Links - 11th August 2026 (2 - Jason Arday)

Thread by @AaronBastani on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I’ll be honest, I was barely aware of who Jason Arday was until this week. Learned a lot covering the story on Tuesday. One thing that interests me is that some of the most senior people in British academia believed he was: a world class marathon runner, one of Britain’s most impressive charity fundraisers, an apprentice at Crystal Palace football club, a plausible snooker pro, and that he had brain surgery weeks before his viva (which meant memory loss). The liberal intelligentsia like to think they are smarter than everyone else, but most people would hear that and think “hang on, this doesn’t really sound very possible does it”. ‘Smart’ (credentialed) people can persuade themselves of basically anything, by making complex arguments that defy basic intuitive reasoning. They are more prone to motivated reasoning as a result. And it’s not even close!"
Alex on X - "I’ve heard it said that it sometimes requires an above average level of intelligence to be convinced of utterly ridiculous things, as the mental gymnastics required to make them sound believable to oneself are both a constant and intense exercise."
Craig Ewen on X - "The easiest people in the world to deceive are those so sure of their own superiority over others that their arrogance blinds them to the deceptions of others. They can't see the truth. There's another way of putting that but X would prob suspend my account."

Richard Hanania on X - "Jason Arday's memoir begins with a prophecy. He's 21 years old and installing water pumps in Brazil. A woman touches his arm and tells him he's going to suffer but do great things. The guy has been adding Game of Thrones scenes to his life story."

Steve McGuire on X - "The Atlantic has just published a review of Jason Arday’s forthcoming memoir. They compared it to the original book proposal and observed several inconsistencies. They reached out to just about everyone involved, but no one answered their questions."
Peter C. Herman on X - "In other words, this "memoir" is really a work of fiction."
Steve McGuire on X - "“According to a cover letter that his agent sent to publishers at the time, Arday’s book, to be titled Great and Unfortunate Things, would be ‘an awe-inspiring tale of near mythic proportions.’”"

Richard Hanania on X - "The Atlantic reads Jason Arday's memoir, and finds his life story was even more inspirational than we thought He was beaten so badly as a teen he became an epileptic. When the boys who did this were caught, he magnanimously told the judge he didn't want them to go to prison. "By the time Arday started on his master's degree, he writes, he was reading at about the same level as his 3-year-old daughter." You complain you can't get a girlfriend. Chad Arday was going through college illiterate, had his girlfriend write out his applications, and managed to father a child. He then got a teaching job. But he didn't have money, so he started working at a supermarket from 11 PM to 5AM, then a cleaner from 5:30 AM to 7:30 AM. Remember the guys who beat him up? It turns out that two of the muggers ended up being his students. They were so moved by his compassion, that they'd turned their lives around and were now helping at risk youth. As his dissertation approached, Arday got a brain tumor and lost his memory. "More troubles follow in the years ahead: Arday’s brain tumor returns; he splits up with his wife; he suffers autistic burnout during the coronavirus pandemic and can’t get out of bed. He decides to kill himself by jumping off a bridge, but at the very last minute, he listens to his favorite song." The author of the piece writes: "I reached out to the book’s fact-checker to ask whether this and several other stories from the book had been verified, but she did not respond." The Atlantic also got its hands on his book proposal. There are even more incredible stories in it. As a teenager, Arday got hit by a car and went into a coma. The doctor told his parents to pull the plug, but he refused. There's also a bout of testicular cancer that shows up in the proposal but is not in the book. I guess there wasn't enough room for all of that given all of the other amazing stories in his life. Oh, and the book isn't being pulled. Simon & Schuster are still going to publish it next week. The haters are just one more obstacle Arday has overcome."

Jacqueline (Jacqui) Mckenzie on X - "Most of us who signed the open letter in support of former Cambridge Professor, Jason Arday, has had the media on our case for the past couple of days. I signed the letter. Jason's resignation seemed bound to happen and once Cambridge University started its own investigation, inevitable. Jason was clearly hounded by people with an agenda, particularly ones with distasteful and discredited views on race. They in turn were fuelled by a ravenous media which thrives on people's downfall, and other nefarious commentators. But Jason's fate was sealed as the discussion moved from plagiarism and his scholarship, to his character, in a way we've not seen before. And there are plenty of accusations of plagiarism. Academia in the UK is overwhelmingly white so therefore faculty plagiarism is going to be overwhelmingly white. We read about these cases from time to time. I don't recall the sort of forensic examination of every facet of the protagonist's life as I've seen in this case. I don't recall the elderly parents of anyone being doorsteped. African and Asian heritage professionals are over surveilled, micro managed and investigated. This is simply a fact; report after report in some professions, including law and medicine, tell the tale. So whereas media presenters are trying to catch us out when they ask whether race is a factor in this case, it is fair for me, who's worked in the UK for 40 plus years, including as a race equality officer, to say that whilst we don't know the facts in this particular case, we do know the uncomfortable truth that the likelihood is high and as luck would have it, the end might well have justified the means. But this isn't always the case! I signed the open letter when I heard that Liverpool John Moores had cleared Jason of plagiarism. Are they maintaining their position? Is he innocent of this? Was the problem poor citation, or something else? Who amongst us know the facts? This sorry tale does raise issues about the quality of the work done in some of these institutions, including the hallowed ones, and about how autism and neurodivergency might play out in the final analysis. If the multiple stories portrayed as fact turn out to be fantasy, exaggeration or invention, what caused this? Did this young man feel the need to emblish facts to fit in to what is a high, and possibly overachievening, world? Jason is obviously a very talented young man whatever the facts turn out to be. I hope he receives the best support, love and care from his friends and family and can reset and go on to use his talents. Whatever the facts are on his extra curricular activities and on the plagiarism when things are examined, Jason has, seemingly, more talent than most of the people celebrating his downfall. Not sure many of us can write a PhD even with copied paragraphs, run a marathon, or have any inclination to do anything useful for our communities. It's been interesting to hear his bright students speak about him and credit him with their own development. I was happy when I read about his appointment. It is rare to see a young Black person in the space he occupied. I am sad to read about his resignation, the confusion, the gotcha comments, and the implications for those who seek to put their head above the parapet only to be told you don't belong and, we'll get you one way or the other."
When you still cling onto the narrative

Prof. Hanna Kienzler 🧡 🇵🇸 on X - "The glee of the right over the Arday case is indicative of how unsafe academia is for Black scholars and of an attempt to erode whatever fragile safety still exists.They are having a field day while many on the left once again find what is happening too complicated to have a view"
Daniel Friedman on X - "A prominent black academic who was hired as the youngest ever full professor at Cambridge has been exposed as a flagrant plagiarist and a total fraud. The story is so ridiculous it has attracted a high degree of mainstream attention. To normal people, this episode reveals how shoddy and fake academia is, how little rigor and scrutiny is applied to academic publications and how low the bar can be for diversity hires at even the most prestigious institutions. For professor Palestine Flag, however, this is actually “indicative of how unsafe academia is for Black scholars.” What is the danger that they face? Being exposed as frauds like Arday? Is the danger that there are many more just like him?"
Isn't it racist to say Black scholars are all plagiarising liars?

Andrew Hammel on X - "Arday is bringing out the pent-up rage of thousands of non-minority scholars who've toiled for decades in relative obscurity and produced valuable, original work -- all the while watching colleagues whom everyone knew to be mediocre being promoted to positions for which the non-minority was objectively more qualified. And being unable to say anything about it publicly without potentially wrecking their careers. The sheer magnitude of the Arday fiasco is breaking open the debate."

Richard North on X - "Defund the BBC
Although much more is to come out of the woodwork with the Arday affair, the role of the BBC in reporting the emerging controversy should not be forgotten. The contrast between how newspapers like The Telegraph or The Times, and journals such as The Spectator, meticulously dismantled his claims and the passivity of the BBC in handling the story points to several systemic failures in the broadcaster’s objectivity. The BBC possesses an elite investigative arm, yet it fundamentally failed to use Verify or any of its other fact-checking resources independently to audit Arday's work during the height of the controversy. While print journalists were calling up charities, mapping out impossible marathon times (such as his claim of running 600 miles in six days), and running software on his academic papers, the BBC largely limited its coverage to reporting on other people's reporting. It limited is coverage of the controversy, effectively treating the crisis as a mere “row” or a clash of opinions between opposing camps, rather than a verifiable case of fraud. In so doing, it seems to have been attempting to protect a narrative it had spent years building. The BBC itself was a primary driver of the Arday phenomenon. They presented him as the definitive symbol of progressive triumph over institutional barriers: a man diagnosed with global development delay who could not speak until 11 but became Cambridge’s youngest Black professor at 37. Because the BBC’s senior editors used its platform to champion this specific biography, critically examining his thesis would require the broadcaster to admit that its own editorial vetting had failed. Thus, to preserve institutional face, the BBC consistently framed the accusations not as an issue of basic academic integrity, but as a “highly politicised” debate surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The broadcaster’s limited coverage heavily repeated Arday’s defensive framing. In his statements - broadcast extensively by the BBC - Arday claimed that the identical passages in his thesis were merely “errors” caused by his autism and a reliance on “mimicry” to learn. This was despite independent fact-checking and analysis of his 2015 PhD thesis at Liverpool John Moores University, which exposed 188 sentences that were identical or near-identical to a 2009 Brunel University thesis, a statistical impossibility to achieve by accident. Any experienced academic (in fact, any academic) knows that copying entire blocks of text from a previous student’s dissertation is plagiarism, not a symptom of "neurodivergence". By uncritically broadcasting his defence without explicitly pointing out that the scale of text duplication breached standard UK university regulations, the BBC chose to prioritise editorial sympathy over strict factual analysis. But the most significant indicator of a lack of objectivity was the BBC's initial silence on how the story was suppressed. The public now knows that journalists trying to investigate Arday were met with legal threats from elite law firms, and that the Metropolitan Police actually launched a four-month harassment investigation into an independent reporter just for emailing Arday standard journalistic questions. The BBC’s failure to investigate why a university professor was using the Met Police to silence legitimate journalistic scrutiny reveals what appears to be a deep-seated reluctance to challenge the establishment figures they admire. Yet, as a universally tax-funded broadcaster supported by the UK licence fee, the BBC is bound by a strict Royal Charter that legally requires it to maintain absolute impartiality and objectivity. When the broadcaster prioritises protecting a celebrated narrative over conducting basic, rigorous fact-checking, it represents a profound systemic failure that directly violates those foundational public duties. By contrast, the BBC routinely deploys its “Verify” unit to fact-check minor internet rumours or political claims, yet it consciously chose not to apply those same data-journalism tools to a high-profile academic scandal that was emerging. By framing massive text duplication as “errors” and focusing heavily on Arday's defence, the broadcaster allowed its own editorial sympathy to obscure the objective reality of the plagiarism. This demonstrates that the BBC had created for itself a clear conflict of interest where a public broadcaster was protecting its own historical reporting at the expense of the truth. In aligning its coverage with a specific progressive worldview – in this case uncritically championing a high-profile appointment to support a diversity narrative – it has succumbed to institutional capture. It has ceased to be an objective observer (not that it has been for some time) and instead has become an active participant in a cultural conflict, using public money to validate its own institutional preferences. Prior to the current Charter running out on 31 December 2027, the BBC’s reporting of the Arday controversy should feature prominently in the funding review. It should be taken as additional evidence that the current public service broadcasting model has outlived its usefulness. If the BBC wants to be the propaganda arm for the progressives, it should be so on its own dime. It is wholly unacceptable that the public should be forced to pay for it."

Jukka Savolainen on X - "In sociology hiring, race was linked to placement prestige at least as strongly as having a publication in the field’s flagship journals. Black candidates reached top departments with significantly weaker records—evidence of a systemic double standard, not just anecdotes."

John McWhorter on X - "Read this man's resignation letter and witness a delusion, megalomania, and dimness paralleled in public figures today only by America's President. Apparently the letter is AI. But from all we have learned about his "scholarship," of course he was incapable of composing intelligent prose himself. The whites who elevated Arday think Black people are dumb. And yes, it could have happened here. Yes, I am leaving some stuff unsaid."

Melissa Chen on X - "To understand just how irredeemably messed up academia is, compare the differences in how Cambridge treated Jason Arday and how Harvard treated Roland Fryer. One is a black sociologist; the other is a black economist. At this point, we are all very well acquainted with Jason Arday’s insane fabrications, plagiarism, and less-than-stellar research record. Yet he became the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s history at 37. Now look at the case of Roland Fryer. He produced rigorous, data-driven research, published extensively, and ran a major institute (EdLabs) at Harvard. He doggedly pursued the truth on one of the most charged questions in American public life. His landmark 2016 study titled “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force” examined millions of encounters and officer-involved shootings. It found that there were no racial differences in the raw data or after controlling for circumstances. In some datasets (notably Houston), blacks were actually less likely to be shot once the encounter was underway. As you know, this finding directly contradicted Black Lives Matter’s core orthodoxy that police systematically and disproportionately kill Black men out of racial animus. It was not only in vogue at the time; it was literally religion. Roland Fryer and his data were guilty of blasphemy. Harvard launched investigations into allegations of verbal sexual harassment and a hostile work environment in his lab. The process produced a two-year unpaid suspension, the permanent shutdown of EdLabs, and severe restrictions on his ability to advise or supervise. All this was investigated by a kangaroo court under Title IX. The recommendation for his alleged failings was sensitivity training, yet a faculty panel escalated it into career-crippling punishment. Fryer has said he was unfairly targeted because of the political inconvenience of his results. The contrast between how the academy treated these two men shows you how deep the moral rot is."

Donna-Louise on X - "This is going to be in my third article - but I am too outraged to wait to tell you. 😡 Jason Arday was never trained as a sociologist. Jason Arday has no degree, no Master’s and no PhD in Sociology. None. Zero. His entire formal academic training is in Education and Physical Education:
BA in Education Studies and Physical Education
MA in Education and Pedagogy
A second Master’s in Education
PhD in Education — specifically on peer-mentoring among student teachers training to become PE teachers
That is a doctorate in physical-education teacher training. It is not sociology. It contains no sociological theory, no sociological methods, and no sustained engagement with the core literature of the discipline. Yet within a few years the same man was:
Appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Durham
Put in front of students teaching modules called Sociology of Education and Societies in Transition
Then made Professor of the Sociology of Education at Glasgow
Then made Professor of the Sociology of Education at Cambridge
Students were paying close to ten thousand pounds a year. Some of that money was buying teaching and supervision from a man whose highest qualification in the subject he was employed to profess was nothing. He had never studied sociology as an undergraduate, never taken a Master’s in it, and never written a doctoral thesis in it. The word “Sociology” appeared only in the job title. Institutions simply accepted the re-description. A PE-and-education academic was re-labelled a sociologist and students were charged elite university fees to be taught by him. That is not an academic career progression. That is a category error that successive universities chose not to notice. My mind has been blown by this revelation. No wonder his students report him leaning on desks talking about celebrities and inequality! He appears to have known absolutely nothing about the subject he was teaching!"

Donna-Louise on X - "Jason Arday Called the Police on Anyone Who Questioned Him -...
There is no acknowledgement of any error, no acceptance of any responsibility, and no engagement with the substance of the questions that had been raised. The resignation is framed entirely as the result of what other people have done to him. The eternal victim... Daniel Engber at The Atlantic obtained the original 2024 book proposal.
It contains episodes that do not appear in the finished book: a teenage car accident that left him in a locked-in coma for months, doctors advising his parents to withdraw life support “as an act of mercy,” and a full year relearning how to walk and talk.
The memoir says only that he spent those months finishing secondary school and sitting exams. The proposal also mentions testicular cancer, which does not appear in the finished book. The memoir itself describes Arday as having survived two brain tumours — a claim absent from the proposal...
In 2010 Arday kept a public blog of the “30 marathons in 35 days” challenge. There is no mention of a hairline fracture, a leg swollen to twice its size, or completing the final nine marathons while injured. Those details appeared years later... In the Talking Matters podcast Arday said he spent “a handful of years” at Crystal Palace as a youth player and then went on to play semi-professional football. Crystal Palace say they hold no records from that period. No semi-professional club has ever been named. The Telegraph asked directly which academy and which side; no answer has appeared. His memoir mentions neither. The only club that can be independently linked to him is Battersea Park Rangers. A Jason Arday appears on the FA’s Full-Time listings for their Vets side — an over-35s recreational team in the Southern Amateur Veterans League. This is Sunday-morning veterans football, completely outside the National League System. It is not a step on the ladder to professional football. It is the opposite end of the spectrum. A 2023 profile carried a photograph of him accepting an award on the club’s behalf in 2018 under the caption “Jason almost became a professional footballer.” The caption is doing a lot of work. Playing for a veterans recreational side in your late thirties does not constitute almost becoming a professional. It is ordinary Sunday football for men who enjoy the game. He has claimed a professional academy and a semi-professional career for years. He has never named either. When a national newspaper finally asked, he did not answer.
He has said he did even better at snooker than football, practised for seven hours a day whilst he should have been at school, won substantial sums, and was “on the verge of turning professional.” CueTracker records one match: English Amateur Championship, Round 1, 10 February 2002, against Matthew Tugby, lost 4–1. It is the only tournament and the only match on his record. There is no professional tour record... Daniel Engber in The Atlantic reporterd that in his memoir, Arday alleged that as a teenager he was beaten so severely by a group of boys at a bus stop that he developed epilepsy for which he wears a bracelet. When the attackers were arrested, he told the judge he did not want them sent to prison. Years later, while briefly teaching at an unnamed London university, two of the same young men turned up as his students. According to the memoir they had been so moved by his act of mercy that they had turned their lives around and were now coaching other at-risk youths. They hugged him; one asked him to be godfather to his child. Engber notes that the book’s fact-checker did not respond when asked whether this (and several other dramatic stories) had been verified. The 2024 book proposal also told the beating story with slightly different details (the attackers were four years older rather than the same age)... Arday has said, repeatedly, that he was diagnosed at the age of three (around 1988) with a “hybrid” of global developmental delay and Asperger’s syndrome. There are two immediate problems with that claim. First, Asperger’s syndrome was not an official diagnostic category in 1988... Second, even after it became an official diagnosis, a defining requirement of Asperger’s was the absence of any clinically significant general delay in language. The criteria required single words by age two and communicative phrases by age three. Arday’s own account is that he was non-verbal until eleven and communicated by sign language. That is the opposite of the language profile required for Asperger’s... No independent clinical records have ever been produced to support it. Arday has said, repeatedly and in print, that he was non-verbal until eleven and could not read or write until he was eighteen. He has also said he left school with only two GCSEs — PE and Textiles. How is that possible? GCSE Textiles requires a design folder with written research, annotations and evaluations, plus a written exam. You cannot complete the coursework or sit the paper without being able to read and write. The same problem applies to the BTEC that supposedly followed: entry normally requires GCSEs in English and maths, and the course itself is built on written reports and assignments. Completing either while functionally illiterate is not something that happens under ordinary rules... He has also described spending seven hours a day playing snooker instead of attending school. That may explain the two GCSEs — but it does not explain how someone with that level of school attendance and those results then progressed to a degree, two master’s degrees and a PhD... Three separate people who raised evidence-based concerns were reported to the police... The scandal is not only what he claimed. It is how long so many people chose to believe it."

Melissa Chen on X - "DEI advocates always want to have their cake and eat it too.  You cannot demand collective racial engineering via race-conscious hiring, diversity quotas and preferential pipelines and then turn around and say, "Y U NO TREAT US AS INDIVIDUALS" when something like Jason Arday dominates the headlines. You are the ones who elevated identity as a credential.  “We need more BAME professors” was the explicit slogan. “Cambridge’s youngest Black professor” was the explicit marketing line when Jason Arday was appointed in 2023.  Sorry but this is just the predictable consequence of the framework you imposed.  For white people (and East Asians), it's the other way around. Under DEI regimes that systematically disadvantage them in favor of BAME representation, a white / Asian person who still reaches an elite post has typically done so IN SPITE OF their identity, not because of it.   That raises the prior probability that they cleared a higher bar. When such a person later plagiarizes or fabricates, the failure attaches to them as an individual; it does not put “whiteness” or the legitimacy of white presence on trial because their ascent was never framed as a racial deliverable in the first place.  DEI’s central bargain was always unstable. The price of that bargain is that group outcomes, positive or negative, become fair game for judgment.  This idea that you can demand that universities treat people as racial collectives for the purpose of preferential inclusion and then COMPLAIN when a high-profile failure is treated as an indictment of the collective logic that put them there in the first place is so laughable."  
One cope is that race conscious hiring, diversity quotas and preferential pipelines just exactly cancel out racism and ensure a level playing field

The Murder of Brigitte Stegemann

Damn far right conservative Christian extremists who just want terminally ill people to suffer!

Brigitte Frances Kranendonk | Facebook

Our Family's Experience with Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID)

 

This is our family's account of the systemic failures, lack of transparency, and profound procedural violations we witnessed during the final days of our beloved mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Brigitte Stegemann, whom we lovingly called "GG."

 

We are sharing our story because what happened in GG's case was a severe breach of medical ethics, informed consent, and basic human dignity. Decisions of this magnitude demand absolute transparency, strict adherence to legal safeguards, and the meaningful involvement of designated family advocates. In GG’s case, the system failed on every single one of these fronts.

 

Everything that follows is a truthful account of how the care home and the attending physician systematically bypassed our family, ignored our legal standing, and pushed forward with ending GG's life against her previously stated wishes.

 

Background

Brigitte Stegemann ("GG") passed away through the MAID program on Friday, July 10, 2026.

 

GG was the mother of two children, Fritz and Karin. For more than twelve years, her granddaughter, Brigitte (who shares her name), devoted herself to GG's care and advocacy. Brigitte held legal Power of Attorney (POA) and served as the primary contact for all medical and personal care decisions.

 

Approximately five months before her death, GG was diagnosed with untreatable Stage IV stomach cancer. For the last two years of her life, she resided at the long-term care facility.

 

Throughout her stay, Brigitte was contacted frequently by the home—often every day or every other day—to make decisions regarding GG's care. Whether the matter involved medications, treatments, appointments, or other aspects of daily living, the staff consistently relied on Brigitte to make or assist with important decisions on GG's behalf.

 

Approximately two months before GG's death, a meeting was held to discuss the possibility of MAID. At that time, GG clearly stated that she did not wish to pursue it. As a devout Christian, she explicitly expressed that MAID conflicted with her personal beliefs and faith.

 

Shortly afterward, Brigitte and her husband, Robert, left on a planned vacation. During their 10-day absence, Karin and her husband, Dave, visited GG regularly to ensure she was not alone.

 

Although Brigitte continued receiving frequent phone calls from the care home about routine decisions while she was away, she was never informed that additional discussions regarding MAID were taking place privately with GG. Instead, she was only advised that another formal meeting concerning MAID had been scheduled for after her return.

 

This blatant omission was the first major warning sign for our family. Given Brigitte's long-standing role as GG's advocate and Power of Attorney, it is indefensible that discussions about such a life-altering decision occurred entirely behind her back during that brief 10-day window, despite the home's daily communication with her on far less significant matters.

 

The MAID Meetings

During the final five days before Brigitte and Robert returned from vacation, Karin and Dave continued visiting GG regularly at the care home.

 

During those visits, they found her to be extremely weak and largely unresponsive. She would briefly awaken, sometimes only long enough to say her daughter's name, before drifting back to sleep. Because GG was completely deaf in her left ear and had very limited hearing in her right, communication was extremely difficult. Although her eyes were often open, she appeared to be looking past visitors rather than engaging in conversation. Dave shared his concerns with the rest of the family; based on what he had witnessed, he believed GG was nearing the natural end of her life regardless of medical intervention.

 

Monday, July 6, 2026

Our family attended the scheduled MAID meeting expecting to discuss the process with GG's physician.

 

To our surprise, GG appeared dramatically different from how she had only days earlier. She was sitting upright in bed, talking, smiling, and interacting. When Dave playfully pinched her toes, she laughed and raised her hands as though she wanted to box with him. Seeing such a sudden, dramatic improvement left us confused and raised serious questions about why she had appeared so heavily sedated during the previous several days.

 

Driven by deep suspicion over this inexplicable turnaround, Brigitte later requested GG’s Medication Administration Record (MAR) log on Wednesday to audit her chemical baseline. Surprisingly, the facility’s official records reflected that the exact same dosage of medication had been administered every single day. This left our family with a profound contradiction: either the home's paperwork did not accurately reflect what was actually being injected into her system, or the clinical team had actively exploited a brief, completely anomalous window of temporary alertness to rush through a permanent evaluation that entirely misrepresented GG's true, unresponsive everyday baseline.

 

Before the physician arrived, an administrator and a registered nurse from the facility entered the room and advised us that the doctor was running behind schedule.

 

During this conversation, which took place entirely inside GG's room in her immediate presence, Brigitte asked who had arranged the MAID meeting. No clear answer was ever given. Instead, the family was met with an immediate wall of defensiveness, specifically from the registered nurse. The nurse informed the family that staff had met privately with GG on two occasions during Brigitte's 10-day vacation to discuss MAID.

 

Brigitte asked why those discussions had been initiated when GG had previously declined MAID due to her Christian beliefs. She asked point-blank whether these conversations were initiated by GG herself or by the facility staff.

 

The registered nurse became physically agitated and defensive, wagging her head back and forth as she spoke directly to Brigitte, stating, "I'm advocating for her."

 

When Brigitte pushed further to find out exactly who brought up the conversation about MAID, the nurse snapped, "I don't need to tell you anything."

 

Brigitte countered that she had served as GG's advocate for over a decade, held Power of Attorney, and visited consistently, noting that she had never once encountered this particular nurse during her frequent visits. As the interaction grew increasingly hostile, Brigitte finally stated, "I don't understand where this attitude is coming from."

 

The nurse snapped back, "Well, you have attitude." At that point, Brigitte told the nurse she needed to leave the room and return only when she was composed. The nurse scoffed and stormed out.

 

As family members preparing to discuss the impending death of our grandmother, we found this volatile, unprofessional behaviour from a staff member completely unacceptable, particularly because this aggressive argument was brought directly into GG's room where she could see and hear the distress it was causing.

 

After the nurse left, the administrator remained. Brigitte explained that our family did not support MAID in GG's circumstances and expressed serious concerns that GG was not mentally capable of making such a significant decision independently. GG had lived for many years with what our family knew to be a lifelong, undiagnosed developmental or cognitive disability (which we suspected may have been on the autism spectrum), which deeply affected her processing, understanding, and decision-making.

 

The administrator then explained that the doctor would eventually need to be in the room completely private with GG. The administrator added, "Worst case, I can be in the room with her and the doctor." Brigitte immediately spoke up and refused, stating that the meeting should either be strictly between the doctor and GG, or, if any outside staff member was permitted to be present, Brigitte would be in the room as well. Brigitte was deeply concerned that GG would feel intensely pressured, overwhelmed, and cornered if she were outnumbered by authority figures from the facility, ultimately feeling as though she had no choice but to agree to their terms.

 

After waiting approximately ninety minutes, the administrator informed us that the physician could no longer attend due to an unexpected conflict, and the meeting was rescheduled for the following day.

 

Tuesday, July 7, 2026

The following day, we returned for the rescheduled meeting with the attending physician, Dr. K.

 

Dr. K explained that she needed to determine whether GG possessed the capacity to make an informed decision regarding MAID. She began asking GG a series of questions in our presence.

 

What followed was a deeply alarming farce. Because of GG's severe hearing impairment, Dr. K had to repeat her questions several times, but the barrier was far more than physical hearing. Throughout the assessment, GG repeatedly provided objectively incorrect answers to basic, factual questions about her own life and immediate family.

 

When asked if she had any siblings, GG responded that she had none. The family immediately corrected the record, explaining that GG was the second-youngest of fourteen children. Dr. K then asked if any of her siblings were still alive, and GG again answered no. Once more, the family had to intervene and correct the information, explaining that some of her siblings were still living and that GG had spoken to one of them just the previous week. At this point, GG became completely disoriented and distressed. She began to cry, stating, "I forgot about the grandkids," visibly confusing her living siblings with her great-grandkids.

 

In fact, the family had to step in and correct the vast majority of the answers GG gave during the questioning. Brigitte explicitly objected to the evaluation right then and there, questioning Dr. K directly on how GG could possibly be deemed to have the capacity to consent to death when she could not accurately recount the most basic facts of her own family and was actively breaking down in confusion.

 

Despite these clear, undeniable indicators of cognitive disorientation and the family's direct objections, the assessment carried forward anyway.

 

Dr. K then explained MAID to GG in specific terms, describing it, to the best of our recollection, as receiving medication, feeling peace, falling asleep, and explicitly promising GG that she "would not lose control of her bowels." Our family was deeply unsettled by this framing. For an elderly individual of GG's demographic background and cognitive capacity, "medication" was a term conceptually linked entirely to healing, care, and relief. Describing a lethal injection as merely receiving medication—while focusing intensely on her specific, everyday fears of physical indignity—exploited her vulnerability, making it impossible for her to truly grasp that she was consenting to the active termination of her life. Before any further discussion took place, Dr. K instructed all family members to leave the room. Brigitte requested permission to remain, citing her role as long-time advocate and legal Power of Attorney. Her request was flatly denied, and the critical conversation between Dr. K and GG occurred entirely in private.

 

When Dr. K emerged from the room, she addressed the family and stated flatly, "I have deemed her capable of making her own decisions." She then informed us that GG had consented to proceed and that the procedure was scheduled for Friday, July 10, 2026.

 

Dr. K noted that she was required to meet in private because she wanted to ensure there was no underlying pressure or influence from the family. Brigitte challenged this reasoning directly, saying, "Well, we are concerned about pressure and influence from the home. Would that not be a concern of yours as well?"

 

Dr. K brushed the question off, replying that if that was the family's concern, they would have to take it up directly with the home. Brigitte asked why potential outside influence from the facility wouldn't be an automatic clinical concern for the doctor, rather than only suspiciousness directed at the family.

 

Our family left shocked and deeply distressed.

 

The Backwards Paperwork Timeline

What followed this meeting amplified our family's shock and exposed a staggering procedural failure. Legally and structurally, the formal written application for MAID must be signed by the patient and independently witnessed before final clinical assessments take place and a date for death is set.

 

Yet, in GG's case, the timeline was completely inverted. The procedure was scheduled on Tuesday, July 7th. It was only after this date had already been set—and despite the fact that Brigitte and Robert were at the facility visiting GG every single day—that the administration and staff at the care home took it upon themselves to fill out the official MAID paperwork and witness the signature for GG in secret.

 

They did not inform Brigitte that they were generating these legal documents after the fact, nor did they mention that they were actively witnessing them. They completely bypassed the family, executing the legal requests in the shadows despite our constant physical presence at the home. By declaring GG "capable" in that private meeting, the medical team utilized a highly controversial legal loophole within the MAID framework: if a clinician deems a patient mentally capable at the exact moment of an assessment, the patient's immediate voice legally supersedes any pre-existing Power of Attorney or previous directives. The facility used Dr. K's deeply flawed, fifteen-minute evaluation to effectively strip Brigitte of her legal standing as advocate, finalizing the paperwork in the shadows despite our constant physical presence at the home.

 

The Final Days

Following the July 7 meeting, our family struggled immensely to come to terms with what was unfolding.

 

On Wednesday, July 8, before the family went to visit GG, Brigitte received a phone call from the facility advising her that the MAID procedure was being moved ahead by a full day to Thursday, July 9, simply because the physician had an opening in her schedule.

 

Brigitte immediately objected over the phone and stated she was on her way to the facility immediately to discuss the matter. The home claimed that GG had already agreed to move the date.

 

When Brigitte and Robert arrived for their three-hour visit, Brigitte met with the home manager. She expressed how deeply perplexed she was that staff had gone directly to GG to alter the date of her death without consulting her advocate, knowing how many moving parts and final arrangements were still being sorted out. Brigitte stated plainly that the MAID program was being forcefully rammed down the family's throats, while the items of actual importance to GG were being brushed aside. Specifically, GG had consistently and strongly expressed that she wanted to be surrounded by her family during her final moments and desperately wanted her pastor to be present—wishes the care home treated as secondary to the physician's schedule.

 

It was during this exact conversation that the home manager admitted to Brigitte that she herself had personally filled out GG's official MAID application paperwork.

 

The home manager apologized directly to Brigitte for how things had been handled and asked what she could do to make the situation better. Brigitte looked her in the eye and responded plainly, "The damage is already done, and you have taken an awful situation and made it even worse." During this meeting, the manager also confirmed that the hostile registered nurse from Monday's incident had already been officially barred from entering GG's room immediately following the altercation, proving the administration knew the behaviour was entirely indefensible.

 

During the visit that followed, Brigitte sat with her grandmother and asked if she was entirely certain she wanted to go through with this on Friday.

 

GG appeared confused and visibly distressed. She responded with words to the effect of, "I'm going to die Friday? They're going to kill me Friday?" She wept for an extended period, repeatedly stating that she had made a mistake. Brigitte comforted her and reassured her that if she had changed her mind, she had the absolute right to tell the medical team on Friday that she did not want to proceed.

 

Because of the family’s strong opposition and immediate intervention, the facility backed down from moving the timeline, and the original date of Friday, July 10, at 11:00 a.m. was maintained.

 

Friday, July 10, 2026

Our family arrived at the care home at approximately 9:00 a.m. Rather than remaining inside the clinical walls, Karin and Brigitte helped GG into a wheelchair and brought her out to the patio so she could enjoy the fresh air, have a scoop of Strawberry Ice Cream (her favourite) and spend her final morning outdoors with the people she loved.

 

Within ten minutes, an administrator came outside and insisted that GG return to her room immediately so an intravenous (IV) line could be started. Brigitte firmly responded that the family was spending precious time together and that they would return when they were ready.

 

The administrator asked how long that would be. Brigitte replied, "As long as it takes." Brigitte then had to gently but firmly tell the administrator to leave the patio, stating that the family required privacy to spend this time together and that her presence was not needed.

 

The family was deeply perplexed and unsettled by the facility's aggressive rush, given that the MAID procedure was explicitly scheduled for 11:00 a.m. No clinical explanation was ever provided as to why the staff insisted on inserting the IV nearly two hours ahead of schedule, unnecessarily cutting short the family's final, peaceful moments together on the patio.

 

A short time later, GG's pastor joined the family on the patio. He prayed with us, spoke gently with GG, and provided the spiritual comfort she desperately needed.

 

At approximately 10:20 a.m., we returned GG to her room. The Administrator entered to begin the IV insertion. Distressingly, the Administrator asked Brigitte and Robert to physically assist her by handing her medical supplies. Given that the family was openly opposed to the procedure, being asked to actively participate in the preparation was insensitive and deeply upsetting.

 

Moments later, the entire family was called into the room. Upon entering, they were met with a shocking sight. There was a significant, alarming amount of blood covering GG, the bedding, and the surrounding area—the most blood Brigitte had ever seen resulting from a standard IV insertion in all her years of managing her grandmother's care.

 

Shortly afterward, Dr. K arrived. She attempted to speak with GG. By this point, GG was silent, her hands tightly clasped together in a fixed prayer position. GG never provided a verbal response to Dr. K.

 

Our family had been strictly assured that GG would be asked for a final, explicit verbal confirmation on the day of the procedure to ensure she still wished to proceed. When GG remained completely silent and gave no response, Brigitte felt a sudden wave of relief and a big smile came over her face, believing that the procedure would finally be halted because the strict requirement for final consent had not been met. Tragically, we were left alarmed and horrified when the clinical team completely ignored her silence and carried the procedure forward regardless.

 

As the medications were administered, we observed Dr. K encounter visible difficulty injecting one of the fluids through the IV line. She paused and exchanged a look with the administrator that strongly suggested a complication was occurring.

 

After the final medications were pushed, only a brief moment passed before Dr. K confirmed that GG was gone. The room fell completely silent. Our family said our final goodbyes to the matriarch we had protected, loved, and fought for over so many years.

 

Our Concerns and Our Demand for Accountability

What happened to Brigitte "GG" Stegemann was a systemic failure driven by clinical arrogance, a total lack of transparency, and a blatant disregard for the safeguards meant to protect vulnerable patients.

 

One of our greatest ethical concerns is that GG had explicitly declined MAID, stating it violated her Christian faith. Once a vulnerable patient explicitly declines this path, the facility should never have targeted her for re-evaluation behind closed doors while her primary advocate was away—especially when the facility had no trouble contacting Brigitte daily for minor, routine care decisions.

 

We are deeply alarmed by the absolute lack of transparency and independent oversight regarding the application process. The fact that the facility's internal staff took it upon themselves to fill out the official MAID paperwork and witness the signature themselves—completely bypassing Brigitte and Robert while they were visiting the care home every single day, and doing so after the procedure had already been scheduled—represents a profound violation of trust and a glaring conflict of interest. The safeguards built into the MAID program are legally mandated to protect vulnerable individuals from outside pressure. Instead, the facility acted as the initiator, the facilitator, and the witness to the legal request, intentionally keeping her designated Power of Attorney in the dark.

 

We also remain appalled by the assessment of GG's decision-making capacity. GG lived with a lifelong, apparent cognitive impairment. During a formal capacity assessment, the family had to correct the vast majority of her answers, including her inability to identify how many siblings she had or how many were still living. These glaring factual errors, her visible generational confusion and breakdown, and the family's immediate, vocal objections should have halted the process immediately for a comprehensive, independent psychological evaluation.

 

Furthermore, excluding a long-time advocate from the room during the final assessment, failing to halt the process when the patient expressed agonizing second thoughts and confusion days prior, and proceeding on the final morning without an audible, clear verbal consent from the patient are actions that defy the law.

 

An outside reader might wonder why our family did not legally halt the procedure that Friday morning. The answer is simple: the medical team had explicitly instructed us that only the patient has the right to rescind consent once deemed capable, but they strictly promised us that GG would be required to give an explicit, final verbal confirmation right before the injection was administered. We trusted that this mandatory legal safeguard would protect her. We never could have anticipated that when she remained entirely silent, the clinical team would simply ignore the law and push the medication anyway.

 

The events of GG's final morning—being forced to assist with the medical preparation, witnessing a messy and bloody IV complication, and watching the procedure continue while GG sat silently in a prayer position—have left a lasting trauma on our family.

 

Grief does not erase these documented lapses in transparency, nor does it excuse a system that felt entirely rushed, defensive, and calculated. We will forever live with the painful uncertainty of how long GG might have lived comfortably had nature been allowed to take its course.

 

We share this account in loving memory of Brigitte "GG" Stegemann. We hope her story serves as a warning and an urgent call for greater clinical transparency, mandatory family inclusion for cognitively vulnerable patients, and strict legal accountability for facilities that operate outside the law.

 

Submitted in memory of GG by her family

Links - 11th August 2026 (1 - Housing in Canada)

Financialized landlords disproportionately apply to evict in Black neighbourhoods, study finds : r/toronto - "Seems pretty clear cut, the article states the vast majority of the “Approximately 99 per cent of Starlight’s applications before the Landlord and Tenant Board relate solely to unpaid rent,"  Is the expectation that they should be given free housing? The Toronto Star is always trying to play the race card. Pay your rent and you won’t get evicted. Pretty simple."
The reason black people don't pay rent is racism. So they need to be given free housing

Huge disparities in housing approvals and development fees found across Canadian cities by Senate report - The Globe and Mail - "A Senate report highlighting large discrepancies in building timelines and development charges among Canadian municipalities is calling for federal funding to be contingent on cities proving that they can fast track housing projects and lower builder fees.  The report studying housing affordability, by the standing Senate committee on banking, commerce and the economy, found major differences between the approval timelines for homebuilders in different cities. It said that a housing project can take more than two years to be approved in Toronto, because of a bloated regulatory process. Meanwhile, Calgary took only 10 months for the same approvals.  In conversations with builders, the committee found it can take 11 years from the time a first proposal is made until a housing project is completed in Toronto.  Toni Varone, deputy chair of the Senate committee that authored the report, released Tuesday, noted that some cities have up to 50 agencies weigh in on a housing proposal, while other cities have less than half that number and are able to approve projects faster. Some cities have ombudsmen that can co-ordinate with municipal offices to solve issues, while others don’t, causing projects to languish as a result. “There’s no reason why Calgary can go from first application to building permits in months and Toronto needs years, and there’s no impressionable difference in the outcome,” Mr. Varone said.  The report found that development fees account for roughly $200,000 of the final price of a single-family home in Toronto, compared with just $10,000 in Moncton. Development charges are generally used to ensure that developers help pay for the infrastructure costs related to building a new neighbourhood or services, but the report found that those fees are ballooning because they are increasingly being used to fund broader city costs with little transparency... “The federal government has given a substantial amount of money to municipalities across Canada and there’s been no corresponding decrease in development charges, nor has any of that money been linked to the ability of cities to shorten their timeline to approve housing,” Mr. Varone said... Mr. Varone said development charges have gone unchecked for decades, and the report found those fees have increased by roughly 800 per cent in Toronto.  In many cases, Mr. Varone said development fees were being used for city expenses such as parks and wastewater infrastructure, rather than their more traditional purpose of offsetting the cost of building new neighbourhoods... Sales-tax exemptions currently only cover homes up to $350,000 − a value that was set in 1991 and not indexed to inflation.  Mr. Varone said that figure covered 95 per cent of new homes in 1991, and an increase to $1.5-million would allow a similar number of homes to benefit from the tax exemption today. In the 2025 federal budget, the government only expanded the GST/HST rebate on new homes for first-time buyers − a measure that critics said was too limited."
Weird. Left wingers tell us that cutting development fees won't reduce the price of housing, as developers will keep the prices the same

How ‘single exit stairway’ buildings could make cities better and safer - The Globe and Mail - "this project in an older Toronto neighbourhood will express radical ambition. Its design unmakes more than half a century of North American assumptions about fire safety, architecture and how to build cities. Designed by Toronto’s Office Ou, the six-unit building will only have a single staircase, not two as Canadian building codes usually require.  That change – for which local building officials gave special approval – has consequences. It will produce unusually comfortable apartments, each with windows on two or more sides, and a shared stairway where neighbours can encounter one another.  Such “single exit stairway” or “single egress” buildings are common outside North America. Now, several Canadian jurisdictions are re-examining their rules to allow such developments, including the City of Vancouver, which altered its building code last month. In Canada and the United States, most buildings taller than two storeys must have a second stairwell or exterior fire escapes. A typical apartment building features a long, space-consuming corridor that cuts through its middle, with apartments on each side and access to stairwells at either end. North Americans take this form for granted, but it is not the only way to build multiunit residential buildings...  single-stairway designs have recently faced resistance from fire chiefs and building officials who view them as risky. Advocates, on the other hand, say this approach to construction can deliver structures that are safer than the Canadian norm – and provide comfortable family homes, even in small buildings that can slide into existing neighbourhoods.   The owner/developers of the Toronto apartment project, former developer Marvin Green and planner Pamela Blais, say theirs is the first single-stairway project to be approved there in the postwar era. Ontario’s 84-year-old building code forbids this approach; they secured special permission by convincing municipal officials that the design is safer than the prescribed minimum standard... In the U.S., cities such as Seattle and New York now permit new single exit stairway buildings, as does the state of Hawaii. The design is spreading to other states and is being discussed by traditional opponents such as national fire-safety and firefighter organizations.  By contrast, in Australia, Britain, Singapore and much of Europe, single exit stairway buildings are not only commonplace, they can rise up to 20 storeys (typically with elevators as well).  In recent years, proponents have made the case that contemporary fire-safety technologies have rendered obsolete the corridor-plus-two-stairwell layouts that have defined North American multiunit buildings since the 1940s.  New single exit stairway buildings incorporate modern safety systems, such as automatic sprinklers and enhanced fire-retardant building materials, that are not typically used in older and more traditional North American apartment buildings.  According to new research from the Pew Charitable Trust, four- to six-storey single exit stairway buildings equipped with sprinklers have a “strong safety record” versus conventional apartment buildings and single-family homes. They also cost 6 per cent to 13 per cent less to construct, a significant savings. Proponents also argue that this reform creates other spinoff benefits – including larger and more livable apartment layouts.  Such buildings can also add density to low-rise residential neighbourhoods that are economically out of reach for most families and have been losing population for decades... “You have family units in this kind of building and you know your neighbours,” Ms. Roecker said, casting the accelerating single exit stairway revolution in clear terms: “This is the missing link to the missing middle.”... Toronto building examiners initially balked at Office Ou’s solutions. “It’s all about negotiation with the city, which was very complicated and convoluted,” said Office Ou co-founder Uros Novakovic.  Frustrated by the lack of progress, Mr. Green and Ms. Blais took to social media to complain about the roadblocks. Their posts came to the attention of one of Mayor Olivia Chow’s staff. “There had to be political involvement,” Ms. Blais said. “The mayor requested that the chief building official resolve the matter.”  “This was the first single exit stair project with an alternative solution proposal that has come to our attention,” Ms. Chow’s spokesperson, Shirven Rezvany, explained. “Our goal was to help find a way to make it work and set an example that this kind of building is feasible.”... “If you go around the world,” Mr. Keays observed, “there’s hundreds of examples. We are far from the leading edge. We are on the trailing edge.”"

City hall delays add $16,000 cost to rural Ottawa home cost - "Red tape and delays at city hall have cost a rural Ottawa couple more than $15,000 in rising development charges on the dream home they plan to build on the family farm.  James Garland and his wife, Sarah, want to build a new home for their growing family on a two-acre severance from James’ father’s 100-year old farm on Garlandside Road near Limoges. But, while they waited for what they thought would be a simple severance “for a square of a cornfield,” the city’s development charge went up and up, increasing by nearly 50 per cent in two years: to $48,000 from $32,000 originally.  When Garland’s sister severed a similar piece of land from the farm 12 years ago, the process took five months and cost “a few thousand dollars,” he said... "Our expectation was it would take about a year to separate the lot and get the permits and start building, then we’d move into the house after about a year and a half.”  Though Garland’s building permit had been approved, the city wanted new surveys and things such as a hydrogeology report to ensure the water table was high enough to support the house and possible future buildings. Garland had to have numerous test pits dug. He said he had spent $120,000 on legal fees and various studies before putting a shovel in the ground.  A development charge is a fee the city charges to pay for the cost of infrastructure such as roads, transit, sewer and water lines needed for new growth. Ironically, the Garland home will be on well and septic service and doesn’t require city services...  The city has confirmed that the amount of the development charge is correct, but that’s not what has angered Garland. He’s mad about the delays in approval during which time the development charge climbed. It’s a bit like watching the cost of your groceries rise even as you stand in line at the checkout.  “It got into this big ridiculous thing. We started the process three years ago. By that time the (development) fees went up from $32,000 to $34,000 to $40,000 to now, when it’s up to $48,000,” he said."
Proof that capitalism has failed and that we need even more regulation
Of course, many people denied that permits took so long

Average asking rents in Canada fall for 16th straight month: report - "The report says lower rents and a softer market helped improve affordability, with the average rent-to-income ratio falling slightly below 30 per cent in January for the first time in six years... Asking rents for condo units fell 5.7 per cent annually to $2,093 on average, while rents for houses and townhouses fell 3.1 per cent to $2,078.   Rents for purpose-built units declined one per cent year-over-year to $2,049."
Weird. Why does "greed" keep decreasing in tandem with immigration? After all, left wingers tell us that immigrants aren't the problem
Why are the owners of purpose-built rentals so "greedy"?!

Bret 🍁 on X - "Minister of Housing Gregor Robertson says that Canadians can't afford to buy a house because there is a war in the Middle East. How delusional can someone possibly be? Wow."

Sen̓áḵw Towers set to open 113 years after Squamish people forced from site : r/vancouver - "More rentals are a very good thing. If this development is successful I can't wait to see what happens to Jericho grounds"
"More AFFORDABLE rentals are a good thing but these are definitely not that."
"More rentals available of all types keeps prices down.  If you want to rent an older cheaper apartment, do you want to be competing to get it with a rich dude who needs a place to live, or would you rather he have a new expensive place to get, leaving the cheap one available for you?  Also, years down the line the new "luxury" buildings will become the cheap ones as even newer ones are built.  Basically all housing is good and helps the situation."
"I agree. Besides, I'm not sure how anyone expects them to build new rental housing that is somehow more affordable than existing rental housing.  They can make it tiny - people rightly hate that.  They can subsidize it, and make it social housing in a sense.  They can leave out the "LuXuRy" finishes and appliances, but that will hardly save any money.  They cannot build something that's shoddy and outdated, the way a 1970s apartment building would be.  New housing will always be more expensive than old housing. It still helps to build it."
Sen̓áḵw Towers set to open 113 years after Squamish people forced from site : r/vancouver - "I don't think people who say that are in favour of housing scarcity necessarily, unlike the people who talk about protecting the value of home owner's property, but you should recognise that opposing all market housing developments effectively supports housing scarcity. Even if that is not your intention.  At the end of the day you are saying that you are so opposed to landowners making money that you are willing to have the housing crisis get worse, and willing to ignore the fact that one result of that will be landlords making money."

Toronto's biggest landlord warns over half its homes could fall into critical condition unless it gets more cash : r/canadahousing - "Oh no…won’t someone think of the landlords…"
"This is about Toronto public housing."
"People in the sub saw "landlord" in the title and ran straight home to fetch their pitchforks lmao"
Clearly, the government needs to get back into social housing so tenants will be able to live in cheap, high quality units, because profit is evil

Tenant $300k+ in arrears, exploited the easy to exploit system in Ontario, rent free for 3 years. : r/RealEstateCanada - "Solution according to Reddit: this is perfectly fine. Fuck the landlord. Investment comes with risk, up yours.  Hard agree. Everyone should be homeowner. Everyone should own their own homes. There should be no landlord ever.  Cant afford a place to own? Well too bad go sleep on the street or wait for public housing.  This is the way."

Toronto OK’s plan to raze public housing site for towers (aka "Council approves teardown of vacant public housing site near High Park to make way for towers") - "Toronto city hall has approved a plan to demolish and rebuild the west-end housing complex of Swansea Mews — nearly four years after a concrete ceiling collapsed onto a tenant, and led to an evacuation of the entire community... The decision to proceed with the plan was made despite objection from some neighbours and former tenants of the townhouse community. The former tenants were displaced in 2022, after the ceiling collapse sent one tenant to hospital. In the weeks that followed, officials said they discovered the ceilings had been constructed in a way that risked collapses in other units, as well.   Their former homes are still standing today behind fences and under the watch of security. From May 2022 to early December 2025, Toronto Community Housing Corp. told the Star it has spent more than $29 million on Swansea Mews since the ceiling collapse, including security at the idle buildings, the immediate emergency response, shoring to hold up ceilings in units, fences around the complex and lost rental income, not including costs on legal and development fees. More than 100 displaced households from Swansea Mews, who were relocated to other public housing communities across the city, retain a right to return — meaning they can claim a unit in one of the new buildings once finished.  In a committee hearing last month, former Swansea Mews resident Penny Fisher — whose displacement was chronicled by the Star — implored councillors to reject the proposal in its current form, saying key infrastructure, from transit to spaces in local schools, was insufficient to support the increase in density... “I want to be very clear about what delay means from a tenant’s perspective. The families of Swansea Mews have already been displaced since 2022,” speaker Cynthia Black, who identified herself as a tenant organizer, told the committee. “It is easy to call for more process when you’re securely housed.”  Fisher, the former Swansea Mews tenant, left committee with an appeal: whatever was built, it needed to be kept in good shape, she said. She recounted repair issues that plagued Swansea tenants for years before the crisis.  While officials have said the ceiling collapse that ultimately caused the area’s evacuation was due to a construction fault, not neglected repairs, Fisher said many units had already been sitting empty due to disrepair issues."
Damn slumlords! This is why landlords should be banned and the government should build more housing!
Damn greedy developers and landlords keeping housing expensive!

Ford government moves to pause affordable housing rules for new Toronto buildings : r/toronto
Left wingers don't understand that inclusionary zoning is a bad idea. They think intentions are the same as outcomes

Not even Wayne Gretzky's hometown can escape the great correction - "At the very micro-level, the pandemic boom in real estate prices in areas outside the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) never quite added up. Love or hate the city, Toronto is a real estate unicorn since it’s where the jobs are and, due to a scarcity of land, where new, single-family homes are not being built even during the good times.  Factor in the city’s cultural attractions — pro sports teams, low-, mid- and high-end cuisine, arts, world-class hospitals and universities, street life and so on — and Toronto, outside a pandemic, is an undeniably happening place to be. All the things that make the city desirable make housing there expensive and price surges not entirely logical, but at least explainable.  Brantford, in comparison, has a giant Wayne Gretzky statue.  “It is very hard to justify why, suddenly, housing in Brantford, for example, would become a rare and speculative asset,” Couture said. “The pandemic price increases in the suburbs and exurbs never made any sense.”  In places where land is available for development, such as Brantford, housing prices should track building cost increases.  Moreover, housing, in a perfect world, should be regarded as places where people live, not as potentially winning lottery tickets for Canadians looking to amass individual wealth... Say, his buddy, Joe Blow, came to him and said, “Beau, I need you to build me a 1,500-square-foot, three-bedroom condominium with some living space for the kids and bedrooms with enough room that you can open the closet doors without having to move the bed out of the way first.”  The cost of this imagined place, without Wesgroup pocketing a nickel, would be $2 million.  “What we are experiencing is a cost of delivery crisis, because what we’re building, no one can afford,” Jarvis said.  A decade ago, new condos on Vancouver’s east side sold for $587 a square foot, give or take, and developers made healthy margins. Jarvis today can’t sell a new condo with the same specs for less than $1,150 a square foot since he estimates red tape now accounts for 40 per cent of the per-square-foot cost of a new build.  “A significant portion of the cost is government fees, levies and taxes, development cost charges, community amenity contributions, GST, property transfer tax and additional school tax on land,” he said. “The taxation that has occurred in our industry, we often joke that it’s like a sin tax; we are taxed more than cigarettes and alcohol, and they tax cigarettes and alcohol to change behaviour.”"
Clearly, evil developers will not build what people need, so they either need to be forced to do so, or the government needs to step in and because there is no evil profit prices will be lower, i.e. taxpayer subsidised

Aussie to Canada : r/InCanada - "Housing prices are already coming down, and are likely to continue declining as the affordable housing program rolls out. The numbers projected for this summer alone should surpass what was seen through the entirety of Harper and Trudeau's terms combined... Though I guess that's self-evident as a massive privatization sell-off under Harper, followed by Trudeau's inaction on the portfolio, contributed to the horrid decline in affordability.  Zoning and development constraints are a necessity to avoid the kind of disasters we've seen in deregulated areas, with the destruction of wetlands changing watersheds and leading to water table imbalances, flood zones, or mixed industrial and residential zones creating potential health risks.  As for population concentration: that's a hard one to avoid. Since the transition from an agrarian to industrial society, that has always been a challenge. We've had variations of the same problems and complaints since the 19th century. There are possible solutions, but politicians are rarely forward-thinking enough to stay ahead of the problems... And these days those who attempt it are often the subject of conspiracy theories.  For example: King Charles attempted something big with Poundbury -- and there's a lot of good lessons to be taken from the effort, along with a lot of good done for working class people. Yet you hear the conspiracy theorists talk about it, and it's some kind of WEF plot.  This changes the signal to noise ratio in a terrible way, and the lessons we should be taking from that and applying to our own communities gets lost."
Left wingers really live in lala land and are unable to recognise the role that mass migration plays in juicing housing demand or how few new units overpriced and slow government housing contributes. Meanwhile, they keep wanting more regulation which will continue to boost housing costs, but will blame this on "capitalism" and demand even more government housing

Toronto's rental vacancy hits record high since COVID-19 pandemic
Proof that it's not immigration driving rents and landlords need to be less greedy, because anything above 0% vacancy shows that capitalism has failed

Ontario power of sales surge as homeowners run out of runway - "Alphonso’s data collection indicates that roughly one third of the power of sales are from major banks and lenders while the rest are from alternative and private lending, which have higher interest rates than the major banks and aren’t as heavily regulated.  But even major banks and lenders are seeing a significant uptick in mortgages in arrears in Ontario — late payments by three or more months — which reached 0.30 per cent for those lenders in February, a number not seen since 2011. Mortgages in arrears reached a low of 0.06 per cent in 2022, according to the Canadian Bankers Association."

Housing would be 10% lower if Canada had kept pace with U.S.: CMHC | National Post - "Canada’s housing stock would be about 30 per cent larger and prices 10 per cent lower if this country’s building industry had been as responsive to demand as its American counterpart over the last couple of decades, says a new report from the federal housing agency. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) pointed the finger in the report released Thursday at excessive regulation largely at the municipal level and two other factors — geography and demographics — that are often difficult to influence. In the U.S., the report said, there are fewer restrictions on zoning and the use of land in many metro areas, whereas many Canadian municipalities have building restrictions that have hindered the supply of homes and contributed to dramatic price hikes. The CMHC report, based on research from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), found that those barriers left the Canadian industry less responsive to increased demand during the 2006-24 period of study. Mathieu Laberge, the CMHC’s chief economist, wrote that there are two other key factors that have slowed the housing supply in Canada. First, many of this country’s major cities, notably Vancouver and Montreal, have mountains and waterways that are natural barriers to the construction of new houses. Second, Canada has fewer large cities than the U.S., leaving urban residents with fewer places they can move to find comparable jobs, thereby triggering new developments. Paul Smetanin, president of the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis, said international analytical housing models can be misleading because they rest on assumptions, including that the various jurisdictions have comparable regulations and labour pools. Smetanin, who has been studying the Canadian housing sector for decades, said the Canadian housing market is in crisis largely because of bottlenecks that are hindering construction. The industry will build if the market conditions are favourable, he said... the biggest cost in the price of a new home (about 36 per cent), according to one recent study, is taxation, making the three levels of government the top beneficiary of the construction of a new home. About 70 per cent of those taxes are for development charges for sewer, water and electricity, land-transfer taxes, and HST. The other 30 per cent is for the indirect income and corporate taxes paid throughout the supply chain, but ultimately passed on to buyers... There’s no quick fix, however, to a housing shortage. Analysts say there’s often a lag of a dozen years or more from when a plot of land has been identified for a new home, subdivision or apartment building to when people are living there. It can take even longer when roads and key services — sewer, water, electricity — need to be added... Economists point out that an increase in housing construction carries significant benefits beyond the creation of new homes: downward pressure on housing prices, economic activity and jobs through construction and the adjacent purchases of furniture and other items that new homeowners typically make. New buildings also mean a windfall for government coffers at all three levels."
Clearly, we need even more regulation to protect people

Links - 10th August 2026 (2 - UK Politics)

‘Labour’s policies are dictated by social media’ - spiked - "Having been in the Labour Party for almost 40 years, I have put great energy into trying to get the party back to focusing on its working-class heritage... Labour has been moving away from that, which is predominantly why the Red Wall has crumbled and why people are not associating with us. Instead of supporting working people, Labour is re-examining the very identity battles that we went through in the 1970s. I came into parliament in 2001 and was one of only two Muslim MPs at the time. I spent a lot of time working on the issue of radicalisation of young people. Reflecting over lockdown, I noted that we still have a huge amount of radicalisation going on, where people are being groomed away from the mainstream. They are being told to ignore the mainstream media and only to use social media. They are being told not to integrate into society. And they are being isolated as a result. We have to do something about that. But instead we are using the term ‘Islamophobia’ in a way that weakens people’s resolve and forces a victim mentality on them. We need to empower our young people not to be afraid and instead to see themselves as individuals who can progress... We can’t afford to have our policies decided on social media. We can’t afford not to understand what the average person is going through. Social media should be a way of engaging with people, not a means to decide policy and then force people to accept it. Take the Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) initiative. We have it in Birmingham and it’s causing huge problems. People are having to go on huge detours because of it. You can say we should go back to an age where there were no cars on the road. But look at who suffers: working-class people. These people can’t afford to get a new car, so they get penalised. Let’s not use the environment as a stick with which to beat working people... Let’s not have policies that segregate people. Let’s not have funding for one ethnic group or another. That’s division politics. We should support everyone. We should look at the needs of the whole community in every area and see how we can get people to come together. That’s what the Labour Party needs to do. It needs to get people to unite... When I stood for election in 2001, people in the Labour Party said I would not get elected – because the Indians wouldn’t vote for a Kashmiri candidate, the Afro-Caribbeans wouldn’t vote for an Asian person, and the white people were racist so they wouldn’t vote for me either. I managed to get a majority of 7,000. People in all those communities voted for me. That just goes to show that people aren’t divided in the way that others want them to be. They aren’t blocked off into different categories. People are people, and they will treat each other as individuals. Let’s not presume that they are racist. Let’s not try to preach to them from a theoretical standpoint. Instead, let’s do the practical thing and go out and speak to them... People are sharing all these woke ideas on social media and it makes people afraid to say anything. They are too scared to discuss an issue face to face. When somebody posts something online, others assume it is absolutely true. They say it is their feeling, so we can’t discuss it. But we should not just take it as written. We should sit down and talk about it, think about why they are upset. The more you isolate yourself, the more you prevent people having that discussion with you, the worse the problem gets.  People want to be part of society. But others are trying to separate them"

The BBC is not a beacon of ‘public service journalism’ - "Just as his party prepares to defenestrate him, Sir Keir Starmer seems to think he has alighted on a grand idea that he can claim as his legacy: more internet regulation.   Not content with barring under-16s from social media, Sir Keir’s latest proposal would see the Government manipulate what the adult public sees, reads and thinks.   Labour is considering forcing social media companies and platforms such as YouTube to make so-called “public service journalism” more prominent. In practice, this means private companies will be made to boost artificially the content of a select band of organisations hand-picked by Labour, such as the BBC and Channel 4. As a result, space for content from national newspapers or new online creators shrinks. Could it even be the case that publications may be encouraged to sign-up to new rules in order to qualify as acceptable? Such an underhand move would be press regulation by stealth.   These plans mean that viewers will be steered towards what the Government thinks they ought to see. This risks giving the impression that Sir Keir is trying to bury the work of those publications or individuals he disagrees with.   The Government’s claim is that by promoting the likes of the BBC, bias and misinformation on the internet will be reduced. But even a cursory look at the BBC’s recent track-record makes a mockery of this idea.   Last year, The Telegraph published a leaked memo drawn up by Michael Prescott, who was the corporation’s editorial standards adviser. It found that the BBC’s “LGBT desk” had subjected any coverage of the trans issue to “effective censorship”. Any stories that departed from a hyper-progressive view were seemingly ignored.   Quite how this qualifies as a “public service” is unclear. Under Labour’s plan, it would have been promoted anyway. The problems do not stop there.   Coverage of the Gaza war bordered on shameful: on average, BBC Arabic published two stories a week that it was forced to correct.   On Brexit, the economy and immigration, our national broadcaster has time and again failed to represent views that diverge from those of the liberal establishment.   Given this, it is unsurprising that trust in the BBC has been falling, while younger audiences have migrated to platforms such as YouTube. "

BBC bias row as Britons 'forced to read woke lefty news' under Labour plans to promote 'trusted sources' - "Labour's plans to force social media platforms to promote "trusted and accurate" news outlets such as the BBC has sparked concerns they may be forced to promote “woke or lefty” stories.  On Monday, the Government published its "Watch this Space: A new strategic direction for UK media" Green Paper.  The document sets out plans to ensure social media companies and video-sharing platforms prioritise content from "public service" media (PSM), which includes the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. The move would see mainstream media outlets pushed to the top of people's social media feeds when they search for news stories - even if they don't want to read them. The Government has claimed the increased use of social media to access news may mean the public consumes "misinformation" - rather than state-approved PSM."

Meme - "I didn't realise how rich and generous Sadiq Khan is, personally funding London government services. I mean the alternative is he's lying, taking credit for money paid for by taxpayers but he'd never do that... would he?"
"MAYOR OF LONDON... Services funded by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan"

Who needs the Labour Party? - spiked - "If it weren’t for the pandemic, you might forget which party was running the country. The government has responded to Covid-19 with record-high public spending, wage subsidies and increased welfare payments – the kinds of policies most of us have come to associate with the Labour Party. And today, the Conservative government announced that it will effectively ‘renationalise’ the railways... First, there’s Brexit. This has freed the UK government to be more interventionist in the economy. Shapp’s planned GBR would have violated EU law, which demands that trains and tracks are run by separate bodies to foster competition. More broadly, British sovereignty over its state-aid policies was a key battle in the UK-EU trade-deal negotiations. The second is the UK’s political realignment, turbocharged by Brexit, which has pushed the Conservatives towards more state spending and economic intervention, away from so-called ‘free market’ principles. Although many on the left issued dire warnings that Brexit would turn the UK into ‘Singapore-on-the-Thames’ – a low-tax, low-regulation libertarian wet dream – the Conservatives’ post-Brexit voting coalition was always going to push the party in a more interventionist direction. Having won over vast swathes of disaffected, working-class ex-Labour voters, the Tories have had to work out how best to keep them."
From 2021. Clear proof that the Conservatives were a right wing party

Kosher on X - "I want to be sick watching this. Jenrick was questioning Deputy PM David Lammy on Paedophile Hadush Kebatu’s accidental releasing from Prison. This was Lammy’s response. Deranged laughter. Do you feel safe with people like Labour running the country?"

'Voters of Hartlepool, you are the problem' - spiked - "And as with every electoral upset and every populist upsurge over the past half-decade, the liberals have gone into complete and utter meltdown. ‘How could this have happened?’, they whine. ‘How could the party of the pandemic, of sleaze and of arch-liar Boris, win against the moderate, respectable and enlightened Sir Keir?’ For these embittered liberals, the only people to blame are the voters themselves. ‘Comic’ James Felton thinks the good people of Hartlepool were just too damn thick to know what was at stake. In electing the Tories, they had ‘failed the idiot test’, he tweeted... For law professor Paul Bernal, it is less to do with mass stupidity than mass selfishness. ‘Labour’s problem’ was that, unlike nice, generous and intelligent citizens like himself, ‘a lot of people don’t actually want a fairer society’, he says... And for Byline Times contributor Otto English, the electorate has once again been duped by their betters, by ‘fall[ing] for foppish public schoolboys’. A floppy hairdo and a posh accent is apparently enough to manipulate the gullible masses into ticking the wrong box... The message from these oh-so-clever, kind and virtuous folk is the same as it always is: we aren’t the problem – you, the voters, are. For them, the grubby masses simply aren’t good enough for the benevolent Sir Keir and his party of angels. What they always forget to ask themselves is this: why should the voters support a party that holds them in such contempt?"
From 2021. If you don't vote left wing, you're stupid, insane and/or evil, and don't deserve to get to vote

Keir Starmer the victim of a revolution in British ‘turnstile state’ - "British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is the victim of a revolution, but not the kind you have in mind.  Elected with a sweeping majority in 2024, he announced Monday that he will step aside as Labour party leader, ceding the office to his likely successor, former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham.  But Starmer is being toppled by a tendency that has taken hold in the United Kingdom over the last decade of dumping a leader as the means to address the country’s deeply rooted, difficult-to-solve problems. It is a revolution that has outfitted 10 Downing Street with a revolving door — one that has turned Britain into a political turnstile nation — with Starmer making way for what will be the country’s seventh prime minister in a decade."

Meme - "STARMER. STALIN
PERSECUTION OF FARMERS
JAILING OF POLITICAL DISSIDENTS
REMOVAL OF FREE SPEECH
POLITICAL SHOW TRIALS
HIGH TAXES
FORCING CITIZENS TO FREEZE
STATE CORRUPTION
BIASED STATE MEDIA
CREATION OF 'THOUGHT CRIMES'
COVER UP OF MURDERS
FORCED MIGRATION"

Nowhere left to go | Henry Hill | The Critic Magazine - "The WASPI campaign is amongst the most entitled and undeserving in all of British politics – and that is quite the bar. Hinting at compensation and then giving them a bus pass is just Picasso-level trolling... the fact that Burnham has been forced into yet another immediate u-turn after yet another un-thought-out promise bodes very poorly for his premiership, if it ends up happening. He seems to share Boris Johnson’s defining flaw: needing everyone to like him and not being able to say ‘no’; it’s hard to demur from the Labour source who describes Burnham’s wobbling to the FT as “pathetic”... John Healey’s resignation as Defence Secretary is extraordinary. I can’t immediately think of one of his predecessors who resigned over the issue of defence spending. Moreover, Healey is hardly the rebellious type; the point where you can’t keep a loyalist like him inside the government with a serious portfolio is truly the end of the line. Again, though, it’s difficult to expand on this too much without getting repetitive. We know what the basic problem is: the public finances are being hollowed out by runaway expenditure on welfare (defined to include things such as pensions, social care, and the NHS) driven by a toxic combination of generous policy and unpromising demography, but Labour MPs weren’t elected to do mean things like cut spending and so are utterly unprepared to do it.    As Rachel Reeves has already put taxes up several times, this leaves the Government nowhere to go in fiscal terms and no way to arrest its trajectory. Not only are most capital projects being endlessly salami-sliced and delayed, but even headline commitments by the Prime Minister himself, such as on defence spending, can’t actually be financed.  The results, especially on defence, are crushingly embarrassing and are doing real damage to Britain’s global reputation. Because remember, the tangible failure of British defence in the past couple of years – most recently being unable to deploy a ship to Cyprus – has been accompanied by ever-wilder and more delusional rhetoric. Not only has Starmer previously said that he’s putting the UK on a “war footing”, but the now-departed Healey last year said that we would fight China to defend Taiwan. Not only is the very idea of that laughable given the present condition of the Royal Navy, but even the United States (which could actually defend Taiwan) hasn’t made that explicit commitment... Ask Labour MPs what mistakes Starmer has made to justify getting rid of him, and they’ll list his paltry efforts to control public spending; his authority is broken and isn’t coming back. If Burnham replaces him, he’ll have no mandate to do anything differently and apparently a crippling need for his MPs to like him – one failing, at least, that Starmer does not share."
Clearly, the UK needs to stop feeding the military-industrial complex and pre-emptively surrender to Russia, China and everyone else so they can do the decent thing and fund even more welfare

There is nothing authentic about Andy Burnham | Elliot Keck | The Critic Magazine - "Gone are the days when the electorate would tolerate politicians of the kind of Burnham. You can stomach a politician having no principles if GDP per capita is climbing handsomely each year. Who cares if a politician says one thing to one group and another to another group when you are so much better off than you were two years ago. When we talk about wanting politics out of our lives that’s ultimately what we mean — not that we want better, more honest, more principled politicians. We just want politicians who leave the country richer at the end of their time in office than at the start... Britain’s economic model is less trickle down, more Niagara Falls. As Max Tempers pointed out on X recently, the UK’s minimum wage as a percentage of average earnings is now higher than the Soviet Union’s at its peak (66 per cent compared to 60 per cent ). The ratio between the earnings of the top 10 per cent  and bottom 10 per cent  in the UK is also similar to the Soviet Union’s at its most compressed. Whatever these policies may poll individually, their results are despised by an electorate that is desperate for leadership, and desperate for growth. What is really scary about Burnham is that his proclivity to simply say whatever most appeals to the people he needs to appeal to will prove disastrous in government. His absence of any mandate means already powerful backbench MPs will be able to hold him to ransom. We will see the inevitable result of the fact that Labour MPs don’t understand the difference between debt and deficit, between gilt yields and exchange rates, written all over our borrowing costs, employment figures, economic growth rates, inflation statistics and more besides.   So yes, Andy may be able to connect with the bloke at the pub. But when the price of that pint increases, the bloke at the pub’s taxes go up, and the pub ultimately closes under the pressure of tax, regulation and energy prices, we’ll see that sanctimonious smile wiped swiftly off his face by the time he faces his reckoning with the electorate. They very much will be looking back in anger as they realise that he is just as bad as the rest of them."

Dovey Margeaux on X - "Well… well… well… what do we have here? For months the mockingbird media has obsessively scrutinised every single move made by Reform councillors. Endless headlines and hit pieces. Yet since May 1st.. 216 Labour councillors have resigned, quit the party, been suspended  or defected and somehow we were barely heard a peep.  They just never seem to keep the same energy for the Labour.. or any other party.    And some of these cases definitely should have gotten more coverage.
David Graham, Fife Council Suspended and later lost his seat after being jailed for sexually abusing a 15 year old girl over a six month period.
Cllr Irfan Mohammed, Lambeth Council Suspended after being charged with sexual assault and reportedly showing women homemade masturbation videos.
Fiona Wild, Burnley Council Became an independent councillor and later resigned after posting “good riddance” following the shooting of Charlie Kirk.
Cllr Dennis Jones, Peterborough Council Labour’s former council leader, suspended after referring to grooming-gang victims as “poor white trash”.
Cllr Matt Palmer, South Gloucestershire Council Suspended after admitting to taking cocaine while responsible for a vehicle.
These aren’t minor slip ups. They’re serious cases that would have dominated headlines if the party label were different. But sure.. keep gaslighting and tell us there is no media bias."

Greens fight over whether ‘Zionism is racism’ - "It is infighting you would expect from a Monty Python sketch.  But pro-Palestine Greens have been plunged into further factional chaos as they quibble over competing anti-Israel motions.  Earlier this year, far-Left members of the party tried to pass a motion dubbed “Zionism is Racism” at the Greens’ spring party conference, but technical difficulties and filibustering from opponents meant that it was never fully considered.  However, leaked WhatsApp messages seen by The Telegraph reveal the members are still planning to propose the motion at the party’s autumn conference.  If successful, the motion would codify the belief in a “single Palestinian state” and the Palestinian right to “armed struggle” into Green Party policy.  This contradicts existing party policy, which endorses a two-state solution...   In a post on Instagram, Greens4Palestine wrote: “It has been brought to our attention that a motion excluding Palestinian voices is being drafted, in an attempt to derail the Zionism Is Racism motion.”  The message continued: “While we have no doubt your intentions are well-meant, your approach feels assumptive and anti-Palestinian.  “It is not your place to decide that you know better than us about how to resist our oppressors.  “No rewrite, clarification or attempt to shield the party from accusations of anti-Semitism should come at the cost of erasing our reality.  “You have taken it upon yourself to rewrite a motion duly drafted by our Palestinian group. We are not aware of who authorised this, nor on what basis you assumed you could ‘tidy it up’.  “What we see, time and again, is that Palestinians are used to garner votes and more credibility, then cast aside when our agency becomes uncomfortable.  “We are not interested in a rewrite.” However, leaked comments left on the draft by members of the hardline Greens4Palestine WhatsApp group tell another story.  They showed that concern centred around the fact that the “main theme” of the new motion is “Jewish safety ... rather than Zionism”.  A second writer elaborated: “[This motion] assumes that Jews as victims of state-sponsored anti-Semitism was true before, not today. Jews are not marginalised, and it’s a deceptive term.”  A third said: “This motion reads as a compromise document designed to manage disagreement inside the Green Party rather than a document rooted entirely in Palestinian political analysis, liberation and self-determination.”  Another commentator added: “My main issue is the premise of creating an alternative. The original motion was extremely popular.”"
When you literally support ethnic cleansing/genocide and terrorism

The Greens have shockingly proved that anti-Semitism is a vote-winner - "As one Green candidate admitted on video: “I’ll be very honest with you, I had no interest in politics before, until the genocide [sic] take place [sic] in Gaza… apart from that, I had no interest.” In the fertile ground of social media insanity and community balkanisation, the Greens have become a seedbed for the political ambitions of every jihadist, Islamist and progressive fanatic in Britain. Our politics have been disgraced by the rise of a Leftist-sectarian alliance of convenience, one that is riddled with anti-Semitism.  These are problems we have known about for years, even if the elites still prefer to downplay them. The figure of Mothin Ali, the deputy leader, sums it up. Here is a man who celebrated October 7 (he later apologised), described a rabbi as an “animal” and has recently shared several posts by Sami Hamdi, a controversial Israelophobic firebrand whose American visa was revoked amid accusations that he supports terrorism. Yet, with bewildering success, Ali presents himself as a voice of tolerance and moderation. He has even rebranded himself as a humble gardener. But what about the women? Bafflingly, it seems that the ladies can’t get enough of this stuff. According to YouGov, 44 per cent of women aged 18 to 24 would vote for the Greens.  So will anybody heed the true message of this election? Warning lights are blinking on the dashboard of Britain. With Jews under attack and a new fanaticism stalking our politics, Polanski’s Greenshirts are on the march."

Green councillor ran business with man accused of cartoon ape fraud - "A business partner of a Green Party councillor filmed driving a £200,000 supercar has been accused of stealing about £2m in a cryptocurrency scam.  Baggy Khan, 25, who was elected to Bolton Council this month, is named on official business documents alongside Mohamed-Amin Atcha, 25, a school friend.  Mr Atcha was one of three British nationals named in court documents in New York in June 2024 as an alleged perpetrator of a $2.7m fraud involving digital images of cartoon apes. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in 2021 and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison."