🐾 Dave – The Rambling Donkey

  Lucy Connolly was released from HMP Peterborough in August 2025 after serving part of a 31-month sentence for inciting racial hatred. She had pleaded guilty at Birmingham Crown Court the previous October to publishing a threatening and abusive post on X, formerly Twitter, following the murders in Southport in July 2024. Her message, posted on 29 July 2024, called for “mass deportation” and told followers to “set fire to the hotels” that were housing asylum seekers. The post was viewed more than 300 000 times and reposted around 940 times before being deleted. She was arrested on 6 August 2024 and charged under Part III of the Public Order Act 1986. When sentencing her, Judge Melbourne Inman KC said the message was published “when there was a particularly sensitive social climate” and that she had intended to “incite serious violence.” Connolly served about 40 per cent of her sentence before being released on licence and remains under supervision until the end of the term. The Pro...

  On 6 January 2021, thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered in Washington, D.C., near the White House for what was billed as a “Save America” rally. It was a cold winter morning, and the outgoing president took the stage to speak for more than an hour. His tone was defiant, his message familiar: that the election had been stolen from him, that his supporters had to fight to save their country. He told them, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” but he also warned, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” After the speech, the crowd moved towards the Capitol, where Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s victory. Among them were ordinary citizens, political activists, and organised extremists. Within an hour, the protest became a riot. Barricades fell, windows were smashed, and the chanting of slogans gave way to shouts and screams. The mob flooded the steps and c...

Every year, as October draws to a close, the same chorus rises from pulpits and Facebook feeds alike: “Christians shouldn’t celebrate Halloween. It glorifies evil. It opens the door to darkness.” Yet few feasts are more deeply rooted in Christian imagination — and few refusals less so — than Halloween. To understand it rightly is to recover a truth the Gospels teach again and again: that the quiet faith of the humble outshines the loud virtue of the self-righteous, and that light is never found by hiding from the dark. The very name “Halloween” means “All Hallows’ Eve,” the night before All Saints’ Day. Like Christmas Eve, it began as a vigil — the Church gathering at night to remember the faithful departed, to light candles against the darkness, to proclaim that Christ’s victory extends even to the grave. The flicker of candlelight in a pumpkin is not a flirtation with evil; it is an act of defiance. It says, in the language of children, that the darkness does not win. It ...