News Round-Up

• “‘Unqualified’ civil servants fighting asylum appeals” – The Home Office is recruiting civil servants with no previous legal experience to fight asylum appeals, says the Telegraph.
• “Mahmood to block Eritrean visas in row over migrant returns” – The Home Secretary is stripping Eritrean diplomats of fast-track entry and threatening a full visa ban on citizens amid a standoff over migrant returns, reports the Telegraph.
• “Burglar to be deported for fifth time – as secrecy order is lifted” – An Albanian has been jailed four times for burglaries and deported on each occasion, only to sneak back into the country illegally every time reveals the Mail.
• “The Badenoch bounce goes on! Second poll puts Tories ahead of Reform” – The Conservatives are on 24% with More in Common, three points ahead of Nigel Farage’s Reform party and closing the gap on Labour, notes the Mail.
• “Slash size of state to fund defence, IMF urges Burnham” – The International Monetary Fund has warned Andy Burnham that he must cut the size of the state to fund increased defence spending, according to This is Money.
• “Troubles bill will damage ‘bond of trust’, veterans’ groups say” – Special forces associations are urging ministers to reconsider amendments to the Troubles bill they say leave former soldiers exposed to “endless re-investigation”, reports LBC.
• “Burnham prepares to hand more power to EU judges” – Andy Burnham is pushing for an EU migration deal that would grant European judges sweeping new powers over Britain, says the Telegraph.
• “Burnham faces Red Wall backlash over his bid to cosy up to Brussels” – Labour MPs from Brexit-backing parts of the North and Midlands are warning the PM against reopening the free movement debate and urging him to rule out any return to EU migration rules, according to the Mail.
• “Andy Burnham condemns Green Party over ‘antisemitic’ Israel motion” – Andy Burnham has branded the Green Party motion on Israel “antisemitic” and ruled out any coalition with the party, reports the Mail.
• “The modern Left is built on conspiracy theories” – The real irony of Burnham’s Brexit dog-whistle is that it is progressives themselves who are most susceptible to conspiracy theories and political brainwashing, says Allister Heath in the Telegraph.
• “Macklemore’s Free Palestine gig set to benefit ‘extremist’ group” – Macklemore’s upcoming gig at Wembley will benefit an “extremist” group that claims the taking of hostages by Hamas on October 7th was “legitimate”, reveals the Mail.
• “GCSEs overhaul to put speaking on par with reading and writing” – Education Secretary Lucy Powell is set to announce that verbal communication skills will be “hardwired” into a new school curriculum as part of a sweeping reform of GCSEs, says the Times.
• “Graduates forced to apply for school-leaver jobs as hiring dries up” – Six in 10 employers say young people with degrees are now targeting roles traditionally filled by school leavers as the graduate jobs market contracts, reports the Telegraph.
• “The strange irony of Britain’s surprisingly strong growth” – Political chaos may have inadvertently helped the economy by interrupting Whitehall’s relentless policy churn, writes Annabel Denham in the Telegraph.
• “UK’s disinformation defence centre ‘will not get new powers’” – The National Centre for Information Defence, announced by Andy Burnham last month, will “expose rather than disrupt” hostile actors and receive no new enforcement powers, according to the Times.
• “The questions Britain must answer about Christian free speech” – The case of Anita Meston, a teacher sacked for expressing pro-life views, raises urgent questions about Britain’s deepening reputation for penalising Christians, says Julian Mann in Christian Today.
• “Musk blames Trump for Ukraine drone chaos” – Elon Musk has blamed Trump for imposing speed limits on Ukrainian drones, reports the Fox News.
• “Ukraine accuses America of helping Russian war effort” – Ukraine has accused the US of helping Russia’s war effort after key internet services were “throttled” overnight and Kyiv received no warning of incoming missiles, according to the Mail.
• “Elon Musk and Trump are throwing Ukraine to the wolves” – Kyiv can now count the world’s richest man among its enemies, says Jake Wallis Simons in the Telegraph.
• “Misconduct at Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trial site in Argentina” – Previously undisclosed documents exposing dosing errors, disputed safety records and ethics violations at one of Pfizer’s largest COVID-19 vaccine trial sites in Argentina make for explosive reading, writes Dr Maryanne Demasi on her Substack.
• “We must embrace AI and data centres, not pause them” – National defence systems, hospitals, banks and homeowners all urgently need AI to combat an ever-growing range of threats – and pausing its expansion now would be a catastrophic mistake, warns Paul Driessen in Watts Up With That?
• “Google finally admits renewables don’t work for powering data centres” – Google’s management has conceded that battery technology cannot meet the power demands of data centres, prompting accusations that the company knew renewables were inadequate for the task a decade ago, writes Eric Worrall in Watts Up With That?
• “Labour plans to hike ‘boiler tax’ to £140” – Households could face a £140 “boiler tax” under Labour’s plans to more than double the number of heat pumps, reports the Telegraph.
• “Why are power grid bosses gaslighting us?” – The National Energy System Operator is repeatedly dismissing serious control room failures as “unusual” events, even as the grid buckles under the strain of Net Zero, writes Juliet Samuel in the Times.
• “Next financial crisis ‘to be triggered by uninsurable homes’” – ‘Experts’ are warning that Britain faces a financial crisis as climate change makes homes harder or impossible to insure, says the Telegraph.
• “IPCC is under pressure to delay publication of key global climate report” – Some oil-producing countries and major developing nations want to delay a key UN climate report, but vulnerable countries warn that putting it off could spell disaster, reports the Guardian.
• “As clichés rage” – The Climate Discussion Nexus dissects the media’s relentless deployment of the phrase “as wildfires rage” and exposes the clichéd template underpinning climate change reporting.
• “Nuclear power at ‘warp speed’: magical thinking meets statism” – Bipartisan enthusiasm for fast-tracking nuclear power is opening the subsidy floodgates while ignoring the free-market conditions the industry has never actually had, says Robert Bradley Jr. on Master Resource.
• “Why Tom Cruise’s Digger flopped at the box office” – In the Spectator, Ross Clark argues that the dismal box-office performance of Tom Cruise’s climate blockbuster signals that audiences are finally tiring of Hollywood’s green preaching.
• “Greta Thunberg is the personification of empty activism” – Greta Thunberg will bounce from one grievance to the next so long as the cameras are on her, says Joanna Williams in the Telegraph.
• “Are you afraid to speak your mind?” – On GB News, our very own Joanna Gray argues that too many people are afraid to challenge the accepted narrative – and it’s time to find our voices.

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