The A-Z of Woke: Your Essential Guide to the Language of the Permanently Offended
Obscuring weak arguments behind baffling terminology has long been a woke tactic. In the Mail, Andrew Doyle offers an A to Z guide to decoding its strangest phrases, from ‘white tears’ to ‘misogynoir’. Here’s an excerpt:
A
Allyship
The practice of advocating for people from marginalised groups and basking in the warm glow of their oppression….
B
Birthing Person
Often found in NHS maternity guidance, this is a euphemism for ‘mother’. The idea is to avoid upsetting those pregnant women who think they are men.
C
Chestfeeding
Also to be found in NHS guidance, this is a more sensitive alternative to ‘breastfeeding’ that doesn’t offend trans patients. The downside is that it sounds like something that might occur during a zombie apocalypse….
D
A form of protest that seeks immediate change through disruptive acts. In practice, this usually involves tearing down statues, throwing soup at priceless paintings, and striking female police officers with sledgehammers. All of which apparently makes the world a better place.
E
Ecofeminism
The school of thought that links the subjugation of women with the exploitation of the environment. Woke analysts have predicted that in the event of a global apocalypse and the annihilation of humankind, women will be disproportionately impacted.
F
Fat Activism
Social justice advocacy by those incapable of marching in its name….
G
Gender Segregation
The practice of excluding trans women (ie men) from women’s sports, prisons and hospital wards. The woke consider any form of gender segregation to be the height of bigotry; except when it comes to mosques, in which case it’s empowering.
H
Hate Speech
Any speech that woke activists hate.
I
Internalised misogynist
Any woman who has absorbed and adopted sexist attitudes or prejudices against women. In other words, a woman who won’t comply with what woke campaigners tell her to think….
J
Justice
The pursuit of equality and fairness through the vigorous re-education of people with incorrect opinions.
K
Kink-Shaming
Criticising or mocking someone for their unconventional sexual preferences or practices. So if you laugh at a man parading on all-fours down the High Street in a studded PVC alpaca costume, you’re as bad as a Nazi.
L
Latinx
A term used by woke white people to describe the Hispanic population in an effort to empower them. The latest Pew Research Center survey found that only 1% of US Hispanic adults preferred the term, which the woke naturally interpret as evidence of internalised racism….
M
Misogynoir
A term invented by French feminist scholar Moya Bailey to signify a combination of misogyny and racism. The obvious alternative would have been ‘misoism’, but that sounds like a hatred of Japanese soup….
N
Neurodiversity
The idea that differences in how people think, learn and process information are natural variations in the human brain. This applies to everyone, of course, so really it’s a label used to reframe ADHD, autism and dyslexia as identity categories that confer social status….
O
Oppression
When there is a lack of vegan options on the menu….
P
Polyamory
The freedom to renounce oppressive sexual norms and have multiple partners. In other words, it’s a way of cheating while still calling yourself virtuous and brave….
Q
Queers for Palestine
A group of activist homosexuals and their allies who see no contradiction whatsoever in supporting a culture that would like to see them imprisoned, tortured and executed. See also: Turkeys for Christmas.
R
Reparations
Payments intended to redress past injustices such as slavery or colonialism. To put it another way, it’s financial compensation from the innocent descendants of the oppressors to the innocent descendants of the oppressed, in settlement of crimes committed by the dead against the dead….
S
Structural Inequality
Unfair differences between groups that are built into society’s institutions or systems. It’s a term used by woke people to denote examples of inequality that only they can see.
T
TERF
Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist: a term for women who reject the inclusion of men who identify as female in their spaces. In woke parlance, this is a handy synonym for ‘witch’ or ‘uppity woman who won’t do what she’s told’….
U
Unconscious Bias
Prejudice that influences someone’s judgments without them being aware of it. These thoughts are usually so hidden that it requires an overpaid consultant with a degree in Whiteness Studies to tease them out.
V
Virtue Signalling
Boasting about your own impeccable virtue, usually on social media. It’s a way of demonstrating to the world that you are a good person without having to do anything at all.
W
White Tears
A disparaging term for expressions of distress by white people, especially when facing accusations of racism. As Robin DiAngelo argues in her book White Fragility, all white people are racist, and when they get upset at being accused of being racist that simply proves that the accusation is true….
X
Xenophobic
A fear of foreigners. Or a useful alternative for the woke when calling everyone racist all the time starts to feel repetitive.
Y
Your Authentic Self
The person you know yourself to be, regardless of how the world sees you. For example, Rachel Dolezal overcame the hurdle of being born to white parents to become president of a chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). She achieved this through a combination of sheer determination and bronzing pearls.
Z
Zero Tolerance
A woke HR policy of allowing no exceptions or leniency for offensive behaviour. In other words, a policy that promotes tolerance by refusing to tolerate anyone who falls outside the approved definition of tolerance.
Worth reading in full.
French Students Burn Down Schools to Protest School Decay
Student ‘blockades’ (blocus) ostensibly called to protest budgetary insufficiencies and the dilapidated condition of French high schools have degenerated into an orgy of urban violence in which those same schools have been attacked and destroyed. The violence has also included destruction of other property, pillaging of stores and attacks on school personnel, police and simple bystanders.
Students are clearly involved. There are even videos circulating presently of angry parents coming to drag their children home. But numerous French reports citing school sources attribute some of the most serious violence to outsiders.
Labour is Becoming an Army of Power-Mad Killjoys
Whilst medical science has made great strides in eradicating many common illnesses, there is regrettably no cure in sight for the well documented but little understood malady imbecility – or to give it its correct nomenclature footinmouthus.
Whilst this condition might lie dormant for months and sometimes years, it can present itself spontaneously and appears to be aggravated when the sufferer must speak in front of an assembled group.
The Prime Minister himself was not immune to this unsettling syndrome when recently at the Despatch Box in the House of Commons he blurted out the nonsensical phrase “national security cannot come at the expense of social security”. It was a moment for doctors to observe this malady captured on camera.
Only this week, the down-to-earth sounding Nature Minister Jenny Riddell Carpenter asserted that the thought of the far Right weaponising the countryside at the next election, kept her awake at night. Really?
She went further, declaring;
It’ll be that warm ale, a black Labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn’t exist, and with symbolism of fox hunting all around them. It’ll be a very far-Right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don’t want to have, [that] never really existed.
Now, I realise that not everyone sees life through the fuzzy haze of rose-tinted lenses, but most take life as it comes. But what is it about those on the Left where absolutely everything is viewed through the distorting prism of malevolence and misunderstanding?
Every aspect of life – trivial or great – cannot escape being microscopically examined and larded with the far-Right or racist epithet. Nothing can be seen simply for what it is, there must always be some hidden agenda.
The most inoffensive British Countryside was called out in 2024 by the Wildlife and Countryside Link (a group with 80 members including the WWF, RSPCA and National Trust) as being a “racist, colonial white space” in a report to MPs.
This continual onslaught is, I would imagine, greeted with a wearying sigh and eye-rolling by most of the population, who have been gifted a certain degree of herd immunity by regular exposure to this preposterous nonsense.
But does Riddell Carpenter’s assertion hold water? Interestingly, she chose to single out the colour black for the Labradors – an odd selection given the Kennel Club recognises that:
The only correct colours are wholly black, yellow and liver/chocolate. Yellows range from light cream to fox red, livers/chocolates range from light to dark.
One can only posit the question why did the delightful yellow and liver/chocolate breeds escape her sweeping opprobrium?
Dogs have been part of our culture and fabric of society for hundreds of years, from Crab in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Montmorency in Three Men in a Boat to Bill Sikes’ Bullseye in Oliver Twist.
Yet for most people, it was her muddle-headed denunciation of pubs that was quite patently ludicrous. Having spent a goodly part of my life propping up bars, I always found taverns to be a real melting pot of people and, more importantly, opinions. Not once was I aware of latent far Right individuals goose stepping to the pool table or rounding on the landlord for not having the Horst Wessel Lied on the juke box. Drinking beer – yes, warm ale – and chatting to people of very different ages and backgrounds was one of life’s pleasurable educations.
Pubs, sadly closing at an alarming rate, due in no small measure to Labour’s indiscriminately applied taxes, might become a rarity if not outright extinct. What a pity if an institution so beloved and vital to many rural communities was to disappear forever. Maybe Riddell Carpenter would rejoice at such an outcome, removing as she sees it a hotbed of far-Right activism.
Dogs and pubs are a well-worn trope stretching back through the years and walking your dog to the pub is still, for a great many people, one of life’s pleasures – enjoyment that Labour killjoys seem bent on erasing.
The now defunct brewery John Courage recognised the value of dogs in one of its TV commercials where in a bucolic cricketing scene, shot in soft focus, the narrator waxed lyrical of “a dog barking somewhere in Sussex can be heard from a village in Kent”.
For more canine-beer tomfoolery, John Smith’s ran a series of TV ads featuring the actor John Rollings as the long-suffering Arkwright who sought refuge from his nagging wife by escaping to the pub with his dog Tonto – a Jack Russell required to perform several tricks, enticed by his owner with the words “Fancy a drop of John Smith’s?”
At the mention of a pint, Tonto juggles some balls, balances a bar stool on his nose, jumps into the air and stands on his head. “He just needs the right motivation,” says Arkwright.
Funny and warm, it evoked a scenario that was instantly recognisable to millions up and down the country – well maybe not the juggling dog!
What a pity that there is an army of killjoys who, far from embracing innocuous and pleasurable activities, derive enjoyment from exercise power and control.
No doubt Riddell Carpenter’s next well-deserved target will be Sat- Nav guidance systems with their unpalatable demands to “turn right”, “go right” and “bear right” – another thing to lose sleep over.
Alexander McKibbin is a retired media executive who worked across domestic and international media.
Greens Labelled ‘First Openly Antisemitic Party in the UK’ as Members Approve Zionism is Racism Motion
The Greens have been branded ‘the UK’s most antisemitic party’ after members voted through a highly controversial ‘Zionism is Racism’ motion. The Mail has more.
In a move set to send shockwaves through the divided hard-Left party’s ranks, members backed a conference proposal that calls for Israel to be treated like apartheid South Africa by 1,022 votes to 813.
It also supports the “establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital” – branded a plan to destroy Israel itself.
The motion triggered a major internal row, with deputy Green leader Mothin Ali saying he would vote in favour.
But three former party leaders: Caroline Lucas, Adrian Ramsay and Carla Denyer, warned it was divisive and would alienate Jews in the party.
Current leader Zack Polanski, however, missed the vote in Brighton – he is the Green candidate in next week’s Holborn and St Pancras by-election and spent Sunday campaigning in London.
He tried to head off criticism by attaching himself and Mr Ali to a statement issued by the party’s five MPs after the vote, saying they “will never tolerate any form of discrimination or harassment”.
But former Green deputy leader Shahrar Ali told the Daily Mail today: “This is a very sad day for the Green Party. I am deeply ashamed and horrified at what the party has become.
“Making Zionism is Racism our official party policy has made us the first openly antisemitic party in the UK. That conclusion is inescapable.
“The motion calling for the creation of a single state of Palestine requires the extinction of the state of Israel.
“We’re not talking about 1967 borders here as a baseline for a two state solution but the total obliteration of the state of Israel as a political entity.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry also tore into the decision, saying: “Today, the Green Party in Britain ceased to act as a political party and became a body that gives legitimacy to terrorism.
“The Greens have adopted not only the green of Hamas, but also its ideology: the elimination of the State of Israel through armed struggle.”
The motion’s passing now makes the Greens the only British political party to be formally against Zionism.
And it comes after a long fight from pro-Palestine groups within the Greens to declare Israel an “apartheid state”. …
The motion culminates a tense few days at the conference, with a ‘safe room’ being set up for Jewish members and a steady police presence outside the conference centre to separate pro-Palestine and pro-Israel groups.
The Daily Mail can also reveal that two Green members had their passes revoked on Saturday – one after silently protesting in a Palestine fringe meeting, and the other, a Jewish Green, on filming the interaction.
Worth reading in full.
A Revolutionary Idea: Politicians Should Try Not Betraying Their Voters
As of April 29th 1995, the Labour Party could finally relegate concern for the working class down its list of priorities when, at a ‘special conference’, new leader Tony Blair managed to revoke Clause 4 from the Party’s constitution.
Socialist MPs and union leaders such as Arthur Scargill recognised this betrayal for what it was, but it took another 19 years before the penny dropped for many of the working class to catch on to the reality that Labour held them in total disdain – when Lady Nugee, better known as Emily Thornberry, posted a picture of a white van in front of a Rochester house bedecked with three St George Cross flags and the disparaging tweet, “Image from #Rochester”.
Dumping Clause 4 achieved two things: it allowed the Party to switch the focus of its campaigning from the working class to ‘Worcester Woman’ and for Party activists to look for new, deserving groups upon whom they could bestow their political energy.
Labour’s North London intelligentsia, who had always found the working class boorish, uncouth and patriotic, finally got their way.
At about the same time, along came the concept of ‘intersectionality’, presenting a smorgasbord of the ‘oppressed’: women, LGBTQ+, the disabled, immigrants, asylum seekers, eco-warriors and social justice warriors – all ripe for Labour activists’ campaigning zeal.
‘Worcester Woman’, while helping Blair into power, held no interest for Labour activists. Disinterested in political or economic theory, her focus was essentially consumerist. Worcester Woman and Mondeo Man were essentially Barbie and Ken. In the same way that 19th-Century explorers could win over an African tribe with a few mirrors and baubles, so Worcester Woman and Mondeo Man could be won over with Blair’s winsome smile and the promise of a lower mortgage rate.
The emasculation of Clause 4 had really ended the role of political theory on the Left of British politics; thereafter elections were won by the lot who could most effectively ‘relate’ to voters and had the best consumerist offer.
Gordon Brown’s denunciation of Gillian Duffy as that “bigoted woman” fatally undermined whatever ‘relatability’ he had; the mask had truly slipped, allowing David Cameron’s Conservatives and Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems to turf out Brown in 2010.
Promptly, Clegg betrayed his own voters by reneging on his election promise to abolish student fees and instead raising them. Abolishing student fees was probably the Lib Dems’ only recognisable policy in the last 50 years.
With the exception of their student fees promise, the Lib Dems always relied on saying nothing that might scare the horses, in the hope of picking up disgruntled Tory and Labour voters who couldn’t quite bring themselves to cross all the way over to the enemy camp.
Once shorn of the Lib Dems, having won their very own majority in 2015, the Tories set about betraying their own voters with gusto. Asking them to vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum could do nothing but split the Party. Ask most people in the street today which side the Tory leadership campaigned on in the Brexit vote and the majority would say ‘Leave’. Inevitably, half the Party’s supporters felt betrayed.
Brexit was followed up by Mrs May’s inept negotiations that managed to betray the Tories’ ‘Leave’ voters just as much as their inept ‘Remain’ campaign had disillusioned their ‘Leave’ cohort.
The whole Brexit debacle was followed in swift order by Mrs May’s gold-plating of Net Zero and the suicidal advocacy of ‘self-identification’ by the likes of Penny Mordaunt and Maria Miller.
Boris may have conjured an enhanced Parliamentary majority with his commitment to ‘getting Brexit done’, but without missing a beat he plunged into his disastrous Covid farrago – upending his supposed commitment to ‘libertarian’ principles as he copied the CCP with enforced house arrest, £10,000 fines for breaching lunatic regulations and forcing under-tested, unsafe medical products on most of the population, all to fight a viral infection with the lethality of flu.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Boris, having supposedly wrested control from the EU for our own migration policy, promptly opened the borders to millions from outside Europe.
In the 10 years since the Emily Thornberry tweet in 2014, the three leading ‘legacy’ parties had each managed to betray their own base. No wonder two new forces stepped into the resultant vacuum – Reform on the Right and the Greens on the Left.
In the same way that Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment had revealed her own true feelings, so had Cameron’s description of UKIP supporters as “fruitcakes and closet racists” – yet here we were just a few years later, and Cameron’s own troops demonstrated how out of touch he had been as they rallied in their millions to Farage’s vehicle, Reform.
However, it wasn’t long before Farage decided he wasn’t either an economic Thatcherite or a Trumpite ‘re-migrator’ and emerged as a kind of Social Democratic tribute act, freeing up space on his right flank for Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain.
It had taken the Labour Party 77 years to abandon the working class, about 200 years for the Conservatives and the Liberals respectively to upend their own values, and only a year or so for Reform to perform its own U-turn. But let’s not forget the Greens, whose comprehensive betrayal of their founding principles takes the biscuit.
The Greens are essentially a coalition of four distinct groups: the Light, Bright, Dark and Islamic Greens.
The ‘Light Greens’ are the founding fathers of the modern Green movement. More surprising are the names of some of those who did so much to popularise 1980s environmentalism: Sir James Goldsmith, David Bellamy and, in his own way, Richard Branson who, as Mrs Thatcher’s ‘litter Tsar’, championed the kind of local, practical issues that proved so popular.
Light Greens were the spiritual inheritors of Blue Peter: they looked after water voles, dredged village ponds, participated in initiatives promoted by the BBC, recorded garden birds and butterflies. They went out watching badgers and counted tree species in hedgerows.
Bright Greens once saw Elon Musk and possibly Bjørn Lomborg as their patron saints – figures now broadly demonised by the wider Green movement. But Bright Greens continue to believe in technological solutions. Who knows; in the privacy of their own homes some might still admit, albeit furtively, to an enduring admiration for Musk and others of his ilk.
Bright Greens believe in the redemptive power of EVs and the game-changing prospect of data centres in space; that genetically modified crops will solve the food crisis and that nuclear power, nuclear fusion or some future breakthrough offers the prospect of unlimited, risk-free energy.
However, Dark Greens now rule the roost. Created in the image of Greta Thunberg, they despise Light and Bright Greens alike. Dark Greens want ‘de-growth’, though apparently with smartphones, modern dentistry and possibly Dobby-like characters to produce the food, wash their clothes and generally clean up after them. They appear to have no interest whatsoever in energy generation.
Islamic Greens mysteriously make up the fourth strand of modern Greenism. Despising all things LGBTQ+, overtly suppressing women and harbouring a distinct preference for conspicuous consumption of the most garish kind – no Islamic wedding is complete without a fleet of supercars – Islamists’ sole link to Greenism appears to be their choice of favourite colour. Islamic Greens appear to have latched on to the Dark Greens, acting as a kind of Praetorian guard, biding their time while the rest of the Green movement manoeuvres itself into positions of democratic power.
At some point in the near future, the Light and Bright Greens will realise they have been betrayed. The Light Greens will mostly drift off to the Lib Dems and Labour. The Bright Greens could go anywhere; they are essentially believers in capitalism, so the Conservatives have every chance of picking some up. The Islamists, as the polls tighten, will form a caucus within the Labour Party, taking over key urban constituencies. The Dark Greens may stay the course, but electorally they are irrelevant.
So, there we have it. The entire electorate – with the exception of the Islamist vote, which operates on group self-interest – has been betrayed. Political theory has been abandoned. Parties have proliferated as economic cohorts splinter after each fresh betrayal.
But retaining your voter base shouldn’t be that difficult. In the words of the old music-hall song: “Dance with the one that brung you!”
UK Hands Out More Than 1,000 Free Hijabs to Channel Migrants at Taxpayer Expense
British taxpayers have funded more than 1,000 free hijabs for small-boat migrants this year. The Mail has the story:
Internal government figures show that officials have been handing over Muslim head coverings to those illegally landing on our shores at a rate of 162 a month. …
The disclosure comes amid growing political controversy over Muslim headwear, which many critics regard as symbols of female subservience.
Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott told this newspaper she was opposed to hijabs being part of school uniforms, saying: “I do not believe the state should be party to an instrument of female suppression.”
News of the free headgear comes as there is mounting public frustration over the flow of migrants across the Channel and potential security implications.
On Friday, two Iranian nationals who had arrived on small boats were charged with planning a terrorist attack over an alleged plot targeting Manchester’s Jewish community during Yom Kippur. …
Home Office documents show that between January and June, 974 hijabs were given to boat migrants. At that rate, the total is likely to be close to 1,500 by now.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “The Government must stop handing out hijabs to illegal immigrants immediately.
“It’s an insult to hard-working British taxpayers that they’re funding religious items for people who have broken into our country. It should not be for us to fund someone else’s religious practices.”
Worth reading in full.
Saving the Planet, One Pastoral Letter at a Time
When Bishop Terence Patrick Drainey of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Middlesbrough retired, he was not replaced. Instead, Pope Leo XIV decided that the Bishop of Leeds, His Excellency Marcus Nigel Ralph Stock, would assume responsibility as apostolic administrator to the Diocese of Middlesbrough as well as his role in Leeds and his role as apostolic administrator to the Diocese of Hallam.
Consultations are ongoing into a merger of the three dioceses into what can only be described as a ‘super-diocese’. The logic of this move is unclear but, clearly, His Excellency is a very busy man. A pastoral letter – these are issued by bishops to be read and made available at a specific Mass – has been issued this year regarding the Future of the Diocese and this was preceded by a Pastoral Letter for the First Sunday of Lent 2026.
The previous incumbent in Middlesbrough, Bishop Drainey, often used his column in the diocesan monthly newspaper the Voice to push the climate emergency agenda. Sadly, it seems that Bishop Stock may be similarly afflicted.
There is so much to choose from that is relevant to the Catholic Church – such as the hordes of priapic Mohammedans swarming up our beaches (an issue on which the Catholic Church is markedly out of touch with the concerns of the general population), the persecution of Catholics and other Christians in predominantly Muslim countries and the suppression of freedom of speech of Christians in our own country. October is the Month of the Holy Rosary, an instrument of devotion which has frequently been credited with major Christian victories in the Crusades. But that might seem a tad Islamophobic in the current political climate.
The bishop’s most recent pastoral letter deals with none of these issues. Instead, his Pastoral Letter for the Season of Creation (available to read in full in the Voice) addresses the Season of Creation, which is described as an “annual ecumenical month of prayer and action for the protection of the environment and our common home”. With apologies to traditional Roman Catholics for the lack of a trigger warning over the inclusion of the word ‘ecumenical’, I think you can guess what the letter is about. More trigger words follow.
Referring to the most execrable and scientifically illiterate of papal encyclical letters by the late Pope Francis, Laudato si’, and hot on its heels the disappointing first encyclical letter of Pope Leo – which I have described in these pages as Magnifica Verbositas – Bishop Stock tells us: “In order to flourish and grow as human beings, we must listen to the ‘cry of the poor’ and the ‘cry of the earth’.” I can envisage what the “cry of the poor” is, but what on earth is the “cry of the earth”? Does anybody read this stuff before it goes out?
Next up in the pastoral letter, Bishop Stock tells us that “The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales” – never a good start to any paragraph – “has developed guidance for us in a teaching document on the environment, the Call of Creation.” Not a page-turner, I imagine. He continues, saying we must “take the action that is needed to repair our relationship with God’s creation”. I refer you to the last sentence of the above paragraph.
It appears that this episcopal environmentalism is not some new or passing fad, because the bishop informs us that: “Two years ago, I encouraged all parishes and schools to work towards CAFOD’s ‘Live Simply Award’ as a way of ‘protecting this world which God has entrusted to us.’” CAFOD (the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), for those who do not know, is essentially the political wing of the Catholic Church and has form for using the ‘climate emergency’ to persuade Catholics to give money to good causes. Finally, the bishop urges “every parish, working individually or together in a deanery, to form a small team to begin the Live Simply initiative”. I don’t imagine parish priests have been inundated with enquiries.
Of course, the Catholic Church and its bishops have a right to comment on secular matters, especially where they pose an existential threat to humanity. Thus, wars, famines, beginning- and end-of-life issues and addiction are well within its remit. But climate change is demonstrably not an existential threat to humanity. Every prediction since the 1970s of New York being under water, the polar ice caps melting and the ozone layer being punctured – leading to us all dying of sun-induced skin cancer – has proved false. The best indicator of future performance is past performance; on that basis alone, the climate catastrophists fall short.
It hardly matters whether you are a climate change denier (I am not one) or have gone the ‘full Greta’: Catholics should be urging their leaders to drop this climate emergency nonsense and focus on their job of saving souls and bringing people into the Church. Bishop Stock, I am assured, is a ‘good man’ and I have no doubt about that. He is only doing what the hierarchy of the Church above him – all the way up to Pope Leo – is doing.
Perhaps he has been instructed to focus on environmental issues. Perhaps Pope Leo and the Catholic bishops think that focusing on the environment will pack the pews. If so, they should look at France, where record numbers of young people are converting to the Roman Catholic Church. You can bet that they are not doing so because of guilt-inducing sermons on climate change and living simply. They are being attracted to the Church because of traditional values regarding personal relationships, the family and – much to the chagrin of the modernists among the Catholic bishops – the Traditional Latin Mass. Funny that!
Professor Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including the Salisbury Review, the European Conservative and the New Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. His Substack can be found here.
News Round-Up
- “Police ‘receive reports of child rape at school every single day’” – At least 8,500 sexual offences against children aged 13 or under were logged by police between 2021 and 2025 – including 2,000 alleged rapes or attempted rapes, according to the Mail.
- “All domestic abusers to be named and shamed” – Domestic abusers are to be named and shamed in court records for the first time, allowing their movements and behaviour to be tracked by victims and authorities, says the Telegraph.
- “Badenoch drops hint at IHT cut as she kicks off Tory conference” – Kicking off the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Kemi Badenoch hinted at inheritance tax cuts and said she is taking a leaf out of Thatcher’s book by returning to core principles to turn Britain around, notes the Mail.
- “Kemi vows to keep pension triple lock – amid claims some may lose £38,000” – Kemi Badenoch has ruled out following Andy Burnham in ditching the triple lock, as new analysis warns Labour’s plan to scrap it could leave workers £38,000 worse off in retirement, says the Mail.
- “Badenoch tells Labour: stop delaying Henry Nowak inquiry” – Kemi Badenoch is demanding the Government act immediately on the Henry Nowak inquiry, insisting the victim’s family have waited “long enough” for a decision, according to the Telegraph.
- “Penny Mordaunt cleared to stand for Tories in next election” – Ex-Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt has passed the Conservative Party’s candidate assessment board after Kemi Badenoch previously blocked her from standing, says the Telegraph.
- “Cricket game near RAF Fairford halted before ‘terror plot’ arrests” – A cricket match near the US-linked RAF Fairford airbase was brought to a halt at around 4.30pm last Saturday after intelligence suggested an imminent attack, reports the Mail.
- “Andy Burnham scraps controversial plans to curb jury trials” – Andy Burnham has U-turned on proposals introduced under Sir Keir Starmer that aimed to reduce the courts backlog by limiting jury trials, says the Mail.
- “Burnham is no different from Starmer, say voters” – A new poll finds that seven in 10 Labour voters from 2024 believe Andy Burnham is different in practice from Sir Keir Starmer, while Reform and Tory voters are far more sceptical, reports the Telegraph.
- “Rejoining EU will scupper Labour private school VAT raid” – Andy Burnham would be forced to scrap VAT on private school fees if he presses ahead with plans to rejoin the EU, notes the Telegraph.
- “Home Secretary reveals ministers lobby her for migrant worker visas” – Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has revealed her frustration at the “sheer number” of pleas she receives from fellow Government ministers seeking work visas for migrant workers, reports the Mail.
- “Mayfair’s Connaught Hotel has a homeless migrant camp on its doorstep” – Migrants are setting up camp among the luxury boutiques and restaurants of Mayfair’s exclusive Mount Street, says the Mail.
- “Border Force sets out to intercept third migrant boat” – A third migrant vessel believed to have set off from near Utah Beach, the same location as the recent ‘mega boat’ crossings, is being intercepted, reports the Telegraph.
- “Billionaire ranked second on Rich List quits UK for Monaco” – Property tycoon David Reuben, who shares in a £28 billion family fortune, has left Britain for Monaco, says the Sunday Times.
- “I am obsessed with the ignorance of the Jew-haters” – Antisemitism is finding its fiercest home on university campuses, where the profound ignorance underpinning Jew-hatred goes unchallenged, warns Howard Jacobson in the Telegraph.
- “Restore activists claim ‘Jewish ideas ruined country’” – Hard-Right activists are at the centre of Restore Britain’s campaign to win Sir Keir Starmer’s former constituency, according to the Telegraph.
- “Polanski banned from Israel after Greens back ‘Zionism is racism’ motion” – Zack Polanski has been banned from entering Israel after the Green Party adopted a policy declaring that Zionism is racism, reports the Telegraph.
- “Lord Young’s speech in Croatia: does Britain have a free speech crisis?” – The TTE Substack shares the full text of Toby’s recent speech in Croatia, in which the Free Speech Union’s General Secretary sets out the alarming case that Britain is in the grip of a free speech crisis.
- “Flydubai hijacker made hateful religious rants while studying in UK” – Hamam al-Hammami, who severely wounded a pilot using an onboard crash axe in an attempt to seize control of a Flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv, made extremist religious rants while studying at a British university, reveals the Mail.
- “‘Terrorist’ pilot ‘dreamed of crashing plane into Tel Aviv’s airport’” – Sources claim that Flydubai hijacker Hamam al-Hammami had long dreamed of crashing a passenger jet into Tel Aviv’s main airport to cause mass casualties and had planned the attack weeks in advance, says the Mail.
- “Man shot dead in British van ‘carrying illegal migrants’” – A 47 year-old man has been found dead from a gunshot wound inside a British-registered van suspected of transporting illegal migrants through France, reports the Telegraph.
- “Riot-hit France closes up to 500 schools amid fears of fresh violence” – Up to 500 schools in France are set to close amid fears of fresh violence as student protests continue to grip the country, according to the Mail.
- “The two Frances” – On his Substack, C.J. Strachan contrasts 800,000 faithful at Mass and 20,000 pilgrims walking to Chartres with smoke rising from burning French schools.
- “Spitting row after Ireland’s latest anti-Israel protests” – Ireland’s footballers again bowed their heads during Israel’s national anthem and refused handshakes ahead of their Nations League fixture, with a spitting incident adding to the disgraceful spectacle, according to the Telegraph.
- “The NATO ally turning its schools into jihadist training grounds” – Turkey is systematically reshaping its school curriculum to teach children to embrace terror, warns Ayaan Hersi Ali on her Restoring the West Substack.
- “BBC editor accuses Trump of inciting violence at US Capitol” – Senior BBC editor Jeremy Bowen has told an audience that a “terribly corrupt” President Trump “lies the whole time” and incited violence at the US Capitol, according to the Telegraph.
- “Whisper it, but America might be winning the Iran war” – Developments are tentatively beginning to favour the US in its confrontation with Iran, notes Jake Wallis Simons in the Telegraph.
- “How to think like a New York progressive” – In the Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton argues that what critics dismiss as illogic in New York’s progressive orthodoxy is in fact a sophisticated – if deeply flawed – mode of thinking that needs to be understood on its own terms.
- “Jacob Rees-Mogg debates Tucker Carlson about Russia” – Jacob Rees-Mogg may be a traditionalist, but his debate with Tucker Carlson on Russia shows a surprisingly poor grasp of common sense, writes John Leake on the Focal Points Substack.
- “Why so many social science claims are false” – Academic reward systems that incentivise publication over rigour are driving a epidemic of false claims in the social sciences, warns Christopher J. Ferguson in Watts Up With That?
- “Why are some vaccine injured and others not?” – On the Focal Points Substack, Dan Bongino and Dr Peter McCullough explore the roles of batch variability, immune response, biological susceptibility and individual variation in explaining the uneven toll of COVID-19 vaccine injuries.
- “Brits to be able to use their face as their passport” – New ‘contactless borders’ using facial recognition are being introduced at Birmingham and East Midlands airports in the coming weeks, reports the Mail.
- “Social media users face passport checks to enforce under-16 ban” – Social media companies will be required to demand passports or driving licences as “hard checks” on users’ ages under plans to enforce the under-16 ban, says the Times.
- “Tories pledge to scrap environment agencies and expand Heathrow” – Kemi Badenoch has pledged to abolish Britain’s environmental quangos, end Net Zero regulations and push through a third runway at Heathrow, reports the Times.
- “Climate change can’t be harming Indonesian coffee production – it’s setting records” – In ClimateRealism, H. Sterling Burnett debunks an Asia Nikkei report blaming climate change for failing Indonesian coffee harvests, pointing out that yields have in fact been rising to record levels.
- “Major Nature study retracted after RCP8.5 debunking” – A major research paper in Nature claiming to prove climate change was worsening droughts has been withdrawn following the debunking of its RCP8.5 emissions scenario, notes the Heartland Institute.
- “German expert warns of severe economic and social consequences” – German energy expert Prof Fritz Vahrenholt is warning that the country’s green energy transition risks severe economic and social consequences, writes P. Gosselin in NoTricksZone.
- “Winds of change” – A significant shift in the wind energy landscape raises questions about the abuse of power, says Mark Hodgson in Climate Scepticism.
- “The CCC is coming for your holiday” – On his Eigen Values Substack, David Turver reveals that the Climate Change Committee is calling for new taxes and extra costs on flying that threaten to make foreign holidays significantly more expensive.
- “How classrooms become ‘impact’ zones on climate” – A federal-state endorsed teaching group is helping Australian schools brainwash children with climate alarmism and woke ideology, warns Tony Thomas in Climate Scepticism.
- “‘Go woke, go broke’: the fall of Nike” – Sportswear giant Nike lost Kylian Mbappe to rival On and its place on the S&P 100 in a single week in a dramatic illustration of the brand’s ongoing collapse, writes Tim Wigmore in the Telegraph.
- “Cambridge is gorging on social justice foolery and destroying its reputation” – Cambridge University has sacrificed rigour and excellence for DEI gobbledegook, says Zoe Strimpel in the Telegraph.
- “The parish where worshippers face £160 fines for going to Mass” – A council has raised £360,000 in a single year from one traffic camera that is catching churchgoers attempting to attend Sunday Mass, reports the Telegraph.
- “This was an emotional interview for me to do” – On GB News, ex-Green Party deputy leader Shahrar Ali shares his deep shame after members voted to declare Zionism a form of racism and the party an anti-Zionist organisation.
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