News Round-Up

• “Unions demand Burnham acts over £72 million ‘super-donations’ to Reform” – TUC boss Paul Nowak is calling on Andy Burnham to step in over £72 million in donations to Reform from crypto billionaires, saying the cash shows just how much clout the “super-rich” have, reports the Mail.
• “Trade unions set to call for donations cap that would impact everyone but them” – The trade unions are set to call for a cap on political donations that would apply to donors of all other political parties, but not their donations to Labour, says Guido Fawkes.
• “Labour wants to punish us for our £72 million donations, Reform warns” – Reform has accused Labour of trying to “punish” Reform with a retrospective law that could force it to return a record £72 million in donations, according to the Mail.
• “Farage threatens to cut off Labour’s union funding in donations row” – Nigel Farage has warned he will move to sever Labour’s union funding if Reform comes to power if the Government tries to retrospectively make the £72 million donation to Reform illegal, reports the Telegraph.
• “Could new laws force Reform to return its bumper donations?” – As the Government moves to cap political gifts from overseas voters, Nigel Farage is relying on decades-old residency law to protect his party’s war chest, writes Oliver Wright in the Times.
• “Angela Rayner attacks Reform donors… but defends union millions” – Angela Rayner has vowed to “defend our democracy” from “fascist oligarchs” donating to Nigel Farage’s party, despite Labour taking tens of millions from trade unions, notes Jason Groves in the Mail.
• “Billionaire money is fine, but Reform has become a crypto party” – Reform has every right to accept £72 million from two crypto-billionaires, but the implications of its new donor base deserve scrutiny, says Charles Moore in the Telegraph.
• “Reform rules out abolishing inheritance tax” – Reform has ruled out abolishing inheritance tax and branded the Tories “out of touch” for considering it, reports the Mail.
• “People will vote Reform because Lefties are so incredibly irritating” – EU flag-wavers at the Proms are the perfect emblem of a bourgeois disdain for Britain that is fuelling Nigel Farage’s enduring popularity, writes Tim Stanley in the Telegraph.
• “‘Stop hammering Middle England’: Jigsaw owner slams Labour tax hikes” – The boss of upmarket fashion retailer Jigsaw has urged Andy Burnham to “stop hammering Middle England” as tax hikes inhibit consumer spending, reports This is Money.
• “Cabinet Secretary ousted by Starmer got £860,000 payoff” – Chris Wormald, the Cabinet Secretary effectively ousted by Sir Keir Starmer, received “contractual compensation” of £332,897 and “additional severance” of £526,598 after being removed from his post, says the Mail. Not bad for 14 months work.
• “Council hires security guards to counter male migrants” – Essex County Council has hired private security guards in three town centres to ward off “gatherings of male migrants” after reports they were intimidating locals and “wolf-whistling at schoolgirls”, reports the Mail.
• “I’m fighting plans to house 1,256 male asylum seekers in our tiny community” – In the Telegraph, a mother of three daughters living in a village of 300 people describes her alarm at plans to install 1,256 male asylum seekers nearby, potentially leaving residents outnumbered by unknown young men.
• “Villages join revolt over migrant camps” – Piddington has created a blueprint to help other communities resist being forced to house thousands of asylum seekers, writes Charles Hymas in the Telegraph.
• “Muslim woman arrested at Portsmouth protest” – It’s extraordinary, really, how quickly the state can discover an appetite for identifying people in balaclavas, writes Lara Dodsworth on her Substack, noting that the police didn’t hesitate to arrest a male protestor in a burka last weekend.
• “‘Whitewash’ as elections watchdog brushes aside family voting evidence” – The Electoral Commission has acknowledged that family voting “concerns some voters” but concluded there were “very low levels of proven electoral fraud” – a finding critics are calling a whitewash, says the Mail.
• “Zack Polanski campaigns in Urdu for Holborn & St Pancras by-election” – The Green Party leader has posted a video introducing himself and his candidacy in Urdu and urging voters to back him in the Holborn & St Pancras contest, reports the Times.
• “Sturgeon reported to police for allegedly handling stolen goods” – A blogger has accused former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon of breaking Scots law by ‘keeping items’ her husband purchased with embezzled party funds, says the Telegraph.
• “SNP and Plaid do deal with Sinn Fein to push break-up of the UK” – Scottish and Welsh nationalists have today done a deal with Sinn Fein, pledging to work together to break up the United Kingdom, reports the Mail.
• “England should be at the table to discuss the future of the Union” – It appears Britain’s most populous nation has no voice in constitutional talks dominated by the so-called Celtic fringe, notes Philip Johnston in the Telegraph.
• “Did Putin just try to kill Boris Johnson?” – Whatever the target, Russia’s attack near Poland’s border rings alarm bells, says Elizabeth Rushton in the Times.
• “Revealed: the ‘antisemitic rot’ at the heart of the NHS” – A campaign group has highlighted cases of antisemitic abuse in the NHS, including a nurse given a Nazi salute by a colleague and a patient told that “Jews kill children for fun”, according to the Telegraph.
• “Schools to police children’s lunch boxes” – Schools will be expected to tell parents what they can put in their children’s lunch boxes as part of Labour’s plans to promote healthier meals for pupils, reports the Telegraph.
• “Outrage as NHS Trust bans the word ‘normal’ in aid of anxious patients” – Sussex Health & Care has banned staff from using the words ‘normal’ and ‘patients’ over fears it makes their ‘clients’ feel alienated, says the Sun.
• “Leaked data show Israel covered up hundreds of Covid shot deaths and hospitalisations within weeks of vaccine rollout” – Leaked data purportedly showing that Israeli authorities suppressed hundreds of Covid vaccine deaths and hospitalisations in the early weeks of the rollout point to a coordinated global cover-up, writes Nicolas Hulscher on the Focal Points Substack.
• “Research links cancer and Covid vaccines” – On his Substack, Dr Raphael Lataster argues that peer-reviewed research now published in the dedicated cancer journal Oncotarget establishes links between Covid vaccines and cancer.
• “Kennedy can end Big Pharma’s Covid immunity with a signature” – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged to strip pharmaceutical companies of their Covid liability shield – so why does the protection remain in place? asks Dr Robert W. Malone on his Malone News Substack.
• “Donald Trump attacks ‘sick conspiracy’ against AI” – Donald Trump has warned that China stands to benefit after Silicon Valley’s top AI bosses backed calls to restrict AI development, says the Telegraph.
• “Ignore rising factory costs at your peril, Ford boss warns Labour” – Ford’s Chief Executive has warned that its UK operation is under heavy pressure from soaring energy prices, reports the Telegraph.
• “The South China Sea has not been cooperating with the climate change narrative” – Data from the South China Sea continues to defy the prevailing climate change narrative, notes Kenneth Richard on No Tricks Zone.
• “The history is unsettled” – Far from being a fixed backdrop to climate debate, the historical record itself is far from settled, says Geoff Chambers in Climate Scepticism.
• “The world’s climate spending spree has bought us what, exactly?” – After $9 trillion in climate spending since 2020, the UN now admits the 1.5°C target is out of reach while demanding trillions more each year. I’ll take my chances with a warming planet, writes Stephen Moore at the Epoch Times.
• “Wrong, USA Today, ‘hottest summer ever’ claim ignores the most important temperature record” – NOAA’s temperature analysis is incomplete and misleading, and the best available evidence tells a very different story about this summer’s heat, says Anthony Watts in ClimateRealism.
• “AP and Fortune ignore population trends to blame climate change for bear encounters” – Both the Associated Press and Fortune Magazine have ignored surging bear and human population trends in order to pin a rise in bear encounters on climate change, writes Linnea Lueken in ClimateRealism.
• “Lindsay Clancy strangled her kids because of ‘climate change’” – On his Substack, William M. Briggs slams a new academic paper linking temperature to child abuse.
• “The 17th Century was horrible. Who owes whom for it?” – The branding of enslaved Africans with the royal crown reveals something dreadful about Britain’s past, but whether people alive today inherit those debts is a far more complicated question, says C.J. Strachan on his Substack.
• “More than 800,000 have applied for citizenship to new microstate aiming to become ‘utopia’ for crypto billionaires, founder claims” – More than 800,000 people are hoping to move to a self-proclaimed crypto micronation called ‘Liberland’ that is on a patch of muddy floodplain along the Danube River, reports the Mail.
• “Harry and Meghan move children to new school over security fears” – The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have moved their children to a new school because of security concerns, according to Sky News.
• “Sydney Sweeney’s naked betting advert ‘sexualises’ women’s sport” – Sydney Sweeney has been accused of sexualising women in sport after appearing naked in a betting advert, says the Telegraph.
• “Give 16 year-olds the vote – but ban them from the news?” – In the Lords, Toby points out the absurdity of giving 16 year-olds the vote while blocking them from social media news and Commons speeches under the Online Safety Act, and urges Ofcom to enforce its neglected “keep up” duties so they can still access democratic and journalistic content.

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