- “This D-Day cock-up is final proof that Rishi Sunak is an embarrassment to Britain” – Just when you thought the Conservatives’ election campaign couldn’t get any worse, the PM chose to snub veterans by leaving the D-Day commemoration event in Normandy early. Is this his idea of National Service? asks Tom Harris in the Telegraph.
- “Senior Tory adviser quits over Sunak’s show of ‘disrespect’ for D-Day” – Ian Acheson, a leading adviser to Michael Gove, has quit the Tory party over Sunak’s “cynical” decision to leave D-Day commemorations early, according to Guido Fawkes.
- “Sunak’s D-Day snub has exposed his staggering aloofness” – The PM must be the only man in Britain who doesn’t understand the significance of the D-Day anniversary, says Fraser Myers in Spiked.
- “The West’s choice in 2024: will it be more like 1944 or Nineteen Eighty-Four?” – The PM’s Normandy error is a symptom of something much bigger in the current condition of the allies, writes Charles Moore in the Telegraph.
- “The weather forecast for D-Day” – On Substack, Paul Sutton reflects on his grandfather, the meteorologist Sir Oliver Graham Sutton, whose forecast identified a brief weather window, crucial for the D-Day invasion.
- “Pugnacious Farage lands blows that leave rivals reeling in BBC election debate” – Nigel Farage, unleashed into a live debate for the first time this election, was polished, pugnacious and popular, writes Gordon Rayner in the Telegraph.
- “The BBC audience could hardly bring itself to cheer on Nigel Farage” – Nigel Farage knows that it’s the watching TV audience, not the one in the BBC studio, that really counts, says Robert Taylor in the Telegraph.
- “Nigel Farage won the debate” – According to More In Common, which polled viewers of last night’s television debate, Nigel Farage won.
- “Rees-Mogg calls on Sunak to do election deal with Farage” – Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has urged Rishi Sunak to strike a deal with Nigel Farage before the General Election, reports the Telegraph.
- “Conservatives fail to field candidate in Rotherham” – The Tories have announced that they will not field a candidate in Rotherham in a boost to Reform’s chances of winning the seat, says the Telegraph. Although it looks like a cock-up rather than a gesture of good will.
- “The Tory ‘nepo baby’ candidates handed plum seats” – Rishi Sunak’s top aides, Cabinet ministers’ special advisers and MPs’ bag carriers are among the political “nepo babies” to be handed safe seats by the Tories, reports the Telegraph.
- “Selected for greatness” – If Will Tanner, the PM’s Deputy Chief of Staff, fails to win his ‘safe’ Suffolk seat, he could always apply for a job at Facebook, says Parliament Square in the Critic.
- “Political violence is no laughing matter” – For the first time, all candidates in the General Election are being offered security, write Theo Zenou and Sam Bidwell in CapX.
- “Israel fury at being added to list of offenders who harm children” – Israel is furious after the UN has added the country to the global list of offenders who harm children, reports the Mail.
- “Literary festivals have caved to the anti-Israel cranks” – A handful of petulant activists and C-list celebs have dealt a hammer blow to Britain’s cultural life, says Jake Wallis Simons in Spiked.
- “‘Mob’ of Pro-Palestine protesters lock university students inside debate chamber” – Pro-Palestinian protestors formed a human chain outside the Durham Union, preventing a debate on the Israel-Hamas conflict going ahead, reports the Telegraph.
- “Open letter to Professor Cooke, interim co-chair at U.K.’s MHRA” – Should the need for a product recall of the AstraZeneca SARS-CoV-2 sterile injectables be investigated by the Defective Medicines Report Centre? asks PharmaFlow’s Hedley Rees.
- “The dam has broken” – The MSM is finally starting to report on Covid vaccines and excess deaths, says Suzanne Burdick in TCW.
- “Alternative media giants sue the censorship industrial complex” – Webseed and Brighteon Media have filed a lawsuit accusing several U.S. Government agencies and Big Tech companies of orchestrating a vast censorship campaign to suppress dissenting viewpoints, particularly about COVID-19, according to Reclaim The Net.
- “Three quarters of people would use private healthcare if relative was stuck on NHS waiting list” – The Telegraph reports that three-quarters of people would choose private healthcare for a relative awaiting surgery, contrary to Keir Starmer’s stance in his recent TV debate with Rishi Sunak.
- “Free speech concern after Ipso rule against open court reporting” – Press watchdog Ipso has been labelled “disgraceful”, while fears have been raised over free speech following its decision to sanction a news website for its reporting on a rape trial, reports GB News.
- “A victory for press freedom in Northern Ireland” – A High Court judge has overturned a new law in Northern Ireland preventing people suspected of sexual offences being named in the press, says Freddie Attenborough in the Critic.
- “Trans athletes dehumanised by term ‘biological male’, says Olympics” – A 33-page ‘Portrayal Guidelines’ document, published ahead of the Paris Games by the International Olympic Committee, urges journalists not to use phrases like “born male” or “biologically male” to describe transgender athletes, says the Telegraph.
- “‘Conservatism’s future must be counter-revolutionary’” – At the NatCon Conference in Brussels, N.S. Lyons gives his answer to the question: What is to be done?
- “New York scraps congestion charge plan at 11th hour” – In a surprising U-turn, Governor of New York Kathy Hochul has cancelled plans to impose a contentious $15 (£11) congestion fee, saying it would be an “obstacle” to the city’s economy, reports the Evening Standard.
- “London doesn’t need an African Goddess, Sadiq Khan. Why not British abolitionists?” – If the statue of a slaver is to be replaced, perhaps it should not be with the deity of an African nation that participated in the slave trade, writes Michael Mosbacher in the Telegraph.
- “‘I should keep my big mouth shut’: Stephen Fry apologises for cricket remarks” – Stephen Fry has apologised for his remarks about the “beetroot-coloured gentlemen” of Marylebone Cricket Club, reports the Times.
- “Hatred of the working class behind attack on white rural Americans” – Batya Ungar-Sargon’s Second Class is the antidote to Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman’s White Rural Rage, says Pete Anderson on the Public Substack.
- “Man in Mexico dies with first human case of H5N2 bird flu” – A 59 year-old man in Mexico has died with a type of bird flu – H5N2 – never recorded in people before now, reports the BBC.
- “‘We need a global bird flu lockdown NOW’” – On X, comedian Damien Slash suggests an immediate global lockdown following the news of a man in Mexico dying from a new strain of bird flu.
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Till the lunatic Starmer gets in….why were conservatives ever funding this bs.
Because they’re just politicians, like all the rest.
It was a very normie post, apologies.
“No current plans to do so”
I seem to remember:
”We have no plans to introduce a vaccine passport”
Is there a general election coming up?
No need to fund GDI any more – they did more than ‘uphold [the govt’s] values’, their control & censor ideology is now fully embedded.
They won’t notice. It’s already privately funded by busybody billionaires with highly questionable motives.
No government (ie our) money should be spent on this tripe.
What is disinformation? Who decides its definition? Why does the government think that countering ‘disinformation’ is its job? And more to the point, why is this unelected buttock faced multi-millionaire grifter in the cabinet?
They can counter “disinformation” if they like. They can do so by putting out what they think is the right information and then let each of us decide what we think about it all.
The best response to bad information is good information, not shutting people up.
But this assumes this is all actually in good faith and the government is actually worried about bad information. What they’re really worried about is perfectly good information that is a threat to established power. And of course, they can try to counter that with bad but more persuasive information, but that doesn’t really work. Censorship is the only real remedy to inconveniently true information.
Accusing others of lying to cover or promote their own lies is just yet another form of gaslighting of the population.
I do believe in the ‘Online Harms’ bill there is legislation that addresses censorship of true but problematic information.
“problematic” ——-Usually because it interferes with and has the potential to lower confidence in government policies on the 5 main agenda’s. —–Equality Diversity Race Gender and Climate
why is this unelected buttock faced multi-millionaire grifter in the cabinet?
Nobody in the cabinet is elected, they’re all appointed by the monarch on advice of the prime minister (which is itself principally appointed by the monarch as he sees fit although the convention is that it should be the leader of a party which commands a majority in the house of commons).
Yes but ideally in order for our dropped and run over pizza of a democracy to be taken seriously they have to be an elected MP surely? And Cameron is not.
I don’t think so. At least, that’s not mentioned in here:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9877
On a not unrelated note, UK Column delved into C40 cities and the big players & Foundations behind it….It seems Sadiq Kahn is just a small fish in this Globalist agenda.
“….It seems Sadiq Kahn is just a small fish in this Globalist agenda.”
Yes, but he’s ambitious Ron.
But why (if it still is) is the Conservative party funding Hope Not Hate HNH the far left pressure group that Reform didn’t have to spine to tell, go do one!
Correction: The taxpayers will no longer be funding the global disinformation index. Fear not, the government will have something else planned to fritter our taxes away.
That’s for sure. And they almost certainly have some other way of censoring and don’t need the GDI any more.
Penny Mordaunt has simply re-directed the funds as the article I have posted from Off-Guardian makes clear.
Oliver Cromwell’s speech shows politicians haven’t changed much …
“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not process? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lords temple into a den of thieves, by you’re immoral principles and wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!”
Oliver Cromwell’s speech to Parliament on April 20, 1653.
A very nice Philippic.
A key requirement for countering disinformation is the ability to recognise it. I don’t think anyone in government or opposition has that skill. The skill they are required to have is the ability to present whatever the government line currently is in a convincing manner, or to put it another way, lying with a straight face.
Thus we have Zelensky a paragon of virtue, whose every word is the shining truth and Putin who is a slippery-tongued dissembler. There is Biden, the virtuous leader of the free world and Xi, a ruthless dictator.
Then back home we have Sunak and Starmer, but no-one can really tell the difference, they just have different flavours of the same “truth”.
As this article makes clear the UK government is still fighting the good fight on the “misinformation” garbage and so ‘Just Call me Dave’ is, no surprise, telling porkies. And look at who funded the guide:
https://off-guardian.org/2024/05/08/new-guide-teaches-uk-mps-to-spot-conspiracy-theories/
“The report was co-written by “experts” representing several non-governmental organisations, and fact-checkers including:
FullFact – funded by (among others) Google, Facebook and the Open Society Foundation.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue – funded by (among others)
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, Facebook, over a dozen national governments and the UN.
Global Network on Extremism and Technology – The academic research arm of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a thinktank “designed to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms”…and which is funded by (among others) Facebook, Amazon, Youtube and Microsoft.
In short, it’s all a rather incestuous funding pool of the same handful of tech giants and billionaires paying “experts” to tell them what they want to hear.
But we probably shouldn’t judge until we’ve read the “guide” itself, which is tricky because it doesn’t seem to be publicly available (seriously I looked everywhere, if you’re aware of a copy online post it in the comments and we’ll add it the link here).
Fortunately, our old friends at the Guardian have given us a little taste, here’s three things they’re warning about.
The Great Reset, which the Graun describes as…
…a vague set of proposals from the World Economic Forum to encourage governments to move to adopt more equitable policies, the concept has been hijacked by conspiracy theorists claiming it is a bid by a small group to exert control.
…which is wonderful, because it’s essentially admitting it’s true and then pretending it’s not.
The Great Reset is, indeed, a WEF initiative. It was launched in June 2020 with the backing of world leaders and captains of industry, it aims to totally and completely rebuild the way our society works, including how we travel, what we eat and where we live.
You can read about it in Klaus Schwab’s own words here, or see their handy diagram:
How is that NOT “exerting control”? How does one go about transforming the farming, travel, taxation and employment policies of every nation on Earth without “exerting control”?
Eating Insects is another “conspiracy theory”, apparently. With the Guardian warning that:
[conspiracy theories] have included claims – fuelled by attempts to reduce meat consumption – that the WEF wants to make people eat insects.
The only problem being that the WEF really does want people to eat insects:
Like, a lot:
You know what? The Guardian wants people to eat insects too. So does the BBC. And Time. The list is endless.
This is – to use an overused word – gaslighting of the highest degree.
They are at once saying “hey, we all need to eat insects to save the world”, and then claiming anyone who repeats it back at them is a conspiracy theorist.
To encompass how mad this is you have to picture it being done on an interpersonal level.
Imagine a double-glazing salesman comes to your door, wearing a double-glazing company logo and holding a double-glazing sales catalogue and says “I think you should buy some double-glazing”.
To which you reply, “No thanks I don’t need any double glazing.”
At this point the man screams “Double glazing? Who said anything about double glazing!? You lunatic!” storms off down the path, gets in his double-glazing van and drives away.
It’s just that insane.
Climate Lockdowns are the third “conspiracy theory” the Guardian warns us about, claiming:
The ISD identified “climate lockdown” as the catchphrase for the conspiracy that the climate crisis will be used as a pretext for depriving citizens of liberty.
But climate lockdowns are not a conspiracy theory either, they were first posited in a report in October 2020 published by Project Syndicate and the World Council for Sustainable Development. The proposed lockdown included banning private vehicles, the consumption of red meat and “extreme energy-saving measures”.
Since then we have been inundated with peer-review studies, claiming lockdown is good for the environment.
The Guardian itself headlined, in March 2021:
Global lockdown every two years needed to meet Paris CO2 goals – study
It was such an unpopular story that they sneakily changed the headline.
It’s fairly clear that “climate lockdowns” are far from a conspiracy theory, that they were planned and then abandoned (or delayed) due to public anger at the first lockdown.
*
The report is on the ISD Global website:
https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Conspiracy-Theories-Guide.pdf
I’ve had a quick scan through. It appears to be the usual double-down, deny-everything propagandist guff, complete with picture of Trump under the QAnon heading (as if that applies to the UK). It also seems to claim that everything should be treated as potentially anti-semitic (‘Numerous conspiracy theories are rooted in anti-Jewish racism.‘) – the list of conspiracy theories on page 11 has anti-semitism linked to every single one. WTAF?
There is of course absolutely no mention of all the ‘conspiracy theories’ which have been proven to be factually correct.
They might take a leaf out of their own recommendations:
1. Check before sharing. It is vital to check that information has a solid factual basis.