Remember the murder of Stephen Oake? Perhaps you don’t. It was in the news at the time, but it was nothing like as huge a story as the tragedy of Henry Nowak or the horrible maiming of Stephen Ogilvie in Belfast. There were no marches, no protests, no agonised debates about immigration.
Yet the case was, objectively, every bit as significant as the more recent horrors. DC Oake was stabbed to death by Kamel Bourgass, an Algerian national who had arrived in Britain on the back of a lorry three years earlier, and had become radicalised through the terrorist network Al-Muhajiroun.
Why wasn’t his death a bigger deal? Oake was a brave man who died in the line of duty. His murderer was an illegal immigrant. There was a religious radicalisation angle.
The answer, I think, is that Oake died in 2003, when our media and political leaders did not consider it quite proper to dwell on stories about white men being killed by immigrants. Making too much of a fuss was said to “stoke far-Right narratives”.
What we are seeing now is partly the result of decades of repression, deflection and dissembling, a breakdown in trust between the old media and the country at large. That is what makes it so bitter.
We are about to have our seventh prime minister in a decade. Has Britain become the new Italy? What is going on?
The truth is that we are in denial about what we have done to our economy. We have become poorer through excessive taxation, spending, borrowing, regulation and money-printing. But we don’t like to admit it.
A recent survey by @IEALondon found that we think of ourselves as a wealthy country, comparable to Singapore or Switzerland. In fact, Singaporeans and Swiss are roughly twice as rich as us, and we are about to be overtaken by Poland and Slovenia.
How did it happen? There is no mystery. Under Tony Blair, the state was spending one pound in three; now it is closer to one in two.
We say we want growth, but we don’t want it if it means cutting welfare, allowing more private healthcare, reducing taxes for entrepreneurs, liberalising employment law, raising the state pension age, sacking government employees, admitting skilled immigrants, ending the triple lock or allowing new houses near us. In other words, we don’t really want growth at all.
Rather that acknowledging that contradiction, we blame our politicians. But as long as we make it politically impossible to cut spending (see the attached story as just the most recent example, one of a hundred I might have picked), we condemn ourselves to penury.
It will carry on until we have leaders prepared to deliver growth, as opposed to intoning the word. And that will happen only when we accept that we were living beyond our means even before the lockdown, that we have become utterly bloated since and that, like an obese person who wants to become fit, we face some short-term pain.
https://t.co/N8vBRKRQLx
This is pretty rich coming from someone who has pointedly failed to “get on and deliver” the EHRC guidance on single sex spaces because it was politically expedient for her to do precisely nothing.
Keir Starmer today appointed a woman's envoy who can't define a woman, and a global finance envoy who tanked Britain's banks.
He's just not very good at this, is he?
Polite notice to those urging me to show blind tribal allegiance to a party that's screwed over female nurses who want to change in a female-only space, female prisoners housed with male sex offenders and female rape survivors who want an all-female support service: nope.
“I have just been informed that Gordon Brown sold our gold at bottom and left the country penniless. I am furious with my officials for not telling me.”
Bravo, @Keir_Starmer, for getting in an Adviser on Women and Girls who thinks the definition of women and girls includes men and boys. That'll definitely win back people who believe Labour's a party for smug, lanyard-wearing, luxury-belief-espousing cultural elitists. 1/2
As Gordon comes in to “save” the economy it’s worth remembering 2010,
when Nigel Farage was an MEP in the European Parliament and Gordon Brown was Prime Minister.
Starmer thinks we’ve forgotten. We haven’t!
GLORIOUS 🔥
The LibDems REALLY don't like traditional Christian teachings. @timfarron's unhappy leadership during which he was tortured by a secular inquisition into his personal and private moral beliefs should have been proof enough... but we now have the case of @DavidCampanale. It took a four year legal battle for the illiberal Dems to finally admit they had been guilty of "religious discrimination" against him. Many other Bible-believing Christians in the party won't have gone to court but will have had the party close doors of opportunity and candidacy on them. And if it wasn't for the likes of @CamillaTominey on @gbnews today this anti-Christian discrimination would be almost unknown to anyone. Prejudice against Christians in Britain and often violent persecution of them across the globe are barely covered by the BBC, ITV ot other mainstream broadcasters. Britain's extreme abortion laws, racism BETWEEN minority communities, family breakdown, farmlife.... there are so mamy issues that will never get a fraction of the attention that the establishment news orgs give to anti-Americanism, white privilege, global warmimg and their other ideological news priorities. They hate GBNews, indy podcasters and this platform 'X' for breaking the silence on non-favoured topics but it is now our duty to defend and support these new platforms and the light they bring to once dark, unexplored corners of our times.
Here's more on the David Campanale case: https://t.co/9jRv8l7wf0
The Liberal Democrats believe Britain’s diversity is its strength.
And yet, one of their candidates was hounded out for being a Christian, against all the laws they claim to love.
They fought the claims for four years before conceding they were true.
Will Ed Davey apologise?
This is going to be unpopular, but here goes. I believe Sir Keir Starmer. I don’t think he would be so foolish, or so careless, as to lie to Parliament.
He is an ultra-cautious man, a creature of procedure. When he says that he did not discover until this month that Peter Mandelson had been denied security clearance as a potential ambassador, I think he is telling the truth.
But here’s the thing. He never allowed the slightest leeway to others in similar circumstances. As leader of the Opposition, he always assumed the worst, always levelled accusations of lying, always demanded resignations.
Boris Johnson was, in my view, also telling the truth as he understood it when he said that he had been “assured that no Covid rules were broken”. He plainly took the word “party” to mean a festive congregation of invited guests, not a break for tea among keyworkers.
The only actual party in Number 10 was organised by officials while Boris was 40 miles away. Yet Starmer insisted that this was “industrial-scale law-breaking,” and that Boris must “do the decent thing and resign.”
Having set those standards for everyone else, he can hardly now expect an opt out himself.
The United Kingdom has endlessly appeased the criminal regime in Iran. The Prime Minister speaks of protecting the innocent civilians of Iran but failed to act to help stop the regime’s massacre of 40,000 innocent Iranians in January.
Only an end to this regime - that brings terror to Britain’s own shores - will yield lasting peace and regional stability. Keir Starmer should follow in the footsteps of Churchill, not Chamberlain. He should support the Iranian people’s fight for liberty.
The Iranian people will remember who stood with them in their hour of need and who stood against them. There is still time for the Government to change course: prosecute the IRGC that slaughters innocents, expel the illegitimate regime's ambassador, and act to support the people of Iran.
If Jesus is who he says he is, we hardly need to be too bothered about this. I mean, it’s not like we need an exit poll. The result is already in… (Revelation 21 - spoiler alert).
ChatGPT made this graphic for me to illustrate the pump price of petrol...
The fuel duty is higher than the crude oil component
And then we pay VAT including on the fuel duty!!
When @RachelReevesMP talks about fuel profiteering she needs to look in the mirror
@griffitha@ClaireCoutinho
Debates around lowering the term limit from 24 weeks remain unwhipped and a matter of individual conscience.
But it is clear that abortion up to birth is repulsive and a Reform UK government would reverse it immediately.
Imagine being a Christian woman, joining the Church to promote Gods word
Rising to the position of Archbishop of Canterbury. Then, as a vote is being taken in the House of Lords to allow abortion to birth. You attend a 'walk' instead, so you can swerve responsibility
Abhorrent