It's become a fact that Roger Waters had a pig emblazoned with the Star of David at his gig in Berlin.
It has been used by MPs to call for his shows to be pulled, featured in headlines in the Daily Mail, repeated by the BBC etc.
Except, he didn't. Here is the pig in Berlin:
The inflatable pig is a reference to the album cover of Pink Floyd's Animals, which showed a pig flying above Battersea Power Station. That, in turn, was a reference to George Orwell's Animal Farm, which depicted pigs as tyrannical rulers.
The inflatable pig has been a feature of Roger Waters' shows for years. Each iteration has different symbols on it. In 2013, the pig featured the Jewish Star of David, the Muslim crescent and star, and the Christian crucifix, presumably in a statement against organised religion.
It may be gratuitous to use symbols of Judaism and Islam on a pig, but it didn't happen in 2023. The idea it did took hold when an image of the 2013 pig was shared in the context of Waters' latest show in Berlin. This tweet seems to be the one that spread it, with big engagement.
Subsequent tweets stated explicitly that the pictured pig featuring the Star of David was from the Berlin show, which was false.
Mainstream media outlets then asserted that the pig had featured the Star of David at the Berlin concert.
"Inflatable pig emblazoned with Star of David floats over crowd," said the former Hitler-supporting Daily Mail. The Metro, along with many others, featured the picture.
Tory-turned-Labour MP Christian Wakeford claimed in parliament that, in Berlin, Waters had "used the Star of David on a giant pig to insinuate that Jewish people run the world." He wrote to the AO Arena in Manchester urging them to pull Waters' gig there.
The BBC then reported on Wakeford's call, repeating his false assertion.
What's amazing about all this is that there are multiple videos of the full Berlin concert on YouTube, meaning any media outlet, especially one with the resources of the BBC, could very easily have checked.
As for the main accusation against Waters, that he dressed up as an SS officer as an antisemitic statement (when he was in character as Pink from The Wall, who descends into fascist delusions), it's too stupid to engage with.
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"This is Keir Starmer you’re talking here" someone replied to me incredulously after I said he lived it up on expenses as DPP.
So let's look instead at the hospitality he's been enjoying lately: more than £22,000 worth in the last year alone—averaging £1,800 a month in freebies.
Starmer was gifted £1,600 of tickets and hospitality for Spurs vs Arsenal in January by Getir, the rapid delivery company that has just got rid of around 300 UK workers with no notice, leaving the laid off employees "crying and angry." chargedretail.co.uk/2023/03/23/get…
He got Google to buy him dinner—at £190 a head—when he felt peckish while cavorting with the elite in Davos (a place he prefers to Westminster because its full of people he "can see working with in future"). Google, of course, a company with no agenda.
NEW: Martin Forde, the KC asked by Keir Starmer to write a report on Labour's culture (that Keir ignored), breaks his silence, saying there's a hierarchy of racism under Starmer:
"Anti-black racism, Islamophobia, isn’t taken as seriously as antisemitism."
Forde: “Quite a high proportion of Black and Asian councillors or prospective MPs felt they'd been subjected to disciplinary action which had been deliberately timed to exclude them from qualifying processes or selection.”
The programme says: "In his report published in July 2022, Forde made 165 recommendations. He was surprised to have heard almost nothing from the party since."
The piece summarises some of the film's findings, especially on the "current of anti-Black racism and Islamophobia in the party under Starmer," and demands:
"Those responsible for wrongdoing must be held to account, and anyone who participated in racist WhatsApp chats must face consequences. Next, the Forde Report’s recommendations must be implemented in full..."
Update on Keir's honour & integrity. He's now fibbing about previous fibs.
He told @AndrewMarr9 his broken pledges were overridden by a promise of a "laser-like" focus on winning which he made in his closing speeches at leadership hustings.
Turns out that's not true either! >>
It's daft to claim he was elected on the basis of one point he made at hustings events rather than on his campaign pledges, but anyway, he didn't even make it!
I've checked his closing speeches from six of the 2020 hustings and in none of them does he say what he now claims.
Here's what Keir said to Marr:
"About those pledges... we went through the hustings [in 2020]... everybody at every hustings had a closing speech and my closing speech was the same every single time which was: if we don't win, all the things that all the candidates are saying...
It's fair enough that people are unclear why this is significant.
It's not the breach, it's the hypocrisy.
To accept Keir's denial that he didn't break lockdown rules you have to believe he went back to work after his curry & beer, otherwise he was just socialising after work.>
If Labour had any evidence of work after 10pm on a Friday night, believe me they wouldn't have sat through a week of bad front pages and excruciating interviews without producing it. If there were zoom calls there would be emails arranging them. And then there's the ops note...
Now the ops note - the visit plan - has been leaked. It shows no work scheduled after the meal. Of course, it's possible Keir did do some extra unplanned work, but there is apparently no evidence of it.