- “Labour slaps down Emily Thornberry over VAT on private school fees” – Labour’s plans to impose VAT on private school fees have descended into chaos after Emily Thornberry suggested it will increase class sizes in the state sector, according to the Mail.
- “Starmer will bring back freedom of movement if he wins, says Labour official” – A Labour official has boasted that Sir Keir Starmer will bring back freedom of movement if he wins, says the Sun.
- “‘The marriage is off!’ Farage rejects plea from Suella Braverman” – Nigel Farage says “all marriage plans are off” when it comes to rejoining the Conservative Party, reports GB News.
- “Rishi Sunak sounds defiant despite growing alarm about Tory campaign” – A defiant Rishi Sunak says he won’t quit ahead of the election despite growing panic over the D-Day shambles and the Reform threat, according to the Mail.
- “Fighting over the Tory manifesto begins a day early” – Some Tories are already voicing alarm that the party’s 2024 manifesto is playing it too safe on tax and borders and lacks big ideas, writes Katy Balls in the Spectator.
- “Lib Dems plan £9.4 billion election tax raid on banks and super-rich” – The Lib Dems have unveiled a £9.4 billion tax raid on banks and the super-rich to help fund the NHS and social care in England in their manifesto, reports the Mail.
- “Is the Lib Dems’ election campaign silly or savvy?” – Ed Davey’s Lib Dems are conducting an apolitical election campaign, but is this a silly or savvy approach to winning over voters? asks Charlotte Henry in the Spectator.
- “Lib Dem policies are as barmy as their campaign” – The Lib Dems have been taken over by class warriors and outright fools, says Ross Clark in the Spectator.
- “Labour has broken Gen Z’s heart” – Moral purists can’t cope with Starmer’s realpolitik, writes Poppy Sowerby in UnHerd.
- “No, Farage is not being racist about Sunak” – Farage’s claim that the PM is unpatriotic clearly had nothing to do with race. Enough with the smears, says Rakib Ehsan in Spiked.
- “Farage and the case of the vanishing virtues” – In TCW, Dr. Gregory Slysz discusses Nigel Farage’s recent comments on British values and Muslim integration.
- “Rishi Sunak on D-Day” – On Substack, Duke Maskell has penned a satirical letter to the British people from Rishi Sunak explaining why he skipped the final part of the D-Day commemorations.
- “The EU has been shaken to its core” – Europeans have had enough of the Brussels oligarchy, writes Fraser Myers in Spiked.
- “EU vote will drag bloc further Right than ever before” – Parties gaining support in the European elections share a common antipathy towards Brussels overreach, migrants and the EU’s Net Zero target, says James Crisp in the Telegraph.
- “The truth about the rise of the ‘far-Right’ in Europe” – Look closely at the results of the EU elections and we can see the taming of some populist shrews, writes Fraser Nelson in the Spectator.
- “Europe’s insurgent Right won’t change anything” – The impact of the EU elections won’t be as significant as people fear or hope, says Thomas Fazi in UnHerd.
- “Giorgia Meloni invokes Churchill as she triumphs in EU elections” – Giorgia Meloni has emerged as the big winner of the European election in Italy, with her Brothers of Italy party taking 29% of the vote, reports the Telegraph.
- “Olaf Scholz has been humiliated – and Germany is now in crisis” – The message from voters is clear: mainstream politicians aren’t addressing their concerns, says Katja Hoyer in the Telegraph.
- “The arrogance and incompetence of Welsh Labour” – The Vaughan Gething scandal exposes the rot at the heart of the Welsh Government, writes Austin Williams in Spiked.
- “Are American Jews moving Right?” – In recent years, Jews are moving toward the centre, and, somewhat tentatively, even the Right, says Joel Kotkin in City Journal.
- “Bird flu, fear and perverse incentives” – We have allowed the development of a system where outbreaks are almost all that matter, writes Dr. David Bell for the Brownstone Institute.
- “After throwing scientists under the bus for a media smearing, Cochrane backtracks on mask review statement” – Editor Karla Soares-Weiser has still not explained her unprofessional collusion with New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci, who falsely claimed she “corrected” the Cochrane mask review, says Paul D. Thacker on Substack.
- “The fallacy of ‘British values’” – Nationhood cannot be reduced to abstractions, writes Sam Bidwell in the Critic.
- “A legal win for a mast objector in Cheltenham” – Authorities must assess the impacts of radiation on metal implants and pacemakers, says Gillian Jamieson on her Substack.
- “Is Paris about to leave the Paris Agreement?” – If greens play hardball, Le Pen would likely choose economic sanity over damaging climate commitments, predicts Eric Worrall in WUWT?
- “When breast isn’t best” – A major maternity support group is at war with its trustees over its insistence that men should be allowed to breastfeed, writes Heather Welford in the Critic.
- “Starbucks’s political activism has backfired” – If you become a political company, you have to pick a side and stick with it, says John Masko in UnHerd.
- “How California became a warning to the world” – A new dominant class of oligarchs and woke bureaucrats has bled the Golden State dry, writes Joel Kotkin in Spiked.
- “Can the TXSE dethrone Wall Street?” – New York has been losing its dominance in finance for years and the new Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) is another sign that it may not be able to bank on that status in the future, says Allison Schrager in City Journal.
- “Revenge of the Blob” – On GB News, Steven Edginton says some civil servants have discussed “arresting” Nigel Farage and branded Reform an “extremist far-Right group”.
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There are I believe two topics which are of primary concern to voters and Immigration is one:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/youre-right-nigel-this-is-the-immigration-election/
The second subject is Nut Zero.
I would put immigration top of my list because if we do not stop it we will not survive as a civilisation and there is no coming back. Everything else is probably fixable, though sadly at huge cost over many generations. Nut zero might be second for me, though I do have some other more “cultural” or “abstract” concerns that I believe need to be addressed if we’re to fulfil our potential – more protection for freedom of speech and the winding back of any laws other than libel and slander that restrict speech, privatise the BBC, abolish OFCOM, revisit “equalities” legislation (probably just abolish it).
Immigration has to be the greatest assault on this country and its people in the history of our islands. And all made worse because it is being facilitated by some of our own people – the white ones that is.
Yes we have been invaded in the past but we have always shared a largely European background with the invaders so skin colour matches were doable. Once Christianity took hold we tended to broadly share similar outlooks for example the Normans. Shared outlooks and values no longer prevail.
I don’t want a country full of brown boot polish skins who adhere to the philosophies of a barbaric cult that advocates brutality at every turn as opposed to the love and kindness preached by Jesus Christ.
On the issue of Nut Zero the answer is simple – if we are cold, diseased and starving matters such as free speech take a back seat. And of course the Davos Deviants know this.
Just on the point of skin colour, I sometimes see white women ( because it’s always the women that are obviously Muslim, whereas men get to wear what they want ) and wonder to myself if these are women who have converted to Islam, but then I remind myself that there are many fairer skinned people who are majority Muslim, such as Albanians, Chechens, Syrians are often lighter skinned, for instance. You could be a Christian person from Greece, Italy or Spain and have darker skin than many of these Muslims. Then there’s the many Christians from African and Asian countries who are black/brown-skinned. So for me it’s not about skin colour but the religion.
I’d rather live amongst a load of black/brown Christians than white-skinned Muslims, but as I say, it’s only really the women who broadcast the fact they’re Muslim ( with that godawful garment of subjugation ), the men just sort of blend in with everybody else. Where I am we’ve a very large population of Turks, closely followed by Moroccans and Somalians but I only really notice the increase when I’m in the city centre. However, I’ve started to notice the growing ‘diversity’ where I live and just around the neighbourhood. An increase in the Halal selection of foods in the supermarkets is another marker.
Further to your point here, another observation. Who’d want to visit or live in London nowadays though? What with the ever-growing crime and pro-hate/anti-West yobs marching and causing havoc on the regular, it’s hardly selling itself for visitors and tourists, is it?
”You might not want to hear this.
Many people don’t.
I just spent the last week travelling between London, Helsinki and Tallinn.
I lived in London for many years but it has changed out of all recognition.
Tallinn and Helsinki have a safe feel. Homogeneous. No “diversity barriers”.
After London, it was quite a shock. You can argue about whether the changes in London are for the better or not but the kids in both Helsinki and Tallinn are skateboarding and drinking milkshakes. They are not carrying around knives and terrorising or stabbing other kids.
There is space and clean streets. People are friendly – even to strangers.
London felt like it was crumbling. Closed roads everywhere. A murder minutes from where I was within 6 hours of my arrival. People seemed miserable.
I want the UK to do better. To be better. But they need to change things significantly and stop the transformation of the capital city into a third world city.”
https://x.com/therealmissjo/status/1800253029737746721
People of all races and religions are variously marvellous or awful or somewhere in between, but on average if you want a cohesive society then you need shared values/culture and also norms of behaviour and both race and religion contribute to that.
All good points, though on free speech my view is that without free speech, democracy cannot work, and issues are not debated properly, leading to deviant outcomes, so if you foster a culture of free speech and protect it in law, the other madnesses find it more difficult to survive.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/a-beginners-guide-to-covid-part-12-do-i-need-the-vaccine/
Part 12 of Paul Weston’s excellent series on the “pandemic” that never was.
Did anybody need the mRNA poisons?
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/first-do-no-harm-unless-of-course-its-an-mrna-jab/
Roger Watson at TCW looking at mRNA poisons:
“There are mixed messages on the future of mRNA vaccines which have proved to be so disastrous for so many people, causing illness, injury and even death after their massive rollout during the so-called Covid-19 pandemic. Never has so much damage been done by something that did not work to so many people who did not need it in the first place. Congratulations to Big Pharma and their willing associates across the world in nearly every government.”
https://off-guardian.org/2024/06/10/this-week-in-the-new-normal-92/
Always an entertaining and breezily short read with some useful quotes from Orwell at the end.
“He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.”
I think we can claim those words as our own here on DS.
Monday Morning Wargrave Road & New Bath Road Twyford Wokingham
Covid Jabs – The Dead Don’t Lie
Curious about the town name “Wokingham”, I looked it up:
“Wokingham means ‘Wocca’s people’s home’. Wocca was apparently a Saxon chieftain who may also have owned lands at Wokefield in Berkshire and Woking in Surrey.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/28402904/keir-starmer-freedom-of-movement-labour/
We can’t cope with any more freedom of movement.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-the-lib-dems-election-campaign-silly-or-savvy/
Who the hell cares? Can’t the Speccy come up with something a bit more interesting.
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-fallacy-of-british-values/
Well that was a couple of minutes wasted. The author is clueless. I have no idea of the point he is trying to make and clearly neither does he.
The London elite burbling.
I subscribe to The Critic. That subscription’s days are numbered.
How California became a warning to the world
Britain’s present and future:
‘(California has) the US’ highest rates of unemployment, as well as massive net outmigration, an exodus that has increased sharply since 2019. It also has 30 per cent of the nation’s homeless population, with some now living in ‘furnished’ caves.’
‘Newsom’s high-tax, regulation-heavy regime is driving enormous poverty. The state’s ethnic-minority communities are suffering most. Ignoring the interests of these people, California legislators and regulators enact proposals for the almost total elimination of fossil fuels.’
‘……California’s progressive project focuses on issues like gender, abortion and race. All provide excellent ways to virtue-signal without threatening the ruling cabal of the oligarchical elite, the government bureaucracy and the political class.’
‘Newsom and his allies employ budget tricks to deal with the deficit. The governor has even blamed climate change for much of the problem. California’s Democrats are not remotely serious about fixing the budget. Redistribution continues to ace out wealth creation, as epitomised by a pledge to provide undocumented immigrants, hard-working or not, with free healthcare.’
‘…the state’s massive bureaucracy continues to work on imposing mandatory woke quotas, no matter the cost. In 2020, the UCLA school of Medicine handed admissions to a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) administrator who admitted less than stellar candidates. Many of these have failed preliminary exams to do clinical work, helping to lower the school’s ranking from sixth to 18th place.’
‘…..these policies will result in significant income declines for individuals earning less than $100,000 annually, while boosting incomes for those above this threshold.’
Oh! It’s the same as the past……
‘Labour sought to use the ‘social wage’ to protect living standards and defuse inflationary pressures.
Even before the 1976 IMF crisis, however, this strategy faced growing resistance from the Treasury and ‘neo-revisionist’ Labour ministers, who saw subsidies as inefficient and worried about the burden which they placed on tax and public borrowing.’
‘Plans for an annual wealth tax foundered in a Select Committee, and capital transfer tax actually raised less than the estate duty which it replaced, while corporation tax changes were constrained by concerns about profitability. As a result, the burden of paying for new social spending fell largely on income tax-payers, raising concerns about work incentives and complicating Healey’s efforts to control the wage-price spiral’
‘Together with a highly progressive set of tax measures—including an increase in the basic rate of income tax from 30p to 33p, a top rate of 98p on investment incomes, a new capital transfer tax, and a consultation on a wealth tax—this made ‘the first six months of the Labour government’ seem to some left-wingers ‘like a reformist utopia’.
……Wilson went some way further in subordinating market values to social values than his 1964–70 administration had done. As it turned out, he also went further than the Labour government would prove able to sustain in the face of recession, growing tax resistance, and unsympathetic financial markets.
https://academic.oup.com/tcbh/article/33/1/80/6379602
We are comprehensively fecked……….
Immigration. Well. We have invited many religions into this country. One and one only
1. Complains endlessly (more than the Scots, even)
2. Causes endless trouble
3. Refuses to integrate
3. Occasionally blows us up.
Answers on a postcard to @MuslimCouncil on X
Well exactly. I’m still to hear news of all the Jews, Hindus or Sikhs running around, stabbing members of the public, raping girls/women solo or as part of an organized gang, blowing up innocent civilians at gatherings or constantly advertising the fact they hate everybody who isn’t like them because they’re so incredibly intolerant of other cultures and have an inbuilt sense of supremacy…no matter what pathetic counter-argument the terrorist-supporting rape-apologist Jew-haters on here might attempt to put forth. Everybody, irrespective of faith or ethnicity, is capable of wicked deeds, but as you say, there’s the obvious one that stands head and shoulders above all others when it comes to terrorism or perpetrating downright evil. The threat comes from one group, which the Leftards seem to have aligned with very effectively, from what I can see.
Further on where the terrorist threat in the UK mainly comes from. This from Nov 2022;
”Islamist Terrorism remains the larger problem – about three quarters of our terrorist caseload. As previously, much of the volume is self-radicalised terrorists seeking to conduct low-sophistication attacks. Low sophistication does not mean low impact: think of the appalling murder of Sir David Amess MP just over a year ago.
In a free country, detecting self-initiated terrorists – who often don’t reveal their plans to anyone, and can move quickly and sometimes spontaneously from intent to violence – is an inherently hard challenge. A challenge which is compounded by the complex mix, often, of extremist ideology with personal grievance and individual vulnerability such as mental ill-health. This poses pressing questions about how different elements of the State should best join up to manage risk to the public, effectively and proportionately.”
https://www.mi5.gov.uk/news/director-general-ken-mccallum-gives-annual-threat-update
Three downticks- maybe rather than running away, you could explain why you disagree with my post? I’d be interested to know why you think Theocratic Islam and the West can co-exist?
The above article (nearly) concludes with:
What? I had no idea a country could be kicked out of the Paris Agreement. That’s brilliant! We could provoke that and then blame who/whatever it is that does the kicking out.
The fallacy of ‘British values‘
‘You certainly won’t find them in the Acts of Union, or the 1689 Bill of Rights, or in Magna Carta.’
The author clearly has not read ‘Magna Carta’
Britain prides itself, first and foremost, on the freedom of its citizens, everything allowed unless expressly constrained by law.
English citizens rights, property rights, freedoms, free trade, a free church, values in government, are clearly set out in ‘Magna Carta’.
Everything else, the extension into ‘British values’ stems from there.
Freedom:
‘The city of London shall enjoy all its ancient liberties and free customs, both by land and by water. We also will and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports shall enjoy all their liberties and free customs.’
Free trade:
‘All merchants may enter or leave England unharmed and without fear’
Freedom of movement:
‘In future it shall be lawful for any man to leave and return to our kingdom unharmed and without fear’
Property rights:
‘If a free man dies intestate, his movable goods are to be distributed by his next-of-kin and friends, under the supervision of the Church.’
Justice:
‘In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.’
‘No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.’
Universal freedoms:
‘All these customs and liberties that we have granted shall be observed in our kingdom in so far as concerns our own relations with our subjects. Let all men of our kingdom, whether clergy or laymen, observe them similarly in their relations with their own men.’
Integrity:
‘Both we and the barons have sworn that all this shall be observed in good faith and without deceit.’
Even sorting out the fishing:
‘All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway, and throughout the whole of England……’
We know precisely what British values are.
Try and move us away from them (lockdowns, vaccine, mask, mandates) at your peril….as the conservatives are about to find out…….
All notions of the freedom of the individual, hence human rights (which once was about protecting the individual from the state, but now seems to be a weapon for states to bash their citizens on the head with) arose in England.
“Revenge of the Blob” – “On GB News, Steven Edginton says some civil servants have discussed “arresting” Nigel Farage and branded Reform an “extremist far-Right group”.”
Thanks to GB News & the DS for featuring that alarming video, which said some of the civil servants’ suggestions could even be called “criminal”. I overheard similar suggestions first-hand in a local shop this morning, before I knew about the cement attack on Nigel. The shop owner and a customer, both prosperous, liberal, “pillars of the community”, were celebrating news of the attack on Nigel, saying they wished it had been bricks that were thrown at him (which of course might have killed him). They sounded like the criminal “protesters” who smashed windows and splashed red paint on Barclay’s Bank, forcing the closure of 20 branches.
This shows the utter contempt Weedy Wet “Liberal” Leftists have for democracy, which can only lead to more and more violence, like the dozens of electoral candidates in Mexico who were brutally murdered recently, added to hundreds more in previous years, to stop them from being elected. Is this what the West is becoming?