- “Majority of Britons receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes” – According to the ONS, over half of U.K. households received more in state benefits than they paid in taxes last year, reports the Telegraph.
- “How Britain’s water supply spiralled into chaos – and why hiking prices could be the only solution” – Water privatisation in the 1980s made sense, but the mess that followed has left consumers paying the price, writes Jonathan Ford in the Telegraph.
- “Ofwat has failed to defend consumers” – The water regulator has allowed a privatisation that should have worked well to become a fiasco, says the Telegraph in a leading article.
- “Fixing Britains sewers will be fantastically expensive” – If we want a reliable water supply, we are going to have to pay for it, writes Ross Clark in the Spectator.
- “Labour’s U-turn on libel reform is a threat to free speech” – Labour have changed their tune on reforming our overzealous libel laws, notes James Rose in CapX.
- “Starmer is on the brink of erasing Brexit – but Kemi can still rescue it” – Labour has a huge majority and can ram through any EU deal it likes. But the Tories can still make life difficult, says David Frost in the Telegraph.
- “‘No regrets about decisions I’ve made’” – Keir Starmer says he has no regrets about the decisions he has made in the past six months and would do nothing differently, according to the Telegraph.
- “Only decisive leadership will transform Whitehall – this isn’t it” – Labour’s manifesto promised radical reform, but reality has fallen far short, says Eliot Wilson in CapX.
- “Liaison committee grilling turns PM into Starmer-flavoured stock” – In the Telegraph, Madeline Grant reports on Keir Starmer’s cringeworthy grilling by the Liaison Committee, where even his own MPs took turns poking holes in his “plan for change”.
- “Mandelson to be named U.S. ambassador ” – In appointing Peter Mandelson as the new U.S. ambassador, Starmer has chosen a political veteran rich in experience, but also burdened by a fair amount of baggage, says James Heale in the Spectator.
- “When will they see the light (or lack of it)?” – In TCW, Ivor Williams blasts the Government’s blind faith in wind power, showing with brutal graphs how Britain’s energy future teeters on the brink of disaster.
- “U.K.’s online censorship law drives small websites to shut down” – In Reclaim The Net, Didi Rankovic reveals how the U.K.’s Online Safety Act is crushing small sites like Microcosm with draconian liability laws.
- “What tech company would do business in Britain?” – The pernicious effects of the Online Safety Act are now being felt, says Fred de Fossard in CapX.
- “MPs to debate Lucy Letby case as lawyers seek fresh appeal” – The Lucy Letby case will be debated in Parliament in January, the Telegraph has learned, after the former nurse’s lawyers said they would seek a fresh appeal.
- “Letters from America – part three” – On Substack, Dr. Tom Jefferson and Prof. Carl Heneghan warn against further surrender of sovereignty to global health bureaucrats.
- “Yale researchers have found Covid spike protein in the blood of people never infected with Covid – years after they got mRNA jabs” – On Substack, Alex Berenson unpacks Yale University’s discovery of persistent Covid spike protein in vaccinated individuals.
- “German ‘diversity’ Christmas market banned for selling Hamas gifts” – An evangelical church congregation in Germany could face criminal charges for holding an “anti-colonial” Christmas market that sold banned Hamas symbols, reports the Telegraph.
- “Biden was never President: the full truth must come out” – In the Mail, Maureen Callahan blows the lid off the idea that Joe Biden was ever in charge, revealing that a hidden cabal has been running the presidency all along, while the world watched.
- “The U.K. will miss Andrew Doyle and Graham Linehan” – Andrew Doyle and Graham Linehan’s departure for the U.S. is a damning indictment of the state of artistic freedom in Britain, says Simon Evans in Spiked.
- “BBC refuses to play anti-Starmer Christmas song, as it hits No.1 in downloads chart” – A parody song taking aim at Keir Starmer for stripping millions of pensioners of their winter fuel payments has topped download charts, but those behind it are blasting radio stations for refusing to play it, reports the Mail.
- “J.K. Rowling and the tweet that changed the trans debate” – In Spiked, Lauren Smith marks five years since the Harry Potter author first took on the scourge of gender ideology.
- “Sports inequity” – The goal of modern academic life is to make us believe six impossible things before breakfast, or at least to make us behave as if we did, writes Theodore Dalrymple in the Critic.
- “Eamonn Holmes’s GB News co-host Isabel Webster and star Mark Dolan axed” – GB News has sacked a top presenter for being “too woke”, shaken up the schedule by axing another star and slashed Jacob Rees-Mogg’s shifts, reveals the Mail.
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The “anti Kier” song that the BBC is refusing to play, hence showing their political bias, is one of the best parodies of the year and is well worth listening to. Fingers crossed it becomes the official Christmas Number 1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrvmY5s2mo
Thursday Morning White Hill & Wargrave Road
Remenham Henley-on-Thames …
Interesting perspective. I wonder if any posters living in Ireland can attest to this. Also, does anyone know why the Muslim stabber in Dublin hasn’t been sentenced yet?;
”The obsession of the Irish government with falsely accusing Israel of genocide is only equaled by its determination to commit an actual genocide against the Irish people.
In its latest move, the Irish government has called for watering down the definition of genocide to be able to apply it to the Jewish State, but there is no need to water down the formal definition, the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, to charge Ireland’s government with ‘self-genocide’ or ‘autogenocide’ against its own people.
In the last 20 years, Ireland, a small nation of millions, has been overwhelmed by a mass migration of 1.6 million people. In 2023, there were 54,678 births in the Republic of Ireland and 141,600 immigrants. Birth rates dropped 5% in 2023 (hovering at 1.5 births per woman well below replacement rate) but the number of immigrants grew by 31%. And will grow further.
The most popular name for boys was Jack, among Irish parents, while the most popular name among non-European immigrant parents was ‘Mohammed’.
Churches are closing across Ireland and mosques are opening in their place. There were only 400 Muslims in all of Ireland in 1991. That shot up to 19,000 in 2002 and 83,000 in 2023. 3% of Ireland’s children are Muslim now and the numbers are increasing every year.
Some Muslims are impatient with those numbers and have been trying to hurry them along.
In November, an Algerian Arab began stabbing children outside a Catholic school in Dublin. A five and six-year-old girl suffered severe injuries. When a crowd gathered to protest the latest act of Muslim violence, a ruthless police and media crackdown quickly ensued.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, the son of an Indian father, scolded that the Irish protesters had “brought shame on Dublin, brought shame on Ireland and brought shame on their families and themselves.” No shame was brought on those who had allowed Riad Bouchaker and a legion of foreign invaders like him to occupy Ireland, slaughter and displace the native population.
Media accounts emphasized that the Algerian Muslim stabber, Bouchaker, who needed an Arabic translator in court, was really an “Irish citizen” and condemned bigotry against him.
No mention was made in the media that Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire, the Catholic school attended by the children, was four blocks away from the ‘Dublin Mosque’ and the headquarters of the ‘Islamic Foundation of Ireland’ which had formerly been the Donore Presbyterian Church.
And no questions were asked about what this proximity to the largest mosque in the city might have had to the attack. Such questions, according to the government, are “disinformation”.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/ireland-is-committing-genocide-against-itself/
All absolutely correct, from a British/irish national living in Ireland
!
General election results have brought us the same party’s in the same government with the same leaders that just take turns swopping heads every 4 years!
Net Zero, immigration, business as usual
Lowest voter turn out in 100 years (59%)
Take into account all those who didn’t vote for Fine gael,Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein (18-22%)
You do the maths!
If Trump lowers American corporation tax to 12.5% (same as here in ireland) amazon, Microsoft, Google etc will all leave their headquarters in ireland and head back home to their main costumer base in a heartbeat! leaving little old ireland with a multi billion euro tax hole in its finances, the high life that this luxury government and its people have enjoyed will end and it will be back to selling potatoes
Ireland has enjoyed an economy built on sand for too long and must return to reality
Can’t put into words how courageous and mentally strong this lady is considering what she’s had to endure, and how her grown-up children must comprehend what their own father did and enabled dozens of strangers to do to their mother. ‘Sick’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. And quite rightly there is much condemnation about these paltry sentences;
”Dominique Pelicot, the husband who repeatedly drugged and raped his wife for nearly a decade while also inviting dozens of strangers to rape her unconscious body, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, concluding the four-month-long landmark criminal case in France.
The Vaucluse Criminal Court handed down sentences ranging from 3 to 20 years in prison to 51 men convicted of sexual assault and rape in the widely followed Mazan rape trial.
The verdict drew sharp criticism from feminist activists and victims’ advocates demonstrating outside the courthouse who argued the punishments were insufficient for the gravity of the crimes.
The case centered around the repeated drugging, sexual assault, and rape of Gisèle Pelicot by her then-husband, Dominique Pelicot, and dozens of men he recruited online over a decade. Dominique Pelicot, 72, received the statutory maximum sentence of 20 years, including a mandatory incarceration term of two-thirds of his sentence. He will also be registered in the national sex offender database.
The other 50 defendants, aged 27 to 74, were found guilty of varying degrees of participation. Most received sentences of less than 10 years, and six were released immediately due to health considerations or suspended sentences. The heaviest sentence among the co-defendants was 15 years for Romain V., who raped the victim on six separate occasions. The lightest was a three-year sentence, two of which were suspended, for a defendant accused of inappropriate touching.
As reported by Le Parisien and AFP, the court’s sentences fell below the prosecution’s recommendations, which called for 10 to 18 years for most of the accused. In total, the prosecution had requested 652 years in prison for the group but received a combined total of 428 years.”
https://rmx.news/crime/dominique-pelicot-jailed-for-20-years-as-all-51-defendants-found-guilty-in-mazan-rape-trial/
https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/44178
Within Russia, as the anaesthesia of war wears off, the pain and awareness of the destructive consequences of a military ‘victory’ will intensify.
The Kremlin wants to humiliate the West and expose its weakness – to show that NATO isn’t capable of providing security guarantees against Russia, and that all guarantees of this kind in the post-Soviet space should be agreed with Moscow.
Putin responded to a media question during his annual Direct Line televised press conference on December 19 on whether he would change his decision to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine if he had it to do over again, stating that he should have made this decision earlier.
Putin claimed that his invasion was in response to breaches of the Minsk agreements; no mention of NATO. He gives every appearance of making it up as he goes along. The Minsk II Accords did not require Russia to withdraw its armed forces from occupied areas of Ukraine, and Russia used positions in the occupied areas as staging areas for the 2022 full-scale invasion.
Putin said during Direct Line that he is ready to hold talks with Ukraine without preconditions, that any talks must be based on negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022, conditions he attempted to impose on Ukraine when he believed his invasion could succeed in a few days and then, later, as his forces were still driving on Kyiv.
Unfortunately for Russia, the poor performance of the Russian military and the feebleness of the Russian petrodollar economy, so vulnerable as the price of fossil fuels drop, does not give Putin the strong man image in the eyes of the rest of the world that he believes he has in Russia.
That mismatch between self image and reality means that the confrontation between Putin’s Russia and the West will not end here, and that there is a third war ahead.
At the same press conference:
The Russian army is trying to “drive out” the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) from the Kursk region, but no one has set a specific time frame for the operation, said Russian President Vladimir Putin, answering a question from a resident of the region during a live broadcast.
Putin has publicly demanded three times that the military “expel the enemy” from Kursk, most recently on Dec. 16 at a Ministry of Defense meeting, calling it “the sacred duty of the armed forces.” In November, he promised a swift clearance of the territory from the enemy, but since then, the Russian army has been unable to fulfill this task.
Awks……
And not a mention of the North Korean chimera.
Referring to Kursk, Putin stated (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/75909):
We will undoubtedly drive them out. There is no alternative. Concerning a precise date – I am afraid I cannot specify one at this moment. I have an understanding of the plans, which are regularly reported to me. However, it is not possible to declare a specific date. The troops can hear me now; if I were to specify a date, they would go to great lengths to meet it, potentially disregarding casualties. We cannot allow that. While a day or two may not make a significant difference, but we will undoubtedly expel them, the damage assessment will follow, and, most importantly, everything will be restored. There is no doubt about that.
We will rebuild the road network, restore utility infrastructure, and reinstate social facilities such as schools and kindergartens. Community centres and housing will be rebuilt, and housing reconstruction certificates will be issued.
We will assist those who wish to relocate to other regions. Currently, about 108 billion rubles have been allocated for this purpose, if I remember correctly. I know that the first funds have already been received. The Administration will work throughout the holidays, meeting with people and addressing their issues, including providing certificates.
The Kremlin wants to humiliate the West and expose its weakness – to show that NATO isn’t capable of providing security guarantees against Russia, and that all guarantees of this kind in the post-Soviet space should be agreed with Moscow.
When you refer to today’s world as “post-Soviet space”, you appear to be unable to accept that the USSR officially ceased to exist 33 years ago!
NATO may be capable of providing security guarantees to Russia (you wrote ‘against’ but I assume you meant ‘to’ or ‘for’) in some form or another but NATO, or more exactly the West, has zero credibility in Russian eyes – and understandably so.
As Putin stated in his speech I cited in News Round-Up three days ago, “… I spoke about our biggest concerns and worries, and the fundamental threats which irresponsible Western politicians created for Russia consistently, rudely and unceremoniously from year to year. I am referring to the eastward expansion of NATO, which is moving its military infrastructure ever closer to the Russian border … Entreaties and requests do not help … in many regions of the world where the United States brought its law and order, this created bloody, non-healing wounds and the curse of international terrorism and extremism. I have only mentioned the most glaring but far from only examples of disregard for international law. This array includes promises not to expand NATO eastwards even by an inch. To reiterate: they [USA] have deceived us, or, to put it simply, they have played us”.
Referring to US’s imposition of its idea of law and order resulting in the curse of international terrorism and extremism could hardly be more fitting than in today’s world where US support of ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists resulted in the end of the Assad regime in Syria, where these terrorists (whose leader al Jolani has a $10 million price on his head – imposed by USA!) are now running wild, in their usual style beheading Syrian citizens.
Putin claimed that his invasion was in response to breaches of the Minsk agreements; no mention of NATO. He gives every appearance of making it up as he goes along. The Minsk II Accords did not require Russia to withdraw its armed forces from occupied areas of Ukraine …
NATO is not mentioned in the Minsk agreements, so why should Putin refer to NATO? And they certainly did require Russia to withdraw at least part of her protecting armament and forces from Ukraine.
One should not forget that both Hollande and Merkel publicly admitted (2 years ago?) that the primary purpose of the Minsk peace agreements was to provide the West with more time to arm and train the Ukrainian forces.
Unfortunately for Russia, the poor performance of the Russian military and the feebleness of the Russian petrodollar economy, so vulnerable as the price of fossil fuels drop, does not give Putin the strong man image in the eyes of the rest of the world that he believes he has in Russia.
Well, Russia has the world’s 5th strongest economy and Putin was last re-elected with 88% of the votes from a 77% turn-out of voters. Name any Western politician that can claim such support!
As I have repeatedly said,gt Thanks listen to what Putin actually said not what the Western “authorities” said he said. Thanks for spelling it out for our friend who seems to think that Kyivpost is authoritative.
Putin is simply incredible. Which politician in the Western world (and in the eastern, for that matter) is prepared to sit down for literally hours on end to answer a seemingly endless number of questions from the public (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/75909)?
“This is the Results of the Year with Vladimir Putin. As usual, questions can be submitted in a number of ways until the end of our programme. Our colleagues continue working with the incoming questions.
“First, you can submit your questions by calling 8 (800) 200 4040 or sending an SMS or MMS message to 04040. Questions can also be submitted via the programme’s official accounts on Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. You can also use the website and mobile app called москва-путину.рф.
“We have already received over 2.2 million questions, including 1.2 million via telephone, about 43,000 via SMS messages, and over 140,000 via the website. We can see that the number of questions is increasing in real time …”
Furthermore, which politician would ever politely answer a pretty rude question from a reporter whose TV channel supports the country waging war against his?
Keir Simmons, NBC News:
Mr President, you have failed to reach the objectives of your special military operation. Large numbers of Russians have died, including a general assassinated here in Moscow this week. And the leader of Syria, who you supported, has been overthrown. Mr President, when you face President-elect Trump, you will be the weaker leader. How do you propose to compromise? What are you going to offer?
And how did Putin reply?
Esteemed Mr Simmons. Why did I say “esteemed”? Because, despite all the persecution of Russian media, we allow you to continue working in Russia and you can do so freely. It is good enough. You and the people who pay your salary in the United States really want to see Russia in a weakened state.
My opinion differs. I believe that Russia has become significantly stronger in the past two or three years. Why? Because we are becoming a truly sovereign country, and we barely depend on anybody. We are capable of firmly standing on our feet when it comes to the economy. I have already talked about economic growth rates.
We are strengthening our defence capability. The combat readiness of the Russian Armed Forces is the highest in the world today. I assure you it is the highest.
The same is true of our defence industry. We are increasing the production of everything our army and navy need now and will need in the future. We are doing so confidently and quickly, unlike our opponents.
And so on.
‘Putin’s Russia is a revanchist state, fomenting a “Weimar syndrome” (resentment of the collapse of the USSR as a result of Western plots) from the start.
In Putin’s Russia, the collective memory of war as a catastrophe that must never be repeated has faded. War has been normalized as an instrument of foreign policy.
The everyday reality of the people in the occupied regions (terror, political murders, torture, expropriation) would take hold in any other territory conquered by Russia.
Five factors have largely shaped Russia’s strategic culture under Putin’s personalist dictatorship.
First, the head of state and his inner circle make essential decisions in national security and foreign policy without any control from a broader elite or society. Their overriding goal is to ensure the survival of the regime, which state propaganda equates with the survival of Russian statehood.
Second, the autocratic model of rule is projected onto the sphere of international law and politics. State sovereignty is not defined in legal terms but in terms of military power and geopolitical expansion; those who impose their will by force enjoy more sovereignty than others.International agreements are regarded as binding as long as they do not restrict the “sovereign.”
Third, the core of Russian national identity discourse is a strong, imperial state. After the collapse of the USSR, leaders offered no cohesive concept of post-imperial collective identity to a deeply atomized society. The public’s disappointment with democratic reforms in the 1990s paved the way for a revival of the great-power identity under Putin’s rule, while alternative sources of collective identity (the idea of civic nationalism, ethno-nationalism, or regional identities) have been systemically marginalized.
The state-promoted identity is based on negative, confrontational elements: Russia is portrayed as a besieged fortress surrounded by enemies (the West) who seek to destroy it. The image of the enemy has little to do with objective threats but is rather intended to serve the interests of the ruling group.
Fourth, former KGB officers, including Putin, have a dominant position in the system. Their worldview and modus operandi were shaped by the Cold War confrontation with the West.
Fifth, criminal values, rules, and methods permeated Russia’s political and strategic culture after politics became intertwined with organized crime in the 1990s. A large group of political players, including Putin, were involved in mafia activities at the time.’
Enough said
I have no problem with you disliking Putin or Russia, that is your choice; I only have a problem with these ceaseless multifarious allegations which appear primarily based on dislike rather than fact.
Now you accuse Putin of being involved in mafia activities. Would you dare accuse any Western politician of such a crime without having concrete evidence? Because I am sure the authorities would be knocking on your door in the middle of the night if you did!
It is especially interesting how you assign negative attributes to Russia while completely ignoring their proliferation in the West:
Finally, Russia is portrayed as a besieged fortress surrounded by enemies (the West) who seek to destroy it: as proven on a daily basis by the conflict in Ukraine.
‘All this hidden wealth mattered when we published the Panama Papers in 2016, two years after Russia had annexed the Crimean peninsula.
Now, after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it matters more than ever.
Lawmakers in the UK, the EU, the US and Canada have sanctioned Russian banks, Russian companies and individuals close to Putin.
This includes Russian oligarchs, as well as Putin’s friends, supporters and admirers who have helped facilitate his kleptocracy by hiding his wealth in accounts under their own names or just championing his kleptocracy for their own illicit enrichment.
Individuals like the cellist Sergej Roldugin, the Rotenberg brothers and Usmanov.’
“According to the ONS, over half of U.K. households received more in state benefits than they paid in taxes…”
This Telegraph headline is badly misleading. If you read the article, it even admits that this “fact” is arrived at by including people’s share of State services like the NHS and Education in the figures.
In other words, all they are saying is that the State pays out more than it receives, i.e. is running a deficit. Hardly news.
They are not taking about “state benefits” but about all State spending.
It is arguable that education should be classified as a benefit but not health care or OAP which were were required to contribute towards separately through NI.
Indeed, so sure were they of the future success of state run health care that Labour (who introduced a scheme based on a report by a Liberal commissioned by the Conservatives led wartime coalition) that they told us there would be a need for fewer doctors thereafter.
We can argue whether that was poor medical judgement or poor political judgement but it was their advice to the public.
If the assessment is state spending rather than direct state benefits (money) then the NHS should definitely be included in the calculation.
https://shop.nationalarchives.gov.uk/products/the-new-national-health-service-nhs-1948-replica-booklet
My emphasis above.
Good find!
“Biden was never President”.
This is meant to be a revelation?
Of course it’s the case. How else do you keep a system of theft going for so long? Most people have to be in on it and benefiting from it.
Otherwise people would rebel against it. But what we have is a system in which a majority abuse a minority and the abusing majority gaslights the minority constantly telling them they are evil and don’t do enough.
“Mandelson to be named U.S. ambassador”
What’s up.. have they run out of snakes,rats and weasels?
“Mandelson to be named U.S. ambassador”
Absolutely guaranteed to be a serious diplomatic fall-out within the first six months. This guy is straight from the Bliar mold – evil, evil, evil but with a smile.
Why Lord Mandelson’s links to Jeffrey Epstein could come back to haunt Sir Keir Starmer
Court evidence shows Epstein called his friend Lord Mandelson ‘Petie’ | UK | News | Express.co.uk
UK politician Peter Mandelson linked to Epstein, shocking messages reveal invitation to stay at pedo’s house | PerthNow
“Two men charged over Manchester Airport incident in July”
It’s about bloody time!
Bet they’re not remanded in custody pending trial..
Mosely’s Inquest: https://www.gbnews.com/celebrity/michael-mosley-death-inquest-confirms-death-greek-island-tragedy To sum up, they just don’t know, according to the Coroner.
But they do know, really, as does his wife, who unwisely let him wander off alone without his mobile in the searing heat, knowing that he had just finished coldwater swimming, which had caused TRANSIENT GLOBAL AMNESIA in him on a previous occasion in Britain while coldwater swimming with his wife.
Dr Michael Mosley warns of the little-known blackout danger from cold water swimming – Scottish Daily Express
“He was swimming in Cornwall last week at the same spot where his “memory was wiped” three years ago due to “TRANSIENT GLOBAL AMNESIA”.
Since then, the TV doctor said he has “heard from a number of people who’d had a similar experience”.”
” Mosley recalled that he had been swimming with wife Clare for just a few minutes when “it all went blank”. He added: “The next thing I remember is being in A&E. According to the A&E consultant, I had experienced TRANSIENT GLOBAL AMNESIA, memory loss brought on by the cold-water swimming, and that it would almost certainly return to normal within 24 hours.”
Although the condition is said to affect only about one in 10,000 people in the UK ever year, he suggested that “perhaps it is not as rare as we think”.
“It also happened to a close friend of mine less than a month ago while she was swimming in a river,” Mosley added.
“Sports inequity”
Speaking of which, here is the Liverpool Football Club Calendar for 2025. Continuing the now almost universal trend of all advertising photography, including fashion models, to add filters making the white folks look darker and other ethnics look lighter. Blonds & redheads are frowned upon. Spot the Indigenous.
https://media.4rgos.it/i/Argos/4520483_R_Z001A?w=750&h=440&qlt=70
And the one for Manchester United:
https://media.4rgos.it/i/Argos/4522450_R_Z001A?w=750&h=440&qlt=70