Yes: once on the high sea, you are a soul.
Time for recriminantion is either before or after the risk is taken.
Theyâre going after the RNLI now - big time!
Deleted link as I thnk itâs paywalled, so copied and pasted:
The Far Right Has Put RNLI Volunteers In The Crosshairs
Online misinformation about Channel rescues is no longer just poisonous rhetoric, itâs putting real people at risk.
Over this past weekend, we saw two protests that should have us all on very high alert - one in Dover and one in Portsmouth. I wrote about these yesterday, so I will not be labouring the point on how this coordinated act of intimidation should be ringing alarm bells in all our security services.
What I would like to look at today rather is a particular piece of fallout from these protests that, while happening largely online, could result in serious danger to life for a group of people.
That group of people are the volunteers who work with the RNLI, the Royal National Lifeboat Institute.
Now, the RNLI has been a longstanding issue of great consternation to the far-right, and weâve seen many times over the years various different movements against them. There have been calls for them to abandon boats in trouble and let the occupants drown. There have been aspersions cast that they work on behalf of the home office and are now a de facto smuggling ring. George Soros has, apparently, at times also been involved.
My usual tactic when this crops up is simple - I donate to them. Last year, I donated over ÂŁ100 to the RNLI when they came under criticism again. I was very lucky to be able to afford to do so a the time.
This time around though, there is a new, insidious angle to the online rows that happen.
On X, over the past 24 hours, photographs of two volunteers have been circulated with calls for these two men to âface justice.â To be âprosecutedâ under a Restore government. Wishes of serious harm to them and their families. These men have, apparently, now been identified by name, and their details are currently spreading like wildfire to a group of people that have just this weekend shown that they are very willing to take their Twitter fights from the online realm into the real world.
This is, to put it mildly, fucking disgusting.
It is dangerous, it is malicious, and there are very, very real risks to these two people now.
In addition to this, there is also the steady hum of blatant misinformation thatâs being spread around - all with the intent to make content-consumers tumescent with rage. To make them seethe at the injustice.
I want to take a moment to address some of these misunderstandings.
They are funded by British Taxpayers
This delightful misunderstanding comes as a response under a post on X by Kay Burley today, where she pointed out quite sensibly that:
***âThe RNLI Saves Lives. Thatâs the Whole Point.
Would-be London mayor Ant Middleton says the RNLI should be defunded, arguing that would stop it saving lives in the Channel.â***
Nev, and many others, have pushed back with the idea that the RNLI, as a taxpayer funded organisation, should be bowing to demands that they stop any sort of rescue operation involving migrant crossings.
The rather large issue, of course, is that the RNLI is not funded by the taxpayer.
In total, about 90% of the total income that the RNLI receives is from donations. About 10% comes from things like trading and investment. Government support? Negligible if at all.
This particular argument, that Nev and people like her put forward, seeks to personalise and connect their readers. They want you to think that at least a portion of the PAYE that gets listed on your payslip each month goes towards what they consider to be aiding and abetting migrants - despite the fact that it is patently untrue.
The RNLI is a Taxi Service
Benonwine, an account run by ex-Waitrose wine-man Ben Woods, pitched in with another good old trope - the RNLI being a âtaxi service for invading migrantsâ.
Except, thatâs an utterly moronic stance to take if you had even a vague idea of what the RNLI actually does, and how they operate.
Because contrary to popular belief, the RNLI crews donât get to decide who gets rescued or where they end up. Every launch by the RNLI is tasked and coordinated by HM Coastguard, and itâs Border Force and the Home Office that do the processing once ashore.
Looking at the laws that govern how the RNLI functions, under UNCLOS Article 98 and the SOLAS convention, any vessel or crew that becomes aware of people in distress has a binding legal duty to help them. It starts and ends there.
Any refusal done on the basis of nationality, skin-colour or immigration status would be a direct breach of maritime law.
I think itâs also worth just touching on the proportion of rescues the RNLI were involved with - a mere 5.7% in 2025. The other 94.3% of rescues were largely done by Border Force and other agencies.
The RNLI is Funded by George Soros
This particular gem of a brain-fart is a response that was left under a post by Dan Hodges, in which he pointed out that:
âA further example of the activity of the right-wing thugs behind the Dover and Portsmouth protests. Theyâve begun posting on-line photos of members of the RNLI lifeboat crews bringing the migrants to shore. Targeting working men who are risking their lives to save others.â
Now this one is pretty easy to check - because as a UK charity, all of the RNLIâs accounts are public and independently audited, being filed annualy with the Charity Commission for England and Wales and the OSCR in Scotland.
As already mentioned, over 90% of funding comes from donations with 10% coming from trading and investment. There is no Soros finger in the pie here. There very rarely is.
You are very welcome to review the RNLIâs own published accounts if you were inclined to do so.
The RNLI is a pull factor, encouraging more crossings
This post, from Mr Paul Dale-Smith, is one that I was genuinely hoping to find - because itâs been so thoroughly and completely debunked.
Research published by Sanchez et al in Nature in 2023, as well as separate research from the Global Public Policy Institute and the European Council on Refugees and Exile have shown that there is no statistical relationship between the presence (or absence) of rescue services and crossing numbers.
What they found to a very large extent is that conditions in origin and transit countries and smuggling-gang logistics and pricing play a far greater role.
Itâs also worth adding here that the RNLI has no sort of discretionary choice to ânot encourageâ crossings through declining rescues as that would, as already mentioned, be not only a moral failure, but under international law, a criminal one.
The increasing levels of misinformation weâve seen online have gone beyond fever pitch and are reaching their tendrils straight into the real world now. Two volunteers, who are doing good, honest work, have been put at risk.
The facts Iâve chosen to discuss here wonât, unfortunately, do very much to lessen that risk to these men - however, I do hope that it provides at least one or two people with the actual information they need to combat the misinformation being spread that leads to incidents like these.
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This is so, so, so sad and after watching that poor girl being assaulted by a lot of right wing cowards, just epitomises where everything is going.
The RNLI especially should be held as a beacon for all that is left of good. For two volunteers, whose only goal is to see all safe at sea, to be hounded like this is disgraceful. Everyone should be ashamed.
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Some time ago I checked the pay packets for the lady in charge of the RNLI and it was from memory ÂŁ96k, contrast that against the same for help the heroâs at a little short of ÂŁ500k whoâs really helping whom? Where does the organisation sit on refugees? Like Ant Middleton, on the right.
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The days of âignore them and theyâll go awayâ are long gone, and I think that was a mistake many made in the run up to the EU Referendum.
Perhaps itâs time for anyone with a moral compass to now speak up and call out these people every chance they get, be they family, friends or colleagues.
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Yes, that was the fundamental injustice. I used to like Yvette Cooper but he screwed that one up, no doubt with Starmer twisting her arm.
I read on Bluesky, I think it was, that the man who organised the Dover demos, Tommy ten namesâ ex-bodyguard, said he organised his first demo with money from a US right wing think tank.
Also alleged here that it is a US based that did fund Thomas previously, and the same US group has links with others in UK politics.
FB is not in itself a reliable source, but there seems to be a genuine video of Thomas himself there to back up the claim. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1275550117283317/posts/1610920260412966/
So,is it illegal to block a public highway or not?A couple of years ago,pensioners were getting dragged off the road,banged up and charged for sitting on the road during the âJust stop oilâ protests,not to mention the media constantly reporting about how disgraceful it was to stop people getting around,not a lot of complaining going on in the papers about this lot!
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It looked to me like they were playing quite a clever tactical game. As one group were moved off the street, another few would move onto the road a few metres away.
With the pensioners they were sitting down and refusing to move. Identifiable Individuals were creating a hold up, not a swirling mass.
The mob were causing a hold up, but not necessarily individuals who could be dealt with.
They may be nasty, but they, or those leading them, are far from stupid.
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Were the alien hunting men in black repeatedly crossing a pedestrian crossing? Is that allowed 
If so, Re the pensioners, then youâd only need two with their zimmer frames !
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Who is funding Palestine protests etc? The observers/supervisors for example.
Just wondering about the security being heavy handed given the propensity of crazies from the left to actually kill right wingers. Mr Kirk and Anne widdecombe most recently.
Also young Bob, a rightwing Christian, recently attacked and beaten by a left wing mob.
Antifa who regularly threaten violence.
Just saying.
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Antifa?? Is that Aliceâ s Mum?
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Who is Alice? Who is Anti Fa?
You know thatâs not actually an organisation?
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Youâre just saying nonsense since there is no such organisation as Antifa, however much the American right may try to magic one in existence. Itâs the first rule of such things.
I may have stood next to various people some years back that some press, and some authorities, claimed were the âcyber terrorist, violent mobâ called Anonymous. Only Anonymous didnât exist so try as they might to whip people into a frenzy about these scary kids wearing guy Fawkes masks it never took because fundamentally it was just a group of individuals standing in the same place at the same time.
Ironically these scum in black weâre seeing in Portsmouth have called themselves Patriot Platform, and have a leader and hierarchy, and so can be held responsible for their actions, things like Antifa just donât exist.
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You realise thatâs exactly how the far Right argue things, donât you?
Meanwhile, it doesnât seem to have occurred to any left-winger herein that the most likely cause of no arrests is no offences committed.
These pesky right-wingers seem annoyingly law-abiding, donât they?
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Thereâs a law, introduced sometime last year, that bans the wearing of face coverings in public, so they were breaking the law. Why the police didnât enact the law is a question theyâll have to answer.
Anti-Facist Action - AFA or Antifa is very much a thing.
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