From: Peter Gregson <Peter.N.Gregson@outlook.com>
Sent: 21 August 2026 00:19
To: northedinnews@gmail.com
Subject: FW: Workers Party candidate in forthcoming Edinburgh by-election; Whistle-blowing; protected cycle tracks; Hamas; Gaza; Corbyn & Antisemitism
Dear North Edinburgh News,
After I saw your piece on the forthcoming byelection at https://nen.press/tag/by-elections-3-september/ about the Communists wanting to promote Gaza Twinning, I wanted to forward you the following email that I sent out to journalists earlier today.
I also wanted to declare to you that I was astounded that you managed to mention the Gaza Twinning bid, that I began in 2019 and fought so hard to get to Policy Committee on 30th August 2022 (see https://www.twingaza.com/what-you-can-do/ ), without mentioning myself, my petition, and my ongoing Gaza twinning work. Even a cursory amount of research on your part would have thrown up the Gaza Twinning website.
It was as if I did not exist- and the thousands of pounds and thousands of hours that I sank into promoting my twinning bid amounted to nothing. If you scroll through the posts at the bottom of my website at www.twingaza.com you will see just how much I had to do (including handing myself into the Police and asking them to arrest me), in order to get the scheme before Policy Committee. The UK Lawyers for Israel and the Friends of Israel mounted a prolonged and well-documented campaign (by me) to do everything they could to scunner this project. Over the summer of 2022, I arranged for thousands of letters of support to flood the mailbox of every single of our 58 councillors with residents from their very own wards, calling upon their Councillor to support Gaza twinning. This was after the Tory Group had said earlier in 2022 that there was no interest from Edinburgh’s citizens in twinning with Gaza; I was determined to prove them wrong. In the event they dared not raise this objection at Policy Committee on 30th August, for they knew there was massive and widespread support across the whole of Edinburgh for twinning with Gaza.
On the day of the Committee meeting on the 30th August 2022, I had the Mayor of Gaza (Yaya Sarraj, who speaks excellent English), Gaza Sky Geeks, the Dundee-Nablus Twinning Association and numerous others lined up to speak to the Policy Committee in favour of twinning. Earlier that week, Edinburgh’s Depute Provost, Cllr Lezley Marion Cameron, had met with the Gaza Mayor online in a Zoom meeting that I hosted (Cammy was busy dealing with the binmen’s strike) and twinning prospects looked very positive.
However, not only was I, as the petitioner, denied, at the very last moment, the chance to present my twinning petition- by Cllr Mandy Watt (who had previously told me that Edinburgh would be better twinning with Tel Aviv!) , but every other speaker (who had previously been greenlit by the Clerk to the Committee and the chair, Cllr Cammy Day to speak) was suddenly also denied – by both Cammy and Mandy- who suddenly declared there was “no need to hear from them”. The Committee then proceeded, with the connivance of the Greens, to knock up this motion http://www.tinyurl.com/GazaMotion which excluded both myself and the Edina-Gaza Twinning Association (a body of 42 citizens) from any further involvement in the bid. They then kicked it well and truly into the long grass by referring the whole matter to the Edinburgh Partnership.
However, whether by accident or by design, the Council Leader’s office neglected to inform the Edinburgh Partnership that they had been called to act by the Council (who actually host the Partnership). Cammy’s memory seems to have quite failed him on this matter, for I believe he chaired the Edinburgh Partnership at the time. After 4 months I found out that the Edinburgh Partnership 14 members were utterly unaware of the Council’s decision to “call upon them to explore projects with Gaza” and I finally managed to force Cammy’s officers to submit a letter to the Partnership informing the members of the Council motion.
After that- nothing. Not even the genocide of the Gazans, which began in earnest a year later, was enough to prompt the Partnership members to act. Since 2022 I have pursued the Council by many means to honour their August 2022 Committee decision to “work with Gazans on matters of mutual interest”. No matter that none of the partnership had contact with their Gazan equivalents (whilst I did) but none of them spoke Arabic (whilst I did)- this bunch of coffee-swilling bureaucrats had precisely zero interest in doing a single thing to explore projects with Gazans. For example, I had worked with the Gazan Health Ministry (I was also an NHS employee at the time) to propose a bundle of projects to NHS Lothian Health Board (a Partnership member) but the NHS Chief Executive was not really interested.
Finally on 30th July, the Council responded to my efforts to drag them into working with Gaza. To read what they had to say, please go to https://www.twingaza.com/edinburgh-councils-lack-of-action-on-palestine-is-tragic/
To this moment, on a daily basis, I continue to recruit, using the flyer at https://www.twingaza.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GAZA-Flyer-July-2026-2.pdf , new volunteers to work with Gazans exchanging English and Arabic on a 1-1 basis (see https://www.twingaza.com/english-and-arabic-with-a-gazan/ ).
This has been ongoing since 2022 and I have 30 volunteers at present (some have been working with the same Gazans all through the current war, providing huge emotional support) – and a new one joins every day; I have a dozen Gazans ready and waiting to find volunteers speaking English to work with. The Gaza twinning work is alive and very much ongoing- see point 3 below.
It would be great to get just a little acknowledgement of the effort and money I pour into Gaza twinning. I was aware that the communists were going to feature Gaza twinning in their flyers, but somehow, I expected them to at least credit my input somewhere. Sadly, they seem to be above that sort of honorific.
But, to conclude, you can be in no doubt that, should I be elected as councillor for the WPGB for Portobello/Craigmillar, I will give Edinburgh Council’s Policy Committee no peace until they have honoured the commitment they made 4 years ago.
Best wishes
Pete Gregson
Workers Party GB candidate
Read my manifesto at https://www.twingaza.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Pete-Gregson-Leaflet-All-in-one-scaled.webp
From: Peter Gregson <Peter.N.Gregson@outlook.com>
Sent: 20 August 2026 11:13
To: Peter Gregson <peter.n.gregson@outlook.com>
Subject: Workers Party candidate in forthcoming Edinburgh by-election; Whistle-blowing; protected cycle tracks; Hamas; Gaza; Corbyn & Antisemitism
Dear Journalist/Editor,
I wondered if you might be interested in covering any of these topics:
- I am running for office as the Workers Party GB candidate in Scotland in a City of Edinburgh Council by-election on 3rd Sept; in Craigmillar (the 4th poorest housing scheme in Scotland) and Portobello (one of the most affluent areas)… (see my 2-minute promo video https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ureK498xjts )… (my manifesto/flyer is at https://www.twingaza.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Pete-Gregson-Leaflet-All-in-one-scaled.webp )… If elected, I would be the first Councillor ever to be appointed to the body he had been fired from.
I’ll be screening the film I made in 2012 for “Save the Brae”, on the 30th August, at a public meeting to be held in the school that I fought to save, Castlebrae High School, and for which I was fired from my Council position for supporting.
I was also fired for forcing Edinburgh Council to adopt Scotland’s first-ever Whistle-blower hotline in 2014, one that it now proudly boasts of (see https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/opinion/pete-gregson-new-whistleblowing-hotline-hailed-a-success-623627 )
In 2019, I was expelled from a Council meeting for suggesting its CCWEL cycling scheme might result in the asphyxiation of the Scottish Tory leader’s baby (see https://theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2019/05/pete-gregson-ejected-from-council-meeting-today/ ; a meeting to which the police were called and whose audio footage was muted on the Council’s webcam. I have recently been proven correct in my then prediction that pollution levels have RISEN and cycling levels have DROPPED thanks to the Council’s wasteful cycling measures (I speak as a committed cyclist)
- I am pushing a campaign to get Hamas de-proscribed by the UK Government (see https://www.ipetitions.com/p/call-for-removal-of-hamas-political-wing-from-the-uks-proscribed-list-of-terrorist-bodies/ )
- I am busier than ever linking English speakers to Gazans on a 1-1 basis; I now have 30 volunteers working with 30 Gazans, helping them improve their English so as to get work online (see https://www.twingaza.com/english-and-arabic-with-a-gazan/ ). I am also pushing Edinburgh Council to honour its promises to Gaza that they made because of my twinning campaign, in 2022 ( see https://www.twingaza.com/edinburgh-councils-lack-of-action-on-palestine-is-tragic/ )
- Last week at the EIF Fringe, I tried and failed to doorstep Jeremy Corbyn over his attacks on my “antisemitic” banner (see https://rumble.com/v7e24cm-corbyns-doorstep-failure-at-eif-fringe-2026.html )
To conclude, the Herald newspaper piece from yesterday may be of interest to you, along with my response to it regarding my activities around Hamas (see https://www.onepalestine.land/letter-to-the-herald/ )
You can get me anytime on 0758 472 2191
Best wishes
Pete Gregson
Edinburgh