News Round-Up

• “So, the Met has one officer who knows the law on free speech” – One Met officer has shown she actually understands the law on free speech and really ought to be the one training everyone else, says Toby in the Telegraph
• “Minister who smeared journalists to be investigated by Starmer’s ethics tsar” – Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons, who ran Labour Together when it paid an American PR company to smear two Sunday Times journalists, will be subject to an ethics probe in addition to a Cabinet Office investigation, reports the Mail.
• “The emails that show Mandelson ‘leaked’ No 10 secrets to Epstein” – Freshly revealed emails show Peter Mandelson repeatedly sent sensitive Downing Street information straight to Jeffrey Epstein when he was a minister under Gordon Brown, writes Gordon Rayner in the Telegraph.
• “Labour will not reduce spiralling special needs costs until 2035” – Labour has rolled out a £4 billion plan for special needs reform but admits the spiralling costs won’t actually come down until 2035, explains the Mail.
• “Labour’s special educational needs reform doesn’t add up” – Labour’s big SEND announcement has exposed a pretty thin vision for schools that prioritises everything but real excellence, says Joanna Williams in the Spectator.
• “Graduate jobs fall to record low as Labour price young out of work” – Graduate job vacancies have plunged to an all-time low with fewer than 10,000 roles available nationwide right now, according to This is Money.
• “UK unemployment to ‘rise above pandemic high within months’” – UK unemployment has been forecast to shoot past the pandemic peak and hit two million jobless very soon, predicts JP Morgan via the Telegraph.
• “The war on pubs has just hit a farcical new low” – What sort of short-sighted jobsworth would stop a landlord giving his customers a lift home? asks Michael Deacon in the Telegraph.
• “BBC to spend £175 million on gold-plated pensions despite budget cuts” – The BBC is facing a £175 million gold-plated pensions bill next year despite a pledge to save £600 million, reports the Telegraph.
• “Gorton will descend into hostility if Reform wins, claims Starmer” – Keir Starmer has warned that Gorton will become a hotbed of community tension if Reform picks up the seat, says the Telegraph.
• “Reform pledges to block visas for Pakistanis” – Reform UK has promised to slap a visa ban on Pakistan plus five other high-refusal countries that won’t take their failed asylum seekers back, reports ITV News.
• “Reform would create ICE-style agency and end leave to remain, Zia Yusuf to say” – Reform UK has laid out plans for an ICE-style deportation agency that would boot out up to 288,000 people a year and end indefinite leave to remain, says the Guardian.
• “Reform will repeal the Orwellian Equality Act” – Reform will scrap the Equality Act, which has turned equality before the law into state-enforced social engineering, writes Suella Braverman in the Telegraph.
• “Reform pledges to scrap renters’ rights introduced by Rayner” – Reform UK has promised to bin Angela Rayner’s new renters’ rights rules if they get into power, with Richard Tice calling them completely daft, says the Telegraph.
• “Reform pledges to ban the burka” – Reform has committed to banning the burka outright, saying tougher face-covering rules would make people feel safer, reports the Sun.
• “Can Reform really make Britain Christian again?” – Reform has suddenly found its own religious enthusiasm after Restore promised to re-Christianise Britain – but are they actually serious? wonders Lois McLatchie Miller in the Spectator.
• “Far-Right merger collapses as Ben Habib slams ‘dictator’ Lowe” – The planned tie-up between Advance UK and Restore Britain has spectacularly fallen apart after Ben Habib branded Rupert Lowe a “dictator”, says Searchlight.
• “Britain is on course for a blasphemy law by the back door, and a recent case might open it” – If the Crown Prosecution Service gets its way, we could very well be living in a country with an Islamic blasphemy law, warns Max Thompson in Conservative Home.
• “Israel condemns ‘hateful and racist’ Green Party” – Israel has condemned the Green Party as “hateful and racist” ahead of its vote that will brand all Zionists “racists” and commit the party to supporting Palestinian “resistance”, reports the Telegraph.
• “Former Oxfam chief claims charity is ‘toxic and antisemitic’” – Oxfam’s former boss Halima Begum has accused the charity of becoming toxic and antisemitic on her watch, says the Telegraph.
• “What’s wrong with Zionism, Hugh Laurie?” – Hugh Laurie’s apparent swipe at Zionism has sparked fresh debate right after the tragic death of Tehran producer Dana Eden, writes Jonathan Sacerdoti in the Spectator.
• “Badenoch ambushed by Martin Lewis over student loan reform plan” – Kemi Badenoch was cornered onGood Morning Britain by Ed Balls and Martin Lewis over her student loan shake-up ideas, reports the Mail.
• “Britain has been broken by bad ideas before: but seldom by so many at once” – Britain has been broken by bad ideas plenty of times before, but rarely by quite so many all at once, says Robert Tombs in the Telegraph.
• “Pensioner facing police investigation for the crime of calling serially dishonest German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ‘Pinocchio’” – A German pensioner has ended up under police investigation simply for calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz “Pinocchio”, writes Eugyppius on Substack.
• “Migrants in Germany must pay for ‘integration course’” – Germany has decided migrants should now foot the bill for their own integration courses because public money is no longer justified, reports the Telegraph.
• “Iran plotting terror attacks across Europe” – Iran and its proxies have been actively plotting terror attacks right across Europe – and US targets could be next if Trump strikes, reveals the Telegraph.
• “My contacts with Tucker Carlson about antisemitism on his show” – On Substack, Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony opens up about the private conversations he recently had with Tucker Carlson, who was mystified as to why Jews should think him antisemitic.
• “Foreign ownership of media companies is ‘bad idea’, says Netflix boss” – Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has called foreign ownership of media firms – especially by Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar – a terrible idea, reports the Telegraph.
• “Alberta holds referendum on scrapping free healthcare for migrants” – Alberta has called a referendum to claw back immigration powers from Ottawa and slam the door on free healthcare and education for new migrants, says the Telegraph.
• “‘Universities failed us during Covid. Now we are making them pay’” – A growing group of former students has launched legal action against universities after shelling out top fees for what turned out to be a pretty miserable locked-down experience, writes Julie Henry in the Telegraph.
• “The Covid Inquiry’s modelling problem” – The Covid Inquiry has leaned far too heavily on modelling dressed up as certainty when it comes to lockdown timing, argue Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson on their Trust the Evidence Substack.
• “Baric left his fingerprints on the genome” – New analysis has picked up American epidemiologist Ralph Baric’s unmistakable fingerprints all over the SARS-CoV-2 genome, says Jim Haslam on Substack.
• “Claim: The ‘open fridge effect’ Baltic sea level drop is proof of global warming” – Some researchers have tried to spin a rare “open fridge effect” sea-level drop in the Baltic as fresh proof of man-made warming – even though the exact same pattern happened right after the Little Ice Age, points out Eric Worrall in Watts Up With That?
• “New research reaffirms clouds, aerosols and surface solar radiation are ‘driving the climate system’” – A brand-new paper has doubled down on the idea that clouds, aerosols and sunlight hitting the surface are actually the main things steering the climate – not CO₂, writes Kenneth Richard on No Tricks Zone.
• “The rules of credibility” – In Climate Scepticism, John Ridgway lays out what it really takes to earn trust from a proper climate sceptic these days, and it’s a pretty high bar.
• “NY Times throws hissy fit over Trump erasing ‘government’s power to fight climate change’” – The New York Times has gone into full meltdown mode because the Trump team is rolling back federal climate programmes, writes Joseph Vazquez at NewsBusters.
• “Wrong, Oceanographic Magazine, sea level rise in Hawaii is not a looming catastrophe” – Oceanographic recently ran a dramatic piece claiming Hawaiians are already suffering badly from fast-rising seas – but the actual tide-gauge data tells a very different, far less scary story, says Anthony Watts in Climate Realism.
• “Victorious nurse returns to work after woke NHS buckles in trans paedo row” – NHS nurse Jennifer Melle has returned to work after being suspended and disciplined for calling a 6ft bearded trans sex offender “Mr”, reports the Express.
• “Cancelling a man with Tourette’s is a new low for the woke elite” – John Davidson has been relentlessly hounded by Hollywood big names even though his n-word slip at the BAFTAs was an uncontrollable Tourette’s outburst, writes Georgina Mumford in Spiked.
• “Why hasn’t it been done yet?” – Bridget Phillipson halted a new system that would let academics complain if universities shut down lawful speech. In the Lords, Toby says it could still be activated via secondary legislation – so why are ministers dragging their feet?

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