Tag: united kingdom

Rental ads detected in London excluding applicants based on religion and offering “Muslims only” housing, a practice under scrutiny for potential illegality under UK law

A new controversy has emerged in London after the discovery of rental listings that explicitly restrict access to housing based on religion. Several ads published on digital platforms and social media include phrases such as “Muslims only” or “Muslim girls only,” raising concerns about discrimination and legal compliance.

This is not an isolated case. Independent reviews have identified multiple examples of such listings, prompting legal experts to warn of potential violations of the Equality Act 2010, which governs equal treatment in the United Kingdom. The law clearly prohibits discrimination in housing based on religion, among other protected characteristics.

The issue lies in a particularly sensitive legal area. On one hand, the principle is clear: landlords cannot exclude tenants based on their faith. On the other, limited exceptions exist in shared housing situations, where lifestyle compatibility may be considered.

This is where ambiguity arises. Some listings may relate to rooms within occupied homes, where landlords seek tenants who align with certain customs or religious practices. However, legal experts emphasize that explicitly stating religious exclusion in advertisements can still breach the law.

The growth of digital platforms has made it easier for such listings to circulate without prior oversight. Online marketplaces, social media groups, and rental apps allow users to publish ads instantly, complicating enforcement efforts.

This trend comes amid intense pressure on London’s housing market. Limited supply and rising costs have created conditions where demand far exceeds availability, opening the door to irregular practices.

Equality advocacy groups are now calling for stronger institutional action. They argue that allowing discriminatory listings, even sporadically, risks normalizing behavior that undermines legal standards.

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UK Blocks Entry for Anti-Islam Politician

The Home Office’s decision to block Valentina Gomez from entering the UK ahead of a next month’s London rally has re-opened the debate over free speech and government overreach. Gomez, a US-based anti-Islam commentator, had planned to speak at the “Unite the Kingdom” march on 16 May. However, the Home Office has now revoked her electronic travel authorisation, saying her presence is “not conducive to the public good”. The ban followed pressure from Muslim organisations and political figures who pointed to her previous remarks on muslims and immigration.

Gomez is a 26-year-old Christian conservative originally from Colombia. Last week, her Electronic Travel Authorisation was approved, but the Home Office revoked her permit on April 20th. Reports suggest that officials acted after renewed scrutiny of remarks she made during a similar appearance in London in 2025, where she delivered “inflammatory” comments about Islam and immigration. It’s also reported that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood personally intervened to revoke the permission.

In its April 17 open letter, the Muslim Council of Britain urged the Home Secretary to revoke Valentina Gomez’s entry permission on the grounds that allowing her into the UK to speak at a Tommy Robinson rally showed “double standards” in how the government applies freedom of speech and entry rules. The MCB argued that Gomez’s past anti-Islam rhetoric risked making the UK’s streets “less safe”, and said others had previously been denied entry for inflammatory remarks aimed at different faith groups, making her case appear inconsistent by comparison. Its core case was therefore not only that Gomez was divisive, but that admitting her would signal uneven enforcement of the public-interest test used in immigration decisions.

The “Unite the Kingdom” marches have become a focal point for a growing anti-establishment constituency centred on immigration, Islam, public disorder and distrust of political institutions. The European Conservative reported that more than 100,000 people attended the September 2025 London march, presenting it as one of the largest demonstrations of its kind in recent years, though crowd figures at such events are often disputed.

The decision to exclude Gomez sits awkwardly with the UK’s self-image as a country committed to open political speech. It is one thing to prosecute criminal conduct or incitement; it is another to use border powers to decide which foreign political voices may be heard on contentious public questions. Once that principle is applied, the state is no longer merely keeping order. It is deciding, in advance, which arguments are too dangerous to enter the country. That is a serious threshold for a liberal democracy to cross.

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Facial recognition to be ‘rolled out’ across UK after human rights challenge fails

Facial recognition systems will be introduced across the country, the government has said as it welcomed the failure of a legal challenge to the technology.

The case against the Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial recognition technology (LFT) in London was brought by two people over concerns it could be used arbitrarily or in a discriminatory way.

The cameras are usually mounted on vans in busy high streets and designed to identify people on police watchlists if they pass by.

Youth worker Shaun Thompson, one of the claimants, said he was misidentified by the technology. The other person bringing the claim was Silkie Carlo, from the group Big Brother Watch.

Their lawyer told the High Court that LFT would also make it “impossible” for Londoners to travel without their biometric data being taken.

But judges ruled on Tuesday that the claimants’ human rights had not been breached and the force’s policy gave “adequate indication of the circumstances in which LFR will be used”.

They also said the argument the technology risked discriminating against people due to their race had not been convincing.

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British universities paid security firm to ‘spy’ on pro-Palestine students

Twelve British universities paid a private firm run by former military intelligence officials to “spy” on student protesters and academics, including those who have expressed solidarity with Palestine, it can be revealed.

A joint investigation by Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates has uncovered evidence that Horus Security Consultancy Limited trawled through student social media feeds and conducted secret counter-terror threat assessments on behalf of some of Britain’s most elite institutions.

Horus, which describes itself as a “leading intelligence” firm, has been paid at least 440,000 pounds ($594,000) by universities since 2022.

Among those monitored were a Palestinian academic invited to give a guest lecture at Manchester Metropolitan University and a pro-Gaza PhD student at the London School of Economics, according to internal documents.

In October 2024, the University of Bristol provided the firm with a list of student protest groups it wished to receive alerts about, an internal university email suggests. It included pro-Palestinian and animal rights activists.

In total, 12 universities paid the firm to monitor campus protest activity. Others include the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, University College London (UCL), King’s College London (KCL), the University of Sheffield, the University of Leicester, the University of Nottingham and Cardiff Metropolitan University.

There is no suggestion that this activity is illegal.

These findings have come to light after Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates submitted freedom of information (FOI) requests to more than 150 universities.

All the institutions named in this article were approached for comment by Al Jazeera and Liberty Investigates.

The University of Oxford, UCL, KCL, the University of Leicester and the University of Nottingham did not respond to requests for comment.

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London Sees THIRD Attack on Jewish Sites in a Week, as Attempted Arsonist Targets Synagogue

UK Jews are in increasing danger.

An attempted arson attack targeted a synagogue in North London overnight, as the incidents multiply in Labour-led Britain.

It’s the third occurrence at Jewish sites in the capital this week, and it comes in the context of 3,700 antisemitic incidents recorded in the United Kingdom in 2025.

The UK establishment and the lying MSM will blame the military confrontations in the Middle East for this state of things – but, in fact, these attacks are the direct result of their own suicidal ‘unchecked mass migration’ policies.

CBS News reported:

“The fire caused minor smoke damage to a room at Kenton United Synagogue in Harrow, London, according to the Community Security Trust, which provides safety advice to Jewish groups. No injuries were reported.”

Metropolitan Police officers noticed damage to the window of the Synagogue, and saw smoke inside a room, with evidence that a bottle with accelerant had been thrown through the window.

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Divers & police dogs join Hazmat cops’ probe after ‘drones carrying radioactive material target Israeli Embassy’

POLICE dogs and divers have been deployed to central London as cops probe footage of drones “carrying radioactive substances targeting the Israeli Embassy”.

Cops in hazmat suits, divers and fire brigade dogs have been called in to join the search as officers investigate “discarded items” in the popular Kensington Gardens.


Counter terror cops are investigating claims an Iran-linked group targeted the nearby Embassy of Israel with drones “carrying dangerous substances”.

Metropolitan Police divers and London Fire Brigade’s investigation dogs have since arrived in the park and are assisting a search of the area.

Scotland Yard’s chemical biological radiological nuclear van (CBRN) is also on the scene.

As the investigation continued police divers arrived in a large white lorry with a police search and recovery team also assisting the probe.

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Belgium seizes arms shipment sent from Britain to Israel

Two shipments from Britain of military components bound for Israel have been seized in Belgium, which has banned aircaft carrying military equipment for Israel from stopping in the country or using its airspace. 

Last month, the British news website Declassified, Belgian NGO Vredesactie, Irish news website The Ditch, and the Palestinian Youth Movement alerted authorities in Brussells of a shipment travelling from Britain to Israel through Liege airport. 

The consignments left Britain on 23 March and were siezed at Liege airport in Belgium on 24 March.

They were searched by a specialised engineer who found “fire control systems and spare parts for military aircraft”, which had not been properly declared.

Belgian authorities reportedly opened a criminal investigation into the affair but have declined to name the firms involved in the complaint.

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UK Southport Inquiry Pushes Mass Surveillance and VPN Restrictions

On July 29 2024, a teenager walked into a children’s Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England, and murdered three young girls with a knife. He injured ten others.

It was, by any measure, one of the most horrifying attacks on British soil in recent memory, and what followed should have been a reckoning with the catastrophic state failures that let it happen.

Instead, the British government looked at the smoldering aftermath and decided the real enemy was the internet, and the solution just so happens to be the mass surveillance censorship proposals the government is already working on.

After the attack, outrage on social media turned to protests. Protests became riots. And the state’s response landed with a speed and ferocity that it had never managed to direct at, say, the agencies that let a known danger walk free for years.

A former childcarer named Lucy Connolly was jailed for 31 months for a single post on X. That is three months longer than the sentence given to a man who physically attacked a mosque during the same period of unrest.

The UK was already a country where arrests for “offensive” social media posts had nearly doubled in seven years, climbing from 5,502 in 2017 to 12,183 in 2023. The overall conviction rate for those arrests was falling at the same time. Police were locking people up for what they typed at a rate that was going up, while the number of convictions that actually stuck was going down.

The Southport riots became the accelerant. A House of Commons Home Affairs Committee report used the unrest to call for a “new national system for policing” with enhanced capabilities to surveil social media activity, framing public anger as a problem of online “misinformation” rather than a consequence of the state’s own failures.

The state was dodging accountability by demanding censorship and surveillance and blaming the internet for unrest.

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This Is Why Law Firms Are Telling Asylum Seekers to Pretend They Are Gay

Law firms are helping migrants remain in the United Kingdom by having them pretend to be gay so they can get asylum status.

A BBC News investigation uncovered the scheme, revealing how migrants are claiming to be homosexual so they can convince the authorities that they will be persecuted if they are sent back to their home countries.

In the first part of a major undercover investigation, we reveal how migrants whose visas are due to run out are being given fake cover stories and instructed in how to obtain fabricated evidence, including supporting letters, photographs and medical reports.

They then apply for asylum claiming to be gay and in fear for their lives if they return to Pakistan or Bangladesh.

In response to our findings, the Home Office said: “Anyone found trying to exploit the system will face the full force of the law, including removal from the UK.”

The UK’s asylum process offers protection to people who can’t return to their home countries because they would be in danger, for example in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh where gay sex is illegal.

But the BBC News investigation reveals the process is being systematically exploited by legal advisers extracting fees from migrants who want to stay in the country.

These are often people whose student, work or tourist visas have expired, rather than those who have just arrived in the country on small boats or through other illegal routes.

This group now makes up 35% of all asylum claims, which topped 100,000 in 2025.

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Five hundred more pro-Palestine protesters arrested in UK despite High Court ruling

Another 523 arrests were made in Britain on Saturday of people carrying placards with the words: “I oppose genocide; I support Palestine Action”.

The protesters were participating in Saturday’s “Everyone” demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London, organised by civil liberties organisation Defend Our Juries, challenging the ban on direct action group Palestine Action. Their ages ranging from 18 to 87 years old, demonstrators were all arrested under counter-terror laws on suspicion of indicating support for a proscribed organisation.

Over 3,300 people have now been arrested on these charges during various protests since Palestine Action was outlawed by the Labour government in June-July last year.

The latest mass roundup takes place after the UK’s High Court has ruled the proscription of Palestine Action unlawful. The government’s appeal is due to be heard this month, on April 28 and 29 and the arrests are clearly meant to back an overturn of the original verdict.

A Defend Our Juries spokesperson commented, “The Met are choosing to make arrests despite the government’s ban on the group being ruled unlawful by the High Court, and leading lawyers warning that any arrests would be unlawful.”

This criticism was echoed by Tom Southerden, Amnesty International UK’s Law and Human Rights Director, who said, “Today’s mass arrests of peaceful protesters in Trafalgar Square under UK terrorism law are yet another blow to civil liberties in this country—and made all the more outrageous by the Metropolitan Police’s own U-turn.

“The High Court ruled in February that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful. The Met rightly said it would stop making arrests.”

The about turn took place on March 25, with the Met issuing a statement claiming it had only paused arrests while it became clear whether the government would be granted the right to appeal.

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