April Shower

I knew that I would not be spending Christmas in prison. I now know that I shall not be spending Easter in prison, either. My trial has been put back to 11th April next year. I was charged on 13th April this year, having been arrested on 14th March. The judge was no happier than I was, but the Crown Prosecution Service is still insisting on two or three days to try no evidence whatever, including further no evidence whatever that they profess to need another four months, over and above the eight months that they have already had and the ninth month that the Police had before that, in order to uncover.

Certain public figures received one of those unhinged communications which they receive very regularly, and a highly ambitious councillor, whose identity is common knowledge in these parts, took the opportunity to curry favour with those in a position to arrange the Labour nomination for a certain safe seat when the sitting MP retires, by using that communication to seek to remove an outspoken and, though I say so myself, an energetic opponent of the local municipal Labour machine. 

But this has now gone on for an outrageous length of time, entirely at public expense, and there are now, unlike in the first instance, credible threats to the safety of numerous people, including me, but more to the point including teenagers. Those threats have not been not been posted once, from Durham or thereabouts, and referring to a local dispute. They have been posted at least twice, from thousands of miles away, from a country that I have never visited, and referring to major international conflicts. This needs to end. That councillor needs to withdraw the complaint. Or, frankly, expect to face me at the polls when that opportunity next presents itself.

More broadly, we need reversal of the erosion of trial by jury and of the right to silence, reversal of the existing reversals of the burden of proof, abolition of conviction by majority verdict (which, by definition, provides for conviction even where there is reasonable doubt), extension throughout the United Kingdom of the Scots Law requirement for corroborating evidence, requirement that the prosecution present its case within three months of charge or else that case be dismissed, abolition of the admission of anonymous evidence other than from undercover Police Officers, exclusion of the possibility of conviction on anonymous evidence alone, restoration of the provision that no acquitted person should ever have to stand trial again for the same offence (the previous change to this having now done its job in the Stephen Lawrence case), a return to preventative policing based on foot patrols, Police Forces at least no larger than at present, restoration of the pre-1968 committal powers of the magistracy, restoration of the pre-1985 prosecution powers of the Police, restoration of the network of police stations and police houses placing the Police at the very heart of their communities, and disbandment of MI5 in favour Police Officers who, while highly specialised, were nevertheless part of accountable community policing. Among very much else besides. Make it happen.

Fares Fair

The biggest hike in rail fares in five years will be coming next month, with an average increase of 3.4 per cent. With the cost of HS2 diverted to reconnecting many towns to the rail network, we need the renationalisation of the rail services as each franchise came up for renewal, and thus at no cost, as the backbone of a rebuilt network of public transport, eventually free at the point of use, and prior to that requiring the approval of the House of Commons for any increase in fares. Make it happen.

Court and Circular

I still have to turn up to Durham Crown Court at 10 o'clock on Wednesday morning, 6th December. But only to be told what my new trial date is going to be, doubtless well into 2018, and thus anything up to a year after I was arrested, perhaps even a year after I was charged. They have nothing. Nothing. But they are determined to spin out this shameful and shameless political hit job to the last possible moment. In the meantime, please give generously to the reason why they are determined to take me down, which is the reason why I am determined that they never will.

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I am a writer, broadcaster and political activist who is not a member of any political party. I am happy to work with people of all parties and of none. My national and international work is focused on participating in the formulation, articulation and implementation of the alternative to neoliberal economic policy and to neoconservative foreign policy. In my own case, that is based on the pursuit of economic equality and of international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends.

Locally, I support justice for the 472 of Durham County Council’s Teaching Assistants who are still set to lose 23 per cent of their pay, I am working to bring Volkswagen’s production for the British market to County Durham after Brexit, I am seeking to provide a platform for the concerns expressed by and to the non-Labour majority of County and Parish Councillors in the North West Durham parliamentary constituency, and I intend to identify in each ward of the former Districts of Derwentside and Wear Valley a number of projects equal to the former number of District Councillors in order to campaign in support of those projects.

This Needs To End Now

With less than a fortnight to go until the showiest trial this side of Pyongyang, I have been informed by the ever-excellent Durham Constabulary that our old friends "the defenders of Bharat, the defenders of Eretz Israel" have once again been writing from the United States, a county that I have never visited.

This time, they have been writing to prominent but non-political figures in these parts. They have not only repeated their death threats against me (and possibly against others, although I have not been told that), but they have also extended those threats to "the teenage sons of female Police Officers". Those will be killed if I am not convicted and imprisoned, "the teenage sons of female Police Officers". 

This whole business has now crossed a line even by its own standards hitherto. Durham Police Federation must now demand that the charge against me be dropped and that any Police file on me be closed, as must every Member of Parliament and every County Council representing any teenage son of a female Police Officer. That is almost certainly all of them, and certainly all of the MPs.

Look, what do you want me to do? Forgo any claim to financial compensation? I would do it. Undertake never to seek any elected political office that I did not currently hold? I would do it. I am not asking for the Crown Prosecution Service to admit that it never had a case against me, even though it never did. I am not asking for the Council Council election in Lanchester that Labour, although not the candidates themselves, won by these nefarious means to be rerun at expense to the community at large.

Just drop the charge against me, close any and all Police files on me, and concentrate on protecting, not so much me, as others besides, now even including "the teenage sons of female Police Officers", from the intercontinental "defenders of Bharat, defenders of Eretz Isreal", who have defined themselves in the past as the heirs of Nuthurum Godse and of Moshe Sneh, and who are clearly bad and possibly mad, but who are not joking.

They hate me. The likes of Simon Henig hate me. But we trust that only one of those categories is prepared to see "the teenage sons of female Police Officers" go to their graves for the sake of its hatred of me. The one with quite literally more firepower than a single fingerprint that turned up seven months to the day after I had been charged and which may or may not have been mine (it is not), on one side but not the other of a folded piece of paper that any of hundreds of people might have touched, but not on the envelope in which it had been posted, an envelope that bears no trace of my DNA where it had been sealed.

This needs to end. Now.

Acquiescing To The Forces

This letter does not appear in The Observer, despite having been signed by a prominent former MP and by a Lobby journalist: 

Dear Sir,

Next year will mark the tenth anniversary of the Great Crash, and the fifteenth anniversary of the catastrophic invasion of Iraq. In the scandalously arranged absence of Bernie Sanders, President Trump has been elected by the American individuals, families, communities and areas that have suffered most as a result of politically chosen austerity, and which have given most to wars of political choice. The British individuals, families, communities and areas that have suffered most as a result of politically chosen austerity, and which have given most to wars of political choice, have elected Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party, have delivered the referendum vote to leave the European Union, have re-elected Corbyn even more overwhelmingly, and have deprived the Conservative Party of its overall majority in the House of Commons.

Yet Trump is, predictably, acquiescing to the forces against which his supporters voted, while Brexit is being negotiated, insofar as it is being negotiated at all, in precisely the interests of which the referendum result was a comprehensive rejection. In the midst of this, the senior newspaper of the Anglophone liberal tradition is disgracing itself by peddling a bad James Bond parody in which Hillary Clinton and the Remain campaign, limitlessly funded and with almost entirely sympathetic media coverage, were defeated by tweets and Facebook posts from the Kremlin.

Instead of this nonsense, The Observer needs to be participating in the formulation, articulation and implementation of the alternative to neoliberal economic policy and to neoconservative foreign policy, based on the pursuit of economic equality and of international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including a Leader of the Labour Party who is, and who deserves to be, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Yours faithfully, 

David Lindsay, Lanchester, County Durham; @davidaslindsay 

George Galloway, broadcaster and former MP; @georgegalloway 

Nadeem Ahmed, Birmingham Yardley; @Muqadaam 

Sean Caden, Leeds; @HUNSLETWHITE 

Neil Clark, journalist and broadcaster; @NeilClark66 

James Draper, Lanchester, County Durham 

Krystyna Koseda, Essex; @kossy65
John Sweeney, Islington North Constituency Labour Party (personal capacity); @johnsweeney18 

Matt Turner, Evolve Politics (personal capacity), @MattTurner4L