News Round-Up

• “Acne to alcoholism – the £10,000 benefits claims driving up Britain’s welfare bill” – Britons with acne, constipation and those who abused alcohol and drugs are each claiming almost £10,000 a year in disability benefits, reports the Express.
• “Ministers unveil bid to trim billions from ‘unsustainable’ bill” – More than a million Brits face losing large sums in benefits after Liz Kendall defied Labour fury to impose cuts, reports the Mail.
• “‘A sticking plaster at best’” – Liz Kendall’s proposals to fix the welfare system look like a sticking plaster at best, says Jason Groves in the Mail.
• “Labour’s welfare reforms are too little to halt Britain’s imminent bankruptcy” – The current taxpayer-funded provision of benefits is unsustainable and Ms Kendall’s technocratic reforms will barely scratch the surface, warns Philip Johnston in the Telegraph.
• “Radical welfare reform is the bitter medicine Britain needs” – We’re spending more on sickness benefits than defence – yet bedwetters and fakers are pocketing the cash, writes Allison Pearson in the Telegraph. When will Labour stop this farce?
• “Tube drivers on £70,000 demand priority for social housing” – The RMT trade union has demanded that its members are prioritised for social housing in London, reveals the Telegraph.
• “Asylum appeals aren’t helping Labour close migrant hotels” – In the Spectator, Danny Shaw reports that Labour’s pledge to move asylum seekers out of hotels within a year is dead in the water.
• “The terrifying truth about our asylum system” – The small boats are only part of a much bigger asylum problem, writes Tony Smith in the Telegraph.
• “Romanian rapist avoids deportation after claims it would trigger PTSD” – A convicted Romanian rapist living in Britain – who is wanted in his homeland – has claimed it would be “unjust” to send him back because he was previously abused in prison there, reports the Mail.
• “‘The sickening threat made by Rupert Lowe’” – Parliament is no place for extremes or extremists, as Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn found to his cost, says Nadine Dorries in the Mail.
• “‘Farage is a reality TV star – you don’t want him running your life’” – Kemi Badenoch has rejected calls to “unite the Right” and dismissed Nigel Farage as a reality TV star who people don’t want running their lives, according to the National.
• “The European education reforms that spell disaster for Starmer’s schools shake-up” – Spain and Portugal’s Left-wing decisions on education should serve as a cautionary tale, says Julie Henry in the Telegraph, but will Labour lead England down the same path?
• “GCSE exams could be cut back to reduce pupil stress” – GCSE exams are expected to be slashed to reduce pupil stress in an overhaul of the national curriculum, reports LBC.
• “Hamster forum and local residents’ websites shut down by new internet laws” – The scope and scale of the Online Safety Act is being likened to China’s ‘great firewall’, writes James Titcomb in the Telegraph.
• “Millennials had it bad but Gen Z’s outlook is impossibly bleak” – Vilifying young people for lack of ‘grit’ ignores their crumbling economic reality, says Katie Morley in the Telegraph.
• “Why Kemi Badenoch is abandoning Net Zero” – Kemi Badenoch’s Net Zero U-turn aims to appeal to voters wary of the ballooning costs, writes James Heale in the Spectator.
• “Will Kemi’s anti-Net Zero campaign bother Labour?” – Given the reports of tensions between No.10 and Miliband, Kemi Badenoch’s anti-Net Zero stance is likely to prove effective, says James Heale in the Spectator.
• “Mayor Khan’s Ulez fanatics mark their own homework” – In TCW, Vlod Barchuk argues that Sadiq Khan’s claim of significant pollution reduction from the Ulez is dubious at best.
• “EVs could be charged as fast as filling a petrol car after breakthrough” – Electric vehicle owners could soon charge their cars in the same time it takes to fill up a petrol tank after an apparent breakthrough by BYD, reports CNBC.
• “Is there an ‘overdiagnosis’ of mental health problems?” – On the TTE Substack, Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson discuss overdiagnosis in mental health.
• “Children miss extra 4.7 million school days as pandemic triggers attendance crisis” – New analysis shows that schoolchildren across Britain are missing an extra 4.7 million days every term after the pandemic triggered a national attendance crisis, reports the Telegraph.
• “Why do the media and scientists still deny Covid lab leak theory” – The CIA, FBI, German intelligence and the former head of MI6 all say they think Covid started with a lab leak, writes Matt Ridley in the Mail. So why do members of the scientific and media establishments still have their heads in the sand?
• “Yes, mRNA vaccine science should be deprioritised by the NIH” – On Substack, Prof Vinay Prasad slams mRNA vaccine science as a damaged, risky flop and urges the National Institutes of Health to ditch it.
• “The New York Times finally comes clean about Covid” – It only took the NY Times five years to acknowledge what people have said since the beginning, says Bethany Mandel in the Spectator.
• “Downing Street slaps down Lammy after claim Israel broke law” – Downing Street has slapped down David Lammy after he claimed in the Commons that Israel broke international law during the war in Gaza, according to Guido Fawkes.
• “‘Why we wrote the October 7th parliamentary report’” – In the Spectator, Andrew Roberts’ parliamentary report meticulously documents the sadistic atrocities of the Hamas-led massacre on October 7th, countering denial and revisionism with undeniable proof.
• “Israel must destroy Hamas once and for all” – The recent air strikes in Gaza are not “war crimes” but part of a perfectly justified war against an evil foe, argues Robert Clark in the Telegraph.
• “Israel has ‘opened the gates of hell’ in Gaza” – Hamas’s refusal to release hostages, its continued military preparations and its rejection of ceasefire extensions have forced Israel to act, says Jonathan Sacerdoti in the Spectator.
• “Hundreds of migrants evicted from Paris theatre after three month occupation” – Police have forced their way into a 19th-century theatre in Paris and evacuated hundreds of young migrants that had been occupying the venue for months, reports France24.
• “Ghost Bundestag votes to dismantle the German debt brake as Friedrich Merz succeeds in his scheme to authorise thousands of billions in deficit spending against the wishes of his own voters” – On Substack, Eugyppius updates on Friedrich Merz’s dismantling of Germany’s debt brake.
• “Donald Trump could bankrupt Britain with the stroke of a pen” – Rising taxes and a ‘can’t do’ state are driving ever more of our high achievers overseas, warns Annabel Denham in the Telegraph.
• “‘Britain is stagnating because of immigration’” – The US Vice-President says that the West is paying the price for using “cheap labour” as a substitute for productivity, according to the Telegraph.
• “Globalist Europe ‘on brink of suicide’” – In TCW, Kathy Gyngell reacts to J.D. Vance’s repeated warning that Europe’s globalist agenda, open-border policies and free speech restrictions could lead to its downfall.
• “British aid to Kyiv must continue to flow” – Europe is beginning to realise it needs to provide for its own defence in the face of Russian aggression, says the Telegraph in a leading article.
• “Putin needs a deal, but it won’t be easy for him to end the war” – The Russian dictator needs a story to tell his people, writes Tim Stanley in the Telegraph.
• “Here’s a war Trump is up for. But it could get messy on him” – There will be no easy victory fighting the Houthis in the ‘Gate of Tears’, warns Tom Sharpe in the Telegraph.
• “Why US airstrikes on the Houthis will fail” – Every conflict which the US has been involved in since 2001 has ended before America achieved its goals, notes James Snell in the Spectator.
• “Chuck Schumer is losing his grip on the Democrats. Here are the signs” – The Democrats are having a rough time of it – but none of them are having it worse than Chuck Schumer, says Benedict Smith in the Telegraph.
• “Elon Musk reveals DOGE has found 14 ‘magic money computers’” – Elon Musk says that one of the wilder discoveries his Department of Government Efficiency has made is over a dozen “magic money computers” that can send payments from thin air, according to the Mail.
• “DOGE’s cleanup of Social Security deleting millions of dead Americans” – Elon Musk has lauded DOGE’s clean-up of a Social Security database which had millions of impossibly-aged Americans still on file, reports the Mail.
• “JFK files: Trump releases classified documents” – More than a thousand John F. Kennedy assassination documents have been released after President Trump fulfilled a campaign promise to address years of conspiracy speculation, says the Times.
• “The CIA spymaster at centre of JFK files conspiracies” – One of the CIA’s most powerful and infamous spymasters is at the centre of new revelations about the John F. Kennedy assassination, reports the Mail.
• “This insane story about ‘gay babies’ proves that woke isn’t dead” – Parents in the US state of New Jersey have been handed the most staggering questionnaire – and no one can believe it, says Michael Deacon in the Telegraph.
• “Bardophobia” – Why are activists so frightened of Shakespeare? wonders Andrew Doyle on his Substack.
• “Woke Snow White remake slapped with trigger warning for ‘ominous tree’” – The British Board of Film Classification has slapped a hefty list of disclaimers on the new Disney remake of Snow White, reports the Mail.
• “‘The best example of diversity? The Conservative Party’” – In an interview with Chris Harvey for the Telegraph, historian David Olusoga discusses Meghan Markle, military rearmament and whether Britain is a racist country.
• “The Drenching Arms: Rebellion” – Paul Sutton’s latest episode of The Drenching Arms is a darkly comic tale of digital theft and dogging in lockdown-haunted Oxford.
• “Labour are hell-bent on destroying school standards” – In the Commons, Laura Trott MP highlights serious concerns about the damage the Schools Bill will have on our schools.

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