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Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ On Tuesday 3rd November the US electorate delivered their verdict on the Trump Presidency. 

They unceremoniously kicked his party, the Republicans, out of Congressional control, handing it to the Democrats. Trump in typical idiotic fashion immediately and ridiculously claimed; ‘if I had been on the ballot paper’ the republicans would have won. Such a crass statement only an imbecile like him could come out with. 

Having spent weeks telling voters to ‘imagine’ his ‘name to be on the ballot’ when the electorate followed his order, and voted accordingly, the result was less than savoury for Trump and the Republican Party. Trump will now serve out the rest of his Presidency as a ‘lame duck president’ his powers, outside presidential decrees, greatly reduced. In January the newly elected congressmen and women will, unless Trump changes the rules declaring these mid-terms null and void, be sworn into the House of Representatives by the Speaker, and the Senate by the Vice President. A Democrat controlled Congress with a Republican President may well cause more political gridlock than is usual in an already griddled US political system.

Barely three days after the Democrats landslide victory taking 54 Senate seats, +7, and 254, +42, in the House of Representatives giving them control of the Congress the ‘markets’ were getting ‘shaky’. The money grabbing shareholders in Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies began getting ‘jittery’ as trillions were wiped off the value of shares due to panic selling by many. Sweeping Democratic election victories created investor ‘fears of a political backlash’ against AI which could include data centre moratoriums and possible stricter regulations on AI. The panic which wiped $2.5 trillion off the US stock market spread to Europe and Asia causing global concern within capitalism. These panics resulted in a ‘massive, widespread sale of shares’ including company investments as opposed to one single person or a group of individuals selling off individual block shares. 

All this fuss within the capitalist system of corrupt economics because the Democrat controlled Congress might want to introduce some minor regulations to AI. At the moment President Donald Trump is not a believer in regulating Artificial Intelligence.  He believes AI should be allowed to run free irrespective of the consequences. The Democrats modest regulations if they indeed do impose them will hardly threaten global capitalism, they may just make AI a little safer. At the moment AI is at a perilous stage of development with even some large companies voicing concern that the technology may become ‘outside human control’. And one large firm, Anthropic, called for a ‘break on the speed of frontier AI development’ saying; ‘We Must Pace the Frontier’. With this Democratic victory the entire industry faces mounting pressure to ‘slow down’ for a period certainly until safety can be reviewed.

This is not intended to be an anti-AI piece because the technology carefully monitored under common ownership and control can, and indeed should, benefit the whole of human kind. An end to droughts using AI for long term forecasts is perhaps not beyond the bounds of possibilities and advancements in health care are possibly endless. The only proviso is the AI must remain under human control and never be allowed to break away from such. For example, the advancements in health care and diagnosis must be under the control of healthcare professionals, consultants, doctors, and never be allowed to run loose on its own. This is not possible under capitalism because the present owners of AI have one interest and one interest only, profit! This overrides all other considerations including safety within AI, and any form of regulations is an antithesis to these parasites. They could not care a fuck for the future of humankind or the planet we live on: let the androids and robots take over, and if they grow out of control, well, as long as the profits roll in who cares! 

This is the flippant attitude of many capitalist investors and individuals including President Trump, himself a substantial shareholder in AI, towards the industry simply because it is the nature of the capitalist beast. Artificial Intelligence should become a great help to all who live on earth and not be the huge fertile money cow of the tiny minority. 

As it stands it is the latter, not the former, which prevails with the private ownership and shareholders of AI calling the shots. Will they, can they, prevent the Democratic controlled Congress imposing these, from their position, inconvenient and possibly very costly regulations? Try to imagine AI as a Lion. A lion in a zoo is safe enough in a cage and supervised by a Zoo Keeper with rules and regulations such as Do Not Enter the Cage. Now, let us take away the Zoo Keeper, the regulations, and the bars and that Lion becomes a very dangerous animal just as unregulated AI would or will become. The Zoo suddenly employs a new Manager, the Democrats, who wants safer regulations for the animals. These regulations may cost the Zoo’s shareholders profits, a profit reduction not a profit wipe-out. And for the sake of authenticity they want the Lions running almost free among the customers at the Menagerie unregulated. People attend Zoo’s to view animals in safety and, leaving aside the cruelty question, can only do so if the establishment is fully regulated.

As global stock markets fell many shareholders began selling at a rapid pace fearing these regulations once Trump and his henchmen are no longer in control of congress. Unregulated AI is a dangerous beast and could trigger a number of catastrophic incidents, nuclear war and annihilation being the obvious one as robots take control of various countries' securities. This is not the only disastrous possibility. In health care androids not under the control of a group of consultants could make unthinkable errors. It would only take one malfunction and nobody around to detect it and thousands of lives could be lost. Artificial Intelligence should be nurtured, cultured to be of benefit to all of us from sub-Saharan Africa to the Inuit of the Arctic Region irrespective of ability to pay. Under the present system that will not happen and we will see countries like the USA, the UK, and EU countries, in that order, steam ahead while other less fortunate lands will, as usual, be left behind.

The mini collapse of the stock markets due to people voting for the Democrats was how it was indirectly framed as world news. Other more important issues were occurring but everybody, rich and poor, were supposed to be horrified at the stock market crash. So a bunch of fat cats have lost some lose change, it happens in the betting shop every day, and because of this ‘tragedy’ we are all supposed to stop breathing? 

When people voted for the Democrats, they did so, no doubt in the majority of cases unwittingly, not only against Trump and his suicidal, even by capitalist standards, policies but also in favour of some kind of regulation on AI helping to make the world a modicum safer. Such an election in the eyes of global capitalism is criminal and no doubt, if they could, they would revoke the election results keeping the opponent of AI regulations Trump gang in control. They might not have to worry too much because January is a couple of months away and Trump might do this deed for them, don’t bet your house against!
  
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Democrats Win Mid-Terms And Control Of Congress 🪶 But . . .

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Fifty One

 

A Morning Thought @ 3322

Jim Duffy ✍I see there has been a widespread backlash at Simon Harris's idiotic attack on the long term unemployed at the Fine Gael Árd Fheis. 

Harris has had long term fixation on the unemployed. He had it when I knew him. Yet he never has a clue what he is talking about.
 
Many people down as long-term unemployed are on the wrong payment. They should be on disability due to long-term illness that makes them unable to work. However the disability bureaucracy is such that they keep being refused disability for idiotic technicalities. Eventually they just give up trying to get it, despite their doctor, social worker and everyone else knowing that they should be on it. 

One in-law of mine due to ill health should unambiguously be on disability. He instead went round and round and round in circles, constantly getting ludicrous rejections. Social workers know a standard one - people keep being told they did not send in some document they unambiguously did send. So they send it in again, and again they get told they did not send it in. My theory is that the bureaucrats do that in the knowledge that many applicants are demoralised and depressed, and so will give up.
 
Others on long term unemployment are on it because they lost their job at an age where nobody now will employ them. Others get completely demoralised and suffer severe depression.
 
Simon knows nothing about the system. He has got the smug theories of a person with no experience on the topic. If he could get his way he would cut the payments. Luckily, Fine Gael has been in government with Labour, now Fianna Fáil, and unlike Fine Gael, they are not going to slash payments no matter how much Simon wants to.
 
If Simon ever had to survive on social welfare he would die of shock. It is nothing like he thinks.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Not A Clue

Anthony McIntyre ⚽ I still don't know what to think of the current Liverpool side with Andoni Iraola at the helm. 

In terms of both energy and structure it is an improvement on the baton passed to the incoming coach from the unsteady hand of Arne Slot, but it would have been uproarious had it been worse. Slot's hopes and dreams were little more than writing on the sand of a beach, washed away in the first incoming wave.

The last two games I watched, the team failed to hit the high note and were out of tune on so many occasions. Against Fenerbahce it was Slot mark 2. Hard to watch. In the previous game against Arsenal, while denied an obvious penalty which the Premier League authorities have since acknowledged, they simply failed to create a serious goalscoring opportunity. There is a caveat but it offers little in the way of mitigation. The ineptitude of VAR officials has in large part led to me now being in agreement with Caoimhin O’Muraile on VAR. Although Ryan Gravenberch should never have been sent off in an earlier game against Manchester Cheaty courtesy of another VAR howler, which changed the direction of travel of the game and arguably the outcome, this is not a Liverpool thing. 

VAR is destroying soccer. It should be scrapped or radically overhauled to the point where it no longer strips the beautiful game of its most beautiful and beneficial characteristic - entertainment value. That aside, it is not a matter of Isak not being up to it. He is on fire but is not being found by those whose primary purpose on the pitch is to create chances. Such was their ineffectiveness that one sports journalist observed that David Raya 'could have had a cigar in and read the papers for most of the second half.' While Wirtz is improving gradually and Barcola is still adjusting to life in the Premiership, the un-fun fact is that against the Gunners Liverpool showed they had absolutely no guns. For the first time since the 2003-04 season, across 442 league games at Anfield, Liverpool failed to place a shot on target.

I missed most of Sunday's game away to Crystal Palace, catching the first thirty minutes in a Dublin bar as we crawled our way pub by pub to the FAI Cup final. What I did see gave little cause for optimism. Palace aren't exactly high fliers in the English premiership just now but they were allowed to sniff out the Liverpool gaol all too easily. Allison despites some dodgy performances of his own in the other two defeats, kept the scores level. Liverpool emerged 1-3 winners so while the front line has delivered on that occasion, serious questions remain about the backline, which conceded from three set pieces. That is abysmal defending. Even Jeremy Jacquet, so reliable throughout this current campaign, had a seriously off day. 

Virgil Van Dijk commented after the Fenerbahce game that the way the backline performs is not sustainable. But he was making the same sort of claims from early on in Slot's last season to little avail. If the captain understands the problem he shows no aptitude for fixing it. 

Liverpool under Iraola have shown with two home defeats to the big Manchester and London sides that they are still some way off competing with the elites. The Spaniard needs to raise the game much higher than the Dutchman was capable of. 

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

Smoking Cigars And Reading Papers

Louth For Ever ★ writing in Medium on 9-November-2026.

A Century After the First Dáil, Five Countries Just Found the Thing That Comes After the Gun in Ireland

Photo by Parker Johnson on Unsplash


1905 and the Second Step

Return first to 1905, since the structure established then has still not fully played out. In December 1918, Arthur Griffith’s movement secured 73 of the 105 Irish seats at Westminster, declined to occupy them, and then gathered the First Dáil in Dublin on 21st January 1919, the very day it proclaimed a Declaration of Independence that the British government never acknowledged. Thanks to Commandant General Dan Breen, of the Third Tipperary Brigade I.R.A., and comrades, the War of Independence is dated from that same afternoon. The order of events matters more than the mere occurrence: a democratic mandate, pursued and achieved, was answered by refusal, and that was then followed by armed rebellion. The violence did not replace the mandate; it arose because the mandate was denied.

That second step, which another generation of this movement could still have taken whether or not anyone today wishes it had, is now closed off. The Good Friday Agreement, now twenty eight years old as of this past April, resolved that issue both inside republicanism and beyond it. Armed insurrection in service of a political mandate is no longer a viable option, and no serious person claims otherwise. So an uncompromising question remains, one the Agreement itself does not settle: once a mandate is rejected, overlooked, or simply outvoted, and the old second step is no longer available, what remains, in fact.

This essay examines where that question has already been answered this autumn, by people who were not deliberately measuring themselves against any Irish precedent at all.

The Continent

Begin with the phenomenon that already had a label before outsiders supplied one. In the latter half of October, a loosely linked wave of mobilisations that the French press started calling the October 17th Movement spread through five countries, each driven by its own grievance and none waiting for permission from the others.

In France, the French Interior Ministry’s own statistics recorded 410,000 people on the streets nationwide on 24th October, including 110,000 in Paris. Running alongside that was a separate, longer running lycée student movement that had started in September and, by its end, had pulled in trade unions and the yellow vests: more than 2,700 arrests, over a thousand court appearances, and 217 people sentenced through fast-track trials, according to the country’s own justice minister. In Italy, “No Meloni Day” produced protests in Milan, Rome, Turin, Naples, Bologna and Florence, blending opposition to rearmament spending with more ordinary economic anger; on the twenty fourth, Italian police recorded nine arrests and 371 brief detentions across eight cities, while five hundred extra soldiers were sent to Milan alone. Spain divided into two distinct currents: disorder in Barcelona, and, separately, pensioners in Madrid marching to defend public pensions. In Albania, a demonstration that began with students in Tirana developed into an explicit call for the prime minister to resign over corruption and the neglect of schools. In Portugal, the Lisbon protests focused specifically on housing and targeted a government that was loosening rent increase limits and making it easier to evict tenants who fall behind.

Five countries, five different immediate causes, one common reality: none of this was abstract. Every one of these mobilisations confronted a named government over a concrete grievance, and the participants were prepared to be arrested for it.

The Honest Complication

The essay would be neater if the pattern applied everywhere, but it does not, and that should be said directly instead of being edited away.

On 31st October, a movement calling itself Gen Z regelt, Gen Z Takes Charge, staged demonstrations in thirty four German cities against compulsory military service and in favour of investment in education, with a spokesperson in Berlin, Lina Friedrich, describing it as a choice between “peace and freedom” on one side and “war and coercion” on the other. The organisers said they expected 182,000 people nationwide. Yet official police totals in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin combined came to about 18,000, barely more than half of even the lower estimate the organisers’ own website had settled on by the day itself. Germany’s national school student body, the BSK, publicly separated itself from the initiative, questioning whether it was truly youth-led, and instead planned its own protest day for November 20th. The federal interior ministry stated that both far-left extremist groups and organisations tied to foreign extremist movements were trying to use it to mobilise support. Barricades were ignited in Hamburg. In Berlin, businesses along Kurfürstendamm boarded their windows beforehand. Hesse’s interior minister invoked France directly as the example not to repeat.

None of that occurred in Brazil or Serbia. Nor did it occur in the October 17th countries, where turnout generally met or surpassed organisers’ expectations and the movements’ own supposed constituencies did not publicly repudiate them. Measured against a governing coalition in Berlin already in open crisis, and a far-right party simultaneously leading national polls, the honest conclusion about Germany this autumn is not that the method failed there. Rather, the method and the far right are both active at once, unresolved, and that is a genuinely different picture from the rest of this essay. That difference should be kept in view instead of being flattened into a pattern it nearly, but not quite, confirms.

The Largest Single Case

Then came 3rd November, and the United States.

Democrats regained both chambers of Congress in one of the most one sided midterm outcomes in modern American history, only the fifth time since the Second World War that either party has taken both the House and the Senate in the same midterm election. The Senate shifted by seven seats. The House reached 218 confirmed Democratic seats, setting up Hakeem Jeffries to become Speaker, and the first Black Speaker if the chamber chooses him. Early exit polling placed Donald Trump’s approval rating at 38%, the lowest ever recorded for a sitting president at a midterm.

The largest share of what determined the outcome was conventional rather than revolutionary, and it is better to be candid about that than to invent a more dramatic story than the one that actually unfolded. Keisha Lance Bottoms became the country’s first Black woman governor, and also Georgia’s first Democratic governor since 2003. Chris Pappas became the first openly gay man elected to the United States Senate, winning in New Hampshire. Jon Ossoff was re-elected in Georgia. Roy Cooper captured a Senate seat in North Carolina. James Talarico won a Senate seat in Texas, the state’s first Democratic Senate victory since 1988, on the same night Democrats took control of the Texas state House for the first time in more than twenty years. According to the New York Times’ own analysis, Democratic candidates exceeded Kamala Harris’s 2024 results in Kansas; in South Carolina, counties that had backed Trump shifted left by an average of about twenty one points. In Florida, three House districts drawn specifically to benefit Republicans still went Democratic.

That is the main picture: an exhausted governing party, rejected. Yet within it there is a sharper thread. A number of democratic socialist candidates won House contests across New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including the first Gen Z woman elected under that banner. And in California’s 34th District, a democratic socialist challenger, Angela Gonzales-Torres, defeated a sitting Democratic incumbent burdened by misconduct allegations. That outcome is not the same as the others in this essay. It is not a base defeating the other party. It is a base refusing to extend its own side’s compromise any further, and acting on that refusal rather than merely grumbling and voting the same way anyway.

What’s Actually Left

Go back to the beginning. The old second step, the one Griffith’s movement ultimately reached for after a mandate was refused, was closed off by the Agreement that is now twenty eight years old. What has taken its place, and has been demonstrated this autumn at every scale from a dispute over a march on one street to the floor of the United States Congress, is something plainer and more demanding than either violence or patience: open opposition, sustained and directed at a named target, carried by people willing to be arrested, to lose a seat, or to be disowned by the very constituency they claim to represent, rather than diluted into something easier to tolerate.

It does not always succeed. Germany is the evidence that it does not always succeed, included in this essay precisely so the rest cannot be mistaken for a law of nature. But where it has succeeded this autumn, in São Paulo, in Belgrade, on five European streets with five separate grievances, and across an entire American Congress, the shared element was never tactical cleverness. It was the refusal to soften the position into something more comfortable for the people holding it.

What any country does with that is a separate matter. This essay’s point is only that the question is real, and that answers to it, several of them, already exist in public, dated, and available for verification.

⏩Louth For Ever writes on Irish politics and constitutional change. Follow for analysis of Ireland’s democratic future as it’s constructed by those actually engaged in the work.

The Only Weapon That’s Left 🪶 What Refusal Looks Like Without A Gun

Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.


Before We Conform, Or Condemn, Let Us At Least Be Curious


♜One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it - Albert Camus♞ 

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Fifty

 


Hate Theology @ 20

 

A Morning Thought @ 3321

Gary Robertson ⚽A phone call can really mess up your train of thought.

Here I was flowing with ideas, packed with facts and figures, ready to write the column of my life . . .  Then it rang. There was no point in hoping it was for someone else. I live alone nor was there any chance the call would be a short one. As soon as the name appeared on my screen my brain switched off as I did the man art of pretending to listen and nod, occasionally slipping a strategic "yes" "no" or "aye that's not good" into what was essentially a monologue about everything from my son's apparent inability to rise from his slumber before lunchtime on his days off university to the pros and cons of "the fat jag".
 
None of this has anything whatsoever to do with football but now as I write I'm struggling to find a starting point.
 
I guess Thursday might be a good one. Sure let's begin there.
 
With only Hearts and Celtic being Scotland's last two representatives in European competition this season I decided the honourable thing to do would be to watch both games and give an honest appraisal - after all that's what I'm here to do.
 
So let me sum up Thursday in two words - beautiful chaos.

An injury ravaged Hearts side travelled to Thun in Switzerland and once again chaotic defending and sheer bad luck contributed to the Edinburgh side's loss.
 
Scottish teams losing in Europe is hardly something new but when you gift the opposition two of their three goals - the first being an OG from McCart and the other only twelve minutes later when a hashed clearance landed at the feet of Labeau to slot home from close range - you begin to question whether God is actually a fan of the SPL or does he sit there rather like a Scottish football correspondent from the BBC and show only a passing interest?
 
Thun, who are struggling big time domestically, grabbed a third before the one piece of quality that Hearts did show, a header from Findlay at least gave the travelling Jambos some cheer on a chilly night. 3-1 considering injuries and shoddy defending was looking back perhaps not such a bad result for the lads from the Gorgie Road.
 
Then came Celtic.
 
I swithered whether or not to watch this game all week but I felt a sense of duty to do so. Like the vast majority of Hoopites dread was the overwhelming emotion that gripped all but the most ardent and optimistic of fans.
 
Celtic's European record has this season been dismal. Since the hiding away to LASK that ended the Champions League dream for another year they have failed to pick up a single point in the Europa League and again little was expected against Turkish giants Besiktas.
 
It was hard to envisage what was to come, impossible if I'm brutally honest once the away side took the lead. Massive credit to Sam Johnstone who saved the penalty awarded for a stupid challenge by Lotomba but when the rebound was fired into the net it was Déjà vu all over again least that was the expectation. At this point with nothing to lose Martin made three changes just after the hour mark that would turn this game on its head.
 
Out went Tounekti, Høgh and Forrest - in came Osmand, Duran and Donovan, and within seconds a lovely cross field pass from McGregor was fired home by Osmand and Celtic Park erupted.
 
The team with the backing of the crowd carried on a drive that's been lacking then saw scorer turn provider as Osmand set up Duran who expertly rounded the keeper and fired Celtic into a most unexpected lead. The delirium would last only 7 mins when the away side with a speculative shot found the bottom corner of the net. Celtic weren't done with yet and in moments heroes are needed and Celtic have one in Camilo Duran, the Colombian wonder kid side footing close home from Tierney's scuffed shot to grab his second, and once again the Bhoys had the lead.
 
I think at this point God probably tuned in, thought we'd suffered enough, and the victory was Celtic's.
Dreamland.

Saturday
 
A plethora of goals, sixty one  in fact, scored across all four of Scotland's top flight leagues, I could be here all week talking just about Saturday alone.
 
You'll be glad to know I've picked out a few highlights from this round of matches.
 
Hibernian travelled to Aberdeen both desperately in need of points. Sitting at the bottom of the table in November isn't where anyone wants to be yet that's where Hibernian were.
 
Having come off the back of a victory over city rivals Hearts in the League Cup semi final the men from Easter Road played with a swagger that defied their lowly position and trounced the Dons 4-0. There was no fluke about this result. It was well earned and those who made the 256 mile round trip from Edinburgh to Aberdeen and back were well rewarded for their faith.
 
Elsewhere Motherwell and Dundee United fought out a 1-1 draw, St Johnstone overcame Dundee 2-1, and in the evening (an 8pm kick off) Rangers travelled to Paisley to face St Mirren.
 
The home side did make the visitors work for their victory although once again it took a dubious penalty for Rangers to break the deadlock in the 18th minute when Penrice, who should probably stay indoors the next time there's a windy day, threw himself to the floor after being breathed on by St Mirren's Ramos, the ref Nick Walsh pointed to the spot. VAR didn't want to get involved, it seemed, and Naderi did the rest - 1-0 to Rangers.

Much huffing and puffing ensued and it took to the 61st minute for Dan Neil to double the lead and restore the smile to McInnes' face.
 
This put Rangers a point behind Celtic (having played the same number of matches) it was up to Celtic on Sunday to extend the gap again.
 
Other highlights from Saturday
 
A 7 goal thriller between Morton and Stenhousemuir, a victory for the home side by a single goal made all the more remarkable having played the majority of the match with ten players, having Okkie (of Morton) shown a straight red in the 26th minute.
 
An impressive 4-1 victory at home by Arbroath (another place thermals are needed in summer) over Ayr and a hard won 1-0 victory by Partick over hapless Queens Park who now find themselves six points adrift while Partick sit pretty on 28 at the top of the table on a three point cushion.
 
The shock result of the day however came in League one where bottom of the table Cove Rangers fired four past high flyers Hamilton without reply.
 
It would appear the Accies have hit a bit of a wobble and while Ross County continue to do their thing, win, a 4-1 victory over lowly Peterhead and with only three points covering the bottom five it#s the league to watch for thrills and spills for sure. There's now a five point gap at the top as Ross relentlessly roll on.
 
League Two and with victories for both Stranraer and Clyde the table remains the same. Only goal difference separates the two at the top à further six points back to Elgin in third.

Sunday
 
Hearts on an unbeaten home league record that stretches back to last year faced Falkirk who themselves were on a decent run of form having won their previous four including last week over Celtic.
 
The Bairns showed their victory over Celtic was no fluke as they flew out the traps their first scored on four minutes and by halftime they were 4-0 ahead.
 
Second half having done all the hard work they took the foot of the gas slightly after scoring a fifth in 47 minutes giving Hearts a glimmer of hope as the home side fans (those who remained) were rewarded with a first goal in Hearts colours for Frenchman Guendouz and a 75th minute penalty from Braga.

A final score of 5-2 to the away side continued their fine run and they now find themselves in third spot in the SPL.
 
Celtic v Kilmarnock was pretty much a non event. The home side made hard, very hard work overcoming Neil McCanns side 1-0. Granted excuses could be made I guess after Thursday's efforts so let's not judge too harshly.
 
For me at least while the game was dull, settled by a solitary goal from Liam Scales' head, three points going into yet another international break keeps the wolves from the door for now and makes life a little more comfortable but this Celtic team.
 
If I do have a worry though it would be O'Neills admission to Sky Sports news that he's still not 100% sure of his best team.
 
This for me at least took a little of the shine away from what had been a fantastic, then adequate couple of performances by the team.
 
If you don't know by now Martin and it's November . . . 🤔

So that's that for this week. There's so much more I could rant about. For instance McAvennie's moronic comment about Auston Trusty taking time off to attend his fathers funeral as "woke nonsense" (he has since apologised but I suspect not because he in a moment of clarity thought "that was stupid" - money talks).

Whatever you're doing do it well, stay safe and have fun.

Til next time …… 🐼

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

The Number 7

Barry Gilheany ✍ On the Russell Brand rape case.

A Predator Stalks British Light Entertainment Shielded By An Entourage Of Enablers And Contemporary Culture. The Case Of Russell Brand As A Chronicle Aftertold

On Monday 9th November the celebrity comedian, presenter, actor and addict Russell Brand was sentenced to a prison term of ten years and six months after his conviction of the rape of one woman and the sexual assault of three other women after the launch of a police investigations into allegations of sexual offences against him published by the Times and Sunday Times newspapers and broadcast by the Channel 4 documentary Dispatches in 2023. 

At least ten more women are expected to come forward with similar accusations against Brand raising the spectre of a Jimmy Saville type tsunami of cases. Mention of another monster sexual predator raises the question of what exactly has changed within British broadcasting environments since Saville stalked the land in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The uncomfortable reality for such august institutions as the BBC, Channel 4 and The Guardian (for whom Brand wrote weekly florid reflections on being a West Ham United supporter) is that he continued to operate despite such red flags as his requests to runners (the lowest rung in the broadcasting and film food chain, invariably young women looking for their foothold in the industry) to bring back contact details for young women) and his explicit jokes about “flashing” on radio. 

When one compares the environment in which Saville operated and that in which Brand moved around, then disturbing parallels are revealed. The era of the Swinging Sixties with its radical deconstruction of the class ridden and sexually oppressive social orthodoxies had the unfortunate side effects of facilitating Saville, Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter and the other notorious predators of that time because of the lack of awareness of child sexual abuse the actual meaning of consent in sexual relationships.

Because of their enormous cache to the BBC, Saville et al could operate with impunity because of the lack of sexual harassment laws to protect women at work and also because Saville could deploy his mixture of charisma and men to ward off any prying queries. One has to ask if the Cool Britannia culture of the 1990s and the noughties; the risqué content of TV shows like Men Behaving Badly; the proliferation of lads mags like Loaded and FHM and even the iconic rock band Oasis created the zeitgeist that Brand (and maybe others, pace David Walliams) exploited? 

Mercifully free of racist and homophobic content, this contemporary pre-manosphere form of masculinity emerged at the time where the material gains of feminism were now clear and also paralleled the emergence of the “laddette” culture. However, despite the advances in legal protection for women at work; in legislation against rape, violence against women and harassment, light entertainment and the media generally remained institutionally sexist industries in which the complaints of women about the behaviour of top male celebrities continued to be brushed aside by executives too focused on the bottom line of audience popularity. The reality in that it has taken the #MeToo movement to out the unsavoury underbelly of the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and other totemic symbols of fame and celebrity. When histories and analyses of 21st feminism are written, then #MeToo may well be cited as the transformative moment for women. Where legislation proved insufficient to bring down Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, it was the courage of their women victims allied to the investigative journalistic prowess of Ronan Farrow that delivered justice. On this side of the Atlantic, it was similar cooperation between Russell Brand’s courageous victim and good old “mainstream media” journalistic enquiry which ultimately brought him to book.

The Russell Brand case is certainly a chronicle aftertold of sexism and sexual abuse in the media industries repackaged for the first decades of the 21st century. The comedian Katherine Ryan warned of a “predator” in the entertainment industry.[1] Other female comedians such as Shappi Khorsandi and Kate Smurthwaite have recalled since Brand’s conviction their discomfort of being in his presence. Bob Geldof certainly seemed to have the measure of him as evidenced by their spat at the 2006 New Musical Express (NME) awards which has just resurfaced online when, on being presented by Brand with the NME hero of the year, Sir Bob brushed past him to tell the audience, “Russell Brand, what a c__t”. Brand had announced that he had won by saying “Of course, the winner is Live 8 so please welcome to the stage Sir Bobby Gandolf”. In typically tasteless style, Brand later joked the reason Bob Geldof was “such an expert in famine” is that “he had been dining out” on “I don’t like Mondays for 30 years”.[2]

It is not as if there had not been evidence of Brand’s disgusting attitudes towards women and their rights to bodily integrity on the public record. It is there in his memoir The Booky Wook published years before his arrest. In it a teenage Brand recounts a crush in the early 1990s on a fellow student at the Italia Conti theatre school (from which he was expelled for poor attendance) which led to his pursuit of her through the streets of London and then boarding ticketless on a train to her hometown of Wigan where, despite his admission that she did not want him accompanying her never mind coming to her family home, he did so anyway and bedded her. There, he “lied and danced and evoked the spirit of Pan till she reluctantly removed her bra” before deploying “tears and emotional blackmail to secure the immolation of her knickers.”[3]

Anecdotes such as that and the description of how Brand spat in the face of a lap dancer and smashed the phone of a sex worker did not dissuade critics from showering the book with praise; it reached No.1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list and won biography of the year at the 2008 British Book Awards.[4] I have to personally admit to reading The Booky Wook and not having copped onto those offending passages possibly because, like presumably many other readers, I was mesmerized by his portrait of a seeming eccentric written in his typically florid prose. The content of this autobiography graphically prefigures the bedroom scene of the rape for which he was convicted; the forcible penetration of his victim’s anus and the horrific patina of bodily fluids on the bedsheets which, ever the control freak, he ordered her to clear up in the manner that a powerful politician or business figure would speak to a chambermaid.

Further examples of the career of this sexual monster abound. He was labelled “shagger of the year” by The Sun three times (can one imagine a similar accolade for women transgressors such as Bonny Blue). He enjoyed rock star status (no doubt enhanced by his weird sartorial sense) that propelled him to a sell out standup your and an eponymous show on BBC Radio 2. Audiences laughed as he regaled them with stories of how he enjoyed watching women choke during oral sex. Few questions were asked of his spell in “winky nick;” a rehabilitation clinic that his managers had enrolled him in, and which is used as an alternative to jail for convicted sex offenders. Why were no eyebrows raised when he said in a 2010 follow-up memoir “If this is what I’m telling you, can you imagine what’s being left out?”. Even after the notorious “Sachsgate” affair in October 2008 when he and his guest Jonathan Ross left voicemail messages for the Fawlty Tower actor Andew Sachs boasting of how Brand had slept with Sachs’s granddaughter and the welter of national condemnation it drew including the then PM Gordon Brown, Brand was able to keep his job while Ross was suspended for three months and Radio 2 controller, Lesley Douglas, resigned. He regularly made sexual comments about the station’s newsreader and, rather than taking on board advice from the producer that the newsreader was upset, improvised a song about her reading the bulletins in her underwear.[5]

There are others who have questions to ask, though not those relating to the reputational damage caused to the media institutions. Why did - during his supposed reinvention on his return to the UK in 2014 after the breakup of his marriage to Katy Perry during his time as an actor in the USA - did so many “labour luvvies” such as Owen Jones, Jemima Khan, Ed Miliband and even, as came to light last week, PM Andy Burnham, fawn over him as some sort of progressive icon; somebody who as leader of the Labour Party, felt compelled to be interviewed by Brand on his You Tube channel in order solicit his backing for Labour in the 2015 General Election? Why did George Monbiot and Owen Jones feel compelled to write fawning reviews and introductions to his 2014 book Revolution a menage of faux anti-establishment populism and pop psychology slop on “consciousness”. Who deemed him a suitable authority on drugs to be invited to a parliamentary sub-committee to share his insights? Who deemed him to be a suitable panellist on Question Time or an interviewee with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight where he expounded on his reasons for not voting (a position which he reversed in 2015 when he urged a Labour vote in the General Election of that year.

Despite a concerted campaign since the end of his trial by the Daily Mail to frame the afore mentioned figures on the left as being complicit in the cover up of Brand’s crimes, perhaps the worst they can be accused of is naivety (although Owen Jones has in his condemnation of The Sun for its “persecution” of the disgraced BBC News anchor Huw Edwards has shown himself to be a poor judge of character), no such latitude can be shown to the motley crew of far right “anti-establishment” conspiracist groupies which have surrounded Brand since his move to the USA and reinvention as born again Christian and alternative health guru and to the hundreds of thousands of social media followers he has racked up since the start of his trial attracted like moths to the fire of his anti-WEF, anti-Covid lockdown and vaccination, anti-Ukraine and climate change denial agenda cocktail. The following reaction from Restore UK councillor Owain Clotworthy to Brand’s conviction may be beyond, even in these conspiratorial times, may be beyond the pale of acceptable opinion but judging from the uptick of Brand’s social media followers from the start of his trial, the Overton Window may be shifting, if ever more slightly, in online space.

Posting on X, Cllr Clotworthy claimed Brand was the victim of a “witchhunt” by the elites and urged him to “stay strong.” He wrote “Funny how the real pressure only kicked off once he questioned the elites, rejected the COVID narrative, and publicly found Jesus as his Lord and saviour.” He jibed that his accusers had “dug up old claims from decades ago when he was living a very different life,” dismissing the case as a “show trial.” Brand was “speaking truth,” he insisted.[6]

Unfortunately, such sentiments and accompanying misogynist tropes about “why these women have waited so long?” or that women were to blame for their fate for “throwing themselves at famous men” appeared with depressing regularity on my X feed. Such ancient notions about women’s behaviour before and after the incidence of rape were front and centre of the defence case at Southwark Crown Court. However, in what is surely a landmark moment in English jurisprudence, the trial judge in the sentencing hearing in decisively refuting such arguments explicitly endorsed the “No Means No” principle. The woman’s behaviour did not matter; whether she had drunk to excess or whatever signals she transmitted to the man. Women have the right to wear whatever clothes they wished. The length of time it takes a women to take to bring a rape or sexual assault allegation does not matter (no statute of limitations in other words). He recognised the factors that prevent immediate reporting of rape such as fear of the rapist; the psychological power that her abuser continues to hold over her; the long-lasting effects of trauma and of previous adverse experiences of the judicial process.

Ideally Brand’s involvement with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, where he has used his star status to criticise vaccines and vaccine mandates, junk food and pharmaceutical companies, should sound the death knell for this movement and all its world. He has heaped praise on MAHA’s figurehead and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), Jr and Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services and who has been criticised for his promotion of pseudoscience including promotion of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid 19 during the pandemic. During his trial, he took two MAHA Action calls in which he did not address the charges against him but spoke experiencing “the ceremonial pressure of a trial.” True to form, when Brand was a moderator for a segment at the MAHA summit in September (just before the start of his trial), a day-long event that featured RFK, Jr, JD Vance and other Trump administration officials, he and Mehmet Oz kicked off their joint appearance by making a joke about Brand hugging the Secretary of Agriculture backstage which in the words of Oz “took MAHA to a new level.” Brand quipped in reply, “She initiated that contact, I should make that clear, doctor.” An epitaph for Brand Russell.[7]

And the saga continues. As I write this, another of Brand’s former girlfriend, Jemima Khan, has posted details of her experience of his violence and coercive control. But this is Britain’s #MeToo moment. Never before has an entertainer of the public profile like Russell Brand been adjudicated as a sexual predator who displayed stunning levels of arrogance, narcissism, and entitlement in his career in the way in which he was excoriated in Southwark Crown Court today. The victim impact statements of Brand’s prey are vivid testimony to the decades long effect of rape on its victims from feeing useless; fear of and mistrust in relationships; almost physical sickness at the sight of their abuser on TV and loss of confidence.

But at least Brand did not evade justice as Saville did before him. The story of Russell Brand is the story of how unequal power relationships in the entertainment industry facilitated this evil predator’s casual disrespect for women and the norms of civilised behaviour and of, in general, the fear and aura wielded by powerful men, be it in business, the media, sports or politics. The call by the Culture and Media Secretary Lisa Nandy for media industries to sign up to the Creative Industry Standards Authority, an industry body that protects whistleblowers, as part of her candid admission on the Laura Kuenssberg Show that women have not been protected in unregulated media environments is certainly a significant step in the right direction. Legal reforms to tackle the pervasive myths about rape which the judge so effectively took apart may also be in the pipeline.

Lastly a message to those who claimed that Russell Brand was targeted because he was anti-vax or anti-Ukraine such as Max Blumenthal, Jimmy Dore, George Galloway, Jackson Hinkle, Tucker Carlson, and Briahna Joy Gray: Fuck You!

References  

[1] Brand suspected of carrying out attacks on at least 10 more women. The Guardian. 7th November 2026 p.6

[2] Throwback to Bob Geldof’s famous foul-mouthed exchange with Russell Brand.” The London Economic. 6th November 2026

[3] Geraldine McKenzie. Hiding in plain sight. How star got away with predatory behaviour. The Guardian. 6th November 2026 pp.2-3

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

[6] Aaron Newbury, Outrage as rapist Rusell Brand defended by Reform councillor. Daily Express 7th November 2026.

[7] Michelle R. Smith Brand appeared with allies of Trump during rape trial. The Guardian. 7th November 2026 p.8

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

Hiding In Plain Sight Again

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