Tag: united kingdom

UK drivers warned they risk £5,000 fine if they are wearing sunglasses

Drivers caught wearing sunglasses can be slapped with large fines of up to £5,000 according to the Highway Code.

Despite sunglasses helping to prevent the sun from blinding drivers, the Highway Code enforces that drivers should stop or slow down when affected by sunshine.

Experts warn that while many believe sunglasses heighten road safety, they may in fact be a risk due to the blinding glare by low light and reflections from puddles or oncoming traffic.

People caught wearing tinted lenses and visors that restrict visibility could be slapped with penalties ranging from points on their licence, unlimited fines and potentially disqualifications.

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Meal deals: Unhealthy options will be restricted in Wales

Meal deals with a high fat, sugar or salt content will be restricted in Wales under plans to tackle obesity and diabetes.

Temporary price drops and multi-buy offers on the unhealthiest foods will also be banned in the proposals put forward by the Welsh government.

But retailers have raised concerns about the timing of the announcement as food prices remain high.

The legislation will be introduced next year and rolled out by 2025.

A number of retailers offer lunch deals which combine a sandwich, drink and a snack for a set price.

Restrictions will be placed on certain combinations that have a high fat, sugar or salt content above the recommended daily amount.

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UK Home Secretary Uses Idea of Keeping Children Safe as a Justification To Demand Ban on Private Messaging

It would be extremely refreshing to hear a government official in the UK, or in a number of other countries, make a, “think of the encryption” plea – which would show they understand the very fundamentals of a safe and privacy-preserving internet.

But instead, we are getting more and more “think of the children” platitudes – as always, designed not to actually do that, but mask other, controversial and unpopular policies.

This time, it is UK’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman who claims that her opposition to Facebook’s slow-moving, alleged attempt to make a number of its products safe via implementing end-to-end encryption has to do with fears that children might get abused online.

Any tech-literate person would present the big picture, and argue quite the opposite, but Braverman is either not one of those, or elects to pretend not to be, in order to serve a policy that is staunchly anti-encryption, for a whole different reason – summed up, that technology stands severely annoyingly, no doubt, in the way of governments’ wholesale mass surveillance of everybody on the internet.

And what better place to twist the narrative about fears of awful things like child grooming and sexual abuse – perversely juxtaposed with actually improving internet security, i.e., encryption – than a get-together of the (in)famous “Five Eyes,” held in one eager member – New Zealand.

Braverman made an effort to write to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and, ignoring the reality of what an internet without encryption would turn into, tried, no doubt, above all to pull at her constituents’ heartstrings:

“As a mother to young children,” the politician stomped her feet, “I won’t stand by idly and watch this happen,” The Daily Mail reported.

“This” would be – platforms like Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct introducing secure communications, so that third parties – be they criminals, malign (foreign) actors, or (sometimes (effectively malign) domestic law enforcement – cannot just swoop in and use personal information in any way they please, including to directly harm those participating, children included, by gaining unfettered access to all their data.

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Schools Are Now Allowing Children To Identify As Cats, Horses, Dinosaurs…

I seriously should have thought of this when I was a kid.  If I could have answered every question a teacher asked by meowing like a cat or roaring like a dinosaur, there is no way they could have ever accused me of getting an answer wrong.  And when it was time for a quiz or a test, I could have just responded to every question with a paw print.  Of course nobody would have actually been able to get away with such a thing decades ago.  When I was a kid, anyone that tried to pull this kind of a stunt would have been immediately marched down to the principal’s office.  But now we live at a time when we are supposed to allow people to identify as anything that they want.

Things have gotten particularly absurd in the United Kingdom.  According to an investigation that was conducted by the Telegraph, schools in the UK are now allowing children to identify as all sorts of things…

At a state secondary school in Wales, one student is said to ‘meow’ when asked questions by a teacher, rather than answering in English, the Telegraph reports.

In other schools, one apparently insists on being addressed as a dinosaur, one claims to identify as a horse while another is said to wear a cape and demands to be acknowledged as a moon.

In the old days, teachers knew how to deal with this kind of nonsense.

But today they are instructed not to correct the children because that would be “discriminatory”…

Pupils claim teachers are ‘not allowed to get annoyed’ about such behaviour in case it is seen as being discriminatory.

However, lessons are reportedly becoming completely derailed by these interactions, impacting the quality of their classmates’ education.

So these teachers in the UK literally have to sit there and make the best of it when students respond to their questions with “animal noises”…

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Police are ‘assessing’ video of Laurence Fox burning ‘LGBTQ+’ bunting in his garden while actor says he ‘hopes officers pay me a visit’ following Father’s Day stunt

The Met Police are assessing the video of Laurence Fox burning LGBTQ+ bunting in his back garden.

Fox, who is preparing to compete for Boris Johnson‘s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency, used a lighter at his home to set the display on fire on Father’s Day.

An outraged Twitter user claimed to have reported the video to police as a ‘hate crime‘, which Fox has slammed as being ‘arbitrary nonsense’.

The actor-turned-political activist added: ‘Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reporting me.’

Fox had previously said the flag in his video – which is the Progress Pride version created in 2018 – ‘is nothing to do with the original Pride flag which was to represent hard-fought-for gay and lesbian rights, which everybody would support.’

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The astonishing story of the last British woman jailed for witchcraft – just 80 years ago

It’s November 25 1941, and off the Egyptian coast, HMS Barham explodes after a U-boat torpedo strike. Jets of steam, smoke and iron fragments are thrown into the sky; the ship sinks within minutes; over 800 Navy men are killed almost simultaneously. All news of the sinking is censored. Yet, in Barham’s home port, Portsmouth, the sailors’ families soon hear rumours; and visitors to the séances of Helen Duncan, a spiritualist medium, apparently witness a miracle. Helen – known as Nellie – speaks with the ghost of a Barham sailor, and reveals the ship’s loss. She makes it public long before the official announcement of the sinking.

How did Duncan know Barham had sunk? Or was her revelation just a guess, a fraud in which she charged the bereaved to listen to nothing better than gossip? In 1944, prosecutors would judge her magical knowledge to be fake, and the Barham story would be told at the end of her trial for defrauding her customers. Even so, however, instead of facing straightforward allegations of deception and theft, Duncan had been charged under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. The British public was gripped by a modern witch-trial, shocked that a 200-year-old law had been revived. In what way, people asked, could Nellie Duncan be a witch?

Duncan had flirted with the supernatural her whole life. She was born in Callander, near Stirling, in 1897, and as a child claimed the magical ability called “second sight”. On becoming an unmarried mother at 17, she was disowned by her parents, and found dusty, dangerous work in a jute mill. More hopefully, in 1916 she married a cabinetmaker, Henry Duncan – but, trapped by poverty and overwork, the couple fell chronically ill. Soon they had eight children – contraception was considered sinful – and a mountain of debt. 

Nellie Duncan took in washing as well as labouring in a bleaching plant, and in spite of all their troubles, she claimed joyful contact with God and the afterlife. As she fell into apparent trances, ghostly spirits would speak through her lips. She and Henry set up a darkened séance room where white gloop – “ectoplasm” – appeared before paying visitors, flowing out of Nellie’s mouth and nose to manifest spirits’ bodies. It looked awfully like muslin cloth, but her customers loved it.

In 1930, Duncan went to Edinburgh and London for appointments with psychic investigators. They tested her mediumship, strip-searching, photographing and X-raying her. Some observers confirmed her claims, although celebrity investigator Harry Price accused her of regurgitating muslin to fake materialisations. Nonetheless, her efforts paid off. Being accepted by the London Spiritualists’ Alliance meant the opportunity to go on séance tours of Britain, bringing fame and wealth.

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RUSSIAN NEO-NAZI FIGHTING PUTIN TAUGHT AT FAR-RIGHT CAMP IN UK

The leader of an anti-Putin militia has disturbing links to an extreme-right wing movement banned in Britain, Declassified has found.

Denis Kapustin, who also uses the names Denis Nikitin and ‘White Rex’, was an instructor at a far-right camp in Wales in 2014.

His presence was noted by a Sunday Mirror investigation that year.

More recently, the White Rex has been in the news for leading the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK).

They are a group of armed dissidents launching raids into Russia from their base in Ukraine since March.

At least two civilians and a child have been killed in their attacks so far, with another 13 wounded.

While the RDK’s far-right ideology was belatedly noted in media reports, the fact its leader spent time teaching neo-Nazis in Britain has so far been forgotten.

He taught at the Sigurd Culture Camp in the Brecon Beacons in August 2014, which was designed to “enthuse them with a sense of racial pride, and to awaken the ‘Spirit Warrior’ within”.

Camp organiser Craig Fraser wanted to recreate Hitler’s SS by drilling his men into shape – and even planned to show footage from ISIS training in Syria at the next session.

The Sunday Mirror said a “key trainer at the event…was Denis Nitikin [sic], the owner and organiser of White Rex, a Russian martial arts and cage fighting club.”

Yesterday immigration minister Robert Jenrick refused to tell parliament what information the Home Office holds on Kapustin’s visit to the UK in 2014 or whether he had since been banned from entering the country, claiming not to comment on individual cases.

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Britain’s Oldest Wooden Artifact Found With Curious Carvings

This special piece of timber was unearthed on a building site in the village of Boxford in Berkshire, England. Decorated with mysterious carvings, this rare wooden artifact has been compared to Shigir Idol, the oldest piece of carved wood in the world.

Until now, the oldest piece of wood discovered in England, known as the “Sweet Track,” was an ancient walkway in the Somerset Levels that dated back to the Neolithic period , around 3807 BC, making it over 5,000 years old. Now, a large chunk of oak has been discovered in England, that was well-preserved in peat, and it has been dated to the European Mesolithic period, “more than 6,000-years-ago”.

This story begins four years ago when landowner, Derek Fawcett, was constructing a new outbuilding. When the builders were digging out a foundation trench for the outhouse, Fawcett spotted timber and contacted the county archaeologist, Sarah Orr. After inspection, Orr determined that the wooden item was located about 1.5 meters (4.92 ft) below the ground level, and that “it was clearly very old and appeared well preserved in peat.”

Fawcett and Orr hosed down the timber and noticed what appeared to be markings that Orr said looked “unnatural and possibly man-made.” Fawcett and Orr have since been working closely with a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists from Historic England , who teamed up with scientists from the Nottingham tree-ring dating laboratory , and the Centre for Isotope Research at the university of Groningen .

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Erasing the English: Anglo-Saxons Never Existed, Claims Cambridge University

Cambridge University is reportedly teaching its students that the Anglo-Saxons never existed as a unique ethnic group in an “anti-racist” attempt to dispel supposed nationalist “myths” about Britain.

In an ironic turn of events, the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC) at the once prestigious Cambridge University in England is now attempting to dismantle the very ideas inherent in the title of the department, claiming that the Anglo-Saxon ethnic group is apparently a racist concoction meant to stoke British nationalism, according to a report from London’s Daily Telegraph.

The woke academics claimed that the purpose of its anti-English stance is to make its history lessons “more anti-racist”, the department said according to the broadsheet, adding: “One concern has been to address recent concerns over use of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and its perceived connection to ethnic/racial English identity.”

“In general, ASNC teaching seeks to dismantle the basis of myths of nationalism… by showing students just how constructed and contingent these identities are and always have been,” they continued.

Apparently unsatisfied with dispelling the supposed “myth” of the Anglo-Saxon people, the university department went on to claim that there was never a “coherent” ethnic identity for the peoples in England, Ireland, Scotland, or Wales.

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Mysterious Sheep and Cattle Mutilations on the Rise in Wales – UFOs or the Beast of Bont?

Are mysterious cattle mutilations on the rise in the U.S.? One telltale sign this is the case is when the major mainstream media – in this case, The New York Times – finally picks up on the story, as the Times did in April when it covered “the mysterious deaths in three Texas counties of six cattle that were found with their tongues missing” and gave it the eye-grabbing description of “in what could be a plot from an episode of “The X-Files”.” Those reporting on these strange occurrences outside of the mainstream media already know that farmers in the Pacific northwest and in other cattle-raising areas of the country have seen a rise in these events, but no subsequent rise in resolutions or arrests … assuming the culprits are of planet Earth. That alternative is the path an investigator is following in Wales, where it seems livestock mutilations have spread … and so has the mystery of their possible causes.

“With these cattle they are found the next morning by farmers and it has been only one or two in the herd. They are clean cut with all the inners taken out. No blood is left on the ground and there are no footprints leading up to the cattle. Animals would leave a mess. There are no inners and no blood. This is the theory that many UFOers have – that they may be experimented on from above.”

Helena Worth works for Ceredigion County Council, but in her spare time is a ufologist and amateur scientist – all of those came into play recently when local farmer Jonathan Davies called the police to report that two of his sheep had been found dead and their “entire innards had been removed cleanly” with just an empty and the heads left behind, observing that “It was so tidy – it was like someone had been there with a knife and skinned them.” According to The Mirror, Worth immediately saw the similarities between these sheep killings and the cattle mutilations in the U.S.. She suspected that extraterrestrials had expanded their experimentations to sheep and their territory to Wales – possibly even establishing a “sheep mutilation corridor” similar to the cattle mutilation and UFO corridor often referred to as the “37th north parallel” in the U.S.

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