Steve Cass

Honesty, Empathy, Hard-work, Humour. Retweet/like if interesting/funny. Not necessarily an endorsement of views. Block rude/abusive folk. Discuss don't troll!

[Steve Cass @SteveCass14]

Hi everyone.
I (semi)-retired a couple of years ago now and among other things, I’ve been writing.
Mainly shorter reads, so anything from a couple of hours down to three or four minutes. I have three story collections being published over the coming months 1/5

[Noel Plum @noelplum]

The irony of this uneducated post is that if he went to a state school instead then we really WOULD be paying for his education...... and in a "cost of living crisis" as well grumble grumble!!

[Noel Plum @noelplum]

Apparently he needs to go to a "modern" school.
The idea, of course, is to strip the Royal Family of every vestige of tradition because then at that point you may as well have just another political suit as your Head of State.
Modern, dull, valueless.

[Noel Plum @noelplum]

Good to see a lot of sensible replies to your ill thought out tweet.

[Eric Kaufmann @epkaufm]

Emotional blackmail from woke activists and intellectual dishonesty from cowed liberals is killing academia, plunging us into an intellectual dark age.

My review of @NigelBiggar's must-read New Dark Age is now out at @LawLiberty

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

I always suspected that an alliance between the most socially conservative people and the least conservative people might run into problems

[Toby Young @toadmeister]

Oxfordshire has become the first council to start a legal battle to ban residents from raising Union and St George flags on or near public highways due to the "distress" they cause. https://t.co/20hN0rzuaq

[Sonia Sodha @soniasodha]

The idea society can’t have laws unless you have state enforcement officers checking every single person complies all the time with every single law is quite something. This MP is talking about single-sex facilities and services not being able to survive contact with reality 🤯

[Julian Jessop @julianHjessop]

Chart of the Day

Even after some favourable revisions, the trend in payroll jobs is still down, with 119,000 fewer employees in May than in the same month a year earlier - and 187,000 fewer than two years ago... 🤔

[Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson]

In fact, record numbers on out-of-work benefits.

Sickness benefit disguising true extent of worklessness

[Zachary Elliott @zaelefty]

Non-binary reinforces a socially constructed binary because you are claiming that atypical interests or personality makes you neither a man nor woman.

Why not accept the full variation within men and women? Instead, you are simply reinforcing a binary you claim to be against.

[Heidi Bachram @HeidiBachram]

Irish author Sally Rooney gave a speech last night blaming Israel for the rise of fascism and the far right in Europe and concluding that the “liberation of Palestine represents the liberation of the world”. How very 1930s Europe of her to blame the Jews for everything.

[David Turver @7Kiwi]

There's billions of barrels left in the North Sea. Even more onshore fas. Oh, and there's no security from intermittent renewables.

[Britain Unbound @BritainUnbound]

Liz has zero problem at all with the over 160,000 tonnes of cheaper beef brought into the UK from Ireland in 2025, undercutting British beef farmers.

Between 65-75% of annual beef imports come from Ireland. If Liz *really* cared about British farmers, she would care about that.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

The Free Speech Union has serious concerns about the Government’s proposal to ban under-16s from some social media platforms (but not others).

When the proposal was first announced, ministers cited supposedly 'harmful' platforms such as X, Facebook and YouTube, but made no mention of the left-leaning Bluesky.

A selective ban, rather than a blanket one, means Ofcom will be tasked with enforcing the political preferences of whichever government happens to be in power. If there's a change of government, will X be taken off the banned list and Bluesky put in its place?

Another concern is enforcement. How exactly does the Government intend to make the ban work in practice? In Australia — the model ministers appear keen to follow — many under-16s continue to access social media through VPNs.

Will the Government’s next step be to ban VPNs as well? That would put the UK in the same company as Turkmenistan, Iran and North Korea.

The Government has also failed to explain how this proposal can be reconciled with its duties under the Online Safety Act to protect content of democratic importance and journalistic content — duties that are due to come into force next month.

This is particularly important given the Government’s intention to extend some social media restrictions to 16 and 17 year-olds and at the same time lower the voting age to 16.

How can 16 and 17 year-olds be expected to participate meaningfully in the democratic process if the Government is restricting the content of democratic importance and the journalistic content they're able to access?

The Free Speech Union will be keeping a wary eye on the Government’s plans 👇

[Catherine McBride OBE @CeeMacBee]

Not settled science

Last week, the BBC declared that it had not breached its impartiality rules, claiming there were no significant counter-voices arguing for positive or even neutral effects of Brexit on the UK economy.

A new book, Brexit: the facts strick back would beg to differ.

https://t.co/GLe1sImmSD

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

The discovery of a massive global greening trend completely reverses the cost-benefit calculation for carbon dioxide.

Yet far too many have a vested interest in the old view so will resist admitting that global greening is a huge win for the planet.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Cross sex hormones are not HRT. The clue is in the name. Hormone replacement treatment replaces small amounts of naturally occurring hormones that have diminished with age. Cross sex hormones don’t replace anything. They are intended to disrupt the body’s hormonal balance.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

You’ve listed the make up of the ‘counterfactual’ against which actual UK performance is being compared: 61% US, 11% Estonia, 10% Greece, 7% Italy. That alone should have made you realise the study’s not worth the paper it’s written on. What on earth makes you think that a proper comparison — 61% America, which has way outperformed all major European economies??!! It’s almost as if the counterfactual was specifically chosen to make UK look bad.

[Rafe Heydel-Mankoo @RafHM]

I was pleased to speak in Parliament today on the topic of Sharia councils and how they are used to oppress, exploit and abuse Muslim women.

Britain is the "Western capital" of Sharia councils and helps set up councils in other countries.

60%-80% of Muslim marriages in the UK are sharia-only marriages, with no British civil registration (and thus no protection for the wives, who can be quickly divorced and left penniless by the husband, who also has priority over custody of the children).

This is far higher than anywhere in the Western world.

Far too little is known about how some of these completely unregulated councils are led by extremists and Islamists.

Some councils condone wife beating, ignore sexual and honour based violence, and allow forced, child and cousin marriage - and can deny mothers access to their children. And that's just the start!

Sharia law and councils have no place in Britain or any advanced Western nation.

Around 50 in attendance today including MPs, Peers and other notable figures such as Sir William Shawcross who led the critical review into the Government's "Prevent" programme.

Thank you to the Women's Policy Centre & Paola Diana for inviting me and to Sarah Pochin MP for hosting.

Brilliant speeches from Dr. Anna Loutfi, Camilla Tominey and Khadija Khan.

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

On all three issues, the bat tunnel, the fish disco and the Dartmoor ponies, Natural England say with a straight face "it's not us!" They blame over-reacting engineers or farmers. Why do those people overreact? Because they dare not risk NE refusing their permits..