🚨NEW: The rape gang inquiry, carried out by Rupert Lowe, mentions the NHS recording genital injuries, STIs, and pregnancies in children as young as 11, then discharging them back to their abusers the same night

Hillary Benn says there would have been no point in vetting the Sudanese knife-attack suspect when he arrived in Belfast, as past behaviour can’t predict the future. The British state doesn’t give a damn about the public’s safety, says Owen Shapell buff.ly/A4IMvlW

I hope Starmer is miserable He deserves it I can't think of a politician who I have disliked more and that includes Osborne

BREAKING: The Speaker of the House of Commons was furious to hear that the Government’s long awaited Defence Review is planned to be snuck out on a Friday when the House isn’t sitting. This can only herald bad news for our nation’s defence. Sir Lindsay Hoyle has long been a powerful advocate for the Armed Forces from the first day he entered Parliament. He said he would be "appalled" to see the plan announced without a statement to the Commons first and makes a direct appeal to No10: "That would be an utter disgrace and an utter kick in the face to members of this House.” It would also be the highest breach of standing orders and an act of cowardice.

This morning everyone is reacting to the horrific attempted beheading in Belfast. But last week in Galway a young Iranian mother of two, Masuma Sohrabi, was murdered and almost beheaded. There is no viral video of this brutal attack. She was living in State care. Her body was thrown over a bridge. Murdered by her ex-partner. The had been living in an IPAS centre together. She had previously secured a court protection order against him. He was moved only a few miles away. Only a week later, her story is all but forgotten. In 2012, Savita Halappanavar, died in State care while giving birth in Galway. Her death lead to the one of the biggest political movements in Irish history, after an enormous campaign of outcry from, media & NGOs. My question is: Where is the national outcry for Masuma Sohrabi?? Where are the NGO's demanding an overhaul of IPAS? Where is the media demanding answers? The sad truth is her death doesn’t fit any convenient political narrative for the NGO/media complex. As some journalist in the Irish Times might say, her murder "isn't being helpful".

The Irish happily check vehicles and people going south when they want to. Yet apparently we can't police our border with Ireland. Instead we let people wander across it & give them asylum. We must be out of our minds. The back door into the UK via Ireland needs closing.

An extraordinary clip. “You’re already better than Nelson Mandela by the virtue of your religion. You’re already a better person than him, because Allah chose you to be a Muslim.” And yet this supremacist tripe is not in the least unusual at the University of Leeds. 1/7

Burnham Promised Affordable Homes. He Built Luxury Towers For Chinese Investors Before Andy Burnham stood for Mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017 he was explicit about what he would do with the region's housing investment fund. He criticised public loans for city centre and luxury schemes. He promised to renegotiate the fund so it would fully focus on the long term goal of an affordable home for all. Here is what he actually did. Burnham's Greater Manchester Combined Authority lent £578 million in public money to a single developer, Daren Whitaker of Renaker. In March 2024 Burnham chaired a meeting that approved £120 million in loans to Renaker companies in the space of one minute. Out of 11,000 homes built with that public money, 503 are classed as affordable. Less than five percent. Since 2020 Whitaker's personal fortune has grown from £140 million to an estimated £698 million, making him one of the wealthiest individuals in the North West. He briefly registered his residency in Monaco before switching it back to Britain. A tribunal found that GMCA failed to obtain a statement of assets and liabilities from Whitaker before lending him the money, exposing taxpayers to a risk the tribunal described as potentially wiping out the public funds. Whitaker also received a £40 million dividend payout despite restrictions in the original loan agreement. The GMCA would not say whether it knew about or approved those payments. The terms of the loans remain secret. A Court of Appeal hearing on £140 million of those loans is scheduled for June 9. Nine days before the Makerfield by-election. The China dimension is where the story connects to something considerably larger. The taxpayer backed developments were actively marketed to Chinese buy to let investors through Hong Kong estate agents. A marketing event was held in Hong Kong just weeks before the GMCA approved a £69 million loan for the Contour development. Hundreds of flats in taxpayer backed skyscrapers have been sold to Asian investors according to Telegraph analysis of Companies House filings. Angela Rayner, then Deputy Prime Minister, was simultaneously telling the Telegraph that it was a real frustration that international investors could buy up houses before local people get a look in. Her government's mayor in Manchester was lending public money to a developer marketing those same homes to Chinese buy to let investors in Hong Kong. Labour was pledging a stamp duty surcharge on overseas landlords while its most prominent northern mayor was facilitating exactly the investment it claimed to oppose. For Makerfield voters the question is direct. The constituency sits within a region where 18,000 people have no permanent address and one in 61 Manchester residents is homeless. The man asking them to send him to Westminster promised in 2017 to focus public money on affordable homes for all. He then lent £578 million to a developer who built luxury towers now owned by Chinese landlords, extracted dividend payments despite loan restrictions, and left taxpayers exposed without conducting adequate financial checks. For Britain as a whole the question is broader. The pattern of accommodating Chinese financial interests runs from the super embassy in London to the spy trial collapse to Mandelson's undisclosed relationship with China's finance minister. The Renaker story adds a further dimension. Public money, lent without adequate due diligence, flowing into luxury developments marketed directly to Chinese investors, by the mayor now seeking to become Prime Minister. The Court of Appeal will hear the case on June 9. The voters of Makerfield deliver their verdict on June 18. Both deserve an honest answer. "Burnham's Greater Manchester Combined Authority lent £578 million in public money to a single developer, Daren Whitaker of Renaker."

Milton Friedman's greatest regret. The federal government discovered the perfect crime in 1943: make employers collect taxes before workers ever see their paychecks. You think you earn $60,000 per year, but you actually earn $75,000 and hand over $15,000 to politicians without ever touching it. The psychological difference is enormous. Before payroll withholding, Americans wrote quarterly checks directly to the Treasury. Picture yourself sitting at your kitchen table, writing a $3,750 check to the IRS every three months. The pain was immediate and visceral. Politicians faced constant pressure to justify every dollar because citizens felt the extraction in real time. Withholding transforms this concrete loss into an abstract accounting entry. Your employer becomes an unpaid tax collector, and you never experience the actual cost of government. Worse, most people celebrate their tax refunds as government generosity rather than recognizing them as interest-free loans they provided to politicians. The Treasury collects your money throughout the year, spends it immediately, then returns your own cash and receives gratitude. This system enables the explosion in government spending you witness today. Defense contractors billing $640 for toilet seats, agricultural subsidies for corn syrup, and congressional salaries for 535 people who rarely show up to work. When taxation feels painless, voters stop demanding accountability for how their money gets spent. Milton Friedman helped design withholding as a wartime emergency measure and later called it his greatest regret. Free market economists recognized that the psychological pain of direct taxation creates political pressure for fiscal restraint. The temporary always becomes permanent in government hands, and the emergency justification disappears while the extraction mechanism remains forever.

Here’s Bernie six years ago claiming that humanity only had about six years left to stop the existential threat of climate change. All we had to do to save the planet was pass his $30 trillion Green New Deal. 😂

The past eleven years have been the hottest on record. Every fraction of a degree brings greater harm – especially to the most vulnerable. This #WorldEnvironmentDay, warning signals are everywhere. This is the moment to act for our environment & for our future.

I’m struggling to work out why you didn’t do this in government then. Indeed your key decision when you became Chancellor (and thus your lasting legacy) was to immediately reverse some tax cuts and instead to put taxes up 🤷👇