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Hardwick Hall was used as a filming location in one of the Harry Potter films. Last year they ran an art installation the public could take part in, embroidering names of women they admire. Several children embroidered the name @jk_rowling and it caused so much controversy the pic.twitter.com/b4vbZR13ZN

— Lottie Lewis (@LottieHistory) March 11, 2025

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"….project had to be shut down temporarily whilst The National Trust decided what to do. Someone had embroidered a line through the name, and they weren't sure if they should scrap that piece or not (some other names chosen below). Some staff said they felt unsafe. In the end they decided to let people choose any name they wanted, but they put a sign up saying the names on display did not always reflect the views of The National Trust."

Added: "Ironic given Bess of Hardwick built the original hall. She was a redoubtable woman, who rose to be the richest woman in England at a time when very few woman had power or agency."

women’s rights body, presiding until March 21st at a gathering of global leaders that is supposed to address gender equality amid a reported backlash against women’s rights, at the 69th annual session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

“It’s surreal. Electing Saudi Arabia to head the world body for protecting women’s rights is like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based independent human rights group.

“As chair, Saudi Arabia is now in a key position to influence the planning and decisions of the world’s top women’s right body. Yet despite cosmetic reforms, Saudi Arabia continues to subject women to legal discrimination, where they are effectively enslaved under a male guardianship system that was enshrined into law three years ago, ironically on international women’s day,” said Neuer….

“One of the world’s most patriarchal and misogynistic regimes now chairs the Commission on the Status of Women, which is touted on the UN website as the “principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

of a ‘train full of Jews’ and said everyone should be there to greet it, because ‘we have to make those cancer Jews feel what they did to our brothers’. The train could be late, one of them joked, because it might be a ‘special train’ laid on by Hitler, ‘with gas for [the Jews]’.

Where were these racist obscenities uttered? Where was this violent hunt for Jews carried out? Germany in 1938, perhaps? No, it was in Amsterdam, last year. This was the jodenjacht of November 2024 when visiting Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv were ‘hunted’ by mobs of mostly Arab men in the streets of Amsterdam. More details about this pogrom emerged during the latest court cases last week, and they heap yet further shame on the pogrom deniers of the Western left who insisted these were just street clashes, not a Jew hunt.

Much of the reporting here blamed the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, of course. Football fans and Jews: the perfect villains.

Western leftists devoted the same amount of moral energy to denying the truth of the Amsterdam pogrom as they normally devote to uncovering racism absolutely everywhere. The same people who for years decried everything from white women wearing their hair in cornrows to the scuffing of a page in the Koran as ‘racism’ were now shrugging their shoulders over a literal Jew hunt. ‘Maybe the Maccabi fans brought it on themselves’, they essentially said.

To the rational observer, it was clear from the start that what happened in Amsterdam was a pogrom. The first ‘trial of the Jew hunters’ took place in December. Five men were convicted of violence. One had boasted in the WhatsApp group about joining the ‘Jew hunt’ – his words. He later kicked Maccabi fans and grabbed one by the throat. Another described his victims as ‘cowardly [Jews]’. The men, along with around 900 others, were part of the virtual chat which, the court heard, had shared information for the purposes of ‘violence against people of Jewish descent and / or supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv’. Four of the five men were jailed, one was given a community order….

And yet still leftists said it wasn’t a pogrom. Still we saw headlines like ‘The pogrom in Amsterdam that wasn’t’. Still we were told that the Maccabi fans had it coming because they yelled offensive slogans and tore down a Palestine flag. These fans brought the ‘spirit of Israeli fascism’ to the Netherlands, one observer said, and folk in Amsterdam just fought back. It was victim-blaming on steroids, as grotesque as when anti-Semites said the Jews of Germany brought Kristallnacht on themselves by being such economic disruptors. Nothing better sums up the turbo-smug racial paternalism of the modern left than the fact that gangs of men said ‘We carried out a Jew hunt!’ and these people essentially replied: ‘No you didn’t. You were just protesting. Bless.’ They don’t only know better than Jews, you see – they know better than Arabs, too.

’s leadership.

Yet as economic conditions worsen and people struggle to feed their families, these propaganda songs have lost their effectiveness.

“Songs might have worked for ideological control in the past, but now, as people face harsher realities, they ignore them no matter how much they’re forced to sing,” the source said. “Plus, with more outside information getting in, people are less influenced by propaganda.”

“People openly say that singing songs won’t make rice appear or improve their lives when they can barely make ends meet,” the source added. “Ultimately, this coercive approach of forcing people to memorize and sing songs will only increase public distrust of the regime.”

Let's hope so.

1909. "View toward Campus Martius from Detroit Opera House."

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company]

e facilities. Gender-neutral options will also be made available where possible.

“Transgender people are accommodated according to the gender they identify with, rather than sex registered at birth, regardless of where they are on the transition journey.”

It's a step back in time. Well, it's a step back in everything. In every sense.

an a decade.

“Islamist groups have stepped up attacks and assaults on isolated villages, already killing thousands of Congolese civilians,” it stated.

Even Aid to the Church in Need are playing it down:

The latest massacre of 70 Christians might seem like persecution, but Maria Lozano, Director of ACN International Press and Media Department, says there needs to be a more careful analysis to determine the motives.

“We cannot speak of persecution across the entire country, as most of the violence occurring in the DRC has no religious connection. It is important to be cautious and avoid oversimplifying or misleading people in our analysis,” she told Crux.

She explained that the recent massacre is likely to result from “a mixed of reasons.”

“One of them is that these victims were unable to resist or endure the forced march. When the rebels take hostages, they force them to travel with them, either as reinforcements for their group or as forced labor for their war effort. When there’s loot, they need people to carry it. If you get tired on the way, you’re done. I believe that’s what happened to these 70 people. The church was the best place to get rid of them,” she told Crux.

She said the fact that the people were killed in a church doesn’t necessarily mean they were targeted in anti-Christian pogroms.

“Most of the fighting in the DRC is related to the competition for resources,” she noted.

Hmm. Seventy people, all Christians, decapitated in a church, very likely by an Islamist group – but hey, it's all about the struggle for resources. Nothing to see here.

More on the ADF:

The Allied Democratic Forces (French: Forces démocratiques alliées; abbreviated ADF) is a Ugandan Islamist rebel group based in western Uganda and eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is considered a terrorist organisation by the Ugandan government and the United States. Originally based in western Uganda, it has expanded into the neighbouring Congo. Most ADF fighters are Ugandan Muslims from the Baganda and Basoga ethnic groups….

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The engine house with Stanley Graham, mill engineer

An insurance company boiler inspector on top of one of the furnace tubes inside the Lancashire boiler

Charlie Sutton, boss of the Weldone fluing gang from Brierfield, taking a break
[Photos © Daniel Meadows]

at this could happen to their cherished son, who had been born late in their lives. Soon, rumors spread throughout the city.

Shortly afterward, the couple vanished.

“Soldiers escorted the parents to Pyongyang on Feb. 15, and they never returned. Four days later, housing officials arrived to announce their home would be reassigned to another family. The entire neighborhood was stunned,” said the source….

The incident has created anxiety within military ranks. Officers interpret this as a warning that any violation involving Kim will face severe punishment without exception. They anticipate stricter regulations regarding the supreme leader throughout all units.

“Soldiers at the training site where the incident occurred are experiencing extreme anxiety, fearing they could lose everything while their families receive only a brief death notification,” the source concluded.

We're not told the nature of the soldiers' "dishonorable behavior" which led to their punishment, but we can be fairly sure it was something trivial: perhaps looking the other way when Kim was talking, for instance. 

ish racism. It has given a platform to murderous terrorists, presented apologists for terror as independent ‘experts’, allowed extreme views to go unchallenged in interviews and echoed the language of Hamas.

It has subjected Israeli guests to biased and hostile questioning, downplayed attacks on Israelis and failed to swiftly remove antisemitic comments posted online.

BBC Arabic staff who posted in support of the barbaric rape, murder and kidnap of innocent men, women and children on 7 October 2023 continue to work for the organisation.

This document charts four years under Tim Davie’s leadership in which senior executives and the BBC Board have failed to stamp out the extraordinary bias within BBC Arabic despite repeated demands for change.

Full report here.

Kemi is on the case:

Kemi Badenoch has called for “wholesale reform” of the BBC Arabic channel after a report accused it of “appalling antisemitism and anti-Israel bias”.

The Conservative leader wrote to Tim Davie, the director-general, to set out concerns about the World Service channel on Friday, weeks after warning that her party will withdraw its support for the licence fee if the BBC fails to tackle her concerns about bias….

Badenoch’s letter came after a ­report from the media watchdog the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera), which accused the channel of “anti-Israel bias, toxic antisemitism and the promotion of Hamas propaganda”.

The 33-page report covers claims spanning four years, including providing a “platform to terrorists”, presenting apologists as independent “experts” and ­allowing extreme views to go ­unchallenged in interviews. It also ­accused BBC Arabic of echoing Hamas language.

In her letter, the leader of the opposition accused the BBC of losing its grip on the World Service channel.

“A public-service broadcaster ­appears to have become a regular platform for race-hate, extremism and the endorsement of terror,” Badenoch said. “BBC Arabic is intended to provide high-quality, trusted news for the ­hundreds of millions of people who speak Arabic. It should uphold the highest standards of public-service broadcasting. Instead, it seems that the World Service may be fomenting ­extremism and misleading audiences — while funded by the taxpayer and ­licence fees. This is simply unacceptable and must stop.”

Badenoch repeated her threat, made after the documentary was shown, that the Conservative Party would withdraw its support for the licence fee “without real action” from BBC bosses.