News Round-Up

• “Reform U.K.’s offices targeted in anti-racism demonstrations” – Reform U.K.’s central London offices were targeted by activists as part of anti-racism protests on Saturday, with the organiser from Left-wing pressure group Stand Up to Racism, Samira Ali, trying to pin the blame for the riots on Farage, saying he is “fanning the flames of bigotry and Islamophobia”, reports the Telegraph.
• “You will be refused bail even if you only watched riots from the sidelines, judge warns” – Whether “active participant” or “curious observer”, anybody involved in disorder will be locked up, a Belfast just has said as he jailed an 18 year-old who went “to have a look” and left when petrol bombs were thrown, according to the Telegraph.
• “Two-tier policing is not a myth” – Identity politics is at the heart of modern British policing, says Fraser Myers in Spiked.
• “Angela Rayner scraps plans to limit social housing applications to long-term British residents” – Angela Rayner has dropped plans by Michael Gove to introduce a “U.K. connection test” to limit social housing to those resident for at least 10 years, the Telegraph reports.
• “The riots ending is proof hard-line policing works. So why do the elites despise it?” – The great discovery of the past few days has been this, says Peter Hitchens in the Mail: if police are visible, if wrongdoers are swiftly arrested, rapidly charged, prosecuted and quickly and frighteningly punished, you get a grip on crime. So why are they so soft the rest of the time?
• “Starmer’s popularity slumps after criticism of riots response” – New polling for the Telegraph shows the PM’s approval ratings have plummeted in the fortnight since far-Right unrest broke out (though he’s still net positive, and most people’s complaint was that he wasn’t hardline enough).
• “Get ready for the crackdown” – From the return of the Counter Disinformation Unit to the start of live facial recognition, Big Brother Watch’s Silkie Carlo joins UnHerd to discuss the U.K. crackdown.
• “The Machiavellian cause of Britain’s disorder” – The country is ruled by weak and effete foxes, says N.S. Lyons in UnHerd.
• “Why we must fight for the right to criticise Islam” – A Government clampdown on ‘Islamophobia’ would inflame social tensions, not dampen them, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “Thwarted attack on Taylor Swift concert reveals youth jihadi problem” – In UnHerd, Ralph Schoellhammer says the three migrant-Muslim background youth who tried to blow up a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna this week are emblematic of a wider Islamist problem among European young people.
• “Lessons from the Taylor Swift terror plot” – There is no room for complacency in the face of the Islamist threat, says Ian Acheson in Spiked.
• “Schools to wage war on ‘putrid’ fake news in anti-extremism crackdown” – Children will be taught how to spot “extremist” content and “fake news” online in a “revamp” of the curriculum following the riots, according to the Telegraph. And you thought schools were already woke madrasas…
• “Advertisers axe corporate responsibility scheme after lawsuit from Musk’s X” – The World Federation of Advertisers told members on Thursday that it would shut down the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (Garm) following legal attacks from X, the Guardian reports.
• “Biomass power station produced four times emissions of U.K. coal plant, says report” – The Drax biomass power station received £22 billion in subsidies despite being the U.K.’s largest emitter in 2023, reports the Guardian.
• “Labour abandons Tory pledge not to build solar farms on food-growing fields” – Planning rules introduced to block the construction of new solar farms on food-producing land will be scrapped by Angela Rayner under Labour’s Net Zero drive, reports the Telegraph.
• “What The Met Office Did Not Tell You About Extreme Temperatures” – Yes, there are more hot days, but there are also fewer cold days, and no overall trend in “extreme” temperatures, whatever the Met Office may tell you, says Paul Homewood in WUWT.
• “Spare a thought for slave labour building solar panels” – Ed Miliband’s plan to plaster the countryside with solar panels is likely to create more jobs for Uyghur slaves in China than blue collar workers in Britain, says Ross Clark in the Mail.
• “WEF: Climate Change Causes Pakistani Men to Beat up Their Wives” – According to the World Economic Forum, the problem is not that some Pakistani men are cowardly wife beaters, the problem is climate change, says Eric Worrall in WUWT.
• “How Red Emperor Xi Jinping cynically used Covid to create the ultimate Big Brother society: from ferocious lockdowns to apps that spied on citizens’ every move… and up to a million Muslims herded into concentration camps” – All dictators know there is no disaster that cannot be turned to their advantage, and Xi determined the Chinese response to Covid would be led by politics, not science, says Michael Sheridan in the Mail.
• “Premiership players come forward with heart concerns after Ben Youngs’s collapse during training” – The Telegraph reports that Ben Youngs, who recently underwent heart surgery after collapsing, has revealed other players in the Premiership have contacted him having been through similar procedures. Heart conditions among players are “not uncommon”, he says. Well, not anymore…
• “Kamala Harris and the Election of Laughter and Forgetting” – America now has a new Democratic nominee who, until three weeks ago, was widely acknowledged as a political lightweight, a poor manager and the author of incomprehensible word salads, but you won’t find that anywhere in the liberal media now, says Eli Lake in the Free Press.
• “Israel’s school strike has triggered an information war” – Israel now has a dilemma, says Dr. Limor Simhony Philpott in the Spectator. If it stops targeting terrorists that hide behind civilians in Gaza, it will not be able to fight Hamas.
• “Imane Khelif files legal complaint for cyber harassment after ‘digital lynching’” – Imane Khelif, the Olympic gold medal-winning boxer at the heart of a gender eligibility storm, has filed a legal case against “misogynistic, racist and sexist” cyber bullying, claiming ‘she’ has been the victim of a “digital lynching”, says the Telegraph.
• “French Left celebrates gender-row boxer’s victory as defeat of ‘fascism’” – French Left-wing leaders have hailed Imane Khelif, saying they were enjoying drinking “fascist tears” over the controversial Olympic triumph, reports the Telegraph.
• “NHS staff told to ask men if they are pregnant before X-rays” – NHS X-ray operators have been told to ask men if they are pregnant before conducting scans, the Telegraph reports.
• “‘I am not a monster.’ Strictly star Graziano hits back” – Graziano Di Prima tells the Mail that Zara McDermott’s allegations may relate to an accidental blow after he kicked floor “in frustration” that he apologised for at the time.
• “Feel free to insult me!” – Elon Musk posts a video on X of Rowan Atkinson from 2012 explaining why U.K. law urgently needed to be reformed to protect freedom of speech by decriminalising “insults” – a proposal that Keir Starmer as Director of Public Prosecutions backed at the time. It was too little, too late, of course, as the Great Awokening took hold and dissolved the Left’s commitment to free speech; but Atkinson’s speech has certainly aged well.

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