Tag: united kingdom

British farmers to protest again over increasing burden of government’s anti-farming policy on agriculture

Last month a convoy of tractors rolled through Dover and thousands of farmers gathered in London to protest against changes to inheritance tax rules as announced in the Labour government’s recent Budget.

The protests were sparked by the proposed 20% inheritance tax on farm assets worth £1 million or more, set to take effect from April 2026.

British farmers argue that the policy, combined with the fast-track withdrawal of the Basic Payment Scheme, increasing farm employer costs and a carbon tax on fertiliser, among other policies, could force families to sell land to cover tax bills, breaking up livelihoods and generations of UK farming businesses, Farmers Weekly reported.

There are also worries within the industry over the impact of future trade deals, substandard food imports and the recent removal of farming grants.

The potential introduction of chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef from the US undermines the UK’s high food standards and is a major concern for farmers.  The government’s decision to remove or stop farming grants and funding for promoting British food abroad has added to the industry’s woes.

“There’s a decision about an American trade deal, which is a massive problem for British farming. It is unsurvivable. We’re back looking at the horror of chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef. 

“Obviously, the inheritance tax is another assault on farming.

“What is more, the government has removed or stopped a lot of the farming grants and pulled the funding for promoting British food abroad.  What we’re seeing is a real aggressive move from this government to end British farming,” founder of Save British Farming, Liz Webster, said.

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Muhammad is The Most Popular Name For Boys in England & Wales

Exemplifying demographic changes taking place due to mass migration, the most popular name for boys in England and Wales last year was Muhammad.

The Arabic name, which is shared with the Prophet Muhammad, overtook Noah to become the most popular name for boys in 2023.

Although it is being reported that this is the first time Muhammad has topped the charts, it would have actually come in at number one in multiple previous years had all the different spellings of the name been combined.

“In 2023 there were 4,661 Muhammads born across England and Wales, up from 4,177 in 2022,” reports the Telegraph.

“In contrast, only 4,382 Noahs were born in 2023, down from 4,586 the previous year.”

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Podcaster in UK Faces Prison For Saying “Young White Girls Are Being Raped by These Grooming Gangs”

A podcaster in the UK faces potential prison time after being charged for making “grossly offensive comments” in a YouTube video in which he stated, “Young white girls are being raped by these grooming gangs.”

Yes, really.

Carlisle Crown Court heard that 41-year-old Derek Heggie made the comments in two YouTube videos in early August during the rioting and unrest that took place across numerous cities in the aftermath of the Southport murders.

Heggie had been set to stand trial on a charge under the Malicious Communications Act, but instead “pleaded guilty to sending communication of an offensive nature.”

Prosecutors said Heggie’s comments were “particularly inflammatory” in the context of the riots and he is still being remanded in custody as he awaits sentencing later this month.

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UK Pays Wind Farms $1.3 Billion To Shut Down When It’s Windy

Bloomberg reports UK Is Paying £1 Billion to Waste a Record Amount of Wind Power

Burgeoning capacity and blustery weather should have driven huge growth in output in 2024. But the grid can’t cope, forcing the operator to pay wind farms to turn off, a cost ultimately borne by consumers. It’s a situation that puts at risk plans to decarbonize the network by 2030 and makes it harder to cut bills.

Crucial to the net zero grid target is a massive build-out of renewable power, particularly from wind. Britain has boosted its offshore fleet by 50% in the past five years and is set to double it in the next five, Bloomberg data show.

But the grid hasn’t expanded at the same pace. As a result, the operator is increasingly paying wind farms, particularly those in Scotland, not to run. So far this year, the UK has spent more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion) in “congestion costs” to turn off plants that can’t deliver electricity because of grid constraints, and switch on others.

Last month for example, when Storm Bert swept across the UK, some of its newest and biggest wind parks were still. Scotland’s £3 billion Seagreen project, owned by SSE Plc and TotalEnergies SE, was shut off. SSE’s Viking development on the Shetland Islands was also closed.

Wind vs Gas

UK generators usually sell output in advance on the wholesale market. But those transactions don’t take into account the physical limitations of balancing supply and demand in real time. To keep the lights on, the operator steps in, paying some plants to turn off and others that are closer to demand centers to fire up.

Often, this means shutting off a far-flung wind farm and starting up a gas-fed plant that’s closer to a city.

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Odd UFO Filmed and Photographed at British Airport

A purported airline pilot in England caused a stir online by sharing photos and a video of what they claim was an orb-shaped UFO spotted on the tarmac at a major British airport before taking off into the sky. The eyebrow-raising revelation reportedly occurred last week when an anonymous individual using the pseudonym ‘CaptainBiggalow’ posted the intriguing material on Twitter. According to the alleged airline pilot, the three photos and singular video (seen isolated below) were from an incident this past June wherein the weird object, which was described as being the size of a small car, was seen at the Manchester Airport.

Claiming to have received the material from a colleague, ‘CaptainBiggalow’ indicated that the orb was initially seen floating a few feet above the tarmac, which understandably prompted airport security to be dispatched to investigate the worrisome intrusion. However, he said, seemingly upon realizing it had been spotted, the object departed the scene with a sudden vertical ascent. Adding another layer of mystery to the curious case, the CaptainBiggalow account shut down shortly after the post caught the attention of UFO enthusiasts online and spawned a dizzying amount of discussion on Reddit.

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How The Rush To Net Zero Is Accelerating Britain’s Industrial Decline

It’s Toytown basic economics that the price of any commodity or service is determined by the relationship between supply and demand. The less there is of anything, the higher its price will be, depending on the level of demand. The greater the level of supply the lower the price, and thus the greater the demand and usage.

Nothing could exemplify that better than energy. Restricting the supply of energy whether by design or circumstance, or even elevating the price artificially with taxes and levies, is bound to inhibit demand. And that diminishes the economy.

The Telegraph has published an article by Jonathan Leake on how Net Zero has accelerated Britain’s national decline:

For Ed Miliband and Sir Keir Starmer, Net Zero is the route to clean energy, economic growth and turning the U.K. into a global green superpower.

Across the Atlantic, however, Britain’s drive for “decarbonisation” is increasingly seen as an economic experiment – one that risks tipping the U.K. from miniscule economic growth into full-scale decline.

Chris Wright, Donald Trump’s nominee for US energy secretary, has warned that Britain’s rush to ditch fossil fuels in favour of wind and solar power is causing higher prices, driving away energy-intensive businesses and contributing to Britain’s national decline.

“The U.K., although no longer part of the EU, has continued aggressive climate policies that have driven up energy prices for its citizens and industry,” he wrote in a recent report. “The once world-leading United Kingdom now has a per capita income lower than even the poorest state in the United States.”

Leake doesn’t dispute the effects of climate change or “other consequences of greenhouse gas emissions”. His main point is that a key part of Net Zero policy is to reduce energy usage, but only in Britain. How much less?

To quote the Government’s advisory Climate Change Committee: “In our Balanced Net Zero Pathway, the U.K. economy becomes much more energy efficient, with total energy demand falling by around 33% in end-use sectors between now and 2050.”

Improved efficiency – delivering more output for the same amount of fuel, or less – could help to deliver a reduction in energy consumption. Yet huge advances would be necessary to yield a reduction in consumption of a third. Many observers believe the tail will wag the dog when it comes to this target, meaning the U.K. may be forced to curtail energy use in order to hit it.

For Wright and others, slashing energy consumption by a third and still expecting growth is heresy – an economic experiment no other country has achieved, or even attempted before.

Their view – one supported by most economists – is that access to energy has historically always been directly related to prosperity. The more energy we have, the richer we will become. And if we have less, we get poorer.

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UFO expert not ruling out Russia or China links to drones seen at RAF bases

A British former UFO hunter has said he does not “rule out” recent drone incursions over RAF bases in England being connected to Russia and China and nuclear weapons.

Unidentified drones were spotted in November over three airbases in the east of England that are used by the US air force (USAF).

“Small unmanned aerial systems” were seen between 20 and 22 November over RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and RAF Feltwell in Norfolk. The USAF, which occupies the bases, could not confirm if the drones were hostile.

According to a January US Department of Defense (DoD) notice, plans to deploy American nuclear weapons to RAF Lakenheath have progressed. The document states the work was in preparation for the base’s “upcoming nuclear mission”.

“I don’t rule out the activity being connected with nuclear weapons,” said Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defence official who headed the UFO desk in Whitehall from 1991 to 1994.

“Adversaries (probably Russia or China) might use drones to gather data on this, in parallel with using other intelligence-gathering strategies. But they’d be unlikely to risk an intelligence officer (either declared, let alone a highly prized illegal) on something like this.”

Pope thinks that if foreign adversaries were responsible, they might use third parties, perhaps by supplying local drone hobbyists with some equipment.

“Perhaps convincing them they’d be working for an independent news agency. Anti-nuclear groups or individual activists might also be potential culprits in this scenario.”

November’s incursions wouldn’t be the first time unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP, the military’s preferred acronym for unidentified flying objects or UFOs) have poked around RAF airbases housing nuclear weapons.

On Boxing Day 1980, United States airmen spotted strange objects flying over Rendlesham forest on the doorstep of RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk, a former airbase used by the US air force.

Charles Halt, the on-base commander at the time, said he saw crafts shooting down beams of light to the ground and heard over his radio that “the beams went down into the weapons storage area”.

Pope said that, unlike other UFO tales, eyewitness reports from Rendlesham were backed up by hard evidence. “It’s the perfect storm of a UFO case. It’s multiple witnesses, including the military. It’s sightings over three consecutive nights.

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Fuel Minister Liz Kendall, who axed £300 payment to pensioners, lives in £4million Notting Hill home with her banker partner – and their heating bill is paid by YOU

The Cabinet Minister who axed pensioners’ winter fuel payments has her own £350-a-month energy bills paid by the taxpayer – while she lives in a £4 million London mansion.

Liz Kendall has been branded a hypocrite for removing the payment for ten million pensioners while bills at her second home are being met from the public purse. 

The Work and Pensions Secretary’s main base is a four-bedroom property in Notting Hill, West London, which she shares with her partner, an Old Etonian investment banker. But she is allowed to claim costs for the second property she rents in her Leicester West constituency.

The most recent documents held by the Commons show she claimed a total of £3,810 in energy costs between April 2023 and July this year, with the largest monthly bills totalling £352. 

Ms Kendall’s decision to axe the annual winter fuel payment of between £100 and £300 for all but the poorest pensioners will force 100,000 people into poverty by 2027 according to her own department’s forecasts.

Last night, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The hypocrisy of the Labour Government knows no bounds. I will not be claiming a penny in expenses for my heating.’

And Tory MP David Simmonds said: ‘This revelation will be a kick in the teeth for the 10 million pensioners facing choosing between heating and eating this Christmas because of Labour and Liz Kendall’s political choice to cut the winter fuel payment.

‘While Liz Kendall is living a life of luxury the country is facing real life consequences of Labour’s ill-thought-out decisions. In four short months this Labour Government have made it clear they do not have the British people’s best interests at heart.’

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Disabled Brits Fearful as UK Pushes Assisted Suicide Bill

Multiple disabled individuals in Britain have expressed fear or anxiety that if the bill the UK Parliament just approved becomes law, people in the country will not only be able to choose to kill themselves if they have a terminal diagnosis, but those lives deemed less valuable could be ended by an anti-life medical system. After all, British babies have been taken off life-support against their families’ wishes in the past because doctors didn’t want to treat them.

The Nazi mentality of ending lives that the authorities consider arbitrarily to be valueless has spread from justification for abortion to justification for assisted suicide—and what is essentially murder of the elderly and sick. “I am a doctor and I have a disability,” posted Dr. Callum Miller from London, England. “I am telling you without a shadow of a doubt Doctors do NOT have the time or the understanding to protect disabled people from assisted suicide[.] Doctors will be killing vulnerable disabled people if this bill passes.” 

MP Nigel Farage agreed, “The right to die may become the obligation to die.”

The UK House of Commons has reportedly voted to approve a bill that would allow those with a terminal diagnosis of less than six months to live to kill themselves in medically assisted suicide. The Christian values of honoring sufferers and praising brave deaths have been replaced by the pagan desire to end physical pain through any means possible, even suicide or murder. But it is easy to predict that once assisted suicide is allowed, even for a few exceptions, it will soon be encouraged for many other reasons, too.

Miller is not the only person worried that disabled Brits will be pressured into killing themselves. Catholic campaigner and mother Caroline Farrow posted, “People in wheelchairs openly weeping, here outside of Parliament. The atmosphere is one of profound sadness and terror. A dark cloud has descended over the UK.” 

Disability Rights UK announced it was “deeply dismayed” by the House of Commons vote, arguing, “This legislation sends a chilling message: the government prioritises the right to die over the right to live.”

To provide context on how easily legalized assisted suicide could be abused, in 2018, British baby Alfie Evans (see photo above) was ordered taken off life support against the wishes of his parents. Italy granted Alfie citizenship, and the Vatican offered to treat Alfie at a hospital there, but UK authorities refused, and Alfie was taken off life support and died. In 2023, a UK judge ruled that baby Indi Gregory needed to be taken off life support, and authorities would not let her be evacuated, even though, once again, a Vatican hospital was willing to provide little Indi the care she needed to survive. She died in November 2023. 

In both of these cases, the UK authorities arbitrarily decided the babies’ lives were worthless and not only refused care, but actively prevented the Vatican from providing care, ensuring the babies would die in the UK. 

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Drone Swarms are Flying Circles Around the U.S. Government Inter-Agency Process

Establishing a trendline means having at least three data points.  Now we have three data points in drone incursions against U.S. military facilities.

During December 2023 we had 17 days of unrelenting, unchallenged drone swarms over the largest cluster of military facilities in the world, the Hampton Roads/Virginia Beach region of Virginia.

Then starting on November 18, 2024, drone swarms started visiting Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, approximately 35 miles to the west of New Jersey.  Picatinny is the DOD center for small arms and ammunition.

Now, the three core U.S. Air Force facilities in Europe, Royal Air Force (RAF) Stations Lakenheath, Mildenhall, and Feltwell have experienced drone swarms.  One note – it is a long-standing clause of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that these are called RAF vice U.S. Air Force Bases.

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