Tag: united kingdom

NHS plans to DNA test all babies to assess disease risk

Every newborn baby in England will have their DNA mapped to assess their risk of hundreds of diseases, under NHS plans for the next 10 years.

The scheme, first reported by the Daily Telegraph, is part of a government drive towards predicting and preventing illness, which will also see £650m invested in DNA research for all patients by 2030.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said gene technology would enable the health service to “leapfrog disease, so we’re in front of it rather than reacting to it”.

It comes after a study analysing the genetic code of up to 100,000 babies was announced in October.

The government’s 10-year plan for the NHS, which is set to be revealed over the coming few weeks, is aimed at easing pressure on services.

The Department for Health and Social Care said that genomics – the study of genes – and AI would be used to “revolutionise prevention” and provide faster diagnoses and an “early warning signal for disease”.

Screening newborn babies for rare diseases will involve sequencing their complete DNA using blood samples from their umbilical cord, taken shortly after birth.

There are approximately 7,000 single-gene disorders. The NHS study which began in October only looked for gene disorders that develop in early childhood and for which there are effective treatments.

Currently, newborn babies are offered a heelprick blood test that checks for nine serious conditions, including cystic fibrosis.

The health secretary said in a statement: “With the power of this new technology, patients will be able to receive personalised healthcare to prevent ill-health before symptoms begin, reducing the pressure on NHS services and helping people live longer, healthier lives.”

Streeting added: “The revolution in medical science means that we can transform the NHS over the coming decade, from a service which diagnoses and treats ill-health to one that predicts and prevents it.”

Sequencing DNA gives a lot of information about a person which can then be used to make predictions about the likelihood of them having particular genetic diseases, according to Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, a geneticist at the Francis Crick Institute.

These include conditions like muscular dystrophy, liver diseases and some kidney problems, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

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Primary School Children Being “Sexualised” by Lessons on the “300 Flags of Pride”

Leaflets handed out at primary schools by the charity Swindon and Wiltshire Pride claim there are more flags representing sexuality and gender identity than there are for countries.

The material, signposted by the local council on social media, goes into detail about a “small selection” of 29 varieties.

It says: “While some might think [300] is too many, it’s all part of a drive to be more inclusive of the expansive breadth of identity within the community.”

Along with the rainbow LGBT Pride flag are a variety of offshoots, from the “intersex-inclusive Pride flag” to the “polyamory Pride flag” and even a black and white “heterosexual flag” for straight people, which it says can include transgender people.

The materials make up part of a free annual support guide produced by the charity, which also points to websites providing advice on controversial practices such as wearing a “binder to reduce apparent size of breasts”, the use of cross-sex hormones in under-18s, and information on “fetish spectrums”.

Parents of children at the primary schools told the Telegraph their concerns had been ignored by the local Labour council. …

One mother, a former teacher, said the guide being given out in primary schools was “really concerning”.

“Obviously the polyamory one, encouraging children to have multiple sex partners, they shouldn’t be sexualising children,” she said. “In the guide itself, under education, it states it is ‘for schools, teachers, and students’.

“A couple of sentences down, for example, it says ‘raise awareness of the lesser known identities across the fetish spectrum’,” she added, saying that was “inappropriate”.

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Britain has fallen to the technocratic death cult

Politicians twist words and abuse language to ‘make lies sound truthful and murder respectable’, said George Orwell. That has never rang more true than it does today. In the House of Commons this afternoon, MPs spoke in deceitful tongues to make suicide sound attractive and death sound liberal. They voted to legalise what they call ‘assisted dying’, but which I think we should call state-sanctioned suicide. For strip away all the linguistic trickery about a ‘right to die’ and what we are left with is a new regime of state-appointed death merchants who will have the power not only to propose self-destruction to the ill, but to facilitate it, too.

Make no mistake, this is a dark day for Britain. MPs voted by 314 to 291 to pass the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. This is the private members’ bill, spearheaded by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, that will empower the state to aid and abet the destruction of lives judged to be less good or less happy than others. It applies to England and Wales. It will permit sick people who are expected to die within six months to get ‘medical assistance’ to end their lives. To be eligible for this state-sanctioned suicide, you must be over 18, have mental capacity and get the agreement of two doctors, seven days apart. Then the state will give you poison to bring about your death.

Ms Leadbeater and her supporters big up the bill’s ‘safeguards’. They insist the law will not be a slippery slope to a culture of death, to self-obliteration as a consumer choice for the merely sad or dejected. It’s about ‘assisting’ the terminally ill only, they say. Yet even on this front, its flaws are glaring. Doctors are often wrong when they estimate how long the sick have left. You might be given six months but get two years. What’s more, people often feel suicidal upon receiving a terminal diagnosis, but then reflect and change and come to cherish the time they have left. This law, unquestionably, would lead to the state-faciliated deaths of people who had so much more living to do.

All the technical blather about ‘safeguards’ distracts us from the profound moral questions thrown up by the bill. Let’s be clear: this law would represent one of the most dramatic and destructive overhauls of the relationship between the state and the individual that we have ever seen. Overnight we would transform from a society that seeks to prevent suicide into one that facilitates it. The health service, once proudly devoted to saving life, would now be charged with ending life in certain circumstances. The Hippocratic cry of ‘First do no harm’ would lie in tatters, replaced by a new deathly creed: ‘Do no harm, unless they’re very sick, in which case maybe kill them?’

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UK’s Net Zero agenda is right at the top of the tyranny scale

David Turver argues that the UK’s Net Zero agenda is a far-left, tyrannical project that attacks freedom and is comparable to fascist states.

“If we substitute ‘Net Zero’ for ‘the State’ in Mussolini’s famous quote, we get close to describing the totalitarian Net Zero agenda: ‘Everything within Net Zero, nothing outside Net Zero, nothing against Net Zero’,” he says.

He talks us through how he comes to the conclusion that those advocating for Net Zero dystopia are narcissistic, psychopathic Machiavellians.  “We have somehow allowed the very worst people to take charge of most of our lives,” Turver says.

Introduction

Some friends have asked me to write more articles on the political and sociological impact of Net Zero. In addition, another contact put forward the suggestion that Net Zero is an attack on freedom. That idea has been turning over in my mind and I have concluded he was right and, effectively, Net Zero is just a cloak for far-left tyranny.

The Political Compass

The Political Compass is a widely used tool to differentiate between different political ideas, philosophies and ideologies.

It is typically drawn with the x-axis representing left and right opinions along the economic dimension. The left represents a desire for the economy to be run by cooperative collective agency with substantial state intervention and the political right represents a desire for the economy to be left to the devices of competing individuals and organisations, otherwise known as free markets.

The y-axis represents the social dimension, with the top representing authoritarianism and the bottom representing libertarianism. For shorthand, we can shorten this to tyranny versus freedom.

Net Zero Is Far-Left Tyranny

We can characterise Net Zero along both axes of the political compass. Starting with energy policy, we can see that there are government-mandated subsidies for renewables which cost a fortune. Plus, intermittent renewables can bid low into the market and be dispatched onto the grid despite the full cost of renewables being much higher than the market clearing price. Then there are extra subsidies for the Capacity Market to provide backup to intermittent renewables. In addition, there are even more subsidies for industry to compensate them for the resulting high electricity prices. There are extra subsidies for biofuels, green gas, green hydrogen and carbon capture and storage. On top of that, Miliband’s plan for Clean Power by 2030 sounds like a Soviet-era five-year plan for tractor production.

The UK government and the Climate Change Committee are also intent on forcing landlords to install insulation measures, many of which have payback times measured in centuries. We also have subsidies for heat pumps and company EV drivers pay less tax than for petrol cars.

On the supply side, new drilling for both onshore and offshore oil and gas resources is effectively banned and the assets that remain are being taxed to oblivion with 78% marginal tax rates. Using gas to produce electricity attracts carbon taxes through the Emissions Trading Scheme, amounting to about 20% of wholesale prices.

All of this takes energy policy as far away from free markets as it is possible to imagine. Net Zero is a far-left project that would not have been out of place in the USSR.

Turning to the vertical axis, we can see that many of the proposed measures to achieve Net Zero can be described as tyrannical. First, the Climate Change Committee (“CCC”) is effectively beyond the control of Parliament and the people because, as former chair Lord Deben put it, Parliament has to seek the permission of the CCC to change the Carbon Budgets. To achieve the targets, the Government and their advisors want to interfere in our lives to an unprecedented extent. They are interfering in markets to mandate targets for heat pumps and EVs to change how we heat our homes and the type of car we drive. The Energy Act 2023 gives the authority for draconian powers to take control of EV chargers, batteries, home heating, washing machines, fridges and dishwashers. The Act even gives authority for powers of entry to check that our smart appliances are compliant. Now the Government is planning to force pension schemes to merge into mega-funds and force them to invest in clean energy projects.

The CCC has recommended that we cut our meat consumption by a third and cut the number of livestock by almost half. Of course, they also want us to eat “alternative proteins,” which is code for things like insects.

Some of the advisors to the Government are even more tyrannical. We have the Behavioural Insights Team (also known as the Nudge Unit) calling for the regulation of advertising and for TV drama and news to promote upbeat stories about Net Zero. They also want to influence the physical, social, economic and digital environment to alter what is offered to consumers and change perceptions of what is socially acceptable. They recommended that the Government intervene across vast swathes of the economy to align businesses, markets and institutions with Net Zero. These measures include a meat tax, making flights more expensive, defaulting us onto renewable energy tariffs and making heat pumps look cheaper than gas boilers.

The National Energy System Operator (“NESO”) is planning to halve per capita energy consumption. They also want to “optimise” demand by introducing penal charges at peak times through Time of Use Tariffs (“TOUTs”). In other words, consumers need to organise their lives around the grid rather than the grid being designed to meet the needs of its customers.

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The Brits & Ukrainians Are Plotting To Manipulate Trump Into Escalating Against Russia

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Agency (SVR) warned that the Brits and Ukrainians are preparing two false flag scenarios in the Baltic Sea.

The first one would see Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian torpedoes explode near a US ship there and a supposedly malfunctioning one will then be found to implicate Russia in the alleged attack

The second, meanwhile, will involve Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian mines fished out of the Baltic Sea and presented as proof of a Kremlin plot to sabotage international shipping.

These perfidious provocations are being employed to manipulate Trump into escalating against Russia after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced in mid-February that the US won’t extend Article 5 mutual defense guarantees to NATO countries’ troops that might deploy to Ukraine. That scenario was the initial one that was planned for getting him to pull out of talks with Putin and then double down on support for Ukraine, but his team preemptively scuttled it through Hegseth’s announcement.

That’s why efforts are now underway to organize a false flag attack against a US ship in the Baltic and/or frame Russia as a threat to international shipping through the fishing out of its mines there. The Baltic has already been a so-called “NATO lake” since even before Finland and Sweden’s joined NATO given their prior shadow membership in the bloc, however, so it’s unrealistic that Russia could really carry out either of these two operations undetected even if it wanted to.

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British Government to Reopen over 800 Cases of Historic Child Rape Grooming Gang Cases

The British government will reopen more than 800 cases of historic child rape grooming gang cases in addition to launching a full national inquiry after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer bowed to pressure and made a major reversal on the issue over the weekend.

The National Crime Agency (NCA), the UK equivalent of America’s FBI, will lead investigations alongside local police forces across Britain into grooming gang cases that did not result in the suspected perpetrators facing justice.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Sunday that over 800 cases of suspected child rape grooming have already been selected to be reopened.

“The vulnerable young girls who suffered unimaginable abuse at the hands of groups of adult men have now grown into brave women who are rightly demanding justice for what they went through when they were just children,” Cooper said per the i paper.

“Not enough people listened to them then. That was wrong and unforgivable. We are changing that now.”

The move will come on top of a full national inquiry, which will be established under the Inquiries Act, meaning that it will have legal authority to compel witness testimony and have full access to police and other local documents.

The exact remit of the investigation remains to be seen. However, it was launched in response to the findings of a review from Baroness Louise Casey, which is set to be published this week.

Baroness Casey reportedly argues that a full national inquiry was necessary and that it should not only focus on the politically correct cover-ups committed by local officials and police, but also on the ethnicities of the perpetrators.

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Guilt by Algorithm: Woman Wrongly Accused of Shoplifting Due to Facial Recognition Error

A woman was left “fuming” after being erroneously accused of stealing toilet paper and ejected from two Home Bargains stores in Greater Manchester, UK, due to an apparent mix-up with a facial recognition system designed to prevent shoplifting.

BBC News reports that Danielle Horan, a makeup business owner, found herself in a distressing situation when she was escorted out of Home Bargains branches in Salford and Manchester, without initially being given any explanation for her removal. It was later discovered that Horan had been falsely accused of stealing approximately £10 worth of items after her profile was added to a facial recognition watchlist used by the stores.

The incident unfolded on May 24, when Horan visited the Home Bargains store on Regent Road in Salford. As she was shopping, the store manager approached her and asked her to leave, causing Horan to feel embarrassed and confused in front of other customers. Despite her protestations, the manager advised her to contact Facewatch, the retail security firm that provides the facial recognition technology, directly.

Horan’s attempts to reach out to both Facewatch and Home Bargains initially proved futile. However, when she visited another Home Bargains store in Fallowfield, Manchester, with her 81-year-old mother on June 4, she was once again surrounded by staff and told to leave the premises as soon as she entered the store. This time, Horan stood her ground and demanded an explanation for her treatment.

After persistent emails to Facewatch and Home Bargains, Horan finally learned that there had been an allegation of theft involving approximately £10 worth of toilet rolls in early May. Somehow, her picture had been circulated to local stores, alerting them not to allow her entry. Horan checked her bank account and confirmed that she had, in fact, paid for the items in question.

Eventually, Facewatch responded to Horan, stating that a review of the incident showed she had not stolen anything. The firm acknowledged the distressing nature of Horan’s experience and noted that the retailer had since undertaken additional staff training. However, Horan’s ordeal had already taken a toll on her mental well-being, causing anxiety and stress as she questioned her actions and felt sick to her stomach for a week.

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UK Turning Into ‘National Health State’, Says Think Tank

The UK is turning into a “National Health State,” the Resolution Foundation has said, after Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a £29 billion annual increase in NHS funding.

The think tank’s analysis of Reeves’s Spending Review estimates that by the end of financial year 2028–29, the health service will account for half (49 percent) of all day-to-day public services spending, up from 34 percent in 2009–10.

On Wednesday, the chancellor announced a record £29 billion funding injection, which the Treasury said will deliver on the government’s promise to cut waiting lists, improve patient care, and modernise services.

Resolution Foundation Chief Executive Ruth Curtice said in a statement, “Health accounted for 90 per cent of the extra public service spending, continuing a trend that is seeing the British state morph into a National Health State, with half of public service spending set to be on health by the end of the decade.”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) noted in its initial response to the Spending Review that the funding increase for the NHS was substantial, but questioned whether it will be enough to get the health service back to meeting its 18-week target for hospital waiting times within this Parliament, something which the think tank said was “enormously ambitious.”

£6 Billion to Speed up Tests and Treatments

After the Spending Review, Reeves announced that £6 billion of the allocated funds will be used to deliver up to four million additional NHS tests, scans, and procedures over the next five years.

This will be spent on ambulances, new scanners, increasing diagnostic centre capacity, and more Urgent Treatment Centres.

The government will also invest £30 billion in day-to-day maintenance and repair of the NHS estate, with over £5 billion allocated for critical repairs over the next five years.

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BritCard: Inside Labour’s “Progressive” Digital ID

A new report from a British government think tank offers some clear insights into the Starmer administration’s plan to introduce a universal digital ID.

That digital ID – in one form or another – is a major part of the endgame is not any kind of revelation. We’ve known that was the plan for years, but the report tells us quite a lot about how it’s going to be sold to the public.

I guess we should go ahead and dive in.

The Thinktank

The report was published just this week by Labour Together – formerly “The Common Good” – a thinktank founded in “Labour’s wilderness years” to help “make Labour electable again”, according to their about page.

Translation: They’re centrist globalist Blairite shills who helped undermine and destroy the only vaguely genuine movement in the last 50 years of British “democracy” and now publish reports to push a globalist agenda.

According to the Electoral Commission, they received over £ 9 million in donations last year (from only 234 donors), much of which seems to have been “donated” by Labour Together Limited, a for-profit company. The murky world of Westminster finances is not my focus, however, and I’m sure it’s at least passably legal and no more corrupt than is standard practice in those circles.

Exactly how a think tank with eighteen employees, ten advisors, four policy fellows and five board members manages to spend 9 million pounds writing a newsletter a week, a report every two months and doing some online polls I have no idea.

It’s a good question for another time, perhaps. For now, we know everything we need to know – Labour Together are old-fashioned New Labour types shilling for globalist tyranny.

The Authors

We won’t talk long about the authors, because there’s not much point. They’re names on a title a page, and while I’m sure they believe in the words they write (or at least, asked ChatGPT to write), it’s also true their job requires they believe it.

I just wanted to point out that the three supposed authors of this work on technology have no tech backgrounds at all. The closest any of them comes is Laurel Boxall, the “about the authors” section of the report proudly declares she has a Masters from Cambridge “focusing on AI”, but a bit a of digging reveals it’s a Masters in “Digital Humanities” with a focus on fictional portrayals of AI in media. Apparently, that qualifies you to become a “tech policy advisor”.

Which is interesting, because it demonstrates that they consider fictional portrayals of AI to be as relevant to this work as real AI experience. An apposite commentary on the state of society in general.

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Commons forced to apologise after allowing a transgender woman to use female-only toilets despite Supreme Court ruling

The House of Commons has been forced to apologise after allowing a transgender woman to use female-only toilets despite the recent Supreme Court ruling that protects single-sex spaces.

Robin Moira White, a trans barrister who is a biological male, was directed to use the ladies’ loos in Portcullis House last week after attending a meeting of the women and equalities committee in which the landmark judgment was discussed.

White, 61, said parliamentary employees had been told that swift access to the lavatories was required because of a health condition.

But the barrister, who was shown to the closest ones to the Thatcher Room, where the committee had met, was challenged outside the facilities by women’s rights campaigners, Kate Harris and Heather Binning, who had attended the same hearing.

Harris said that a staff member told her ‘We don’t do that here’ in reference to excluding trans women from female loos.

She added: ‘We were in the mother of all parliaments, and it was not adhering to the law. It was not the fault of staff, who clearly have not been trained in how to deal with these issues.’

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