Rishi Sunak will meet Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, as soon as Monday, and ask him whether Saturday’s disorder could have been avoided had existing laws been used to limit the pro-Palestinian march.

The Prime Minister has also asked officials to look at ways in which the law could be tightened and remove any doubt that officers can and should intervene on hate speech.

Options include lowering the threshold at which police can ban marches and bringing in a new law on glorifying terrorists. Legislation to prevent protesters from climbing bus stops, statues and scaffolding, and strengthened laws around fireworks and flares, are among other possibilities.

Both Mr Sunak and Mrs Braverman are urging police to use all powers possible to take action against protesters who try to skirt around anti-terrorism laws by carefully wording chants and signs to avoid meeting the thresholds for arrest.

In his meeting with Sir Mark, the Prime Minister will also discuss what further measures need to be put in place to reassure the Jewish community should further pro-Palestinian marches be scheduled.

Downing Street believes that, while Right-wing thugs were rightly arrested on Saturday, there needs to be swifter action to tackle the anti-Semitic behaviour that was in evidence, much of which is already prohibited.

It comes after a week of rows between Ms Braverman and the Met Police over her claim that they “played favourites when it comes to protesters”.

In a series of tweets on Sunday afternoon, Mrs Braverman, who has faced criticism that her rhetoric had exacerbated some of Saturday’s violence, thanked police for their professionalism and said it was an outrage that some officers had been injured.

She said some of the placards and chants in evidence on Saturday’s march were “clearly criminal”, adding: “This can’t go on. Week by week, the streets of London are being polluted by hate, violence and anti-Semitism.

Members of the public are being mobbed and intimidated. Jewish people in particular feel threatened. Further action is necessary.”

The Telegraph understands that both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary believe existing laws would have allowed police to limit the extent of the protests and crack down on anti-Semitism.

But Mrs Braverman is willing to consider changing the law, such as by creating a new offence of “glorifying” terror or lowering the threshold at which a march can be banned.

Current laws cover offences including encouraging terrorism and inviting support for banned groups.

Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, is drawing up a report that could recommend ministers update the Terrorism Act to cover the “glorification of terrorist acts” rather than just the groups that commit them.

He has also proposed an offence of “having a flag that is associated with terrorism generally”. This could be the Shahada black flag, which “looked like the Islamic State flag but is not the Islamic state flag”, he added.

The review is also likely to look at proposals to lower the threshold at which a protest or march can be banned, such as by taking into account the impact on a community.

Currently, police can apply for a public procession to be banned under the Public Order Act if there is a risk of serious public disorder, and Mr Sunak has previously written to Sir Mark outlining the variety of laws at his disposal to curb disruptive protests.

Lord Walney, the Government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption, said the threshold was too high because it did not consider the wider effects of demonstrations on vulnerable groups.

In her tweets on Sunday, Ms Braverman appeared unrepentant about claims over the weekend that her rhetoric had encouraged the violence.

She wrote: “Our brave police officers deserve the thanks of every decent citizen for their professionalism in the face of violence and aggression from protesters and counter-protesters in London yesterday. That multiple officers were injured doing their duty is an outrage.

“The sick, inflammatory and, in some cases, clearly criminal chants, placards and paraphernalia openly on display at the march mark a new low. Anti-Semitism and other forms of racism together with the valorising of terrorism on such a scale is deeply troubling.”

Saturday’s pro-Palestinian march was the biggest in the UK since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct 7. There have been pro-Palestinian protests in London every Saturday over five successive weeks, starting on Oct 14. The Armistice Day demonstration saw some 300,000 people march through central London to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

On Saturday evening, Matt Twist, the Met Police Assistant Commissioner, said: “This operation took place in unique circumstances, against a backdrop of conflict in the Middle East, on Armistice Day and following a week of intense debate about protest and policing. These all combined to increase community tensions.”

Senior police officers believe the level and tone of the political debate increased the numbers and ferocity of the protests.

However Tory MPs have criticised police for suggesting that political interventions contributed to the escalation in violence on Armistice Day.

Ministers accept that they cannot intervene in operational decisions, but are frustrated that police may close down legitimate criticism of “broader” policing approaches.

David Jones, a former Cabinet minister, said: “It was quite clear that the Home Secretary had proper reason to be concerned about what might happen, and indeed there was disorder.

“To suggest that was exacerbated by the Home Secretary expressing her legitimate concerns as the minister ultimately responsible for policing is frankly outrageous. It would be astonishing if the Home Secretary could not express concerns about policing.”

Jonathan Gullis, a former minister, said: “This is Mark Rowley making excuses for not being strong enough to make the right decision, which should have been to ban the demonstrations over the weekend.”

Mr Sunak said on Saturday that those involved in crimes must face the full force of the law, adding: “I condemn the violent, wholly unacceptable scenes we have seen today from the EDL [English Defence League] and associated groups and Hamas sympathisers attending the National March for Palestine.

Hamas and its supporters say such accusations are Israeli propaganda.

But a newly relevant 2015 report by the human rights group Amnesty International also alleges that one of the hospitals, Shifa, once served as a Hamas interrogation and torture centre.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, joined the criticism of Hamas on Sunday evening: “We condemn the use of hospitals and civilians as human shields by Hamas,” he said.

“Civilians must be allowed to leave the combat zone. Hostilities are severely impacting hospitals [and] taking a horrific toll on civilians.”

The Israeli military also said last week that Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, was connected to the so-called “Gaza Metro”, the tunnel network used by Hamas to transport fighters and weapons.

Medics and Hamas officials say that thousands of civilians are currently trapped in Shifa and other Gazan hospitals because of shell and sniper fire from Israeli troops.

On Sunday, staff at Shifa said that 37 babies in intensive care were are at risk of dying because the hospital’s power had run out. Both Shifa and another large hospital, al-Quds, announced that they were suspending operations.

Mr Sullivan said that while the US had urged the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to minimise the risk of hospital patients being caught in crossfire, it understood why the military was targeting them.

“The United States does not want to see firefights in hospitals where innocent people, patients receiving medical care, are caught in the crossfire and we’ve had active consultations with the Israel Defense Forces on this,” he told CBS News.

But he added: “Hamas is using hospitals as it uses many other civilian facilities, for command and control, for weapons storage, to house its fighters and this is a violation of the laws of war.”

Mr Sullivan said the US’s assessment was based on open source information rather than intelligence from the IDF, which has shared information about Hamas’s use of hospitals with Western governments.

While he did not specify what the open source information was, there have been several reports in the past linking Shifa to the brutal activities of Hamas’s secret police.

In a 2015 report, Amnesty said Hamas had commandeered a disused outpatient clinic at al-Shifa to interrogate, torture and kill opponents, in what Hamas enforcers dubbed “Operation Strangling Necks”.

The victims were people accused of collaborating with Israel, or of working with the rival Palestinian Fatah movement.

Abandoned areas of Shifa hospital “including the outpatients’ clinic area”, were used “to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects, even as other parts of the hospital continued to function as a medical centre”, the Amnesty report noted.

One Fatah activist told Amnesty he suffered two hours’ torture at the outpatients’ clinic, being beaten with a hammer while blindfolded and trussed.

The report, which investigated dozens of extrajudicial executions by Hamas’s “internal security” agents, also said victims’ bodies would be dumped at Shifa’s morgue so that families could collect them.

Many bore signs of torture and multiple gunshot wounds.

Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa director, said at the time that Hamas’s actions were “spine-chilling” and “in some cases amount to war crimes”.

In 2008, a New York Times report also said that Hamas militants posing as hospital orderlies shot an alleged collaborator in the hospital as he lay on a stretcher. Five others were murdered the same way in the previous 24 hours, the report alleged.

On Sunday night, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, doubled down on his own claims that Hamas was using hospitals’ civilian populations as human shields.

The IDF, he said, had offered fuel to Shifa and safe evacuation routes out for staff and patients, but Hamas was “doing everything in its power to keep them in harm’s way.”

“We’ve called to evacuate all the patients from Shifa, and 100 or so have already been evacuated,” he told CNN. “There’s no reason why we can’t just take the patients out of there.”

Pointing out that Hamas still held 239 Israelis hostage, he also asked rhetorically what America would do if faced with a similar situation. “It would take all its force and go after these killers,” he said. “And what if these killers embed themselves in hospitals and schools?”

Mr Netanyahu also said that now was not the time to discuss whether he should be blamed for the security failings that led to last month’s Hamas massacre.

“Did people ask Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor? Did people ask George W. Bush after 9/11?” he said.

“I’m going to answer all the questions that are required, including the responsibility, there’ll be enough time for that after the war, let’s focus on victory. That’s my responsibility.”

The Israeli leader also got words of support from Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, who said that he opposed an “immediate” ceasefire in Gaza, despite growing international calls for a halt to the conflict.

“I freely admit that I don’t think the calls for an immediate ceasefire or long pause – which would amount to the same thing – are right, because that would mean ultimately that Israel leaves Hamas the possibility of recovering and obtaining new missiles,” Mr Scholz said.

The IDF later said it attempted to supply Shifa with 300 litres of fuel but Hamas prevented the hospital from receiving it.

The fuel was left in jerry cans near the hospital, in co-ordination with staff, but Hamas the IDF said it received “evidence” that Hamas officials had stepped in to stop the delivery.

The IDF has already been involved in organising evacuations at two other hospitals, Nasser and Rantisi, co-ordinating safe passage via talks between hospital officials and IDF Arabic language speakers.

It also offered yesterday to evacuate the 37 babies from Shifa, following reports from medics that three other infants had already died.

“We lost electricity to the main ICU and to the neonatal ICU,” said Dr Marwan Abusada, head of surgery at Shifa hospital. “It is a very dangerous, very critical situation.”

Major Libby Weiss, an Israeli military spokesman, told the BBC: “The IDF is not targeting the Shifa hospital.

Scotland Yard admitted it was ‘not advisable’ for the two officers to have agreed to be pictured with the child at the pro-Palestinian march yesterday, which was marred by displays of antisemitism.

The force was also branded a ‘disgrace’ after a video posted on X showed officers in riot gear standing and watching as punches were thrown in an ugly brawl in Trafalgar Square. The Met said it is ‘making enquiries’ and it was ‘clear the reaction of officers was not what we would hope to see’.

It comes after Home Secretary Suella Braverman provoked a political storm last week by warning of a ‘perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters’.

Concerns about the apparent political biases of Met Police officers has been a recurrent theme at protests in recent years, most notoriously when several officers ‘took the knee’ at a Black Lives Matter march in 2020.

Since then, Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has sought to stamp out woke gestures at public events, saying earlier this year that there were ‘very few causes policing should be attached to’.

Yesterday there was a furious reaction to the picture of the two officers posing with the child, given the sensitivities surrounding the march due to surging levels of antisemitism in the capital.

Daniel Sugarman, director of public affairs at the Board of Deputies, said: ‘I’m just wondering what on Earth these officers were thinking.’

‘No action will be taken against the officers who we have no reason to think were doing anything other than trying to positively engage.’

In a widely shared video on X, a night-time brawl can be seen breaking out in the middle of Trafalgar Square with a lit-up National Gallery in the background.

A number of officers dressed in riot gear stand in a line and watch as punches are thrown while a woman’s voice can be repeatedly heard asking: ‘Can someone tell me why the police are on stand down?’

In another clip on board a London bus, an aggressive American Amish pro-Palestine woman wearing a black bandanna, ripped blue denim jeans, black top and coat, asks someone: ‘Are you a Jew?’

She then spots she is being filmed and takes a swipe at a woman’s phone before directing her anger at another passenger as he tries to stop her walking towards another man.

‘Why are you touching me, fam?’ she says, before adding: ‘I’ll smash your glasses into your eyes, bro.’

The answer to that question is, unfortunately, probably not as soon as you’d like – not unless federal and state governments commit to significant changes to the way they fund local road maintenance.

More than 75 per cent of Australia’s roads are managed by councils.

These are the sealed and unsealed roads that link homes and businesses to the arterials, corridors, and freeways of the road network.

Metropolitan councils often have the resources to manage their road networks professionally, but many remote and rural councils just can’t afford to maintain their vast stretches of road in a decent condition.

The poor state of our local roads is largely a problem of governance, and the way local government is funded more generally. A gradual erosion of untied federal funding over the past decade has been terrible for local roads, especially in rural areas.

At least an extra $1 billion is needed each year just to keep roads in the same unsatisfactory state they’re in today.

But many councils do not have a realistic way of raising this revenue themselves.

And while budgets may be tight, delay is a false economy: when a road is allowed to deteriorate too far, it ends up costing much more to restore.

A $1 billion funding injection would mean an extra 25 per cent on top of what councils are currently spending on road maintenance.

But it’s not only a question of money.

Funding for road maintenance needs to be better targeted to the councils that need it the most, and with cleaner lines of accountability from the funding source to the end point of better, safer roads.

Taxpayers would also get better value if the federal government stopped favouring the densely populated states of NSW and Victoria, to the detriment of Tasmania and the NT, and cut back the share of the funding pool that it directs to metropolitan councils that are already self-sufficient.

Even better targeted funding, however, won’t be enough to fix the problem of local roads.

A Grattan Institute survey of councils conducted for our report reveals that an extraordinary number of councils don’t even know what roads they manage.

A quarter of those we surveyed don’t know how many bridges they have; for remote councils, it’s almost half.

The federal government has a role to play here.

To help councils better manage their assets, the government should establish a national road hierarchy, minimum service standards, and basic data specifications for councils to follow.

State governments should provide templates to help under-resourced councils create and maintain best-practice asset management and long-term financial plans in a consistent way.

Better-practice road management would help councils cut through the morass of red tape and time-wasting obligations they currently face.

Councils are obliged to spend part of any Roads to Recovery grant on road signs acknowledging the federal government as the funding source, and to get the money out the door within six months; tied state grants often favour new construction over maintaining the roads and bridges we already have.

The federal and state governments also induce councils to divert money away from roads when they unilaterally reduce established funding, charge councils compulsory fees such as the waste and emergency services levies, and require them to administer regulations without sufficient funding to cover costs.

Motorists and truck drivers are not happy.

Macron did not attend, but expressed his support for the protest and called on citizens to rise up against “the unbearable resurgence of unbridled antisemitism”.

However, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, stayed away from the march, saying last week on X, formerly Twitter, that the march would be a meeting of “friends of unconditional support for the massacre” in Gaza.

Paris authorities deployed 3000 police troops along the route of the protest called by the leaders of the Senate and parliament’s lower house, the National Assembly, amid an alarming increase in anti-Jewish acts in France since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas after its October 7 surprise attack on Israel.

France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, but given its own World War II collaboration with the Nazis, antisemitic acts today open old scars.

Holding a French flag, Robert Fiel said marching against antisemitism is “more than a duty”.

“It’s a march against violence, against antisemitism, against all (political extremes) that are infiltrating the society, to show that the silent majority does exist,” the 67-year-old said.

– Government Guts………..the big chap in the centre………..

– Seriously: which are the Blackfullas (shouldn’t that be BLAKfullas?) and which the Palestinians?

I reckon the two sheilas left and the two central blokes are Arabs. The Ghaddafi look-alike in sandals: not sure…..
https://openart.ai/discovery/sd-1006613722665590925

Anyone know Better?

– I thought they looked like the academic staff of the ‘Faculty of Phlegm’ at the Labor Party’s ‘Face-Spitters University’.

As chants of “Death To Jews” and “Final Solution” rang through the London air, longtime Nazi leader Josef Schmidt was overwhelmed with joy. “After so many decades of being an outcast here in Britain, to now watch Nazis march through the heart of London yelling ‘Gas the Jews’ – well, it brings a tear to your eye,” said Mr. Schmidt. “I’ve had to hide my swastika flag for years, but no more! We’re going out for a triumphant walk right by Buckingham Palace.”

In failing to prove recklessness, the judge dismissed Cook’s claims for damages following a 10-day trial.

Outside court, Cook cried as he labelled the judgment a “bittersweet victory”.

He vowed to appeal the dismissal of damages and said the fight for justice wasn’t over.

“The court has just ruled that Sutton was wrong. But there was no compensation for myself, my family, my employers. We will continue to fight,” he said.

“We’ve been doing this for ourselves and every Victorian.

“This government has spent millions trying to destroy us. We will continue [to fight]… we’ll just have to work out how we’re going to afford it.”

The food supplier was forced to close in February 2019 after health officials found it provided a sandwich to Knox Private Hospital patient Jean Painter, 86, who later died with a listeria infection.

McDonald said samples were later taken from I Cook’s premises and tested, detecting listeria in ham, silverside beef, egg and lettuce, and ham and cheese sandwiches. Also, in sliced cucumber.

But those results came two days after Sutton ordered that the catering company immediately cease food production and destroy what was left on the premises.

This order, McDonald said, had an immediate impact on the business, and within weeks all customers had terminated their contracts and its 41 employees were dismissed. They never reopened.

“The order made by Dr Sutton on the evening of February 21, 2019, had an immediate and significant adverse effect on the business’ reputation,” McDonald said.

Cook’s legal team had argued Sutton acted with “reckless indifference” to the consequences of closing the kitchen, and that the closure resulted in the “complete destruction of the business”.

But the health department argued Sutton’s actions were lawful, considered and done without malice in an honest attempt to protect the community.

McDonald said the closure order was invalid because the department failed to observe the requirements of procedural fairness, which required it to give the business the opportunity to respond before the order was made. But he also found there was no reckless indifference in the decision, so Cook was not awarded any damages. He had sought up to $50 million.

“I accept Dr Sutton’s evidence that once he was satisfied that food being prepared at ICF was unsafe, there was an urgent need to make an order for cessation of production.

The population of the region is characterised by large family size, high maternal and paternal age, and a high level of inbreeding with consanguinity rates in the range of 25-60%

The most famous example of inbreeding is in ancient Egypt, where several Pharaonic dynasties collapsed after a couple of hundred years. In order to keep wealth and power within the family, the Pharaohs often married their own sister or half-sister and after a handful of generations the offspring were mentally and physically unfit to rule. Another historical example is the royal houses of Europe where royal families often married among each other because tradition did not allow them to marry people of non-royal class.

The high amount of mentally retarded and handicapped royalties throughout European history shows the unhealthy consequences of this practice. Luckily, the royal families have now allowed themselves to marry for love and not just for status.

The Muslim culture still practices inbreeding and has been doing so for longer than any Egyptian dynasty. This practice also predates the world’s oldest monarchy (the Danish) by 300 years.

A rough estimate shows that close to half of all Muslims in the world are inbred: In Pakistan, 70 percent of all marriages are between first cousins (so-called “consanguinity”) and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 More stillbirths among immigrants”

Statistical research on Arabic countries shows that up to 34 percent of all marriages in Algiers are consanguineal (blood related), 46 percent in Bahrain, 33 percent in Egypt, 80 percent in Nubia (southern area in Egypt), 60 percent in Iraq, 64 percent in Jordan, 64 percent in Kuwait, 42 percent in Lebanon, 48 percent in Libya, 47 percent in Mauritania, 54 percent in Qatar, 67 percent in Saudi Arabia, 63 percent in Sudan, 40 percent in Syria, 39 percent in Tunisia, 54 percent in the United Arabic Emirates and 45 percent in Yemen (Reproductive Health Journal, 2009 Consanguinity and reproductive health among Arabs.).