Decision over Highworth golf course housing plans to stand
The "extraordinary meeting" was called after some opposition councillors cited issues with how the decision to progress the plans to the next stage was made, including that it was not clear whether the cabinet had read the report on the matter.Mr Robbins said it was "simply untrue" to suggest they had not read the papers and "knew nothing about the issue".Closed in 2019, the golf course land has been owned by the council since the 1970s.Some resident groups and the town council want the area to officially become a nature park.
According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, at some points, the meeting became heated, with chairman councillor Dale Heenan warning some members of the public after intemperate outbursts.Borough councillor Steve Weisinger asked for the decision to be returned to the cabinet, but only after the Build a Greener Swindon policy and performance committee had discussed and produced a detailed report on the matter.Highworth ward member Nick Gardiner said the decision was "legally shaky, financially short-sighted and environmentally backwards", saying the loss of green open space would have a negative impact on residents and asked for it to be returned for reconsideration.However, councillor Kevin Small, the cabinet member responsible for the plan, said "even with 700 houses", around "58 per cent of the site will remain as green open space".Mr Heenan pressed Mr Small to assure the committee that no final decision on houses would be taken before a further report was made to cabinet, Mr Small confirming the cabinet would make the final decision.The committee voted to confirm the cabinet's decision with voting falling along party lines.
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The Guardian
25 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Dear Keir Starmer, stop cosying up to Donald Trump – or he'll drag Britain down with him
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In September, Trump will return for an unprecedented second state visit, at Starmer's unctuous behest. At that point, the full, embarrassing extent of Britain's thraldom will be there for all the world to see. Let's be clear. Trump is no friend of Britain's and is, in key respects, a dangerous foe. Efforts to curry favour with this narcissist will ultimately prove futile. Trump always reneges. His unedifying career is littered with broken promises and relationships, personal and political. His only loyalty is to himself. Right now, this wannabe dictator is busy making America not greater but weaker, poorer, less influential and more disliked. Don't let him drag Britain down, too. It's not too late to make the break. US leadership of the western democracies used to be taken for granted. Now it's a problem. Politicians in both Britain's main parties have difficulty accepting this shift. As so often, public opinion is ahead of them. Recent polling by the Pew Research Center found 62% of Britons have no confidence in Trump 'to do the right thing regarding world affairs'. Most of those surveyed in 24 countries viewed him as dangerous, arrogant and dishonest. Thanks to him, the US's international standing is in freefall. Giving Israel a free hand in Gaza is the most egregious example of how Trump's policies conflict with UK interests. Starmer's government has condemned the deliberate killing and starving of civilians. Among the 55% of Britons opposed to Israel's actions, 82% believe they amount to genocide, a YouGov poll found last month. A majority backs additional sanctions. Trump's support for forced relocations, opposition to a two-state solution and close collaboration with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader charged with war crimes, all contradict stated UK policy. Trump bears significant personal responsibility for what Starmer calls the 'unspeakable and indefensible' horror in Gaza. Starmer warned dramatically last month that the UK was in growing danger of military attack following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Britain and other Nato states have steadfastly supported Kyiv. Not so Trump. Since taking office, he has toadied to Vladimir Putin, vilified Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy, suspended military supplies and questioned Nato's future. Ignoring proliferation fears, Trump is simultaneously fuelling a nuclear arms race. Now the hapless Starmer has been panicked into buying US jets capable of carrying warheads and, it is claimed, has secretly allowed US-owned nukes back into the UK. This is not the Britain Labour voters want. Trump recently reversed himself on Ukraine, patched things up with Nato and criticised Putin. But he could change his mind again tomorrow. Oblivious to the glaring double standard, he congratulates himself meanwhile on 'obliterating' Iran's nuclear facilities – even though last month's illegal US bombing was only partly successful. 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His second term will evidently be more globally perilous, destructive and destabilising than his first. In support of universal principles established centuries before anyone heard of him, Britain should steer clear of this walking, talking catastrophe. Rather than hug Trump close, Starmer should keep him at arm's length for fear of infection. Don't go to Scotland to see him, Prime Minister. Don't waste your breath. Instead, start planning for the post-special-relationship era. Make the break. It's time. Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
The Guardian
29 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Dodgy guys who dress just like him': meet the team behind far-right activist Tommy Robinson
The Tommy Robinson outriders were early to Epping. Wendell Daniel, a former Labour councillor who is now a film-maker for Robinson's Urban Scoop video platform, turned his microphone to a young woman on the edge of the protests in the Essex town. 'Look into that,' he said pointing to the camera. 'Talk to Tommy, tell him you want to see him coming down here.' 'Tommy,' she responded, 'I think you should definitely come down because you will help out the situation so much more.' Robinson, 42, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was quick to respond: 'Hear you loud & clear, I'm coming to Epping next Sunday ladies & bringing thousands more with me,' he said on X. The actor and rightwing activist Laurence Fox was coming along too, he added. For days, Epping has been the scene of demonstrations outside the town's Bell hotel after the charging of an Ethiopian asylum seeker – recently arrived on a small boat – with sexual assault against a local girl. With the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, and the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, talking up the risk of the disorder spreading further, it had appeared the perfect opportunity for Robinson, with a so-called 'migrant hotel' providing the focus. Twenty-four hours later, Robinson appeared to have gone cold on the idea. It might not benefit him and it might not benefit Epping, he mused on camera. It might appear an awkward volte-face, but Lucy Brown, once a right-hand woman to Robinson, chronicling his every stunt and provocative comment for social media for two years, had seen it all before. It was, the 34-year-old suggested, an insight into both his frustrating tendency to act on instinct and a reliance on the colourful team behind him, an inner circle that includes the son of a Krays' gangster, the Canadian publisher of a far-right platform and a Sikh convicted of being part of a robbery in which a shop worker was threatened with having his throat slashed. 'He's very reactive,' Brown said of Robinson. 'It's often just what comes into his head. He's very quick to believe his own myth. It takes probably a bunch of messages from people saying, 'Don't do it'. And finally he has to begrudgingly say: 'Oh, maybe it's not a good idea'. 'He'll just rush in, straight away, whatever feels right at the time. He just does not think. Which is why he falls in [to] prison all the time, because he's always saying stuff that he shouldn't.' Brown was with Robinson at some of the key moments early in his rise, including escorting him to what would be a highly lucrative first meeting with Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist to Donald Trump. Bannon thought he was ex-army, a bemused Robinson disclosed to her at the time. Brown left Robinson's side after a bruising falling out, but suspects that his enthusiasm for Epping dulled when he was alerted by his entourage to appeals from leading figures in the local protests for him to stay away. Robinson may appear to be a one-man band, marshalling his significant following in the UK and a trans-national far-right community that is particularly strong in the US thanks to Bannon and Elon Musk. This week, Robinson sent out an email to followers to raise £106,000 to fund an upcoming demonstration, according to one recipient. In truth, the 42-year-old sits at the centre of an ecosystem of long-term acolytes and more recent hangers-on, who are key to facilitating what even his harshest critics will admit is a successful campaign to put himself at the heart of national debate. When Robinson judicially reviewed his 'detention in solitary confinement and treatment' at HMP Woodhill, where he was jailed for repeating false claims about a 15-year-old Syrian refugee in defiance of a court injunction, the judge ruled against him on the grounds that it was for his protection and he had enjoyed '80 social visits, not including those from family members'. On leaving prison, Robinson told a friendly podcaster that he had planned from his cell a 'Uniting the Kingdom' demonstration in London to be held on 13 September, all with the help of regular communication with his lieutenants. Who then is Team Tommy? Brown, who at one point moved to Bedfordshire to work more closely with Robinson, stopped working with him seven years ago, but the core around him has remained remarkably stable for at least a decade, according to Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate. On leaving HMP Woodhill, Robinson had words of thanks on the steps of the prison for Ezra Levant, the Canadian owner of Rebel Media, a social media platform similar to the better known Breitbart, for helping his family while he was in jail. Nine years ago, he had started paying Robinson £200 a video for Rebel. The platform generates revenue through donations from viewers and crowdfunding campaigns. Brown, who was the helping hand with the camera at the start of that relationship, said Robinson had become a big earner for the businessman. 'Ezra Levant is very important, definitely kind of like the show runner, and it's fascinating seeing him still around,' she said. 'He is the one that goes down to the court cases with [former Sun journalist] Dan Wootton and spins the story to make sure that everyone knows that Tommy's actually the victim, guys. He is perpetuating the Tommy myth despite seeing him up close and personal. But it is a business to him.' While it was with Levant that Robinson did his first interview after leaving jail, the second was on a podcast called The Dozen hosted by Liam Tuffs, son of Peter Gillett, a registered sex offender who was said by Reggie Kray to be his 'adoptive son'. Tuffs, who runs a security firm and has described his father as an 'animal' and 'narcissist', has interviewed figures such as Laurence Fox (in a episode entitled 'British Culture is under Attack') but he has also featured Adam Kelwick, the imam at the Abdullah Quilliam mosque in Liverpool (an episode entitled 'Death Cult or Peaceful Religion? Muslim Leader Quizzed over Radical Islam'). 'He's a friend of Tommy that now and again would go on stage and compere for him,' said Brown of Tuffs, who is regarded as a calming influence on Robinson, who has been diagnosed with ADHD. 'I've watched him sidle his way in. He likes to tell people that he helps Tommy get sober, but I'm not sure if we can trust that Tommy is sober, to be honest with you.' It was Tufts and Guramit Singh, a former leading member of the English Defence League (EDL), who was with Robinson at the Hawksmoor restaurant on London's Air Street last month when they were asked to leave because staff 'felt uncomfortable serving him'. Singh, from Nottingham, was sentenced in 2013 to seven years and three months in jail for his role in a robbery during which a shop assistant was pinned the ground and made threats to slash his throat if he did not hand over cash. There is a further tranche of Robinson devotees at Urban Scoop, the so-called 'independent journalism' website to which Robinson is a consultant. It was set up by Adam Geary, better known as 'Nem', and one of Robinson's closest advisers since the rough and ready days of the EDL. Robinson today emphasises the peacefulness of the protests he organises and the relationship with the police that he has sought to build. But Brown said that those who crossed him were well aware of his ruthlessness. In his biography, Tommy, the Hope Not Hate founder, Nick Lowles, reported how Robinson failed to visit his cousin, Kev Carroll, a former leader of the EDL, for six months when he was on remand after he was caught wielding a machete while standing on the bonnet of a car. 'I'm 52 years old and I've got nothing to show for it,' Carroll later wrote. 'You give Tom everything and he just wants more and more until you have nothing left to give. And then he doesn't want to know you.' Lowles recalled how Robinson doorstepped him at his home alongside 'self-confessed bomb-maker' Peter Keeley to accuse him of paying people to 'make up information about him'. His behaviour towards a female reporter at the Independent, after she investigated his finances, compelled her to apply for an interim stalking order. What, then, keeps people by Robinson's side? 'A lot of these guys around him seem to have the same kind of modus operandi of 'protect the source' – because I guess they'll probably make money as well from association with him', said Brown. 'Many of them have their own little YouTube channels, with varying degrees of success.' There was a darkness to her experience with Robinson, she said. She remembered 'the dodgy guys that look and dress just like him' and the drink and drugs binges. Her memoirs, The Hate Club, are expected to chronicle some of the sleazier moments in her time with him when she self-publishes next month. Robinson has admitted to past heavy drug use while denying claims that he used donations to buy cocaine and pay for the services of sex workers. But he has a charisma that lures people into his circle, said Brown, who is married to Sascha Bailey, the son of the photographer David Bailey. 'It's like being around Peter Pan or something,' she said. 'You just have to keep up the myth. You're either in or out. He wines and dines them all, you know. 'Come out. We'll go for drinks'. He schmoozes people, and he knows what they want. That's something I noticed when we were working together – he knows what people want to hear.'
BBC News
34 minutes ago
- BBC News
Belfast Pride's 2025 'Not Going Back' theme strikes defiant note
Belfast Pride is striking a defiant note as it holds its annual parade in the city on 2025 theme is "Not Going Back", which organisers said was chosen because they believe "LGBTQIA+ rights are under attack, here and across the world".Stormont's four executive parties, Sinn Féin, DUP, Alliance and UUP, have been told by Pride organisers they are not welcome at the parade because they supported a ban on puberty blockers for parade starts at Custom House Square at 13:00 BST and will make its way through the city centre before finishing in Victoria Street. Thousands of marchers and spectators are expected to watch and take part in the parade, which is part of a wider programme of wider Pride festival has been running since 19 July and finishes on festival's co-chairpersons, Neil Millar-McDonagh and Lynn Millar, said said the "Not Going Back" theme sent a clear message."As we celebrate how far we've come, we stand firm in our commitment to keep moving forward - towards love, equality and justice for everyone in our LGBTQIA+ community," they said. Political controversy First Minister Michelle O'Neill said she was sad her party was permitted to march in Belfast Pride over the puberty blockers Sinn Féin deputy leader said she would still celebrate Pride "in my own way".Stormont's Agriculture Minister Andrew Muir, who is gay, has said he will be taking part in Belfast Pride in a "personal capacity".The majority of Pride parades across Northern Ireland have taken a similar decision and asked the executive parties not to attend. Lynn Millar said that the rights of the transgender community were "under threat" as a result of the to the BBC's Good Morning Ulster programme, she defended the decision to exclude executive parties from taking part in the parade."We're acting on what our trans community wanted us to do," Ms Millar said."Pride has always been a protest. It started out as riots - we're not going back to that."We celebrate Pride as well, but there will always be a political element when it comes to human rights and I'm not going to apologise for that."
