The Bristol Politics Show – A Bristol Angle on Geopolitics and the Occult

1977: Should the City of London Corporation be abolished and put under direct control of the GLC? – David Miller wins his court case against Bristol University – anti Zionism now protected – 7/7 London Bombings mastermind released from Mental Hospital to ‘do it all again’ – Richard Cottrell’s two brilliant books: ‘Dr Who? Atomic Bomber Beeching and his War on the Railways’ and ‘Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe, the Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis’ Aisling O’Loughlin looks at Richard D Hall’s deliberately nonsensical conspiracies surrounding Manchester bombings, and why they continue, without any evidence – Crystal Palace fire of 1936, came to the conclusion it was most likely arson and uncovered probable motives. Crystal Palace: Accident or Arson? – The Bristol Politics Show, presented by Tony Gosling

By Tony Gosling Posted on 7 August 2026 Posted in Politics Show with Tony Gosling No Comments

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Part One – Local and National News Review

Abolition of the City of London? Back to January 1977 and an extraordinary debate at the Greater London Council GLC in London in 1970s and what it achieved -Should the City of London be abolished? | The GLC | 1970s London | ThamesTV Should the City of London Corporation be abolished and put under direct control of the GLC and Tower Hamlets. TX 26 January 1977 get rid of The City – Tony Banks, Ken Livingstone, Brian Gould. Tony Banks who’s chairman of the GLC general purposes committee whose idea this takeover is and Norman Hall who’s chairman of the policy committee of the corporation of the city of London. Mr. Banks I can turn to you first of all why the need to absorb what has always been a very successful little borough. Well first of all not my idea to take over the city. I’m merely carrying through proposals that have been tabled by the labour movement both nationally and in London for many many years. Um, our contention is uh that the city doesn’t pay its fair share of running London, the costs of running London. Secondly, we we fail to see why the city, which is an unrepresentative enclave in the middle of London, should purport to speak on behalf of 7 million Londoners. And thirdly, we consider it to be the most undemocratic local government institution in the country that is sheltering behind a lot of pomp and circumstance, but is actually a very undemocratic institution that ought to have been removed many, many years ago. Norman Hall to guess you’d disagree. Oh, I disagree most totally. And first of all, let’s deal with the financial side very very briefly. We run our city extremely well on an extremely small budget and we give vast sums 140 million in fact to the Greater London Council, the Inner London Education Authority and other parts of London for the benefit of Londoners as a whole. All this talk about altering our affairs will be ridiculous when you think that we have got uh a marvelous neat tidy little area. The lady who’s just been talking said how neat and tidy it is and how is it going to be run from so far away as county hall where they have the most immense problems to try and run the whole of London. a most immense problem. So much so that there’s some doubt whether we shall even reach this on the agenda this afternoon. We we do in fact have immense problems and that is the very point of the argument that the city um has immense wealth. We have immense problems and we are saying that that city wealth should be dedicated more to solving London’s entire problems. Of course the city is a nice neat little uh um patch. So is my back garden. But the fact is that one looks at the problems from the GLC point of view of the whole of London and not of one square mile run by a few rich businessmen because that’s what it is. The back garden we’ve been talking about doesn’t contribute to the national economy. Whereas the city of London is the greatest contributor to the wealth and prosperity of this country that has ever been assembled in one small space. Wealth created by 500,000 people who come in every day to work in the city. But the business vote which is kept for the few businessmen, the 8,000 businessmen who work in the city but don’t live in the city is denied to the 500,000 workers who come in every day. Now, is that democracy? It doesn’t seem like it to me.

David Miller wins his court case against Bristol University – anti Zionism now protected as free speech. David Miller on Ammar Kazmi’s Attritian podcast – Pax Judaica as a new empire, with Jewish Zionists influencing elections, and creating new settlements around the World. Sacked professor wants job back after appeal win A professor says he is “looking forward” to returning to work at the university which sacked him for his anti-Zionist views and criticism of Israel. The University of Bristol dismissed Prof David Miller in October 2021 on the grounds he “did not meet the [university’s] standards of behaviour” after comments made about Israel. In 2024 Miller won an appeal against his sacking, and on Tuesday the university lost its challenge against the ruling at an Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT). Miller said he was also looking forward to being “free to work in higher education without fear of intimidation or reprisal”. A university spokesperson previously said they were “disappointed” with the EAT’s decision. Miller, who worked at the university as a lecturer of political sociology, attracted criticism for a lecture in 2019 when he said the Zionist movement was one of five pillars driving Islamophobia in the UK. Critics described his statement as “false, vile” and an “antisemitic slur”. But a report into academic freedom of expression concluded his comments “did not constitute unlawful speech”. He made further comments against Zionism at a Campaign for Free Speech event in 2021 and was also criticised by the Bristol Jewish Society. He later called some Jewish student groups “political lobby groups” and described Jewish students at British universities as “political pawns by a violent, racist foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing”. In a subsequent email to a student journalist, he said Zionism “has no place in any society” with the comments leading to the disciplinary process, and subsequently dismissed. In 2024 an employment tribunal ruled Miller was wrongfully dismissed by the university, after he claimed unfair dismissal, breach of contract and discrimination or victimisation on grounds of religion or belief. The university appealed against the findings and told the EAT that his anti-Zionist beliefs were political and therefore not protected under the Equality Act. In a ruling on Tuesday, Lord Fairley, the president of the tribunal, dismissed most of the university’s appeal. He said he saw “no good reason why the beliefs relied upon by the claimant in this case should be excluded from protection simply because they related to an issue of social importance which might, broadly, also be categorised as ‘political'”.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan sign NATO style defence pact, isolating Iran. US running out of missiles. Turkey says Saudi-Pakistan defence pact mirrors NATO’s Article 5, Egypt could also join Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says the new defence agreement between Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is technically equivalent to NATO’s Article 5 mutual defence clause and does not target Iran. Fidan told Turkey’s Anadolu news agency that the three countries would establish a ministerial committee resembling NATO’s decision-making structure. The pact will also have a general secretariat based in Saudi Arabia. Egypt could join the alliance once the parties resolve outstanding technical issues, Fidan added. Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed the agreement on Friday. What Pakistan’s defence pact with Saudi Arabia and Turkey means for the Middle East The deal, which establishes that an armed attack on one signatory will be treated as an attack on all three, risks drawing Islamabad deeper into Middle Eastern rivalries A new security pact between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey is reshaping the Middle East’s strategic map, bringing together three of the Muslim world’s most influential powers under a collective defence framework. Named after the holy city where it was signed on Friday, the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement stipulates that an attack against one member is an attack against all three. Echoing Nato’s Article 5, the clause gives the pact immediate geopolitical significance, even as the joint statement leaves specific military commitments vague. For Pakistan, the world’s only nuclear-armed Muslim-majority state, the accord marks a striking departure from its traditionally cautious stance as a regional mediator. By standing alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Islamabad is positioning its armed forces as a potential security guarantor at the heart of an emerging axis spanning South Asia and the Gulf…

Board of Peace to build military base in Gaza. Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace issues first building contract – for a military base Exclusive: Louisiana firm awarded tender to build rudimentary outpost to house Moroccan troops Aram Roston in Washington Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, which was set up in January to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, has finally issued its first construction contract in the devastated territory: a project to build a rudimentary 150-person military outpost to house Moroccan troops, a source familiar with the matter told the Guardian. The contract, which has not yet been finalised, was awarded to Arkel International, a Louisiana-based firm that has previously carried out work with the US government in countries such as Iraq. The Board of Peace is chaired by the US president and led by a team that includes his son-in-law Jared Kushner and friend Steve Witkoff. In an email, a Board of Peace official said the board and a group of Palestinian technocrats installed to oversee Gaza “are in the final stages of preparing several contract awards. None have been finalised.” The Palestinian group is known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. The official said “one prospective contract concerns facilities to support the international stabilisation force (ISF), which will assist in implementing the roadmap’s security and governance arrangements”. They added: “This contract will be one of many that are essential for the future of Gaza.” A group of men in suits smile in front of a backdrop that reads ‘Board of Peace’ Trump’s Board of Peace plans to grant itself sweeping immunity, documents show Read more The award comes just days after Trump announced that Hamas had agreed to disarm, though there are considerable questions about how the group would give up its guns. Israel has opposed the plan, and increased airstrikes in Gaza after Trump’s announcement. The Guardian reported in July that the board’s original Gaza reconstruction had shrunk dramatically from an ambitious blueprint to rebuild the whole territory to a small pilot project in the south of the strip. The base now being planned is just 100 metres by 120 metres and is intended to house a contingent of Moroccan troops, who would rotate from a base in Israel, the source said. It would lie in the 60% of Gaza’s territory that the Israeli army directly controls. Israeli forces have also created a buffer zone beyond that area. The source said the base was about a mile from the Israeli border and would have a “quick extraction route” in case the small force came under attack. Screen showing glitzy buildings under title New Gaza Donald Trump’s original grandiose vision of a reconstructed Gaza is displayed by the president at the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos on 22 January. The UN resolution authorising the Board of Peace had approved establishing an “international stabilisation force” for Gaza, and there have been varying reports on which country would provide these troops. Morocco has promised a small contingent, but the legal framework for the ISF has yet to be finalised, and it is not clear when the deployment would begin. In earlier contract plans seen by the Guardian, the 150-person base was the first phase of a plan to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza for the ISF. This base would have included “vehicle fighting positions” and a perimeter berm – or raised defensive bank – and would have rudimentary facilities suitable for short-term deployments. The earlier contract said the first phase would consist of “tents and cots for forces to sleep, as well as chemical toilets and handwashing stations. At this phase, this is what we would consider habitable.”

Meta can’t police the internet – leaving young people vulnerable. Meta fined $567m in largest child safety ruling against social media giant Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has seen his company face an increasing number of lawsuits over child safety – pictured here after testifying at a Los Angeles court in a separate case in February A US judge in New Mexico has ordered Meta to pay another $567m (£421m) for its failure to warn the public about dangers its platforms posed to children, marking the largest fine against the company over child safety. Judge Bryan Biedscheid said the social media giant is a “public nuisance” akin to air pollution and that it must put the money in a fund aimed at reducing future harms. Thursday’s ruling is in addition to $375m in fines Meta was already ordered to pay in the case, for a total of $942m. Judge Biedscheid compared Meta to a factory, with advertising and content as its product and “the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children to be the pollution that must be abated”. A spokesman for Meta, which owns and operates Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Threads, said Thursday: “We disagree with the ruling and will appeal.” “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content,” they added. “We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.” Regarding the earlier $375m verdict in the case, Meta had said it intended to appeal the ruling and gave a similar explanation. It was the first time that a state had successfully sued Meta over child safety issues. Meta is currently facing thousands of lawsuits in the US over similar issues. In addition to the New Mexico rulings, Meta earlier this year lost a landmark case in Los Angeles which found it could be held liable for building addictive platforms. Bruce Daisley, a former European vice president of Twitter (now X), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the New Mexico fine, while large, was “a drop in the ocean” for Meta. In its latest financial results, the social media giant posted $61bn in revenue from April to June – up 28% on the same period a year ago. “But it’s an indication that we are moving to a stage where social media is going to be tackled around the world,” he said. Meanwhile, former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips told Today she believed US court challenges against big tech could enable the UK to take tougher action – without fearing it may damage UK-US diplomatic ties. Pollution comparisons The New Mexico case stems from a 2023 lawsuit brought by state attorneys. It argued Meta should be held liable for the way in which its platforms endangered children and exposed them to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators. In the first phase of the trial, Meta was found to have repeatedly violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act as its recommendation algorithms essentially “steered” young users toward harmful content and contacts…

RELEASED! PHOTOFIT PICTURES OF ALLEGED 7/7 MASTERMIND STILL-TO-BE-CHARGED, NOW RELEASED IN BROMLEY, KENT! London 7/7 bombings – anomalies that lead to the idea it was a false flag. GB News – Haroon Aswat, linked to 7/7 bombings, has been released from mental hospital in Bromley. Photo of Haroon. Islamist terrorist linked London bombings receives nearly £15,000 in taxpayer-funded aid for ‘mental health’ support An Islamist terrorist linked to the London 7/7 bombings has received nearly £15,000 in taxpayer-funded aid for help relating to his “mental health”, GB News can reveal. Haroon Aswat, 51, born in Batley, West Yorkshire, has received mental health legal aid from the state totalling £14,074 over the course of 21 years. Returning to Britain in 2022 after serving prison time in the United States for plotting to form an extremist training camp, Aswat was detained under the Mental Health Act. Since then, he had been in Bethlem Royal Hospital in Bromley. However, the convicted terrorist was released from the southeast London mental health hospital last month after a High Court judge ruled he would be free after completion of his treatment. Despite Aswat’s current whereabouts being unclear, with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) not confirming his location, it has been speculated he has been moved to another institution for mental health support. Legal aid the MoJ has matched to Aswat has been revealed to GB News via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. It shows his total cost for mental health legal aid was £14,092.96, spanning across five separate grants between 2008 and 2025. Mental health legal aid is a category of civil legal aid in England and Wales, covering advice and representation for people sectioned under the Mental Health Act, including challenges to their detention. After being captured in Zambia in 2005, Aswat was brought to the UK and fought extradition requests to the US for nine years over plotting to form an extremist training camp in the state of Oregon in 1999. He was transferred to Broadmoor Hospital in 2008, after being diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which causes a person to have unpredictable and aggressive behaviour. In 2015, Aswat was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the US for conspiring with convicted terrorist and ex-London imam Abu Hamza to set up an Islamist training camp in 1999. He was returned to the UK four years ago after serving part of his sentence in the country, as periods of detention while awaiting extradition were discounted from his incarceration. 7/7 bombings Aswat is understood to have confessed involvement in the 7/7 bombings while in US custody | In 2022, a psychiatrist found no evidence Aswat had the condition at the time of the offences, which took place around November 1999. The psychiatrist said Aswat openly endorsed “extremist ideology”, telling him in an interview: “I am a terrorist.” In a report prepared ahead of Aswat’s extradition, the psychiatrist wrote that even in a relatively stable mental state, Aswat had continued to express violent extremist Islamic views. The report also noted Aswat was “highly ambivalent” about taking medication and had relapsed twice after stopping treatment, with each relapse coinciding with violent outbursts. It concluded Aswat remains at risk of “Islamic violent extremism”. At the High Court hearing last year, the convicted terrorist was assessed by police in the UK, who concluded he “remains a risk to national security”. Aswat has been linked to the 7/7 bombings in London, 2005; however, he has never gone to trial for his alleged involvement. Police traced 20 calls from the 7/7 bombers to a phone linked to him just before the attacks, which killed 52 people and injured 770. Aswat left the UK via London Heathrow Airport for India just hours before the bombings took place. While in US custody, Aswat is understood to have confessed to involvement in both the 9/11 attacks in New York and the 7/7 London bombings. He is also understood to have trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in 2001 and to have stayed at a safe house in Pakistan, where he met two of the 7/7 bombers. The FOI shows the convicted terrorist has received £65,315.91 in legal aid in 21 years. The largest single grant was £30,168 for civil representation under “Public Law”, covering the period from 2013 to 2022. Of that, £6,194.54 went to solicitor costs and £23,973.46 to barrister fees. Aswat also received £21,054.95 in criminal legal aid between 2005 and 2007. This included £435.17 for police station attendance and £20,619.78 for a non-standard representation order at magistrates’ court. A further £14,092.96 was granted for mental health-related legal help, spread across five grants – the largest of these, worth £6,643.35, covered the period from 2010 to 2015. The MoJ said legal aid is paid directly to legal representatives rather than to the individual…

Richard Cottrell on the utter failure of journalism exemplified after the 7/7 London Bombings – context is Operation Gladio – NATO False Flag attacks on European civilians – is book ‘Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe, the Pentagon – Nazi – Mafia Terror Axis’. NATO false flags. An exhaustive chronicle of the doings and mis-doings of NATO and its motley clandestine collaborators might be expected to take some swallowing. And not just because the very notion of the thin veneer of democracy masking an endemic and far-reaching woodworm infestation tends to make the average punter queasy and inclined to hold tighter to his happily imbecilic delusions. Even those of us who always suspected there was something nasty in the nursery have been assailed by so much conspiracy theory that we would be forgiven for shrugging resignedly at the prospect of five hundred pages of all is not what it seems spookery. But Richard Cottrell is not of the tinfoil hat brigade; nor is he a purveyor of perverse propositions. He has spent much time in the thick of it in person – as a member of the European parliament, as a journalist, and even as an appointed rapporteur on one of the ever more compelling cases he instances of dark forces tampering with mass reality. Such cases stack up to a clearly repeated pattern and an increasingly recognisable M.O. which, taken together, betray the same criminal intents, and frequently the same criminals. Cottrell’s achievement here is monumental, not only in providing an encyclopaedic list of ‘deep state’ atrocities, false-flag capers and universal corruption, but in whisking us through it at a breathless pace, so that it reads more like a le Carré novel than a charge sheet. The author weaves his tangled web with wit and authority, not least because he doesn’t, himself, practice to deceive. Where the evidence refuses to add up, or isn’t all in yet, he won’t jump to conclusions merely to support his general thrust. Masquerading as a rear guard against a possible Communist takeover, NATO’s covert special forces are in reality a hideous cancer poisoning European democracy. The dirty war projects have included the Italian Strategy of Tension, the Red Brigades and Baader Meinhof/Red Army Faction, the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, the deaths of Italian ex-PM Aldo Moro, banker Roberto Calvi, media magnate Robert Maxwell, Swedish PM Olaf Palme, and “The Umbrella Murder,” as well as the attempt on Pope John Paul II’s life; the sex snare set for British PM Harold Wilson, and the Cyprus genocide. Gladio architect Lyman Lemnitzer is implicated in the 1944 reintroduction of the Mafia into Sicily and the murder of the Kennedy brothers. Covert NATO operations were behind Solidarnosc, the fall of the Soviet Union, the color revolutions of Eastern Europe and North Africa, and the massacres of August 2011 in Norway and Libya; the infiltration of Occupy Wall Street by violent provocateurs is on the same pattern.

US COINTELPRO (from COunter INTELligence PROgram) (1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organisations. It was COINTELPRO that enabled the FBI and police to eliminate dissident leaders without undermining the image of the United States as a democracy, complete with free speech and the rule of law.

Aisling O’Loughlin looks at nonsensical conspiracies surrounding 2017 Manchester Arena bomb, and why they continue, without any evidence – COINTELPRO UK? or just stupid/mad? Off the wall conspiracy ideas muddying the water for the real conspiracies. How counterintelligence tricked conspiracy theorists into drawing the wrong conclusion Aisling O’Loughlin So-called investigative journalist Richard D Hall convinced his followers there was no bomb and no victims from the Manchester Area blast on Monday 22, 2017. Only problem is he failed to provide sufficient proof the victims were crisis actors. This is a breakdown of how he used suggestion and speculation to brainwash his audience who to this day are convinced there was no bomb and no victims that night. Iain Davis wrote a book The Manchester Attck: An Independent Investigation ignoring the victims, something unheard of in journalistic terms, a stunning omission. He dismissed my concerns that his approach could lead to the wrong conclusion during our interview, September 10, 2024. The audience seemed to think leaving out the victims was perfectly fine too, which was troubling to say the least. It would be good to get some clarification on what’s going on considering we’ve been so public about this debate over the years. Iain’s book is currently unavailable on Amazon. It appears to be still available to buy on his website but the sale won’t go through on Paypal. Has his book been removed from circulation or is it just out of stock? If it is the case that the families of the deceased have been in touch to put a halt to the book’s distribution, this puts Iain Davis in a bit of a predicament. He ignored the victims because he deemed them irrelevant to the story. A terrible idea as I tried to warn him in September 2024 but he followed in the footsteps of Richard D Hall’s unreliable evidence. Madness! It didn’t make any sense and still doesn’t to this day. All those pushing the ‘no bomb, no victims’ line on the Manchester Arena bombing must be looked at with suspicion. Either they’ve believed the worst kind of evidence through naivety and groupthink or they’ve actively been trying to hoodwink people into a false conclusion for nefarious purposes. Yes it’s that stark. This is where David A. Hughes and Iain Davis’ ‘no bomb, no victims’ theory falls to pieces. They can’t explain the deaths or injuries from the night. If there was no bomb, what killed and injured all the people? Also none of the families have backed up their claims. Why do people insist on believing absurdities? Is it because it comes out of the mouths of people they deem to be experts?

Israel behind the 7/7 London Bombings: Tony Gosling’s documentary, and article | Videos of full shows | Economic essentials: Michael Hudson | Blackrock/Vanguard | Why/how Israel Assassinated JFK & RFK | Operation Gladio | Tony on Brexit & (4th Reich) Traitors of Arnhem | Creation vs. Evolution | God vs. Lucifer | ‘Great Plan’ for 3 World Wars | Devil Worship: The Rise Of Satanism | Nuclear Armed IDF Doomsday Cult | Aanirfan | Armageddonists I have known: Nick Land (1976-8) | George Monbiot (1995-7) | Manna for the Revelation Generation: CONSPIRACY CLASSICS, longer interviews/lectures

Part Two – International news review, Accelerationist, Armageddonist reports and investigations

Rod Liddle, journalist, dies aged 66. His history. SWP infiltrated by secret services. SDS (Special Demonstration Squad) mainly infiltrated left wing groups.

Bastille Day in France – Florian Philippot of Les Patriotes leads a demonstration against Ukrainian troops taking part. French politics.

Police arrest pro Palestine Action protesters outside Horfield prison. Tim Crosland, Defend Our Juries, at a pro Palestine Action protest in London. Yvette Cooper.

BBC World Tonight – early release system for prisoners explained. China – what works and doesn’t work there.

Andy Roberts, Fine Print, with details about why UK trains are expensive and don’t work so well. Your Bill – £257 Fine Print They got paid £310 million during the pandemic when nobody was riding trains. They got paid £8.9 billion to run a franchise where 160 trains a day were cancelled. And they’re getting paid right now while you’re freezing on a platform watching the board flip from delayed to cancelled. Here’s the contract that made it legal. SOURCES • National Audit Office — Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern rail franchise • Bureau of Investigative Journalism — Govia/Southern Rail • Association of British Commuters — judicial review documentation • ORR — Cancellations data 2024-25 • DfT — Emergency Measures Agreements / management fee payments • Public Accounts Committee report on TSGN • Companies House filings — Angel Trains, Eversholt, Porterbrook

Interview by Tony with Richard Cottrell, author of ‘Doctor Who?’, about 10 years ago – the Beeching cuts to railways in UK. He explains how the cuts weren’t necessary, and the train system had to pay for it’s whole system itself, whereas roads were funded by government. UK giving nuclear bomb info to Russians. The book describes the efforts of the British Government to force the diversion of rail traffic to roads and the motor transport industry by shuttering much of the rail network. A key figure in this scheme was Doctor Who? – Doctor Richard Beeching – a physicist who it is revealed in this book for the first time helped to design the British A Bomb during his wartime work at top secret weapons establishment. Hence Atomic Bomber Beeching and his War on the Railways.
Beeching’s reign of terror in the early 1960’s resulted in the closure of a third of the UK rail network, mostly on on entirely specious grounds to please his political masters in the Conservative Party. Parts of the system that he closed are now being painstakingly and expensively re-opened. The railway that he saw at death’s door is now carrying more passengers annually than its entire previous history. Doctor Who? Atomic Bomber Beeching and his War on the Railways a 2013 anti-Beeching polemic study by journalist and MEP Richard Cottrell [paperback | ebook] When the 50th anniversary of Britain’s ‘Beeching Report’ passed recently, magazines TV and radio all marked the occasion with retrospectives on the man who took a hatchet to half the 4,000-odd stations, all the 5000 goods yards and 6,000 miles of Britain’s railways. Back in 1963, Dr. Richard Beeching ripped the heart out of the world’s first and greatest railway network, but not one of those articles or programs mentioned that Beeching had no qualifications whatever for what was an accountant’s job. His expertise was metallurgy and he’d just helped develop Britain’s first atomic bomb. Britain was the first country to industrialise and used her manufacturing muscle to become the great empire in the 19th century. It wasn’t just technology, like the invention of the steam engine, but a national policy of mass urbanisation, transferring labour from agriculture to armaments and industry that put Britain ahead of the world. Mass evictions of the peasantry, known as enclosures, kept the wheels turning in the factories, William Blake’s ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ were filled with hundreds of thousands of homeless men with hungry families to house and feed, desperate for money for rent and food. The wider empire was built on one particular invention, the railway. Moving coal, iron ore, wool and other raw materials as well as manufactured goods off the canals and uphill, down dale, cheaply and at speed gave Britain the edge as a massive shipbuilding program projected Queen Victoria’s power across the globe. Even as Britain’s influence waned between the wars and the deliberate retreat from empire post WWII to make way for the US empire, the railways underpinned everything, moving people, goods and services, wherever they were needed and with a minimum of cost or fuss. Across the Atlantic in the 1920s, though, people were about to be forced off the rails. Rockefellers’ Standard Oil Company teamed up with the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Mack Truck and General Motors automobile lobby to set up a bogus public transport firm National City Lines (NCL). Streetcar (tram) companies all over the US were taken over by NCL, which deliberately failed to maintain or replace worn out vehicles. With consecutive governments, particularly Tory Transport Secretary Ernest Marples – who owned road-building firm Marples Ridgeway – the industrial lobby got its way. Passenger travel on the railways would in future subsidize bulk freight transport. A top secret de-industrialization plan was in place too. In late 1967, British Rail printed a secret ‘Blue Book of Maps’ with details of coalmines, steelworks etc. and associated rail lines secretly earmarked for closure over succeeding decades. Britain’s devastating 1984/5 mine closure program and subsequent strike had been secretly anticipated by government and oil industry alike, decades before.

Train system disrupted around Greater Manchester after brief technical failure. Petro dollar crumbling?

Curtis Yarvin, tech ‘entrepreneur’, on a patchwork system of governance – where unelected specialists run the show – accelerationism.

‘What’s The Monarchy For, Part 2’ – Dimbleby documentary – how Royals are tax exempt, and their great wealth.

Robert Knowles, Fireman, investigated the Crystal Palace fire of 1936, and came to the conclusion it was arson. Crystal Palace – Accident or Arson ? By Robert H. Knowles The cause of the conflagration that destroyed the Sydenham Crystal Palace on 30th November 1936 has intrigued many people and has been the subject of many a debate since that fateful night. Here, aided by transcriptions of original documents and new interviews, along with fresh information and his well-researched account of events, the late Robert Knowles points us in new directions and gives us many fascinating new insights. His account will, nevertheless, leave us pondering… The following additional documents and reports were not available to Robert when he wrote his book. Gas Board reports Penge Fire Brigade – Chief Officer’s Report Metropolitan Police reports Excerpt from the book ‘In the Wake of Disaster’ by David Wainwright about the insurance Request to the Home Office for a Public Enquiry re BBC broadcast London County Council – Report of the Fire Brigade and Main Drainage Committee Report by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Chapter 7 of the book ‘Fire’ by Major C. C. B. Morris, Chief Officer, London Fire Brigade Memories of fireman Jim Barnard, present at the fire Memories of C. G. Allaston Stationmaster, Crystal Palace High Level railway station Memories of Sydney A. Legg, General manager’s private secretary Weather report for 30th November 1936 Was this calamitous event an accident, or was it arson…? We all found the book captivating from start to finish, remembering all the research that went into it and the length of time he took to make sure he gathered all the information he could, he described the palace so well I could of been there, We relearnt the history all over again and could remember a few of the people he mention in the book, we never realised how good he actually was at writing. We are a very very proud family. Thank you very much for those memories. Family of Robert Knowles What, on the surface, could have been a relatively mundane investigation is transformed into an immensely readable book through the calm, straightforward approach of Robert H Knowles. In an almost Poirot-esque fashion he lays out the known facts, reports on the possible theories and investigates what could, or could not, be probable. The result is a fascinating collection of news, interviews and testimony that allows the reader to comprehend facts, without bulldozing an opinion. It must have taken many years of exhausting, extensive research to gather the information, but never is this about Knowles. Instead, his consistently humble approach shines light on the main players without judgement but with empathy and understanding of the place, the time and the circumstance. It’s a terrible shame that Knowles never got to see his work published. It’s a beautiful legacy from him and a must-read for anyone vaguely interested in the Crystal Palace or British society at the end of Empire. Alan Pottinger

Scott Ritter, on Mohsin Abbas’s Deep Dive podcast – prediction that Israel would be captured by Jews with extremist Zionist views coming from Eastern Block. Patricia Opulenza poem.