News Round-Up

• “Petition: call a General Election” – Sign the petition on Parliament.uk calling on the Prime Minister to dissolve Parliament and call a General Election. At the time of going to press, it had nearly 250,000 signatures.
• “‘No pathway’: Australian Government drops controversial misinformation bill amid Senate opposition” – In a major victory for free speech, Albert Albanese’s Government in Australia has dropped controversial plans to outlaw ‘misinformation’, reports SBS News. Meanwhile…
• “Yvette Cooper plans to expand non-crime hate incidents despite Pearson row” – The Home Secretary ignores the public outcry over Essex Police’s bullying of Allison Pearson and says she wants even more ‘non-crime hate incidents’ to be recorded, reports the Telegraph.
• “Britain’s liberal reputation has been trampled by the bleak reality of our DEI police state” – Police and Crime Commissioners were supposed to hold the force to account, says Dan Hannan in the Telegraph. But instead they have made excuses for the end of free speech.
• “Police accused of ‘turning blind eye’ to anti-Semitism to pursue ‘nonsense’” – The Campaign Against Antisemitism says it has launched half a dozen private prosecutions in cases where the police refused to act, according to the Telegraph.
• “Revealed: The ridiculous ‘hate incidents’ probed by police” – Non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) are meant to be reserved for cases that are “clearly motivated by intentional hostility”, reports the Mail. But officers have recorded some ridiculous things as ‘hate incidents’, including a tweet about identifying as a fish and a boy calling another a leprechaun.
• “Police log hate incident for refusal to shake hands in gender row” – More than 13,200 hate incidents have been logged by U.K. police forces in the past year, according to the Times, including against schoolchildren, vicars and doctors.
• “Dirty pants on washing line recorded as non-crime hate incident by police” – ‘Soiled underpants’, hedge disputes and secondary school taunting are examples of 13,000 NCHI reports this year, says the Telegraph.
• “Cops must stop wasting time chasing petty tweets while REAL crimes go unsolved” – Cops must stop wasting time investigating “petty incidents” while real crimes go unsolved, says the Sun, reporting on the campaign against NCHIs being waged by the Free Speech Union.
• “Free speech row after regulator bans advert for mocking Virgin Mary” – A poster promoting Fern Brady’s stand-up tour has been ruled as ‘offensive’ to Christians by the Advertising Standards Authority and banned, according to the Telegraph.
• “How to end the free speech crisis” – In the Critic, Fred de Fossard says the free speech crisis in Britain has become an international laughing stock, particularly in America.
• “Starmer and his Justice Secretary represent two of England’s most crime-ridden constituencies” – Analysis of police data shows the constituencies of the Prime Minister and the Justice Secretary are among the most crime-ridden in England, reports the Telegraph.
• “What’s Starmerism?” – Despite appearances, this Labour Government does have a vision – and it’s bloody awful, says David Frost in the Telegraph.
• “Labour commits £70m to foreign aid food security while taxing farmers at home” – Anneliese Dodds has promised millions to farming businesses in Asia and Africa, reports the Telegraph.
• “Elderly farmers pressured into ‘suicide window’ by inheritance tax changes” – Families fear their parents will kill themselves as a result of Rachel Reeves’s IHT raid on farmers, says the Telegraph.
• “My day at the farmers’ protest that ended in chaos” – In his Sunday Times column, Jeremy Clarkson describes the chaos that ensued after he spoke at the farmers’ protest last week.
• “MoD under fire for importing eco-friendly steel rather than buying British” – Net Zero wokery is being blamed for the MoD’s betrayal of thousands of skilled British workers, according to the Telegraph.
• “Miliband’s promises of cheap and easy energy don’t add up” – The Shadow Energy Secretary, Claire Coutinho, says in the Telegraph that Ed Milliband’s disastrous, head-lone rush towards Net Zero are raising household energy bills and destroying British businesses.
• “Winter is coming” – As the madness of Net Zero deepens, time has already run out for many of our most vulnerable citizens, says Richard Lyon on his Substack.
• “Is Big Oil back?” – While shale oil and gas has been the story of America’s quest for energy security, there is a renewed boom in drilling for offshore oil, says Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “Equality law applies to ‘pregnant men’, SNP tells Supreme Court” – The SNP reckons the Equality Act prohibits discrimination against “pregnant men”, according to a legal submission it’s made to the Supreme Court, says the Telegraph.
• “Welby criticised for ‘egregious failure’ to act over convicted paedophile” – The Archbishop of Canterbury, while Dean of Liverpool Cathedral, allowed a priest to continue officiating despite being told he was a convicted sex offender, reports the Telegraph.
• “We have a problem with radical Islam” – We have a problem with radical Islam in the U.K., says Joe Baron in the New Conservative.
• “Manchester airport brawl” – Paul Bracchi in the Mail reveals the truth about the men who attacked the police at Manchester Airport.
• “Meet Trump’s free speech warrior taking on America’s ‘censorship cartel’” – Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to run the FCC, is eyeing a crackdown on the censorship-industrial complex, starting with NewsGuard, according to the Telegraph.
• “‘Government the greatest perpetrator of misinformation,’ says Trump’s pick to head the FDA” – The Naked Emperor on Trump’s latest appointing – one of the best yet.
• “How the ‘deep state’ will fight tooth and nail against Trump’s revenge presidency” – The President-elect’s plans to take on the federal bureaucracy has sent U.S. Government employees into blind panic, reports Tony Diver in the Telegraph.
• “MAGA men love Trump and his war against the age of wokeness” – The Trump campaign seems to be as much about Making Guys Great Again as America, argues Zoe Strimpel in the Telegraph.
• “Trump-hating celebs must be crazy to quit the US for Starmer’s miserable Britain” – There’s no bigger sign of Trump Derangement Syndrome than flouncing off to a country that’s now poorer than any American state, i.e., the U.K., says Michael Deacon in the Telegraph.
• “Hollywood luvvies heading to the Cotswolds will learn that cattle grids and high heels don’t mix” – In her Telegraph column, Isabel Oakeshott says the Hollywood A-listers flocking to the Cotswolds are unlikely to get a warm reception
• “Violent clashes in Montreal as anti-Israel protestors set cars ablaze” – In another blow to Justin Trudeau’s credibility, an anti-Israel protest in Montreal descended into public disorder, with demonstrators clashing with police, smashing windows, and setting vehicles on fire, according to the Mail.
• “The ICC has granted succour to terror organisations around the world” – The message that is sent by this disgraceful development is one of encouragement to terror organisations the world over, says Natasha Hausdorff in the Telegraph.
• “The world is full of tyrants. Why is the ICC so obsessed with Israel?” – In his Sunday Times column, Rod Liddle lets fly at the ICC’s crazy plan to arrest the Israeli Prime Minister for war crimes. Surely, there are more deserving targets of their arrest warrants?
• “Lucy Letby hospital outlines 15 reasons why ‘baby killer’ was innocent” – A neonatal ward manager has produced 15 reasons why Lucy Letby could not be behind the deaths of babies at his hospital, reports the Telegraph.
• “The paper mills helping China commit scientific fraud” – In one Chinese research paper into prostate cancer, 50% of the patients named were women – who do not have prostate glands, says Ian Williams in the Spectator.
• “How Nick Clegg plotted the downfall of Facebook’s biggest rival” – Former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is lobbying to ban TikTok which, if he’s successful, would entrench Meta’s social media stranglehold, reports the Telegraph.
• “An Unscientific American” – Editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth’s departure from Scientific American last week is an object lesson in the dangers of mixing facts and ideology, argues Michael Shermer in Quillette.
• “Stonewall and the search for meaning” – In UnHerd, Kathleen Stock tries to explain the extraordinary rise of Stonewall.
• “Who did this?” – On X, Paul Embery asks who made the brilliant ‘sequel’ to the now infamous Jaguar ad, in which an actual Jaguar leaps on the transgender models prancing around in rainbow colours.

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