Le Cygne

'If you speak they will kill you: if you are silent they will kill you. So speak out and die.' Tahar Djaout on Islamism (Algeria 1990s)

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

It is welcome that rapists will no longer be part of Labour's early release scheme.

But here's what they're not telling you.

They still plan to free thousands of serious criminals in ten tranches, starting in October.

And today’s changes in who is eligible for early release will only take effect from at least 12 January next year.

That is because this is the first tranche date to cover those with sentences over four years - which would have included rapists and "serious" child sex offenders.

Despite their rhetoric, we are still set to see many serious criminals back on the streets by December - including those guilty of child sex offences they deem "not serious".

Labour are putting public safety at risk.

[Eve Barlow @Eve_Barlow]

This morning Boy George has been banned from Bandcamp where his song fighting Jew hatred was available for download.

Last week, my friend Alyssa Rosenheck had her book launch cancelled because her book is about fighting Jew hate.

Did you hear about the kosher restaurant that was burned to the ground in Montreal this weekend?

And yet, silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence.

[Matt Vickers MP @Matt_VickersMP]

Twana Jamal was described as the “godfather” of the migrant camps in France.

He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

Now, he has been found running two dodgy vape shops in Leicestershire.

He has no place in our country. He should be detained and deported.

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better for the archbishop to have visited a place where Christians are, in the present, routinely persecuted for reasons of their faith.

[Keith @keith0582456611]

The National Audit Office are refusing to sign off on the Government Labour Party Accounts. A discrepancy of
£81 Billion , yes read that again!!! Racheal Reeves as our former Chancellor of the Exchequer has somehow "lost" £81 Billion
Where is the outrage from the Legacy Media? That is OUR MONEY which appears to have just evaporated into the Ether
https://t.co/fwjDxYtUAR

[Katie Amess @KatieAmess]

I am looking forward to finally getting some answers after 5 long years of heartbreak. How was someone known to the government as being a threat free to walk the streets and kill my dad? I just can't wait for this all to be over.

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

Last Wednesday, several years after the Channel migrant crisis began, 752 people arrived into Britain by small boat - a record number for the year. Last night it was announced that the killers of a police officer will walk free prematurely because prison capacity has dried up. Two absolutely glaring examples of calamitous state failure. We cannot continue like this.

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

I have often made the case that parties should make the effort to have policies - but also that there isn't much point in doing so if they don't know how to use them. Today is a prime example of that. While deeply flawed, @RestoreBritain can still say with absolute confidence that their mass deportation paper is better than anything produced by Reform, and today Reform have given them an open goal to exploit by producing their sloppiest effort yet on the small boats crisis.

With Reform and Restore being ideologically similar, they were always competing in the competence stakes. Today Restore has an opportunity not only to embarrass Reform, but also to advance their own policy and raise the standard of debate.

But as we can see, they're just going through the motions. Of the few policies they have, they have no idea how to exploit them to their advantage. @_HenryBolton has made a concise and credible argument as to why Reform's policy is stupid, and Bolton is Restore's spokesman - yet the main Restore account has nothing to say about it. Usual level of amateurism from the Slop Right.

[The Telegraph @Telegraph]

Italy wants the EU to send failed asylum seekers to repatriation centres in Africa, with countries including Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia reportedly willing to host the facilities.

Giorgia Meloni will push the proposal at an emergency EU meeting on the Ceuta migration crisis ⤵️
https://t.co/P6IuY1RtMR

[Claire Coutinho @ClaireCoutinho]

Andy Burnham and his new Energy Secretary said they would be ‘pragmatic’ when it came to the North Sea.

But this morning Miatta Fahnbulleh confirmed they will BAN all new oil and gas licences.

How is it pragmatic to favour gas from Norway, the US or Qatar over gas from Britain?

[Jon Pike @runthinkwrite]

So, today's @ObserverUK didn't publish any letters in response to that painful article last week attacking the WTA sex testing policy.

Even this one, apparently.

Shame, because I think it's spot on. 🤔

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

I don't have the bandwidth to do a full read of Restore's economics paper this week, but if you know what you're looking at, you can immediately see it's low effort filler that won't hold up to scrutiny. The immediate tell is this....

--"QUANGOs: We will freeze aggregate budgets, generating savings of approximately £8 billion per year or £40-45 billion over a Parliament, and review all bodies for abolition, scaling back, or full ministerial oversight (currently some 438 bodies spending £376-391 billion)".

Yest later, they say...

--"Budget Freeze: We will freeze most departmental budgets (excluding defence, health, and debt interest) for three years, generating further savings of £3-4 billion per year"

As anyone familiar with the territory will point out, the top five QUANGOs account for 90% of the spending, one of which is NHS England - and they rule out a freeze on health spending. Of the other QUANGOs, a couple of major ones are defence related so there's no immediate savings there either.

Essentially, the authors approach this from the angle that "QUANGOs are bad" - without really knowing what they are or what they do - which is not a sensible place to start setting out your economic costings. Then you have entities such as the Serious Fraud Office, and if you are at all serious about tackling waste and illegal immigration, then you are going to want to beef this up considerably and increase the headcount to put more inspectors in the game. Precisely why you don't produce your economic costings until you've done the policy work.

On health, they say "Many comparable nations deliver better public services at lower cost. Britain can do the same". My first thought is "good luck with that". Bringing the cost of health down is contingent on sorting out social care, for which you need dedicated policy, which probably isn't going to yield any immediate savings - especially if you're aware of the Gen X savings timebomb.

They make bold claims about QUANGO spend, but I note they use the TPA as their source - which is always sensationalist bollocks. Some of the bigger budgets account for pension liabilities then you have HMRC included in the list with a spend of £40bn, but one assumes much of this is doled out in the form of tax credits.

I've done some provisional work on QUANGO reviews and you soon arrive at the conclusion that there aren't any immediate and obvious savings to be had, not least because mergers/amalgamations have their own interim costs. A great many of these entities have a budget of under a million, and are little more the special purpose vehicles for the purposes of transparency on public-private collaborations.

If you want to make serious savings you have to look in much more granular detail at what they do. The Environment Agency is one such example, where its flood prevention work is absolutely vital, which could easily be merged with Natural England, so there aren't conflicts and duplications with habitats preservation work, but then there's a whole tranche of specialist work, some of which is pivotal, some of which is not. You need to do the policy groundwork first.

The big one that the slop right usually fixates on is the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. DCMS sponsors 41 arm’s-length bodies (the official figure confirmed in the department’s own Monitoring and Evaluation Strategy 2026–2031, published December 2025). This is one of the largest portfolios in Whitehall and includes highly visible cultural, heritage, sport and media organisations (Arts Council England, Historic England, Sport England, British Library, national museums, Ofcom, Gambling Commission, VisitBritain, etc.).

DCMS does seem to be the dumping ground for all the oddballs but they tend to be small and inconsequential. They tend to come into the crosshairs of the slop right because some are part of the left wing cultural establishment. There are savings to be made but it’s not going to be in the billions. The BBC is about half of the DCMS budget but the future of the BBC is a whole other policy conversation. £1.4bn in spending (19% of the budget) is National Lottery grants - which needs closer supervision, but it’s not tax payer’s money as such. That leaves you cutting Arts, Culture & Libraries. Good luck with that.

By my reckoning at least seven British Prime Ministers (or those who became PM) have pledged or been directly associated with a “bonfire of the quangos” and it never happens. They each discover in turn that running an advanced, first world state is complicated and expensive, and the idea that there are hundreds of wasteful and useless quangos is a piece of right-wing mythology. This is how we know Restore's paper is dross. It is reasonable to assume the same lack of rigour throughout.

[Bernie @Artemisfornow]

It’s just so incompetent I don’t know where to start!

Hundreds of grid meters, including 416 at offshore wind connections, are sending data the wrong way round? …. potentially costing consumers up to £100m a year.

And the owners aren’t being forced to fix them! Because a ‘backward’ running meter is a regulation problem not a repair job huh??

I have nothing 🤡

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

🇪🇸 In Ceuta, hundreds of migrants have been relocated to the beach closest to the CETI (Temporary Immigrant Stay Centers).

“Most of the people remaining here are from sub-Saharan Africa, from countries like Sudan, Mali, Eritrea, and Somalia.”

Video: RTVE

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

Her argument collapses on contact. Desperate to find SOMETHING to apologise for despite its role in the forefront of the abolitionist movement, the Church of England discovered that for part of the eighteenth century, a sum set aside for poor clergymen and known as Queen Anne’s Bounty had been invested in the South Sea Company, which was involved in shipping enslaved people.
The investment was made by accountants acting on behalf of the church, almost certainly without instruction. Its vicars were, at the time, demanding abolition from the pulpit; its bishops were voting for it in the Lords; its congregants were raising money for anti-slavery campaigns; its missionaries were touring Africa trying to persuade local chiefs to manumit their slaves.
None of that matters, though, because, across the period when the shares were held, they lost money. The Church of England’s profit from the South Sea Company? Zero.

[BostonTea @BostonTea84]

Chińczyk podsumowuje Afrykę w kilku zdaniach. Kluczowa scena w jednym z najważniejszych filmów dokumentalnych XXI wieku:

"Bardzo długo rządzili wami Europejczycy. Powinniście byli nauczyć się od nich, jak działają różne rzeczy. Doświadczenie i wiedza powinny być przekazywane z pokolenia na pokolenie. Tylko w ten sposób można iść do przodu. Tymczasem wy cofnęliście się w rozwoju. Zaniedbaliście wszystko, co wam zostawili. Mało tego: kompletnie zniszczyliście infrastrukturę i cały sprzęt. Co gorsza, w ogóle nie oszczędzacie pieniędzy. W dniu wypłaty tracicie rozum. Wszystko wydajecie, mija 48 godzin i już prosicie o pożyczkę."

[Dr. David Lütke @DrLuetke]

Marokko hat offenbar gezielt Afrikaner aus anderen Staaten nach #Ceuta durchgeschleust.

Nun sind die Afrikaner in der Stadt und Marokko nimmt sie nicht zurück.

Die EU muss den gesamten Zahlungsverkehr, Investitionen und Tourismus nach Marokko einstellen.

[Kelvin MacKenzie @kelvmackenzie]

Rod Liddle, a Sun and Sunday Times columnist ( but at his best in the Spectator) has died at 66. He leaves a wife and three children.
Sun editors were often concerned his views would lead to problems with advertisers so effectively barred him from writing about Islam or trans. Quite wrong.
When Emma Tucker was Editor of the Sunday Times she tried to have him sacked as a columnist because he was white and Right.
Really great credit to owner Rupert Murdoch who blocked the sacking with Liddle ( he joined in 2005) lasting a lot longer than Tucker who was moved to the Wall Street Journal.
Loved the statement from his children who said; “ He raised us much as you might imagine, to be inquisitive, brave and always humorous.”
A free spirit in a controlled world. RIP Rod.

[The Black Opinion @opinion_black]

On Saturday I attended St James Park with two very young family members. Had a great time. When we were leaving we crossed the road near Buckingham Palace and entered Green Park. The park was quite full with people enjoying a beautiful summers day.

We heard loud shouting and everyone’s attention was drawn to a young (25-27) white male who was pushing and prodding an older white gentleman aged 80+. Initially I was not going to get involved but the older chap seemed genuinely frightened when the thug said ‘I will knock you the f—k out’.

I instructed my two family members to stand back and told the big mouth to ‘try to knock me out instead’. To be honest I did end that sentence with ‘you prick’.

His bullying arrogance stopped immediately. I knew he was a piece of shit coward. The older chap thanked me and said that all he did was take pictures of the wildlife and that the thug slapped him on the back of his head for no reason. He then began following him and harangued him relentlessly. When I asked ‘do you mind me asking your age?’ He replied ‘83 next birthday’.

When I initially jumped in I heard 4/5 women cheer, grateful that I had stopped that cowardly bully. What caused me real concern was that MANY men in that park witnessed this and said absolutely NOTHING. What type of country tolerates its senior citizens being treated like that?

I am seriously concerned for the future of this country. I am not joking either……..

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

The Church of England is sending £100 million overseas for slavery “reparations”.

Meanwhile our parish churches - our national inheritance - are crumbling.

This is gesture politics - and it’s theologically nonsensical.

My letter to the Archbishop.