News Round-Up

• “Pakistani man accused of spreading lies about Southport attack charged” – A web developer accused of spreading misinformation about the Southport knifeman has been charged with cyber terrorism in Pakistan, reports the Mail.
• “Yvette Cooper’s chilling crackdown on ‘harmful’ beliefs” – A war on ‘harmful’ beliefs would give the Government a blank cheque to demonise views that are old-fashioned, possibly unpopular or just not very PC, warns Brendan O’Neill in the Spectator.
• “Expressing an opinion is not incitement to violence” – In Spiked, Aaron Terr says the U.K.’s vaguely worded speech laws are a recipe for authoritarianism.
• “They spouted hate online. Then they were arrested” – The recent anti-immigrant riots in Britain have raised questions about the limits of free speech, writes Mark Landler in the NY Times.
• “Prison works – if Labour abandons this principle our streets will descend into chaos” – Our judicial system is too ready to give habitual offenders short sentences – and the situation will only get worse with Keir Starmer, warns Suella Braverman in the Telegraph.
• “Rachel Reeves has already run out of cash” – Rachel Reeves has to confront a harsh truth: the state has run out of cash, and cuts will have to begin, says Matthew Lynn in the Spectator.
• “Empowering unions will stifle growth, businesses warn Keir Starmer” – Business leaders have called on Keir Starmer to abandon plans for a radical extension of union power in Britain amid warnings it will stifle economic growth, reports the Times.
• “Keir Starmer is being humiliated by the rail unions” – Taxpayers are getting nothing whatsoever for the extra money they are going to be spending propping up a chronically unprofitable rail industry, says Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “Public sector payouts will worsen our debt crisis” – Taxpayers’ cash is being used to repay debt interest rather than being spent on vital public services, writes Shimeon Lee in CapX.
• “Labour is losing fiscal credibility ” – Just how much longer will the Government be able to sustain its assertion that the Conservatives left behind a £22 billion hole in the public finances? wonders Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “Left and Right come together to back Kemi Badenoch for Tory leadership” – Two MPs on opposite wings of the Tory Party have backed Kemi Badenoch, saying she’s the only candidate who can “see off” the threat of Reform and “neuter” the Lib Dems, reports the Telegraph.
• “Private schools urge Labour to delay putting VAT on fees in January” – Private school leaders have asked the Treasury to delay adding VAT to fees in January or risk a “mid-year surge” of pupils overwhelming the state sector, says the Mail.
• “Third of teachers say GCSE pupils missed exams because of anxiety” – One in five students in England was persistently absent from school this year, failing to attend at least 10% of their lessons, according to the Telegraph.
• “‘Social justice’ is damaging education” – Teaching at universities is at risk of degenerating into indoctrination, warns John Armstrong in the Critic.
• “Primary school teacher is banned from classroom after police uncovered offensive WhatsApp chat” – A primary school teacher has been banned from the classroom following the discovery of a WhatsApp chat containing sexist messages, reports the Mail.
• “Robin Hood in reverse: foreign aid spending in regions that are richer than parts of the U.K.” – Millions of pounds of foreign aid cash have been squandered on projects in areas where people are wealthier than those in the poorest parts of Britain, according to new research by the Institute of Economic Affairs.
• “Madness and the evaporation of authority” – On Substack, Dr. Hugh Willbourn rails against modern society’s obsession with abstract ideas and rigid policies over practical solutions.
• “How Israel is clearing Hamas out of Rafah” – In the Spectator, Andrew Fox describes the IDF’s mission to destroy Hamas’s booby-trapped tunnel network in Gaza.
• “Pro-Palestine protesters who caused £1 million of damage jailed” – A group of Pro-Palestinian protesters who caused over £1 million of damages at a weapons factory have been jailed for a total of five years and two months, according to the Mail.
• “Pro-Palestinian protesters burn flags and clash with police in Chicago” – Anti-Israel demonstrations continued through the second night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, with protesters burning an American flag and chanting “Free Palestine” outside the Israeli consulate, reports Fox News.
• “Tory peer distances himself from daughter-in-law’s Israel remarks” – Tory donor Lord Farmer has defended Israel following his daughter-in-law Candace Owens’s controversial anti-Semitic remarks, according to the Times.
• “Ukraine attacks Moscow in one of largest ever drone strikes on Russian capital” – Ukraine’s drone strike on Moscow, involving at least 11 drones, was described by Russian officials as one of the largest since the war began, reports Reuters.
• “West risks WW3 if it allows Ukraine to keep attacking Russia” – A top Putin ally has warned the West that it risks triggering a Third World War if it allows Ukraine to carry on its invasion of Russia, says the Mail.
• “How Britain fell behind in the global race for nuclear power” – Decades of decline have meant the U.K. has fallen rapidly behind in the global nuclear race, jeopardising the country’s energy security in the process, writes Jonathan Leake in the Telegraph.
• “Volkswagen attacks EU over ‘incomprehensible’ electric car tariffs” – Volkswagen has slammed Brussels over plans to charge the German car giant higher import tariffs than its Chinese rivals, according to the Telegraph.
• “New green diktats risk turning me off recycling for good” – We’re already living in an age of anxiety. Ten separate rubbish bins is enough to drive anyone round the twist, writes Rowan Pelling in the Telegraph.
• “More students asking to sit exams away from main hall in ‘post-Covid phenomenon’” –The Sixth Form Colleges Association reports that, since the pandemic, more students have been applying for special exam access arrangements due to anxiety about crowded exam halls, according to the Independent.
• “Deep learning analysis of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy on Twitter in six high-income countries: longitudinal observational study” – On the Courageous Discourse Substack, Dr. Peter A. McCullough highlights Twitter’s role in highlighting vaccine safety concerns in the face of widespread censorship in the MSM.
• “‘Coding’ errors prompt retraction of paper on Long Covid in kids” – JAMA Pediatrics has retracted a 2023 paper on Long Covid in children due to coding errors that underestimated the condition’s risk, according to Retraction Watch.
• “Investors beware: MPox disaster cronyism” – On Substack, Dr. Robert W. Malone follows the money to find out who exactly financially benefits from the World Health Organisation’s PHEIC declaration.
• “Assisted suicide and the NHS are a truly toxic mix” – People are right to fear the elderly may face pressure to end their lives to reduce pressure on the NHS, says Madeline Grant in the Telegraph.
• “Female Barclays bank exec wins discrimination claim against male boss” – A tribunal has ruled that a Barclays executive faced discrimination when her male boss assumed she didn’t want a promotion after she mentioned family pressures, reports the Mail.
• “What exactly does the gay Pride flag signify?” – On the Courageous Discourse Substack, John Leake questions the meaning of the gay Pride flag flying above the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.
• “Labour’s war on history is a war on the nation itself” – Cardiff’s policy of making Wales “an anti-racist nation” by 2030 could turn out to be a prototype for the rest of the country, warns Robert Tombs in the Telegraph.
• “Who is Tim Walz?” – The media have been running cover for Tim Walz for years, says Ann Bauer for the Brownstone Institute.
• “X’s Grok is the unwoke solution to Google’s Gemini” – You may be disturbed by Grok’s AI-generated images, but the idea that someone needs to stop them being made isn’t just deeply authoritarian; it’s practically antihuman, writes Kat Rosenfield in the Free Press.
• “Starmer’s claim that these riots were organised by far right agitators was itself fake news” – Toby on GB News says the news out of Pakistan, with the arrest of a web developer for being the first person to falsely claim the Southport attacker was an “asylum seeker”, suggests Keir Starmer’s claim that the “far-Right” instigated the riots was fake news. Should he be arrested for breaching s179 of the Online Safety Act?

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