|
|||||
|
Cash savings are not dead money – they’re the deposits that finance the banks’ loan books. Tossery built upon ignorance. Richard Murphy – that Sage of Ely – is one of the few people in the country able to proffer up budget ideas even worse than the ones we’re going to get from Rachel this week. November 24th, 2025 | 8 comments
 In May 2020, I wrote a piece called ‘Britain’s Covid Reich’. I commented:
One possibility I anticipated was:
I thought I was going over the top when I wrote that. But that’s exactly what’s happened – hasn’t it? Back then I thought there was a more optimistic possible alternative, but I was wrong. Few politicians, few scientists and even worse few in the so-called free press seemed to be able to understand that the measures the Government was imposing were going to leave a legacy that would, and has, set Britain back by half a century and perhaps change it permanently. Anyone who dared to stray from the state propaganda line was shot down in flames. So it is almost beyond belief to see that the confused and contradictory Covid Inquiry has continued to ignore the impact of lockdown… November 23rd, 2025 | 6 comments
This cult of safety has risen inexorably alongside the bloated state, the proliferation of lanyards dangling from corporate necks like talismans or morality nooses, – I mean look at us here, at the Margaret Thatcher Centre all proudly wearing our own blue ropes – and the insidious creep of human resources culture. HR departments, those modern inquisitors, enforce “safe spaces” where dissent is heresy, and risk assessments stifle innovation and free speech goes to die. It’s a world where playgrounds are padded to absurdity, and employees are trained not in skills, but in avoiding offence. This isn’t safeguarding; it’s societal strangulation, a slow garrote on the British spirit. November 22nd, 2025 | 12 comments
We’re told that students perform better when exposed to “different formats”. This is fair enough in principle, though the guidelines decline to specify what these formats might be, beyond implying there will be an impressive number of them. One can already picture the future: a single course requiring essays, posters, podcasts, puppet shows and a short stop-motion film made from Play-Doh – each designed to develop the student’s confidence, creativity and capacity to perform self-expression in increasingly unhinged ways. Next, the document warns that “Standard Academic English” (once known as “English”) is an oppressive tool that advantages “already privileged students”. The implication, apparently, is that requiring coherent writing is a form of violence. This is the educational equivalent of a gym announcing that push-ups are discriminatory because they favour those with upper-body strength. November 20th, 2025 | 6 comments
I remember him announcing this on YouTube. It was, frankly, appalling. Classic police overreach and the school complaining was typical of the thin skinned using lawfare to shut down critical voices. Yet it all came to nothing as the case was dropped. As any reasonable person would expect it to be. The correct approach to the initial complaint would have been to warn the complainant of the penalties for wasting police time.
But they will, because it wasn’t a mistake. Until there are personal consequences, this will continue to happen. November 18th, 2025 | 6 comments
The sudden resignations this week of BBC director-general Tim Davie and CEO of news Deborah Turness has focussed minds on the role of the media. It has been startling – and grimly predictable – to watch senior figures at the BBC scrambling to defend their failures by muttering darkly about ‘right-wing conspiracies’ and ‘inside jobs’. Few, if any, have paused to consider whether the real problem might be their own cowardice. The same rot runs through mainstream media across the world. In Ireland, I’ve met too many well-paid figures at RTÉ, the Irish Times and the Irish Independent who seem serenely proud of their refusal to touch anything remotely controversial. I call it Hugh Linehan syndrome, since, as duty editor of the Irish Times and host of the popular Inside Politics podcast, he appears to be particularly self-satisfied, even self-righteous, about his ability to avoid difficult issues. November 16th, 2025 | 23 comments
In a series of reports, I have shown that the European Union already operates a vast propaganda and censorship apparatus that spans every level of civil society — NGOs, think tanks, the media and even academia. The cornerstone of this system is a network of EU-funded programmes — notably CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values), Creative Europe and the Jean Monnet initiative — that collectively funnel billions of euros into organisations that are, in theory, “independent” but are in fact deeply enmeshed in the Brussels machine. November 15th, 2025 | 8 comments
The ideological divide within MAGA has grown increasingly harsh. Trump is not, at heart, a professional politician. Rather, he is a blend of New York developer and carnival barker. His uneasy alliance with ‘tech bros’, Wall Street insiders and fervent right-wing nativists was never stable. It was held together mostly by Trump himself – and by the awfulness of the Democrats. Even as he strikes a populist pose, some people influential in MAGA flirt with ideas like eugenic Darwinism and a permanent ruling aristocracy. Others within MAGA embrace isolationism and attacks on minorities, particularly Jews. Trump rejects such notions, but too many top GOP figures, argues Senator Ted Cruz, seem terrified of alienating the odious Tucker Carlson to do so. November 14th, 2025 | 72 comments
That is certainly one way of putting it. Another is that, first, the Trump stuff is much less important than the BBC’s issues in other areas and that it seems modestly significant that Goodall devotes almost no space at all in his lengthy Substack piece to any of those issues. Secondly, at no point does Goodall bother considering whether some or any of the criticisms made by Prescott and Grossman have any validity at all. That, however, seems a necessary starting point. News judgement is often a nuanced and complex business. News “values”, on the other hand, should be comparatively straightforward. This is where it is entirely reasonable to convict the BBC’s coverage of the sex & gender wars. For here the corporation largely – though with notable exceptions, especially Hannah Barnes on Newsnight – picked a side and chose the one that required BBC journalists to sacrifice their judgement. Ideology trumped basic news values. They said it was dry when in fact it wasn’t obviously dry at all. For once again, among the most important of those values is this eternal question: Is This True? There is blood in the water and the sharks are circling. This story is going to run and run and run 😀 November 12th, 2025 | 17 comments
As for its content, Simpson’s post summed up the BBC on several levels. Firstly, that its most senior journalists are simply unable to see the world as ordinary people see it. Politically motivated attack? Mate, the BBC literally edited footage. This was no innocent error; as Janet Daley put it, this was “a professionally crafted editing job which has to have been designed to produce a calculated effect for a political purpose”. Your bleating is only making it worse. Secondly, that the BBC considers a Left-of-centre worldview to be the definition of objectivity. The Guardian is its ideological ally because both assume they are the privileged holders of sanity, grown-up thinking and the truth, which must be defended against the fascist hordes. When the chips are down, the BBC won’t even bother to hide it. Thirdly, that any criticism of the broadcaster represents a bad-faith attempt to destroy a great socialist project that aims to redistribute the news to each according to his needs. Here lies the kicker: in pushing such a conspiratorial Leftist worldview, the doughty journalists of the BBC have apparently dispensed with the need for evidence. – Jake Wallis Simons (£) November 11th, 2025 | 20 comments
We must take over the whole of Birmingham, the whole of the West Midlands, the whole of the UK… we will not be taken for granted, and we will win. – Iqbal Mohamed MP, Jezbollah Party er, I mean “Your Party” November 10th, 2025 | 9 comments
Kruger’s presentation began with the announcement of Reform’s intention to develop a far more detailed agenda for government than any incoming administration in recent memory, including a range of pre-written legislation to give them a running start to their first term in office. In addition, the party will have candidates lined up for key appointments, bringing in ‘expertise, advice and executive capacity’ from outside Whitehall, to both civil service leadership and ministerial roles. The intention, according to Kruger, is to ensure that a Reform Government is positioned to give a clear list of priorities to civil servants upon entering Downing Street — not the other way around. – Pimlico Journal newsletter November 6th, 2025 | 19 comments
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||