Tag: united kingdom

UK Knew About Possible Fatal Blood Clot Risk, But Allowed COVID Vaccine Trial on Kids to Continue

Children as young as 6 continued receiving AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine in a 2021 U.K. clinical trial, even though U.K. government advisers were aware of a potentially deadly blood clot risk, a newly released document reveals. GB News first reported the story Monday.

The revelations arise from the minutes of a May 21, 2021, meeting of the Commission on Human Medicines, which advises the U.K. government on medicine safety, efficacy and quality. The meeting addressed a “very small but potentially very serious risk” of vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT).

VITT is a life-threatening syndrome that causes blood clots (thrombosis) and low blood platelet counts (thrombocytopenia). It has been linked to both mRNA and non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, including the AstraZeneca shot.

The partially redacted document, marked “Official — Sensitive Commercial” and “Not for Publication,” shows that at least one member at the meeting argued that the trial “should be allowed to proceed” even though there is often “no successful intervention” available for VITT.

The minutes revealed that the U.K.’s Paediatric Medicines Expert Advisory Group agreed that the clinical trial — which enrolled 262 children ages 6-17, including 112 kids ages 6-11 — should continue, even though the clinical trial was temporarily paused in April 2021 to investigate reports of “extremely rare” blood clots.

The meeting’s participants — including several advisers with ties to AstraZeneca or Oxford University, the vaccine’s co-developer — reached this conclusion despite acknowledging that the vaccine’s “direct benefit” to kids was “quite remote” and that the benefit of vaccination “when balanced against risk is low.”

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Britain’s Defense Secretary Sets A 1,000-Day Countdown To War

Britain’s Defense Secretary is telling the country to get ready for war, and he has put a date on it.

Defense Secretary Wes Streeting wrote in the Telegraph on October 24 that his “defining priority” is to make sure that Britain is ‘ready to fight and win a war’. “That is the only metric that counts,” he says. He sets out the danger that he sees, which is not of new hostility towards Britain but of new capability. “Our adversaries’ willingness to harm us is not new. What has changed is their capacity,” he writes. “By 2030 their force strength and war economy could put them in a position to attack. That gives us a little over 1,000 days to complete our mission: to be ready with our allies to fight and win. This Government will make sure it is mission accomplished.”

He writes that the “gravest dangers of the 20th Century are returning, armed with the technologies of the 21st.” Deterrence must come first, he says. “To prevent the worst, we have to prepare for it.” In the first place that means ramping up our capabilities to deter our adversaries from attacking us. And if that fails, then we must make sure that Britain is ready to fight a war. It is a “chilling” message, the Daily Mail says, as Russia increases threats against NATO members.

The warning is not being made in isolation. The “Be Ready” campaign, launched by the government this week, is urging households to store three days’ worth of food and up to nine litres of water, as well as other essentials like blankets, cash, a first-aid kit and a wind-up radio, The Independent reported. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has insisted that the measures are “sensible” and “not about panicking.” GB News reported that Labour has also outlined harsh criminal punishments for anyone who tampers with undersea cables or energy pipelines, and plans to grant telecommunications powers to remove or disable services during a national emergency.

Then there is the issue of money. Streeting says he is “100 per cent confident” that Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Chancellor John Healey will hit NATO’s target of 3.5% of GDP spent on defense by 2035. Healey resigned as Defense Secretary earlier this year over the lack of cash on offer. But on Wednesday, Healey is due to deliver his first Budget as Chancellor and it is expected that the National Wealth Fund will receive billions, with a chunk of cash set aside for the British Business Bank. Some of that money could be invested in UK defense companies, such as those that produce drones and military technology. The move is intended as a downpayment on his 3% ambition by 2030. However, Healey will not set out a fully funded plan of how he intends to reach the higher target until next year’s spending review. And the Shadow Defense Secretary, James Cartlidge, says that while the Conservatives welcome the extra cash, it must be part of a wider funded plan, with money for training and for stockpiling ammunition.

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Racist? UK Charities Are Paying White People A Third Less Than Ethnics

Oxfam paid its white staff a median of 33% less than colleagues who described themselves as black or a person of colour last year, according to the charity’s own annual report. Cancer Research UK and the British Red Cross reported similar negative ethnicity pay gaps in favour of ethnic minority staff.

The figures, drawn from the organisations’ voluntary disclosures, have prompted questions about how “positive action” provisions in the Equality Act 2010 are being applied in practice. Critics argue the measures, intended to address under-representation, are producing outcomes that disadvantage white employees in recruitment, promotion and pay.

Oxfam’s ethnicity pay gap stood at -33.0% on the median and -12.9% on the mean, based on data from 69.2% of staff who shared their ethnicity. Black or people of colour (BPOC) staff made up 10.5% of the workforce. The median gap had been -10.4% the previous year.

The charity noted that a higher proportion of staff in the top two pay quartiles disclosed their ethnicity, and that lower overall numbers of BPOC colleagues “may be driving a skew in the pay gap.” It stated the figures “cannot be seen as conclusive” but were “suggestive of lower average pay at the charity for white workers.”

A spokesman for Oxfam said the organisation was “committed to fair, inclusive recruitment practices that value diversity and ensure everyone has the opportunity to thrive. We do not operate a policy of positive discrimination,” adding that the “reported ethnicity pay gap is not evidence of unequal pay for the same work.”

Cancer Research UK reported that white staff were paid 7.6% less on average in 2025. The charity has recorded a negative gap in favour of ethnic minority employees since 2020, though it said the figure is now “the closest to being neutral it has ever been.”

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The UK Russia Scare Tactics Continue

The new way of fighting Russia is with a tin opener. The UK government has launched a new campaign for householders to store up three days of water, food and medication. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has kick-started the “Be Ready” campaign, which will run over three years, with social media and radio messages and more than 500 organizations signed up to share it.

The typical shopping list includes about 3 liters of drinking water per person per day, enough food that needs no refrigeration or cooking to sustain the household for 3 days, essential medication and a first aid kit. In addition, there should be a torch with batteries, a battery or wind-up powered radio, a charged power bank and some cash. Yahoo News UK reported that the list includes blankets.

The campaign was unveiled at the launch of a new tank gun barrel, being produced by the German defense firm Rheinmetall at a factory in Telford, Yahoo News UK reported. And here Streeting was talking about stockpiling of provisions in front of a massive gun barrel. He warned of “increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks” on businesses and supply chain disruption caused by “hostile state actors or terrorists,” the BBC reported, and gave the example of a local shop hit by a cyber-attack so that “your card isn’t working at the till.” The threat, said Streeting, was the worst of his lifetime – he told BBC One’s Question Time it was greater than at any time “certainly for most, if not all, of my lifetime.”

He then segued to the obvious threat of Russia. Yahoo News UK reported that Streeting said “state-sponsored terrorism by Russia or another hostile state” was a threat to businesses and households, targeting infrastructure. As he put it, “terms like ‘hybrid warfare’ and ‘grey zone threats’ do not accurately capture or convey to the general public what I prefer to describe as ‘state-sponsored terrorism’.” Even the scare needed a rebrand.

Mr Streeting was also asked by the TV program whether or not he was engaging in ‘scaremongering’. The Defence Secretary admitted that he had nothing specific in mind, but that the government’s desire was to get people “alert but not alarmed,” the BBC reported. So the threat is the worst of his lifetime, it has a name, and there is nothing specific in mind. What is most striking is that the government’s own announcement of the new campaign leads with the threat of severe weather (such as last winter’s storms or this summer’s wildfires) and reiterates the vast majority of the advice already published on the government’s existing household guidance (first published in May 2024). ‘Be Ready’ is essentially the government’s existing ‘Prepare’ website rebranded with some new messaging, the government said.

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The UK’s Push For War With Russia Continues: Fishing Trawlers Are The Latest Excuse

Britain is building a case for another confrontation with Russia – this time a large fleet of fishing boats.

The Telegraph reported that Russian trawlers are mapping the seabed where many of the UK’s undersea cables travel. The paper’s analysis of four and a half years’ of satellite tracking data from Global Fishing Watch revealed that more than 500 incidents had been logged in which Russian vessels operated above, or followed the routes of, cables connecting the UK to Europe and the US. Of these, 17 ships had been tracked hovering in the same area for long periods at low speed in regions where cables ran through charted routes.

The examples given by the Telegraph are specific and detailed. For example, Ship A turned up near nine separate cables. North of Scotland, Russian fishing boats logged 337 hours over the Atlantic Crossing 1 cable, 322 of them in April 2023. Ship B crossed the Hibernia Express cable several times and sat for nearly an hour at under two knots. Ship C followed a decommissioned cable for 10 miles, reversed course, then slowed over Google’s Grace Hopper cable and the Amitie cable linking the UK to France and Spain.

Again, there is no proof of interference or damage to any cable. As ClashReport noted in its summary of the Telegraph findings, tracking data alone does not establish what equipment the boats carried. What’s left is anonymous sourcing and naval speculation. A NATO source told the Telegraph that some of the ships identified in the article “have never seen a single fish on their deck”. A senior naval officer who watched footage of one of the ships identified told the Telegraph that it “could be easily used for other activities to store an uncrewed surface vehicle or remotely operated vehicles (ROVs)”.

The government is presenting it as an urgent threat, to be answered by replacing the 140-year-old Submarine Telegraph Act. The new security measures proposed by the White Paper of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology include up to 14 years in prison and unlimited fines for anyone who intentionally damages cables or pipelines. There will be new security duties placed upon telecoms companies, and the government will be granted new powers to instruct such companies on a national security basis. A 12 week consultation will be held upon the proposals of the new legislation.

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Britain Wants To Punish Microsoft for Being Too Successful

Successful tech companies are being punished—for being successful.

Last week, Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) proposed designating Microsoft as having strategic market status, which would give the government regulator enormous powers to regulate Microsoft and impose specific conduct requirements on product design. A consultation process has begun, with a decision on whether Microsoft will be given strategic market status expected in February 2027.

If the CMA decides to designate Microsoft as having strategic market status, it could intervene in product bundling (how Microsoft packages Teams, Word, Excel, and Copilot together), interoperability (whether Microsoft should make it easier for competing software and AI developers to integrate with its products), cloud licensing (whether Microsoft’s licensing arrangements disadvantage rival cloud providers), and customer switching (whether businesses face unreasonable barriers to leaving Microsoft’s ecosystem) in the United Kingdom.

Bizarrely, the CMA’s fundamental gripe with Microsoft is that it has made its software so interconnected, convenient, and commercially attractive to buy together that competitors struggle to persuade businesses to use anything else. For example, the CMA says that Microsoft offers customers “technology that is useful, secure, easy to deploy and manage, and available at an attractive overall price.” According to its own customer research, Microsoft is seen as “relatively good value for money,” and its bundles are “seen as more cost-effective than buying and managing separate licences.” Because commercial bundling “makes customers less likely to adopt products from alternative providers,” the CMA thinks it must intervene.

Microsoft is not the first tech giant to feel the CMA’s wrath for creating products people like. In 2025, the CMA decided Google had strategic market status in general search and search advertising, giving the regulator the power to impose legally binding requirements on how the company operates. Since then, the CMA has ordered Google to use government-mandated standards for ranking organic search results, provide competitors with tools to access users’ search data, and give publishers greater control over how their content is used in AI-powered search. (These requirements were imposed without finding that Google had violated competition law.)

“Products working well together at an attractive price used to be called a selling point,” but is now “attracting intervention pushed by an overzealous regulator,” Matthew Lesh, public policy fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a London-based free market think tank, tells Reason. Lesh is the co-author of Digital Overload, a 2023 report that warns against giving the CMA “extensive, discretionary powers” amounting to the regulator “telling some of the most successful and popular platforms on the planet how to run their businesses.”

Lesh argues that including Copilot, Microsoft’s AI chatbot, in the designation is “particularly outrageous.” Last year, when Google was designated as having strategic market status, the CMA excluded Gemini because the “AI assistant sector is relatively small, nascent, and highly dynamic.” Lesh argues that, with Google, the CMA acknowledged “uncertainty about the market’s development,” but now “proposes sweeping Microsoft’s workplace AI into a designation requiring an assessment looking at least five years ahead.”

“Five years ago, ChatGPT didn’t exist. Anyone confident about who will lead workplace AI in 2031 should be running a hedge fund, not a regulator,” he tells Reason.

While European countries have taken a far more interventionist approach to technology, the United States has, at least comparatively, celebrated competition and innovation. But American lawmakers are increasingly flirting with importing similar restrictions on Big Tech.

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Army Chief Warns Britons Must Make Sacrifices For Coming War

General Sir Roly Walker, Chief of the Army General Staff in the UK, has declared that Britons will be required to make sacrifices for their country in a coming war.

He addressed around 700 soldiers at Catterick Garrison and laid out the coming reality in plain terms. “You didn’t know this, but our nation is going to need you,” he said. “There was a time that our nation didn’t want to think of a time when it would need its soldiers to fight in a war. Indeed, very soon, the political leaders of this country will start to have a frank conversation with the citizens of this country about just what is going on and where the risk lies.”

He continued that citizens “have got to consent to sacrifices to prioritise defence and security” and that they will be asked “to play a part in the defence and security of this country.” Ultimately, he said, the public must “back us, to back you to do the one thing that you do that nobody else gets to do and that is to take the fight to the enemy.”

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“We’re Really in Trouble Here”: British Commentator’s Powerful Reality Check About Islam’s Special Protection and the Death of Free Speech in the UK

Ada Akpala, a writer, YouTuber, broadcaster, and commentator, recently appeared as a panelist on the GB News show Patrick Christys Tonight.

In the clip, she discusses free speech in the UK, contrasting the treatment of criticism of Christianity versus Islam, referencing issues such as two-tier policing and the cultural/religious double standards that exist in the UK.

Akpala, “I currently live in a country that I can burn a Bible, I can spit on a Bible, I can stamp on a Bible, and I’ll go about my day.”

“If I burn a Quran, the law might not even be on my side, as we saw with the Turkish asylum seeker.”

“I live in a country today that I can say anything I want on this show right now about Jesus. None of you will attack me.”

“But if I said something about Muhammad, I’ll probably put myself, and even those here who are on screen with me, at risk.”

“Have you heard from the Batley teacher yet? No.”

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Nurse Deemed ‘Not Disabled Enough’ For Payout After COVID Jab Paralysis

An NHS nurse in the UK has been denied compensation despite being permanently damaged by a COVID vaccine during a trial.

Marie-Claire Hoyle, who volunteered for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial in 2020 developed transverse myelitis two weeks after her second dose, temporarily shutting down the global trial.

The qualified advanced nurse practitioner and NHS England’s network manager for high-consequence infectious diseases, lost the use of her hands, became numb from collarbone to thigh, and still carries permanent spinal cord damage visible on MRI. The Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme acknowledged the vaccine caused her condition yet refused the £120,000 one-off payment because her disability improved below the rigid 60% lifelong threshold.

Hoyle that’s related how she was on shift when pain hit her neck and spine, spreading within an hour into her shoulders and hands. “I lost the ability to use my hands, I couldn’t hold a pen, I couldn’t hold a toothbrush. I was completely numb from my collarbone down to my thigh level because the signals from my spine and brain had been damaged.”

An MRI confirmed transverse myelitis. The trial paused worldwide while her case was assessed; she survived and recovered enough for it to resume. Permanent damage remains. “I’ve had an MRI since and there is still damage in my spinal cord, which will never heal. I have really poor grip in my fingertips, so I constantly drop things. I still have nerve pain down the left side of my arm and numbness across my central chest and that will never resolve,” she further stated.

She received a high five-figure out-of-court settlement from Oxford University. The VDPS, however, ruled she no longer qualified. “They acknowledged that the vaccine caused my transverse myelitis, based on the evidence I supplied with all my medical records, and at the time I was seriously harmed on a value of up to 60%. However, they said: ‘You aren’t now, so you don’t need the payment.'”

Hoyle, a mother of three who later had her youngest vaccinated and says she continues to support vaccines in principle, wants a scalable system matching actual ongoing harm rather than an all-or-nothing cutoff.

AstraZeneca later withdrew its Vaxzevria vaccine worldwide in 2024, officially citing commercial reasons and the shift to updated formulations. The company had already admitted in court documents that the shot can cause thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome. Kate Scott, whose husband was left with permanent brain injury, said the decision looked less commercial and more like recognition that the product no longer sat “within the acceptable safety parameters,” given 445 confirmed VITT cases and 81 deaths in the UK alone. The company maintained the vaccine had saved over 6.5 million lives in its first year.

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British Government Reportedly Plotting Internet Tax to Prop Up BBC

The left-wing UK government is reportedly planning to introduce an internet tax to prop up the financially struggling BBC public broadcaster.

Currently, everyone who watches broadcast television in Britain must pay the government an £180 ($239) annual licence fee, whether they watch the BBC or not. The fee was originally used to fund the BBC’s radio broadcasts, but was later expanded to incorporate TV following the Second World War. Now, amid the rise of streaming services, the left-wing Labour Party government is said to be planning on extending the effective tax to the internet.

According to The Independent, which cited a Whitehall source, plans to change the BBC’s charter will be made public before Christmas, with the present agreement set to expire in December of next year.

The source said the so-called “YouTube tax” will be imposed on internet-based video platforms to stop people from avoiding the television licence fee by watching content on computers, phones, or tablets. This comes as about two million people have stopped paying the BBC television licence fee over the past five years, and 539,000 over the past year, up to April.

If the government imposed an internet fee, an estimated three to four million more people would likely be on the hook to fund the BBC. Yet this would still likely be insufficient to meet the broadcaster’s budget shortfalls.

Nevertheless, the civil service source told the Independent that the additional money could be spent countering “conspiracy theories and fake news” that they claimed helped Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party rise in working-class regions of Britain.

This negative attitude by the civil service and the BBC towards Reform may reflect the party’s vow to abolish the BBC licence fee altogether and force the broadcaster to compete on an even footing with private media.

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