All Minus One

Think for yourself …

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

This is an outrageous, disgraceful smear on John Healey — and an outright lie. There are a ton of ways to finance more for defence — starting with net zero — without taking a penny from schools or hospitals. Reeves should be ashamed of herself for allowing this nonsense. Suggests she’s really desperate.

[Theo Bertram @theobertram]

A defence secretary has never resigned in this way. Fox, Heseltine, Profumo - all resigned over scandals. To resign because the PM would not pay enough to keep the country secure - unprecedented.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?
#IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill

[Robert Peston @Peston]

Healey’s resignation is arguably the worst crisis faced by the PM, and he has faced a few. Because he is saying that Keir Starmer - encouraged by Rachel Reeves and the Treasury - is jeopardising the security of the nation by refusing to fund any significant increase in defence spending between 2027 and 2030 (he says that on Monday the Defence Investment Plan was shared with him, and it would involve defence as a share of GDP rising from 2.6% to just 2.68% of GDP by 2020).

One implication is Starmer simply does not have the authority over his cabinet colleagues to compel them to make the kind of cuts to their budgets that could have released funding for defence. He will face the charge that, with Burnham campaigning in Makerfield to replace him, he is prime minister in name only

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

Well done, @JohnHealey_MP. We prioritise disability benefits over drones. The MoD can’t get the £28 billion which it needs to keep us safe, yet the welfare budget is set to rise by £42 billion.
We spend more than 5️⃣ times as much on social security as on actual security.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

So in the blink of an eye, an attempted beheading by a migrant has been turned into a clampdown on freedom of speech by the Labour government. Everything Starmer does is designed to enforce an agenda that no one voted for. As always with him, it’s smoke and mirrors deflection.

[Daniel ShenSmith (BlackBeltBarrister) @dshensmith]

This is total lies.
State school parents do not in any way subsidise independent schools; if anything it is the other way round because independent school parents pay their taxes that fund the state schools, and they pay the fees for independence school on top. Thirdly, they save the state at least £8000 a year per Child by doing so

This is why many people no longer trust the BBC

[All Minus One @AllMinusOne1]

@heynavtoor @Fox_Claire AI is a misnomer. There is, thus far, nothing ‘intelligent’ about it - it’s just sophisticated data processing. A useful tool, but the hype and hysteria are overblown.

[All Minus One @AllMinusOne1]

@JakeWSimons This is indeed, unspeakably dim. The UK media and political ‘establishments’ are replete with idiots, wedded to lowering standards in virtually every facet of life. The nation’s economic decline and the erosion of social cohesion are the fruits of their efforts.

[Jake Wallis Simons @JakeWSimons]

Siri, show me everything that's wrong with the British establishment right now

[All Minus One @AllMinusOne1]

@SMeaker18 Yes, you’re missing something. Whether or not you think it necessary, the fact is that the senior management imposed a curfew - presumably in response to the Ashes incidents. And Ben Stokes, holding a senior leadership position, promptly ignored it. It’s about team discipline.

[All Minus One @AllMinusOne1]

@toadmeister "Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them." George Orwell

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

Today, we woke to the sickening scenes of a Sudanese man attempting to behead another man on the streets of Belfast.

In the aftermath, we’ve seen the all-too-familiar damage-control operation from the authorities.

People are being urged not to share the footage or comment on the incident because it may cause division, distress the family, or fuel the “far right”.

In a democratic society, people have the right to share footage of events that take place in public and to discuss why such horrific acts keep happening in our country.

Hear from FSU Case Management Director @BenBarryJones 👇

[All Minus One @AllMinusOne1]

@SpeechUnion @simonmontefiore Encouraging signs that, like the subsiding ‘trans’ mania, the tide is turning on the ‘establishment’s’ obsession with DEI.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

📣🚨 FSU Victory!!

The Free Speech Union has just heard from South Wales Police that it has withdrawn its guidance on “anti-Muslim hostility”.

The force had effectively adopted its own Islamic blasphemy law, instructing officers to record any conversation that went beyond “legitimate” discussion of Islam.

Under this guidance, criticism of Islam could have been recorded as an anti-social behaviour incident and potentially appeared on DBS checks, affecting someone’s ability to work as a teacher, carer, or in other regulated professions.

South Wales Police has backed down because the Free Speech Union threatened them with a judicial review if it chose to press ahead with the policy.

The force has described this move as a “pause” to the guidance — but we think it is highly unlikely to return.

We must also thank Shadow Equalities Minister @ClaireCoutinho for referring South Wales Police to the Equality and Human Rights Commission after we brought this issue to her attention.

Blasphemy laws were abolished by Parliament 18 years ago. We must not allow them to return through the back door.

Let this be a warning to any other public body — particularly police forces — considering the adoption of its own blasphemy laws.

Watch Lord Young below 👇

[All Minus One @AllMinusOne1]

@DanielJHannan While the 'chattering class' decries the 'reactionary' attitudes of those they consider their social inferiors, it has been obvious for years that the establishment's course on 'diversity' and immigration would undermine social cohesion and increase ethnic and religious tensions.

[Handre @Handre]

The Concorde stands as the perfect monument to government economic illiteracy: a $15 billion exercise in bureaucratic vanity that carried 100 passengers at twice the speed of sound and ten times the cost of rational air travel. Technological marvels mean nothing without willing customers at sustainable prices. Free market economists predicted this outcome from day one.

The British and French governments launched this folly in 1962, convinced they could engineer market demand through sheer political will. They burned through taxpayer money for two decades before the first passenger ever stepped aboard. By 1976, when commercial service finally began, the economics were already catastrophic. British Airways and Air France operated the fleet at losses so severe they required perpetual government subsidies just to keep the engines running.

You can measure the Concorde's market failure in brutal precision. Twenty aircraft built. Fourteen ever entered service. Zero sales to any airline willing to pay market prices. Pan Am, TWA, and every other major carrier took one look at the operating costs and ran. The round-trip London-New York ticket cost $12,000 in today's money while regular flights charged $2,000. Even wealthy passengers chose subsonic travel once the novelty wore off.

The final flight in 2003 ended this expensive charade, but the lesson endures. Politicians don't eliminate economic law by throwing other people's money at engineering problems. They just postpone the reckoning while the costs compound. Every government "investment" in commercial technology carries the same fatal flaw: bureaucrats spending money they didn't earn on projects they don't understand for customers who don't exist.

The market gave its verdict on supersonic passenger travel in 1976. Governments just took 27 years to listen.

[All Minus One @AllMinusOne1]

@spikedonline @Glinner This Labour government is made up of many of the lowest calibre people to have ever held high political office in the UK. And it shows in how quickly they have accelerated the decline inherited from years of Conservative mismanagement. This is what a feckless electorate chose.

[All Minus One @AllMinusOne1]

@DrChrisParry @IanSt_John David Lammy was disbarred in early 2009, after his disastrous performance on BBC’s Celebrity Mastermind. The Bar Standards Board found he had failed to comply with Core Duty 5, by exhibiting a level of stupidity likely to diminish public confidence in the legal profession.

[All Minus One @AllMinusOne1]

@ikeijeh @TrevorPTweets The UK’s government is populated with shockingly incapable people - @DavidLammy, a painfully dim deputy PM: @RachelReevesMP, a Chancellor who would be out of her depth in Halifax’s complaints department: @Ed_Miliband, seems genuinely unwell: Keir ‘reverse Midas touch’ Starmer …