News Round-Up
- “Trump considers ‘relinquishing leadership of NATO’” – President Trump is considering dropping US leadership of NATO after insisting that Europe take more responsibility for the continent’s security, reports the Mail.
- “EU announces €800 billion plan to rearm Europe and win over Trump” – Ursula von der Leyen has unveiled plans for an €800 billion boost to EU defence spending to win over Donald Trump, says the Telegraph.
- “France’s National Rally says EU’s €800 billion defence ‘rearm’ plan is a power grab” – EU President Ursula von der Leyen has been accused by Marine Le Pen of attempting to grab more power for Brussels after unveiling a “rearm Europe” plan based on an €800 billion fund for European defence, according to Brussels Signal.
- “Ukraine isn’t Starmer’s Falklands, it’s his Iraq” – Starmer’s grand plan for Ukraine needs Putin’s permission, Trump’s backing and an army we don’t have, says Richard Kemp in the Telegraph.
- “Poll shows Labour edging back into lead after PM’s crisis diplomacy” – YouGov research shows Labour edging back into a lead over Reform, up two points since the end of last month, reports the Mail.
- “‘Storm Rachel’ pushes public sector pay bill up by £24 billion” – New analysis reveals that taxpayers will be forced to foot the £24 billion public sector wage bill over the next five years, following Rachel Reeves’s National Insurance raid, says GB News.
- “By backing an exit from the ECHR, Kemi could destroy the Tory party” – The coming Conservative mutiny over the ECHR will make the Brexit wars look like a mere scuffle, warns Sherelle Jacobs in the Telegraph.
- “BBC reported to counter-terror police over Hamas documentary payments” – The BBC has been reported to counter-terrorism police after admitting it paid the family of a Hamas official, according to the Telegraph.
- “Miliband’s postcode pricing strategy will upend Britain’s North-South divide” – Ed Miliband’s proposed energy strategy could create a “postcode lottery” adding hundreds of pounds to household bills, says GB News.
- “Crimes of punishment” – In Takimag, Theodore Dalrymple points out different examples of what he calls “juridico-political idiocies” in England and France.
- “Netanyahu warns Hamas of ‘unimaginable’ consequences amid truce talks” – Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened Hamas with “unimaginable consequences” if it does not return the hostages being held in Gaza, reports the Mail.
- “Zuckerberg axed 20 Meta employees who leaked information to the media” – Mark Zuckerberg has sacked 20 Meta employees after they slipped information to the press following the tech giant’s pivot towards President Trump, says the Mail.
- “How restricting online anonymity threatens democracy” – Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wants to kill online anonymity, but history shows that’s a slippery slope to censorship and totalitarian control, warns Strade Cadillay in the New Conservative.
- “The NHS’s puberty-blockers trial is a danger to children” – The awful effects of puberty-blockers are well known, says Jo Bartosch in Spiked. So why are so many medics determined to bring them back?
- “Council bans Christian prayers being said before meetings” – St Albans City and District Council has voted to remove prayers before meetings to foster better “equality and inclusivity”, reports the Mail.
- “Why aren’t people interested in facts anymore?” – Have we lost the ability to reason, or are we just addicted to emotional narratives and media spin? wonders Rebekah Barnett on her Substack.
- “Ash Sarkar’s class war” – Discussion of Ash Sarkar’s new book has focused on her takedown of Left-wing identity politics, but far more striking is its elitism, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
- “Abrdn to bring back vowels after disastrous rebrand” – Abrdn will reintroduce vowels to its name, becoming ‘Aberdeen’, after a disastrous rebrand at the investment company backfired, reports This is Money.
- “‘It is absolutely imperative that the Royal Society sticks with objective truth’” – On Politics Live, Claire Fox congratulates the Royal Society for not giving in to a McCarthyite witch-hunt against Elon Musk.
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https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-14458669/Aberdeen-Group-reborn-fund-manager-finally-ditches-Abrdn-rebrand.html
knb nds!
Fckng twts!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/04/america-is-ready-to-leave-nato-trump-vance-europe-uk-us/ ‘The danger for us all is that the new occupants of the Oval Office are not very well travelled. JD Vance’s statements are wildly inaccurate and seem to suggest he believes everything he reads on social media. Donald Trump and JD Vance mean everything they say. They mean it when they say Russia isn’t a threat. They genuinely believe that the US should leave Nato and they want one way or another to take Greenland. That only China, Russia and the US count. The real beneficiaries of such outcomes are Russia, China….It isn’t Europe they are after, it’s Uncle Sam. Putin, a man who has spent his whole life fighting the West, hasn’t suddenly decided Donald Trump is his new best buddy. For over a decade now Russia has been stoking the divisions we see being played out today. During the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, Russian troll factories deliberately magnified both extremes of the debate on social media. Division was what they encouraged and division is what they got. Across another Ocean, China will be gleeful at the potential dismantling of the old world order. All the things that really made America great and rich since the end of the… Read more »
Blaming Russia for BLM? Look at who funds them, it’s not Putin
‘….the troll factory had contacted about 100 real US-based activists to help with the organisation of protests and events. RBC claimed the activists were contacted by Facebook group administrators hiding their Russian origin and were offered financial help to pay for transport or printing costs. About $80,000 was spent during a two-year period, according to the report.
The main topics covered by the groups run from Russia were race relations, Texan independence and gun rights. RBC counted 16 groups relating to the Black Lives Matter campaign and other race issues that had a total of 1.2 million subscribers.’
“We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America,” Trump said.
But he made clear he would not give up if persuasion fails, saying: “One way or the other we’re going to get it.”
“We will keep you safe, we will make you rich, and together, we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before.”
President Trump 04 March 2025
‘Until quite recently, historians liked to take an ‘on-the-one-hand/but-on-the-other’ view of the relationship between the Soviet Union and its former allies. But Milton refuses to be mealy-mouthed in his defence of the West. He champions those who identified Stalin as the enemy, and stood their ground, most notably Labour’s Ernest Bevin and our old friend Colonel Frank ‘Howlin’ Mad’ Howley. ‘He was the first to recognise that the Soviets were no longer an ally; that Stalin was plotting the seizure of both Berlin and western Germany,’ he writes. ‘Howley saw Soviet duplicity in razor-sharp focus, with kidnappings, looting, murder and espionage being a daily reality in Berlin, along with lurid propaganda and the rigging of elections.’ The British and Americans were slow to realise that the Soviets had no intention of playing by the rules. ‘They will promise anything, sign anything, provided it benefits them, and will scrap the pledge the moment it doesn’t,’ declared the less easily deceived Colonel Frank ‘Howlin’ Mad’ Howley, who led the American contingent of the joint British-American Military Government of Berlin. He had arrived in the German capital on his guard against the Germans. ‘But it was becoming more evident by the day,’ he… Read more »
Are you actually praising Stalin, a monster responsible for literally millions of deaths? Do you really consider the world a sick place, a dangerous place, if there is peace and no war? Must every Russian or Chinese leader be bent on conquering the world? Are you thereby totally blind to the history of USA wilfully causing death and destruction in so many places around the world, only to benefit some temporary political whim expressed by one of its Presidents? Who is actually fighting whom in Ukraine and why? Ukraine could have remained neutral, just like Switzerland or Austria, instead of demanding to join NATO. Did Ukraine actually want to join NATO or was that the desire of a US President? I hope that Trump manages to fight the deep state and put an end to US’s militarism. And I hope the world becomes multipolar because it has been pretty disastrous with only its US hegemony. Why should USA, Russia and China not live and enjoy peace together, thrive from doing business with each other, and hopefully make the world a better place? You are always looking under the carpet to find some excuse to expand Western militarism, to have a… Read more »
Hmmm, article by Ben Wallace. Is that the Ben Wallace who wanted to be head of NATO? Any bias there maybe?
“The governments that this country has voted in for the last thirty five years” – and the governments it voted out too.
‘Still, it is obvious that it is up to the strong sovereign states, those that do not follow a trajectory imposed by others, to set the rules governing the new world order.
Only powerful and sovereign states can have their say in this emerging world order. Otherwise, they are doomed to become or remain colonies devoid of any rights.”
Putin June 2022
“How restricting online anonymity threatens democracy” – Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wants to kill online anonymity, but history shows that’s a slippery slope to censorship and totalitarian control…
…From the country that gave the world the Spanish Inquisition.
Meanwhile anonymous bureaucrats, eurocrats and quangos across Europe get a free pass to dispense copious online mis-, dis- and mal-information on behalf of their various mal-administrations.
Witness five years later, the panic become pandemic, for which Senor Sanchez was a principal panic-monger.
People in glass houses, Senor.
“Council bans Christian prayers being said before meetings” – St Albans City and District Council has voted to remove prayers before meetings to foster better “equality and inclusivity”, reports the Mail…
…As the linked Mail article makes clear, all on behalf of D.I.E. and to avoid offending the 4.7% Muslim, 1.5% Jewish and 1.8% Hindu minority populace of predominantly Anglo-Saxon St. Albans – home town to a fine medieval abbey turned cathedral, named after “Britain’s first Christian martyr.”
How many times does the old adage need to be said – Offence is taken, not given.
I’m not sure about this. It depends what one stands for.
If one stands for Britain being a Christian country, and the last time I checked that was the case. After all, the monarch is the defender of the faith. Not the faiths. THE faith. So it’s incongruent that prayer not be allowed in any public setting.
However if what one stands for is a live and let live society that doesn’t seek to impose any religion on anyone, then one either allows all prayers by all religious groups who want to pray at a public meeting, or none.
Personally I like a society in which everyone keeps their religion to themselves. Which of course to me includes being able to stand anywhere in public and pray quietly if that is what you want to do. Including outside abortion clinics.
Agreed. Live and let live, each to their own. Could argue that in the modern “secular society”, prayers of any sort at council meetings can be dispensed with.
What’s also incongruous is ostensibly stopping prayers in order to bow down to the DIE agenda.
I agree, but you just know they’ve specifically banned Christian prayers to avoid causing offence to other (more important) religions (and to look “inclusive” and progressive), and not for the reasons you list.
I share your dilemma. I tend towards ruling all prayers as not allowed in such meetings on the basis that they are not necessary and just take up time. But I am not religious. I suppose it depends how much importance one attaches to emphasising our Christian history. At some point there will be so few practising Christians left that nobody will want to take part in public prayers at council meetings anyway – in fact I am amazed they do now. But equally I don’t think it’s terrible if the current situation of allowing only Christian prayers continues for as long as anyone wants to say them on the basis of tradition.
I used to live in St Albans and this news doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Lovely city in many ways but reminds me too much of London for my liking. London for middle class liberal white people who actually don’t want to live side by side with non-whites and poor people in actual London, but pretend they have moved out for the schools and the greenery. Nice market though.
Sounds about right although I would say that lots really do move out of London to have kids and send them to the excellent state schools in the area while tutting disapprovingly about the elitism of private education and totally missing the point that they are also paying for a good/semi-private education via house prices rather than school fees.
Where I lived (the less desirable side) there were two mosques within a few hundred metres and many of our neighbours were Pakistani, although I suppose I’d be hard pressed to say they were poor, even the “cheap” houses were ridiculously expensive.
Yeah it’s all expensive there – relative to other parts of the country (except London).
In Vitamin D update https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUfv_y-Zeq0&list=WL&index=8 by J Campbell, this book https://dgreatbiologyreset.com/ was advertised; it is available free in pdf form, or purchasable in print.
In chapter 1, it says: “It is also quite possible for a living human being to be both highly intelligent and exceptionally stupid at the same time. ”. Quite right, evidently; a side effect of being an expert.
“France’s National Rally says EU’s €800 billion defence ‘rearm’ plan is a power grab”
Marine Le Pen is absolutely right. Unelected Ursula von der Lyin’s dream is to be Commander of an EU Army and Empress of Europe. Give her the boot.
“Ukraine isn’t Starmer’s Falklands, it’s his Iraq” – “Starmer’s grand plan for Ukraine needs Putin’s permission, Trump’s backing and an army we don’t have, says Richard Kemp”
Richard Kemp has encapsulated it all succinctly.
I’m not advertising the items on sale here, but it reminded me of the “Spitting Image” show in the 1980s. Real images of the “actors” this time, rather than puppets of Thatcher et al: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtmMl8ISPcY&list=WL&index=6 By Ivor Cummins.