie.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/18373887

Two men were found with kinder eggs filled with drugs up their bums as they tried to get into Creamfields. Marshall Maddock and Harry Hewitson were about to enter the north gate of the festival site before a drugs dog indicated to police that the pair may have illegal drugs.

When both were taken to a nearby area to be searched by officers, Maddock handed over a small quantity of drugs but refused to be searched further. Because of his refusal, an intimate search was conducted where officers found a kinder egg containing 10 bags of ketamine in his anus.

Hewitson also refused to be searched, claiming he didn't have any drugs, but when officers searched him he was also found to have a kinder egg with 10 bags of ketamine inside hidden in his anus. Appearing at Chester Crown Court, on Friday, October 4, the pair were handed sentences totalling 36 months in prison.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/18130515

Our sixth show from 21st February 2024!

now on YouTube for absolutely free.

matches:

• LIZZY EVO v SCOTT OBERMAN
• JACK CRITCHLOW aka CRITCHY v KEMPER
• McCARTHY & MAGINNIS v MADE TO LAST
• ALEXXIS FALCON v HARLEY HUDSON
• SAM BAILEY v MAX BROOKER v TEDDY REAY v ETHAN KELLY
• TROY RYAN v NATHAN BLACK
• LANA AUSTIN v LILY WINTER
• ROB DRAKE v TONY WRIGHT

all filmed and edited by Ant Jones - AJ MEDIA

People in Liverpool have many different ways to define a Scouser. For some, the best test is based on the colour of your wheelie bin, for others it's defined by postcode and for some it's a matter of accent.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the term Scouser means "a person who comes from the Liverpool area in North West England". The crucial word there is "area", suggesting you do not necessarily have to live within the Liverpool city limits to be a Scouser, just the area.

For example, places like Bootle, Crosby, Kirkby and Huyton are technically not in Liverpool. The city of Liverpool, defined by the area governed by Liverpool City Council, does not stretch to those places.

It means the aforementioned towns do not have purple wheelie bins. For Bootle and Crosby - as they are in the borough of Sefton - their general waste is collected in grey bins. In the Knowsley towns of Kirkby and Huyton, the bins are maroon.

You would, however, have a hard task telling someone from Bootle that they are not a Scouser. But if you are from Merseyside and you're not a Scouser, what does that make you?

Some people might class you as a wool (short for woolyback, for the non-initiated). But again, wool is a rather contested - and usually a pejorative term. There is some dispute as to whether it is more likely to relate to people from rugby league town of St Helens, as well as our Cheshire neighbours of Warrington and Widnes, or can it also be applied to people from Knowsley, Sefton or Wirral?

One man is making the argument that a catch-all term could solve these many problems of defining identity. Writer Richie Wright, 44, believes the term ‘Liverpolitan’ should apply to anyone from the Liverpool City Region (LCR) - the combined authority led by Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram, covering Liverpool, Wirral, Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens and the Cheshire borough of Halton.

The idea of a Scouse accent for many people from outside the city is rooted in prominent 20th century examples like The Beatles and TV dramas like 'Boys from the Blackstuff'. However, what you hear on the streets of Liverpool in the 21st century is markedly different, with many believing that a new variation of the Scouse accent has developed.

In order to find out if the accent has changed, we spoke to Liverpool-born Professor Tony Crowley. Tony has written extensively about Scouse - or Liverpool English as he refers to it. His books include the 'Liverpool English Dictionary', 'Scouse: A Social and Cultural History' and, most recently, his 2023 work 'Liverpool: A Memoir of Words'.

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Firstly, Tony argues that our accent doesn't come from where people may think. The accepted wisdom is that Scouse is a combination of the Lancashire and Irish accents, driven by mass immigration to the city from the Emerald Isle during the Irish famine.

That theory was notably promoted by docker, councillor and ECHO columnist Frank Shaw in the first half of the 20th century. However, Tony's argument is different. He told the ECHO: "Liverpool was an immigrant city in the 19th century. In the 1861 census, half the population were immigrants which was an amazing thing.

"There wasn't anywhere else like it in Britain - not even London. All of these people mixed together and linguists say that new dialects come from language contract - all of these different people mixing, speaking different languages and different dialects. My argument is that's where Scouse came from."

"I grew up with Frank Shaw's story, which I liked and my dad loved. Frank Shaw was Catholic and was Liverpool Irish.

"He wanted to put the Irish back into Liverpool history. In the '50s, Liverpool was still a very sectarian city. He puts the Irish back into Liverpool - it's a great story but it just happens to be wrong. Sometimes the best stories aren't true."

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Tony explained: "In the Second World War, a Liverpool accent appeared on radio for the first time - it was Tommy Handley, the Dingle comedian, in a series called 'It's That Man Again'. That's really fascinating. Tommy Handley has a very distinctive Liverpool accent. But there's very little evidence from the 1930s right up to the '50s of what people from Liverpool sounded like.

"Then The Beatles came along and they did have a south end accent - the north end accent was very different. My dad used to say the north end was a different place and people spoke differently.

"Frank Shaw wrote the first volume of 'Lern Yerself Scouse' - that was published in 1966. It was published for all the tourists coming to Liverpool for the World Cup games at Goodison.

"They apparently needed a guidebook to Liverpool English, that was how they sold it. It was really well received and it was reviewed by the Times Literary Supplement. But there was uproar in Liverpool because people from the north end said 'this is south end Scouse'. It was not north end Scouse.

"I tell my students about this and I remember one of my students asking me 'how big is Liverpool geographically?'. I said it was about seven miles from the north end to the south end, but they looked at me like it couldn't possibly be the case that north end Scouse and south end Scouse could be so different. The second volume of 'Lern Yerself Scouse' was about Bootle Scouse, specifically about that."

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He said: "I think the Scouse accent has changed now. Partly because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that we are Scouse and not English -as Liverpool has become much more of a distinctive identity and also a confident distinctive identity since the '80s.

"When you get the regeneration of Liverpool and it becomes much more confident as a city, you see that people - particularly the younger generation - use it as a way of marking themselves out as being really distinctive.

"There's an argument that Scouse has become much more Scouse over the past 20 years. If you look at recordings of kids today and of kids from 20 years ago, there are certain features of Scouse which have become stronger.

"I think that's to do with a sense of identity and a sense of coming from Liverpool. That's always there, but I think the self-consciousness of that comes from the last 30 years or so."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17157676

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16931957

Tributes have been shared to a ‘great and splendid’ former SAS officer who helped free hostages in the siege of the Iranian Embassy. Warrant Officer John Thompson, originally from Liverpool, died yesterday, Saturday August 31, aged 82 following a period of ill health, The Mirror reports.

Mr Thompson began his military career with the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers. He went on to serve with the United Nations before being transferred to a new role in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps for the Parachute Brigade back in 1969.

Half a decade later, having spent a year working in Korea, he was awarded the Republic of Korea Service Medal during a ceremonial parade. A pivotal role in his military career came when he joined Operation Nimrod, the SAS-led effort to free hostages being held by terrorists at London's Iranian embassy.

The soldier was part of the SAS A squadron that stormed the building in 1980 after being flown in by helicopter, firing gas canisters during a successful mission that killed five of the terrorists holding hostages inside.

Mr Thompson joined Boat Troop G Squadron the following year, and aided troops participating in the Falklands War for three weeks ahead of the Argentine invasion by gathering intelligence. Through the rest of the conflict, he helped target enemy troop patrols, and later retired from the service to work as a bodyguard in the Middle East.

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An ex-colleague remembered the soldier as an "all-round nice man" in a post on Facebook after his death was confirmed. They said: "John was the former regimental chief clerk at Hereford before he passed SAS selection. A great guy, splendid soldier, all-round nice man and a friend to many. RIP Always a little further."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16651773

The world's oldest living man has celebrated his 112th birthday at a care home in Southport today. John Tinniswood was born in Liverpool on August 26, 1912, the same year the Titanic sank.

He became the oldest man in the world in April this year and has said his long life is down to "luck". When John was asked how it felt to be turning the ripe old age of 112, he said: "In all honesty, no different.

"I don’t feel that age, I don’t get excited over it. That’s probably why I’ve reached it.

"I just take it in my stride like anything else, why I’ve lived that long I have no idea at all.

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John was questioned as to what he thought the biggest difference in the world was from when he was born to now, more than a century apart. He said: “It’s no better in my opinion, or hardly any better, than it was then. Probably in some places it is, but in other places it’s worse.”

On the secret of his longevity, he told Guinness World Records it’s “just luck.” He added: "You either live long or you live short, and you can’t do much about it."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16607052

A Liverpool brewery was transformed this week as Atomic Wrestling returned. The independent professional wrestling company has built up a huge following in the city since it staged its very first show at Azvex Brewery last year.

The electrifying sports entertainment action from the best of the North West means the show regularly sells out. Fans once again packed into the taproom on Gibraltar Row on Wednesday to watch the heroes and villains in spandex settle their scores in the most thrilling way imaginable.

"Back to Formula" marked Atomic's return to Azvex after they hosted Snailmania at Futureyard in June. Atomic has now staged nine events and continues to go from strength-to-strength. One of the showrunners spoke to the ECHO last year about why the wrestling has struck a chord with fans.

Chris Welsh said: "Our ethos is to present the best of the North West. A lot of local talent. It all started a few years ago; there was a training school in Maghull, Fighting Spirit Pro Wrestling, but it was closed down after the two owners joined WWE and moved to Florida.

Afterwards we knew there was a lot of talent in the area that was being overlooked. There's a lot of wrestlers being flown in from overseas, but we wanted to show what we have got. The reaction we have had from fans has been really positive. It's very much a gig atmosphere."

Sir Ken Dodd's joke books, tickling sticks and other artefacts are to be preserved in a new £15m centre dedicated to the late comedy legend in his home city of Liverpool.

The Sir Ken Dodd Happiness Centre will provide a permanent home for his archive, as well as hosting comedy performances and events.

The four-storey centre will be attached to the city's Royal Court theatre, where Sir Ken regularly performed during his career. He died in 2018.

The plans were submitted in November and were approved by Liverpool City Council last week.

His widow Lady Dodd told BBC News he would be "honoured" and "amazed".

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16440966

A city centre office building has been home to a snail farm for more than a year, in what council bosses allege is an attempt to avoid tax.

About 15 covered crates - containing as few as two snails each - have been kept on the lower ground floor of 9 Dale Street, in Liverpool, since 2023.

Under current law, this could qualify as "agricultural use" and this part of the building would arguably be exempt from business rates.

The firm renting the space said it was a legitimate snail farming operation.

The company, Snai1 Primary Products 2023 Ltd, shares its sole director, Terence Ball, with a company called BoyceBrook based in Ribchester, Lancashire.

BoyceBrook’s website says its team "has a proven track record of minimising the liability for empty property rates" and describes the company as the "Canceller of the Exchequer".

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Each crate contains two snails, according to L’Escargotiere, another company operated by Mr Ball, also based in Ribchester.

Its website says the number of snails per crate is kept to a minimum to avoid "cannibalism, group sex and snail orgies".

The next stage of a major overhaul to transport across the Liverpool City Region was unveiled as Anfield got the first look at a proposed rapid transit “Glider.” As part of his manifesto to win a third term, Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram pledged to introduce a rapid transit bus system to serve key routes across the area.

For the first time, we have now seen the vehicle - on loan from Belfast and decked out in Merseytravel yellow - as tests begin to see how it could work across hotspots throughout the city region. The 10-wheeled vehicle, first dubbed a trackless tram, will undergo tests throughout Liverpool to begin with, to establish key changes that may need to be made to the city’s infrastructure with a view to a full rollout by 2028.

The system will be similar to Belfast's Glider, which launched in the Northern Irish capital in 2018 and runs on two separate lines using dedicated and mixed traffic lanes. The scheme cost around £100m in total.

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Earlier this year, Mr Rotheram said he envisaged the rapid transit network running between Liverpool city centre and Liverpool Airport as well as Anfield Stadium and Everton's new Bramley-Moore Dock ground.

Over 150 members of the books community – including Tracy Chevalier and Diana Beaumont – are donating backlist copies to the riot-hit Spellow Lane Library as part of crime writer Marnie Riches’ Reading Not Rioting campaign.

The Manchester-based crime writer decided to help the recently developed library after it was set on fire by rioters on 3rd August, during destructive far-right protests which have taken place across the country. Spellow Lane has also inspired a successful crowdfunder, which has now raised more than £120,000 in two days, but Riches wanted to use her writing network to focus specifically on the library’s stock.

Historical novelists Chevalier and Eve Chase are among those who have donated backlist copies to Reading Not Rioting, as well as crime writers C L Taylor, Elly Griffiths and Simon Toyne and literary agent Beaumont, who recently joined DHH.

“It started as a single tweet,” Riches told The Bookseller. “I saw that the library in Liverpool had been destroyed by far-right rioters and that it had recently been refurbished. I was so upset because I’m a northern writer and a writer of working class origin, so libraries are very important to me and I understand their role in the community.

“There’s also the issue of the library not having immediate stock to hand. These rioters have injured a community because a library is a place of social cohesion and learning and self-improvement and ordinary people have nothing to read.

“So I thought, I have a backlist of 20 books and I can send them a box and thought I’d send a shout-out [on X] to see who might want to join me, I have a good network as I’m a crime writer and used to be a children’s writer. I put a call out saying I was donating my entire backlist and the response has been huge. It’s the most popular tweet I’ve had, including 90,000 impressions and, crucially, almost 160 authors have already pledged to send books.”

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/15469336

Police have released photographs of 12 people they want to speak to over riots which took place on Merseyside days after the deaths of three girls in Southport.

Alder Hey Children's Hospital has confirmed today that all children it was caring for following Monday's horror stabbing in Southport have now been safely discharged. Three young girls - Bebe King, Alice Dasilva Aguiar and Elsie Dot Stancombe - were killed when an attacker entered the Hart Space pregnancy and community centre in Hart Street, Southport last Monday.

The attack also left eight children and two adults seriously injured. The majority of the children who were injured in the attack were taken to Alder Hey for emergency care. Initially five of the eight children were described as being in a critical condition. All of those being looked after at Alder Hey have recovered from their injuries and have now been discharged.

Fundraising:

• Swifties for Southport on JustGiving, for Alder Hey, the children's hospital
• Southport Dance Group Emergency Fund on GoFundMe, for the victims and their families

A fundraising campaign has raised more than £120,000 to help repair a Liverpool library and community hub that suffered severe fire damage after being targeted by rioters on Saturday night.

Nigella Lawson and children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce are among those who have donated to the gofundme page, which was set up on Sunday afternoon in aid of Spellow Hub library.

The fundraising page had an initial target of £500 but has gone on to raise more than £120,000 in two days, from more than 6,000 donations.

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Spellow Hub is located on County Road, Walton, where Merseyside Police said approximately 300 people were involved in violent disorder on Saturday night. The riot was among a number of incidences of violence that have taken place in cities and towns in England, and in Belfast in Northern Ireland, over the last week in the worst outbreak of civil disorder in Britain for 13 years. Police have made 378 arrests since the killing of three young girls in Southport in north-west England last Monday, after which false claims were spread online that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker.

Police said when firefighters arrived at the library, the rioters attempted to stop them from getting to the fire to put it out. “They even threw a missile at the fire engine and broke the rear window of the cab”, said police in a statement. The library has suffered severe fire damage to its ground floor.

Brothers Adam Wharton, 28, and Ellis Wharton, 22, pleaded guilty to charges of burgling the library at Liverpool magistrates’ court on Monday. Ellis also pleaded not guilty to charges of assault on an emergency worker.

Formerly known as Spellow library, Spellow Hub re-opened as a community hub last year, after a “radical, community-led makeover” intended to offer training and opportunities to one of the most deprived communities in the country.

The youngest of those to appear in court was a 14-year-old boy - who cannot be named for legal reasons due to his age.

He said he understood how "foolish and silly" he had been after pleading guilty to violent disorder over the rioting in Liverpool city centre, a court heard.

Liverpool Magistrates' Court heard the teenager, from Liverpool, was part of a group of eight to 12 males who were lighting fireworks and setting them off in the direction of members of the public and police officers near a branch of B&M in Clayton Square that had already been looted on Saturday night.

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His lawyer Iqbal Singh Kang said the incident was "completely out of character for him and his family". The boy's father and uncle were in court.

He said the youngster went to the city centre to catch a bus and amid the "widescale disorder across the city became involved with people he didn't know who were offering out various fireworks".

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A 69-year-old welder, the oldest to appear in court so far, has admitted his role in Saturday's riots in Liverpool, where he came armed with a wooden bat.

William Nelson Morgan, from Walton, pleaded guilty to violent disorder and possession of an offensive weapon at Liverpool Magistrates' Court.

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Two brothers appeared at Liverpool Magistrates' Court accused of crimes relating to a library which was set on fire during the riots.

28-year-old Adam Wharton appeared first, admitting burglary with intent to steal from the Spellow Lane Library Hub, which suffered severe damage to the ground floor due to the fire.

The library was opened last year to provide support for one of the most deprived communities in the country.

Wharton, who has 16 previous convictions for 26 offences, including robbery and burglary, stood in the dock at Liverpool Magistrates' Court wearing a grey, prison-issue tracksuit.

As he left the dock, Wharton said: "Nice one, shitty arse judge man."

Liverpool Cathedral is set to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2024 with an exhibition by Anish Kapoor. The exhibition, which will feature work never before seen in the UK, is running from August 10 to September 15.

Called Monadic Singularity the artwork marks Anish's first solo show in a UK cathedral and his first major solo exhibition in Liverpool since his seminal 1983 exhibit at the Walker Art Gallery. He has become world-celebrated for his works, including landmarks such as Cloud Gate, known affectionately as “The Bean”, in Millennium Park, Chicago and Nottingham Playhouse’s Sky Mirror.

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His exhibition will include architecturally scaled sculpture never before seen in the UK, Sectional Body Preparing for Monadic Singularity (2015). The Main Space will also feature a kinetic wax sculpture.

Anish Kapoor said: "To show works in Liverpool Cathedral is complex. It is a space that is alive both with the physical and spiritual. As such it is resonant with a powerful sense of body and the disembodied.

"The works that I have chosen to show in the cathedral are situated similarly between body and materiality and geometric immaterial which I refer to as the non-object. It is my hope that this conjunction of object and non-object here in this immense and potent space will be cause for reflection on the nature of religious experience and the human condition."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/15759427

The Commons standards watchdog should hold Nigel Farage to account over his “dangerous comments” following the week’s violent disorder in the wake of the Southport murders, a Liverpool MP has said.

Kim Johnson, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, said Farage’s comments “cannot be left to fester” and should be examined by the parliamentary standards commissioner.

Farage has released two videos since three children were murdered in Southport last week. In the first, he questioned whether police were withholding information about who was responsible for the murders.

It came at a time when false information was circulating on social media that a Muslim asylum seeker was responsible, which fuelled disorder at a mosque in Southport.

In a second video, Farage challenged Keir Starmer’s argument that the violent protests were the fault of the far right, saying it was “a reaction to fear, to discomfort, to unease that is out there shared by tens of millions of people”.

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However, several members of the public claim on social media to have submitted complaints about the Reform leader to the parliamentary standards commissioner, who can investigate any behaviour that brings parliament into disrepute.

Johnson said: “Nigel Farage’s dangerous comments cannot be left to fester. He is the voice of the EDL [English Defence League] in parliament, using his platform to spread fear and misinformation. Tensions are high and our politicians should be doing everything in our power to advocate for peace and unity, and support our communities standing resolutely against the racism and hatred displayed over the last few days. With so much at stake, we need urgent action from the Commons standards committee and the police to hold him to account.”

It’s unlikely that Elon Musk has ever heard of Southport, far less visited it. He has five or six companies to run, after all, and has been busy this week sounding off about Venezuela, Kamala Harris, puberty blockers, and why the legacy media lie to you.

So it’s probable that some ugly riots in a seaside town somewhere in northwest England will not have registered with the strange genius who may well be the richest man in the world.

And it’s equally probable that, if you told Musk that he was in some way responsible for these riots, 5,000 miles away from the seven homes he owns/owned in California, he would scoff.

But that’s how it is. When Musk decided to splash out $44bn (£35bn) to buy what was then called Twitter, he took ultimate responsibility for the speech of 350 million-odd users of the platform. And Twitter – now called X – is where a foul virus spread in the wake of the horrendous stabbings of numerous children in Southport on Monday. That virus led to the rioting the very next day – and since. And Musk enabled it.

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Musk, whatever else he is, is not a stupid man, so maybe one shouldn’t take him too literally when he proclaims Twitter to be a truth engine and the MSM a swill of lies. But I think it’s possible he is an unthinking and arrogant man who would simply shrug at what happened on his platform – and elsewhere – this week.

This is what happened: within hours of a local 17-year-old boy being arrested for the mass stabbings, untrue narratives started circulating on social media naming him as “Ali al-Shakati” – a Muslim migrant to the UK – alleging that he was on an MI6 watchlist, and that he was an asylum seeker who was known to the Liverpool mental health services.

None of this was true, but research by Dr Marc Owen Jones, an expert in digital authoritarianism, has traced how this kind of speculation rapidly notched up 27 million impressions on social media.

The self-proclaimed misogynist and alleged rapist Andrew Tate, who has nearly 10 million followers on X, posted a false image of the supposed attacker, claiming he was “straight off a boat” – even though by then the police had told us he had been born in Cardiff 17 years ago. But that, according to Tate, was a lie promoted by what he calls “the Matrix”.

One of the most prominent amplifiers of this untrue information was a shadowy organisation calling itself Channel3 Now. Quite who is behind this outfit is unclear. Investigative journalists soon found that it had started life as a place for Russian car rally videos. It may now be run from an address in Pakistan or the US. That’s the joy of Musk’s beloved “independent media” – you haven’t got a clue who half of the fabulists are.

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