David Adams @ObserverDavid

BREAKING: British MPs are demanding that Rahmeh Aladwan, a doctor in the UK, be removed from the General Medical Council after she called for people blaspheme Islam to be executed. What is Rahmeh even doing in the UK?

Good news for anyone concerned that electricity was getting a bit too cheap.

BBC Wales News @BBCWalesNews

18 hours ago

Wales plans to ban steel pylons as government launches consultation bbc.in/4z7nnMx

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This is one of the most illiberal, invasive and appalling pieces of legislation ever to come before Parliament. The Conversion Practices Bill isn’t about preventing gay children from being abusively coerced into being straight. That is already rightly illegal. It will criminalise well-intentioned conversations between parents and gender-confused children, discussions with therapists, and religious leaders sharing their faith’s teachings with their congregations. A parent could face up to five years in prison simply for trying to dissuade their child from embarking on irreversible, dangerous and life-changing medical pathways before the age of 18. In his letter to the pre-legislative scrutiny committee, the Minister for Equalities attempts to reassure us that the bill respects “freedom of religion and parental rights”. It does no such thing. So much for the Labour Government’s promise to tread more lightly on our lives. It is not the state’s role to dictate what conversations parents can have with their young children around the dinner table. Parents know best — not ministers. Read the letter below 👇

Good speech from @NJ_Timothy. You don't shut down free speech just because it makes violent people angry.

Liza Rosen @LizaRosen0000

2 days ago

A rare moment of political courage in the British Parliament. British MP Nick Timothy tells Muslims crying “Islamophobia” to shove it: “Muhammad was a false prophet. Britain is not bound by Islam or Sharia.”

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It’s weird how the “global price” of gas is lower in countries that drill for it.

Javier Blas @JavierBlas

17 hours ago

CHART OF THE DAY: The price of natural gas in the US 🇺🇸 and Europe 🇪🇺. Now, imagine running a gas-intensive company (say, a fertilizer plant) in either region. Europe >$30; US <$3

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Basic infrastructure in our country is literally crumbling. And yet the charity that's supposed to maintain London's bridges is funnelling millions to climate activists and groups with alleged ties to Hamas. We are truly through the looking glass now.

Daily Mail @DailyMail

2 days ago

London bridges charity gave £1.1million to Muslim group whose trustee 'has ties to Hamas' while capital's river crossings crumble trib.al/NGHLdTY

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🚨 A 15-year-old boy was woken by four West Midlands Police officers banging on his door. Fraser, a schoolboy and Reform UK activist, was arrested in front of his neighbours, bundled into a police car and held overnight in a cell. His mugshot and DNA were taken; even his shoes were confiscated. While he was in the cell, officers searched his bedroom at home. His “crime”? Criticising a Conservative councillor for wearing shorts and a T-shirt to a council meeting, then joking on social media that the councillor “was not looking like a rent boy” when he wore a suit. Fraser also posted an altered photograph of the councillor wearing bunny ears. In what self-respecting democracy should a child be arrested for criticising an elected politician? The Free Speech Union is supporting Fraser and has taken on his case. His lawyers received an email from West Midlands Police stating that “it is alleged that your client’s comments could be considered a hate crime offence”. Months later, Fraser is still waiting to learn whether he will be charged. Speaking to the New York Post, FSU Director of Legislative Affairs Sam Armstrong said: “Broadly speaking, several thousand people a year are being arrested for… ‘offensive speech’ in the UK.” Since 2020, the FSU has handled more than 7,000 cases involving people whose free speech has been infringed and who have been punished for exercising it. More than 60,000 people have also been arrested for communications offences in the UK. The First Amendment protects US citizens’ right to free speech. As Sam told the New York Post, it is the “global gold standard”. Read more below 👇

If you ever scratch your head and wonder why some politicians pander to the Boriswave and how they might scupper these reforms, it's because of Commonwealth voting. Much of the Boriswave have come from Commonwealth countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Ghana — all of which can vote upon arrival in the UK, there is no minimum residency period. We have a system in this country that grants non-citizens the vote and their influence holds as much weight as those with British citizenship. Because most migrants also settle in areas with other migrants, many of which are in cities and urban areas (which tilt Labour), this creates areas with a significant and influential non-citizen voting bloc.

The Telegraph @Telegraph

a day ago

Foreign care workers could get a fast-track route to settlement under proposals being considered by Shabana Mahmood to head off a Cabinet revolt. The Home Secretary is reviewing potential concessions that could allow them to earn their right to indefinite leave to remain (ILR)

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Stock Up On Tinned Food. That Is The Government's Actual Policy Now. A state does not tell its citizens to keep bottled water and tinned food in the cupboard unless it already knows it cannot guarantee the basic security it was created to provide. That is what this advisory actually says, stripped of the reassuring language wrapped around it. Not "be sensible." An admission. Look at what sits behind it. Russia's embassy has openly threatened Britain with "consequences" after British-built drones struck targets on Russian soil, language serious enough that the government is accelerating its own war book, the manual for defending the nation against external attack. The National Risk Register has just added interference in Britain's democratic process as a live threat. Five consecutive heatwaves and a prolonged drought have pushed the National Farmers Union to call the situation "increasingly concerning," with dairy farmers already burning through winter feed because the grass has stopped growing. Analysts are warning of the worst food security crisis in decades. None of these arrived without warning. Each has been building for years, visible to anyone paying attention, while the government's energy policy closed down North Sea production and left Britain more exposed to exactly the kind of price and supply shock now arriving. A source told the Financial Times this would be "common sense, not scaremongering." That is precisely the kind of line a government reaches for when it wants to manage a reaction rather than answer a question. The question worth asking is not whether stocking a cupboard is sensible advice. It plainly is. The question is why a state with intelligence services that thwarted twenty Iranian-linked plots, with analysts warning of drought-driven food shortages months in advance, with its own risk register flagging democratic interference, is only now telling the public to prepare, rather than having spent the intervening years building the energy security, agricultural resilience and border control that would have made this advisory unnecessary. This did not happen by accident. It happened because the people making these decisions were never equipped to see them coming. Britain's current parliamentary intake is drawn overwhelmingly from charities, political offices and communications work, backgrounds built around managing perception and institutional compassion, not defence, agriculture, energy or security. A parliament trained to manage a message will always reach for a message first. A public information campaign is what that instinct produces when the underlying risks have already arrived and can no longer be talked around. Every thread running through this crisis traces back to a choice, not a misfortune. Energy independence was dismantled in pursuit of targets that assumed a stable world that no longer exists. Border security has been practically non-existent, verification abandoned in favour of processing speed, a four per cent removal rate standing as proof. Foreign policy has wavered between confrontation and retreat, provoking exactly the kind of hostile state response Britain is now least prepared to absorb. Each decision was defensible in isolation, at the time, to the people who made it. Together, they have produced a country now advising its own citizens to keep a torch and a few tins in reserve, because the state that was supposed to prevent this moment cannot promise it won't arrive. Tinned food and bottled water will not fix an energy market Britain deliberately made itself vulnerable to. They will not replace a harvest lost to drought nobody planned for. They will not stop a hostile state that has already promised consequences. They are what a government offers the public once it has run out of the years it needed to prevent the emergency it is now asking them to survive. "Years spent failing to secure energy, food and borders. Now the advice is to prepare for it yourself."

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Yes. The Commonwealth has a role only if it is celebrating things that are worth celebrating: common law, parliamentary democracy, habeas corpus, free speech, jury trials and so on. If its shared heritage is regarded, at least by some members, as shameful, then it was no purpose.

Ben Judah @b_judah

a day ago

It is time to admit that the Commonwealth does not only not serve its purpose, but works against its premise of post-imperial comity. This is because it has become a little more than a poorly attended biannual summit whose only purpose seems to be to for Caribbean countries to

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Is deeply odd this profusion of people mocking the idea that people having basic supplies - food, water, some cash, wind-up radio - is somehow silly, a joke or weird. In countries such as Finland and Sweden this is absolutely standard, part of their “total defence” doctrine.

LBC @LBC

a day ago

'You're so wrong!' Should we prepare for potential food shortages and power cuts, or is it the Government’s job to protect us? @IainDale, @Martha_Gill and @CarolineFlint debate.

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A British person visiting Israel 20 years ago was visiting a country half as wealthy as their homeland—and you could really feel it. That same visitor today arrives in a former British colony now 20% richer than their own country, with the gap continuing to grow...

Saul Sadka @Saul_Sadka

2 days ago

UPDATE: Israel’s economy is growing so fast, it will leapfrog the Netherlands and Australia within the next 18 months, in time for it's 80th birthday—not by 2030, as predicted—to rank second only to the USA in GDP per capita of all nations with populations over 10 million.

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This has gone viral in France. The wonderful black woman is a credit to France. The smug, haute-bourgeois blonde an embarrassment.

Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇫🇷🇺🇦🇹🇼 @DrewPavlou

3 days ago

“Your shops that got looted were nice, okay, but we’re starving.” People looked this girl up and her dad is a corporate executive who worked for Shell. What a smug psychopath.

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I really do encourage people to read these. Some of the most complex published so far. A girl with an IQ of 67 is raped in a park, in mitigation the judge has to consider that his ‘family have been affected, and your relationship has ended as a result of your convictions’

Centre for Justice Policy @Justice_Policy

2 days ago

🧵 Today the Centre for Justice Policy is publishing 10 new grooming gang sentencing remarks from Rochdale, Huddersfield, Rotherham, High Wycombe, Nottingham and Chelmsford. Some had no reporters in the room, and coverage of the rest missed much of what the judges said.

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This is the British Pound GBP against the Euro EUR over the past month. This isn't down to strength in the British market, or performance of the British economy. This is the fear of the French economy about to go pop.

Because they just hate Jews. There are something like 40 ongoing occupations worldwide. #Kurdistan

Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby

a day ago

Why don’t any “End the Occupation” anti-Israel lunatics ever speak about Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus?

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It is funny that as Baroness Fox patiently set out a case for the dangers of poorly-socialised young people in Western society, the BBC had an oversized child sat by her to roll its eyes, sigh and interrupt every few seconds.

Claire Fox @Fox_Claire

2 days ago

My attempt at discussing what has driven violent riots & wanton destruction in France (not without interruption). I was also reacting to unhelpfully labelling Kemi Badenoch's mention of challenges of migration y'day, as a Trump-like dog whistle #PoliticsLive

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Why the hell is no one talking about the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria? More than 3,000 members of one pastor’s congregation have been brutally murdered. Where’s the media coverage?

China. Qatar. Turkey. You're forging a partnership with the world's worst abusers of human rights.

Mark Carney @MarkJCarney

a day ago

New markets. Stronger defence. Greater energy security. We’re forging a new Canada–Türkiye Strategic Partnership.

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Norway's fund works because Norwegians can look at $2.4trn of Nvidia and Palantir shares for twenty years and not touch it the people most upset Britain never built one would have forced it to dump Palantir after the first demo and spent the rest on nurses in the first recession