- “Rishi Sunak begs angry Tories to return after by-election carnage” – Rishi Sunak blames the Tories two by-election losses in Wellingborough and Kingswood on low turnout and warns that voting Reform would “put Keir Starmer in power”, reports the Mail.
- “Reform is not just a flash in the pan, these results show it holds the key to Tory re-election” – The right-of-centre party came third in both Wellingborough and Kingswood achieving double digit percentages of the vote, reports the Telegraph.
- “Reform secure best by-election result – are they a threat to Tories?” – Election experts say the by-election results “backed up” Reform’s national opinion polling, which has seen the party hover around 10% for weeks, says the Mail.
- “The Tories should be worried about Reform” – The Tories failed on all the traditional vote-winning concerns: the economy and taxation, the state of the NHS, the criminal justice system, according to Patrick O’Flynn in the Spectator.
- “Reform is obliterating the Tories. It’s too late to avoid electoral catastrophe” – Big tax cuts might have prevented these by-election disasters, but Mr Sunak chose otherwise, says Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
- “The Tories laughed as we launched Reform U.K. – they’re not laughing now” – Conservative MPs deserve to face electoral oblivion for their woeful performance, says Richard Tice in the Telegraph.
- “‘Zero tolerance’ policing and tackling ‘woke madness’: Reform U.K.’s pledges at a glance” – The right-of-centre party wants to make ‘tough decisions’ and have ‘difficult conversations’ about the future of the country, according to the Telegraph.
- “Nigel Farage considers comeback as Reform Party leader” – Reform took home 10.8% of the vote in the Kingswood by-election and 13% in Wellingborough, prompting Farage to show fresh interest in becoming leader of the party, says the Times.
- “Nigel Farage vows to make life ‘very difficult’ for new NatWest boss” – NatWest Group has appointed Paul Thwaite as its permanent Chief Exec, succeeding Dame Alison Rose who stepped down in the wake of the Nigel Farage debanking row last year, reports the Mail.
- “Navalny’s Hell on Earth” – The FKU IK-3 penal colony, where Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was murdered, is a Soviet-era prison camp located deep in the Arctic Circle, says the Mail.
- “The Navalny I knew was moral, witty and charming – unlike his nemesis Putin” – the opposition leader’s defiance and optimism were dangerous weapons that the Russian leader had no idea how to counter, reports the Telegraph.
- “‘Putin, you will answer for what you did to my husband’” – “If it’s true, I want Putin, his whole crew and all of his friends to know that they will answer for what they have done to our country, my family and my husband,” says Navalny’s widow, according to the Mail. “That day will come very soon.”
- “Putin must pay for ‘murder’ of Navalny, say world leaders” – Joe Biden among world leaders to speak out against Russian regime after concluding Putin was responsible for the death of Navalny, reports the Telegraph.
- “Labour’s plan to slap VAT on school fees is a tax on aspiration” – The idea that private schools are solely the preserve of the rich is a colossal misconception, says Inaya Folarin Iman in the Mail.
- “Where is the ECHR when Brits are having properties seized for asylum-seekers?” – Human rights activists don’t seem that bothered when the right to property is breached, says Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
- “How Sadiq Khan came up with names of the six London Overground lines” – The Labour Mayor gave branding firm DNCO five months and £115,275 of taxpayers’ money to come up with the names Lioness, Mildmay, Windrush, Weaver, Suffragette and Liberty, reports the Mail.
- “Maybe we shouldn’t be ‘annoying all the right people’” – On his Substack, Ed West reflects that politicising commonly shared amenities to ‘annoy all the right people’ may not be the best way to run a city.
- “MS Society defends axing volunteer, 90, who was confused over pronouns” – Fran Itkoff was fired after 60 years of voluntary service with the National Multiple Scelorsis Society because she was unable to master modern-day pronoun use, according the Mail.
- “The Maoist cruelty behind the trans crusade” – The ousting of a 90 year-old charity worker for querying preferred pronouns is a new low for the woke movement, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
- “Le Tissier says he has ‘zero regrets’ about his conspiracy theories” – Matt Le Tissier has insisted he has no regrets over his sceptical views about the Covid vaccines, reprots the Mail.
- “Why did behavioural scientists crave mask mandates?” – It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the U.K.’s COVID-19 Inquiry will be the most expensive pantomime of all time, says Gary Sidley in the Critic.
- “Skin cancer diagnosis delays caused by lockdowns led to 12,000 years of life lost” – Scientific analysis of records from more than 50,000 patients calculated how their disease would have progressed if their treatment hadn’t been delayed by the lockdown, says the Telegraph.
- “Royal College of GPs forced into U-turn after cancelling gender-critical doctors’ conference” – A Labour peer is “shocked and disappointed that medical body tried to close down debate on important clinical issue”, reports the Telegraph.
- “What’s with all the fuss over Simon Fanshawe?” – In the Critic, Freddie Attenborough writes about the latest trans row to engulf Edinburgh University.
- “Exeter Under Ideology” – Left-wing race and gender theory have devoured a once-prestigious American private school, says Christopher Rufo in City Journal.
- “John Lewis branded ‘irresponsible’ by GPs over breast binder advice for transgender children” – The recommendation in the department store’s magazine for 70,000 staff members that trans adolescent girls should try breast binders has been condemned by doctors, reports the Telegraph.
- “Donald Trump in court: attempt to delay Stormy Daniels case rejected” – Donald Trump will face a criminal trial next month over the allegation he paid hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, says the Times.
- “Trump must pay more than $350 million for fraudulently inflating income, judge rules” – In another blow to the presidential hopeful, Judge Arthur Engoron finds that Trump and his co-defendants submitted “blatantly false financial data” and must pay a huge fine, according to the Telegraph.
- “Meta, Amazon, Google and others shed 3,071 staff in do-goody ‘ESG’ roles” – More people left ESG jobs than started them for much of 2023, marking the reversal of a previously-growing sector, reports the Mail.
- “JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock drop out of massive UN climate alliance in stunning move” – JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock and State Street confirmed they are exiting the world’s largest climate alliance which seeks to push investors away from funding the fossil fuel sector, says Fox Business.
- “Satellite photos show Egypt building a wall near Gaza Strip as Israeli offensive on Rafah looms” – Egypt is building a wall and is levelling land near its border with the Gaza Strip, according to AP News.
- “‘Run by the Mob’: How Anti-Semites Took Over Stanford’s Campus” – On January 24th, Stanford University held a forum on combating antisemitism which quickly descended into an antisemitic hate fest, reports the Free Beacon.
- “As the air goes out of Just Stop Oil, new tyre deflaters hit the streets” – Climate campaigners targeted a middle class street in Fulham earlier this week, deflating the tyres of a car that belonged to a handicapped women who couldn’t then take her child to hospital, says the Times.
- “Cambridge is biased against rich white boys, says ‘anti-woke’ vice-chancellor” – James Tooley, Vice-Chancellor of Buckingham University, warns that diversity targets are discriminating against straight white males, reports the Times.
- “Met Office’s stormy January was just average” – January was in fact no more stormy than usual, reports Paul Homewood in TCW – Defending Freedom.
- “Neoracism, Finally on Defense” – Coleman Hughes has written a great book defending colour-blindness in American public life, says Andrew Sullivan on his Substack.
- “We didn’t find any racial bias in police shootings” – Ex-Harvard economist Roland Fryer explains to the Free Press’s Bari Weiss how his copper-bottomed finding that black Americans were no more likely to be killed by the police than whites caused an absolute meltdown among his academic colleagues, who strongly advised him not to publish.
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State Power Grab School Vaccination
latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
Welcome to sunny Berkshire.
Nothing to see here apart from the 5G tower and the chemtrails:
Scars across a clear blue sky
The Tories laughed as we launched Reform U.K. – they’re not laughing now
I’m sure Mr Tice realised this was a bit of a Bob Monkhouse moment.
‘‘People used to laugh at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well they‘re not laughing now.’
JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock drop out of massive UN climate alliance in stunning move
This will be what lies behind Labour dropping the climate pledge. Starmer and Reeves went to Davos, cap in hand, and found the green investment funds weren’t forthcoming.
“green investment funds weren’t forthcoming.”
Which has possibly saved British taxpayers a lot of money. The lying Kneel was in no position to borrow money that increasingly poor British taxpayers would have been responsible for repaying.
The Navalny I knew was moral, witty and charming – unlike his nemesis Putin
‘If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong,’
A. Navalny
‘M: And on which piece of cloth was your focus on? Which garment had the highest risk factor?
K: The underpants.
M: The underpants.
K: A risk factor in what sense?
M: Where the concentration could be highest?
K: Well, the underpants.
M: Do you mean from the inner side or from the outer? I have an entire questionnaire about this, which I am about to discuss with Makshakov, but will require your knowledge as well.
K: Well, we were processing the inner side. This is what we were doing.
M: Well, imagine some underpants in front of you, which part did you process?
K: The inner, where the groin is.
M: The groin?
K: Well, the crotch, as they call it. There is some sort of seams there, by the seams.
M: Wait, this is important. Who gave you the order to process the codpiece of the underpants?
K: We figured this on our own. They told us to work on the inner side of the underpants.
M: Who said that? Makshakov?
K: Y-yes.
M: I am writing it down. The inner side. Ok… the grey-colored underwear, do you remember?
K: Blue.’
Bellingcat 21 Dec 2020
Makshakov is the squad’s commander, and Alexey Alexandrov and Ivan Osipov were the main perpetrators of the poisoning in Tomsk.
Col Stanislav Makshakov:
Military scientist
Makshakov allegedly supervised the Navalny plot and ran the seven operatives who carried it out. He regularly communicated with the FSB squad, Bellingcat reported, citing phone records. Makshakov previously worked at the State Organic Synthesis Institute in the closed military town of Shikhany-1, also known as military unit 61469. Soviet scientists developed novichok in the 1970s in the institute’s secret laboratories. Makshakov reports to Gen Kirill Vasilyev, director of the FSB Criminalistics Institute, according to Bellingcat. Vasilyev is subordinate to Maj Gen Vladimir Bogdanov, former chief of the Criminalistics Institute and deputy director of the FSB’s Scientific-Technical Service. Vasilyev’s superior is the FSB’s director Alexander Bortnikov. He in turn reports to Vladimir Putin.
I’ve been busy & just woke up so I’m firing blind atm , at first glance I thought it was the Bud Light person you were covering . Anyway a week after TC sat down with Putin are we to believe that rather than basking in the post interview afterglow he’s ordered the inner ring piece resting seam of Mulvanys Skidders to be lathered with Novichok which makes him CIA villian number one again !
A Piece Of Bread Would Buy A Bag Of Gold
I notice the reports of Ukrainian withdrawal from Avdiivka;
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4473848-ukraine-says-forces-are-withdrawing-from-avdiivka/
The article talks about the urgent need for USA money to redress the balance in the war.
”A senior U.S. defense official told reporters Friday that Ukraine faces challenges across the entire front from Russian offensives if more aid is not approved.”
But to my mind you do not fight a war with money, you fight with arms and troops. Is there a huge pile of armaments somewhere just waiting for Ukraine to purchase? This site is called the Daily Sceptic and in that spirit I would have to say that if the USA gives that money I am highly sceptical as to where it will go and how it will be used? I am more used to Agricultural markets than any other sort and simple market logic tells me that when there is loads of money and little produce; QED the price goes up. Somebody somewhere is going to be cashing in but I am not sure it is going to reverse the position in this war?
Of course Defence companies will make money but I don’t see any evidence that their earnings are much higher than normal. A lot of the stocks going to Ukraine are close to time expiry and would have to be replaced in any case.
”About $60bn would go to supporting Ukraine. The country would receive nearly $14bn to rearm itself through the purchase of weapons and munitions, and nearly $15bn for support services, such as military training and intelligence sharing. About $8bn would go to help Ukraine’s government continue basic operations (with a prohibition on money going toward pensions). There’s also about $1.6bn to help Ukraine’s private sector and about $480m to help Ukrainians displaced by the war.
About a third of the money allocated to supporting Ukraine will actually be spent replenishing the US military, which has been depleted by the weapons and equipment being sent to Kyiv.’
‘Lockheed Martin forecast its 2024 profit below Wall Street expectations on Tuesday, as the U.S. defense contractor’s largest aeronautics segment that makes the F-35 jets faces supply chain disruptions.’
Reuters 23 Jan 2024
“A piece of bread would buy a bag of gold…”
Larry Norman?
It has been widely reported that the amount of cash that goes to Ukraine is minimal. By “cash” I do not meen dollar bills but available bank balances for the Ukjrainians to spend.
The overwhelming support given to Ukraine is arms and munitions and the sterling or dollar figures reported are the value of them. In some cases it was found the USA was valuing redundant out-of-date stock at full replacement value but I understand that has now changed and a realistic value is put on older stuff.
There have been two main problems with the sipport the west has given Ukraine.
First, what was promised has arrived late and from some countries the delay has been so long it might not arrive at all. It appears the reserve stocks in the west were not properly maintained so if takes a very long time to check them and even to renovate them.
Second, all western governments repeatedly reduced defence spending following the end of the Cold War. Clearly a reconsideration of defence needs and a likely reduction was the right approach but it was taken much too far. Our reserve stocks were depleted and not replaced. Many effective arms were just destroyed while others were replaced but by tiny numbers (eg MBTs, aircraft or all types and ships).
As a result of the above, many arms manufacturing plants were closed, even demolished, and what remains has not been updated for decades. Our manufacturing capability is low and for some components, at least in the UK, it is Zero.
‘Met office’s stormy January was just average’. I have noticed that the disparity between forecasts and what we actually experience is becoming wider. For today and tomorrow in our area we have a met office ‘weather warning’ for bands of heavy rain, yet their actual forecast online shows light rain and/or drizzle with very low totals of rainfall. An independent weather site I use shows similar. So why the weather warning? could it be, at year’s end, they can trumpet that in the past twelve months they have had to put out more weather warnings than ever before, which indicates the progression of ‘climate change’?
Maybe. There is evidently a strong whiff of policy forecasting from them, but it seems to me that they have tended to become more defensive since the October 1987 débacle, which gave them a bad press. I often compare the met office forecasts with one from https://www.westweather.co.uk/, which uses the American GFS model, and there’s often a lot of variation between the two.
https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1758202588888252449/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1758202588888252449¤tTweetUser=TheChiefNerd&mode=profile
The mind boggles…..
Hahaha…enjoy those just deserts, you antisemite tosser!!!
”Comedian Paul Currie is continuing to face backlash after he abused a Jewish audience member and forced him to leave while encouraging the audience to scream “get the f*ck out.”
The controversial comedian has released a statement appealing for “eyewitness accounts” after denying the antisemitic outburst.
“HELLO. This is a message from me Paul Currie. I am pleading to any of the 140 audience members who attended by show SHTOOM on Sat 10th Feb at Soho Theatre to send me their statement to what they saw. I’m trying to get as many eye witness accounts. Or if you know anyone that was there ask them to send me their eye witness accounts.”
In the wake of the backlash, his upcoming performances at comedy events in Melbourne, Brisbane and
Lisburn, Northern Ireland have been cancelled with an upcoming show in Glasgow now being ‘reviewed.’
Soho Theatre, the venue where the outburst took place have permanently banned the comedian from performing at the venue again.”
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1758705005001908388
Doing that to any member of the audience is not a good look and equally so for any who went with the herd and participated.
An interesting article on weaponising anti-semitism.
“As some plausibly argue, one manifestation of the redefinition of antisemitism as anti-Zionism is that antisemitism is no longer about ‘who hates Jews’, but ‘who Jews hate’.”
https://www.declassifieduk.org/weaponising-antisemitism-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/
Just because the Jewish guy and his friend didn’t stand up and clap at the end when the antisemite produced a Ukraine and Palestine flag the antisemite turned on them and went mental, encouraging the crowd to join in on the bullying and abuse. Here he is explaining what happened ( 3mins );
”Israeli man thrown out of theatre by comedian Paul Currie for being Jewish speaks out.
“On stage, he turned to me and waited for me to apologise. He shouted and cursed at me before ordering me to leave and began chanting ‘ceasefire now.”
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1758701968183181383
Where in all of this was the audience member attacked for being Jewish? He and his friend stayed seated when the flags were brought out – an understandable response to any flag waving intended to invoke herd mentality.
The other people who left might have been Jewish but in this GB News interview, it was an assumption. When rabble-rousing starts, some will sensibly depart regardless of religion or ethnicity.
He sounds perfectly level headed and sensible to me, I think he was treated terribly by mob mentality goaded on by a braindead so called comedian.
Defending the action of mob mentality will lead to nothing good!
I totally agree, see my first comment.
However the comedian appeared to be triggered by their failure to engage in flag allegiance rather than being Jewish as reported. How did he know they were Jewish or was it karma? Those downticks without providing contrary information isn’t enlightening.
See the link in my comment on weaponising anti-semitism.
Did this young lad know anything about this “comedian?”
Excellent
Rishi Sunak is proposing tactical voting – hold your nose and vote Conservative to keep Labour out.
It seems to me there’s an increasing appetite for strategic voting, that is voting for someone whose principles you support, knowing that will lose the election but destroy the Conservative party and, after a period of great pain and setback, probably the Labour party too.
Taking a long-term view seems the only wise course when too many short-term plasters have been applied to a failing system.
Under Secretary of State for Scotland John Lamont MP campaigns on the basis that voting for him is the only way of keeping the SNP out as there’s historically not been enough support for other candidates. Pushing such messages is obviously intended to maintain that situation.
Even if people vote for who they believe will represent them, there’s no requirement for the MP to do so.
We should have recall rights.
Interesting downvotes yet what is factually incorrect?
Does the timing of the Navalny death, for whatever reason, not seem beneficial to anyone other than Putin?
Should the worse come to pass, we can expect to never see this headline.
“[Insert leader name] must pay for ‘murder’ of Assange, say world leaders”
The wall-to-wall coverage of Navalny’s death by the Western MSM yesterday – it even kicked the Gaza genocide off Al Jazeera news for several hours – was astonishing, right up there with the covid propaganda circus. OTOH Gonzalo Lira’s death in prison was completely ignored except in alternative media, and Julian Assange’s appeal next week only gets the occasional mention here and there. Clearly the global fallout from the Tucker Carlson interview needed some major distraction to reset the hoi polloi’s attention.
Repost from yesterday – The Duran provided good, balanced coverage.
https://rumble.com/v4drjik-alexey-navalny-dies-in-prison.html
Or Gonzalo Lira
I’ve come to the conclusion I’m too far down the rabbit hole. When I heard about the Navalny murder, and all my brainwashed colleagues talking about the evil Putin, my very first thought was “Well played Biden puppet master. There’s no way anyone will look further than Putin for the culprit. What a brilliant way to apply more international pressure on Putin whilst also making Putin unpopular in his homeland. Win, win, for the West”. That is crazy right?
I’m with you on the rabbit hole FL. When I heard ‘clot’ mentioned, especially in a 47 year old, I immediately thought: ‘jab’. Silly me. Here in the West we’ve become so inured to the ‘sudden and unexpected’ cardiac and clot deaths due to the jab that it’s taken as normal now; we barely bat an eye when yet another sports person or actor drops these days. So I clearly need to dose up on MSM propaganda to get my head back on the right Russia-bad Narrative™ .
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/02/16/vladimir-putin-must-pay-prison-murder-alexei-navalny-death/
who dunnit? Who benefits?
Am I the only one to think the Tories demise is nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with the war on British identity, liberty, energy?
I have posted previously that I firmly believe that the destruction of the Conservative Party is being deliberately engineered so your view that it links “with the war on British identity, liberty, energy” certainly has merit.
“MS Society defends axing volunteer, 90, who was confused over pronouns”
This is probably the most disgusting story I’ve ever read! MS charity can swivel until this hero women is reinstated!
supportercare@mssociety.org.uk
Let them know your veiws!
In GBNews today I found this:
Petrol drivers paying £1,200 more at forecourts than EV owners charging at home
The article has some numbers based on an electric Corsa vs a 1.2l petrol Corsa which indicate that using a home ‘smart’ charger will cost £231 per annum for a 12,000 mile/year driving habit or £1,461 in petrol. It also suggests that charging from a standard domestic 13A plug will cost 3 times as much as a smart charger.
So £1,200 more per year for a petrol car…
The electric Corsa costs £12,820 more than the petrol (Vauxhall site list price).
At £1,200 ‘saving’ per year it will take 10.7 years to break even during which time you will have driven 128,200 miles.
If you don’t have a smart charger the ‘saving’ will be £678 per year. So it will take 19 years and 226,000 miles to break even.
I understand insurance is more expensive for electric cars but I can’t find anything about servicing costs. Maybe that will help push these crazy numbers down a bit.
I don’t think depreciation would be much short of 100% for any 19 year car.
I’ve no idea how accurate those figures are, but assuming they are, they rely on the relative price of electricity and petrol remaining stable. I think there’s a good chance electricity will get much more expensive and petrol stay the same or get cheaper. If the current plans to turn us 100% electric are pursued, they won’t be able to generate enough for everyone and they will ration it by increasing prices.
Realistically tof the aim is simply to price we plebs off the road. The mode of transport is irrelevant.
I think you’re right. The market price of petrol not interfered with by the state would drop but they will make it stays expensive by taxing it more.
The numbers were from the linked article (GB News) except for the list price of the vehicles – I didn’t check them further except to say that I don’t pay quite that much per litre from my local Tesco. The implied miles / kWh and miles / litre seemed typically over inflated as all car manufacturers figures are.
The figures given suggest that the energy consumption of the electric Corsa would be 2,760 kWh / year (for 12,000 miles) which is a little under the 2,900 units which they reckon is the UK Medium Typical Domestic Consumption. So essentially nearly doubling a normal electricity bill if we don’t get a special tariff (so £693 / year seems cheap for a current annual leccy bill)
The price of petrol is already significantly made up of tax paid to the government. £0.5795 / litre in duty and then VAT at 20% on the subtotal amount.
Yes, I agree that TPTB would prefer most of us not to have personal cars. They’ll just about accept electric scooters to buzz about town – for now. They’ll probably issue them free to anyone over 100 – with parental permission.