Tag: united kingdom

The UK’s Digital ID Era Starts This Summer

A sweeping transformation of the UK’s identity systems is underway, with the government poised to launch a digital identity wallet this summer. Beginning with a digital version of the Veteran card and expanding to include driving licenses later this year, the initiative is designed to eventually consolidate all government-issued credentials into a single, centralized app by 2027.

While pitched as a modernization effort, this dramatic shift toward a digital-first ID system has sparked serious concerns about surveillance, data security, and individual autonomy in an increasingly watchful society.

To enroll in the system, users will be expected to provide personal documentation.

The Gov.uk Wallet, as it is known, represents a fundamental redesign of the relationship between the state and its citizens.

This overhaul comes at a time when nearly 50 million people across the UK could be affected by the new digital infrastructure. While specific instructions on how to apply for or access the wallet have yet to be detailed, the direction is clear: the UK is moving toward a society where physical IDs may soon be relics of the past.

The government frames the change as part of its larger digitization strategy, yet the scale and permanence of eventual biometric data collection call into question the long-term implications for individual freedoms.

The introduction of digital driving licenses has also been tied to broader regulatory reforms, including newly proposed rules for e-scooter purchases. Buyers will need to provide license details as a form of identity verification, reinforcing the idea that access to everyday services will increasingly hinge on digital ID systems. This entrenchment of digital identity into daily life carries substantial consequences: it embeds surveillance mechanisms into transportation, access to benefits, and public services in ways that may be difficult to reverse.

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Inside The Secret Illegal Antifa Headquarters

From Portland to Washington, D.C., and across Europe, the far-left extremist movement known as Antifa has unleashed years of orchestrated chaos driven by a radical, anti-capitalist agenda aimed at destabilizing the West. Now, for the first time, explosive undercover footage reveals life inside an illegal Antifa headquarters. 

YouTuber The Urban Legend has released 30 minutes of explosive footage captured inside a secret and illegal Antifa headquarters in Manchester, United Kingdom.

The video reveals what appears to be a fully operational base—complete with stockpiles of food, racks of clothing, a sleeping area, and what looks like a makeshift revolutionary workshop for rioters. The footage offers a rare and disturbing glimpse into the behind-the-scenes of the revolutionary movement that has fueled unrest across the West. 

We grabbed a series of screenshots from the video, including text on the wall that said: “Give Trans Girls Guns.” 

Additional graffiti included slogans like “Protect Trans Kids” and “Punch Nazis”—language that, while politically charged, raises serious concerns due to its potential to incite violence. 

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Jailed wife of ex-Tory councillor loses sentence appeal over Southport tweet

A childminder who was jailed for 31 months after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire after the Southport attacks has lost an appeal against her sentence at the court of appeal.

Lucy Connolly, who is married to a former Conservative councillor, said in an X post in July last year: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care … if that makes me racist so be it.”

The post came after three girls were killed in a knife attack at a holiday club in Southport on 29 July, sparking nationwide unrest. It was viewed 310,000 times in three and a half hours before Connolly deleted it.

In a written judgment published on Tuesday, the appeal court judge Lord Justice Holroyde said: “There is no arguable basis on which it could be said that the sentence imposed by the judge was manifestly excessive. The application for leave to appeal against sentence therefore fails and is refused.”

He said the principal ground for appeal “was substantially based on a version of events put forward by the applicant which we have rejected”.

The former childminder was sentenced at Birmingham crown court last October after pleading guilty to a charge of inciting racial hatred.

She is married to Raymond Connolly, who was a Tory councillor for West Northamptonshire but lost his seat in May this year.

The court heard that the day before Connolly was arrested, she sent a WhatsApp message saying the “raging tweet about burning down hotels has bit me on the arse lol”. She also said she would “play the mental health card” if arrested, and would deny responsibility for the post if asked.

Naeem Valli, prosecuting, said Connolly, who had no previous conviction, also sent a message saying she intended to work her notice period as a childminder “on the sly” despite being deregistered.

She sent another tweet commenting on a sword attack that read: “I bet my house it was one of these boat invaders.”

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Police could search homes and phones after pregnancy loss

Police have been issued guidance on how to search women’s homes for abortion drugs and check their phones for menstrual cycle tracking apps after unexpected pregnancy loss.

New guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on “child death investigation” advises officers to search for “drugs that can terminate pregnancy” in cases involving stillbirths. The NPCC, which sets strategic direction for policing across the country UK, also suggests a woman’s digital devices could be seized to help investigators “establish a woman’s knowledge and intention in relation to the pregnancy”. That could include checking a woman’s internet searches, messages to friends and family, and health apps, “such as menstrual cycle and fertility trackers”, it states.

Details are also provided for how police could bypass legal requirements for a court order to obtain medical records about a woman’s abortion from NHS providers.

Abortion law in the UK is based on the Offences Against the Person Act from 1861. In recent years, an increasing number of women have been investigated and prosecuted under this law. The Abortion Act of 1967 allows women to end their pregnancies under medical supervision up to 24 weeks, or beyond in certain circumstances, such as if the life of the mother is at risk or if the foetus has a serious abnormality.

The guidance replaces a 2014 document that did not mention investigating stillbirths, but had one mention of investigating women who may have had an illegal abortion. The new guidance, published in January and developed by a sub-group of the NPCC’s Homicide Working Group alongside the College of Policing, National Crime Agency and Metropolitan Police, covers the scenario over several pages.

The lead authors were Ch Supt Liz Hughes of Avon and Somerset police force; Det Supt Jon Holmes of Lancashire; DCS David Ashton of Durham; Ch Supt Fiona Bitters of Hampshire and Isle of Wight; Sonya Baylis, of the National Crime Agency; and DS Robert Simmons of Suffolk.

Dr Ranee Thakar, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), said: “The new guidance is shocking. Women in these circumstances have a right to compassionate care and to have their dignity and privacy respected, not to have their homes, phones, ­computers and health apps searched, or be arrested and interrogated.”

Leading abortion providers, legal experts and medical professionals have told The Observer they were not consulted over the NPCC guidance and called for it to be amended.

Katie Saxon at BPAS, the leading abortion provider, said the organisation was aware of an increase in police investigating women who had had abortions in recent years, “but to see it in black and white after years of criticisms of the way this outdated law is enforced is harrowing”.

She added: “This [NPCC] guidance was written at the same time as unprecedented threats to global abortion rights and while parliament was set to consider decriminalising women abortion. To write it without public conversation or discussion with experts shows just how detached from reality the NPCC is.”

Louise McCudden at the abortion provider MSI Reproductive Choices said the guidance was “fuelling a culture of hostility and suspicion towards abortion and pregnancy loss”.

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UK Contractor Extradited to U.S., Pleads Guilty in Massive USAID Fraud Scheme Tied to Pakistan Energy Program

A UK citizen who ripped off American taxpayers through a U.S.-funded foreign aid program has been sentenced to time served after a brazen kickback scheme drained nearly $100,000 in USAID funds — and he’ll now be handed over to immigration authorities.

Stephen Paul Edmund Sutton, 53, of the United Kingdom, pleaded guilty in Washington, D.C. federal court Monday to conspiring to commit theft concerning a program receiving federal funds, a felony offense.

Sutton was a Logistics Operations Manager for a contractor implementing the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Power Distribution Program (PDP) in Pakistan — a five-year effort that was supposed to help modernize Pakistan’s failing electric utilities.

Instead, Sutton and his co-conspirator, who remains under indictment, lined their pockets by setting up bogus shell companies that funneled inflated contracts for forklifts and crane services — all under the guise of helping Pakistan’s struggling power grid. Sutton personally pocketed at least $21,000 in kickbacks.

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 According to court documents, PDP was a component of U.S. government assistance to the government of Pakistan to support its energy sector.

Launched in September 2010, the five-year program was designed to facilitate improvements in Pakistan’s government-owned electric power distribution companies through interventions and projects addressing governance issues, technical and non-technical losses, and low revenue collection.

The main goal of the PDP was to improve the commercial performance of the participating distribution companies through technology upgrades and improvements in processes, procedures, and practices, as well as training and capacity building.

Under the PDP contract, Sutton’s employer subcontracted through purchase orders with vendors in Pakistan for certain goods and services.

From May through November 2015, Sutton and his co-conspirator, an employee supervised by Sutton, participated in a kickback scheme by creating two companies, obtaining PDP purchase orders for forklift and crane services for the companies, and distributing the profits to themselves.

As part of the scheme, his co-conspirator arranged for low-grade local vendors to provide the services for at least half the contract rates, and Sutton ensured that the company paid the invoices despite suspicions raised by an accounts payable officer.

U.S. government sentencing documents indicate the agency was defrauded of almost $100,000 and that for his part, Sutton received at least $21,000 in kickbacks.

Sutton’s co-conspirator is also charged by indictment and his case is pending disposition.

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Britain ‘investing in 30,000 more electronic tags for criminals’ amid massive overhaul

Britain is investing in 30,000 more electronic tags for criminals as part of a massive overhaul in sentencing law.

The huge expansion of tagging technology will see nearly 40,000 criminals electronically monitored at once.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is understood to have secured £700 million in funding from the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to buy the devices.

This will increase the Probation Service’s budget by roughly a third and enable it to quadruple the number of criminals fitted with electronic tags, The Times reports.

It comes as David Gauke, the former Conservative justice secretary, will publish a long-awaited sentencing review this month.

The report is expected to lead to the most drastic shake-up of sentencing legislation in decades and, the government is predicted to accept most of his recommendations.

A MoJ spokesman said last week: ‘This Government inherited a justice system in crisis, with prisons days from collapse.

‘David Gauke is conducting a sentencing review to ensure that we never run out of prison places again, and we are committed to reforming sentencing to ensure our prisons cut crime and keep the public safe.’

The Ministry of Justice is also thought to be preparing to announce a new type of tag that will measure the level of drugs in an offender’s system by monitoring their blood pressure and heart rate.

Mahmood said the new devices are the ‘holy grail’ of tagging technology because of the large proportion of criminals whose offending is driven by drugs.

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UK Man Arrested For ‘Racially Aggravated Harassment’ After Trying to Book a Room in Migrant Hotel

A UK man was arrested for ‘racially aggravated harassment’ after he tried to book a room in a hotel that was housing illegal migrants.

The individual, who goes by the handle @gb_national on X, was filming outside the The New Bridge Hotel in Newcastle when the incident occurred.

The man briefly entered the hotel after hearing reports that migrants staying there had sexually harassed students and underage girls in the immediate vicinity.

Security immediately called the police and the man left the hotel.

He then continued filming from the other side of the road but was subsequently approached by police.

The officers told the man he was not being detained but continued to question him, before telling him he couldn’t walk on the path alongside the hotel due to it representing a “threat to public order.”

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Exposed: NHS manager accused of Rushdie-style fatwa death threat over ‘insult to Mohammed’

An Islamist extremist working at one of London’s most famous hospitals has been suspended after being accused of issuing a fatwa-style death threat for blasphemy.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that NHS employee Omar Abdallah Mansuur, 39 – an influential imam – faces claims that he decreed a fellow Muslim should get the death penalty for insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

His broadcast was made to tens of thousands of followers and is thought to be the first time a cleric in Britain has made such a threat.

The terrified victim, now in hiding in Europe, has been warned by police that it is too dangerous for him to visit the UK. ‘It is a living nightmare,’ he said last night. ‘My life is at risk and I am constantly looking over my shoulder.’

But last night, Mansuur denied issuing a death threat, saying he merely stated the Islamic punishment for blasphemy.

In some of his inflammatory diatribes, Mansuur appears on video from inside St Thomas’ Hospital – directly across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament – where he works in procurement.

One sequence shows him going into the hospital via an underground entrance and walking along a corridor before sitting down in an office.

Staff describe bespectacled Mansuur, a British national of Somali origin who lives in North London with his wife and children, as unassuming and polite. But his social media profiles tell a different story.

Using TikTok, Facebook and X, he reaches millions of followers with his hate-filled videos and live broadcasts.

On Friday, after the MoS passed on its evidence, the hospital said Mansuur had been suspended pending an investigation.

Yair Cohen, a lawyer representing the victim, said: ‘I am calling for immediate and decisive action to protect my client.

‘Police forces seem able to swiftly arrest people for far less serious social media activity.’

The National Secular Society said: ‘It’s appalling that here in the UK, Islamists are calling for the death of supposed blasphemers or those who leave Islam. The police and counter-extremism authorities must take this threat seriously, and people who incite murder against those who they see as offending their religion must face justice.’

In one broadcast, Mansuur says of the 32-year-old moderate imam, whom he accuses of making offensive remarks about the Prophet: ‘When he repents, he will be put to death in the manner Muslims are killed. If he refuses to repent he will be caught, killed, then thrown in a hole like a dog.’

The death threat victim vehemently denies insulting Islam and insists comments he made on social media were doctored. The Metropolitan Police said it had referred his complaint to police in the country in which he is hiding.

The target of the ‘fatwa’ told the Met in a statement that he fears he will suffer the same fate as French teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded near his school in Paris in 2020 after hate campaigners accused him of showing a cartoon of the Prophet to students.

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Now woke schools teach pupils that Stonehenge was built by black people… while Waterloo and Trafalgar go untaught

Children are being taught that Stonehenge was built by black people and the Roman Emperor Nero married a trans woman as woke narratives increasingly infiltrate schools, according to an education think-tank.

They are also being told – in pro-transgender resources – that genital mutilation of slaves was a form of ‘gender transition’.

But landmark British victories such as those at Waterloo and Trafalgar go largely untaught – with as few as one in ten pupils learning about them.

A Policy Exchange investigation has warned that schools have ‘taken it too far’ as they adapt history curriculums in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.

The prestigious centre-Right unit found that George Floyd’s death in 2020 led to schools hastily including material about ethnic minorities to appear ‘anti-racist’.

Former history teacher and chairman of Campaign for Real Education Chris McGovern said it was ‘clear that the subject has been captured by the Left’.

The report added that some resources, such as the book Brilliant Black British History, push ‘contested narratives’ – such as black people building Stonehenge.

The book is marketed as ‘a must-have in any school library’ but its claim that early black Britons built the world-famous Neolithic stone circle is ‘hotly contested and outside mainstream historical thinking’ yet ‘presented as fact’, according to the think-tank.

While in some cases these initiatives have a ‘positive effect’, such as exposing pupils to ‘wider world history’, the report flagged serious concerns about replacing facts with biased narratives.

It warned: ‘In too many cases this process has gone too far, leading to the teaching of radical and contested interpretations of the past as fact, or with anecdotes of interesting lives replacing a deeper understanding of the core drivers of history.’

One resource, from the Classical Association’s ‘Queering the Past’ project, claims the Roman Emperor Nero married a trans woman called Sporus but omits the fact that they probably underwent a forced castration rather than consensual gender reassignment. 

It comes as the Government conducts its curriculum review to ‘reflect the issues and diversities of our society’ – which the report says may be unnecessary as schools already do it.

Backed by former education secretaries Lord Blunkett and Nadhim Zahawi, it also calls for pupils to be impartially given a better overview of British history.

A Classical Association spokesman said its teaching resources were ‘complicated and nuanced’ where ‘more than one interpretation is possible’.

A Department for Education spokesman said: ‘The curriculum and assessment review is considering how to ensure young people have access to a broad and balanced curriculum.’

Meanwhile, Mr McGovern warned history is ‘seen as a vehicle for undermining and destroying British national identity’.

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Hocus Pocus, There Goes Habeas Corpus

What if the writ of habeas corpus has been guaranteed to the British since 1215 and to Americans since 1789? What if this encompasses the right of every person who is confined by the government against his or her will to compel the jailer to justify the confinement before a neutral judge?

What if this right is personal and individual and applies to all persons at all times? What if the right can be exercised by anyone who is arrested, whether it be for spitting on the sidewalk or murder? What if this right — to be free from an unjust confinement; to be free from arrest without trial — is one for which the Founders and the Framers fought the American Revolution?

What if habeas corpus is today recognized by all judges in the United States? What if judges actually stop court proceedings when a habeas corpus petition is received in order to hold a hearing and compel the government to lay out the evidence against the accused and justify his or her confinement, lest he or she spend one minute more behind bars than is lawful?

What if British monarchs and their subjects believed that the monarchy was divinely created? What if they actually believed that God the Father chose whomever was the king at a given moment to rule over them? What if they called this the divine right of kings? What if the divine right of kings enabled the monarch to write any law, prosecute any person and impose any punishment he wished for real or fanciful or even imagined crimes?

What if even this divine-right-of-kings nonsense — once universally accepted and now universally rejected — had an exception to it? What if that exception was habeas corpus? What if even the most tyrannical and absolute of monarchs in Britain recognized and respected habeas corpus for their subjects in Britain?

What if British kings failed to recognize habeas corpus for the colonists in America? What if their governments arrested folks here [in America] and then brought them months later to London for trial? What if there was no mechanism for habeas corpus in the colonies to protect one from the wrath of the British government?

What if on the few occasions where habeas corpus was recognized, the colonial judges — who were dependent on the king for their jobs and their salaries — persistently ruled in favor of continued confinement, no matter how flimsy the evidence against the accused or how unlawful the charges?

What if Thomas Jefferson condemned this practice in the Declaration of Independence? What if the failure of colonial judges to recognize here in America the same rights recognized of Englishmen in Britain played a significant role in arousing the colonists to revolution in 1775 and 1776?

What if colonial revulsion at the refusal to recognize habeas corpus was so great that James Madison — who wrote the Constitution — insisted that this right be preserved in the Constitution? What if this was done even before the Bill of Rights was added?

What if Madison recognized that in cases of invasion or rebellion, Congress might want to suspend habeas corpus until the rebellion or invasion subsided? What if Congress — in order to prevent frivolous or politically based suspensions of the right — defined invasion or rebellion as a state of affairs of such calamity that the federal courts are unable to conduct proceedings?

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