AOC Goes Off On Republicans During Impeachment Inquiry Hearing Into President Biden

Forbes Breaking News

 Sep 28, 2023

At a House Oversight Committee hearing on Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) spoke about the impeachment inquiry into President Biden and called out Republicans for holding a hearing without first-hand witnesses. 

Ocasio-Cortez: Christie remarks about Jill Biden ‘disgusting, misogynistic’

Julia Mueller
Thu, September 28, 2023 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) blasted Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie for “disgusting, misogynistic” remarks about first lady Jill Biden during the second GOP debate on Wednesday night.

“It’s disgusting, misogynistic, and if Republicans want to continue pissing off an entire nation of women, please be my guest. We’ll see you at the ballot box,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

Christie during the debate had blasted President Biden for “sleeping with a member of the teachers unions,” arguing the president wouldn’t take on teachers unions because of his wife’s status.

Asked on “CNN This Morning” why he made the remark, the former New Jersey governor said the first lady is “a radical advocate for the worst in the teachers union” and said he brought it up because “no one else is willing to say it.”

He responded to the congresswoman’s criticism by stressing he’s “standing by the wording,” and knocked Ocasio-Cortez as a “hypocrite.”

“Let her accuse me of whatever she wants. When you look at the kind of hypocrite that she is, the kind of things that she does and lives her life as, as opposed to what comes out of her mouth. Please, I’d be happy to be accused of anything by AOC,” Christie said.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, also on the Simi Valley debate stage on Wednesday night, referenced Christie’s comment about the president’s wife later in the event.

“My wife isn’t a member of the teachers union, but I’ve got to admit, I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years. Full disclosure,” Pence said.

Zoom backgrounds have big impact on first impressions, study reveals

Anthony Cuthbertson
Wed, 27 September 2023

The UK government, under the leadership of Boris Johnson, used Zoom to hold cabinet video conferences in March 2020 (Boris Johnson)

A person’s choice of background on video call platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams can significantly impact other people’s first impressions of them, according to a new study.

Researchers at Durham University found that objects like house plants or book shelves can alter whether people perceive someone as trustworthy or competent.

Study participants were asked to judge still images of different subjects taking part in a videoconference, with statistical analysis revealing that people who used blurred, novelty or living space backgrounds were viewed as less trustworthy than those who had bookcases or plants in the background.

The research also revealed that people who smile on video calls are also generally seen as more trustworthy.

“This research shows how our Zoom backgrounds can affect the first impressions we make,” the researchers wrote.

“If you want to come across as trustworthy and competent there are some backgrounds you should use and some you should definitely avoid.”

Previous studies have demonstrated that first impressions can have significant impacts on people’s lives, capable of influencing everything from criminal sentencing decisions to romantic outcomes.

The popularity of videoconferencing platforms that arose during the Covid-19 pandemic mean first impressions are often made via video chat rather than face-to-face contact.

“In the professional environment, 75 per cent of business meetings are predicted to occur by videoconferencing by 2024. The findings of this study therefore have extensive implications for professional organisations and the general public,” the researchers wrote.

“The findings are highly relevant to recruitment processes because competence is a strong predictor of hire ability... Beyond the boardroom, the implications of the study are pervasive for the criminal justice system as defendants are increasingly appearing by videoconferencing.”

The research was detailed in a paper, titled ‘Virtual first impressions: Zoom backgrounds affect judgements of trust and competence’, published on Wednesday in the scientific journal PLoS ONE.

UK

HMRC investigating tax affairs of one of Tory party’s largest donors


Anna Isaac
Wed, 27 September 2023

Photograph: David M Benett/Getty Images

One of the Conservative party’s biggest and most influential donors, Anthony Bamford, is under investigation over his tax affairs, the Guardian can disclose.

The broad-ranging inquiry by HMRC calls into question whether the Tories should accept funds from the peer in the run-up to the general election.

It may also cast a shadow over the more than £10m he and his family have given to the party over the past 20 years.

The Guardian understands that the HMRC inquiry has been ongoing for three years and covers a period spanning several years.

Lord Bamford, who runs one of the UK’s best-known manufacturers, JCB, has been among the most significant donors to the Conservative party in recent decades.

He also bankrolled the former prime minister Boris Johnson and the Vote Leave campaign to quit the EU.

The Guardian’s revelation that HMRC is investigating the peer over his personal tax affairs risks embarrassment for the Tory party and the House of Lords.

Peers are obliged to inform the second chamber’s authorities of anything that has the potential to bring parliament into disrepute and sources said Bamford had not done so.

Bamford’s brother, Mark Bamford, who is a director of the Conservative Party Foundation and a major Tory donor in his own right, is also under investigation, the Guardian understands.

The Guardian approached Lord Bamford and his brother Mark. Neither had provided comment at the time of publication.

HMRC said it could neither confirm nor deny the investigation, and could not comment on identifiable taxpayers, citing confidentiality obligations.

The Bamford family have made about £10m in gifts and donations to the party in the past 20 years. Lord Bamford also personally paid for Johnson’s 2021 wedding party and offered the use of his own London townhouse and a cottage to Johnson’s family at below market rent last year.

JC Bamford Excavators, the yellow digger company founded by his father, Joseph Cyril Bamford, was the fourth most important source of political party donations for any party in the 2019 election and the Tories’ top donor that year, according to a 2022 study by the University of Warwick. Anthony and Mark are directors of the company.

This placed the family in a “super-donor” category, academics found. Another of Lord Bamford’s companies, JCB Research, was also a “super donor” in 2010.

Some senior officials and ministers are aware of the HMRC inquiry and have sought information about its progress.

The race to build war chests for the general election campaign is under way, with Tory donors being tapped by Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ) in order to “keep Keir Starmer out of Number 10”. A general election is due before the end of January 2025.

Questions over his tax affairs led to Bamford withdrawing from the peerage appointment process in 2011.

He said in an interview with the Evening Standard in 2012: “I knew it was all utterly untrue but thought the best thing to do at that time was to withdraw. I am a UK taxpayer. I am not a non-dom. I pay a very large amount of tax every year personally because I earn a lot of money.

“I have no tax schemes. My tax return is a very simple one. I have no outstanding tax matters at all. Have I ever had disputes on PAYE in the last 20 years? Once or twice but not major disputes. But let me emphasise, there are no outstanding tax matters.”

Knighted in 1990, Bamford was elevated to the House of Lords in 2013 by the then prime minister, David Cameron.

The Conservative party has faced close scrutiny of the tax affairs of its donors and ministers in recent years. Nadhim Zahawi was investigated over his tax affairs while chancellor and the Guardian revealed that he was forced to pay a multimillion-pound penalty to HMRC.

The Tory donor and Indian rice tycoon Karan Chanana faced scrutiny by the Indian finance ministry over his tax affairs.

Sources who worked closely with the Tory party chair, Greg Hands, during his time in government do not believe he would accept or seek a donation from someone he knew to be under investigation by HMRC or any other government agency. Hands and the Conservative party have been approached for comment.

Members of the House of Lords must inform the parliamentary commissioner for standards if they are placed under investigation by a body that polices their business or activity.Interactive

For business leaders, this includes bodies such as HMRC, sources said. This is meant to happen at the start of an investigation or as soon as a peer is made aware of it.

The Guardian understands that Bamford was informed of the investigation more than a year ago. Bamford has not informed the House of Lords authorities that he is under investigation, sources told the Guardian.

He has publicly criticised UK tax policy in recent weeks. In July, he told the Sunday Times that a recent rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25% was a “mammoth increase” and indicative of there being “no appetite for a long-term business policy”.

Related: Who is Anthony Bamford, the billionaire ‘super-donor’?

Bamford’s JCB Excavators helped fund Liz Truss’s Conservative party leadership campaign even while he was under investigation over his tax affairs.

Boris and Carrie Johnson’s wedding party was hosted and paid for by Bamford at his Cotswolds estate. It was said to have a festival vibe, with the Bamfords footing the bill for South African party food and rum.

In 2019 Johnson drove a JCB digger through a wall of polystyrene bricks emblazoned with the words “Get Brexit done”.

Johnson, Truss and Zahawi have all received financial support from Bamford or the wider family. Zahawi has received donations from Bamford’s son Jo to help fund the activities of his constituency office in Stratford-upon-Avon, with the latest being a donation of £7,500 in February this year.

Mark Bamford gave nearly £1m to the Tory party in March 2022.

JCB was founded in 1945 and has 22 factories globally, employing more than 18,000 people, who make more than 300 different products, according to its website. It reported a turnover of £4.4bn in 2022 and made a profit before tax of £501.6m.

JCB Excavators is held by JCB Group Holdings based in Switzerland, which is ultimately controlled by family interests.

UK

Tories ‘don’t deserve to win the next election’, says Thatcher donor Lord Harris

Luke Barr
Tue, 26 September 2023 

Lord Harris has held sway in Tory circles since the 1980s, during which time he has donated to a string of Conservative prime ministers - Eddie Mulholland

The Conservative Party does not “deserve” to win the next election, long-time Tory donor Lord Harris of Peckham has said, just weeks after he donated £5,000 to Rachel Reeves.

The Carpetright founder and Conservative peer said he had lost faith in the ability of the party to govern following a series of policy disappointments.

He told the Telegraph: “The whole situation in politics at the moment is very damaging to the UK.

“Does a Party like the Conservatives, with what they have done in the last three years, deserve to get back [in power], I don’t think so.

“You can’t think of many good things that the Conservatives have done and stuck to. At the last election, they said they were going to open 40 new hospitals in the next five years. Where are they?”

The comments come after Lord Harris, a former close ally of Margaret Thatcher, gave £5,000 to the shadow chancellor in August.

The peer insisted he was not defecting to Labour and said the donation reflected the fact that Ms Reeves was a graduate of one of his Harris Academies.

However, Lord Harris’s stinging criticism of the Government and public donation to Labour are a significant blow to the Conservative Party and will serve as a wake-up call for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Lord Harris urged the Tories to “adopt a clear vision and stick to it”.

A self-made entrepreneur, Lord Harris has held sway in Tory circles since the 1980s, during which time he has donated to a string of Conservative prime ministers, including Baroness Thatcher, Sir John Major and David Cameron.

He was knighted in 1985 by Baroness Thatcher and then made a Conservative life peer in 1996 by Sir John.

The 81-year-old has become the latest high-profile businessman to donate to Labour ahead of the next election.

Former supermarket chairman Baron David Sainsbury and former Autoglass chief Gary Lubner have both given multi-million pound donations following a charm offensive by Sir Keir Starmer and Ms Reeves.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves received a £5,000 donation from Lord Harris in August - Lorne Campbell

Lord Harris said he would not vote Labour at the next election but said the Government could not carry on with its current way of doing things, especially as it keeps “changing people every five minutes”.

He said: “If I were a Labour voter, which I am not, it wouldn’t be hard to beat the Conservatives after what’s happened in the last three years.

“The only thing is, will Labour do any better?”

Lord Harris is perhaps best known for his Harris Academy schools. The Harris Foundation, a not-for-profit charity, runs more than 50 primary and secondary schools across deprived London boroughs and educates tens of thousands of children.

Ms Reeves was one of his former pupils and he said it was this link that sparked his donation.

“She went to one of our schools in Beckenham. And she goes back without me knowing and talks to the children. She’s never asked me for any money but I decided to send her £5,000.

“I have not spoken to her about this at all. I have only ever met her once over a cup of tea about a year and a half ago. As shadow chancellor, I can listen to her and see where she’s coming from.

“I am 95pc Conservative but there are some good Labour people.”

Over the course of his career, he has donated cash to Labour MPs on “four or five” occasions, he said.

Prior to the donation to Ms Reeves, the most recent instance was around five years ago when he gave money to Mitcham and Morden MP Siobhain McDonagh. This too was a product of her work with Harris Academies.

His business career started at age 15 when he took over the family market stall and two shops in Peckham, which he subsequently turned into the country’s largest carpet chain.

As well as his expertise in education, Lord Harris also chaired the Guys and Lewisham NHS Trust in the 1990s.

He said the state of Britain’s health service was worrying: “You shouldn’t have to wait 18 months [for treatment] when for 40-50 years of your life you have paid in money and then you can’t use it.

“As the country is today, I want the best party to win the next general election, one that’s going to look after the British people.”

Lord Harris said no Prime Minister since Baroness Thatcher had rivalled her ability but said “the next best were Tony Blair and Major.”

Ms Reeves was contacted for comment.

Labour declined to comment.

UK

Financial Times considers scrapping print newspaper as weekday newsstand sales drop below 5,000

James Warrington
Tue, 26 September 2023 

Financial Times

The Financial Times is considering scrapping its print newspaper in some countries around the globe as its traditional readership continues to decline.

The City broadsheet said it was considering whether to maintain its print edition in various locations amid a “volatile and fragile” market.

The company, which shuttered its own UK printworks last year, said a comprehensive review had been carried out in 2022, taking into account factors such as reduction in circulation and the impact on subscribers and advertising.

Bosses said the paper had a new five-year strategic plan in place, but print site contracts will be renewed on an annual basis.

The review comes amid a continued decline in print circulation as increasing numbers of readers move online.

The FT saw its UK print readership fall 16pc last year to 135,000 while newsstand sales stood at fewer than 5,000 on weekdays last month, according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC).

However, digital subscriptions jumped 13pc to top 1m for the first time, driven by strong growth in corporate subscriptions. Digital content revenues rose by £26m to £193m.

The newspaper said: “Paid-for subscriber levels continue to ensure the FT.com platform is a robust business model, while advertising revenues remain strong.”

The FT, which is owned by Japanese media giant Nikkei and employs 2,700 people worldwide, books most of its costs in the UK but generates a large proportion of its revenue overseas.

The Financial Times has strengthened its internationalist outlook under editor Roula Khalaf - Charlie Bibby

Under editor Roula Khalaf, the paper has cemented its reputation as a publication with a globalist outlook, and has attracted criticism from some in the City for its anti-Brexit stance.

Overall, the FT Group grew revenues 5pc last year to £458m, while operating profits fell 7pc to £29m.

The newspaper, often known as the “pink ‘un”, blamed this on a one-off cost of living bonus of £1,800 paid out to all staff last year. In the UK, total staff costs rose by £19m to £151m as the company increased staff numbers by more than 100.

Like many rival media organisations, the FT has looked to new sources of revenue to help mitigate the decline in readers and a tough advertising market.

The paper has invested heavily in podcasts such as its daily News Briefing and recently-launched investigative series Hot Money.

The FT also saw a 30pc rise in revenues from its live division last year, boosted by events such as the Business of Football Summit and the FT Weekend Festival.

Pre-tax profits in the newspaper’s home market rose to £6.8m, up from a loss of £3.2m the previous year.

The high-risk life of the bar-tailed godwit: endurance flyers under threat from development

Andrew Stafford
Wed, 27 September 2023 



From GJ Walter Park, just north of Toondah Harbour on the shores of Moreton Bay, Judith Hoyle gazes across the dappled water towards Cassim Island, a resilient stand of mangroves emerging from the mudflats several hundred metres offshore. Ferries from Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) cruise past, barely causing a ripple.

From a spit of mud on the island’s southern end, a group of 100 or so bar-tailed godwits appear undisturbed. But the rising tide is rapidly consuming their roost. As roosts disappear beneath the waves, the godwits reluctantly move to higher ground, deeper into the mangroves. By high tide, they’ll be forced further inshore, where dogs are allowed off-leash.

Hoyle, a BirdLife Australia board member, watches the godwits with a mixture of awe and concern. The birds are emaciated and exhausted, having only just arrived back in Moreton Bay from their breeding grounds in the Arctic tundra, which stretches from north-eastern Siberia to Alaska. They have barely any energy left, moving only when forced.

“Every time I talk about the migration of shorebirds, I come out in goosebumps,” Hoyle says.

Bar-tailed godwits are endurance beasts. Last year, a satellite-tracked bird, just five months old, broke the record for a single flight, winging it nonstop over 13,500km from the Yukon Peninsula in Alaska to Tasmania in 11 days. While airborne, they sleep with one eye open, switching off half their brains at a time, navigating by the stars and the Earth’s magnetic field.

Once they arrive and spread out around the shores of Australia and New Zealand, the godwits have one purpose: to gorge themselves on all the molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic invertebrates they can eat until they are fat, feathered footballs, ready for the journey back.

Related: ‘They used to blacken the sky’: the siren song of the magnificent Carnaby’s cockatoo

It’s a high-risk, high-tension lifestyle. Like the eastern curlew and the 20 to 25 other shorebirds who depend on Moreton Bay as a nonbreeding foraging ground each Australian summer, the birds cannot afford excessive disturbance. Hoyle and I look askance at the dog owner who lets her three pooches happily chase a Frisbee into the water 10 metres away.

“Every time a migratory shorebird is disturbed, they’re losing energy, which means two things can happen – they may not reach the critical weight to migrate, so they lose a breeding event. Or they set off and fail to make the migration and they die. If one bird was to live and breed for 15 years, the species loses every one of those breeding events,” Hoyle says.

Both of us are experiencing a kind of eco-grief. About 30 years ago, we would come to Moreton Bay to see tens of thousands of shorebirds lined up on the banks of Brisbane’s bayside suburbs of Cleveland, Thorneside, Manly and Lytton. Every year, we’ve watched their numbers decline.

The numbers of bar-tailed godwits appear to be, in Hoyle’s words, “relatively chipper” – they’re still one of our more commonly encountered migratory shorebirds. But globally, the species has sagged from an estimated 1 million individuals to fewer than 300,000. In Moreton Bay, numbers fell by 68% from 1993 to 2008. It’s now listed as critically endangered.

It’s for these reasons that Hoyle has been fighting against Walker Corporation’s proposed development at Toondah Harbour, which intends to build out from the foreshore, consuming the park and mudflats in a concrete archipelago stretching to the boundary of Cassim Island.

“All this area that you can see in front of you is going to be high-rise, with 3,600 apartments,” she says.

And that, Hoyle says, means more water sports, more dogs, more noise, more claypans swallowed up, and more dead and displaced shorebirds. Moreton Bay, she says, is an intertwined ecosystem. “You can’t say we’re going to drop a rock and it’s going to have no impact; there’ll be a ripple-out effect.”

When the tide recedes, the vast mudflats of Moreton Bay will be exposed. One could be forgiven for thinking the godwits, and all the other shorebirds, will simply go somewhere else. The truth is they are remarkably site-faithful: tracking has shown the same birds return to their favoured locations, including Toondah, year after year.

Moreton Bay was declared a Ramsar site as a wetland of international importance in 1993. It is also a marine park and a key biodiversity area. It is a summer refuge to a number of critically endangered birds besides the godwit. Eastern curlews, curlew sandpipers and great knots – all trans-equatorial migrants from the Arctic Circle – can be seen with relative ease here.

Related: Tricksters, messengers, fire-bringers: crows and ravens have been woven into human history | Kim V Goldsmith

Another chunk of a supposedly protected area falling under a developer’s hammer would be a gross failure of Australian environmental law, Hoyle says. “The EPBC [Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation] Act is failing to protect our most vulnerable family of birds by continuing to approve this development here, that development there. If you keep nibbling away at habitats, the birds will continue to decline.”

Hoyle is voting for the bar-tailed godwit in Australia’s bird of the year 2023 poll. Partly it’s because shorebirds, collectively, have everything stacked against them. They live in the intertidal zone – inconspicuous, rather drab until they moult into often startling breeding plumage. The godwits morph from beige to beautiful brick-red before their journey north.

But mostly it’s because of the extraordinary lives they lead. “I understand why people would vote for the superb fairywren and the magpie – these are birds that we see every day and they have a relationship with. But the bar-tailed godwit does something that is truly amazing. No other birds have that impact on me.”

You can vote in the bird of the year poll until Thursday 5 October

UK SCANDALE

Laurence Fox: Journeyman from acting dynasty who became resident ranting sexist on Right wing TV


Katie Rosseinsky

THE INDEPENDENT
Updated Thu, 28 September 2023 

Fox has railed against ‘cancel culture’ and describes himself on X as a ‘trans lesbian of colour’ (AFP/Getty)

I say quite a lot of unfortunate things,” Laurence Fox admitted during an appearance on Good Morning Britain back in 2020. “But I think it’s really important for one to express one’s opinion, and for that opinion to be attacked or taken down with bad ideas or better ideas.” Since then, the actor has banged the free-speech drum repeatedly, stressing his right to “express one’s opinion”.

And he has also said a lot more “unfortunate things” in his new capacity as the hard right’s resident contrarian, culminating in his appearance on Dan Wootton’s GB News show on Tuesday night, when he made offensive and misogynistic comments about the political journalist Ava Evans. “Show me a single self-respecting man that would like to climb into bed with that woman ever, ever, who wasn’t an incel,” he said. “We don’t need those sorts of feminist 4.0. They’re pathetic and embarrassing, Who’d want to shag that?”

His remarks provoked an outcry, with Ofcom announcing an investigation and GB News issuing an apology, before eventually suspending Fox and Wootton. Fox, however, has said that he “stand[s] by every word of what I said”. For anyone who hasn’t been keeping up with the Harrow educated actor’s descent into right-wing trolldom, it begs the question: how the hell did the bloke best known as the sidekick in ITV’s inoffensive detective show Lewis fall so far?

Fox was born into an entertainment dynasty in 1978, the third son of The Remains of the Day actor James and his wife Mary Elizabeth Piper; his younger brother Jack most recently played a Jane Austen scoundrel in ITV’s re-imagining of her unfinished novel, Sanditon. His paternal grandfather was the theatrical agent Robin Fox, while his grandmother, the actor Angela Worthington, inspired a Noel Coward song, “Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs Worthington”. His uncle Edward, meanwhile, is a two-time Bafta winner, whose children include Silent Witness star Emilia and Slow Horses actor Freddie. The two sides of the family, though, didn’t spend much time together when Fox was growing up, he has said, alluding to the presence of “two big egos in one room”.

After appearing opposite Mick Jagger in notorious Seventies gangster movie Performance, James took a break from acting and found Christianity instead; he and Mary spent a decade as missionaries in Leeds for the Navigators group, and Fox and his siblings were brought up in Yorkshire as evangelical Christians (James once revealed that his mother was less than impressed by his religious fervour: “She was quite convinced I’d been snatched by a cult and that I was weird and was indoctrinating the kids,” he told The Times).

At the age of 13, Fox was enrolled at Harrow School in north London. “I was a troublesome, mischievous kid who broke rules because there was nothing else to do, other than going to classes and meeting downtown chicks,” he later recalled. He was eventually asked to leave a few weeks before his A-Level exams, after a PE teacher discovered him having sex on the dance floor at the sixth form ball; he later struggled to get into university after his teachers gave him less than glowing references.

With one of the most expensive schools in the country on his CV, Fox sometimes gets namechecked as part of Britain’s extensive cohort of publicly educated actors (see: the higher profile likes of Benedict Cumberbatch, Damien Lewis, Tom Hiddleston and Eddie Redmayne). His attitude towards this privileged education is a little topsy-turvy. In 2015, he said that “it was hard coming to terms with being posh” but it was “a relief to come out” as “a posh British man. And proud”. A year later, he backtracked, telling the Daily Mirror: “I may sound posh because I went to public school but I don’t feel particularly posh.”

After a stint working as a gardener, Fox landed a prestigious spot at Rada where, he once claimed, he was made to feel like an outsider (or in his words, treated “like a nonce”) for being an ex-public school boy. He graduated in 2001, leaving with a string of roles to his name, including a brief turn as an aristocratic suitor in Julian Fellowes’s proto-Downton murder mystery Gosford Park, appearing alongside a who’s who of British acting talent: Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas, to name a few.

Laurence Fox and Kevin Whately in 'Lewis' (ITV)

Then came a succession of wartime dramas, from Foyle’s War to Colditz. It was his stint in the latter that eventually helped him land his best-known role to date. Actor Kevin Whately just happened to catch the final 10 minutes of the made-for-TV movie about prisoners of war, around the time that the producers of his Inspector Morse spin-off series Lewis were looking to cast a younger actor in a supporting role: just as the taciturn, Wagner-loving Morse had been paired up with the affable Geordie Lewis, now he needed his own diametrically opposed sidekick. “[I] saw this young English boy going bonkers and wandering out to be shot, and I thought: ‘He’s interesting,’” Whately told The Independent. “As it happens, I was meeting all the powers that be the very next day for lunch and did say that he would be worth taking a look at.”

Whately’s recommendation paid off, and Fox would play the erudite, often moody Sergeant Hathaway for almost a decade after joining Lewis in 2006, solving crimes against the backdrop of a gloriously telegenic but alarmingly murder-ridden Oxford. It was a significant year in his personal life too: he met his future wife Billie Piper, then best known as a teenage pop idol turned Doctor Who star, when they started rehearsing for their revival of Christopher Hampton’s play Treats, which ran in the West End in 2007. “I knew there and then she was the one for me,” he said a few years later, when asked if he believed in love at first sight. They married on New Year’s Eve, in a church ceremony attended by Whately, Piper’s ex-husband Chris Evans and her Doctor Who co-star David Tennant; the following year, the couple welcomed son Winston, and their youngest child Eugene followed in 2012.

Bit-parts in films like Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Austen biopic Becoming Jane followed, along with a role as King George VI in Madonna’s critically panned Wallis Simpson movie W.E. (he appeared alongside dad James, who played King George V). But by May 2016, his personal life started to overshadow his work when news of his split from Piper hit the press. “Laurence Fox and Billie Piper have separated,” a terse statement from the former couple’s representatives announced, confirming that “no third parties [were] involved”. Piper was eventually granted a decree nisi in just 50 seconds, citing Fox’s “unreasonable behaviour”. A protracted – and expensive – custody row ensued. “It was quite a drastic life change,” Fox later said. “Goodbye, money! Goodbye, wife! … Obviously, you miss the large bank account but that’s not everything.”

Fox founded the Reclaim political party, but it has enjoyed little success at the polls (PA)

His split from Piper coincided with the launch of his musical career: featuring lyrics like “Don’t fall in love / if you don’t want a gun fight”, his debut album inevitably invited speculation about the break-up. He released another record, A Grief Observed, in 2019; The Times summed it up with: “Think lyrics by Jordan Peterson, guitar by George Ezra”, while The Guardian scathingly branded it as “less Chelsea Hotel, more Chelsea Travelodge”. Glimmers of Fox’s new political persona emerged while he was promoting this second record. First, he criticised his old drama school Rada for “virtue signalling”, taking issue with them sending him a general email requesting script submissions with “at least a 50 per cent female representation in cast and character”. Then he slammed the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for being “ultra-woke” and for “hypocrisy” over their use of a private jet. He claimed that he had been “banned” from calling one of his songs “Me Too”. “I’ve said some fairly hardcore things,” he boasted. “I was worried it was going to be cancelled.”

But it was his appearance on Question Time in January 2020 that really sparked controversy. When audience member Rachel Boyle, a researcher with a specialism on race and ethnicity, described Meghan’s treatment by the British press as racist, Fox dismissed her comments. “It’s not racism,” he said. “We’re the most tolerant, lovely country in Europe. It’s so easy to just throw your charge of racism at everybody and it’s starting to get boring now.” When Boyle then called him a “white privileged male”, he then hit back by claiming that she was in fact being racist towards him.

The run-in was dissected endlessly in the media, and a social media post from actors’ union Equity’s minority ethnic committee branded him a “disgrace” soon after (the union later issued an apology to Fox for the post, stating that it was a “mistake for Equity as an organisation to criticise him in this way”). A few days later, he sparked yet more controversy when he criticised the inclusion of a Sikh soldier in Sam Mendes’s First World War film 1917. Appearing on James Delingpole’s podcast, he said that seeing actor Nabhaan Rizwan on screen had “divert[ed] me away from what the story is”; he then claimed that “there is something institutionally racist about forcing diversity on people in that way”. He later apologised for “being clumsy in the way I have expressed myself over this matter”, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that he was “as moved by the sacrifices [Sikh soldiers] made as I am by the loss of all those who died in war, whatever creed or colour”.

Fox’s week of scandal marked the start of a new era of his career: as a self-proclaimed “anti-woke” campaigner thriving on controversy. His last mainstream acting role – a turn as an oddly accented Mancunian drug dealer in Netflix thriller White Lines – aired shortly after, in March, and as the Covid pandemic hit, he became an outspoken critic of the coronavirus lockdown. Later in 2020, he announced the launch of his political party Reclaim, focused on tackling “wokeness” and described by one Westminster source as “basically a Ukip for culture”. Soon after, he revealed on X that he had been dropped by his agent in a phone call. “I want to thank my acting agency who let me go on the phone just now for reaffirming exactly why I am doing what I’m doing,” he wrote.

Fox campaigning during the London mayoral election in May 2021 (PA)

Next came an announcement that he would run for mayor of London, in a fight against “extreme political correctness”. Despite garnering pages and pages of media coverage, Fox’s campaign for City Hall ended up as a damp squib, culminating in the loss of his £10,000 deposit after earning less than 2 per cent of the vote (his 47,634 votes put him in sixth place). When he stood as a candidate in the Uxbridge by-election earlier this year, after Boris Johnson stepped down from parliament, he received just 714 ballots (and once again said goodbye to his deposit).

But alongside these more formal attempts to become embedded in the country’s political fabric, Fox has also embarked on more bizarre exploits on social media. In 2022, he was briefly banned from X after posting a swastika made from Pride flags, violating the platform’s policy on “hateful imagery”; more recently, he shared a video showing him burning rainbow bunting. In his profile on the site, he currently describes himself as a “trans lesbian of colour”.

Although Dan Wootton and GB News may have apologised to Ava Evans after Tuesday night’s incident, it seems that Fox is unrepentant – and his decision to share a screenshot of a private message between him and Wootton is unlikely to go down particularly well with the broadcaster either. The entertainment industry might have turned its back on Fox – whose last screen project saw him play Hunter Biden in a bizarre docudrama funded by Breitbart News – but he seems to be enjoying his current role as a professional outrage merchant. Even if no one else is.


Who is Dan Wootton? GB News host facing sex pic scandal suspended over Laurence Fox interview

Barney Davis

THE INDEPENDENT
Thu, 28 September 2023

Who is Dan Wootton? GB News host facing sex pic scandal suspended over Laurence Fox interview

GB News presenter Dan Wootton has been suspended by the channel and sacked by MailOnline after an interview with Laurence Fox faced widespread criticism.

The 40-year-old host was taken off air on Wednesday after failing to stop Fox’s ‘misogynist’ outburst and laughing at derogatory comments about Ava Evans, a political correspondent for online news site, Joe. GB News, which has billed itself as the “home of free speech”, has also banned Fox from further appearances and promised a “full investigation”.

Wooton’s woes deepened on Thursday when the Mail website said it had terminated his column, which had already been put on hold following separate allegations against him.

Dan Wootton during an interview with Laurence Fox (right) on an episode of Dan Wootton Tonight (PA)


Wootton, who apologised online saying he should have “intervened immediately to challenge [Fox’s] offensive and misogynistic remarks”, was dragged back into the mire when Fox released screenshots of his Twitter interaction where the New Zealand-born showbiz reporter seemed amused by the row.

The unverified direct message shows Wootton sending cry-face emojis back to Fox adding: “You can imagine them freaking out in the gallery” after the rant which he had just publicly denigrated.

Who is Dan Wootton?

Born in 1983 in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, to British parents, Wootton was raised in Lower Hutt, a city to the east of Wellington Harbour. He was a near contemporary of future Oscar-winner Anna Paquin in this English-speaking enclave of the Pacific Ocean.

In 2004 Wootton made the decision to move to the UK, reversing his parents’ migration a few decades earlier. Despite promising gigs as a cub reporter at The Dominion Post, one of New Zealand’s top dailies, and on the TVNZ 1 show Good Morning, the lure of European celebrity culture was too strong.

Where has he worked?

After a brief flirtation with becoming a financial journalist (“I was dealing with hedge fund managers who would have had fortunes of £100,000,000 or something,” he later told a website for New Zealand expats, “and here I was earning absolutely no money, and talking to them about something I knew nothing about”) Wootton found himself gravitating towards entertainment journalism.

By 2007 he had bagged a plum job as TV reporter at the News of the World, and, when the paper was shuttered in scandal a few years later, he joined ITV’s Lorraine as an on-air entertainment reporter. Mixing an ear for gossip with a contacts list that covered the great and good of the new millennium’s social scene, Wootton was swiftly identified as a rising star of tattling reportage.

During this period he also took on a column at The Sun, continuing his association with Rupert Murdoch’s News UK and giving him a soapbox for an increasingly gossipy, and conservative, worldview.

In the same year that he joined The Sun, Wootton publicly came out as gay. “I am gay and I believe in equality in every way,” he tweeted. “If the media hides gay relationships then how will they ever be normalised?”

Why has he been suspended?

During an interview on Wootton’s show this week, Fox said: “We’re past the watershed so I can say this… show me a single, self-respecting man that would like to climb into bed with that woman… ever… ever.

“That little woman has been fed... spoon-fed oppression day after day after day, starting with the lie about the gender pay gap.

“She’s sat there, and I’m going like, if I met you at a bar and that was like sentence three, chances of me just walking away are just huge.

“We need powerful, strong, amazing women who make great points for themselves. We don’t need these feminist 4.0. They’re pathetic and embarrassing.

“Who’d want to shag that?”

Smiling, Wootton made a belated attempt to defend Ms Evans. He said: “I’m just going to provide a touch of balance from her because she did actually respond to this earlier today, saying that she regretted her comments, but she didn’t apologise. Uh, yes. So there you go. And she’s a very beautiful woman Laurence, very beautiful.”

Ava Evans says getting Dan Wootton and Laurence Fox suspended from GB News wasn't 'a goal' (TalkTV)

What is Wootton accused of?

The GB News suspension comes as Wootton has faced separate accusations of potential criminal behaviour by allegedly using a pseudonym and offering newspaper colleagues money for sexual material.

He was suspended by MailOnline while the claims were investigated and now the column he has been writing since 2021 has been terminated following the Fox interview row.

Last week, GB News chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos said the channel was continuing to “monitor” the allegations regarding sexual material. There is no current police investigation, the Met Police said last month.

The GB News presenter claims to be the victim of a “witch hunt” after being accused of using fake online identities to trick men into sending him explicit images for tens of thousands of pounds.

Wootton has denied any criminal wrongdoing, although he has admitted to “errors of judgment in the past”.

Byline Times published a number of detailed and serious allegations against Mr Wootton, claiming that it had evidence he had pretended to be a man named Martin Branning.

Laurence Fox (above, right) made sexist comments about Ava Evans as he appeared on a GB News show hosted by Dan Wootton (main) (GB News)

What has Wootton said?

Speaking on his programme on GB News later that night after the Martin Branning scandal broke Mr Wootton said: “These past few days I have been the target of a smear campaign by nefarious players with an axe to grind.”

He added: “I, like all fallible human beings, have made errors of judgement in the past. But the criminal allegations being made against me are simply untrue.

“I would like nothing more than to address those spurious claims – I could actually spend the next two hours doing so – but on the advice of my lawyers, I cannot comment further.

“But I have been thinking much over the past few days about the current state of social media, where any allegation can be made in an attempt to get someone cancelled, but it is impossible to defend yourself against thousands of trolls.”

Before his suspension for the Fox furore, he posted on X: “I want to reiterate my regret over last night’s exchange with Laurence on GB News.

“Having looked at the footage, I can see how inappropriate my reaction to his totally unacceptable remarks appears to be and want to be clear that I was in no way amused by the comments.

“I reacted as I did out of shock and surprise in an off guard moment while working out how to respond as he continued to speak by searching for tweets @AvaSantina had sent earlier in the day while having them read out in my ear at the same time.

“However, I should have intervened immediately to challenge offensive and misogynistic remarks. I apologise unreservedly for what was a very unfortunate lapse in judgement on my part under the intense pressure of a bizarre exchange. I know I should have done better.

“I’m devastated that I let down the team and our supportive GBN family. We seek to tackle the issue and not the person, which I intend to stress again on air tonight.”

German greens to block sales of Typhoon jets to Saudi Arabia


Danielle Sheridan
Wed, 27 September 2023 

Eurofighter Typhoon military fighter jets

Germany’s Green Party has indicated it will not approve a deal for Britain to sell dozens of Typhoon fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.

‌Sara Nanni, the party’s defence spokeswoman, told The Telegraph that Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, would not receive the backing of Robert Habeck, economy minister, or Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister, to approve the sale of the 48 Eurofighter planes.

‌“In my opinion he won’t get that,” Ms Nanni said.

‌Both Mr Habeck and Ms Baerbock are Green politicians and belong to Germany’s Federal Security Council, which is required to sign off on potential arms exports.

‌The deal to sell the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets to Ryiadh was initially signed by the UK government in March 2018.

‌However, because the jet was jointly developed by a consortium of British, German, Italian and Spanish companies under Nato’s watch in the 1980s, the consent of all four nations is required to export the planes.

‌Ms Nanni, whose party has its roots in pacifism, pointed out that the German cabinet agreed as recently as July not to sell fighter jets to Riyadh and said she expected the country’s coalition government to stick to this commitment.

‌A spokesman for the German Economy Ministry also referred the Telegraph to remarks made by Mr Scholz at July’s Nato summit in Vilnius in which he stated “no decision on Eurofighter deliveries to Saudi Arabia is foreseeable at the current time.”

‌Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has personally urged Mr Scholz to sign off on the arms deal, which is worth at least £5 billion.

‌It is unclear what the German chancellor’s own position on the issue is.

German ministers Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck - CLEMENS BILAN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

‘Black mark against the UK’

‌While the plane is designed and manufactured by BAE Systems in Lancashire, a third of its components are built at sites in Germany.

‌Berlin imposed a ban on exporting weapons to Saudi Arabia after the Kingdom’s agents killed Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist and critic of Crown Prince Mohammed, in 2018.

Germany’s three-way coalition later committed itself in 2021 to delivering no arms to states involved in the civil war in Yemen.

But, since a UN-brokered ceasefire in Yemen was agreed, Berlin appears to have softened its stance.

Mr Scholz said in July that the clause in the coalition agreement was “no longer a guiding principle” due to the fact that the situation in Yemen had calmed down.

The chancellor met Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi earlier this month.

While it is not clear what the two leaders discussed, Germany is seeking new energy partners after ending its reliance on Russian gas.

In a sign of rapprochement between Berlin and Riyadh, Mr Scholz visited the Saudi capital a year ago.

Justin Bronk, an airpower researcher at the RUSI defence think tank, said that “not securing the sale would be a black mark against the UK” in terms of its reputation as a reliable arms partner.

RIP

Farm scientist behind India's 'green revolution' dies

AFP
Thu, 28 September 2023 

Indian scientist Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan was the architect of the 1960s 'green revolution' that brought an end to the chronic food shortages then plaguing the country

 (ALBERTO PIZZOLI)

India on Thursday mourned the death of scientist Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, the architect of the 1960s "green revolution" that brought an end to the chronic food shortages then plaguing the country.

The plant geneticist died at the age of 98 in Chennai after an illustrious academic career that garnered him 84 honorary doctorates from some of the world's top universities.

His work breeding wheat and rice strains with improved yields, and training farmers to cultivate them, helped transform India from a starving nation into a food exporter.


"At a very critical period in our nation's history, his groundbreaking work in agriculture transformed the lives of millions and ensured food security for our nation," Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

"His passion to see India progress was exemplary."

Swaminathan was awarded his doctorate in genetics from Cambridge University in 1952 but turned down a US professorship after resolving to return to post-independence India and "serve the nation".

Memories were still fresh of the Bengal Famine of 1943 at the twilight of British colonial rule, when up to 3.8 million people died of hunger.

He began collaborating with US agronomist Norman Borlaug, whose own contributions to improving world food supply won him the Nobel Peace Prize.

After prime minister Indira Gandhi took office in 1966, Swaminathan was given free rein to implement a new agricultural programme.

At the time, India's economy was hobbled by chronic food shortages that left it dependent on foreign aid, but by the early 1970s the new techniques had made it self-sufficient.

"Crisis is a mother of invention. We faced a crisis in the 1960s and we succeeded," he told AFP in 2008.

Swaminathan was the 1971 recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, popularly known as Asia's equivalent of the Nobel, along with a laundry list of other accolades.

Time Magazine ranked him as one of the three most influential Indians of the 20th century, alongside independence hero Mahatma Gandhi and the revolutionary poet and artist Rabindranath Tagore.

His later career saw him briefly serve as a member of India's parliament.

He was survived by his three daughters following the death of his wife last year, media reports said.

gle/pjm/ssy

UK
Majority ‘against lowering inheritance tax threshold’ – poll

Martina Bet, PA Political Staff
Wed, 27 September 2023 



The majority of people oppose any reduction in the £1 million inheritance tax threshold, new polling commissioned by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) suggests.

Only 20% advocate for a reduced tax, while the remainder, 60%, wants the tax to either remain as it is or be increased, according to the polling conducted by Opinium on behalf of the TUC.

The survey of 2,084 UK adults also found this opposition extends to those who voted for the Conservative Party in the 2019 general election, with 62% expressing a desire against cutting it.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak warned against the consequences of such a tax reduction, saying it was “reckless in the extreme” amid the ongoing strain on public services.

He said: “Nothing works in this country any more. But instead of getting on with fixing our public services, the Conservatives are considering a tax giveaway to millionaires.

“Abolishing inheritance tax would be a huge tax cut for a very small, very wealthy minority and drain £7 billion from the public purse each year.

The Government is reportedly considering raising the inheritance tax threshold, potentially leading to its complete elimination.

The move would come amid growing demands from prominent Tories, including former prime minister Liz Truss and former cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi.

But according to the TUC, the polling highlights a disparity between the Government’s considerations and the public’s desires.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak warned against the consequences of such a tax reduction, saying it was “reckless in the extreme” amid the ongoing strain on public services.

He said: “Nothing works in this country any more. But instead of getting on with fixing our public services, the Conservatives are considering a tax giveaway to millionaires.

“Abolishing inheritance tax would be a huge tax cut for a very small, very wealthy minority and drain £7 billion from the public purse each year.

“Slashing it would be reckless in the extreme and an act of levelling down.

“It’s no surprise that a clear majority of the public oppose lower inheritance tax thresholds and instead want the wealthiest to pay their fair share.

“At a time when our NHS is on its knees, school buildings are crumbling and runaway inequality is blighting every corner of the country, the last thing we need is an unfunded tax cut for the wealthiest.

“The Conservatives have broken Britain, and they seem hell-bent on making things even worse. It’s time for a reset. We need an economy that rewards work, not wealth.”

The polling was conducted by Opinium between August 23-25.

On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was silent on speculation that he was considering changes to inheritance tax, saying only that “the most important tax cut I can deliver for the British people is to halve inflation”.

But Defence Secretary Grant Shapps described the duty as “punitive” and “deeply unfair”.

Inheritance tax is levied at 40%, but the vast majority of estates fall below the threshold, which can be up to £1 million for a couple, to incur the charge.

Mikhail Bakunin Archive

ABOLISH INHERITANCE

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On the Question of the Right of Inheritance

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1871/inheritance.html

Report of the Committee on the Question of Inheritance

The Anarchist Library

https://theanarchistlibrary.org › library › mikhail-baku...

We intend that both capital and land—in a word all the raw materials of labor—should cease being transferable through the right of inheritance, becoming forever ...