News Round-Up

• “Zombie-knife crime doubles in five years, police data reveals” – The number of recorded crimes that mentioned machetes, swords or zombie knives has increased from 7,159 in 2019 to 14,195 in 2023, reports LBC.
• “Migrants rescued in Channel as crossings for year hit 25,000” – One in five migrants crossing the Channel are claiming to be children hoping it will boost their chances of asylum, reports the Telegraph.
• “Labour fixer who worked for Lord Alli helped select MPs” – Keir Starmer faces a fresh backlash over his relationship with Lord Alli because of the role played by one of the donor’s former staff members in choosing prospective Labour MPs, says the Telegraph.
• “Angela Rayner under fire over taxpayer-funded £68,000 ‘vanity’ photographer” – Angela Rayner has been accused of wasting taxpayers’ money after hiring a £68,000-a-year ‘vanity’ photographer, reports LBC.
• “‘Four million homes to be built on green belt’ under Rayner’s planning revolution” – The Housing Secretary is pushing for a radical overhaul of the National Planning Policy Framework, which could free up vast swathes of green belt land for housing development, says Business Matters.
• “It’s no surprise nurses want a bigger pay rise” – Labour’s message to public sector workers is that the key to higher pay lies in a protracted series of strikes, writes Isabel Hardman in the Spectator.
• “The U.K.’s birth rate is falling. Will a Labour Government respond?” – In Politics Home, Sienna Rodgers talks to figures across the Left to explore how a Labour Government might respond – or not – to the U.K.’s falling birth rate.
• “Labour MP: regulate media to ‘make Starmer’s job easier’” – To help Starmer better handle press scrutiny, Labour MP Ribeiro-Addy has suggested the Prime Minister should consider, er, regulating the press, says Steerpike in the Spectator.
• “‘I care more about children than pensioners,’ says key Labour donor” – Green energy tycoon Dale Vince claims it’s right for the Chancellor to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners because so many British children now live in poverty, reports Lucy Burton in the Telegraph.
• “Britain is locked in a low-trust, high-crime spiral” – Governments that lose the confidence of their voters are in serious bother, says Ian Acheson in CapX.
• “The writing is already on the wall for Labour’s floundering Government” – Keir Starmer’s ‘loveless landslide’ was always volatile and his weak political antennae means his party is sinking in the polls, writes John Curtice in the Telegraph.
• “A very wooden cabinet” – In the New Conservative, Dr. Roger Watson casts a (very) critical eye over Keir Starmer’s Cabinet.
• “Wes Streeting’s surprising praise for Reform” – In the Spectator, Steerpike reacts to Wes Streeting’s bold claim that Nigel Farage’s Reform party is the new intellectual powerhouse of the Right.
• “The plight of Hatun Tash shames Britain” – There is something far more offensive, and scary, than Hatun Tash’s occasional sullying of the Koran: the chattering classes’ silence over her persecution, writes Brendan O’Neill in the Spectator.
• “‘I was barred from Anthony Joshua’s fight after criticising Saudi sports-washing’” – After criticising Saudi Arabia‘s ‘sportswashing’, the Telegraph’s Oliver Brown found himself barred from Anthony Joshua’s world title fight.
• “Israeli missiles rain down on Lebanon as Netanyahu issues warning” – Israeli missiles slammed into the Lebanese capital of Beirut yesterday in a strike said to be targeting a senior Hezbollah commander, reports the Mail.
• “Brandenburg Election: the Federal Government teeters on the edge of collapse, the SPD pull off a pyrrhic victory with the help of confused pensioners and the AfD win another blocking minority” – On Substack, Eugypius reflects on the results of the last of the three regional elections held in East Germany.
• “Immigration has turned Germany upside down” – The row heating up over migration in Berlin shows the Right is destabilising traditional German politics, writes Lisa Haseldine in the Telegraph.
• “Labour’s war on the boiler will end in electoral disaster – just ask the Germans” – The radical heating law introduced by Olaf Scholz’s coalition was astonishingly toxic – and should come as a warning to Starmer, says Guy Kelly in the Telegraph.
• “‘Port Talbot won’t feel or look the same – it breaks my heart’” – The BBC reports on the closure of Port Talbot’s steelworks, resulting in the loss of 2,000 jobs as the town confronts the end of its industrial legacy.
• “Millions urged to get Covid and flu jabs amid ‘tripledemic’ fears” – Millions of people are being urged to get their free flu, Covid and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines amid fears of a ‘tripledemic’ that could overwhelm the NHS, according to Women’s Health. Here we go again.
• “Covid-era social distancing bollard turns shopping street into ‘ghost town’” – Businesses in a Surrey town say that a road barrier introduced during the pandemic has led to a devastating fall in trade, reports the Mail.
• “Crits-Christoph et al. 2024 retraction request” – On the Biosafety Now Substack, Prof. Bryce Nickels posts the fifth in a series of documented calls for the retraction of scientifically unsound papers on the origin of COVID-19.
• “Amazon excommunicates Dr. Paul Marik” – Amazon’s banning of Dr. Paul Marik’s book Cancer Care is an extremely dark moment in the history of censorship, warns John Leake on the Courageous Discourse Substack.
• “‘I was the devil incarnate’: an interview with John Boyne” – In the Spectator, Julie Bindel sits down with John Boyne, who reveals how a children’s book he wrote turned him into the unwitting poster boy for ‘transphobia’.
• “Instilling fragility” – In his latest Law & Liberty essay, Theodore Dalrymple warns of the ongoing dangers of the infantilisation of the British populace, which has gone hand in hand with the growth in the popularity of psychology at universities. After all, those psychology graduates need customers.
• “How common sense has gone walkabout in woke Australia” – Since the turn of this century, Australia’s political and social elites have endeavoured to import ‘progressive values’, bound up in all manner of nanny state rules, says Terry Barnes in the Mail.
• “Anyone who admired Greta Thunberg when she was faking support for climate must feel like an idiot now“ – On X, Dr. Eli David reposts a video of the climate campaigner who’s become a fully-fledged anti-Israeli fanatic.

If you have any tips for inclusion in the round-up, email us here.