All posts tagged: Labour council

Fury as Labour council promotes grotesque ‘antisemitic’ art exhibition | Politics | News

Fury as Labour council promotes grotesque ‘antisemitic’ art exhibition | Politics | News

One of the images on display (Image: -) A Labour-run council is promoting a “grotesque” art display which critics say uses antisemitic images in the guise of supporting the Palestinians. Campaigners insisted Thanet District Council must apologise after promoting the exhibition by artist Matthew Collings, which features images of Israelis as demons with blood spewing out of their mouths, and shows a pro-Israel “lobby” hypnotising the world The exhibition is labelled “Drawings Against Genocide” and Thanet District Council is promoting the show, at Joseph Wales Studio in Margate, on the Visit Thanet website, which is run by the authority’s tourism and culture team. A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “These images are grotesque. This isn’t art but incitement, drawing on classic tropes. “Modern art is often as much, if not more, about the inner feelings of the artist than about the subject, and here the artist’s inner feelings about Jews and the Jewish state are all too clear.” READ MORE: Alarming university study finds 20% of students don’t want a Jewish housemate “It’s a …

Council ‘can’t afford’ elections… but spends £30k on migrants’ mental health

Council ‘can’t afford’ elections… but spends £30k on migrants’ mental health

A Labour council that cancelled its local election to cut costs spent tens of thousands of pounds on an “asylum seeker mental health and trauma project”. Blackburn with Darwen borough council is one of 29 local authorities granted government permission to halt its local election this year. The cancellations have resulted in Sir Keir Starmer being accused of “running scared” of the electorate at a time when polls show a collapse in support for Labour. Defending Blackburn’s decision to ask the Government for a postponement, Phil Riley, the council’s Labour leader, previously said the council would “rather the money went on delivering services people want than on an election which would have to be repeated just a year later and on different ward boundaries”. “It costs around £200,000 to hold an election,” he added. However, the same local authority spent £30,000 on commissioning a project that focused on the mental health of asylum seekers, The Telegraph can reveal. A contract awarded in January 2024, when Mr Riley and his party were in control, granted the …