He also regularly writes for and appears on Al Mayadeen (Hezbollah affiliates), the Iranian Regime's Press TV, and Russia Today.

And yes, you would be correct if you guessed his views on Syria's Bashar al-Assad based on this information.

The PLO was a terror group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma'alot_massacre

Two examples off the top of my head of a terrorist group engaging in terrorist violence.

Only a handful of countries consider Hamas a terror group. Funnily enough these are the same countries that are complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Those are also more or less the only countries I'd trust to be able to correctly identify a terrorist group.

This is a “leopards ate my face” law. It’s fine until you get caught up in it however unlikely that appears now.

I simply don't support terrorist organisations. It isn't difficult.

There really is no plausible ‘fetish outfit’ that could possibly under any circumstances be appropriate for work at the Civil Service.

I cannot believe this even needed to be clarified in the first place

One obvious reason the author doesn't explore is that neither Wales nor Scotland has ever experienced mass immigration nor profound demographic changes in their population.

Scotland remains 92.87% white (2022), Wales 94.2% (2021), compared to England at 81% (2021).

In Scotland, 2.2% identity as Muslim, 0.4% as Hindu, 0.1% as Jewish.

In England, 6.7% identify as Muslim, 1.8% as Hindu, 0.5% as Jewish.

Scotland and Wales are therefore much more homogenous as populations. They're whiter, less religious, and from similar backgrounds. They're not as diverse as England is and therefore don't have the challenges of community cohesion and social solidarity that England does.

It therefore doesn’t have the levels of intra- and inter-communal diversity which can provoke the kinds of tensions we've seen playing out in the streets of England over recent years, whether in Hindutva-Muslim ethnoreligious violence in Leicester or these anti-Islam and racist riots in recent weeks.

Scotland's sense of its national identity has also not been challenged to the same extent as in England. Nor has a patriotic attitude towards Scottishness been derided as hateful, bigoted or xenophobic, as it has in England. (This sometimes leads to highly funny events, though, like when ScotNats try to claim they were victims of the British Empire.)

Personally, Threads is the only social media platform where the content on it generally improves my mood by showing me lots of funny, cute or interesting content. It's the only one where I don't feel frustrated or angry or outraged by the content the algorithm surfaces or baited. It feels like the feed wants me to smile and cheer up or learn something new, rather than baiting me into getting angry and shouting at people. That counts for a lot, to me.

Thanks, I hate it

Squeeze 'em til the pips squeak.

I think bundling the two together obscures more than it illuminates. I don’t think it’s any less serious (in fact in some regards it’s more dangerous), just that it doesn’t fit with normal far-right characteristics. To take one important difference, the far-right are ultra-nationalists, while Islamic fundamentalists are strictly anti-nationalist – they don’t recognise the legitimacy of nation-states to exist at all. They also tend to be pretty unconcerned with race or ethnicity in themselves, whereas that’s obviously a major thing for Neo-Nazis and other Fascists. And it makes it harder to identify and address the problem, because the sources and drivers of far-right extremism are separate and often unrelated to the sources of Islamic fundamentalism and radicalisation.

I haven’t tested out my opinion that ‘Church is good, actually’ to see how that one goes down here but I’m not expecting the result to be positive.