The Met arrested members of the City of Westminster’s Night Safety team. They are volunteers. They were pulled last night at 2am and have been held for 14 hours. One of them came out of the station in tears. Police didn’t apologise.
They were arrested by the Territorial Support Group.
They were arrested for being in possession of… rape alarms. They hand them out to women.
A third member of the Night Safety Team is here. He has marks on his arms from being roughly arrested by the TSG. He wasn’t processed until 5am and was kept in cuffs for all that time. Riz Choudhry says: “Pure police brutality and racial discrimination.”
He is also part of XR’s arrest team so is familiar with these police tactics.
Here’s Riz is in his own words:
He expressly and actively consented to be filmed.
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Since @lstwrd didn’t think my debate on the monarchy with Ruth Dudley Edwards was podcast worthy, here’s a section of my opening statement.
The word missing from the end of that clip is “farcical”.
And here’s where it got personal and I was explicitly accused of being a “puritan” and implicitly accused of disloyalty to the nation. (Obviously you can listen to the whole thing on the Today FM website. It does get more heated)
I know I’m meant to be civil or whatever but I’m fucking tired of it. These people are so tedious.
All they want to hear is me say, “I will vote Labour whatever Daddy Starmer does. He’s great and I love him and I can’t wait for him to be Tony Blair without the charisma but all of the authoritarian instincts.”
Curiously this debate didn’t make it onto their podcast. I have never been paid to appear on The Last Word — I have by the BBC for instance — and somehow it was totally cool to let RDE go personal instantly. It was a cheap debate and set up to be a bun fight.
Nick Ferrari’s show used to try and jump me when I went on there and they still owe me £30 so I’ll never go on there again. Similarly, I might be off Today FM now that the producer gaslit me after her own colleague effectively apologised when he told me they’d booked RDE.
A respected Irish broadcaster DM’d me earlier to say he was surprised I stated so calm and to note that the radio stations are going *far more tabloid* than they were even 5 years ago. And it’s not like I can’t handle rough vibes — I used to go on George Hook’s show ffs.
Depends on who you think the audience are. They are writing for an angry minority — some of whom can be inspired to violence by stochastic terrorism — and broadcast producers who are so lazy and cheap that they lean on Sun and Mail lines.
… who will suddenly believe the Mail, Sun, Telegraph et al. when the subject of the abuse is someone they also dislike or when the campaign line is in their interests. Just as many people wouldn’t admit voting Labour after Iraq, many Tories have got a lot, lot *shyer.
There are a lot of people in the ‘middle’ who like to believe that they are above the Mail or Sun readers but bare their fangs when their interests are threatened just as quickly.
Was just on @lstwrd debating the monarchy with Ruth Dudley Edwards. Of course, she decided to be personally insulting and to castigate me for being unfair to King Charles. Joke arguments in favour of a joke institution. Matt moderated well but I felt I had to fight hard.
My dad is a republican and served during the Falklands War; I will not have it implied that he or any republican who has fought for their country is less loyal because they do not genuflect to the Windsors.
I rarely talk to a producer after the show but I did today. All respect to @cooper_m who I always enjoy being on with but it was unedifying to be repeatedly insulted and to have my sincerely held beliefs treated as “silly” by someone making false claims.