“Hilariously Abysmal” Extent of Snow White’s Flop Revealed as Woke Disney Reboot Sells Zero Tickets During Prime Weekend Slot
By Will Jones
The “hilariously abysmal” extent of Snow White‘s flop has been revealed by screenshots showing that the woke Disney reboot sold zero tickets during a prime weekend slot in the US. The Mail has the story.
Shocking images of cinema bookings have revealed the ‘hilariously abysmal’ extent of Snow White‘s flop just days after its release.
The Disney reboot of the classic 1812 princess fairy tale starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot launched on Friday.
However, the film has been criticised by some over the controversial updates, including the the Seven Dwarfs being re-imagined as a group of “magical creatures” of all heights, gender and race.
The Mail’s Brian Viner hit out: “Disney’s contorted attempts not to offend anyone have somehow managed to offend everyone” – and the sales prove it.
It currently has a disappointing rating of 44% on Rotten Tomatoes and doesn’t seem to be attracting fans like producers hoped for.
One prospective cinema-goer shared on social media how the movie sold zero tickets at one point for a prime weekend slot, and just one ticket for another screening.
They posted on X: “Opening Friday night for Disney’s Snow White in IMAX. Only ONE person bought tickets for tonight. Yeah this movie’s gonna flop.”
Alongside the caption was a photograph of the cinema booking screen, showing just a single seat reserved.
They also posted another image of Saturday night’s bookings and penned: “And for Saturday night? ZERO.
“I’ve never seen a major movie from Disney have this little interest opening weekend. This is hilariously abysmal.”
The post attracted over 13 million views as well as hoards of comments from people who observed similar scenes in their cinemas.
Someone else commented on the post and shared how their theatre was also very empty.
They said: “I have one better. Dolby Cinema and only a small handful of people.” …
It comes as another post on X shared a video of Rachel hoping people would “wait in line” to see movies she stars in.
It was captioned with: “Prior to Snow White’s release, actress Rachel Zegler told her critics that audiences would wait in line to see her. Snow White is the lowest performing Disney movie in decades. No one waited in line to see it.”
“I can only hope that despite my flaws and despite my cracks and my breaks and there are many of them, that at every premiere and every thing I do, people will wait in line to see,” Rachel says in the clip.
Another video post on X showed a large cinema that seemed to be vacant and was captioned “so many people here to watch Snow White“, before panning to show rows upon rows of empty seats.
One penned: “Snow White and the seven viewers.”
While another said: “Go woke, go broke – live from the box office.”
Worth reading in full.
IGN reports that Snow White “may face an uphill battle to break even after a sleepy start at the box office.” It says Comscore figures for Snow White
revealed a $43 million domestic box office debut, which is the second biggest of 2025 so far behind only MCU flick Captain America: Brave New World and enough to top this week’s chart, but below the live-action Dumbo’s domestic launch haul of $45 million back in 2019, and below estimates. For context, 2019’s The Lion King, 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, 2016’s The Jungle Book, and 2023’s The Little Mermaid all secured more than $100 domestically during their opening weekends. It was a similarly sleepy start for Snow White internationally, where the opening weekend brought in $44.3 million. That makes for a total of $87.3 million at the global box office, according to Comscore estimates.
Adolescence, Netflix’s ‘Life Saving’ New Show, Is Regime Propaganda Aimed at Grooming a Gullible Public Into Accepting the Online Safety Act
Back when I was at school, the only piece of drama I studied in which teenage boys and girls ended up going a bit stabby on one another was Romeo and Juliet. Today, star-cross’d underage lovers are exhorted to instead examine the new four-part Netflix drama Adolescence, which is less by William Shakespeare, more by William Wagfinger.
Supposedly, say the media, this is “the TV show everyone’s watching”, which rather disregards the fact that over 40% of UK households don’t even have Netflix. Nonetheless, all the right people in politics and the mediasphere seem to be viewing it at the moment, and such elevated individuals really do think their own limited breed represent the views of “everyone”, or at least “everyone right-thinking”, when it comes to politically fashionable subjects like toxic masculinity, with which the programme purportedly deals.
Tate Pre-Modern
This is not a review of the show; but then, neither are any of the so-called ‘reviews’ appearing in newspapers right now. Incredibly unrealistic and fawning in their praise, they read more like public proclamations of ideological fealty than dispassionate reviews of a simple media entertainment product. For a more honest assessment, check out the recent piece on this website by Laurie Wastell.
Adolescence is a police procedural concerning the stabbing to death of a schoolgirl, Katie, by a 13 year-old boy, Jamie, after he is mocked by her on social media for being an ‘incel’ – i.e., a sad male loner who spends too much time online without a girlfriend. In a Poirot-like twist, viewers are later gathered together in the metaphorical library and told whoreallydunnit: not Jamie after all, in a way, but Andrew Tate – the well-known manosphere influencer and TikTok star, noted misogynist and alleged rapist and woman-trafficker!
That, at least, is what the media wants us all to believe. Yet one of the show’s two co-writers, Jack Thorne, is at pains to state Jamie doesn’t simply kill Katie after watching Tate’s output, but due to a concatenation of social influences, telling the Guardian: “I certainly hope the conversation around the show doesn’t become about Andrew Tate.” Oh dear – mission failed.
In the deliberately misleading narrative presently being pushed, Andrew Tate is supposedly behind a tidal wave of abuse by young British boys against young British girls. But this narrative goes against actual polling data from YouGov: despite 84% of 13–15-year-old boys in the UK having heard of Mr Tate, only 23% entertain a positive opinion of the man. An overwhelming 63% of boys in the fictional Jamie’s age range view Tate negatively; many actively disagree with his demeaning attitudes towards females, while many are basically unaware of them.
Tate does have his fans, however, and some jumped to his defence, pointing out that The Matrix would “do anything to drag Andrew Tate’s name through the mud. Now they’re [even] trying to link him to a fictional murder.” Not only fictional ones. Last year, Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blyth, who enjoys the impeccably post-1997 job title of ‘National Lead for Policing Violence Against Women and Girls’, called the “toxic” Tate’s online influence upon young men and boys “quite terrifying”.
Why? How many real-life, off-screen cases of femicide has Tate actually been provably linked with? Not as many as a casual newspaper reader may be led to presume. Andrew didn’t bomb all those little girls to death at the Manchester Arena a few years back, did he? Mere days after Adolescence went up on Netflix, the UK’s counter-terrorism tsar, Robin Simcox, released a report into 100 convicted UK-based terrorists arrested between 2004 and 2021, analysing their “mindset material”, like social media activity. This found that, of the 100 studied, 85 could be classed as Islamists, 14 as ‘far-Right’ (whatever that even is now) and… one as being an incel. Appropriately enough, really, for such a committed breed of professional loners.
Any Resemblance To Actual Persons, Living Or Dead, Is Purely Coincidental
Another individual highly confused between the concepts of fictional and real-life murders is Sir Keir Starmer, who, when asked about the show during PMQs, replied that he was currently viewing it with his own teenage children so as to teach them never to kill any of their classmates themselves, accidentally calling it a “documentary”. A slip of Starmer’s adenoidal tongue, maybe, but the impression that Adolescence really is some kind of docu-drama seems to be one our ruling class is eager for the ill-informed proles to form. But how true-to-life is the show, really?
The drama’s co-writers have explained how, while Jamie and Katie’s own particular tale was entirely invented, the basic conceit was inspired by three real-life stabbings of young girls by young incel boys of a toxically masculine nature.
The first was the murder of teenage trans child Brianna Ghey in Warrington in 2023 by a lonely autistic schoolboy named Eddie Ratcliffe… and a serial-killer-obsessed schoolgirl named Scarlett Jenkinson, who played by far the dominant role in proceedings, like Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in reverse. I can’t help but notice that, in this particular agitprop-inspiring case of toxic “male-on-female” violence, the victim was actually a male in a dress, while the main perpetrator was a biological female. Police later found that Jenkinson also had a kill list of intended future victims: all were male. If Little Miss Murder really had been watching manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate online prior to her crime, she can’t have understood their alleged core message very well.
Secondly, there was the tragedy of 12 year-old Ava White, stabbed to death by a 15 year-old boy in Liverpool in 2021 after two groups of friends had argued with one another over the boys recording social media videos of the girls without their permission. It appears the killer had known severe behavioural issues, having previously hit a PCSO and been arrested for assaulting two women. The key issue here, therefore, would appear to be why the demonstrably ultra-violent bundle of toxic masculinity was not already forcibly locked up in some kind of secure institution, not whether he enjoyed watching Andrew Tate speeding about in sports cars and calling women slags on YouTube. But I suspect a didactic drama named Bring Back Borstal! would not have stood as much chance of being commissioned by Netflix.
Thirdly, there was the case of 15 year-old Elianne Andam, stabbed to death by an obviously disturbed 17 year-old named Hassan Sentamu in London in 2023 in an unbelievably petty row over a teddy bear and his being splashed with water by some schoolgirls. As in the Ava White case, Sentamu had what the BBC called “a history of attacking girls and carrying knives”, besides a “short temper and aggressive tendencies”, and yet was still allowed to walk around freely, because to do anything otherwise would no doubt be against his human rights. Sentamu allegedly once threatened to chop his pet cat’s tail off if he didn’t get his own way in something; when Tate advises his followers to get out there and mess up some pussy, I don’t think this is quite what he meant.
So, again, what do Andrew Tate and the online manosphere have to do with this case? Nothing. Given that Sentamu’s disturbance was reputedly triggered not by Tate but by the child suffering abuse from violent adults who beat him with metal poles while he was growing up in Uganda, it may have been more honest to pen a morality play about the likely consequences of shipping in boatloads of psychologically damaged young men from abroad and then dumping them on the streets of a capital city already flooded with black-on-black knife crime. But no – because the most plausible policy suggestion to emerge from discussion of any such series would be: Close the borders now!
And even if the above murders had been directly related to Tate’s evil and immediately corrupting manosphere, I’d observe that, according to a survey of 16–25-year-olds from 2023, black youths – like the real-life Hassan Sentamu – are more than twice as likely to view Tate positively than white youths – like the fictional Jamie – are, at a rate of 41% against 15%. (Asians – usually code for ‘Muslims’ – come somewhere in between at 31%.) But you couldn’t depict the fictional stabber as being black, of course; that would be racist. Instead, the clever detective who works the whole thing out is a black man, black characters being law-abiding saints every bit as much as schoolgirls are on most modern-day British TV shows.
Warped Reality
Yet, despite being demonstrably fictional, with its race-swapped, gender-demonised or gender-beatified villains and victims explicitly designed to appeal to contemporary liberal shibboleths, Adolescence still seems set to influence public policy. Coincidentally or not, the show’s production company, Warp Films, has in the past been part-funded by the UK Government in the shape of the UK Global Film Fund. As co-writer Jack Thorne explained to the Guardian, he now wants the Labour Party to step in and regulate the public’s internet and social media usage:
Spend any time on most social media platforms and you end up, quite quickly, in some dark spaces. Parents can try to regulate this, schools can stop mobile phone access but more needs to be done. There should be government support [re: censorship] because the ideas being expressed are dangerous in the wrong hands and young brains aren’t equipped to cope with them… We wanted to make something that people want to watch, of course, but we also wanted to pose a question that got people talking on their sofas, in pubs, in schools, maybe even in Parliament… We will not solve the problem by kicking this issue into the long grass. This requires urgent action. I hope the Government is brave enough.
Possible translation: “Please beef up the Online Safety Act. If we don’t, more made-up children like Katie will die!” According to one Guardian headline: “Adolescence is such powerful TV that it could save lives.” The basis for this claim? Hours before crossbow killer Kyle Clifford murdered his ex-lover and her equally female sister and mother, he had “searched online for misogynistic podcasts and watched Andrew Tate videos”. True, but I’d strongly imagine this particular outright lunatic was going to perform such atrocities anyway. Which social media influencers did Jack the Ripper once watch on his own Victorian-era clockwork-powered iPhone?
Such feverishly partisan reviews, features and interviews are really just calls for strengthening the Online Safety Act (inevitably soon to become known as the ‘Adolescence Act’) to censor politically unwelcome views and perspectives from public access, ineptly disguised as glowing reviews of a TV drama.
And then, lo and behold, this desired leap from the pages of the script onto the pages of the statute books begins to rapidly take place – ostension in action. “I want it [Adolescence] to be shown in schools, I want it to be shown in Parliament. It’s crucial because this is only going to get worse,” Jack Thorne demanded. So has Labour MP Annelise Midgley, who stood up in the Commons and asked the Prime Minister to do Thorne’s bidding and ensure it is indeed shown in schools. Because otherwise, ALL OUR CHILDREN WILL DIE.
Sir Keir was only too happy to comply. The show’s co-writers have now been invited to a meeting to discuss online safety with MPs. The PM certainly seems very eager to take the advice of the State-funded ‘documentary’ to heart: “This violence [i.e., the stabbing of Katie, who does not exist] carried out by young men by what they see online is a real problem. It’s abhorrent, and we have to tackle it.” But only if the toxic online loners being influenced into such violence happen to be conveniently white, like Jamie, it seems.
Online Harams Act
Last week, news of another sinister, woman-hating online influencer also came to light, but media reviewers of Adolescence strangely failed to link him to the drama in any way, shape or form. This is because his name was Mahamed Abdur-Razaq, a volunteer preacher at Birmingham’s An-Noor Masjid Mosque and Community Centre, which fine institution had placed a lecture of the scholar about Islamic gender relations on YouTube for all to see.
In this highly Tate-topping video, the Islamic influencer had explained how, according to Koranic law, if a wife refused to have sex with her husband, “he’s allowed to hit her”. If told to have sex by her owner, she should agree “straight away… without delaying”, whilst showing no “dislike”, even if she is being “forced to do it”. The “doubts of the feminists and the kuffar” that such practices may be considered rape should just be ignored, he concluded, otherwise you were just a total cuck-fag, bro, before jumping from his lectern and giving a high-five to the nearest passing bling-clad imam.
Who do you think, all things considered, would be likely to have more social influence amongst young males in this country today, where 6% of the population are now Muslims, a demographic heavily skewed towards the testosterone-fuelled under-30s? Andrew Tate, an independent spokesman only for his own excessively ego-filled self, or a man like Mahamed Abdur-Razaq, who poses as having the backing of an entire global religion, together with its religious institutions and holy book, not to mention the inviolable law of Almighty Allah Himself? I say it’s Mahamed, so where’s the quasi-state-financed Netflix drama aimed at stopping the spread of the dangerous, women-hating messages of people like him, then?
I note that Andrew Tate is a Muslim convert himself, by the way, sincere or otherwise. Allegedly, he found Mecca as a marketing tactic, perhaps identifying the religion’s young men as an ideal target audience for his message. If so, what could it have been about certain practitioners of the faith who may have given him the impression they were receptive to his repellent spiel?
Crude, flash, self-fellating show-off Andrew Tate may be, but I think there may be worse online role models out there for teenage boys these days. Someone should really write a TV show warning parents about them.
Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books, the latest being Hitler’s & Stalin’s Misuse of Science: When Science Fiction Was Turned Into Science Fact by the Nazis and the Soviets (Pen & Sword/Frontline), which is out now.
The Crash of London’s Latest LTN
By Mike Wells
The Labour-run London Borough of Camden (LBC) has been forced to scrap a hugely controversial Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) scheme centred on Dartmouth Park on the eastern edge of Hampstead Heath – home to Ed Miliband, Benedict Cumberbatch and numerous other Labour luvvies. The plan had been to impose an 18-month ‘trial period’ with the least possible public consultation.
Attempting to put the best spin on it, LBC calls this a “pause”, but the scheme – a pet project of cycle-fanatic Cllr Adam Harrison, “Cabinet Member for Planning and a Sustainable Camden” and CBC’s Deputy Leader – was always unworkable. Uproar among locals, who discovered Camden’s brief ‘nonsultation’ was to be held during last summer’s holidays, was led by the Highgate Society which commissioned expert analysis of LBC’s dodgy metrics.
Locals packed protest meetings and deluged their council with complaints, not least about the scheme’s obvious potential for raising money by fines. With vehicle access from the north, east and south denied to thousands of homes in the LTN, voters demanded to know how ambulances, deliveries and visitors could reach them, or how anyone less than 100% fit would be able to get the shopping home?
Among many issues they highlighted were inevitable gridlock on Highgate Road, Highgate West Hill and other bus routes on the proposed LTN’s boundary, and increased air pollution on children’s walking routes to the area’s schools – ironically the same good schools which attract so many upwardly-mobile Labour supporters to leafy Dartmouth Park’s expensive homes.
Having wasted vast amounts of TfL’s money on consultants while plotting Dartmouth Park’s LTN in secret, Camden’s Labour regime has been handed an expensive lesson in not annoying one’s diehard voters. Its problems include a private company called Commonplace, and an unusually articulate local population.
Commonplace Digital Ltd is a privately-owned “citizen engagement platform” which claims to “inspire thriving places, powered by data and collaboration”. On its touchy-feely website rows of smiley, young and casually-dressed “customer success managers” and “business development managers” promote the platform.
What Commonplace actually does is to sell machine-readable online surveys to councils and developers – relieving them of the trudge of asking local people what they think and reading the responses properly, while still getting the result they first wanted via an ostensibly democratic process.
The snag, as we in Bedfordshire know to our cost, is in the questions asked and the boxes you’re allowed to tick. Our council’s Commonplace survey on local cycling and walking issues produced 826 responses, of which over 100 tried to explain – only possible in the “other comments” box – that by far our worst problem is how to get across the A1 safely into Biggleswade without using a car: a walk/cycle underpass is needed, obviously.
But in its published LCWIP plan, based on this “engagement”, Central Beds Council felt able to ignore the lethal risks run by locals trotting or wheeling their children across the A1 carriageways, because the online Commonplace survey had asked no machine-readable question about it. The metrics didn’t prove a need, which happily allowed CBC and National Highways to carry on ignoring the danger.
People are increasingly suspicious of the skewed questions asked in Commonplace surveys, and in the case of Camden’s proposed Dartmouth Park LTN, many refused to participate. Instead 773 locals emailed their council direct, as well as emailing individual councillors. Here in Beds our ward councillor just leafleted over 800 locals about our Biggleswade problem, asking what they need to get onto town safely, and the scores of replies were a revelation.
Ask people what they really think, without leading questions or tick-boxes, and what you get is ‘quote gold’. Many said roughly what was anticipated, though in their own inimitable words; others made important points that hadn’t even occurred to campaigners. Analysing genuine replies like these – as opposed to machine-readable surveys – takes time and thought, and Camden is now having to go back to the drawing board and read its hundreds of non-Commonplace responses, acutely aware that having wound up the Highgate Society and Dartmouth Park’s vigilant locals, its cunningly-worded online “consultation” cannot alone justify imposing a disastrous LTN.
How the Police Went Woke
Former Metropolitan Police officer Paul Birch spent 24 years in the police. In this interview from the premium section of the Sceptic, he gives a first-hand account of how the police went woke – embracing EDI, virtue-signalling and “community policing” – and why that’s been such a disaster…
Donate to the Daily Sceptic to access our premium content. Follow Laurie on X. Subscribe to Paul’s Substack here. Subscribe to the Daily Sceptic YouTube Channel here. Produced by Richard Eldred. Filmed at the Westminster Podcast Studio.
Legalising Assisted Dying: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
I risk being accused of hypocrisy with this article, as I am a strong advocate of going to Dignitas. So when it looked as if assisted dying might be legal in the UK, I was quite excited. But as the details of the Assisted Dying Bill became clear, I reconsidered.
What is the Assisted Dying Bill?
The Terminally-Ill Adults (End of Life) Private Member’s Bill, sponsored by MP Kim Leadbetter, passed its second reading in the UK Parliament in November 2024. The draft legislation proposes granting people medical assistance to die if they have six months or less to live, with the approval of two doctors and a judge.
The bill is currently at the committee stage, which is supposed to involve a detailed examination of the bill, scrutinised line-by-line, with full public transparency. The committee should hear evidence from witnesses and consider proposed amendments. After the first committee meeting in January, the amended Bill can be found here.
Problems with the conduct of the committee stage
The membership of the committee was heavily stacked (14:9) in favour of Leadbetter’s Bill, while requests to join from experienced Parliamentarians with relevant expertise were rejected. Four Labour MPs wrote an open letter expressing concern that the committee met in private to discuss what oral evidence to accept, thereby preventing public scrutiny; the selected witnesses were heavily skewed in favour of the bill.
Also of concern was the exclusion of evidence from:
- The Royal College of Psychiatrists
- Disability rights organisations
- The British Geriatrics Society
- Other countries which have assisted dying
After negative publicity, the Committee U-turned on evidence from the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Disability Rights UK.
Although Leadbetter continues to claim the bill offers the “strictest safeguards in the world”, nearly every one of her safeguards has now been removed or diluted.
Judges will no longer give approval for assisted dying
Although the bill passed its second reading containing the provision that the assisted death must be certified by two doctors and a judge, Leadbetter has now removed the need for a judge’s approval. The new proposals require an Assisted Dying Review Panel of three people, comprising lawyers, psychiatrists and social workers, to approve assisted dying applications. Leadbetter has called this new proposal “judge plus” but many were quick to point out that in fact it is ‘judge minus’.
It is this development in particular that could cost Leadbetter the bill. Up to 140 MPs who had previously backed the bill are said to be reconsidering their position.
Practicalities have not been addressed
No-one seems to have considered whether the ‘assisted dying’ service will be a part of the already overstretched NHS or be a separate service, or whether and to what extent it could be outsourced to private companies. The Times reports that assisted dying could be provided by private companies.
How much training will doctors and nurses need to participate in the assisted dying programme? How will outsourced private companies be regulated and quality control assured?
Opt-outs are important if the bill becomes law. Will doctors and nurses be able to opt out of being part of assisted dying without prejudice to their careers? Will care homes and hospices be able to decline it?
Apparently, there are not enough psychiatrists to take on the Assisted Dying Review Panel work. A poll on this issue only had a 10% response rate from psychiatrists; of those 10%, only a third said they would be willing to participate in an assisted dying service.
It’s the same with social workers. The Telegraph reports they are “too busy to sit on assisted dying panels… and will need more funding to meet the needs of the assisted dying bill”.
What happens in other countries where Assisted Dying has been introduced?
Canada offers assisted dying under the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) programme. The Mail reports that Canada is now euthanising 10,000 of its citizens a year, representing more than 3% of all deaths. That’s an increase of a third on the previous year. The original 2016 legislation was restricted to the terminally ill, but was broadened three years later to cover “grievous and irremediable” non-fatal illnesses. It is likely to be expanded to include mental suffering in 2027. Fewer than 50% of patients who opt for euthanasia see a palliative care team.
Healthcare staff have been caught ‘suggest-selling’ assisted dying to people with costly medical conditions who have no desire to die. One of the most horrific examples is Christine Gauthier, who served 10 years in the Canadian armed forces, where she sustained a bad injury. She requested funding to install a stair lift in her home in 2018. When there had been no progress four years later, a caseworker from Veterans Affairs Canada contacted her to offer assisted dying.
Both Belgium and the Netherlands allow assisted dying for adults with non-terminal physical conditions or mental distress, and in some circumstances for children, thereby undermining the requirement for ‘capacity’ when giving informed consent. In all these countries, the scope of the original assisted dying legislation has been extended.
Evidence from the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych)
The Committee was shamed into hearing evidence from the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych), which was initially disallowed. RCPsych said it had several concerns:
- Whether it’s possible to assess reliably a person’s capacity to decide to end his or her own life, especially when mental health issues are involved.
- Can consent serve as an adequate safeguard against coercion? Vulnerable individuals might be pressurised into choosing assisted dying, with coercion coming from family members with personal or financial motivations but also from societal pressures.
- Individuals with mental disorders, intellectual disabilities and neurodevelopmental conditions often face barriers to accessing palliative care and may be more susceptible to coercion.
- The introduction of assisted dying legislation could undermine suicide prevention efforts.
An elder abuse charity also gave evidence after initially being excluded. It said it was “witnessing an epidemic of abuse against older people” and reiterated the legislation’s potential harm to vulnerable, elderly, mentally ill and disabled people.
‘Mission creep’
There is the very real danger of the legislation’s scope being extended, as we’ve seen in Canada, with assisted dying offered to those with mental health issues, eating disorders, chronic conditions and those who feel they are a burden. “Being a burden” is one of the leading reasons for patients requesting assisted suicide, cited by 50% in Canada 50%; 43% in Oregon and 60% in Washington. Studies have shown that often ‘being a burden’, not pain, is the main reason for requesting assisted dying. UK Medical Freedom Alliance (UKMFA) reports that Leadbeater admitted that under her bill a person would qualify for assisted death for the sole reason of saving his or her relatives money.
The Telegraph reports that Kim Leadbeater has already proposed an amendment to include people with terminal mental disorders or disabilities in the bill’s scope. This would be a particular risk for people suffering from eating disorders because the ‘terminal illness’ “may have arisen as a result of their mental illness and this needs to be properly considered”, according to the Telegraph. Assisted dying laws abroad have already enabled at least 60 patients with anorexia to end their lives. A representative from the UK’s leading eating disorder charity said “eating disorders should never be classified as terminal”.
What about palliative care?
Palliative care seems to be in a parlous state. HART points out that the sector is seriously underfunded, with only 30% of hospice funding provided by the Government. Hospices rely on fundraising to survive, which is much reduced with the cost of living crisis, while large NHS pay rises have pushed up wage bills for hospices. The Budget made things worse because hospices are not exempt from the rise in Employers’ National Insurance Contributions. The number of people dying each year in the UK is going up significantly, while hospices are making service reductions and redundancies.
The Spectator reports a palliative care consultant saying: “Every night in my hospital, and every weekend from Friday to Monday, you cannot see a palliative care nurse or doctor.” The equalities watchdog argues that “because provision of palliative care was so patchy… the terminally ill would have no viable alternative but to have an assisted death, thus denying them a free choice”.
If the money and energy that had gone into this bill had instead been used to improve palliative care, to allow terminally ill individuals to live their final days free of pain and with dignity, the clamour for some form of assisted dying might not have been so loud. The Telegraph notes that “unlike other similar assisted dying legislation in other countries, the bill failed to make any commitment to provide extra funding for palliative care”. But once we allow assisted dying, there is no longer any incentive to fund and support palliative care. A recent JL Partners survey of the public showed that 64% of respondents are in favour of palliative care over assisted dying legislation.
At the end of the day, assisted dying is just cheaper and easier for the state, particularly as healthcare spending is normally highest in the final year of life. UKMFA points out that assisted suicide would cost the equivalent of just one week of palliative care, whereas a good hospice can cost thousands of pounds a month.
Can doctors accurately predict death within six months?
No, and we shouldn’t expect them to. So many factors are involved that it’s impossible to be precise. In fact, the Telegraph reports hospital data indicating that doctors’ prognoses were wrong more than half the time and that patients given six months to live can still be alive three years later.
Furthermore, the Telegraph says that the draft bill proposes using the Department of Work and Pensions’ fast-tracked benefits scheme, which entitles patients with just six months left to live to be fast-tracked onto Universal Credit, highlighting eligible patients. But a doctor’s prognosis that is suitable for ascertaining who may receive Universal Credit is unlikely to be suitable for ascertaining their suitability for assisted dying. And it rather smacks of trying to avoid paying the Universal Credit. Furthermore, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data obtained by the Telegraph revealed that a fifth of those benefit claimants are living much longer than expected.
This is likely to alter forever the doctor-patient relationship
Up until now, we have always looked to doctors to act in our best interests. If we now have to consider that they could be involved in certifying suitability for assisted dying or even administering the drugs, a fair degree of patient suspicion could creep in. It makes a nonsense of the fundamental principle of medical ethics: “First, do no harm.”
And we have only to look back at the COVID-19 pandemic, when then Health Secretary Matt Hancock stockpiled the sedative and respiratory depressant Midazolam to give to care home patients with Covid. Midazolam, morphine and ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ notices were forced on patients without consultation or consent involving either the patient or their families. This resulted in a large number of patient deaths shortly after the Midazolam had been administered. We don’t need an Assisted Dying Bill when our health care system can already kill us indiscriminately in care homes.
As Dr Vernon Coleman reminds us: “The Nazis ran a euthanasia programme for a while. After a short period, Hitler abandoned it because he considered it morally indefensible.”
Dr Rachel Nicoll is a medical researcher, lecturer and writer. You can contact her here.
£5 Pints to Be the Norm After Reeves Tax Raid
By Will Jones
A pile of cost increases heaped on the pub industry next month by Rachel Reeves and the Labour Government will push the average price of a pint of beer above £5 for the first time, bosses have warned. The Telegraph has more.
The British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) said a combination of higher taxes and increases in the minimum wage will mean the average cost of a pint of beer is to surge by 4.4%, rising faster than the current rate of inflation.
This means drinkers can expect to pay an average of £5.01 per pint in Britain compared with the current price of £4.80, it said, citing a survey by Frontier Economics.
In London, the average price of a pint hit £6.75 last year, according to a survey by the personal finance website Finder – meaning a similar 4.4% increase would see the price of some pints approach or even breach the £7 mark.
The soaring price of beer in Britain has been blamed on a string of cost increases heaped on brewers, pubs and drinks companies.
Bosses have warned about the inflationary impact of Rachel Reeves’s decision to increase employers’ National Insurance contributions (NICs) and lower the threshold for earnings at which they are paid from £9,100 to £5,000. At the same time, businesses face a 6.7% rise in the minimum wage.
Emma McClarkin, Chief Executive of the BBPA, said: “The cumulative impact of these taxes and regulations is now plain to see and it is highly unfortunate that the only way many pubs can remain viable is to pass on the array of upcoming costs to consumers.
“No one wants to see the cost of an average pint increase by a further 21p and break the £5 average pint barrier that will be required for pubs to maintain their punishingly slim profit margins.”
Because hospitality companies often rely on lower-paid and part-time staff, chiefs have accused the Chancellor of disproportionately hammering pubs and restaurants compared to other industries by moving the threshold for NICs. …
In total, the BBPA said the impact of new costs from Ms Reeves’s October budget alone would amount to a hit of approximately £650 million for the beer and pub industry.
Worth reading in full.
Migrants Will be Put Up in Hotels for Years to Come, Treasury Admits
By Will Jones
Migrants will be housed in hotels for years to come at a cost of £5.5 millions a day, the Treasury has admitted, as figures show there are 8,000 more asylum seekers living in hotels than when Keir Starmer pledged during the election campaign to “end asylum hotels”. The Times has the story.
Migrants will be housed in hotels and other temporary accommodation for years to come, the Treasury has admitted as it ordered the Home Office to find cheaper providers and to prevent private companies “profiteering” from the small boats crisis.
Treasury advisers tasked with finding annual savings of £4 billion targeted Home Office spending on migrant hotels in an audit launched earlier this month.
A Treasury document setting out its plan said that “global instability” made it inevitable that illegal migrants would continue to come to the UK so demand for temporary accommodation for them would endure, especially as there were “other pressures on housing supply”.
However, it said that the Government’s commitment to build 1.5 million homes in England by 2029 would help to reduce the use of hotels for asylum seekers.
The document, published by the Treasury’s new Office for Value for Money (OVfM), says companies contracted to find hotels for migrants have “made record profits in recent years, leading to accusations of profiteering”.
It pointed to research by the Institute for Public Policy Research which found that the cost to UK taxpayers of each asylum seeker had increased from £17,000 to £41,000 between 2020 and 2024.
There are 8,000 more asylum seekers living in hotels than when Sir Keir Starmer pledged during the election campaign in June last year to “end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds”.
The National Audit Office found that putting a migrant in a hotel cost £145 per night, compared with £14 for dispersal accommodation — large houses, bedsits and flats across different local authorities.
More than 38,000 migrants are in hotels, costing the Home Office £5.5 million a day. A further 65,707 migrants are in dispersal accommodation.
Worth reading in full.
In the Spectator, Andrew Tettenborn highlights the emergence of an anti-ECHR contingent among Labour MPs (spurred by frustrations at the difficulty in removing foreign criminals) to suggest that “we may be seeing the beginning of the end for Britain’s ECHR membership”:
It may take a long time. But ECHRexit, like Brexit once did, looks not only increasingly respectable, but likely to be ultimately successful.
News Round-Up
- “Sex offender avoids deportation because he ‘distrusts authority’” – A convicted Iranian sex offender has avoided deportation because drink and drug use have made him distrust authority, reports the Telegraph.
- “Will Labour back ECHR withdrawal?” – ‘ECHRexit’, like Brexit, looks not only increasingly respectable, but likely to be ultimately successful, says Andrew Tettenborn in the Spectator.
- “Crime has utterly broken the spirit of our nation” – The Government has an obligation to make Britain safer, writes Zak Asgard in the Telegraph.
- “We are paying for the price of crime in the loss of our freedoms” – Facial recognition technology goes too far and is not necessary in capturing criminals, argues Melanie McDonagh in the Telegraph.
- “Farage unveils Sarah Pochin as Reform candidate for Runcorn by-election” – A former magistrate and Cheshire councillor has been named as the Reform candidate for the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, according to the Runcorn & Widnes World.
- “Human rights laws may yet reverse Labour’s private school VAT raid” – If the courts find that the Government’s tax on private schools contravenes the ECHR, Starmer will find it very difficult not to ditch this spiteful policy, says George Trefgarne in the Telegraph.
- “The Employment Rights Bill is morally wrong” – Workplace privileges should be earned, not handed out as automatic entitlements, writes Charles Moore in the Telegraph.
- “How to resolve the modern care dilemma: drop the obsession with GDP” – Resolving the modern care dilemma means putting family at the heart of the economy, says Miriam Cates in Politics Home.
- “Non-Muslims could be victims of Islamophobia under Angela Rayner’s new terms” – People mistakenly identified as Muslims could be victims of Islamophobia under Angela Rayner’s new definition, reports the Telegraph.
- “Condemning Hamas is now a risky business” – There should be absolutely nothing wrong with describing an evil terrorist organisation as “disgusting”, writes Brendan O’Neill in the Telegraph.
- “Who will stand up for Jews today?” – In the Spectator, Jonathan Sacerdoti issues a moral call to action, asking why so few are willing to stand up for Jews facing hatred and brutality.
- “Prime Minister fails to back Heathrow boss” – No.10 refused to say if it had confidence in the Heathrow boss who reportedly went to bed instead of staying up after a blaze knocked out a power substation near the airport, reports the Standard.
- “Of course there should be disagreement in pubs: that’s what they’re for” – In TCW, Sean Walsh warns that the Government’s ‘banter ban’ threatens to turn British pubs from bawdy havens of free speech into state-approved safe spaces for the easily offended.
- “Minister cuts Rachel Reeves adrift over Sabrina Carpenter freebie” – Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has given the Chancellor less than full-hearted backing after Reeves admitted she accepted concert tickets worth £600, according to the Mail.
- “Reform donor Charlie Mullins claims threat to rescind OBE is ‘politically motivated’” – Pimlico Plumbers founder Charlie Mullins was threatened with being stripped of his OBE over a social post attacking Sadiq Khan, reports the Telegraph.
- “We don’t need ‘happy’ soldiers, we need fit ones” – A proposal for trainees to be given ‘lie-ins’ will only soften our already depleted army, warns Robert Clark in the Telegraph.
- “Cosy climate consensus collapses” – Kemi abandoning the Net Zero 2050 target collapses the fragile Jenga tower of climate and energy policy, says David Turver on his Substack.
- “Will Ed Miliband’s precious Net Zero sound the death knell for his career?” – Ed Milliband and his Blue Peter presenter energy could be the next victim of Rachel Reeves’s cuts, writes Tim Stanley in the Telegraph.
- “Energy bosses at war as Ed Miliband mulls zonal electricity pricing” – Under radical reforms being considered by Ed Miliband, the UK may be split into several different zones with varying electricity prices between them, reports the Mail.
- “Households ‘will be saddled with shoddy heat pumps under Net Zero plans’” – While heat pumps installed in existing homes under grant schemes must be fitted by accredited technicians, that is not the case for new builds, says the Telegraph.
- “JSO activist, 78, moans about ‘insulting’ request in prison” – A 78 year-old grandmother who was imprisoned for joining in a Just Stop Oil protest on the M25 has blasted the conditions of the female prison she spent Christmas in, according to the Mail.
- “Are climate scientists qualified to judge Net Zero?” – There is no scientific answer to climate change policy, writes Stephen Webb in the Spectator.
- “Bird flu detected in British sheep for first time” – The world’s first case of bird flu in sheep has been found in one animal in Yorkshire, reports the BBC.
- “Only Filipinos more reluctant to go into the office than Britons” – Five years on from the first Covid lockdown, workers in the UK are spending two days a week on average in the office — a higher number than they would like, says the Times.
- “How Covid lockdowns ruined your constituency (and the country)” – From long-term sickness to stunted productivity, most of the UK remains heavily impacted by lockdown measures, reports the Telegraph.
- “Be careful what you wish for” – On the TTE Substack, Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson explain how workplace mental health policy gets it wrong.
- “Urgent warning over hand wash tainted by potentially deadly bacteria” – Shoppers have been urged to return bottles of a popular hand soap after Government officials warned they could be contaminated with infection-causing bugs, reports the Mail.
- “Why the Trump-Putin bromance could finally topple Iran’s ayatollahs” – Experts tell the Telegraph that Russia and America’s growing closeness – alongside internal discontent in Iran – could spark regime change.
- “Trump cabinet complained about ‘free-loading Europe’ in top secret group chat” – Donald Trump’s cabinet complained about defending “free-loading Europe” in a secret group chat accidentally shared with a reporter, according to the Express.
- “Multiple bombs found inside Tesla showroom in Texas” – Multiple incendiary devices have been found inside a Tesla showroom in Austin, Texas, as nationwide threats against CEO Elon Musk continue, reports the Mail.
- “Elon Musk: the latest folk devil” – Smearing Elon Musk as a ‘Nazi’ is both infantile and historically illiterate, says Andrew Doyle on his Substack.
- “Parents attack CBeebies show over gender-neutral racoon” – Parents have slammed Hey Duggee, an award-winning CBeebies show, for featuring a gender-neutral raccoon and language they call “inappropriate” and “confusing” for kids still learning to talk, reports the Telegraph.
- “Turtle madness” – In TakiMag, Steven Tucker explores the surreal rise of ‘turtlegender’ and other animal identities in public health and education.
- “‘It’s just total hooey’” – On SpectatorTV, Toby slams the Netflix series Adolescence for regurgitating metropolitan liberal groupthink. Watch his full interview here.
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