Tag: united kingdom

A Closer Look at ARIA: Britain’s Secretive £800 Million Sun-Dimming Quango

The UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), established in 2023 with an £800 million purse of taxpayer funds, received a burst of publicity last week when it was unveiled that the agency was planning to “dim the sun” to fight global warming. The agency approved £56.8 million to be spent on “climate cooling” projects which include looking into the logistics of building a ‘sunshade’ in space and injecting plumes of salt water into the sky to reflect sunlight away from Earth.

ARIA is the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, a prominent British political strategist who served as the chief adviser to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson from 2019 to 2020. Cummings pitched a lean, “audacious” agency to fund high-stakes research in AI, quantum computing and synthetic biology, sidestepping the “timid bureaucracy” of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). In a research paper published in 2018 on his website, ‘On the ARPA/PARC “Dream Machine”, science funding, high performance and UK national strategy’, Cummings proposed a high-powered publicly-funded British research agency to emulate the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC).

The latter two entities inculcated high-risk, high-reward research with minimal bureaucracy and exemplified high-performance team performance, flexible work processes and visionary leadership. They yielded many innovations such as GPS, the internet, laser printing, the graphical user interface and the computer mouse, which resulted in large societal and economic returns.

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Fire Breaks Out in British PM Starmer’s London House – Arson Suspected, Counterterrorism Police Investigating

On the very same day that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to cut migration to the Kingdom, his North London home reportedly caught fire – or was set on fire.

The fire broke out in the early hours of the morning, and British police is now investigating the case.

GB News reported:

“The London Fire Brigade attended the property in north London after they received reports of a blaze at around 1.30am on Monday. The door to the four-bedroom property was damaged but nobody was injured.”

Met Police: “The fire is being investigated and cordons remain in place while enquiries continue.”

London Fire Brigade: “The [fire] brigade was called at 1.11am and the fire was under control by 1.33am. Two fire engines from Kentish Town fire station attended the scene.”

Downing Street spokesman: “The Prime Minister thanks the emergency services for their work.”

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CENSORSHIP KINGDOM: Retired Constable to Sue UK Police After Arrest Over a Social Media Post Denouncing Anti-Semitism

The United Kingdom continues its decent into authoritarianism and censorship of social media content.

Now, a retired constable is getting ready to sue Kent Police after being arrested back in 2023 for posting a social media reply warning about rising anti-Semitism.

The Telegraph reported:

“Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham in Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers from the force he had served for a decade after replying to a pro-Palestinian activist on X.

The 71-year-old was detained for eight hours, interrogated and ultimately issued with a caution after officers visited his home on November 2 2023.”

Last week, Kent Police sent out a statement saying that the caution was a mistake and has been deleted from Foulkes’s record.

The local law enforcement agency admitted that it was ‘not appropriate in the circumstances and should not have been issued’.

“On Sunday, Mr. Foulkes accepted an offer from the Free Speech Union (FSU) to fund a legal challenge against the force for wrongful arrest and detention.

‘The FSU and Lord [Toby] Young have generously agreed to fully fund a lawsuit against Kent Police’, he said. ‘I’m extremely grateful for such excellent support and would urge anyone concerned about the sustained attack on free speech to please join the FSU. They’re fighting hard every day for all of us’.”

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Says Epstein Files Likely Destroyed, Claims Israel and UK Still Hold Remaining Evidence — Believes ‘He Didn’t Kill Himself’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) drops a bombshell about the Epstein files during an interview with far-left blowhard Cenk Uygur on his show The Young Turks.

Greene raised serious questions about the fate of the elusive Jeffrey Epstein files and the decades-long cover-up protecting the powerful elite.

Greene didn’t mince words when asked about the Epstein case — asserting that the vast majority of the evidence has likely been destroyed and suggesting that foreign governments like Israel and the United Kingdom may be sitting on crucial information.

Cenk Uygur: Okay, so, one more thing here, along these lines — Epstein files. How disappointed are you that they have not come out yet? And do you have a theory as to why they haven’t?

Rep. MTG: Yeah, I’m glad you asked me about that. You know what I’ve been saying for quite a few years now — I guarantee you, most of that information has already been destroyed. I can’t imagine that it still exists. And I would like—of course, we want to see all the information—but I just think it’s been destroyed. That’s my own personal opinion. But I think there are other foreign countries that probably have information on that as well, and it would be nice if they would release the information that they have.

Cenk Uygur: Oh, that’s interesting. Which foreign countries do you think might have information about that?

Rep. MTG: I would guess some of our greatest allies. Israel probably has information there. I would not be surprised at all if they did. The UK, I bet, would have information. I’m not sure who else, but I would suspect those countries.

Cenk Uygur: Are you disappointed that the Trump administration has not put it out yet?

Rep. MTG: I’m disappointed that many administrations haven’t put it out. The Biden administration should have put it out. I think a lot of people should have put it out. But again, I’ll go back to this: I—I have a hard time believing that it all still is there.

Cenk Uygur: Yeah. Any theories on what happened?

Rep. MTG: I have no idea. I couldn’t even tell you. Do I think he committed suicide? Nope. I don’t think so. But again, that’s just my opinion.

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Why did 30 Met officers kick the door down at a teenage tea and biscuits meeting in a Quaker house?

When six young women gathered in central London to discuss the climate crisis and the war in Gaza, the setting could not have been more appropriate. The building in which they sat was a Quaker meeting house, the home of a movement whose centuries-long history is rooted in protest and a commitment to social justice. On the table were cups of jasmine tea, ginger biscuits and a selection of vegan cheese straws.

But the events that brought this apparently convivial gathering to an abrupt end have sparked protests of a different kind and raised questions about how justice is administered by the UK’s largest and most embattled police force.

Talk among the youth activists that evening had turned to the 1963 Children’s March in Birmingham, Alabama, when a flash of blue light interrupted the chatter. Seconds later up to 30 Metropolitan police officers, some armed with stun guns, smashed down the door of the Grade II-listed building and arrested the young women inside.

One of the six, 18-year-old Zahra Ali, was held in a cell for 17 hours. Another was “rear stacked”, hands cuffed behind her back and held against the wall in what she described as an hour-long ordeal. Phones were seized and laptops bagged as evidence.

The raid, described as “intelligence-led”, was targeting the protest group Youth Demand. The members in attendance were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. Five remain under investigation.

Six weeks on, the operation has drawn criticism from religious groups, politicians and activists. The need for such a severe course of action, meted out in a place of worship, remains a concern, not least for those who were targeted.

“I was the last one to be taken into custody,” said Ali, the youngest of the six women. “I got to the station about 10pm-ish and I had to wait two hours to be booked in. I was taken to a freezing cold cell for hours. I wasn’t allowed a personal call. I didn’t get to speak to my solicitor until he came in person.

“We saw the blue lights a second before they marched in. We were just a bunch of young people talking about our government, about protesting, and they arrested us for that.

“I think had they rung the bell we would have let them in, obviously … They didn’t have to raid us. It’s six young women in a room, in a place that we hired, that we publicly advertised, and they could have just sat in and listened to us. I don’t really see any conspiracy in that.”

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When the Truth Is Uncomfortable – and We Want to Look Away

Both the UK grooming scandals and the medicalisation of ROGD teens highlight how the visceral reality of body horror drives us to turn away from deeply unsettling truths.

It’s striking how two seemingly unrelated issues can sometimes reveal the same deep-rooted problems in society. On the one hand there are the UK grooming gang scandals – horrifying crimes, ignored for decades, involving networks of Pakistani Muslim men who targeted vulnerable teenage girls. On the other, there’s the sudden explosion of teenagers, particularly girls, identifying as trans – many of whom are suffering irreversible harm as a consequence of inappropriate medical transition. At first glance you may not think these two crises have much in common, but scratch the surface and a disturbing pattern emerges.

In both cases, the adults in charge looked the other way. Institutions minimised. Social workers made the wrong calls. Mental health professionals rarely helped – and often caused harm. Journalists stayed silent. Officials deflected. Very few people in positions of authority had the courage to confront the shocking reality, and those who did were labelled as bigots.

Meanwhile parents’ pleas were ignored and dismissed as either “Islamophobic” or “transphobic” depending on the context. And because the parents found no societal support when they needed it, their children became out of control and their lives were ruined.

At a conference in the US earlier this year, I found myself facing blank stares when I mentioned the parallels between girls caught up in the grooming gang scandal and teenagers swept up in the world of rapid-onset gender dysphoria. One delegate pushed back, insisting that victims never feel glad to be targeted while plenty of ROGD kids say they are happy with their medical transition. But sadly, that’s not true. Many of the targets of grooming gangs believed their abusers were their boyfriends. Just like many ROGD teens, they felt flattered by the attention and even encouraged their friends to join in what they saw as fun. The gifts, the glamour, the sense of being wanted – it all had a powerful pull. Quite a number went as far as converting to Islam and marrying their abusers.

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Sun-Dimming Quango has £800 Million of Taxpayer Money to Blow – and a CEO on £450k

Recently, this site reported that £50 million worth of taxpayer money was about to be approved to blot out the Sun in the name of staving off ‘global warming’.

The Telegraph has more on developments and the eye-watering sums of money being quietly allocated to Aria to develop potentially irreversible interventions in the natural world, while also paying extravagant salaries:

Plans to block sunlight to fight global warming have inadvertently shone a light on Aria, the Government’s opaque research arm.

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency was set up in 2021 by Kwasi Kwarteng, the ex-Tory business secretary, and was originally the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief aide.

Yet few people on the street know what it is, what it does, or how much taxpayer cash is flowing into its well-financed coffers.

Sure, it has a shiny website stocked with techno-waffle promising to help scientists “reach for the edge of the possible” and foster “opportunity spaces” but there has been little clarity on its day-to-day operations.

This week, we learnt it will spend £56.8 million on 21 “climate cooling” projects, which include looking into the logistics of building a “sun shade” in space and injecting plumes of salt water into the sky to reflect sunlight away from Earth.

“We’re not trying to dim the Sun,” representatives from Aria said rather disingenuously at a press briefing, knowing full well that should experiments prove successful, that is their ultimate aim.

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Controversial Plan to Block Sunlight with Geoengineering Advanced by Shadowy UK Government Agency

Controversial geoengineering research, including a plan to study blocking sunlight, received $75 million in funding from the UK government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), which some scientists warn could be just as dangerous as the climate change it seeks to combat.

Proposals to geoengineer humanity’s way out of the impending climate crisis span 21 projects, from sunlight-reflecting clouds to thickening arctic ice. The funding comes under ARIA’s Exploring Climate Cooling programs, a five-year initiative aimed at holding off the tipping point of the impending crisis.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency

ARIA was announced in 2021 as the UK’s answer to the US Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and has been active since 2023. The agency’s £800 budget funds risky yet potentially groundbreaking technologies in areas like climate, AI, and neurotechnology, leaving more conventional and slow-paced research to the UK Research Initiative, the country’s other public science funding organization.

The shadowy agency became a target of controversy early on over its lack of transparency, after being declared exempt from freedom of information requests. The News Media Association, a UK media organization with members that include The Guardian and The Daily Mail, issued a statement in 2021 calling for the UK government to reverse ARIA’s immunity from freedom of information requests.

Geoengineering Controversy

Now, ARIA is wading further into controversial territory with its recent funding of geoengineering projects. Despite warnings of climate catastrophe, many experts have expressed concerns over whether relying on geoengineering as a solution could produce outcomes worse than the problem at hand.

Last year, Harvard University canceled a project in Sweden to dim the sun by introducing particles into the atmosphere after local residents became concerned about the longer-lasting repercussions. On May 7, 2025, Florida also took legislative action to ban geoengineering.

Mark Symes, a University of Glasgow electrochemist who leads ARIA’s Exploring Climate Cooling programs, explained that any proposed concepts are only stop-gap measures to curb the planet’s slow progress toward reaching a global climate tipping point, buying time to address root causes like carbon emissions.

“We want to keep this research in the public domain,” said Piers Forster of the University of Leeds, who chairs a committee that monitors climate projects for ARIA.

“We want it to be transparent for everyone,” Forster said.

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When did charities turn into insufferable activist groups?

When did charities become so political? From Oxfam to the British Heart Foundation, many British charities are going well beyond their core missions of saving lives and helping the needy and have branched out into political lobbying, whether it’s for sugar taxes or so-called climate justice. The third sector has relegated old-fashioned charity work to second place, behind lobbying the government for ‘progressive’ policies.

This trend should not be allowed to pass unnoticed, especially when there is such a clear revolving door between charities and politics. According to research from Transparency International in 2023, almost one in three ex-Conservative ministers ended up in jobs that overlapped with their government brief – many in charities. After last year’s General Election delivered a landslide of new Labour MPs, more than 35 per cent of parliamentarians now have a ‘background’ in the charity sector, including eight members of the cabinet.

Labour figures have proved most adept at floating seamlessly between NGOs and government. Gordon Brown’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, now specialises in ‘refugee resettlement and assistance’ at the International Rescue Committee. Others, like UNICEF and Save the Children’s Justin Forsyth, have gone back and forth between charity and government. In 2023, Oxfam appointed Halima Begum as its chief executive, who tried to become Labour MP in 2019.

The result of this echo chamber is clear in charities’ output. Last year, Oxfam, which was founded to help famine relief efforts in the developing world, called for a 60 per cent tax in the UK on income, stocks, shares, rent and other revenue ‘that the rich disproportionately rely on’. The British Heart Foundation pledges to reach Net Zero by 2045 and pushes for nanny-state policies like sugar and salt taxes. Christian Aid was set up to provide life-saving support when wars blighted some of the world’s poorest communities. Now it also campaigns for ‘climate justice’, whatever that means.

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UK government plans to mandate new homes have solar panels and also plans to block sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface; the two do not go together

The UK’s Future Homes Standard aims to ensure that new homes built from 2025 produce 75-80% fewer carbon emissions compared to homes built under the current Building Regulations. It will require new homes to have very high levels of energy efficiency and low-carbon heating systems, ensuring they contribute to the UK’s net-zero carbon emissions target.

The standard includes specific performance requirements for building elements like external walls, roofs, floors, windows and doors, as well as minimum efficiencies for heating systems, ventilation and lighting.  It also demands that people’s homes be adorned with solar panels.

“The so-called Future Homes Standard regulations is due to be unveiled ‘soon’, billed as ensuring that properties are ‘highly efficient’ and do not have fossil fuel boilers by 2030,” the Daily Mail reported.  “The latest version of the blueprint could see four-fifths of new homes required to have solar panels covering 40 per cent of their footprint.”

A Ministry of Housing spokesman said, “Through the Future Homes Standard we plan to maximise the installation of solar panels on new homes, as part of our ambition to ensure all new homes are energy efficient, and will set out final plans in due course.”

This mandate is expected to add between £3,000 and £4,000 to the cost of building a home.

Meanwhile, war criminal and former Prime Minister Tony Blair has said that the government’s net zero targets are “unrealistic” which has caused the Labour Party to descend into bitter infighting, with some Members of Parliament and unions urging a re-evaluation of net zero policies while others are defending them.

A day after issuing his comments, Blair, who has advised Sir Keir informally, backed down and insisted he supported Labour’s plan to reach net zero by 2050.

Blair wasn’t criticising the false “climate change” premise on which net zero policies are built. He merely criticised the current net zero approach as “doomed to fail” and called for a pragmatic “reset,” arguing that people in developed countries are unwilling to make financial sacrifices and lifestyle changes when their impact on global emissions is minimal.

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