“It's disgraceful“.
The Telegraph's Poppy Coburn reacts to the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from their Aston Villa away fixture on safety grounds.
#Newsnight
BREAKING: it appears by his own social media posts, that an illegal immigrant staying at the Bell hotel in Epping, recoding the protets out the window, also has many posts of him with heavy firearms!
It is interesting to note that while Labour ministers were telling us the government couldn’t afford £1.5billion for pensioners’ winter fuel allowance it was telling a court behind closed doors that it was allocating £7billion to resettle Afghans.
Instead of buying your meat from the supermarket, why not try to support your local butcher?
Helping businesses and jobs in your community...
Maybe not every time, but once a month?
Try it - you might like it!🇬🇧
17 years after Parliament abolished blasphemy against Christianity, the courts have brought it back for Islam.
Sir Keir Starmer once defended a woman who trampled on the American flag. Yet, today, faced with a man fined for burning a Koran, he melts into apparent silence.
So it’s free speech for flag-burners, but criminal records for Koran-burners? The double standard could not be starker: this is two-tier justice, made to measure for Two-Tier Keir’s Britain.
Hamit Coskun’s fate is grotesque. He was allegedly stabbed in broad daylight by an enraged zealot for burning a religious book and hauled before a judge while his alleged assailant will not face trial until 2027. The Kurdish-Armenian atheist, protesting President Erdogan, was knifed, kicked, and spat on outside Turkey’s London consulate, yet it is only he who now carries a criminal record.
Had Coskun torched a Bible outside Apostolic Nunciature (the Vatican’s Embassy) while shouting abuse about Christianity, does anyone seriously believe the CPS would have rushed to press charges? Would the police even have turned up? Their own hate-crime guidance celebrates satire, mockery and irreverence – unless, it seems, the target is Islam. Parliament did not legislate for such religious privilege; officials have conjured it out of thin air. It could have been even worse. My campaign alongside the Free Speech Union forced the CPS to dump its farcical charge that Coskun had harassed “the religious institution of Islam”. Even so, their revised charge still criminalises the robust denunciation of ideas. This is the rebirth of a blasphemy law, smuggled in through the back door. The charge against Coskun, Section 5 of the Public Order Act, was meant to tackle threatening or abusive behaviour directed at real people present in real time. In 2013, Parliament tightened the law so that ordinary insult would no longer suffice. The CPS has now expanded that provision into a blasphemy clause. If book-burning during a political protest is re-defined as “disorder”, then any vigorous criticism of Islam – or indeed any religion – is at risk. The judgment sets a chilling precedent: the more “offended” a crowd claims to be, the more likely the state might be to punish the speaker.
Coskun’s appeal against the conviction must, as @KemiBadenoch has said, be successful. To see where this is heading, look no further than Batley Primary School teacher still in hiding – his life shattered – for sharing a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed. Parliament must strike back so that the authorities and our courts have no doubt of Parliament’s protection of free speech.
My colleague, @NJ_Timothy, has produced a Bill that will bar prosecutors and judges from reviving blasphemy in any guise. I will support it unequivocally, and I challenge the Government benches to support it. Ministers who claim to cherish free speech must prove it. Let the Bill progress, or admit they are willing to trade our liberties for the transient comfort of avoiding offence.
'It's cowardly of him not to speak to us! I mean, he has plunged the whole rural economy into chaos.'
Farmer, Jamie Blackett, has accused Keir Starmer of 'running away' from the discontent around inheritance tax on farmers on GB News.
This has been going viral on other platforms. Sadly, there’s a lot of truth to it. We need to turn our country around and make it work for hardworking Brits.
Remember how much Labour used to object to Tory ministers using private jets?
Well David Lammy has splashed out £891,719 on Private Air Travel in his first 3 months alone, nearly half of what Liz Truss spent during her entire tenure as Foreign Secretary in 2021-2022.
Hypocrites
Housing thousands and thousands of illegal migrants in hotel accommodation is PURE insanity.
It costs a fortune, endangers local residents and sends an appalling message.
The answer? Detain, deport. This is the only way.
My speech in Westminster on the relentless madness...
"Britain now stands shamed before the world. The public’s suppressed wrath is bubbling to the surface in petitions, calls for a public inquiry, and demands for accountability.
The scandal is already reshaping British politics. It’s not just about the heinous nature of the crimes. It’s that every level of the British system is implicated in the cover-up.
Social workers were intimidated into silence. Local police ignored, excused, and even abetted pedophile rapists across dozens of cities. Senior police and Home Office officials deliberately avoided action in the name of maintaining what they called “community relations.” Local councilors and Members of Parliament rejected pleas for help from the parents of raped children. Charities, NGOs, and Labour MPs accused those who discussed the scandal of racism and Islamophobia. The media mostly ignored or downplayed the biggest story of their lifetimes. Zealous in their incuriosity, much of Britain’s media elite remained barnacled to the bubble of Westminster politics and its self-serving priorities.
They did this to defend a failed model of multiculturalism, and to avoid asking hard questions about failures of immigration policy and assimilation. They did this because they were afraid of being called racist or Islamophobic. They did this because Britain’s traditional class snobbery had fused with the new snobbery of political correctness.
All of which is why no one knows precisely how many thousands of young girls were raped in how many towns across Britain since the 1970s."
So many decent people have been bullied into silence, out of fear of being called a racist, bigot or whatever else.
Let me be abundantly clear - there is NOTHING shameful about wanting to protect our borders, from both uncontrolled legal and illegal immigration.
Don't feel guilty, ashamed, in the wrong - the entire British system has been pushing that message on people for years, relentlessly making us feel regretful about believing in strong border control.
Don't buy it any longer. THEY are wrong. WE are right, and we are the majority.
Uncontrolled mass immigration is THE root cause of almost every problem facing our country.
People have seen their communities transform in front of their eyes over the last couple of decades. And somehow they're made to feel like they're racist for pointing that out? NO. It is simply not on. We must push back.
We've got entire areas of certain towns where almost nobody speaks English? And we're supposed to accept that as normal? It is NOT normal. It's happened there, and it will happen elsewhere too - at an increasing rate.
Migrants who come need to work, integrate, speak the language, live by our laws. If they don't? They're not welcome. It should be that simple.
A vast majority of Brits agree, but it's all done under whispers and in fear.
Incredibly controlled and limited immigration, where the needs of the British people are placed above all else, is a benefit to our country. The current chaos is not.
It's time to say enough is enough. Uncontrolled mass immigration has destroyed our country, almost beyond repair.
Do not be afraid to say so - you'll find that most people agree with you.