- “Who could replace Rishi Sunak? These are the agents of change” – Potential Conservative Party leadership candidates are on manoeuvres — but have to win their own seats first, according to the Times.
- “Five Tory big beasts facing ‘Portillo moments’” – An anti-Tory campaign group predicts a string of leading names could lose seats if people vote tactically to oust them, reports the Telegraph.
- “Tom Tugendhat expected to run for Tory leader after election” – If the Conservatives lose the election, the Security Minister is expected to put his name forward, claims the Telegraph.
- “Boris Johnson set to go on holiday rather than campaign for Tories” – The former PM was expected to counter the threat of Reform U.K. in the election, but Rishi Sunak’s allies fear he would be a distraction, reports the Times.
- “Reform to benefit from Churchill’s letter to his old teacher” – A letter from Churchill thanking his maths master for getting him into Sandhurst could fetch £8,000 for Nigel Farage’s party, according to the Times.
- “Nigel Farage has emerged victorious in the battle of the manifestos” – Reform offers tax hope, not pain – unlike the Tories and Labour, says Brian Monteith in the Telegraph.
- “BBC gives Nigel Farage a spot on an extra Question Time leaders’ special” – The BBC has acceded to Farage’s demand to be in the leaders’ debate on Question Time, but only by organising a special ‘extra’ one for the also rans, claims the Telegraph.
- “Only Nigel Farage is telling the truth about the NHS” – Embracing private healthcare is the sort of radical reform to the NHS we need, according to Karol Sikora in the Telegraph.
- “Starmer’s idiotic worship of the NHS has exposed him for what he really is” – The Labour leader may claim to understand why regular folk would opt to go private if they had the means, but clearly he hasn’t a clue, says Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
- “What Farage can learn from Canada’s Reform” – In UnHerd, Michael Cuenco warns that the path back to power for the Canadian Right took 13 years after their defeat in 1993.
- “Nigel Farage insists Kyiv will have to seek a peace deal with Russia” – Ukraine will eventually have to seek a peace deal with Russia, Nigel Farage said yesterday, creating a clear divide between his party and the Tories over the conflict, according to the Mail.
- “Starmer: Working people don’t have savings” – Senior Tories claim Starmer’s remarks, seemingly giving himself a loophole to raise taxes, show Labour is preparing to “wallop” savers and homeowners, reports the Telegraph.
- “Labour’s secret tax rise plans revealed” – The Mail reveals that proposals put forward by a group of party MPs, known as Tribune, and whose members include Sir Keir Starmer, called for six tax raids to raise £60 billion.
- “What 25 years of Labour rule has done to Wales” – From the economy to the NHS, the party predicted to rule the U.K. doesn’t have the best track record in Wales, says Ollie Corfe in the Telegraph.
- “Starmer’s Labour: the political wing of the Blob” – The Labour leader has outsourced his entire programme of government to unelected officials, says Tim Black in Spiked.
- “Lazy civil servants are driving Britain to the brink” – Britain has a choice: we continue along the path of decline, or we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down, and get to work, says Richard Tice in the Telegraph.
- “Sir Jim Ratcliffe backs Labour and says Britons have ‘had enough’ of the Tories” – The billionaire Man Utd owner has switched horses, reports the Telegraph.
- “Billionaire donor John Caudwell switches to Labour in ‘despair’ at Tories” – The founder of Phones4U has criticised the failures of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak and says he is impressed by Starmer, according to the Times.
- “Mass postal voting is endangering our democracy” – Postal voting has proved to be wide open to fraud, says Philip Johnston in the Telegraph. Why, then, does Labour now want to introduce votes for 16-year-olds?
- “White House denies Biden keeps ‘freezing’ at public events” – Biden’s administration claims the President’s opponents are manipulating video clips as they try to weaponise his age, reports the Times.
- “We called it: Karine Jean-Pierre blames AI ‘deepfakes’ for Joe Biden’s real infirmity” – As predicted by Matt Taibbi in Racket News last week, AI has been blamed for the footage of Biden acting like a zombie at recent ceremonial occasions.
- “The great Brussels stitch-up” – In UnHerd, Thomas Fazi describes how Ursula von der Leyen was crowned as the new Empress of Europe at an “informal” dinner in Brussels.
- “How French extravagance made Macron the new Liz Truss” – Years of debt-fuelled spending have left France’s bond markets on a hair trigger, claims the Telegraph.
- “Benjamin Netanyahu dissolves war cabinet amid row with army” – Netanyahu’s future decisions on the Gaza conflict will likely be made with advisers following the resignation of the opposition leader Benny Gantz, according to the Telegraph.
- “Pro-Palestine activists ransack Kent military technology factory” – A pro-Palestinian protest group has targeted two companies over their alleged links to Israel as police arrest several suspects in London and Kent, reports the Telegraph.
- “Green aviation targets driving cooking oil fraud at ‘mass scale’” – Suppliers are shipping virgin palm oil to unwary refiners and airlines in an effort to comply with Net Zero targets, campaigners tell the Telegraph.
- “propaganda playbook for climate activists” – On his Substack, El Gato Malo delves into the propaganda playback climate hysterics are fond of using.
- “Long covid derangement syndrome” – Roger Watson writes about what he calls “long Covid derangement syndrome” in TCW – Defending Freedom.
- “Science Follows Politics: How German politicians invented lockdown-justifying Covid infection thresholds and got their allegedly independent scientific experts to defend these false metrics for years” – On his Substack, Eugyppius documents the manipulation and deceit behind the German authorities’ response to the pandemic.
- “Censoring the science: bombshell study on excess deaths faces retraction” – Last week, the integrity of a peer-reviewed study on excess deaths came under attack on several fronts, reports Sonia Elijah on Substack.
- “We need Covid fine amnesty, says ex-Justice Secretary” – Sir Robert Buckland, who oversaw the courts during the pandemic, wants a clean slate for the more than 29,000 people fined for breaching lockdown rules, according to the Telegraph.
- “Top medical journals promoting ethics ignore Nature Medicine’s unethical ghostwritten Covid origins paper” – In the Disinformation Chronicles, Paul D. Thacker writes about a scandal of omission at Nature Medicine.
- “‘White, male and heteronormative’: The cancelled philosophers you shouldn’t quote in 2024” – In 2017, students at a London university demanded their curriculum be decolonised. Now, they’ve made a list of who they deem acceptable reports the Telegraph.
- “How trans fanatics tore Pride apart” – Some women no longer feel safe at what is meant to be a celebration of all things LGBT – and the tensions could undermine the whole movement, says Sanchez Maning in the Telegraph.
- “Stephen Lawrence detectives will not face prosecution” – A decision not to prosecute the four retired officers in the Stephen Lawrence case was upheld by the CPS after being challenged, according to the BBC.
- “The quiet return of eugenics” – In the Spectator, Louise Perry writes about the gradual re-emergence of eugenics, although only for the super-rich who want to have designer babies.
- “Police investigate activist who said trans GP enjoys examining women” – Feminist campaigner Maya Forstater has been investigated by the police for over a year for criticising a trans GP on X, reports the Times.
- “The “right” amount of concern about racism” – How much should we be concerned about things that are racist, relative to all the other things we should be concerned about? asks Noah Carl in Aporia.
- “This Morning viewers back Cat Deeley after ‘seizure’ joke” – Cat Deeley faced criticism from an epilepsy charity after quipping that she was “having a seizure” while dancing to Meghan Trainor’s song ‘All About That Bass’, reports the Mail.
- “Utterly Superb” – Mehdi Hasan, the author of a book called Win Every Argument, made the grave mistake of trying to take on Douglas Murray and Natasha Hausdorff in a Monk debate about the Israel-Hamas conflict, reports Lee Harris on X.
This is utterly superb! Mehdi Hasan, amusingly the author of a book called "Win Every Argument", made the grave mistake of trying to take on @DouglasKMurray and Natasha Hausdorff in a debate.
— Lee Harris (@addicted2newz) June 18, 2024
Watch until the end. It went exactly as you would expect.
Destroyedpic.twitter.com/5rlZQuTkrs
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“Postal voting has proved to be wide open to fraud, says Philip Johnston in the Telegraph.”: Then he asks a very odd question “Why, then, does Labour now want to introduce votes for 16-year-olds?”
We all know why political parties want to corrupt the voting and electioral system; it is to ensure they get elected using fraud, tax payers’ monety and anything else that does not involve them responding to the public’;s demands.
“In the Spectator, Louise Perry writes about the gradual re-emergence of eugenics, although only for the super-rich who want to have designer babies.”
Is nikt free (encouraged) abortion for the masses a form of eugenics?
No, not unless it is done with the intention to ‘improve’ the genetic make up of the species… though I’d accept ‘Birth control for the foolish or unwary*’, perhaps?
* yes, I know there are myriad reasons for pregnancies being aborted, but I’d posit the majority of them will be to rectify ‘mistakes’.
If people cannot regulate pfregnancies they are very incompetent. Perhaps some will justify euthenasia on the basis of rectifying “mistakes”, albeit a lot later.
My point was that if the elites do not practive abortions at the same degree or rate as the little people we will have achieved a euthenasia policy. Any such poolicy or practice wheich is not uniform across society is that.
There’s an excellent debate on Spectator TV between Mary’s Wakefield, Harrington & Louise Perry, concerning this issue. One observation that amused me was that, when the contraceptive pill was introduced it was expected that it would allow the poor to stop having unwanted kids and the richer to have wanted kids. In the event, the opposite has occurred.
That doesn’t sound right to me. I suspect both the richer (more middle class) and the poorer are having fewer unwanted kids, but the richer are more effective users of birth control.
Maybe not in the UK but in the US that was certainly the case, as Louise Perry sets out in her article. A large proportion of aborted babies are black babies. This may not (anymore) be because they are black, but because blacks are overrepresented in the underclass.
Excuse me foir making three early postings.
“Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, is expected to run for the Conservative leadership if a contest is triggered next month by election defeat, The Telegraph understands.
Mr Tugendhat, a former soldier seen as being on the moderate wing of the party, won more votes than expected when he sought the leadership in the summer of 2022.”
Moderate?
I think globalist wet would be nearer the mark. As all sorts of people put their names in the frame, or it is done for them by friendly journos, we will see Tories with a long reputation for Remain and social liberalism, economic incoherence and general non-conservative views and bbvoting history start to claim theyt were Thatcherite all along, emnbrace Brexit as it is (incomplete) and represent the centre of the Tory Party.
The centre of the Tory party is left of most Labour governments we have ever had and it will move further left after the GER for two reasons:
1 few non-wets will retain their seats – the candidate lists of the past 20 years have ensured that
2 that is what the Tories always do – move left and seek support from their competitors.
Farage shoulkd have a field day.
“Starmer: Working people don’t have savings”
Whagt an incfredible statewment. Aside from personal fiunancial buffers whiuch poeople build as soon as they can, most people have saviungs in the form of pension rights. In the private sector that means personal pensions which appear highly at risk from Labour.
OIf course, the public sector, including MPs, do not have to worry because the rest of us have to provide inflation protected high pensions.
Tuesday morning Henley Rd & Caversham Park Rd
Caversham
Reading
Watch the 3min video of Starmer and Khant in this article. It’s nauseating. And what’s going on with Khant’s hair? I think you need a miracle to occur in the UK elections to avoid what’s headed down the line. Blasphemy laws in the UK, FFS. No civilized Western nation has blasphemy laws, for crying out loud;
”Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer said that if elected, his government would take a hardline approach in policing “Islamophobia” as he looks to sure up Muslim support before the July 4th general election in Britain.
The government needs to take a “zero tolerance” approach to supposed anti-Islam statements not only made in real life but online as well, Sir Keir Starmer said in a video with London Mayor Sadiq Khan marking the of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.
The comments from Starmer, who is widely predicted to become Britain’s next prime minister in a little over two weeks time, suggest that his potential government would look to build upon his party’s history of undermining free speech in the UK.
For example, under former Prime Minister Tony Blair — whom Starmer appears to be modelling his persona and policies after — the Labour government introduced the draconian Communications Act of 2003, which criminalised statements deemed to be “grossly offensive” or intentionally causing “annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another”. The legislation has been used to arrest thousands of Britons for posts online.
However, the Labour Party seems to look to go further, particularly on so-called Islamophobia. The increasingly urban woke left-wing party has adopted the widely contested All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) definition of Islamophobia as being “rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”.
The adoption of the definition suggests that the party may seek to enshrine it into law once in power, which critics such as Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch have warned will act as a “back door” blasphemy law in Britain.”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/06/17/zero-tolerance-labour-leader-starmer-vows-govt-crackdown-on-islamophobia/
Here’s Peter Whittle’s thoughts on the matter ( <5mins )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56S8WXkWGO8&ab_channel=TheNewCultureForum
Starmer is no more modelling himself on Blair than the monkey models itself on the organ grinder.
Nigel Farage insists Kyiv will have to seek a peace deal with Russia
What’s really going on.
‘Russia can keep this war going for ever.’
That assumes Putin can mobilise; conscription. Can he?
That is also what both China and the U.S. would like Russia to do. That is their ‘Russia’ strategy. Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Ukraine clearly would not wish for this state of affairs
‘At some point there have to be face-to-face talks……I’m not suggesting that it’ll happen quickly, but at some point that’s what we’d like to see.’
As a statement of the blindingly obvious……..
Ukraine has already committed to presenting a peace plan at the next peace summit.
Putin has realised it is time to move towards a peace agreement, but isn’t yet ready to admit that this must be done not on his terms.
Ukraine is not ready for a peace agreement because there’s no trust. Ukraine is bothered by the lack of guarantees.
No one can give a clear answer to the question of what to do so that Putin won’t attack again in three years.
Also, after 2014, no one in Ukraine wants to go down in history as the government that lost territory.
So, for now, these, below, are the only deals on the table:
Russia:
Ukraine……..to withdraw from the four regions annexed by Russia last year and agrees to give up its Nato membership ambitions. Russia would then expect Ukraine to consent to holding status referendums in the occupied territories over the next 15 years. European Union is a yes for Ukraine; NATO is a no. The U.S. and Russia would agree that there will be no nuclear confrontation in Europe.
Ukraine peace plan:
1. Radiation and nuclear safety, focusing on restoring safety around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine, which is now-Russian occupied.
2. Food security, including protecting and ensuring Ukraine’s grain exports to the world’s poorest nations.
3. Energy security, with focus on price restrictions on Russian energy resources, as well as aiding Ukraine with restoring its power infrastructure, half of which has been damaged by Russian attacks.
4. Release of all prisoners and deportees, including war prisoners and children deported to Russia.
5. Restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity and Russia reaffirming it according the U.N. Charter, which Zelenskiy said is “not up to negotiations”.
6. Withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities, restoration of Ukraine’s state borders with Russia.
7. Justice, including the establishment of a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes.
8. Prevention of ecocide, need for protection of environment, with focus on demining and restoring water treatment facilities.
9. Prevention of escalation of conflict, and building security architecture in the Euro-Atlantic space, including guarantees for Ukraine.
10. Confirmation of the war’s end, including a document signed by the involved parties.
And, clearly, both parties are way too far apart.
We also now have an interesting insight into the likely position of the U.S. Government:
‘When the USSR collapsed and Russia was at its most vulnerable, the allegedly nazified NATO (Russia’s claim) did not march its armies into Moscow, dismantle Russian’s nuclear deterrence, seize Russian natural resources, and enslave its population.
Japan did not exploit Russia’s unprecedented weakness to retake the Kurile Islands. Finland did not reabsorb Karelia, nor Germany East Prussia/Kaliningrad.
Instead, Russia was welcomed into the G-7 and the WTO and its business and government leaders regularly feted at Davos.
Western investment and commerce blossomed, and Russia was generally accepted as a more or less normal country.
This continued even after Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and his steady reimposition of autocratic rule, murder of political opponents at home and abroad, poisoning of Ukrainian Presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in 2004, invasion of Georgia in 2008, and military occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea and Donbas in 2014.
Each of these transgressions was met with new “resets” from the US and its allies eager to avoid any serious confrontation.
In short, appeasement.
NATO did, over fierce Russian objections, broaden its membership after the fall of the USSR to include former Warsaw Pact states newly freed from Soviet occupation and the liberated Baltic republics.
Yet this was not the result of NATO’s initiative but arose from the clamouring of these former vassals for a hedge against a potentially reinvigorated and revanchist Russia—remarkably foresighted in retrospect.
Enlargement notwithstanding, Russia’s claim of hostile military encirclement by NATO rings hollow.
NATO actions famously require unanimity by its members, and one need only observe how hard it was to achieve Sweden’s mere admission to the alliance to understand how the notion of NATO initiation of offensive military action against Russia is pure fantasy.
Moreover, while NATO did accept new members, the alliance’s overall military capabilities and the deployment of US forces in Europe during this period were dramatically reduced, as were US intelligence community resources dedicated to monitoring Russia, exactly the opposite of what one would expect from an opportunistic, ruthless enemy.
Russia’s leaders know all this, and the degree to which they claim otherwise represents willful self-delusion. It’s also a self-serving delusion because the claim of being surrounded by rapacious enemies is the regime’s primary rationalization for its autocratic rule……’
‘Providing (Ukraine) with the resources they need to defend themselves is not only the right thing to do, it’s profoundly in our self-interest.’
Gregory Sims 13 June 2024
Or alternatively the other G7 members, in particularly USA, saw Russia becoming and increasing economic power, a threat to dollar hegemony, and tried to engineer the destruction of Russia through draining its economic power.
The reverse has occurred, and the West is becoming increasinly shrill and bellicose in response.
The parties are becoming closer togather as Russia erodes Ukraine’s borders and manpower.
Effective negotiaion requires a degree of reality on both sides, or in this case on all sides as Ukraine utterly reliant on Western sponsors for what little it actually has left.
So what happens next? You’re looking at it……..
Media portal BanjaLuka.net published an interview with Zvinchuk on June 18. Kremlin linked Rybar Telegram channel, Mihail Zvinchuk gave an unusually frank and critical view of the Russian military when asked to discuss the current state of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Zvinchuk stated that the war has not proceeded as the Russian military had planned, in part, because of Russia’s poor planning.
Zvinchuk also claimed that Russian forces have learned to fight at the platoon, company, and battalion levels but still lack the capability to fight at any higher echelons.
Zvinchuk noted that Russian forces have “learned” to seize the battlefield initiative but have only done so in select unspecified locations and that Russian forces are only able to make slow tactical gains.
Zvinchuk claimed that if Russia could seize the strategic initiative that Russian forces would seize “a city per week, not a house or village per week.”
Zvinchuk also assessed that Russia does not have enough materiel to take the strategic initiative but acknowledged that Russia is attempting to accelerate its defence industrial base (DIB) output.
Zvinchuk acknowledged that international sanctions against Russia have hindered Russia’s ability to maintain its technological capabilities, noting that some Russian oil refineries are not working, which has resulted in a 10 percent increase in fuel prices.
No wonder there is so little progress,
Russia still, 28 months later, actually holds less territory now (16%) than it did in June 2022 (24%).
You had better answer yourself, but you should remind yourself that Russia’s stated aim is secure borders and removal of Ukraine as a military threat, especially the Banderite component.
It has never stated any territorial ambitions other than those necessary to achieve the above aims, for example, a buffer zone reflecting the range of Ukraine’s missiles..
The frequency of Ukraine’s pathetic pleas for more weapons and the third or is it fourth round of conscription added added to Syrsky’s comments about depletion of reserves seems to indicate that Russian aims are well on their way.
Amusingly, a North Korean official kicked out Russian ministers who entered the meeting room before Kim Jong Un.
Foreign Minister Lavrov, Defense Minister Belousov, Health Minister Murashko, Roscosmos head Borisov, First Deputy Prime Minister Manturov and Deputy Prime Minister Savelyev were expelled from the hall.
‘Go out into the hall.
-Why did we come here? You should have warned me right away…
Our leader will come in first.’
Imperial delusions…….
Nigel Farage Speaks LIVE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nQGwOsGC-Y
Thanks for that link— I would have missed it otherwise.
“John Caudwell says “he is impressed by Starmer”
Wha? In that case he’d be impressed by an empty baked bean can!
“The “right” amount of concern about racism” Noah Carl writes:
“Properly defined, of course, racism is wrong. And nobody’s suggesting we should ignore the phenomenon. But what’s the “right” amount of concern about racism?”
I don’t agree with any of this. Who decided that racism is wrong, and shouldn’t be ignored, and everyone should be concerned about it?
All humans prefer to live and work with people of their own ethnic group, because they feel most comfortable around them, sharing their common ancestry and heritage. And they all tend to think their own ethnic group is superior to others, and to look down upon other ethnic groups as inferior. This is perfectly normal, natural, and universal across all lifeforms on the planet.
The answer to Noah Carl’s question, “What’s the right amount of concern about racism?”
is…
“None.”
I think it really depends on how you define racism, and what the results are in terms of how a country treats its citizens. The whole debate has become impossible. I agree with most of what you say, though I am not sure about thinking other groups are inferior – I’m sure some do, but by no means all – but the end result of things going more smoothly when you’re mainly surrounded by people with shared ethnicity and culture is the same.
Delhi heat sends power demand soaring to record high says the BBC
Well the per capita consumption of energy in India has certainly increased in recent years:
But is it the heat in Delhi or other cities that’s driven up energy demand? No, it’s modernisation. The same thing which is slowly improving the lives of more people in India and elsewhere in the developing world:
It’s just as well they can continue to generate more and more electricity from coal and oil without climate alarmists trying to blockade their roads and other infrastructure or destroy their cultural art works – otherwise people might die, like they used to: