News Round-Up

• “Keir Starmer meets Donald Trump to build relations before U.S. election” – Keir Starmer is holding talks with Donald Trump to help build a personal relationship with the U.S. Presidential candidate and to stiffen his backbone over Ukraine, reports the Express.
• “Keir Starmer could hit homeowners with swimming pools with ‘tap tax’” – Families with large gardens or swimming pools could face higher water bills, reveals the Mail.
• “Labour’s non-dom plan could raise no extra funds, officials fear” – Officials believe that Keir Starmer’s crackdown on non-doms could reduce tax revenues rather than raise them, reports the Guardian. No, really?
• “Musk snubbed by Starmer over ‘deplorable’ civil war claims” – Elon Musk says that no one should visit Britain because it releases paedophiles from prison after he was snubbed by Keir Starmer over an upcoming investment summit, according to the London Economic.
• “Starmer faces a profound humiliation over Labour’s private school tax raid” – Ironically, the Prime Minister may yet suffer a famous human rights defeat in the area of law he once plied his trade, says George Trefgarne in the Telegraph.
• “Labour accidentally taxes three year-olds in private school raid” – Toddlers will inadvertently be taxed under Labour’s private school VAT raid despite ministers promising it would exempt nursery children, reports the Telegraph.
• “Streeting’s £20,000 fundraiser with McKellen hosted at Lord Alli penthouse” – Health Secretary Wes Streeting hosted a fundraiser at Labour donor Lord Alli’s London home, making him the third Cabinet minister to have used the property in the Labour gifts row, says the Telegraph.
• “Lord Alli’s parlour – the best Airbnb in Covent Garden” – In a world where GCSE students are drowned in city chaos, Keir Starmer’s luxury Covent Garden getaway offers a blissful escape for the elite, writes Paul Sutton on his Substack.
• “Sorry, Labour: it’s not one rule for you, and another for the rest of us” – Keir Starmer’s new rule on refusing to speak about his staff, e.g. Sue Gray, reveals Labour’s double standards in power, says Tom Harris in the Telegraph.
• “The tragedy of Angela Rayner” – Luxury freebies – and luxury beliefs – could prove to be the undoing of the Deputy PM, writes Julie Burchill in Spiked.
• “Is anyone convinced by Starmer’s feeble excuses?” – The Prime Minister’s attempts to weasel out of ‘donor-gate’ are just making a bad situation worse, says Brendan O’Neill in the Telegraph.
• “Why Labour’s backbenchers are turning on Starmer” – While the Prime Minister may have spent years preparing for power, the result now he’s there is The Rookie Errors Show, writes Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph.
• “Keir Starmer’s grown-ups are living in fantasyland” – If Starmer is to get anything done, he must abandon his ‘grown up’ rhetoric and start working out which interests to serve and how, says Juliet Samuel in the Times.
• “Why the Tories lost – by the Tory leadership candidates” – As the four Tory leadership candidates prepare to make their pitch at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, the Spectator quizzes them about their ideas and ambitions.
• “Baroness Warsi quits Tories as they investigate ‘divisive’ comments” – Britain’s first Muslim Cabinet minister has quit the Tories after an internal investigation was launched into her posting pictures of herself with a coconut to celebrate the acquittal of the protestors in the ‘coconut’ case, reports Sky News.
• “BBC antiques dealer and husband reported migrant hiding in van – and were fined £3,000” – An antiques dealer and her husband have been fined £3,000 after they called police to report a migrant who had snuck into their vehicle at the French border, says the Express.
• “Reeves should cut WHO pandemic funding to pay for winter fuel: Farage” – Nigel Farage says that Rachel Reeves should cut U.K. funding of the “scaremongering” WHO and spend the money on winter fuel payments for pensioners, according to the Telegraph.
• “Britain paying highest electricity prices in the world” – British companies face the highest electricity prices globally, with costs for industrial businesses rising 124% in five years, reports the Express.
• “Fury at plan to turn idyllic corner of U.K. into solar farm capital” – Political leaders warn that “deeply disturbing” plans to turn an idyllic corner of England into the solar capital of the U.K. will be fought “tooth and nail”, reports the Mail.
• “Just Stop Oil soup throwers ‘are daring iconoclasts, not criminals’” – Art ‘experts’ claim that the Just Stop Oil protesters who threw soup on a Van Gogh painting are daring iconoclasts, not criminals, reports the Telegraph.
• “Italian town outraged over plan for wind turbines four times taller than famous cathedral” – Campaigners are battling the planned construction of giant wind turbines among the olive groves, vineyards and woods of Umbria, says the Telegraph.
• “How Europe is embracing industrial decline to become the world’s museum” – Spain’s post-industrial pivot to tourism offers both blueprints and warnings for its northern neighbours, writes Tim Wallace in the Telegraph.
• “Sky News has lost its way” – In the Spectator, Douglas Murray criticises Sky News for its reporting on Israel’s bombing of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
• “Whatever happened to Lionel Shriver?” – In the Spectator, Lionel Shriver updates on the crippling medical condition behind her recent absence.
• “Future pandemic as big as Covid is inevitable, says Whitty” – Prof. Chris Whitty tells the Covid Inquiry that another pandemic as big as the Covid crisis is “a certainty”, according to the Guardian.
• “COVID-19 vaccination increased the likelihood of mortality and severe heart failure” – According to a new study, COVID-19 vaccines significantly increased the risk of severe heart failure and the likelihood of death from heart attack. This could explain excess mortality in countries with high vaccination rates, says Epp Tuul on the Freedom Research Substack.
• “Excessive DNA contamination in mRNA vaccines could cause cancer, Australian PM warned” – Top scientists are urging the Australian Government to ditch the Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines, citing risky synthetic DNA contamination, reports Rebekah Barnett on her Substack.
• “Will NHS staff be able to veto Christian prayers during assisted suicides?” – If assisted suicide becomes legal in the U.K., will NHS staff have the right to veto Christian prayers being said when the lethal injections are administered? wonders Rev. Julian Mann in Christian Today.
• “Train passengers see terror messages after station wi-fi hack” – A man has been arrested over an act of cyber-vandalism after passengers at some of the country’s biggest railway stations were shown details of Islamist terror attacks when they logged on to wi-fi services, reports LBC.
• “How Iran could be interfering in U.S. election to undermine Trump” – According to a new report, Iran is targeting African-American voters and Muslims in the critical state of Michigan in an attempt to sway the U.S. election against Donald Trump, says the Telegraph.
• “Ireland’s embarrassing hate speech fiasco” – To the surprise of nobody and the disappointment of only a few, the Irish Government has finally dropped its hugely controversial plans to introduce draconian hate speech laws, writes Ian O’Doherty in the Spectator.
• “Irish Hate Speech Laws: From grassroots activism to legislative success” – Sarah Hardiman of Free Speech Ireland writes about how the campaign against Ireland’s hate speech laws succeeded in the Free Speech Union’s news blog.
• “How can we rebuild our shrinking armed forces? Simple. Recruit more white men” – The Ministry of Defence has more diversity groups than it has working tanks. It’s time for change, says Tim Collins in the Telegraph.
• “Moustached man refused to leave female nightclub lavatory because he ‘identifies as a woman’” – A moustached man was tossed from a Leeds nightclub’s women’s lavatory after insisting, “I identify as a woman” reports the Telegraph.
• “Attorneys General warn Academy of Paediatrics it may be breaking the law with child gender statements” – Twenty-two Attorneys General just called out the American Academy of Paediatrics for pushing “deceptive” claims about puberty blockers for kids – about time, says John Leake on the Courageous Discourse Substack.
• “Why is modern public art so bad?” – The latest piece to grace the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is banal and propagandistic. We should expect more for our public spaces, says Andrew Doyle on his Substack.
• “Who’s afraid of Englishness?” – The woke war on our shared history is a threat to integration, writes Rakib Ehsan in Spiked.
• “‘I was going to dress as a ‘paedophile’ on Strictly… until my wife stopped me’” – Ed Balls has revealed that his wife, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, nixed his plan to dress up as Jerry Lee Lewis and peform ‘Great Balls of Fire’ on Strictly, reports the Telegraph.
• “How Penn tried to buy Amy Wax’s silence” – The University of Pennsylvania has suspended law professor Amy Wax for one year at half pay after she refused to accept a lighter sanction in exchange for keeping her mouth shut about her treatment following some politically incorrect remarks, says the Washington Free Beacon.
• “‘The North Polar ice cap is ‘falling off a cliff’’” – Listen to Al Gore predict an ice-free Arctic by 2014 at his December 10th, 2007 Nobel Prize speech. At the annual September minimum in 2024, the Arctic had 26% more sea ice than 2012.

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