News Round-Up
- “Hamburg stabbing: 17 injured and suspect arrested at German railway station” – A woman has been detained after a knife attack in Hamburg in which 17 people were injured, reports the Times.
- “Asylum seeker tent cities spring up in the shadows of Heathrow” – Mini ‘tent cities’ have sprung up in a West London borough where councillors say they are struggling to cope with supporting thousands of asylum seekers, says the Mail.
- “Netanyahu tears into Starmer for ‘siding with Hamas over Israel’” – Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tore into Western leaders over their threat of sanctions against Israel as tensions reached new highs over a planned Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to the Mail.
- “Israel should not listen to Keir Starmer” – Netanyahu’s response to this week’s appalling statement by the leaders of France, Canada and the UK was entirely correct, writes Stephen Pollard in the Spectator.
- “Jewish protester charged over placard mocking terrorist leader” – Another two-tier policing row has erupted after a pro-Israel activist was arrested for holding up cartoon at a counter-protest ridiculing the leader of Hezbollah, reports the Telegraph.
- “First Labour MP calls for mother jailed over Southport tweet to be freed” – Mary Glindon, a Labour MP, has signed an early day motion condemning the “unduly harsh” sentence meted out to Lucy Connolly, says the Telegraph.
- “How calling a German finance minister a ‘moron’ leads to cops and criminal charges” – Stefan Niehoff, a 64-year-old retiree and former sergeant in the Bundeswehr, was subjected to a dawn raid and charged with a criminal offence after posting a meme about a Green Party politician, according to Brussels Signal.
- “Biden administration labeled opponents of Covid mandates as ‘Domestic Violent Extremists’, newly released documents show” – The Biden Administration labeled Americans who opposed the COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as “Domestic Violent Extremists”, or DVEs, according to newly declassified intelligence records, reports Public.
- “Top FDA official admits she refused the COVID-19 vaccine while pregnant” – A senior regulator at the FSA has admitted she avoided the Covid jab while pregnant, reveals Maryanne Demasi on her Substack.
- “Revealed: the grassroots Tory plot to oust Kemi Badenoch” – Association chairmen are understood to be considering a confidence motion against the Conservative Party leader, says the Sunday Times.
- “Telegraph to be sold to RedBird Capital” – RedBird Capital, which was planning to buy the Telegraph as the junior partner of IMI, a fund controlled by the UAE, has decided to make a bid for the Telegraph itself, reports the newspaper.
- “Jeremy Clarkson interview: ‘In the past 20 years Britain has fallen off a cliff’” – After swapping Ferraris for tractors, strong opinions on TV and at protests have made Jeremy Clarkson a people’s champion. But is he about to become Britain’s Donald Trump? asks Ed Cumming in the Telegraph.
- “Trump ‘laughing’ at Starmer’s Chagos deal, claims Badenoch” – The Tory leader says the US president “has got a great deal at the expense of the UK” as she labels Sir Keir Starmer’s Chagos deal “wasteful and dangerous”, says the Telegraph.
- “Starmer peddles disinformation to sell Chagos surrender” – Starmer’s press conference on the Chagos surrender was packed full of excuses for the handover. They don’t wash, according to Guido Fawkes.
- “‘Lying’ Starmer reported to watchdog over true cost of Chagos deal” – The PM has been accused of a “misuse of statistics” when trying to justify his agreement to hand the Chagos islands to Mauritius, reports the Telegraph.
- “Labour red-faced over claims of ‘massive increase’ in NHS appointments” – Full Fact has called Labour’s recent claims about the increase in NHS appointments into question, according to the Mail.
- “Labour’s spending is out of control” – If you tot up the total amount the Labour Government has added to spending over the last five days, it comes to an extraordinary £50 billion, writes Matthew Lynn in the Spectator. So much for the £22 billion black hole.
- “Is it any surprise doctors are trying their luck with more strikes?” – Did anyone really think that the incoming Starmer government was going to appease the public sector unions for long by stuffing their mouths with gold? asks Ross Clark in the Spectator. A recent spate of pay demands by doctors, nurses and teachers suggests otherwise.
- “Wave goodbye to the British middle classes, exploited to extinction under Starmer” – The Left’s brutal tax assault is hammering those who contribute most to Britain’s coffers, writes Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
- “The fight between Rayner and Reeves will destroy Labour” – Starmer is struggling to reconcile the wishes of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor and their ongoing dispute is threatening to tear the Government apart, says Tom Harris in the Telegraph.
- “The trans war tearing Labour apart” – Labour has postponed its women’s conference for fear that the internal row about the judgment will burst into the open, reports the Telegraph.
- “First nationalised train will be a rail replacement bus” – South Western is launching a Woking to Waterloo service on Sunday… but engineering works will force passengers off at Surbiton, says the Telegraph.
- “Labour’s tax raid to trap 1.5 billion barrels of oil and gas under North Sea” – Ed Miliband’s windfall tax has doubled the rate of decline in production in North Sea oil, according to the Telegraph.
- “Trump attacks Starmer’s Net Zero plans” – The US president has attacked Britain’s beleaguered Prime Minister for failing to drill in the North Sea, reports the Telegraph.
- “Trump declares war on Harvard” – Trump’s attack on Harvard is not an effort to reform America’s ideologically hidebound higher education sector, says Andrew Sullivan in the Weekly Dish. It’s about destroying Harvard out of spite.
- “Harvard sues Trump over foreign students ban” – Thousands of international students have been told they must either transfer to another college or leave the US, according to the Telegraph.
- “Trump’s assault on Harvard is an astonishing act of national self-sabotage” – The revocation of Harvard’s ability to certify visas will lead to a mass exodus of talent, writes Yascha Mounk in Persuasion.
- “Two-thirds of Britons back chemical castration of paedophiles” – Sixty seven per cent of Britons back the chemical castration of paedophiles, while just 16% oppose it, says the Mail.
- “The BBC’s war on the SAS” – The SAS is under fire, not from terrorists or insurgents, but from ill-informed commentators and our state broadcaster, writes Richard Williams in the Spectator.
- “Spain’s blackout story is disintegrating” – It is the socialist government, not green energy, that ought to be on trial for plunging Spain into darkness, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph.
- “Denmark raises retirement age to 70, sparking fury” – The Danish Government has raised the retirement age to 70, says the Mail. How long before the UK follows suit?
- “Stephen Fry could easily be satirising Keir Starmer in this clip” – James Melville points out that this old clip of Stephen Fry pretending to be a sleazy Tory PM could easily be a take off of our present-day PM.
If you have any tips for inclusion in the round-up, email us here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Child Vaccine Death Sentence – latest leaflet to print at home, deliver to neighbours, forward to your bad MP & friends online. Start a local campaign. Deliver 100 leaflets a week (5200 a year). Over 300 leaflet ideas on the link on the leaflet.
Covid Jab Massive Deaths – latest leaflet to print at home, deliver to neighbours, forward to your bad MP & friends online. Start a local campaign. Deliver 100 leaflets a week (5200 a year). Over 300 leaflet ideas on the link on the leaflet.
Good Morning to all. After weeks of good weather, we have rain, and on a Bank Holiday too. How surprising.! Nothing much to surprise us in the list today either. I can’t summon the enthusiasm to have a good grump about any of it. We may have the hope of a fresh government ahead, but this one is running us hard into the wall. I feel like it will take a generation or two to recover, if we are able. With that happy thought, I bid you adieu for the weekend. Have fun whatever you are up to.
Fresh government? In 4 years time. I am working hard to derive hope from that thought
This is like hoping for better prison guards. How about no prison at all? How about hoping for slimmed down state in which it doesn’t matter too much who is in government because it doesn’t have enough power to affect your life too much?
Don’t bet on there being an election in four years.
Ukraine War – Funding?
I have looked in vain in the news for any idea as to how the Ukraine War is being funded? Is it clear whether the USA, UK or the EU are still providing arms and money to Ukraine? As the Ukraine was grinds on is there any indication as to whether Ukraine can continue to find the man-power, arms or money to continue this war?
A state-backed war-risk insurance formula Kyiv reached with the United Kingdom in 2023, for example, brought bulk carriers back to Ukraine’s ports and defeated Russian efforts to blockade Ukrainian grain exports.
As a result, Ukraine exported 57.5 million tonnes of agricultural goods in 2023-2024, and was on track to export 77 million tonnes in the 2024-2025 marketing year, which ends in June, its agriculture ministry said.
“There needs to be a substantial expansion of public insurance products in particular, as well as a move to seize frozen Russian assets,” said Hess.
Seizing some $300bn in Russian central bank money held in the EU was deemed controversial, but the measure is now receiving support.
“The Russian state has committed these war crimes, has broken international law, has done this damage to Ukraine – that actually becomes a just way of helping Ukraine rebuild,”
War crimes have been committed, and are being committed, en masse by Ukraine, as evidenced, for example, in the Telegram channel “War Crimes in Ukraine” and tracked by Russian authorities: there will be all sorts of trials when the conflict is over.
International law has no meaning whatsoever to USA that happily marches into any country on any occasion at the whim of its President. It was Donald Trump that drastically increased financial support and military aid to Ukraine during his first term; at the same time, CIA set up the 20 hidden bases on the Russian border to Ukraine, training Ukrainians to kill Russians.
Nobody has damaged Ukraine more than Zelensky who was voted into office (once) on the basis of, if necessary, going on his knees to achieve peace. As soon as he came into office, somehow everything changed (very common with today’s politicians) and he did an about-face.
And go ahead and steal the $300 billion Russian investments – you are already stealing the interest – and watch the West’s financial collapse as the rest of the world sees how unsafe investments in this part of the world have become.
‘The good news is that I think Ukraine is now almost capable of holding the territories it controls, provided that there is a significant increase in support from Europe and that there is a critical minimum of assistance from the United States. This minimum includes three key things: intelligence, Patriot interceptor missiles, and 155-mm ammunition,” the political analyst said…..As evidenced by the reaction of Europe — the visits of Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron, Kier Starmer, Donald Tusk to Kyiv, the arrival of all foreign ministers to Lviv — there is a real political will to support Ukraine. We are indeed in an extremely difficult situation, due to a combination of factors related to Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. But I am convinced: Ukraine, together with Europe, is still able to withstand and cope with this threat’
‘Torbjorn Becker, who presented the SITE report to EU finance ministers, said Russian GDP numbers could not be trusted because Moscow was most likely strongly understating inflation which affected real GDP calculations.
“Russia claims inflation is 9-10%. Why would they then have a policy rate of 21% at the central bank? Which regular central bank would have a policy rate that’s basically 11.50 percentage points higher than the inflation rate? If any of our central banks were doing something like that, they would be out of their job the next day’
And do you expect anyone from the EU to report figures accurately?
You are surely not that naive? They can’t even account for their own finances
let alone an enemy state’s.
And in answer to your last question – to contain expenditure and force inflation down. It is a much more reliable way than printing money.
The indications are that Ukraine is shortly about to capitulate, and all the money the West has invested in trying to replace Putin and break up Russia has been lost, which is why European leaders are running around like headless chickens, beating the war drums and spouting complete nonsense (nothing new there).
There are many videos of Ukrainians, who themselves have paid large sums to avoid being drafted, strong-arming young or old men – generally beating them to a pulp – to force them into a vehicle to be taken for a week’s training as a soldier before being sent to the front line to die.
The war must go on!
Headless chickens … praying that their citizens do not realize how many billions have been thrown down the drain in attempting to subjugate Russia (as though it had not been tried in the past), instead of benefitting from the commercially cheap availability of Russian resources (assuming USA would refrain from blowing up the infrastructure transporting the stuff to Europe).
Not so much down the drain as into the pockets of corrupt Ukrainians, from Zelensky down to the press gangs dragging people off the streets.
Trumps team are apparently insisting on a detailed audit to account for the distribution of both the cash and the materiel that has been sent Ukraine’s way.
‘Fiscal numbers in Russia don’t really correspond to what we think that they are putting into the war effort,” Becker said.
He said much of the financing of the war machine was going through the banking system. “So if you add that to the fiscal numbers, their fiscal deficits would be ballpark twice as high as what they have shown in the official statistics,” he said.
This, in turn, was building up financial risks in the banking system, Becker said, because banks were reporting high credit growth.’
‘Russia’s wartime economy is undergoing reverse industrialization. High-tech sectors are giving way to labor-intensive, low-productivity industries as civilian parts of the economy are stagnating, and defense-related production is prioritized. Russia is experiencing persistent labor shortages, especially for skilled workers in technical fields. The Kremlin’s reforms of the education system to fill defense-sector vacancies have caused public concern over fairness and quality. Meanwhile, dependence on energy exports has become a liability as Western sanctions and infrastructural shortcomings have severely reduced revenues from oil and gas. Russia’s war against Ukraine currently serves as a justification and a diversion for Putin in explaining the poor economic situation. Putin claims that the West is “seeking to fight us on the economic front” and “shutter [the Russian] economy.” In December last year, Putin claimed that the Russian economy was “growing despite everything, despite external threats and attempts to influence us.” Conversely, Putin has stated that Russia’s national defense should be top priority without “destroy[ing] our own economy” and that the “Russian economy has prevailed over the risks it faced” as “we had to respond literally on the fly, dealing with issues as they emerged.” A true and sustainable peace settlement threatens Moscow’s ability to sustain domestic pressure and repel dissent against the Kremlin’s economic policies. Russia… Read more »
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-the-istanbul-talks-failed/ This is why the Istanbul talks failed: ‘The Soviet Union continues to exist in a legal sense – something that constitutional law specialists, including those in Western countries such as the United States and France, have long acknowledged. This is because the procedure for the so-called dissolution of the USSR was violated. Since the Congress of People’s Deputies (also known as the Congress of Soviets) established the USSR in 1922, it should have been dissolved through a decision by that same Congress. If the legal procedure was not properly followed, then, according to constitutional law experts, the USSR remains legally intact’ He also criticized the legitimacy of the Belovezha Accords, which are widely credited with dissolving the USSR. ‘From a legal perspective, the Belovezha Accords are entirely questionable,” Kobyakov stated. “This agreement was later ratified by the Supreme Soviets of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Belarus – acts that, in fact, exceeded their authority. If the Soviet Union was not legally dissolved, then the Ukrainian crisis, for example, could be viewed as an internal matter rather than an international conflict.’ https://tass.com/politics/1961499 This is why talks will continue to fail: ‘Moscow demanded Kyiv withdraw its troops from the four regions… Read more »
If you enter into war with any country you must be prepared to lose.
That is why it is better not to go to war but instead use that old-fashioned something called diplomacy.
If you are losing a war, you can call for a ceasefire but only after capitulating.
Again, never start wars.
“In order to block and disarm 20,000 well-armed [Ukrainian soldiers], you need a specific set of personnel. And not just in numbers, but with skill. We needed specialists who know how to do it,” Putin said in the documentary.
“That’s why I gave orders to the Defense Ministry — why hide it? — to deploy special forces of the GRU (military intelligence) as well as marines and commandos there under the guise of reinforcing security for our military facilities in Crimea,” Putin added.
The press reports that the Istanbul talks are continuing, with the two sides agreeing to a second round, but maybe not in Istanbul, so I suppose technically, not Istanbul talks.
Nobody seriously thinks that an unconditional ceasefire is the only precursor to a peace – it is simply a device by the losing side to gain time to reset their defence.
‘Considering that the Russian economy is beginning to operate in a closed circuit, once its reserves have been exhausted, Russia could quickly decide to suspend certain social benefits and reduce salaries while continuing to raise taxes.
In addition, it could seize all foreign assets still present in Russia (or even gradually sell the Russian Central Bank’s gold reserves on parallel markets).
As this is unlikely to be enough in the long run, Russia will have no choice but to turn on the “money printing press,” accentuating the inflationary spiral and further depreciating the ruble.
This maximalist strategy would most likely enable Russia to hold out for some years, but with the risk of a cataclysmic economic collapse in the end:
This is pretty much the exact description of the Soviet Union’s economic situation between 1989 and 1991.’
I take it that you weren’t responsible for saying that. It is clearly a work of fiction.
The BBC’s war on the SAS
The BBC is a national disgrace.
‘As for those apparently damning EKIA statistics, they actually reflect the opposite of what the BBC and others have sought to insinuate. They show that of the 446 enemies prevented from committing further terrorist offenses the majority were detained without loss of life and only 19 – less than 4% – were killed…..
At the start of 2005 , approximately 100 vehicle borne suicide bombs…..a month….by the end of 2007….single detonation per month….’
‘There is a saying by Martin Luther King doing the rounds among……SAS men:
‘In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.’
For those who maintain there is no genocide in Gaza (and there are three articles listed above attacking any criticism of Israel), I recommend watching the Judging Freedom YouTube channel video filmed with Scott Ritter on 21st: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAq54D1SZn8. A video clip was shown (from 11m08s) of Moshe Feiglin, a former member of the Knesset and a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s party, saying: “Every child in Gaza is the enemy … Every such child to whom you are now giving milk, in another 15 years will rape your daughters and slaughter your children. We need to conquer Gaza and settle it … and not a single Gazan child should remain there …” Judge Napolitano asked Scott Ritter, “Is this the attitude of the Israeli people towards Gazan babies: kill them now, starve them to death because they may grow up to rape your daughters? This is repellent.” To which Scott Ritter replied: “I can’t say all Israeli people but I just want to remind your audience that in 2010, 2014 in the city of Ashkelon, which is just north of Gaza, when the Israeli jets and Israeli artillery were going in and pounding the positions, the citizens would take out… Read more »
And here is a transcript of only the beginning of The Electronic Intifada’s latest weekly report (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG3Dw4Gd_3I): Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed more than 700 Palestinians over the last 7 days according to the latest figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry, as starvation continues to spread after more than 80 days of Israel’s blockade. At least 160 were killed in a 24-hour period on Sunday, May 18th, alone, including at least 40 in a massacre targeting displacement tents in Khan Yunis. In Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Gaza City, in northern Gaza, Israeli air strikes killed more than 200 Palestinians in a 48 hour period between Friday, May 16th, and Saturday, May 17th, according to the Gaza government media office: ”This is a series of ongoing massacres accompanied by the complete or partial destruction of more than 1,000 housing units, the re-destruction of what was already destroyed, and the forced displacement of more than 300,000 citizens to the already stricken Gaza city, which lacks any infrastructure to accommodate this massive number of forcibly displaced persons”. “Among the martyrs [killed], 140 remain under the rubble as a result of the Israeli occupation army’s deliberate denial of access to the bombed areas… Read more »
I am afraid both sides of this unhappy conflict share responsibility for the atrocious death toll, but it is of course the non-combatants who die, not the leaders or their overseas supporters.
I beg to disagree. One side may have initiated the current conflict but the other side (Israel) has developed and expanded the conflict well beyond all reasonable limits. The comparative death tolls are explicit in this regard.