Tag: united kingdom

Man ‘given no choice’ over trowel arrest caution

A man who was cautioned for carrying a bladed trowel in public has said he was given no choice but to accept the reprimand because police were unable to contact a solicitor for him.

Armed police were sent to challenge Samuel Rowe as he walked home from his allotment in Chorlton, Manchester, carrying the tool, a peeling knife and a sickle.

The 35-year-old theatre manager said he was held for 12 hours, before being told he had to accept the caution without representation or face longer in custody.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said Mr Rowe had admitted possessing a “dagger” and was given a conditional caution, which entailed advice about the law on the carrying of bladed weapons in public.

The keen gardener said he was terrified when the armed officers, who did not draw their weapons, arrived outside his home on 3 July.

He said the officers were shouting at him to “drop the knife”.

“I said I didn’t have a knife and they told me to drop the knife again,” he said.

“So I dropped my Japanese hand gardening sickle and a handful of privet that I just cut off the hedge.

“They turned me around, pushed me up against my house, handcuffed me, then put me in the back of a van.”

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US Plan To Copy UK’s Disastrous Online Digital ID Verification Is Winning Friends in the Senate

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is moving forward in the US Senate with 16 new co-sponsors as of July 31, 2025, reviving a proposal that copies the same type of provision found in the UK’s controversial Online Safety Act, which has caused much backlash across the Atlantic.

In Britain, that measure forces online platforms to implement digital ID age checks before granting access to content deemed “harmful,” a policy that has caused intense resentment over privacy violations, the erosion of anonymity, and government overreach in the realm of free speech.

Now, US lawmakers are considering a similar framework, with more senators from both parties throwing their support behind the bill in recent weeks.

Marketed as a way to shield children from harmful online material, KOSA has gained prominent backing from Apple, which has publicly praised it as a step toward improving online safety. Yet beyond the reassuring branding, the legislation contains provisions that raise serious concerns for free expression and user privacy.

If enacted, the bill would give the Federal Trade Commission authority to investigate and sue platforms over content labeled as “harmful” to minors. This would push websites toward aggressive content moderation to avoid liability, creating an environment where speech is heavily filtered without the government ever issuing direct censorship orders.

The legislation also instructs the Secretary of Commerce, FTC, and FCC to explore “systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.” Such a mandate paves the way for nationwide digital identification, where every user’s online activity could be tied to a verifiable real-world identity.

Once anonymity is removed, the scope for surveillance and profiling expands dramatically, with personal data stored and potentially exploited by both corporations and government agencies.

Advocates of a free and open internet warn that laws like KOSA exploit the emotional appeal of child safety to introduce infrastructure that enables ongoing monitoring and identity tracking. Even with recent changes, such as removing state attorneys general from enforcement, these core concerns remain.

Senator Marsha Blackburn defended the bill, stating, “Big Tech platforms have shown time and time again they will always prioritize their bottom line over the safety of our children.” Yet KOSA’s structure could end up reinforcing the dominance of large tech firms, which are best positioned to implement costly verification systems and handle the resulting data.

The bill’s earlier version stalled in the House after leadership, including Speaker Mike Johnson, questioned its impact on free speech. Johnson remarked that he “love[s] the principle, but the details of that are very problematic,” a sentiment still shared by many who view KOSA as a gateway to lasting restrictions on online freedoms.

If this legislation moves forward, it will not simply affect what minors can view; it will alter the fundamental architecture of the internet, embedding identity verification and top-down content control into its design.

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UK Government Used ‘Accountancy Trick’ To Hide 90% of Cost of Giving Away Strategic Islands: Report

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer stands accused of using an “accountancy trick” to mislead the public over the true cost of giving away British Islands hosting a strategic U.S. airbase in the Pacific Ocean.

The true cost of giving away a chain of strategic islands in the Pacific is £35 billion ($46bn), not £3.4 ($4.5bn) as the government attempted to claim, a report states. The Prime Minister has been accused of misleading Parliament over the figures.

The British Indian Ocean Territory was given away by the British government to Mauritius, a country with questionable links to the Islands  but which nevertheless successful in using the International Court of Justice and the United Nations to award itself a claim, earlier this year. This plan, pushed through by international law extremist Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in spite of widely-discussed concerns about the wisdom of handing over such a strategic asset to an African state increasingly drifting towards China’s orbit, and the exorbitant cost.

Under the terms of the deal, the UK handed over the land under the Diego Garcia airbase, a joint UK-U.S. facility which is crucial for military reach across the Middle East and Asia as well as intelligence interception, and will lease it back for 99 years. Starmer’s government defended this expense on the grounds that it was good value for money and not even nearly as expensive as claimed. While the government said the deal would cost £3.4 billion, the Conservative opposition claimed it was more like £30 billion.

Now it is claimed an “accountancy trick” to hide the cash figure of giving away British islands from the public has been revealed. The Daily Telegraph states documents gained from civil service actuaries show the Starmer government knew the true cost of the deal all along but this was reduced from £34.7 billion using inflation estimates and a “controversial accounting method sometimes used for long-term projects”, the Social Time Preference Rate.

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UK speech police could break Wikipedia, keep punishing Christian expression: critics

From crowdsourced Wikipedia entries to public religious expression, the United Kingdom’s speech regulation is drawing alarm on both sides of the pond for its potential and actual effects on shared knowledge and conscience rights at home and abroad.

The U.K. High Court knocked down a challenge to the Online Safety Act by the U.S.-based Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, on the grounds that it must wait for the Office of Communications to actually subject Wikipedia to “Category 1,” which would strip the anonymity underlying its volunteer model for creating and editing entries.

While some observers warn the ruling Monday could lead Wikipedia to go dark in the U.K., the nonprofit looked for the silver lining, noting Justice Jeremy Johnson said Ofcom and the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology do not have “a green light to implement a regime that would significantly impede Wikipedia’s operations.”

Swiss-based Proton VPN promoted its “anti-censorship” virtual private network services to circumvent the law, given that the “government could soon be asking its citizens to provide ID to access Wikipedia … Created to ‘protect children online,’ the OSA is increasing censorship for everyone.”

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales told BBC Newsnight that “forums for self-help” including a “stop-drinking app” now have to block U.K. users who refuse to identify themselves in line with the law, which he called a “human rights violation” that is not “reining in Big Tech.” He’s also promoting VPNs, or virtual private networks, to circumvent the law. 

His co-founder, Larry Sanger, has been a vocal critic of Wikipedia’s alleged capture by the “woke” left for years and has even called for some recourse for people it defames. American conservatives have aggressively targeted it for biased though decentralized editorial decisions such as trashing President Trump’s Cabinet nominees.

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Push To Cut Livestock For Climate Goals (Due To Burping & Farting) Worries UK Farmers, Ecologists

UK government advisers have urged deep cuts to the country’s cattle and sheep numbers to reduce the overall levels of methane emissions.

Officials insist no mass cull is planned.

But farmers are concerned that it’s part of a growing push to reduce livestock levels, which could sacrifice traditional grazing and damage the fragile ecosystems it supports. 

The UK’s net-zero policies go further than those of the European Commission, where cattle farms remain outside regulatory crosshairs until next year.

In February, the UK’s independent adviser on climate action, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), whose advice strongly guides government policy, recommended a 27 percent decrease in cattle and sheep numbers by 2040 in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the UK government, agriculture is the country’s largest source of domestic methane emissions, accounting for 49 percent of total emissions. Of this, around 85 percent of agricultural methane comes from cows and other ruminant animals through enteric fermentation and is released as mostly burps but also flatulence.

One discussed option in the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee’s 2024 report as a mitigation strategy included “reducing ruminant livestock numbers, enabled by dietary change and reduced food waste.”

‘It’s Completely Backwards’

Britain’s livestock farms, which are mostly grass-based, are integrated into the iconic patchwork countryside, with sheep and cattle grazing in open fields divided by hedgerows and stone walls as part of a complex natural ecosystem.

Alan Hughes, a fourth-generation tenant farmer who is part of the Farmers to Action agricultural rights campaign, told The Epoch Times that wider net-zero proposals on livestock ignore the ecological function of grazing.

“It’s completely backwards to stop grazing. It causes fires, which then releases far more CO₂ than the livestock sequence by grazing,” he said.

He added that without sheep grazing, “sheep don’t eat the dry matter,” which then turns to kindling.

“This then starts wildfires, from the peat and from the crops which should have been eaten by the sheep, which causes a massive release of CO₂,” he said.

Beyond fire risk, Hughes said that reducing livestock also damages food security and degrades natural ecosystems.

“The biggest issue we’re going to have before long is not enough protein to feed our population, which is why they’re looking at bugs,” he said.

“If they force us to do more, I call it ‘less natural’ ways of production. If you don’t have livestock grazing, you don’t have the manure or improve the biodiversity of soil, and that’s when you get soil erosion, which causes deserts, or you’re forced to do vegetable crops.

“Now, when you plow up a field for vegetable crops, you kill the root structure of grass. Now that then turns to methane and carbon dioxide, which is actually released.”

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Age-Restricted Taxi Tracking? The Absurd Consequences Of Britain’s Online Safety Act

I was recently travelling in the UK and, after a lot of sightseeing on foot, decided to order a taxi to go back to my hotel.

I searched the internet for a local taxi firm and found one with relative ease. I called the number and went through an automated process which worked well. I managed to book a taxi quickly. The computer-generated voice told me that my taxi was on its way. I was sent a link so that I could monitor the progress of my taxi. The message also said that I would know the taxi driver’s name and the type of vehicle and registration number that was on its way….

I can’t understand why anyone would consider a link to show you the progress of a taxi that you have ordered to be age-inappropriate content.

I can only assume that it is to do with the recent Online Safety Act, although coincidentally I had recently changed mobile providers, so it might purely have been that the mobile provider that I’d switched to had a different standard as to what was considered adult content.

I doubt this on the basis that the company I moved to, Talkmobile, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the company I had used previously, Vodafone, and, as you can see, the block was from Vodafone.

Whoever has decided that this link contains age-restricted content hasn’t necessarily thought this through.

Consider the scenario where a 17 year-old girl can’t get hold of her parents and it’s too far away or she does not want to walk home, so she orders a taxi through a reputable taxi service.

A link is sent to her so she can see the progress of the taxi that she has ordered.

Of course, she can’t open it because it’s considered age-inappropriate and, being only 17, she’s not in a position to prove that she’s over 18 and thus get the link to the taxi.

Thankfully it’s rare, but we do know that there are predators out there who will look for people who are vulnerable, and it’s not difficult to spot someone who’s waiting for somebody to pick them up or waiting for a taxi, because every time a car approaches the person will look up from whatever they’re doing to see if it’s the car that’s picking them up.

All it would take would be for a predator to be around at that time, pull the window down and say, “Did you call for a taxi?” and, of course, because she’s just ordered one, she believes this is her taxi, so she gets in, perhaps never to be seen again — all because some moron has decided that a link to follow the progress of a taxi is something you’re not allowed to see if you’re under the age of 18.

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UK Announces Plans for Immediate Deportation of Migrant Criminals

British Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced plans to pass legislation allowing for the immediate deportation of foreign criminals from the United Kingdom.

Amid increasing anger over the ramifications of the mass migration agenda imposed on the country by both Westminster establishment parties, the left-wing Labour government said on Saturday that part of its “Plan for Change” will see migrant criminals deported and barred from return rather than allowing them to serve their sentences in Britain.

The planned legislation would potentially mean that foreign convicts could avoid jail time altogether if their country of origin refuses to enforce the sentence handed down by a UK court, the BBC noted.

While most foreign convicts would become immediately eligible for deportation — down from the current standard of having served at least half their sentence in a British jail, murderers, terrorists, and anyone else deemed to pose a national security threat would not be eligible for removal until they served their full term behind bars in the UK.

At present, around 12 per cent of Britain’s prison population is comprised of foreign offenders, or over 10,000 migrants. According to the government, each prisoner costs the taxpayer an average of £54,000 per year.

In addition to alleviating costs, the move would potentially free up badly needed space in the nation’s prisons, which have been running at near capacity for years.

Indeed, during last summer’s anti-mass migration riots and protests in the wake of the Southport mass stabbing, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s government controversially released prisoners early to make space for those convicted in connection to the riots, including some who merely made posts on social media.

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UK Government Warns Against VPNs, Caught Using Them Themselves

The UK’s technology secretary urged citizens to think twice before using virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass the country’s new oppressive online digital ID checks, framing it as a matter of child safety. His comments have landed awkwardly, given that many MPs, including senior ministers, rely on taxpayer-funded VPN subscriptions themselves.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Peter Kyle warned: “For everybody out there who’s thinking about using VPNs, let me say this to you directly: verifying your age keeps a child safe. Keeps children safe in our country, so let’s just not try to find a way around.”

Politico reported that official spending records show parliamentarians across party lines have been billing the public for commercial VPN services.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds charged taxpayers for a two-year NordVPN subscription in April 2024.

Labour MP Sarah Champion, who in 2022 pressed the government to investigate whether teenage VPN use could undermine online safety rules, also has a subscription on record.

The government says it has no intention of outlawing VPNs but admits it is monitoring how young people use them. This comes after a sharp increase in downloads following the rollout of mandatory digital ID checks under the new censorship law, the Online Safety Act.

For security experts, VPNs are not a subversive tool but a vital one.

The real danger lies in the age verification industry itself.

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Dealer’s Talking Parrot Helps Police Nail Entire Drug Ring

A British drug ring was busted and its members jailed after police found the next best thing to a stool pigeon.

Mango, a pet parrot, became vital evidence through his vocabulary lessons after police arrested multiple members of a drug gang in Blackpool, according to ITV.

Fifteen people in all, including a man who ran a drug dealing operation from prison, were convicted in an investigation that got its big break when cell phones were discovered in the prison cell of Adam Garnett, the ringleader, according to a post from Lancashire police on their website.

From those phones, police were able to identify his contacts, which included Shannon Hilton, Garnett’s girlfriend. Videos found on her phone became important evidence that led to multiple convictions.

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Muslim Rape Gangs: The most sustained and complete race-based crime in British history

The Muslim rape gangs have been the most sustained and complete race-based crime in British history.

The mass rape of children by “grooming gangs” has been ongoing for decades, with tens of thousands of victims.  Despite reports and inquiries, no significant action has been taken against those responsible.   

Instead, it has been met with denial, deflection and trivialisation.  There have been no high-profile resignations or sackings of police chiefs, council officials or Members of Parliament (“MPs”).  Worse still, the British establishment has enabled and apologised for Pakistani Muslim rapists.

It’s estimated that 1 in 11 Pakistani descent men in the UK have taken part in child rapes, with recorded rapes increasing tenfold in the last 20 years.  Yet, the government is increasingly censoring discussion of the issue, with laws like the Online Harms Act and Crime and Policing Act allowing for imprisonment of those who speak out about the mass rapes, such as Tommy Robinson.

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