News Round-Up

• “No.10 plots billions in disability welfare cuts to ease debt crisis” – According to the Times, reductions in the welfare budget are imminent so Rachel Reeves can hit her borrowing targets.
• “Britain can no longer afford Rachel Reeves” – Any suggestion that there is a genuine strategy for growth or prospects for meaningful policy reforms appear to have dropped by the wayside, declares a Telegraph leading article.
• “Cabinet alarm over market chaos with Reeves headed to China” – The Chancellor is en route to Beijing despite demands to cancel the trip and deal with mounting pressure on the U.K’s fiscal position, reports the Mail.
• “The £100 billion Labour spending promises that tipped Britain into crisis” – Rachel Reeves’ maiden Budget allows for increased borrowing and big outlays on public sector pay, a combination that has turned the bond market against U.K. gilts, according to the Telegraph’s Deputy Economics Editor.
• “Markets don’t believe the Chancellor has a plan” – Saying one thing and then doing another has been the besetting sin of our new leadership, says Kate Andrews in the Telegraph.
• “There’s no point investing in Starmer’s Britain – look to Trump’s America instead” – Our incompetent political class continues to double down on its chronic failures, writes fund manager Barry Norris in the Telegraph. Time to invest in America instead.
• “Britain is paying a terrible price for Labour’s surrender to public sector greed” – From teachers to the Civil Service, this Government is giving in to the unions’ demands, but ignoring the plight of the grooming victims, says Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
• “Britain back under union control, warns Badenoch” – The Tory leader has told the Telegraph that “what we have is Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party fronted by Keir Starmer”.
• “Miserable Starmer will soon wish he’d never been elected Prime Minister” – Labour has finally realised its politics don’t work in the real world, says the Telegraph’s Ben Wilkinson.
• “If there’s to be no rape gangs inquiry, it’s time to arrest officials and deport rapists” – It’s time for Sir Keir Starmer to put country before party, according to Tom Harris in the Telegraph.
• “Rape area councils brand ‘Asian grooming gangs’ a racist term” – Oxford, Newcastle, Greater Manchester and Calderdale have adopted a definition of Islamophobia that brands any talk of “Asian grooming gangs” Islamophobic, reports Tom Witherow in the Times (who lifted this story from a Free Speech Union thread on X).
• “Rochdale grooming gang cost taxpayers more than £2 million in legal aid” – Members of a child sex grooming gang have cost taxpayers more than £2 million in legal aid bills while battling deportation, according to the Mail.
• “The previous rape gangs cover-up? How the Goddard Inquiry became the Jay Inquiry” – A New Zealand judge seemingly discovered Britain’s dirty little secret — and was sent packing, reports the Pimlico Journal, a conservative Substack worth subscribing to.
• “Rape gangs: what people really think” – Keir Starmer is completely out of touch with the sensible majority judging from a new YouGov poll, says Matt Goodwin on his Substack.
• “This is what a respectability cascade looks like” – Louise Perry on her Substack describes the ‘respectability cascade’ which means it’s no longer infra dig to talk candidly about the rape gangs.
• “Pakistanis up to four times more likely to be behind grooming” – According to the Telegraph, data from police forces in England and Wales shows that men of Pakistani heritage are four times more likely to be responsible for child sex grooming offences reported to the police than the general population.
• “The shocking truth about the Paedophile Information Exchange” – In the Spectator, Christian Wolmar describes the astonishing number of seemingly respectable people who were members of the Paedophile Information Exchange in the 1970s.
• “Grooming gang victims are still being ignored” – The horror of organised child sexual abuse and pimping – euphemistically called ‘grooming gangs’ – is back in the news, but when are we going to hear from the victims? asks Julie Bindel in the Spectator.
• “When will Britain wake up to the Islamist threat?” – A poll this week in France found that 78% of respondents are in favour of proscribing the wearing of Muslim headscarves at universities and also for classroom helpers on school outings, reports the Spectator.
• “How the drive to end teen pregnancies aided the grooming gangs” – How did the depraved cruelty of Britain’s grooming gangs go on for so long, so openly and with such seeming impunity? One overlooked but vitally important element of the scandal is that over the past 30 years the lines of defence girls had against sex crimes were deliberately eliminated in the drive to reduce teen pregnancies, says Catherine Lafferty in the Spectator.
• “Sir Keir Starmer can combat Elon Musk with cold hard facts” – Attacks on Starmer by Musk over grooming gangs reveal the danger to the PM of dodging data and trying to avoid tricky conversations, writes Fraser Nelson in the Times.
• “Reform U.K. rocked as 12 councillors resign over Nigel Farage leadership” – Twelve Reform U.K. councillors have resigned from the party in protest at Nigel Farage remaining at the helm after Elon Musk’s criticism of him earlier in the week, reports the Mail.
• “Why has it taken so long for the police to take anti-Semitism seriously?” – ‘Palestine Solidarity’ marches have been passing synagogues on the Jewish sabbath since October 7th. Why has that only been stopped this week? asks Danny Cohen in the Telegraph.
• “Met’s Black Police Association chairman could be sacked after ‘racist’ WhatsApp messages” – Inspector Charles Ehikioya is under fire for allegedly racist messages in a WhatsApp chat with friends, says the Telegraph.
• “The Chagos plan is fast turning into Labour’s Rwanda debacle” – The UK has a small window to save the Diego Garcia base and to rescue the relationship with the incoming Trump administration, writes Marcus Solarz Hendriks in the Telegraph.
• “Who will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury?” – As the Church of England gears up to appoint a new Archbishop, the female candidates appear to be more impressive than the male, says Julian Mann in Christian Today.
• “The ‘sale’ of the Telegraph has become more like a form of house arrest” – The paper is stuck in limbo, as George Osborne seeks a price nobody wants to pay, writes Charles Moore in the Telegraph.
• “Net Zero? You ain’t seen nothing yet” – In the Conservative Woman, Paul Homewood says the climate zealots are just getting started.
• “British Gas warns there is only a week of supply left” – U.K. storage sites only half full as Britain braces for low wind speeds and freezing temperatures, according to the Telegraph.
• “The traders making millions by gaming Britain’s power crunch” – While families face higher bills, the U.K.’s “malfunctioning energy system” has become a cash cow for gas plants, reports the Telegraph.
• “Farmers protest targets supermarket supply chains” – Hundreds of farmers staged tractor protests on Friday, with go-slow drives attempting to disrupt supermarket supply chains in “a warning shot” to Sir Keir Starmer, says the Telegraph.
• “The new, woke Nutcracker made me want to vote Reform” – The English National Ballet’s right-on ‘update’ of Tchaikovsky’s classic is an insult to audiences, according to Nick Tyrone in Spiked.
• “Novak Djokovic: I was poisoned in my hotel room” – In the Telegraph, the Wimbledon champion makes a shocking claim about his 2022 detention in Australia and insists: “I am not anti-vax, I am pro-freedom.”
• “Pakistan Airlines advert shows plane flying into Eiffel Tower” – On the day the ban on Pakistan Airlines flying to Europe was lifted, the airline ran an ad depicting one of its planes flying into the Eiffel Tower, reports the Telegraph.
• “Covid border closures were a terrible mistake – and one I fear we’ll repeat” – The international border closures of the Covid pandemic were a colossal misstep, says Greg Dickenson in the Telegraph. They must never be repeated.
• “The Intense Influenza Frenzy means only one thing: Positivity is Decreasing” – Disregard the hysterical media reporting about the winter flu bug, say Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson in their TTE Substack. Infections have peaked.
• “The L.A. fires are an epitaph for Democrat misrule” – Climate change is to blame for California’s calamity, its state government insists – ignoring its own culpability, writes Freddy Gray in the Telegraph.
• “Has Mark Zuckerberg genuinely rediscovered the value of free speech?” – The big tech mogul is scrapping politically-biased ‘fact-checkers’ on Facebook and Instagram. Does it matter if his reasons are cynical? asks Andrew Doyle on his Subsack.
• “Mark Zuckerberg makes shocking admission on Joe Rogan podcast” – Mark Zuckerberg has told Joe Rogan that the Biden administration tried to force him to censor a meme about the COVID-19 pandemic, reports the Mail.
• “Meta ends its diversity programs before Trump takes office” – The social media company behind Facebook and WhatsApp is ending diversity initiatives, saying the term DEI has become “charged”, reports the Times.
• “What does an ‘unconditional discharge’ mean for Donald Trump?” – The President-elect could have been sentenced to up to four years in prison over hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, but has been given a conditional discharge by a Manhattan Judge, according to the Telegraph.
• “Supreme Court poised to uphold U.S. TikTok ban” – The video-sharing site argues the ban infringes the First Amendment, but it looks as if the Supreme Court will uphold it, says the Telegraph.
• “Fired for being a member of Reform” – Watch an interview between me and Saba Poursaeedi, who reveals shocking details of his treatment by his employer when they discovered he was an organiser for Reform U.K. If you want to help him get justice, donate to his fundraiser.

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