News Round-Up
- “Lucy Connolly warned she could be recalled to prison over social media use” – Lucy Connolly has been warned she could be recalled to prison after re-posting a comment which joked about Trump removing Sir Keir Starmer after Maduro’s removal from power in Venezuela, reports the Express.
- “Labour police boss refuses to sack Maccabi chief constable” – A Corbynite Crime and Police Commissioner has refused to sack the chief constable at the centre of the Maccabi fan ban row despite Shabana Mahmood declaring she has lost confidence in him, says the Mail.
- “He shames his uniform and his force – police chief needs to resign” – West Midlands Police chief Craig Guildford has demonstrated repeatedly he is unfit for his office, writes Stephen Pollard in the Telegraph,
- “West Midlands Police is rotten to the core” – In the Spectator, David Spencer questions whether West Midlands Police’s close community ties have crossed into something more troubling.
- “The Maccabi scandal shows the danger of communalism’s grip on Britain” – Communal politics are distorting policing and public life, warns Nick Timothy in the Telegraph.
- “The public are right: citizenship is a privilege, not a right” – Voters are ahead of politicians on citizenship and belonging, says David Shipley in the Spectator.
- “Furious Labour MPs hammer Starmer after latest shambolic U-turn on ID cards” – Labour MPs have erupted after Sir Keir Starmer ditched plans for mandatory digital ID cards, reports the Mail.
- “Crime in London is worse than Khan admits” – Official reassurances on crime mask a far grimmer reality on London’s streets, writes Lawrence Newport in the Spectator.
- “Woman identifying as a man is ‘raped in all-male psychiatric hospital ward’, court hears” – A biologically female trans man was raped within an hour of admission to an all-male ward at a secure NHS psychiatric hospital, according to the Mail.
- “Keir Starmer: soft on grooming gangs, tough on Grok” – The PM has a curiously selective approach to the threats facing women and girls, writes Stephen Tucker (not to be confused with our own Steven Tucker!) in Spiked.
- “Welcome to buffer-zone Britain” – Buffer zones are fast becoming the price of managing an increasingly fragmented society, says Stephen Daisley in the Spectator.
- “Chinese takeaway with Kowtow Keir” – On Substack, Paul Sutton argues Britain has quietly aped Chinese authoritarian habits.
- “Starmer on track to lose seat to Greens” – A new poll suggests Labour’s troubles now extend to the Prime Minister’s own seat, according to the Telegraph.
- “Reform UK announces more defections as Nigel Farage welcomes a slew of new councillors including an ex-BBC reporter, an Iraqi hostage and a switcher from the Greens” – Reform UK has continued to build momentum with a fresh wave of high-profile council defections, reports the Mail.
- “Four million denied a vote in attack on democracy” – Four million people are to be denied the vote in May’s local elections in a “disgraceful attack on democracy” by Labour, says the Telegraph.
- “Dutch activist ‘barred’ from UK three days after tweeting about Keir Starmer” – Eva Vlaardingerbroek says she has been banned from entering Britain three days after she tweeted something critical of Sir Keir Starmer, reports the Express.
- “The hypocrisy of the luvvies over Iran is sickening” – Compared to the anti-Israel outcry, the double standards over Iran are despicable, says Allister Heath in the Telegraph.
- “Riding the American train to the future” – On Substack, Graham Cunningham ponders where America might be leading the Western world in 2026 and beyond.
- “Computer science used to be a golden ticket to a lucrative career. Now graduates can’t get a job” – Tech graduates are struggling in a job market that no longer guarantees easy rewards, notes Megan Carnegie in the Telegraph.
- “The ‘bombshell’ science that casts doubt on claims about microplastics” – Like tobacco and asbestos before, microplastics have sparked widespread fear, writes Sarah Knapton in the Telegraph. But now experts say the risks may be overstated.
- “Stubborn influenza in the elderly” – On the TTE Substack, Dr Tom Jefferson and Prof Carl Heneghan question why flu outcomes in the elderly still appear at odds with vaccine expectations.
- “The age of academic slop is upon us” – On Substack, Seva Gunitsky urges academics to stop chasing AI trends and start writing serious books.
- “Miliband prepared to add £1.8 billion to energy bills with wind farm blitz” – Hundreds of new wind turbines are to be built around Britain’s coastline after Ed Miliband awarded yearly subsidies of up to £1.8 billion to green energy developers, reports the Express.
- “New EV tax ‘will put off nearly half of potential buyers’” – Auto Trader has found that nearly half of car buyers tempted to go electric are having second thoughts after the Government floated per-mile charging, according to the Times.
- “BP to write down green investments by $5 billion” – BP has scaled back its green ambitions after swallowing billions in losses after failed green investments, reports Interactive Investor.
- “The West vs the Rest” – Developing nations have wrested control of the climate agenda from the West, writes Robin Guenier in Cliscep.
- “The white women turning to ‘Dark Woke’” – In UnHerd, Emily Jashinsky explores how frustration and alienation have curdled into a new cultural politics.
- “Free Speech Union launches Stripe donations page to tackle soaring costs of cyber attack” – In the wake of a cyber attack by a militant pro-trans group, the Free Speech Union has launched a donations page to cover the costs and show it won’t be silenced.
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I’m afraid the public is dead wrong, and anyone who thinks that is the victim of gaslighting.
Citizenship is a protection racket. You don’t get to opt in or out. Being stateless is not an option, at least not a viable option. You have to be ‘owned” by someone.
They made it even clearer when after the 2008 crisis states tightened up tax avoidance and made it impossible for anyone to not be tax resident anywhere. You simply cannot be part of the financial system and have any kind of bank account without declaring tax residency anywhere. Even if you don’t meet the tax residency criteria in any country. Basically you need to be someone’s bitch. No opting out.
That is the reality of the world. So citizenship is neither a privilege, nor a right. It’s an inescapable obligation.
I see the logic of what you are saying, but I think you have gone off at 90deg to the statement. Citizenship is a privilege. We inherit it from our forefathers, who have built the country with great endeavour, ingenuity and sacrifice. You can’t just turn up from wherever and become British like sticking a label on yourself. You have you join in, and you have to put in that effort to build for the next generation. If anything has been forgotten by the left, it is that all our toils and travails are for the kids to have a better life than we have.
Possibly what you nean is UK citizenship is a privilege, when compared to others.
But citizenship as such is an unavoidable obligation. Try not being a citizen of anywhere and see how far you get.
I think you’re conflating citizenship and belonging. Citizenship is just the machines way of monetising belonging.
Citizenship isn’t inherited. The Irish didn’t inherit their citizenship, they were British up until 1923 abd had no. Itizrbdhbatcall before Ireland – like England – became the fiefdom of the Plantagenet Kings, US “citizens” were British until 1776. Then there is India, Pakistan, Bangladesh – until 1948 all one citizenship – British.
Until 1707 the Scottish and English did not share a common citizenship.
Citizenship is a governmental construct which binds people over whom the governing class has power and from whom demands allegiance in exchange for protection, and gives itself the Right to use coercion to make its citizens pay taxes to them.
I’ve not read the article as I don’t have a Spectator subscription but my assumption from the headline is that the author means that the ability to immigrate into another country is a privilege not a right, which seems an entirely reasonable point – that we should not feel morally or in any other way obliged to grant citizenship to foreigners. None of which negates the points that you make – at least I don’t think it does.
The article does indeed discuss the issue of citizenship in the context of migrants. And refers to the public being asked whether migrants should treat the citizenship they receive as a right or a privilege that can be revoked at any time. My comment is really about how that is a very limited and narrow way of thinking about citizenship and its implications. And really they are conflating citizenship with the right to be in the UK which is what they really care about. It clearly seems that to many people, a migrant that has acquired citizenship is still basically a migrant, a different tier of citizen at best. That is partly because people in the UK tend to think of their citizenship as a gift because compared to many others it probably feels that way. But citizenship in practice (not in theory) is a very modern form of slave branding. We belong to the UK state. The UK state just happens to be a fairly benevolent owner, especially for its more useless non-productive “slaves” because they are maintained very nicely by the productive ones. And compared to many places we aren’t mistreated much – as.long as we diligently hand… Read more »
Yes, there’s no more un allocated land that is attractive.
In fact it’s a disguised form of serfdom.
The serf could not leave the land without the landowner’s permission, he was required to provide such labour for the benefit of the landowner that the latter required (called income tax these days), restricted on what he could eat, not allowed to criticise his landlord.
Sound familiar?
Under Magna Carta, there are no citizens, just free, sovereign individuals.
“The white women turning to ‘Dark Woke’
Always the middle class white women, eh..? Never seen that mentioned before…
Monday Morning Sonning
Forget maduro, I think sstarmer is now even less popular than the Ayatolla.
When people talk about the police having ties or links with the community, it’s never law abiding white communities that they mean. It’s other groups that, rightly or wrongly, are suspected of being apt to kick off into mass lawlessness, triggered by something or other. This is seen as normal.
Mob rule! And Birmingham will be the first sectarian city, added and abetted by it’s police force
We were told yesterday that the disgraceful W Midlands cop took advantage of a fire and rehire scheme that enabled him to maximise his pensions. Apparently he had a one month break so that one pension scheme could be closed and another one started a month later to avoids the limits on pension pots.
It was also suggested that his income for the year increased despite the one month break in service.
I agree with your point but I think you mean ‘retire and rehire’.
Fire and rehire is rarely in the individuals favour.
I think you are right, thanks
“Woman identifying as a man is ‘raped in all-male psychiatric hospital ward’, court hears”
Oh dear, how sad, never mind!
Who would have thunk it?
Perhaps Greenland/Denmark should make a deal with Canada. It is more naturally linked to Canada than USA
“Four million denied a vote in attack on democracy”
It occurs to me that this is a wrong move, not from a constitutional view, though it possibly is but, rather from a political one…
Labour are likely to be trounced at the next general election, whatever they do. There is no hiding from the absolute shambles of this government but, if they were to allow these elections to go ahead and the result was sweeping gains by Reform, they would have to run those councils until the next election, in which time they may well find (as Labour have), that being in power is a different thing to carping on the sidelines and the lustre may come off the public’s perception of how they might run the country?
“The Maccabi scandal shows the danger of communalism’s grip on Britain”
Well, maybe, but it also raises a question about the police and their willingness to manufacture evidence to get the result they desire.
And that, in turn, raises another question about how widespread it might be?
My emphasis added.
I hope that Guildford’s resistance to resigning results in a healthy dose of cleansing daylight into the force – and into other forces.
Re-posting a joke is bad behaviour?
I mean, it’s clearly a joke, right? Trump’s administration would never try to remove Starmer, right?
Right?
Not even if we said please?
May I add this news to the Round-Up:
78% Of Netherlands Starter Homes For Families With Children Go To Aliens, While 20% Of Overall ‘General Starter’ Homes Go To Aliens
“Last year, Dutch politicians from a variety of parties complained that refugees can gain access to housing in a mere 14 weeks on a waiting list, while Dutch citizens can wait up to 12 years.”