Tag: united kingdom

UK: Ofcom-Backed Study Could Be Part of a Push to Extend “Impartiality” Rules to Online Media

A government-funded research campaign spearheaded by Ofcom and Cardiff University will raise red flags among free speech advocates, as it aims to scrutinize the so-called impartiality of political news coverage across UK media.

This expansive project, backed by £755,625 ($1,028M) in public funds from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), specifically includes online and broadcast outlets and coincides with the run-up to the 2024/25 general election.

Though framed as an academic endeavor, the collaboration involves not only researchers but a cadre of mainstream broadcasters with longstanding ties to government regulation.

These include the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky News, and ITN. Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator and enforcer of the wide-reaching and controversial online censorship law, the Online Safety Act, is a central partner.

The project description emphasizes “challenging but urgent questions” about how political coverage is presented to the public and hints at future interventions under the pretense of raising editorial standards.

Cardiff University, which is leading the study, openly states that it intends to “identify where editorial standards can be raised to better inform…audiences.”

While no explicit call for regulatory changes is made, the language closely mirrors the justification often used to extend oversight, particularly toward newer or nonconforming media platforms.

The announcement states that “accusations of so-called media bias abound, often fuelled by edited clips circulating across online and social media platforms rather than scientific studies of news reporting.”

Impartiality rules enforced by Ofcom have repeatedly been used as tools to investigate and sanction broadcasters like GB News and TalkTV which have a large online presence.

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ULTIMATE ESCALATION: United Kingdom and France To Work Together on ‘Nuclear Deterrence’ to ‘Protect Europe’

If France and the UK can’t even tackle illegal migration on the channel, how will they manage to ‘defend Europe’?

When it comes to France and the United Kingdom, we feel tempted almost to describe them as ‘the former European powers’, because while they’re still the two nuclear-armed nations in the continent, generations of Liberalism/Globalism have turned both countries into pale imitations of the ones that emerged victorious in WW2.

Their current political leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, have many things in common: complete adherence to Globalist failed policies, a constant push for military escalation in the continent, an obsession with Ukraine, frayed societies on the brink of collapse – and very, very bad popularity numbers.

They also have proved that they can’t work well together – they haven’t been able to accomplish the relatively minor task of tackling the small boat invasion of illegals to the UK from French beaches.

But now, during Macron’s state visit to London, they have announced plans to do something much harder: to coordinate their use of nuclear weapons for the first time to defend Europe from ‘extreme’ threats.

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Net Zero to Cost Taxpayers £800 Billion, Warns OBR

Britain’s move to a Net Zero economy will cost taxpayers more than £800 billion over the next two decades, the OBR – the UK’s fiscal watchdog – has said. But even this is based on implausibly generous assumptions, say critics. The Telegraph has the story.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said Government plans to limit climate change will cost the public purse £30 billion every year until at least 2051, as tax revenue from the sale of petrol and diesel fuel dries up.

This includes nearly £9.9 billion of spending every year on tech investments – for example updating the electricity grid – as well as £20.5 billion in revenue losses from declining fuel duty from petrol cars, as electric vehicles (EV) become more common.

Investments in green technology will initially make up most of the Net Zero cost before lost tax receipts become the bigger factor, the OBR said.

“In the next decade, expenditure accounts for the bulk of the fiscal cost, particularly public investment in residential buildings, removals and surface transport, which start to decline from 2036 to 2037,” it said.

While the sums are significant, the fiscal cost of Net Zero has been revised down from £1.1 trillion since the OBR last reviewed it in 2021. The watchdog said this was because of fuel duty freezes leading to lower lost receipts and a higher-than-expected uptake of EVs.

It also assumes the Government will spend less on the transition after the Climate Change Committee revised down the costs across the whole of the economy.

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London is the Testing Lab for Big Brother Mass Facial Scanning Tech

Since the start of 2024, the Metropolitan Police has been quietly transforming London into a testing ground for live facial recognition (LFR).

Depending on who you ask, this is either a technological triumph that’s making the capital safer or a mass surveillance experiment that would make any privacy advocate wince.

The numbers are eye-watering: in just over 18 months, the Met has scanned the faces of around 2.4 million people. And from that sea of biometric data, they’ve made 1,035 arrests. That’s a hit rate of 0.04%. Or, to put it plainly, more than 99.9% of those scanned had done absolutely nothing wrong.

The police, of course, are eager to present this as a success story. Lindsey Chiswick, who oversees the Met’s facial recognition program, calls it a game-changer. “This milestone of 1,000 arrests is a demonstration of how cutting-edge technology can make London safer by removing dangerous offenders from our streets,” she said.

Of those arrested, 773 were charged or cautioned. Some were suspects in serious cases, including violent crimes against women and girls.

But here’s where things get complicated. To secure those 1,000 arrests, millions of innocent people have had their faces scanned and processed.

What’s being billed as precision policing can start to look more like casting an enormous net and hoping you catch something worthwhile.

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‘Delete, Silence, Abolish’: America’s estranged allies ramp up perceived censorship, speech rules

Overt government control of the internet is expanding within America’s increasingly estranged allies and threatening to spill over national boundaries, likely renewing earlier confrontations with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the world’s richest man and creator of America’s newest nascent political party.

The European Union last week made its officially voluntary three-year-old “Code of Practice on Disinformation” legally binding under the Digital Services Act. It’s now a “Code of Conduct” to be used as a “relevant benchmark for determining DSA compliance” for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Bing, TikTok, YouTube and Google Search.

These “very large” online platforms and online search engines were already signatories of the 2022 code, whose commitments include taking “stronger measures to demonetise disinformation,” increasing fact-checking across the EU and its languages and improved reduction of “current and emerging manipulative behaviour.”

Australia imposed an age-verification law for harmful content that makes the Texas law recently upheld by the Supreme Court look like a type-your-age prompt, applying to not only pornography but also “violent content” and “themes of suicide, self-harm and disordered eating,” in the words of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.

Last week she registered three of nine “codes” submitted by the online industry, covering “search engine services … enterprise hosting services and internet carriage services such as telcos,” and has sought “additional safety commitments” on remaining codes for “app stores, device manufacturers, social media services and messaging” and broader categories.

The same day, Canada suspended a U.S. tech firm tax to avoid trade recriminations from the Trump administration. Justice Minister Sean Fraser told the Canadian Press that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is taking a “fresh” look at predecessor Justin Trudeau’s proposed Online Harms Act, which went down in Trudeau’s political downfall.

Anti-censorship group Reclaim the Net flagged pressure on Carney’s government to revive C-63, which famed Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson claims would criminalize wrongthink. Trudeau-appointed Senator Kristopher Wells pressed Government Representative Marc Gold to commit to further criminalizing “hate” in a “questions period” last month.

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Bombshell report exposes attempts by Muslim Council of Britain group to censor UK media

The Muslim Council of Britain’s media monitoring unit “acted in bad faith” by trying to suppress accurate reporting about terrorism and risks curtailing press freedom, a bombshell report has claimed.

Policy Exchange tonight released its 94-page report, titled ‘Bad Faith Actor: A study of the Centre for Media Monitoring’, which exposed the organisation’s inadequate methods of documenting Islamophobia and its partisan agenda.

Despite the CfMM claiming that 60 per cent of stories about Muslims are “offending” and negative, Policy Exchange found that just one complaint made by the group resulted in a newspaper being required to make a correction.

Policy Exchange revealed that CfMM, which sat on a working group at press regulator Ipso, counted factual reports of Islamist terror attacks in its 60 per cent figure of Islamophobic journalism, including a Manchester terror attack report by agency AP that accurately used the phrase “knife-wielding man yelling Islamic slogans”.

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Roger Waters reported to counter-terror police after declaring support for Palestine Action

Former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters has been reported to counter-terror police after sharing a Facebook post declaring his unwavering support of Palestine Action – a day after it was officially proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

In the three-minute clip, posted to Waters’ Facebook page just hours after the ban came into effect, the 81-year-old stated: “I support Palestine Action. And I always will because that is the right thing to do.”

He also shared a hand-written sign he’d made, which read: “Roger Waters supports Palestine Action 5th July 2025. Parliament has been corrupted by agents of a genocidal foreign power. Stand up and be counted its now.”

The proscription came into force at midnight on the morning of July 5.

Speaking to the camera, Waters declared: “I am Spartacus. OK, this is Independence Day, July 5th 2025. I declare my independence from the government of the UK who have just designated Palestine Action a terrorist – a proscribed terrorist organisation.

“For the record I support Palestine Action. It’s a great organisation. They are non-violent. They are absolutely not terrorist in any way.

“They are a non-violent protesting organization, protesting the presence in the UK of Elbit Systems who are an Israeli arms manufacturing organization. Alright so that’s that. I support Palestine Action. And I always will because that is the right thing to do.”

Caroline Turner, director of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), which reported Waters to counter-terrorism police, commented: “Palestine Action have been anything but a non-violent organisation, using sledgehammers to smash windows and machinery, and causing millions of pounds of damage over the past few years in order to intimidate the public and certain companies, and to advance their own ideological cause.

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The UK Aims To Entrench Its Influence In Estonia In Order To Lead The Arctic-Baltic Front

The possible deployment of nuclear-capable F-35As there, which could be equipped with US air-to-ground nukes since the UK no longer has its own, would give London a leading role in managing the joint Arctic-Baltic front against Russia that’s expected to remain even after the Ukrainian Conflict ends…

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told the Postimees newspaper after last month’s NATO Summit that his country is interested in hosting nuclear-capable F-35As from its allies, with the outlet suggesting that the UK could deploy some of the 12 that it plans to purchase after they’re transferred. The UK’s other announcement that it’ll join NATO’s dual-capable nuclear aircraft mission raises the chance that these jets could be equipped with US nukes since the UK no longer has its own air-to-ground ones.

The Wall Street Journal explained how “U.K. Shifts Nuclear Doctrine With Purchase of U.S. Jets”, which could lead to it obtaining the aforesaid nukes from the US, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared that Estonia’s readiness to host nuclear-capable jets from any NATO country poses an “immediate danger” to Russia. All this follows Russia’s Foreign Spy Service warning in mid-June that the Brits and Ukrainians are cooking up two false flag provocations in the Baltic to rope Trump into the war.

Seeing as how it was assessed in late April that “Estonia Might Become Europe’s Next Trouble Spot”, it’s therefore likely that they’ll let the UK deploy nuclear-capable F-35As at Tapa Army Base, where it already has some troops as part of its largest overseas deployment. Putting everything together, it can therefore be concluded that the UK is actively expanding its sphere of influence in the Baltic on anti-Russian pretexts and via associated means, with Estonia playing a leading role by hosting its regional forces.

The Baltic front of the New Cold War is connected to the Arctic one due to Finland joining the alliance in 2023 and Russia responding by building up its forces along their border to deter NATO-emanating threats from there. This joint front, which is expected to remain tense even after the Ukrainian Conflict ends, will also see the construction of the “EU Defense Line” that’ll stretch along Finland’s, the Baltic States’, and Poland’s eastern borders with Russia and Belarus as a 21st-century Iron Curtain.

It’s within this context that Trump reportedly plans to pull some US troops out of Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), perhaps in exchange for Russia reducing its own presence in Belarus (possibly including its tactical nukes), as part of their plans to build a new European security architecture. Be that as it may, the “EU Defense Line” – which includes new border fortifications and the deployment of extra-regional countries’ forces like the UK’s and Germany’s – ensures that the EU-Russian security dilemma will persist.

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Top police chiefs say smell of cannabis is a ‘sign of crime’ that can make even them feel ‘unsafe’… and frontline officers should ‘do something about it’

Britain’s top police chiefs today urge their officers to crack down on cannabis.

The country’s longest-serving chief constable admits the smell of the drug is a ‘sign of crime and disorder’ which makes even him ‘feel unsafe’.

Sir Andy Marsh, who leads the College of Policing, said frontline officers should ‘do something about it’.

He is backed by Greater Manchester Police Chief Sir Stephen Watson and Merseyside Chief Constable Serena Kennedy.

In a joint intervention following recent calls for decriminalisation, they tell future police leaders they must listen to their communities and be prepared to take a tougher line.

Launching a new leadership programme for policing, they acknowledged forces were in a ‘foot race for public confidence’ and officers can no longer ignore what has traditionally been perceived as the ‘little stuff’. 

Sir Andy, who is the officer in charge of police standards, said: ‘In my community, my kids are too frightened to use the bus stop because it always stinks of cannabis.’

He told the Mail ‘policing is about creating an environment that people feel safe in’ and said: ‘I’m speaking from personal experience and people I talk to, if I walk through a town, city, or even village centre and I smell cannabis, it does actually have an impact on how safe I feel.

‘One definition of what police should be doing is – [if] something [is] happening which does not feel right, someone ought to do something about it.’

He added: ‘For me, the smell of cannabis around communities, it feels like a sign of crime and disorder.’

The call for action comes after figures on Sunday revealed that three in four people caught with the drug last year were let off with an informal warning or community resolution.

In the year to September 2024, 68,513 people were found in possession of cannabis, but only 17,000 were charged, according to data released under Freedom of Information laws.

Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan has called for the decriminalisation of possession when it involves small amounts of the drug. 

But recently judges have warned that cannabis is ‘not a benign drug’ after a series of horrific cases, including a samurai sword rampage in Hainault, east London, where a schoolboy was killed and four others seriously injured by a drug-crazed Brazilian who had a £100-a-day habit.

The head of Merseyside Police said of cannabis: ‘The public should absolutely expect us to take positive action around those things and hold us to account over it. 

‘We have to work with our communities, it’s no longer good enough to inflict priorities on them, we have to hear their voices and make them part of the problem-solving.’

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Paedophile jailed for 25 years complains prison guards have lost his teddy bear

A convicted paedophile has complained from behind bars that prison guards have ‘lost’ his teddy bear.

Shane Medhurst was jailed for 25 years last June after being found guilty of 14 counts of child sex abuse.

Among the charges included two counts of sexually assaulting a child under the age of 13.

Medhurst, 58, was jailed at Reading Crown Court, and is currently serving his sentence at the 1,100-capacity HMP High Down jail in Surrey.

The jail has two dedicated wings sex offenders, with around 400 inmates convicted of sex offences.

Writing in the latest edition of prisoner publication Inside Time, Medhurst said he was really ‘into arts and crafts’ and had started making his own teddy bears.

One in particular, which he called Mr Bear – a bright yellow bear with a blue and white striped outfit and a hat – was his ‘favourite’ and had taken him three weeks to make.

He said other teddies that he made had been sent to family and friends, and had loaned Mr Bear to the library inside the prison – but three weeks later he’d vanished.

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