Tag: united kingdom

Britain Imposes Islamic Blasphemy Law as Man is Convicted of Burning a Quran

Britain’s transformation into an Islamic state is almost complete.

The case in question relates to a man who has been convicted of a “religiously aggravated public order offence” after he burned a Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London.

The Spectator magazine reports:

This law has been created by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and District Judge John McGarva. Between them they have prosecuted and found a man guilty of a ‘religiously aggravated public order offence’ because he burned a Quran outside the Turkish consulate.

The CPS mounted a prosecution conflating the religious institution of Islam, with Muslims as people, and a British judge has accepted this. Islamic blasphemy codes are now being enforced by arms of the British state, via what the National Secular Society describes as ‘a troubling repurposing of public order laws as a proxy for blasphemy laws’.

Hamit Coskun burned a Quran outside the Turkish consulate in February, before being attacked by a man named Moussa Kadri who has since pleaded guilty to the assault. Mr Coskun was initially charged under the Crime and Disorder Act with ‘intent to cause against the religious institution of Islam harassment, alarm or distress’.

On sentencing Coskun, the left-wing activist Judge John McGarva said Coskun’s conduct was “provocative and taunting” and accused him of harboring a “deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers.”

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British Police Investigate Mysterious Fires at Prime Minister’s Residence

British counterterrorism police are now reportedly  investigating a series of suspected arson attacks targeting properties associated with Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

A 21-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life, though authorities reported no injuries resulting from the incidents, which occurred over the past week.

The fires were set at two locations: a four-bedroom house in north London that Starmer currently rents out, and an apartment building where he once owned a residence. Additionally, a vehicle caught fire near one of the properties.

The Metropolitan Police have stated that, due to the connection to a high-profile public figure, the investigation is being led by their Counter Terrorism Command.

Starmer, who has served as Prime Minister since 2024, resides with his wife and children at the official residence on Downing Street.

The house in north London, which he rented out after moving to government housing, was the site of a fire in the early hours of Monday morning.

Earlier, on Sunday, flames were reported in the doorway of the apartment building linked to Starmer. The vehicle fire occurred in proximity to the house, prompting police to investigate potential links between all three incidents.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister expressed gratitude for the police’s efforts but refrained from offering further comments on the ongoing investigation.

The police have emphasized the seriousness of the situation, particularly given the implications of targeting a prominent political figure.

Local residents have expressed concern over the fires, noting the potential risks associated with such violent acts. “It’s alarming to think that something like this could happen so close to home,” said one neighbor, who requested anonymity.

“We expect our leaders to be safe, and it’s unsettling to see this kind of threat.”

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British Attacks on Free Speech Prove the Value of the First Amendment

Political activists occasionally propose a new constitutional convention, which would gather delegates from the states to craft amendments to the nation’s founding document. It’s a long and convoluted process, but the Constitution itself provides the blueprint. Article V allows such a confab if two-thirds of Congress or two-thirds of the state legislatures call for one.

These days, conservatives are the driving force for the idea, as they see it as a means to put further limits on the federal government. Sometimes, progressives propose such a thing. Their goals are to enshrine various social programs and social-justice concepts. Yet anyone who has watched the moronic sausage-making in Congress and state legislatures should be wary of opening Pandora’s Box.

I’d be happy enough if both political tribes tried to uphold the Constitution as it is currently drafted. It’s a brilliant document that limits the power of the government to infringe on our rights. Without the first 10—the Bill of Rights—this would be a markedly different nation.

For a sense of where we might be without it, I’d recommend looking at Great Britain and its approach to the speech concepts detailed on our First Amendment. Our nation was spawned from the British, so we share a culture and history. Yet, without a specific constitutional dictate, that nation has taken a disturbing approach that rightly offends American sensibilities.

As Tablet magazine reported, “74-year-old Scottish grandmother Rose Docherty was arrested on video by four police officers for silently holding a sign in proximity to a Glasgow abortion clinic reading ‘Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want.'” Thousands of Brits are detained, questioned, and prosecuted, it notes, for online posts of the type that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow here. The chilling effect is profound.

This isn’t as awful as what happens in authoritarian countries such as Russia, where the government’s critics have a habit of accidentally falling out of windows. But that’s thin gruel. Britain and the European Union are supposed to be free countries. Their speech codes are intended to battle disinformation/misinformation, but empowering the government to be the arbiter of such vague concepts only destroys everyone’s freedoms.

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Retired UK Constable Detained for Social Media Post Receives Financial Compensation for Wrongful Imprisonment

Under leftist Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the United Kingdom is sinking ever deeper in the censorship quagmire, signaling an authoritarian future where free-speech will be completely criminalized.

But that is not to say there has been no pushback from the British society.

Now, a retired police constable has been awarded some measure of justice in the form of compensation of £20,000 [US$ 27,000] after a wrongful arrest over one social media post in which he warned about rising anti-Semitism.

The Telegraph reported:

“Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham, Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers after replying to a pro-Palestinian activist on X. Kent Police officers searched his home and commented on his ‘very Brexity’ book collection. The force detained the 71-year-old for eight hours, interrogated and issued him with a caution after officers visited his home on Nov 2 2023.”

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Migrants In The UK Are Receiving £1 BILLION PER MONTH In Welfare Benefits: Report

Migrant households are siphoning almost £1 billion in welfare benefits every month in Britain, a report has claimed.

The Telegraph highlights government figures from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) which reveal that registered households with at least one foreign national in March received £941 million in universal credit.

The welfare scheme allows low-income or unemployed people in Britain to claim government subsidies 

The figure just three years ago was £461 million, meaning it’s on course to double in just half a decade.

It’s hardly surprising given the massive increase in mass migration to the country under the so called Conservative government.

2023 saw migration climb to a record of 906,000. The latest data shows that 948,000 people came to Britain in 2024.

Migrants are eligible to apply for universal credit as soon as they acquire residential or refugee status in the Britain. 

The report notes, however, that the total cost to the taxpayer of foreigners is way higher, when healthcare, education, and housing are factored in.

A recent study conducted by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) discovered that housing asylum seekers, a great deal of whom are in the country illegally, has increased to approximately £4.7 billion a year.

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Britain Is Sleepwalking Into Total State Control of Our Daily Lives

In a gloomy piece for the Telegraph, Sam Ashworth-Hayes warns that Britain is blindly sleepwalking into total state control, sacrificing individual freedom to an ever-expanding, intrusive government that now dominates every aspect of daily life. Here’s an excerpt:

Thank God we won the Cold War. For a while there, it was touch and go, the future of the world on a knife-edge.

On one side, we had a system permeated top to bottom by an official state ideology. Employment and freedom was made contingent on adherence, an extensive network of censors and informers was established to maintain the illusion that dissenters were a minority, harsh punishments were meted out to political prisoners and the state took control of vast swathes of the economy.

On the other, the promise of freedom: freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and association, freedom to do as you would with your private property.

It was, as I said, close. But in the end, despite Thatcher’s brief, doomed fightback, the Socialists won.

It’s a tongue-in-cheek reading of British history, but it doesn’t take a great deal of exaggeration to see how it could be true.

As AJP Taylor once wrote, “until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state beyond the post office and the policeman”.

That is emphatically not the case today. Having won the wars, the advocates of freedom comprehensively lost the peace. They lost to such a degree that those of us born and raised afterwards find it hard to comprehend the scale of the change.

It’s easiest to start with the size of the state. To be sure, socialism in Britain has receded from its high point. The nationalisation of coal, iron, steel, electricity, gas, roads, aviation, telecommunications and railways has been mostly undone, although steel and rail are on the way back in.

But by comparison to our pre-war starting point, we live in a nearly unrecognisable country. In 1913, taxes and spending took up around 8% of GDP. Today, they account for 35% and 45% respectively. To put it another way, almost half of all economic activity in Britain involves funds allocated at the behest of the government, and over half of British adults rely on the state for major parts of their income.

And if anything, this understates the degree of government control. Outcomes which are nominally left to the market are rigged by a state which sees prices as less as a way for markets to clear, and more as a tool for social engineering.

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China Has ‘Aggressively Penetrated’ Whole of UK Economy, Admits Govt.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has successfully penetrated every sector of the United Kingdom (UK)’s economy as a result of the government’s willingness to accept Chinese money without asking questions, so says the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee in a report published Thursday.

The CCP has “prolifically and aggressively” targeted Britain’s industrial and energy sectors as a means of gaining control and influence over the British nation and its interests. It has also been “particularly effective” at using its money and influence to buy up universities and academia to ensure criticism of the party is suppressed and that Chinese values and narratives are pushed “at the expense of the West,” the report states.

The UK is one of China’s main targets due to its close relationship with the United States as well as the UK’s position as an “opinion former,” claims the Intelligence and Security Committee’s chairman, Julian Lewis.

The UK government has done little to counter the threat, instead choosing to take Chinese money while turning a blind eye to “China’s sleight of hand.” The report explains:

“The lack of action similarly to identify and protect UK assets from a known threat is a serious failure, and one that the UK may feel the consequences of for years to come.”

The UK is now “playing catch up,” but “[t]here is no evidence that Whitehall policy departments have the necessary resources, expertise or knowledge of the threat to counter China’s approach,” the report adds.

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UK Rail Station Volunteer Ousted For Wrongthink Over ‘Pride’ Train… And He Is Gay

A volunteer has been banned from a railway charity scheme in the UK after he asked a basic question regarding a train that had been wrapped in ‘Pride’ colours.

The Telegraph reports, “Matthew Toomer, 48, was thrown out of West Midlands Railway’s ‘Adopt a Station’ scheme after he privately contacted company bosses to express concern about its ‘Progress Pride’ train.”

What awful hateful thing did Mr. Toomer say?

He commented on a social media post about the rebranded train, asking if it would “return to its natural state once the event is over.”

Oh the horror.

He was then “summoned” to attend a meeting with railway officials and informed that he views (he didn’t express any views) “do not align with [WMR’s] values and mission.”

He was then banned from the station volunteer group altogether as punishment for merely hinting at not being fully onboard with the trans train.

Mr Toomer told reporters “As a gay man myself, I want to stress that this wasn’t about objecting to visibility.”

Yes, even the gays can’t ask questions about the relentless ‘progress’ of THE MESSAGE.

“My concern was the increasing tendency of public transport organisations to take visible positions on divisive issues,” Toomer further outlines, adding “The Progress Pride flag has become associated with particular ideological stances – particularly around gender – which not everyone, including many within the LGB community, fully endorse.”

“My position was simply that public services should remain neutral and welcoming to everyone,” he emphasised.

Noooooo. That opinion won’t do.

While the Free Speech Union has demanded that the train company “apologise for this vindictive decision and reinstate him,” the Telegraph gleaned that the company had basically scoured Mr. Toomer’s social media activity and discerned that it was “problematic”.

A WMR spokesman said “Our company has a proud culture of inclusion and allyship,” adding “We believe the views Mr Toomer has expressed on social media on a range of subjects are at odds with these values and could be harmful or offensive to our colleagues, customers or other volunteers.”

Wrongthink then, essentially.

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London Mayor Backs Marijuana Decriminalization After A Commission He Created Recommends Reform

The mayor of London is voicing support for the decriminalization of marijuana following the release of a comprehensive report the government commissioned that ultimately determined that criminalizing people over simple possession of cannabis does more harm than good and disproportionately impacts minority communities.

On Wednesday, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the report from the independent London Drugs Commission (LDC), which he established, “makes a compelling, evidenced-based case for the decriminalization of possession of small quantities of natural cannabis.”

While the policy recommendation to move marijuana from the Misuse of Drugs Act to the Psychoactive Substances Act has been described as decriminalization, the proposal to remove any criminal penalties associated with low-level possession and stop police from conducting searches people over the smell of cannabis would effectively be non-commercial legalization.

What the report expressly does not recommend, however, is legalizing and regulating cannabis sales—at least for now. That comes as a disappointment to advocates, who feel the debate over reform and evidence from jurisdictions that have taken that step sufficiently shows that enacting commercial legalization would promote public safety with minimal risk.

“We need fresh thinking on how to reduce the substantial harms associated with drug-related crime in our communities,” the mayor said in a statement. “Better education, improved healthcare and more effective, equitable policing of cannabis use are long overdue.”

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The Net Zero Agenda’s Continued Collapse Into Chaos

Last week, Ofgem announced that the Energy Price Cap would be lowered. From July, average bill payers will see “a decrease of 7% compared to the cap set between April 1st to June 30th, 2025”. The likes of Ed Miliband were quick to capture the good news by reaffirming the Government’s commitment to the 2050 Net Zero and 2030 Clean Power agendas. But a closer look at the detail of the price cut and other news shows just how fragile those agendas really are.

The news that there would be a price cut was not unexpected. Energy price caps are announced quarterly. As reported here, the Spring (April-June) price cap rise was announced in February – the third since the Labour Government was elected in July last year on the promise of “lower bills”. “Energy bills are set to rise again due to a spike in global gas markets,” claimed Ed Miliband ahead of Ofgem’s February rise. But there is no such thing as “global gas markets”. And that “spike” had already passed.

A post-pandemic low price of gas on UK markets had occurred in February 2024 at around 56p per therm (29.3 kWh). But over the next year, this price increased to 142p, peaking on February 11th. On February 25th, Ofgem announced a 6.4% price cap increase for the second quarter of this year. But by the time of Ofgem’s announcement, a mere fortnight later, the price had fallen to 106p – a fall of 25%. Into the second quarter, the price fell further, reaching a low of 69p – or less than half of February’s spike price – on April 7th. The price then stabilised at around 83p (around 42% of the peak price).

“It’s great news the energy price cap is going down, but we have more to do”, tweeted Ed Milband in response to last week’s announcement from Ofgem – as if he and his policies had caused the price drop. “Our clean power mission is the route to long-term energy security and lower bills,” he added. Odd, isn’t it, that a 6.4% increase in the cap was blamed on (non-existent) “global gas markets”, but that a 7% drop in the cap, following a 42% reduction in UK gas prices, is not blamed on the same outside forces, but is instead given as cause to double down on the green agenda.

The clues are there for those whose capacity for simple maths is not hindered by green ideology… a 42% reduction in UK gas prices yielded only a 7% drop in the energy price cap. But doesn’t Miliband tell us that “global gas prices” are the cause of all our problems? 

And not just Milband. In the Times, the Green Blob’s favourite du jour talking point is reproduced uncritically by the newspaper’s Energy Editor, Emily Gosden. “Unlinking electricity prices from gas ‘would cut energy bills’,” claims the headline. According to this meme, remastered by energy market consultant Adam Bell, formerly Head of Energy Strategy at BEIS and Senior Policy Advisor at DECC, the “link” between gas prices and electricity prices could be “cut”. According to the article, “Britain’s wholesale market operates on a system of ‘marginal pricing’ whereby the most expensive plant needed to keep the lights on determines the price all generators are paid”.

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