- “Andy Burnham is the runaway favourite to replace Sir Keir Starmer” – A Find Out Now survey has put the Manchester Mayor neck-and-neck with the PM when Labour members are asked to name their preferred leader, reveals the Mail.
- “Nandy complains about Burnham speculation after helping election bid” – Lisa Nandy dismisses claims that big-hitters are gearing up to depose the Prime Minister as “froth and nonsense”, despite helping Andy Burnham’s election bid, according to the Mail.
- “Tories should stand aside for Reform in Makerfield, says Rees-Mogg” – Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg is among several leading Conservatives calling for a by-election pact with Reform to stop Andy Burnham reaching Westminster and launching a Labour leadership bid, reports the Telegraph.
- “Andy Burnham in retreat over Brexit betrayal” – The Greater Manchester Mayor has distanced himself from calls to rejoin the EU following a backlash that threatens to derail his by-election campaign, says the Telegraph.
- “Labour will trigger ‘years of chaos’ if it tries to undo Brexit” – Kemi Badenoch has hit out at Labour as the party tears itself apart over whether to overturn the result of the 2016 referendum, reports the Mail.
- “Burnham ‘failed to grasp the nettle’ on grooming gang inquiry” – A whistleblower claims Andy Burnham showed neither “leadership nor courage” in failing to order a proper inquiry into grooming gangs in Greater Manchester, according to the Telegraph.
- “Fund manager sells off ‘fragile’ UK bonds in warning sign for Burnham” – One of Britain’s biggest fund managers has dumped Government bonds over concerns of an Andy Burnham premiership, says the Telegraph.
- “As Labour lurches further Left, the markets are calling time” – All Labour leadership rivals in the frame would crank up borrowing and spending even further, warns Liam Halligan in the Telegraph – hence the bond market jitters.
- “Starmer’s challengers are merely rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic” – Labour needs to wake up to how markets and incentives work – and how much the Government itself has helped create the current economic mess, says Roger Bootle in the Telegraph.
- “Middle England’s wallet is in the firing line of a Labour succession war” – Whether Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting or Ed Miliband replaces Sir Keir, the squeezed middle is set to pay the price, warns Michael Mosbacher in the Telegraph.
- “Angela Rayner should have faced stamp duty penalty” – According to a Government expert in the department that investigated her, Angela Rayner should not have escaped a fine for underpaying stamp duty on her seaside home in Hove, reports the Mail.
- “Whitehall could sabotage Farage with strikes if he wins election” – Whitehall officials are plotting to paralyse the government with a sustained campaign of strikes if Nigel Farage wins the next election, according to the Mail.
- “UK tourism industry could collapse under new ‘holiday levy’” – Letting agents are warning Britain’s tourism industry is being “taxed out of existence” and could buckle under the Government’s proposed holiday levy, says the Mail.
- “Eurovision proves the British public rejects the crazed Israelophobia” – The Eurovision Song Contest has allowed people to support an unjustly maligned country defending itself from permanent attack, writes Gareth Roberts in the Telegraph.
- “Why are pro-Gaza activists silent on the plight of Afghans, Iranians and Sudanese?” – It is right that we care about the suffering of Palestinians, but the obsessive focus on Israel as the font of all evil must end, says Danny Cohen the Telegraph.
- “Trans Indian MSP wants Scots to pay reparations to Palestine” – A trans Indian student elected to Holyrood wants Scottish taxpayers to fund reparations to Palestinians because of their “complicity” in the “occupation” of the territory, reports the Telegraph.
- “Hamas’s sexual terrorism is laid bare and still the world looks away” – A new 300-page Civil Commission report – backed by 10,000 photographs, 1,800 hours of footage and 430 testimonies – documents Hamas’s systematic sexual atrocities on October 7th, yet the mainstream media and international institutions continue to look away, writes Camilla Long in the Sunday Times.
- “Stab victim fighting for his life after attack by ‘Eastern European’” – A man in his 60s attacked by an “Eastern European” knifeman in Stafford is still fighting for his life in hospital, reports the Mail.
- “Britain may be turning into the Ottoman Empire at breaking point” – We need leadership which engenders renewed faith in the collective mission of our nation, says Alec Marsh in the Telegraph.
- “British engineer sanctioned over Iranian shadow banking network” – A British engineer has been sanctioned along with four other family members for running a “shadow banking network” that laundered billions of pounds for the Iranian regime, reveals the Mail.
- “Son of British couple jailed in Iran ‘for spying’ blames Keir Starmer” – The son of a British couple who have spent 500 days in an Iranian jail “for spying” blames Sir Keir Starmer for abandoning his parents, reports the Mail.
- “Iranians describe horrific abuse at the hands of regime guards” – Detainees in Iran’s prisons are being subjected to beatings, rape and psychological abuse, according to testimonies that lay bare the lengths the Islamic Republic will go to crush dissent, says the Mail.
- “There won’t be anything left of Iran if it refuses peace deal” – Donald Trump has warned Iran that there will be “nothing left” of the country if its leaders do not agree to a peace deal with the US, reports the Telegraph.
- “US forces kill top ISIS leader in daring 1am gunfight” – Donald Trump has celebrated the killing of ISIS mastermind Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, accused of orchestrating the massacre and kidnapping of hundreds of Christians in Nigeria, according to the Mail.
- “The French nursery staff sexually abusing children and staying on” – Parents of alleged victims are speaking out about a French school system “infiltrated by paedophile networks”, writes Henry Samuel in the Telegraph.
- “The Beijing Motor Show is proof that the future of cars is Chinese” – Rapid-reacting Chinese manufacturers are leading the transition to electric vehicles and building the future, claims Andrew English in the Telegraph.
- “Ebola outbreak declared health emergency ‘of international concern’” – The WHO has declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a “public health emergency of international concern”, reports the BBC.
- “Machiavellian spy firm or NHS saviour? The US giant love-bombing Britain” – US tech giant Palantir is promising to transform UK healthcare, but its critics fear it threatens our privacy, writes Andrew Orlowski in the Telegraph.
- “Wine merchant Tanners threatens to pull out of Wales over recycling tax” – A historic family-owned wine merchant has threatened to pull out of Wales because of plans to add a recycling levy to the cost of each bottle sold, reports the Telegraph.
- “How batteries can help Britain beat a £300 surge in energy bills” – Ed Miliband’s pledge to decarbonise the grid risks piling £100 billion on to household bills. But batteries and smart ‘flexibility’ could cut costs up to £800 a year, reveals Jonathan Leake in the Telegraph.
- “Drill baby drill to drive growth and improve productivity” – On Substack, David Turver argues that oil and gas extraction is one of our highest productivity industries – so it makes sense to start drilling again.
- “South West oyster farmer quits after royal landowner’s pressure” – Oyster farmer Tim Edwards is set to shut his River Avon site after the Duchy of Cornwall refused to renew his lease over the harvesting of Pacific oysters which it calls ‘invasive’, but which he says has no impact on the environment, according to Jonathan Morris for the BBC.
- “Ex-climate activist speaks out – Lucy Biggers” – Former climate activist turned sceptic Lucy Biggers tells the hosts of Triggernometry how she came to question the movement she once devoted herself to – and what she found when she started looking at the science more carefully.
- “Climate pseudoscience debunked: livestock methane fears are baseless” – Killing every one of the world’s 1.6 billion cattle would reduce temperatures by just 0.04°C, making the entire global campaign against live stock methane one of the most costly and pointless exercises in history, says Gregory Wrightstone for CO2 Coalition.
- “Junk science: loneliness caused by climate change kills people” – In Watts Up With That?, Anthony Watts debunks claims that climate change kills people through heatwaves keeping people indoors.
- “Great expectations” – In Climate Scepticism, Mark Hodgson reacts to the WHO’s ‘independent’ Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health calling for a global public health emergency to be declared over climate change.
- “NHS faces more discrimination claims over trans use of women’s toilets” – The NHS could become flooded with thousands of discrimination claims from female staff after a tribunal found it has wrongly been allowing trans women to use women’s toilets, reports the Mail.
- “Met Police apologises to Graham Linehan over Heathrow arrest” – The Met Police has apologised to Father Ted creator Graham Linehan for arresting him at Heathrow over gender-critical social media posts, says the Telegraph.
- “Daughter of Garraway’s new love interest wows with anti-trans speech” – The daughter of Kate Garraway’s new love interest, Liam Halligan, has bcome an internet sensation after her Cambridge Union speech in defence of women’s rights has gone viral, reports the Mail.
- “Schoolchildren taught black people cannot be racist to white people” – Teenage pupils are being told that black people can be prejudiced towards white people, but this doesn’t constitute racism, says the Telegraph.
- “Crowds rampage shopping centres over limited-edition watch” – Shoppers who queued overnight for a £350 Swatch–Blancpain watch stormed retail outlets across Europe and Asia in chaotic scenes that left staff shaken and shelves bare within minutes, reports the Sun.
- “The PM was right to describe the UK as ‘an island of strangers’” – The FSU’s Ben Jones appeared on Free Speech Nation last night to discuss his new book Island of Strangers: Diversity, Decline and Free Speech in Crisis.
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It is reported the IMF has drawn attention to the Laffer Curve. Its solutions include cutting waste in the NHS and removing the protection for OAP. If it was an objective organisation it would have mentioed the benefits paid to non-citizens as the first thing to cut.
If it was truly a servant of democratic nations it would not give advice on cuts to spending at all other than they must be done.
Once Starmer’s gone someone will need to produce songs about his successor that are as good as these.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9heZvDseRPE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K9rwr6YO3c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psjWBq5D6oQ
HS2 failings blamed on high-speed focus and political pressure Says Aunty Beeb
Remind me what the initials HS stand for?
If it is no longer HS then there’s no great advantage for it to be non-stop between London and Birmingham. It becomes just an ordinary railway line. Instead of HS2 it’s YARL – Yet Another Railway Line.
It’s too late to scrap it completely as too much irreversible damage has been done. Open it to commercial bids to build stations along the way so that some people at least can get some benefit from it – other than the grifters currently involved in ‘managing’ the building of it.
HS = Horse Shit
HS2 failings are based on “everybody lied”.
Pretty much across the board… as usual, they really need to look at what money has gone where.
The economic advantage – supposed – is it would save business people travel time thereby reducing time spent away from their workplaces – and “time is money”.
But this assessment was based on old data before mobile phones, tablet/laptop computers, Internet and wi-fi on trains.
The train carriage now becomes the work place, and for some it means they get more done away from the distractions of the office. I suppose we could call it “Work from train”.
The supposed economic benefit is no longer there, since some might welcome longer journey times.
The problem with a high speed railway on the island of Great Britain is… it is a small island, and cities/towns are not far apart. Travel distances between stops is short, so it is only possible for a high speed trainset to reach and cruise at maximum speed for very short periods before having to brake… or end up in Denmark.
Other Countries with HS trains – France, Germany, Spain, China are much bigger territories with long distances between stopping points.
This was evident from the start.
The success of InterCity 125 trainsets was not their high speed of 125mph – average speed was 90mph to 100mph – but they could accelerate and brake much quicker between, so they could travel longer at cruising speed, thereby reducing journey times.
Because it is so unusual I want to report that I did not have to login on my iPhone this morning. However that gives me the opportunity to report another fault which I have noticed over recent days/couple of weeks.
When posting a comment the text box use to disappear. Now it remains and there is no indication the slow responding DS system has taken it. So, I press “Submit” again. Whereupon it tells me I cannot post the same comment twice. The text box remains.
Why has DS employed careless programmers and implemented untested changes.
Have you tried emailing the team at; [email protected]? They’ve always got back to me in a timely manner with any inquiries or probs I was experiencing.🤞
Unless your browser clears its web activity history when shut down, or if the browser was not shut down, you will remain logged in.
Text box remaining – sounds like a communication problem between your iPhone and the website.
“How batteries can help Britain beat a £300 surge in energy bills”
Jonathan Leake your a fool!
Completely covering the UK’s total electricity usage strictly with Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) is technically unfeasible. Batteries are designed for short-term balancing, not multi-day, seasonal backup. Building enough capacity for even a single day’s demand would be prohibitively expensive, costing between £152 billion and £360 billion.
Thats a mere £131,400,000,000,000 (131.4 TRILLION) for the whole year!
I’ve tried to do a few back of the fag packet calculations for the real cost of achieving net zero including battery storage which would be by far the biggest single cost. There’s so many assumptions such as how much nuclear power we’d have, how much solar and wind capacity we’d have and how often it could meet demand, the cost of batteries especially the raw materials such as lithium etc. Based on the cost and storage capacity of what was the world’s largest battery when it was installed in S Australia I came up with figures between 3 and 5 trillion pounds for battery storage. The batteries would probably last 8-10 years, depending on how often they were charged and discharged then need replacing. Since the battery in S Australia was installed the price of lithium has sky rocketed so £5trillion would now be the lowest possible figure.
If a lot of countries try to achieve net zero the cost of raw materials will be astronomical. A couple of people far more knowledgeable than myself have tried to calculate how long it would take to mine enough raw materials, at current rates of production, for the whole world to… Read more »
There would be no nuclear. Nuclear cannot be used intermittently to back up intermittent wind/solar, battery output.
Reactors are designed for constant high output, with long, slow cooling periods if maintenance or change of fuel rods is needed. Frequent cooling down then beating up causes damage to the core which can include fuel rods buckling and getting stuck, but in any case will shorten the reactor life considerably – an expensive outcome.
Wind, solar, batteries cannot provide frequency inertia. There can be no fossil fuel free electricity generation, because at least 60% of spinning generation would be required at all times to guarantee a frequency stable grid to avoid black-outs from which if would take days/weeks to recover and restore the grid.
Net Zero is the fantasy of those who do not understand physics or economics.
Like mad Ed Milliband…
The test:
Compared to what?
At what cost?
Based on what evidence?
And – 85% of our « energy » is from fossil fuels, batteries can play no part in that.
Conflating energy and electricity is either ignorance or duplicity.
The whole problem with Net Zeroids – Socialists – is they fail to see electricity as a demand service in a market system, supplied by enterprises who require a return (profit… Boo! Hiss!) on their considerable capital investment. So they only look at marginal prices. They have no concept of “Cost plus one”. The first new-model car off the production line costs £14billion, the next one costs £10 000 and that £14 billion has to be amortised over the production run.
No intermittent business can be profitable – or would even attract investment in the first place. So the only way to get people to invest in and run these “businesses” is by promising vast subsidies and guaranteed above market prices for their output.
And that goes onto bills. The more of these inherently non-profitable subsidy harvesters there are, the more will go on to the bills.
Imo all the talk about what Liebour leadership candidates want to do regarding the EU is irrelevant. Streeting says he wants Britain to rejoin the EU, so what I want a lot of things.
Surely the next PM wouldn’t dare try to rejoin the EU or even hold a referendum as it wasn’t in Liebour’s manifesto and they have no mandate to do so. If they did rejoin Farage could include it in Reforms manifesto that we’d leave within a week of him becoming PM.
In some ways in-out could be a good thing. Farage could do what the Tories should of done and leave then negotiate, why might get a better deal but it’s hard see how we could end up with a worse one than we’ve currently got.
Obviously the next PM will be very pro EU and drag us back in bit by bit, negotiation by negotiation but in this respect can they be any worse than Starmer?
In the last paragraph I think you meant voluntary surrender by voluntary surrender. There is no meaningful negotiation to be had with the EU and there is nothing we want from them.
I still hope, true to his nature, that spiteful Starmer will announce a general election to take all his turncoats with him!
I would want to know who approved the scale of what happened and what the justification was for it. An apology is not enough.
“Met Police apologises to Graham Linehan over Heathrow arrest” – The Met Police has apologised to Father Ted creator Graham Linehan for arresting him at Heathrow over gender-critical social media posts, says the Telegraph
How can you simultaneously be neck and neck and a runaway favourite?
😂 and through the middle comes the winner, the battle hardened nag 2TK!
I hope not, but am rather sceptical about the ‘fight’ between Streeting and Burnham concerning the EU.
Because one is already scheduled for the dog meat factory.
“The French nursery staff sexually abusing children and staying on”
This, of course, is what happens when you put liberal progressives in charge of anything, they’re complicit in the evils perpetrated on others, particularly children.
No wonder they’re not intending to have any investigation into the rape gangs, they know damn well what’s going on, because they’re involved, and they’re worried what will be seen when the stone is kicked over.
Truly astonishing how many cleave themselves to the parties that literally condone this behaviour…
The ruling classes across europe seem all to be disgustingly pervert adjacent.
“Trans Indian MSP wants Scots to pay reparations to Palestine”
Don’t care… they voted him in. As ye sow, and all that…
This guy is such a fraud on two counts, in my opinion. I don’t for one minute think he actually gave a flying fig about the ‘Palestinians’ while he lived in India. Maybe if anyone can find some evidence of him raising awareness or any type of activism in this regard it’ll refute my theory. Same goes for his alleged trans identity. He’s grown his hair long but I notice he’s not gone the whole hog and worn make-up or women’s clothes. That’ll be because his mam and dad are watching from India and he knows they’ll disown him if he carries on like that. Again, proof is needed that he lived as a ‘trans’ identified man prior to moving to the UK.
I think this joker has just jumped aboard the relevant bandwagons in order to further his self-serving interests because he’s got his own personal agenda. And what better vehicle than the Green Party Clown Show by which to achieve his desired objectives.
I live in Scotland and didn’t vote the Greens into a position where they could form a coalition so I care if reparations are paid and it leads to even worse public services than I currently have to put up with.
I feel sorry for you but if a voting majority of your countrymen want a particular form of government then so be it. I’m sure if you want to live like the English you’d be welcome.
As far as scenery goes, if you live in the Highlands I don’t think England has anything to match. But we’ve certainly got some good places.
A trans indian – so no indian but blacks his face and wears a turban?
How strange.
As long as it’s with their money nit English money.
“Whitehall could sabotage Farage with strikes if he wins election”
Told you… honestly, I’m surprised we’ve not yet heard of this in the locals that Reform took last week.
Can’t they simply be sacked? The first few thousand or so to be dismissed will reduce the size of our bloated government machine and, perhaps, incentivise the rest?
I may need to go that way but probably not easy – at least some will need replacing, and there will be legal cases that may find in favour of the employees. It may be necessary for a future Reform government to change employment laws.
I believe if you are paid by the public purse then a refusal to work should lead to instant dismissal. You sign the contract or you don’t. Existing public service employees are given three months to accept that they’re employed by the people, not the state, and sign a new contract or find another job. It would be better to pay these idiots off if need be then have them suck at the teat of hard working people forever.
That was exactly my reaction, I suspect 80% of them add no value to we the people.
Obviously the majority of judges will try and sabotage Farage, especially on immigration/deporting people who should never of been allowed to stay in the UK after arriving on a small boat or their work/study visa expiring. This will be the case even when we leave the ECHR.
Farage will have to tell the courts in no uncertain terms that Parliament makes the laws and if they don’t like them they can go swivel. If the government has to ignore High/Supreme court rulings on who can stay in the UK so be it. Other than having a hissy fit and running crying to the left wing media what can the courts do about it?
The law will have to be changed. We must leave ECHR, abolish the equalities act and the HRA. Also the Blair laws which give civil servants the right to decide which Ministerial instructions they will follow.
Without that it is unlikely any tax payer funded staff would carry out detention and deportation or any other of Reform’s policies.
It may be Reform has to arrive in government with legislation already drafted in case Parliamentary Draftsmen refuse to do their job.
It used to be said that nations could only vote for communists once because thereafter political rights would cease to exist. Britain seems to have voted left too often. Blairite abuse of our constitution and freedom became embedded during the Tory years and now Starmer is trying to seal off any chance of our reverting to parliamentary democracy.
^ This above all.
ECHR is construed differently by different countries. The way the UK follows it is even more nuts than the convention itself. We don’t really have to leave it – just interpret it to our own advantage like most other countries which claim to follow it.
If a civil ‘servant’ won’t follow a Minister’s direction as a matter of conscience then they need to find a job which their conscience will allow them to do.
It appears foreign judges are more patriotic about ECHR interpretation than British ones. We can’t now change our courts without changing the law and Les ing ECHR.
We all remember how the British civil service gold plated EU rules whereas others, such as France, just ignored them when they felt like it.
Good points.
Judges need to be accountable to parliament who can give them a severe blocking, first and final warning e.g. if they give an illegal immigrant 75 hours community service for a crime that could receive 2 years in prison. If they do something similar again sack them. Once we get illegal immigration under control they’ll be a lot less work for judges hearing endless appeals so we can manage without hundreds of the worst ones
There’s so much Reform need to do they have to hit the ground running. It’ll have to be a case of “we all know Liebour and the Tories have fucked up this country and it’ll take you a long time to sort the mess out. Don’t waste your time keep saying it’s all their fault get on and do what needs to be done”.
Yes, they need to have plans ready. A whole list of bits of secondary legislation and quangos already scheduled for the chop and a list of primary legislation bills ready to go. Devolution may mean that they can only do some of these things in England – but they should not hold back.
If it’s a waste of rations then cut it, whatever it is.