CofE Urban Parish Priest. Inclusive Orthodoxy. #RangersFC #GCAFC
England, United Kingdom
Joined May 2010
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Ray Gaston retweeted
The amendment to safeguard Jewish members was defeated: 684 in favour, 1,026 against. More than a thousand delegates voted against those protections.
This is a deliberate rejection of Jewish members’ right to participate without discrimination. A party that votes against protecting Jews while debating whether their self-determination is racist is practising the racism it claims to oppose.
Ray Gaston retweeted
After the “Zionism is Racism” UN motion spearheaded by the Soviet Bloc & Arab League in 1975 (repealed in 1990), there was a concentrated campaign at universities around the UK to ban Jewish societies.
Not Israel societies.
Jewish societies.
We know where stuff like this leads.
Ray Gaston retweeted
The Ashrafi story has shown the ABC needs a strong adviser on interfaith. Very sadly, the Revd Dr Richard Sudworth, who served in this role for 7 years, died last year. An expert on Christian-Muslim relations and parish priest, he also received an award last week, posthumously.
Ray Gaston retweeted
We Live in ‘a New World of Counterhistory’: @tunkuv interviews @simonmontefiore wsj.com/opinion/we-live-in-a… via @WSJopinion
Ray Gaston retweeted
Concerns Grow Over Kurdish Political Prisoners Facing Execution in Iran
Concerns are growing over the fate of several Kurdish political prisoners in Iran as death sentences continue to be issued and upheld. According to available information, at least seven Kurdish political prisoners are currently at risk of execution in prisons across the country.
Among them are Pakhshan Azizi, a civil activist from Mahabad; Hatem Ozdemir, a Kurdish political activist and Turkish citizen; and Yousef Ahmadi, a resident of Baneh. Their death sentences have been upheld by the Supreme Court, and their requests for judicial review have been rejected.
Raouf Sheikh-Ma'aroufi, Mohammad Faraji, and Mohsen Eslamkhah, three political prisoners from Bukan, have also been sentenced to death on charges of “corruption on earth.” Their cases are currently under review by the Supreme Court. Arman Marefati, a Kurdish citizen from Saqqez who was arrested during the January 2026 protests, is also being held under a death sentence in Qezel Hesar Prison in Karaj.
Ray Gaston retweeted
Here’s what actually happened after the 1945 Labour government:
35yrs of unparalleled improvements in living standards on a social-democratic basis, with mass social housebuilding, full employment, energy independence, consistent real wage growth, and national ownership of core industries.
We can only wish for such an inheritance today. But that Britain has been sold by the pound to satisfy the kind of false economies & financial short-termism inherent in Tom’s market liberal ideology.
If trade unions were the culprit for Britain as the “sick man of Europe”, then we need to explain why Franco-German competitors grew FASTER during the trente glorieuses/German economic miracle with HIGHER union militancy + powerful Communist municipalities/regional gov. in France + deeply embedded labour representation on works councils etc. in W. Germany.
Britain went from superpower to sick man of Europe in the space of a single generation, largely thanks to decisions made in one single parliamentary term 1945-1950.
We destroyed our competitiveness and gave the whip hand to unions that prioritised retaining existing jobs over creating new ones.
Companies didn’t die overnight. But as international competitors innovated - eg cutting jobs in one area and growing them in another, adding more technology or automation, becoming more efficient. British firms could do none of that.
Held to ransom by union barons that didn’t care for the growth or success of the company, only for their own remuneration. At the expense of the growth of the company.
One by one our industries died, some staggering on as zombies reliant on state subsidy to survive. When the subsidy stopped they were finally put out of their misery.
How anyone could look at the postwar consensus and think that’s what we need now is genuinely baffling.
A one way road to ruin.
Ray Gaston retweeted
The long-overdue change from First Past the Post to a Proportional Representation voting system simply has to be top of the agenda now.
Ray Gaston retweeted
There is an escape route for Labour from certain disaster at the general election: use their Commons majority to ram through PR. It’s cynical, + they’d never govern alone again, but it locks Reform out of No10. The left (Lab, Gr, LD) still have a majority over the right in the UK
Ray Gaston retweeted
I've said before & will say again:
Just imagine McDonnell as a junior Treasury minister on LBC arguing cogently for:
👉Extra £40BN tax-raising budget, with most of the burden falling on employers, capital gains, dividends, private schools etc. etc.
👉Altered fiscal rules to allow for £100BN extra capital spending across Parliament
👉Renters Rights & Employment Rights Acts
👉Slowly re-nationalised railways
👉GB Energy & NWF tentatively backing publicly-owned energy projects
👉Higher public sector pay settlements
👉Abolition of hereditary peers in the HoL
👉Recognised Palestinian state + embargo on majority of arms exports to Israel (save for part exports bound up in multi-party, international contractual agreements)
This is all Starmer policy. He's governing as a fiscal Soft Leftist while (inconsistently, and terribly, unconvincingly) signalling "I HATE THE LEFT. I AM A PATRIOTIC FISCAL CONSERVATIVE." It's such a bizarre strategy that has ended up alienating both patriotic conservatives AND, funnily enough, the Left.
.@johnmcdonnellMP speaks a lot of sense. @Keir_Starmer would do well to have him in. Sit down and discuss what it is that we need to do now to begin the process of rebuilding the party. @UKLabour is a movement.
Ray Gaston retweeted
This was a real error by Badenoch. Once you argue that marches must be banned for the fear they provoke inminorities, you cannot just exempt the Robinson events from your calculations. Some of the speeches at his Traf Sq rally were horrendously inciteful against muslims.
Ray Gaston retweeted
If you don't know that early Israeli politics - and Zionist politics before that - were heavily dominated by the left, you're not qualified to weigh in on the conflict at all. In the Mandate era, right-wing Zionism was so much the exception, it was literally called "Revisionist".
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Ray Gaston retweeted
It’s very simple: the Intifada was a campaign of suicide bombings, shootings and stabbings that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians. Calling for it to be “globalised” means bringing it here. That isn’t “criticising Israel”. It’s inciting violent hatred.
Ray Gaston retweeted
Opinion: When it comes to antisemitism, the sound of silence from UK anti-racists is deafening
jewishnews.co.uk/when-it-com…
Ray Gaston retweeted
What a surprise!
When UK state broadcaster and Guardian newspaper along with Sky, Channel 4, plus Green Party and great swathes of Labour/progressive/left - _
all push the IRGC narrative.
Who’d have thought it might increase prejudice against Jews?
Spat at, threatened and kidnapped: British Jews tell of rising antisemitism bbc.in/4mYQxs5
Ray Gaston retweeted
during Ramadan my husband, who is Catholic, refused to eat during lunch so that he could sit in solidarity with his Muslim co-workers. despite their reassurances, he said he felt bad. So today, which is a holy day (Good Friday) for us Catholics, his Muslim friends fasted with him until noon and no one had meat. they all had vegan/vegetarian meals. my heart is so grateful for these signs of love ❤️
Ray Gaston retweeted
“We give not to our Princes the ministering … of God’s Word”
If you want to hear an Easter message, go to church.
Ray Gaston retweeted
I have a lot of journalists following me and I am imploring you, if you are writing about the antisemitic attack in Golders Green, *please* emphasise these two things:
- Hatzola is a volunteer-driven, no-cost service that is *entirely* self-funded. It relies 100% on private donations and community fundraising rather than government or public NHS funding.
- While operating in largely Jewish areas, it services Jews and non-Jews equally.
You may not deem it necessary to include this information, and in a perfect world it would not be. However, these are the two lies being spread by antisemites in order to justify the attack and use it to spread even more hostility against the Jewish people. Please include these facts.
Ray Gaston retweeted
If you want to understand why the Western left is losing support, look at its positions on #Iran. Many Iranians in the diaspora who once felt politically at home there now feel alienated & disillusioned. Movements claiming to represent immigrants should start by listening to them