Links - 16th February 2026 (2 - Trans Mania)

Read some Piaget please! on X - "Kohlberg: sex-role development
Trans activists often misquote Kohlberg, claiming that once children reach “gender constancy” (6–7 years) they reliably know they are transgender. This is the exact opposite of what Kohlberg found. Kohlberg’s three stages (1966) describe how children come to understand biological sex as permanent:
1.Sex-role labelling (2-3 yrs): Can label “boy/girl” from clothes/hair, but believe sex can change with appearance.
2.Sex-role stability (4-5 yrs): Understand sex stays the same over time, but still think it can change with behaviour or clothing.
3. Sex-role constancy (6-7 yrs): Full grasp that biological sex is fixed and unchangeable, regardless of clothes, wishes, or activities. A boy in a dress is still a boy.
Once constancy is achieved, children actively self-socialise into behaviours that match their natal sex because they now cognitively understand it cannot change. Kohlberg explicitly tied this to Piaget’s concrete-operational stage. Also he never used the term “gender identity” — he wrote about biological sex and sex-roles.  True sex-role constancy is the cognitive milestone at which children reject the idea that cross-sex behaviour or feelings can make them the opposite sex. Claiming it proves a child “knows they are trans” and have a 'gender identity' is a deliberate inversion of Kohlberg’s theory."

Janet Murray on X - "Some women don’t mind having intimate medical procedures carried out by male clinicians - or by men who identify as women.  Some don’t mind sharing toilets, changing rooms or other single-sex spaces with men.  Some don’t mind men competing in women’s sports or taking women’s awards in business, sport or the arts.  Some don’t mind being described as “chest feeders,” “birthing people,” or “ovary havers.”  Some don’t mind men’s feelings being prioritised above their own comfort, dignity or safety.  If any of this applies to you, that’s your choice.  But your comfort does not override other women’s discomfort. Nor does it erase women’s legal rights to single-sex spaces, services, sports or sex-based language.  And if you’re a man who thinks you have the right to tell women what they should think or feel about any of this … that’s your choice too.  But remember: women’s rights and their boundaries are not yours to override."

Sall Grover on X - "“Why don’t more women athletes speak up?” This is why 👇 When World Surf League was putting a man in a bikini in the woman’s category, they made women surfers sign a contract saying they would say nothing negative about it or be fined $10,000."

Trans women not a risk in changing rooms, says NHS tribunal judge - "A transgender doctor’s use of a female hospital changing room was not “inherently unlawful”, a tribunal has found, despite the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman.  Sandie Peggie, a nurse, was suspended by NHS Fife after complaining about having to share a changing room with Dr Beth Upton, who was born a male but identifies as a woman.  After submitting a formal claim to an employment tribunal against NHS Fife and Dr Upton, a judgment on Monday found that Ms Peggie had been harassed by the health board.  However, her claims for sexual harassment, belief discrimination and victimisation were dismissed, with the judge ruling that it was lawful for Dr Upton to use the changing room until Ms Peggie complained. Ms Peggie’s solicitor said on Monday night that the judgment appeared to undermine the Supreme Court ruling in April that trans women are not women... His ruling also said there was “very far from sufficient reliable evidence” to show that biologically male trans people posed a “greater risk” to women in female changing rooms."

The trans lobby are determined not to obey the law - "The Sandie Peggie case shows why the Supreme Court was right to make clear last April that, in law, a woman is defined by biological sex. But it also suggests that some institutions, instead of upholding the law, are attempting to resist it. On Monday a tribunal in Fife undermined the Supreme Court’s authoritative interpretation of the Equality Act 2010 by ruling that a transgender doctor had a right to share a women-only changing room with a female nurse. Now it has emerged that the judgment in this case may have been flawed because it allegedly used an AI-generated fake “quotation” as part of its justification in rejecting Ms Peggie’s claim of discrimination.   Judge Kemp appears to have relied on an AI “hallucination”, which distorted the landmark Maya Forstater case to claim that the Equality Act does not give “precedence” to a woman over a trans person. Yet the Supreme Court did indeed rule that “woman” in the meaning of the Act is defined by biological sex, not self-identified gender. So a women-only space is solely for biological females.  The Sandie Peggie case has brought the legal apparatus into disrepute. Quite rightly, Ms Peggie has lodged an appeal."

Rebel Ada on X - "Incredible. The only longterm outcome study of trans people I read +understood immediately 5 years ago. The phrase “retain male patterns of criminality” was burned on my brain. If I can read + understand it, how did Judge Kemp believe and publish that it meant the exact opposite?"
Grim Walrus on X - "Also, if I recall correctly, the study referred to post-op trans ID males. The male in the Peggie case has had no surgery. Based on Ministry of Justice rates of trans incarceration for sex crimes, he was potentially more likely to be an abuser than males generally."

Children taking DIY cross-sex hormones before going to gender clinics - "Fiona said: “It’s like a Breaking Bad bathtub operation [the home meth labs in the hit American TV drama]. “What’s so terrifying is they don’t even know what they’re injecting.”... “They either won’t tell us where they’re getting the hormones, or they’ll say they’re getting it from friends who are being prescribed legally and they’re sharing them. Some have told us they are getting them from illegal websites that sell anabolic steroids to weightlifters. Others say they get them from their drug dealers along with their ketamine.”... When young people later change their minds about being transgender it can have stark repercussions. Anna, a 21-year-old from London, has been left with a deep, gravelly voice after taking testosterone for about a year at the age of 17. “It is heartbreaking to hear,” her mother, Helen, said. Anna had decided she was trans at the age of 13 at a private girls’ school in London. She had been bullied but her new status suddenly saw her one of the most popular pupils. “She got into the party set,” Helen said. By the time she was 17 she was sneaking out at night and, Helen later discovered, taking drugs. Her dealer was not just passing her cannabis, ketamine and MDMA, but also testosterone. Helen discovered this only when she found a vial and needles in her room. Anna later stopped taking the drugs, identifies as a girl again and regrets experimenting with the drugs. For Fiona, the nightmare continues. Hugo has dropped out of his A-levels and his relationship with his parents has disintegrated. “It is cult mind-control stuff,” Fiona said. “They believe that the person trying to protect them from harm is their abuser. And online, people are saying to them, ‘We are your real friends, we are your real family.’” The authorities have not helped. After discovering her son’s drugs, Fiona called the police, but they said there was nothing they could do. “They implied that we somehow were being abusive for trying to withhold urgent life-saving medicines,” she said. Fiona added: “You just feel like your child’s being stolen from you, and the person you once knew is being replaced with a stranger. You still love the person inside, but it’s really hard, because they seem to be reading out someone else’s script. It is so frightening.”"
Left wing logic will be that kids will find a way to get the hormones anyway, so the state should just give it to them anyway

Lozzy B 🇦🇺𝕏 on X - "What kind of dystopian propaganda is this?   The Australian Government says Social media is as dangerous as Alcohol & Cigarettes but puberty blockers & cross sex hormones that destroy young healthy bodies is fine.   Oh & radical leftist Bluesky is fine too. The TQ+ echo chamber that promotes pedophilia 🤔  They also allowed pedo’s & child killers to access ‘Working with Children checks’ to work with vulnerable children too. Many, many children were harmed.  They still haven’t reformed the system either but they say they want to ‘protect the kids’.  Yep 🤨"

Jamie Reed Whistleblower on X - "Running an LGB non profit in the United States daily exposes how entrenched trans is. It is not just the drop ship companies, or google, or sticker printers- it is baked into the entire donation, grant, money stream as well.   We have a profile on a national site that allows donors to resource non profits. We will never reach Gold Status unless I am willing to share the TRANSGENDER STATUS of our board and leadership.   That is not going to happen, because it is complete and utter bullshit."
Wesley Yang on X - "The institutional takeover has never been so rapid or complete. We built out a deca-billion dollar donor funded machine pledged to propagating and enforcing harmful delusions that millions depend on for their livelihoods, that moves in lockstep, and that is far larger than the Democratic Party from which its electoral figureheads are drawn."

Libs of TikTok on X - "HOLY SHIT. Netflix allowed a Transgender activist to tweet on their OFFICIAL ACCOUNT to promote the show “The Baby-Sitters Club," which pushes TRANSGENDERISM on KIDS. @Netflix is DIRECTLY promoting the transing of young children. DISGUSTING CANCEL NETFLIX"

Seasonal Clickfarm Worker on X - "Transgender is something that somehow has been treated as though it were a “medical condition” when in fact it is a religious idea about the relationship between the spirit and the body
Transgender rights should conceived not under the rubric CNN of right to medical care, or the rubric of freedom from discrimination on the basis of sex, but rather within the rubric of freedom of religion."
expatanon on X - "The mistake here is that it gives protection to youth "transitions" as part of a religious practice. "We have a first amendment right to give our child lupron and remove their genitals; these are our sacred rites.""
Seasonal Clickfarm Worker on X - "It seems like the analog would be female genital mutilation, which is not legal in the US"
Hunter Ash on X - "Doctors have no idea how or why transition is supposed to work. They are all deferring to some imagined consensus of greater experts. But that doesn’t exist. We have some ideas about what causes gender dysphoria, but there’s no really robust evidence that the existing treatments alleviate it. There’s no solid mechanistic theory. There’s no solid clinical evidence. It’s presented as settled science when all we have are confounded survey data that would be dismissed in any other context. The whole thing was made up out of air."

Diana Alastair💚🤍💜 ⚢ ❌❌ on X - "This man, “Gabrielle” Darone, spent 9 months simulating a pregnancy, including feigned morning sickness and the wearing of a fake belly, with the intention of play-acting the loss of the imaginary baby. He also joined a support group for grieving mothers who had lost children, seeking validation and “support” for his planned “stillbirth.”   He even went so far as to rent a machine that simulated contractions, and bought a plastic “baby” which he inserted into his rectum and then “gave birth to.”   Women who objected to his presence in the group - women who had actually lost children - were kicked out so that this man could feel supported in his game of let’s pretend. Their very real grief was considered less important than this man’s sexual fantasies.   To top it all off, he did all of this in the house he still shared with his unconsenting soon-to-be-ex-wife and their minor children. He even roped his 7 year old into taking “maternity pictures.”   Mr. Darone also convinced his doctors to provide him with drugs to induce lactation. He asked the members of an online breastfeeding group he’d joined if any of them would be willing to let him “breastfeed” - that is, sexually assault - their babies, and attempted to donate the chemical-laced sludge he pumped out of his moobs to “other mothers.”  These men have proven over and over again that there is no aspect of women’s pain that they will not twist into a prop for their sickening deviancy, from rape to oppression to sexual objectification.   Even the loss of a child in the womb is fair game to them: a perverted, selfish, hyper-sexualized game of make-believe that must always take priority over the real pain and real needs of real women."

Wall Street Apes on X - "The UK is finished UK Resident “I now have a criminal record because I wrote in the Critic magazine that my stalker was a man. Because he is a man. But the police said that misgendering him was contrary to the Online Safety Act because it was spreading false information” A criminal record for misgendering…."

Commuter on trial for pushing security officer at train station over bag screening, causing head injury - "A commuter who was asked to stop for a bag screening at a train station allegedly refused to comply and instead shoved the Certis Cisco security officer, causing the 65-year-old woman to fall and injure her head.  Alina Meridian, 31, claimed trial on Monday (Sep 22) to charges of voluntarily causing hurt to Madam Cindy Tay Jui Hwa at Lorong Chuan MRT Station on the morning of Aug 17, 2024 and using threatening behaviour by shouting and gesturing aggressively at Mdm Tay's colleague.  Meridian was unrepresented and brought along a stack of documents meant for defence purposes.  Although listed in charge sheets and court records as male, Meridian told the court that if "I will be misgendered, I would prefer you use my name". Thereafter, the judge referred to Meridian as "Alina"... "So after a while, I saw a madam with lipstick coming in with a bag, so I requested her to go for the screening," said Mdm Tay, referring to Meridian.  "So I requested her to go for the screening, however, she kept walking and I thought she ... couldn't hear. So near the gantry, I tapped on her shoulder and (told) we wanted to screen the bag," said Mdm Tay.  "But she turned into a rage and threw the bag on the floor and (insisted) we pick the bag if we want to scan her bag."  She said Meridian was "shouting in a rage and scolding us," and she tried to ask her to pick the bag up and have it screened.  "However, without a word, he just pushed me and I fell on the floor," said Mdm Tay. She later clarified that Meridian had earlier said that "he's rushing and we are delaying him".  After falling backwards on her head, Mdm Tay said she felt a big bump on her head and wetness that turned out to be blood... When it was time for Meridian to cross-examine, he asked Mdm Tay: "So you are a senior security officer, but you don't know de-escalation tactics?"  Mdm Tay said she did not know what Meridian meant.  "You are not a beginner security officer, you are a senior member, and you don't know how to de-escalate things? But instead (chose) to escalate to a point where I went from impatient to pissed off and impatient," said Meridian.  Mdm Tay repeatedly said her duty was just to screen the bag, and that she would not touch commuters' possessions as they belonged to the commuters.  "Your duty is to screen the bag, but as a senior security officer, I would expect, you to know at least de-escalation tactics, which is to pick up the bag and help to move things along instead of standing there, escalating things," said Meridian.  Meridian added: "What's the point of having a senior security officer if you can't even do such a thing."  At various points, the judge or prosecutor interjected as Meridian was not asking proper cross-examination questions but instead making comments. "Fine. So, then I guess it's my fault, you know, I should have called the police for transphobia," said Meridian.  When directed by the judge to ask questions of the witness instead, Meridian said: "So you can't help me do your job, but you can make me late for my appointment on that day."  The prosecutor said she still did not understand what the question was.  "She chose not to help me, and I'm late for that day," said Meridian, adding that he had stopped doing the job he had. "And so I have stopped doing it, and now I have no more money and this is entirely her fault," Meridian said.  Meridian then had an exchange with Mdm Tay, where Mdm Tay repeatedly said it was the duty of the commuter to comply with instructions and to pick up their bags and have them screened, and not for officers to pick up the bag when it was thrown on the floor.  Meridian shrugged and said: "So the reason you did not de-escalate the situation and caused it to be worse is because I have to do it for you and then you wonder why I got angry. I don't understand why there (weren't) de-escalation tactics."  Meridian added that he was a former security officer and found it "baffling" how a senior security officer did not know de-escalation tactics. "No further questions. Maybe I just take another exit next time when I see security officers, since this is the answer that I'm getting, which is that they will not de-escalate situations but instead choose to escalate situations," said Meridian."
Mandatory treatment order for man who assaulted security officer at MRT station - "A man, who  became upset with a Certis security officer at an MRT station and assaulted her, was sentenced to a two-year mandatory treatment order on Oct 27.  Alina Meridian, 31, who the judge said was found to have “autism spectrum disorder” and was unable to adjust his behaviour appropriately at the time of the offence, pleaded guilty to an assault charge on Sept 24.  Offenders given a mandatory treatment order have to undergo treatment to address their conditions in lieu of time behind bars."
Too bad Singapore isn't the West, or it would have been let off and the security officer would've been jailed for transphobia

Connor Tomlinson on X - "It's time for a complete and total ban on cross-sex hormones. They cannot change your sex. They turn men with perverse fetishes into derranged bioweapons, and women trying to escape sexual trauma into androgynous osteoporotic goblins. These people need to spend a long time  in an asylum — some of them, indefinitely."
Rohan 🌱🔸️🇧🇷 on X - "Post op FtMs commit 5.6x as much crime and 9.9x (!) as much violent crime as women, going to 4.1x and 7.2x as much respectively when adjusting for immigration status and psychiatric morbidity"
Hunter Ash on X - "Masculinization is a One-Way Street
When female-to-male trans people take testosterone, they become much more violent. But when male-to-females take estrogen and suppress their testosterone, they don’t get noticeably less violent.  This is one of many examples of a general pattern: masculinization is something that either happens or doesn’t to a default-feminine morphology, and once it’s happened it doesn’t un-happen.  Other examples include facial and body hair. When FtMs take T, they grow facial and body hair. If they stop, the hair doesn’t go away. Likewise, estrogen does not get rid of facial hair in MtFs. The same is true of voice: FtMs get deeper voices from T, but MtFs don’t get higher voices from E. I’d bet FtMs experience a boost to athletic performance much greater in magnitude than the decline MtFs see.  This goes all the way down to the embryological level. While we are not all “born female” since we have the sex chromosomes that will differentiate us from conception, “female” is the morphological default. That’s what happens without a surge in androgens. We see this in people with CAIS, who are genetically male but, due to a genetic defect that renders them immune to androgens, develop a female body plan, with their testes located where ovaries would be. They usually don’t learn they are technically male until they fail to menstruate.  This is a fascinating and deep asymmetry between men and women: masculinity is something additional that happens on top of a feminine default."

Mia Hughes on X - "Me: You signed a statement calling “gender affirming care” for youth medically necessary.
Guyatt: WHAT!? That’s RIDICULOUS. I would never say that.
Me: *produces the receipt
Guyatt: Oh, I didn’t read that part. I’m a dope.
Unbelievable."

Forest on X - "“Gender dysphoria never goes away,” they say. “The only treatment is to transition.”  But mine did.  Instead of taking my testosterone prescription, I left social media, went to the gym, went hiking, spent time around people, listened to non woke voices.  My dysphoria went away."

Colin Wright on X - "🚨A peer-reviewed paper in a real journal titled “My pronouns are fuck ICE” argues that universities are colonial, racist, transphobic sites of oppression, and calls for their transformation through “de-stress tea,” “organizational gossip,” and revolutionary “queer pláticas.” One such plática, treated as scholarly data, involves: • Glo, a "trans nonbinary Afro-Caribeñx and Mexican sophomore"; • Toni, an "Indigenous Nahua Cipotx with Salvadoran and Nicaraguan Miskito roots"; and • Mars, a "non-binary Zapotec prietx-alien-femme." Their dialogue includes: • “White people love killing folks.” • “My pronouns are fuck ICE, and my childhood dysphoria is crossing the damn border.” • “I love my dick, and I am a woman, so what?” • “Can I get my diploma and some titties?” • “Titties and citizenship. Don’t forget we need both.” @brad_polumbo and I break down this absurd paper on our latest episode of the Citation Needed podcast (link below)!"

Girls STILL forced to share loos with boys despite schools facing 94 complaints - "Young girls across Scotland are still being expected to share school toilets with boys – as new figures show that councils have received almost 100 complaints and representations about gender neutral loos in the last three years.  Scottish state schools were ordered to provide single sex toilets in a landmark ruling handed down by a judge at the Court of Session in Edinburgh"

I begged my bosses not to let the trans nurse who invaded our changing room take part in my intimate operation. They refused - as they didn't want to hurt HIS feelings - "Karen Danson’s father started to sexually abuse her when she was six. It could have been yesterday, so vivid are the memories... You will have heard of the Darlington Nurses, the eight nurses who are taking legal action against their employers, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, because they claim they were forced to share a changing room with a male nurse who identifies as a woman, despite still outwardly presenting as a man.  Twenty-six women in total signed a letter of complaint – and in return were told by their own HR department that they were transphobic and in need of ‘re-education’. Their union also abandoned them, openly calling them bigoted.  Their case, a pivotal one in the toxic gender war, is still proceeding to tribunal, even though the Supreme Court has since clarified that, by law, a trans woman is a biological male – and does not have the right to access a women’s changing room. The Darlington nurses who have been publicly identified so far have always said that they took the unprecedented legal action partly on behalf of more vulnerable colleagues who didn’t feel they could speak out – including one victim of childhood abuse who had felt intimidated and terrified by the behaviour of the trans nurse, Rose Henderson, in that changing room. Karen was that terrified colleague. This is her first interview. It was her distress that set the ball rolling in this extraordinary debacle. She broke down sobbing to colleagues after being repeatedly asked by Rose (who was ‘wearing boxer shorts with holes in them, which meant I could see his male anatomy’) why she wasn’t getting changed.  They were alone in that changing room, and she – a sex abuse survivor; the sort of woman single-sex spaces were enshrined in law to protect – was paralysed by fear... ‘Inside I was thinking, “I am not getting changed in front of you, no”, but I couldn’t say anything. Then he gave this smirk, this expression, which was the same one my dad had when he was doing the abuse. He could see I was uncomfortable, and he didn’t seem to care.’  She claims that Rose’s question about whether she was going to get changed was repeated three times. There is a sense of incredulity at her own reaction, now, in the cold light of day. This is a very strong and sensible woman, trained to be assertive when required, yet she went to pieces... the sleepless nights and panic attacks – and pounding heart when she went into the changing room – were affecting Karen’s work... She tells me that last summer, after legal papers had been served and after The Mail on Sunday had broken the story of the Darlington nurses, Karen needed an urgent hysterectomy, after years of problems with endometriosis. It was to be carried out at the Darlington Memorial – where everyone involved worked – but just a few weeks before the procedure she discovered, to her horror, that Rose was scheduled to be on duty in the operating theatre on that day, and would be part of the surgical team. ‘It was a gynaecological procedure, and his role would have been down at that end, passing the consultant the tools,’ she says, incredulous. She immediately pointed out the obvious (as she thought) issue here. ‘I told them that because there was a legal dispute under way, involving Rose, it was a conflict of interest, and entirely inappropriate that he should be involved in my surgery, especially intimate surgery like that... Karen escalated her complaint, putting her concerns in writing. ‘And I got an email back saying that they could not accommodate my request [for Rose to be replaced]. They said they would cancel the operation, and I could go elsewhere. I couldn’t believe it. I needed that operation, and I’d been with my consultant for years. After everything, I felt I was being punished. I said, “I am asking this as a patient”, but they didn’t care.’"
Caroline Farrow on X - "What kind of sadist schedules a man who has known to be sexually intimidating and harassing a woman, to participate in his victim's intimate operation and aftercare?"

Mischief Trial of the Century: Inside the Crown’s Bogus, Punitive and Occasionally Hilarious Case Against the Freedom Convoy’s Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, Part II

From 2024:

Mischief Trial of the Century: Inside the Crown’s Bogus, Punitive and Occasionally Hilarious Case Against the Freedom Convoy’s Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, Part II

"Initially scheduled for a tidy 10 days, it quickly became apparent the Crown’s new team had no intention of moving swiftly or efficiently. Three days in, Wetscher and Radcliffe were still introducing a vast array of evidence, mostly Facebook and TikTok posts plus thousands of text messages seized from the pair. The defence rightly argued all of this should have been revealed before the trial started. A week in, Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey griped that her trial was already at risk of going “off the rails”. The Crown’s late disclosures left her feeling “very unhappy,” agreeing with the defence that “this should have been done well before the trial.”

By the start of the second week, Lich’s defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon tried to hurry things along by agreeing to accept some of the Crown’s arguments regarding the protest’s impact on residents in downtown Ottawa. “There were individuals who interfered with the enjoyment of property,” he admitted, suggesting the two sides put together an agreed statement of facts. Wetscher “respectfully declined” this offer. She instead promised to produce a lengthy parade of witnesses to complain about the garbage, noise, smells and congestion associated with the protest. Horn-honking by the truckers was to be a particular focus, given how much it irritated those living nearby.

Even Perkins-McVey thought this tactic was a waste of time. “I just don’t know if this evidence is going to have the weight that you hope,” she informed Wetscher, noting that Lich and Barber had no interactions with any of the prospective witnesses. Worried that her trial could “run on ad infinitum,” the judge allowed Wetscher to call just five local residents and imposed clear limits on what they could discuss.

As the proceedings dragged on over the ensuing months for reasons both mundane and mysterious – the strange disappearance of internal police emails supporting defence arguments that the truckers were initially welcomed by the Ottawa Police Service and shown where to park was one such example – the assembled court watchers and journalists in Courtroom 5 at 161 Elgin Street began to speculate that Lich and Barber’s constitutional right to a prompt trial might be in jeopardy. This offered a potential escape hatch for the accused.

One regular unconvinced by this prospect was Lich herself. As she explained to C2C during a courtroom break, the idea of getting off on a technicality was anathema to her...

Lich’s determination to see her trial out to its conclusion regardless of delays or hurdles likely posed a significant obstacle to the Crown. Considering the fury with which Canada’s legal system has pursued her and Barber for the relatively minor crimes of mischief and obstructing police during the Freedom Convoy protest, it seems plausible the Crown’s goal from the start was to bully them into accepting a plea bargain simply to bring the interminable prosecution to a close. Given its benign reputation but steep potential consequences, criminal mischief seems the ideal charge for this sort of brinkmanship. Set against a possible 10-year prison term, the prospect of pleading guilty to a modest-sounding crime and accepting some modest punishment might appeal to many.

But Lich and Barber have refused to play the Crown’s game. Not only have they signalled a steely determination to let the trial play out to its end, they also have the financial resources to back up their resolve. Besides their own substantial fundraising efforts, both have benefited from the support of organizations such as Rebel News and The Democracy Fund in raising money for their lawyers...

Unable to intimidate the pair or run them out of money, the prosecution had to get creative.

In November 2023, with the trial now two months old, the Crown unveiled an additional tactic to ensnare Lich and Barber: what is known as a Carter application. Named for a 1982 Supreme Court case involving a marijuana smuggling ring in the Maritimes, a Carter application sets out a series of steps and evidentiary standards required to link individuals together in a broader criminal conspiracy. Significantly, the focus of the Carter application in this case appeared to be on the sole charge that Barber faces alone...

Amid the mountains of social media and other evidence collated and presented by the Crown, there is none that Lich ever encouraged anyone to break any court order or injunction. “There’s not one word emanating [from] Tamara Lich that she even said ‘honking’ or ‘horns’,” Greenspon pointed out during the trial. Quite the opposite. The evidence repeatedly shows Lich counselling others to remain lawful and respectful.

The Carter argument, however, may provide the Crown with a sneaky way around this inconvenient lack of proof. According to Goldkind, Carter “basically uses the actions of one of the co-conspirators to obtain a conviction against the other.”...

This is why it has been so important for the prosecution to show Lich and Barber together as co-leaders of the protest, as was the focus of the 106-slide PowerPoint presentation shown during the Crown’s closing arguments...

This also explains the Crown’s odd fixation with pronouns. The prosecution submitted numerous examples of Barber and Lich using terms such as “we” and “us”, including when Lich said on February 3, “We plan to be here for the long haul.” According to Radcliffe, “that ‘we’ pronoun was endless,” and he claimed this proves their combined leadership role, as opposed to, say, their merely holding common views or expressing solidarity with other protesters.

Radcliffe also engaged in a lengthy disquisition about the meaning of Lich’s catch-phrase “Hold the line.” According to the Crown, it was a war-cry meant to incite open rebellion; Radcliffe claimed the term actually “crossed the line” by encouraging illegal behaviour. According to Greenspon, however, “Saying ‘Hold the line’ was a way of encouraging demonstrators not to give up.” Perkins-McVey, for her part, observed that it could simply mean, “Stay true to your values.” The judge also noted that she’d heard police use the same phrase during crowd control efforts.

The frequency with which the judge engaged in often-pointed debate with the Crown attorneys seems noteworthy. Early in the trial, Radcliffe attempted to turn an obvious joke told on TikTok about how the protest was about to move to Toronto into further proof of nefarious purpose. Perkins-McVey quickly admonished him for his lack of imagination. “Reacting to a joke is not a crime,” she remarked offhandedly. She also went out of her way to scold him for imputing unproven radical or violent motives onto Lich and Barber. “They were moderate, that’s why [city] officials reached out to them,” Perkins-McVey explained. Another time, in response to Radcliffe’s assertion that the protest was “unlawful” based on statements made by the police, she wryly shot back, “Just because police say it was unlawful doesn’t make it so.”...

“Leading a convoy of trucks to Ottawa is not unlawful,” he noted. “There is no evidence of Lich even being in a vehicle or parking in a vehicle. There is no evidence of her honking horns or emitting any exhaust. There is no evidence of any Ottawa residents having any interactions with Lich. No evidence of her personally obstructing a peace officer.”

Greenspon followed Granger and began with his reading of the dozens of previous mischief cases assembled by the Crown as legal precedent for the charges against Lich and Barber. None of them, he said, involved protesters “told where to park and where to stay, [and] then prosecuted for parking or staying” in those spots, he noted. The level of official direction provided to the protesters was unprecedented; Greenspon then displayed the maps given to the truckers by police showing “staging areas” around downtown Ottawa designated for their exclusive use. “Can it be said that in following the instructions of the OPS, that they weren’t in compliance with the very plan Ottawa police gave them?” he wondered. How could anyone be arrested for following police orders?

“What Tamara Lich encouraged was entirely lawful,” Greenspon continued. While she stands accused of counselling others to break the law, the evidence collected by the Crown itself points in the other direction. He noted her efforts to register the truckers and implement “a signed code of conduct.” Even more significant is the agreement she struck with Ottawa mayor Jim Watson to begin voluntarily removing trucks from Parliament Hill. The deal was signed before the imposition of the Emergencies Act... “The Emergencies Act was completely unnecessary,” he told C2C. “By February 12 there had been an agreement between Tamara Lich and the mayor of Ottawa to reduce the size of the footprint of the trucks…and it actually started to happen the same day as the invocation.”...

Perkins-McVey had mused that the crux of the case before her rested on the issue of, “How do we balance the right to protest with the right to use and enjoy private property?” Greenspon returned to this central question in his summation, claiming it was an easy one to answer. Does a temporary interference into the daily lives of residents take precedence over the Charter-given rights of protesters to express themselves, he asked rhetorically. “We say not so!” he replied. “In a contest between constitutionally-protected rights and the interference in enjoyment of property, there is no contest.”

And when the judge provocatively asked him if the protestors should have policed themselves better by packing up and leaving prior to being forcibly evicted – Perkins-McVey didn’t spar only with the Crown’s attorneys – Greenspon shot back eagerly and with flourish. “Poppycock!” he declared. Any claim the truckers overstayed their welcome would amount to an “attempt to retroactively justify why the trucks were led into the downtown core without any time limit,” noting further that the February 7 horn-honking injunction explicitly preserved both the truckers’ right to remain in the Ottawa core and their liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful and safe protest. “They never put a time limit on…freedom of expression,” Greenspon concluded. Nor should anyone.

When the trial finally wrapped up on September 15, its 45 sitting days and 13-month duration likely set some sort of record for the Canadian legal system. In every aspect it had lasted far longer than expected, something that was almost entirely the result of Crown tactics and strategy. Even the closing arguments exceeded expectations as the prosecution demanded the right of reply to the defence’s summation, adding yet another day.

Veteran court reporter Aeden Helmer of the Ottawa Citizen, who covered every day of the trial, noted in his blog, “I have never encountered a trial that required 7 days just for closing arguments. I’ve covered murder trials that managed to get through closing arguments (in front of a jury) in a day or two.” According to The Democracy Fund, the prosecution of Lich and Barber constituted “the longest mischief trial in Canadian history”. Echoing Helmer, Greenspon noted that, “I’ve represented people charged with a lot more serious crimes than this, and the trials have not taken nearly as long.” During a courtroom break near the end of the case, Lich’s lead lawyer told a crowd of reporters, only half in jest, “We are going to apply to the Guinness Book of World Records.”

“This is the biggest waste-of-time prosecution in the history of waste-of-time prosecutions,” Toronto lawyer Goldkind exclaimed after the trial wrapped up. “The most serious charges in Canada of a criminal nature often take less than 30 days [to resolve at trial]. That this has gone on for 45 days…must be considered one of the most shameful episodes in Canadian legal history.” By way of comparison, the 1995 trial of Paul Bernardo, one of Canada’s most notorious murderers, was concluded in four months, although it sat for slightly more than 45 days.

For Goldkind, the political vendetta against Lich and Barber is not only vexatious and unfair but a grotesque squandering of public resources. “Every day the courtroom was filled with this stupid case meant there were other trials for rape, child abuse, sex assault, drinking and driving, drug trafficking that were being delayed,” he says, an assessment based on his own experiences as a criminal lawyer. “This was an obscene waste of taxpayer’s money on every level.” In this observation, Goldkind echoes the work of prominent Queen’s University law professor Bruce Pardy, who has written extensively on how Canada’s courts have become badly clogged and afflicted by delays for nearly all legal procedures.

In his classic 1979 text The Process is the Punishment, American sociologist Malcolm M. Feeley observed a clear distinction in the form of punishment meted out by the upper and lower courts of New Haven, Connecticut. As the higher federal courts were concerned with serious crimes such as armed robbery, rape and murder, they thus dealt out significant penalties, including lengthy jail sentences and possibly even capital punishment.

The lower courts, however, were involved with relatively minor crimes that attracted suitably lighter sentences. Feeley’s insight was that the true nature of the punishment they delivered lay in the accumulation of pre-trial burdens placed on the accused, such as meeting bail requirements, getting time off work, attending court and so on. By the time a verdict was rendered – whether guilty or not guilty – the “sentence” was essentially over.

This phenomenon has only worsened throughout North America in the ensuing decades, as prominent commentators such as Mark Steyn have noted. Others, like Canadian media icon Conrad Black, use the term “prosecutocracy” to describe the vindictive and unjust manner in which the legal system can pursue a target out of all proportion to the matter at hand. The prosecution of Lich and Barber appears among the most egregious examples of such punishment-by-process yet to be found in a Canadian court.

Having been identified by politicians in Ottawa as the leaders of a national protest-cum-uprising that allegedly required the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and hence the suspension of Canadians’ essential rights and freedoms, the pair must now fulfill their putative role as arch-villains. But instead of charging them with serious crimes such as sedition or rioting, the worst the police could come up with were mischief and obstructing police...

It is for such self-serving and, some might say, deeply unjust motives that a petite, devout Métis grandmother has been presented to the world as a dangerous, violent rebel whose mere liberty would threaten the safety of all of downtown Ottawa, and whose subsequent communications on social media might destabilize Canada itself. And why she has already spent 49 days in jail for a crime that generally results in no jail time at all.

This is why Karimjee, the original Crown prosecutor, absurdly argued that the fact Lich had accepted a public honour was reason enough to lock her up for years. And why, when that same over-zealous, Liberal-donating prosecutor thought he had her trapped in another bail breach when she allowed her picture to be taken with lawyers just slightly off-stage, he issued a Canada-wide warrant for her arrest and sent homicide detectives to Medicine Hat to bring her back to Ottawa – who actually placed her in leg shackles. If any of these theatrics was justified, Lich would indeed be the greatest criminal threat this country has seen since the FLQ Crisis or the Riel Rebellion.

Only when the case finally made its way into a courtroom, however, was the true nature of the prosecution’s animus fully revealed. “This should not be the trial of the Freedom Convoy,” Greenspon declared at the outset. Yet that’s exactly what it became: a punitive effort to hold Lich and Barber accountable for the actions of others – most of whom were never charged with anything or who had their charges dropped. As the evidence shows, Lich worked tirelessly to make the Freedom Convoy a peaceful, law-abiding and community-minded event."

Links - 16th February 2026 (1 - Donald Trump [including Coup/Treason])

The Washington Times on X - "‘He lost us:’ Generals, senior officers say trust in Pete Hegseth has evaporated"
Sean Davis on X - "They were fine spending the last 20+ years losing wars, but having to do pull-ups and not be fat was apparently their red line. Interesting."

Cynical Publius on X - "So we today we have generals and admirals slithering to the press anonymously complaining about SecWar reading them the riot act over their incompetence and organizational failures.  Let me explain why I take this so very, VERY personally.  I served under Bill Clinton.  I HATED him as my Commander-in-Chief and thought his poor leadership and social engineering such as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and placing women in high-G combat aircraft were destroying our military.  But all of his orders were lawful, and I followed my oath to the letter.  He was my Commander-in-Chief and I respected the fact that the American people had selected him for that role.  You never heard me utter a single peep against him, neither publicly nor in private.  I honored my oath.  Pretty much every officer I knew felt and acted the same way.  Even though I retired just before Obama took office, I know for certain that the exact same thing happened with the officers who served under him.    We did our jobs, honored our oaths, showed the respect the office deserved, and never engaged in the sort of anonymous public insubordination that we see now.  We did the same for the rest of our chain of command, even when incompetents such as Les Aspin and Leon Panetta were serving as SecDef.  That is NOT what is happening now.  The fact that these political Perfumed Prince snakes in the grass wearing stars today even exist affirms something that so many have long suspected--that the Obama/Biden years infected our senior military ranks with men and women not emotionally or ethically qualified for such high rank.  The purge of these oathbreakers cannot come soon enough."

Cynical Publius on X - "I’m not sure I’ve ever been angrier at Democrats than I am right now.  As a career Army officer, I take this latest nefarious chicanery from these filthy Congressional Democrat veterans quite personally,  It is loathsome and disgusting.  You know, I know, they know and even their brainwashed acolytes know that what they are REALLY doing is encouraging active duty service members to refuse to follow lawful orders under the guise of pretending the orders are “unlawful.”  What these Democrat filth are doing is encouraging a form of military coup where service members get to decide not to do things they disagree with politically by pretending those otherwise lawful things are “unlawful.”  This is the greatest threat to US internal stability since the last time Democrats started a civil war.  A military ruled by politics is no military at all.  Instead, it is a group of armed thugs akin to the South American military juntas of the 1970s.  I cannot overstate what an extreme threat this situation is to our nation.  This is a precursor to civil war, initiated and deliberately created by traitorous elected officials hiding behind the honor of the uniform they once wore but now disgraced.  I have never been angrier.🤬"

Gabrielle Giffords on X - "My husband @CaptMarkKelly is a 25-year Navy combat pilot veteran. He served our country with strength, courage, and integrity, dedicating his career to protecting us and upholding our constitution. Today, the President of the United States called him a traitor and demanded he be executed. It is dangerous and wrong. Americans of all political beliefs need to stand up and say so."
Buzz Patterson on X - "No, President Trump said that the punishment for sedition could result in the death sentence. He’s 100% correct. A court of law should decide if your husband is guilty or not. In any event, he’s encouraging troops to question their commander in chief. That, according to US law, is sedition. He should know better, probably does, but chose to do it anyway."

Cynical Publius on X - "I have long been puzzled by career U.S. military officers who align themselves with Democrats. I know from a number of joint assignments and schools that this is a particularly pernicious problem in the Navy. My explanation of this is as follows:
-The overwhelming majority of career military officers are politically conservative and view themselves as guardians of the Constitution. That means we are guarding the document that allows citizens to chart their own paths in freedom.
-The small minority of career military officers who are leftists OTOH view themselves as being superior protectors of the great mass of inferior citizens. Basically, they infantilize the citizenry and see themselves as intellectually and morally superior to the average American. It’s a patronizing, sneering attitude that is entirely consistent with Marxist control over a citizenry perceived as being unable to care for itself. That’s how they become Democrats, because that’s how the Democrat intelligentsia think.
Kelly is no patriot.  He has no love for the actual Constitution.  His love is what he sees as his duty to protect you from yourself.  He sees himself as modern day royalty.  He’s not.  He’s neo-Marxist filth trying to incite a military coup so he and his domineering ilk can have more control over you and me."

The Patriot Oasis™ on X - "🚨 JUST IN: Jesse Waters says that he talked with Two CIA agents who CONFIRMED that Democrats' calling for Millitary personnel to disobey orders is part of an Operation to implant MASSIVE Distrust.  “It’s straight out of the CIA playbook. It’s a destabilization operation where you get people to mistrust each other.”    "They’re trying to condition the country to prepare for something bad that’s about to happen at the hands of Donald Trump.”  "You establish authority. 'I'm CIA, I'm military, trust us...' then say the threat is Donald Trump. Then the solution—resist.""

Cynical Publius on X = "What you have been witnessing are the early stages of an attempted military coup. Think that’s hyperbole? In world history, every time a military coup happens against duly elected leadership, it begins with an information campaign by opposition party members attempting to turn the lower ranks of the nation’s military against said elected leadership."

DataRepublican (small r) on X - "Excellent find. I think we are getting very, very warm as to whose NGO's idea it was to have the Senators produce a video about refusing illegal orders.   National Lawyers Guild issued a document about refusing illegal orders on 11 November. And now they have partnered with Win Without War to advertise seditious-adjacent behavior on billboards. And Win Without War has multiple Congressional liaisons on their "About" page.   National Lawyers Guild is an infamous supporter of antifa per @MrAndyNgo  , which of course is now a foreign terrorist organization.   cc: @CynicalPublius"

Threads - "🚨 Democrat Who Told Troops To Disobey Trump Forced To Admit She Can't Name One Illegal Order 🔥Democratic Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin appeared on ABC’s This Week on Sunday after she and several other veterans-turned-lawmakers released a video reminding U.S. servicemembers that they are obligated to refuse illegal orders under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. viral #beyou #donaldtrump #trump #fyp"

Save America Movement on X - "Veterans from every branch are speaking out. Senator Mark Kelly is being threatened for reminding troops their oath is to the Constitution, not a president. This isn’t justice. It’s intimidation. Honor your oath. Defend democracy. Don’t give up the ship."
CannCon on X - "Yet they can’t name one violation of said Constitution.   This certainly feels like a targeted attack by the CIA and Slotkin’s band of merry morons as President Trump is underway dismantling not only their dark money funding sources via the cartels in Venezuela and Colombia, but their colour revolution machine that is Venezuelan voting systems (that were actually born right here in the US of A).   This is Seditious Conspiracy.    The question is:  how high up does it go?"
The Researcher on X - "This vet group is part of Democracy Inc.  What Senator Mark Kelly did was participate in an effort to undermine a pillar of support (the military) for the Trump administration which is a color revolution tactic as detailed in Gene Sharp’s book “From Dictatorship to Democracy” which is the revolution business bible.   Democracy Inc. has been running a color revolution against Trump and MAGA since 2016 and will continue to do so until many people are held accountable.   Unfortunately, we have worthless congressional republicans who will not tackle the corrupt judiciary and lawfare and a weak AG who is being steamrolled."

🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 on X - "Of course, @SenMarkKelly had a much-different response to the Biden military strikes on children than the Trump military strikes on cartels. Because Mark Kelly is a subversive, partisan hack. Court-martial him."

🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 on X - "Think about how dangerous this is.  This Democrat U.S. senator is going on national TV and telling military members, including 18-year-old enlistees, to ignore orders from the President and his Secretary of Defense they are supposed to determine are illegal.  Was Obama’s order to drone-strike American citizens—including a child—illegal, @SenMarkKelly ?  Is your presidential ambitions worth more than destruction of the chain of command?   Your puppet-master @AlexanderSoros  must be very proud of you."

🐺 on X - "“They may find out down the road that they did something that is illegal.”  YIKES  As noted by @redsteeze  , they’re telegraphing to service members that following orders from Trump may subject them to prosecution when Democrats get back in power.  It’s a very unsubtle way of telling officers “you better not follow Trump’s orders or something bad might happen to you.”  They know that very few officers have the depth of legal knowledge to know whether or not an order is actually illegal…(btw we still have no concrete evidence that anyone at anytime gave an illegal order) they’re telling them to always err on the side of refusing an order….which is absolutely insane.  This is really democrats telling the military “anything outside of our preferred policy outcomes and politics will be deemed illegal when we’re in power.”  It’s really hard to see this as anything other than a highly coordinated effort to strip Trump of his constitutional authority over the military."

Breaking911 on X - "SEN. KELLY: "[Hegseth] runs around on stage talking about lethality and warrior ethos and killing people." "That’s not the message that should be coming from the Secretary of Defense." "He runs around on a stage like he’s a 12 year old playing army.""
Cynical Publius on X - "Freaking seditious moron.  The job of any nation's military is to close with and destroy its enemies in as expeditious a manner as possible.  No nation's military has ever had a mission of social experimentation and figuring out how not to kill its enemies efficiently.  The fact that any American gives this neo-Marxist traitor any credibility of any kind is quite disturbing."

Inciting Terrorism Is Not Free Speech - "“The First Amendment’s protection does not depend on the popularity or palatability of the message conveyed,” wrote the three-judge panel in United States v. Al-Timimi. “On the contrary, it is most vital when speech offends, disturbs, or challenges prevailing sensibilities.” For good measure, the defense attorney whose client was vindicated by the unanimous decision summarized the case as proof that “the government cannot criminalize speech simply because the ideas expressed are unpopular, offensive, or challenge those in power.”... In 2005, a Virginia jury found defendant Ali Al-Timimi guilty of inducing others to use prohibited weapons, soliciting others to commit treason against the United States, attempting to contribute services to the Taliban, and several other charges in the same spirit. According to the Fourth Circuit, a group of men who attended Al-Timimi’s lectures at a Falls Church mosque “began making preparations to engage in jihad in the form of combat.” When members of the group told Al-Timimi that the FBI was on to them, “Al-Timimi chastised them for making their training efforts too obvious. . . . he advised them that they should not cease meeting altogether, because that could raise suspicion, but rather that they should be more discreet.”  After 9/11, Al-Timimi addressed the group, telling them to unplug all electronics and “not repeat anything that was said.”  “He told us that we need to do three things,” a member of the group would later testify. “First, he said we need to repent; second, we need to leave the United States; and third, he said, ‘Join the mujahideen.’ . . . it doesn’t matter if we fight the Indians or the Russians or the Americans, that this is all legitimate jihad.”  Several of Al-Timimi’s mentees did so. He continued to advise these men on “how best to evade detection” and “what to do if they were stopped by the authorities.” (They should “act scared” and ask for their “lawyers and . . . our mothers.”)  None of this is mere “unpopular” speech. Al-Timimi was the ringleader of a terrorist cell, with designs on a holy war against the United States. Yes, he primarily used words to facilitate this war. But he was not discussing these topics in an abstract or academic way. His words helped steel his acolytes’ resolve to commit treason.  Our law has long recognized that words can be dangerous, even criminally so. That is why we have rules against crimes like solicitation, incitement, and conspiracy. To be sure, the line between protected speech and speech in furtherance of criminal behavior is fuzzy. But courts are perfectly willing to uphold convictions involving, for example, antitrust violations based on this distinction.  Despite these precedents, the court of appeals held that Al-Timimi’s convictions could not be squared with the First Amendment. Al-Timimi did not commit incitement, the court concluded, because his “exhortations were vague and general,” failing the “imminent lawless action” standard set out in 1969’s Brandenburg v. Ohio. Though he “encouraged unlawful acts generally,” he was not guilty of criminal solicitation because “the evidence did not demonstrate that he encouraged, with the requisite intent, a specific unlawful act.” This may seem like a loophole for bad actors, but the court reminds readers that “plenty of speech encouraging criminal activity is protected under the First Amendment.”  This is true, but plenty of speech is also not protected. The only standard the court employed to tell if Al-Timimi’s speech was protected was whether the criminal acts he encouraged were sufficiently specific. Since that standard can only be resolved by intuition, it’s probably best left to a jury—like the one that concluded Al-Timimi’s encouragement, advice, and instruction did meet that standard.   One wonders what is left of crimes like solicitation and conspiracy under the court’s reasoning. After all, prosecutors could have hardly hoped for better evidence in their favor. The men even testified at trial to Al-Timimi’s decisive role in helping them overcome their fears and join terrorist groups.  If telling men you know are heavily armed to attack America is too vague and general to warrant prosecution, then any form of solicitation will be extremely hard to prove...   The Court has already made clear that limitations on dangerous speech tailored to prevent terrorism are constitutional, even if applied liberally. In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010), the Court held that simply explaining the law to terrorist organizations may be prosecuted as material support for terrorism consistent with the First Amendment. “Given the sensitive interests in national security and foreign affairs at stake,” the majority wrote, courts should defer to the political branches when they “have adequately substantiated their determination that . . . it was necessary to prohibit” acts, even speech-based acts, that further terrorism.  In spite of this, lower courts have consistently balked at the notion of enforcing laws designed to disrupt terrorist networks before they begin victimizing Americans. They have set the bar for conviction so artificially high that, as in Al-Timimi’s case, no prosecutor could possibly reach them."
Clear proof that Trump met the legal threshold for incitement by calling for peaceful protest!

‘WTF?!’ MAGA Pounces on CNN’s Jake Tapper for Misidentifying J6 Pipe Bomb Suspect as ‘White’ - "CNN anchor Jake Tapper was taken to task by MAGA influencers after claiming on-air Thursday that the newly arrested January 6 pipe bomb suspect Brian Cole Jr. was “white” – moments before showing photos that proved he wasn’t."

Hans Mahncke on X - "As Tapper knows perfectly well but deliberately pretended otherwise through sanctimonious moralizing, President Trump pardoned the January 6 defendants because of the process they were subjected to. It was a total witch hunt driven by the Biden autopen operation, funneled through a deeply corrupt D.C. court system that offered zero chance of a fair trial. Every administration official should have that explanation rehearsed down to the letter, ready to deploy whenever a fake news propagandist tries to pull this stunt."

Peter Baker on X - "The higher the court, the likelier Trump was to win rulings in 2025: District courts: 25% Appeals courts: 51% Supreme Court: 88%"
Buzz Patterson on X - "Thanks for pointing out (I’m sure it wasn’t your intent) that the lower courts are packed with leftist ideologues."
Jonathan H. Adler on X - "Because plaintiffs have a greater ability to engage in forum selection at district court level and appellate panels are selected randomly."
The cope is that higher courts are full of MAGAs and need to be purged

Man Who Called Trump a 'Pedophile' Allegedly Tried Meeting Child for Sex - "A Washington leftist is accused of trying to meet an 11-year-old for sex after previously calling President Donald Trump and his supporters pedophiles.  Police in Bremerton, Washington, said 44-year-old Houston Wade was arrested on December 17 after he allegedly tried to meet up with a little girl"

Trump Forces the New York Times’s Hand on Crime - "The New York Times is growing desperate. In its efforts to discredit Donald Trump’s crime initiatives, it has deliberately drawn attention to black-on-black crime... The New York Times had its story: Trump did not care about black homicide victims... “Historically, most murder victims in Washington have been Black.”...   The Times’s spin on Trump’s allegedly racist crime policies and rhetoric has a few problems—among them hypocrisy, double standards, and inconsistency. If Trump has failed to publicize the black homicide victims mentioned in the Times’s story, he was only following the paper’s lead. None of those killings got any coverage in the paper at the time.  The Times has ignored even more egregious murders than the garden-variety gang violence that now so moves the paper to sorrow...   When Trump announced the National Guard deployment, the paper denounced that initiative as a racist intrusion upon D.C. home rule. It said nothing about the crime that was mowing down black lives. The paper may now bemoan the stationing of National Guard soldiers in downtown areas instead of in black neighborhoods, but in August, it wanted no Guard, period.  Times columnist Jamelle Bouie expressed the paper’s position: There was “no public safety emergency in Washington, D.C. Crime is . . . at a 30-year low,” Bouie said on August 16. Trump was merely demonizing the “residents of D.C. as essentially incapable of self-government.”  What does that acceptable crime picture look like? In 2024, D.C. saw 187 homicides, or over 15 a month. At least 177 of the victims, or 94 percent, were black... nearly 15 black lives lost per month in 2024, in a city of just over 700,000 residents, might conceivably be considered a “public safety emergency” by such racial justice warriors as Times columnists and reporters, whether or not crime was trending downward. Certainly, such homicide numbers would be considered an emergency in First World cities outside of the U.S.—the D.C. homicide rate is about 27 times that of London’s and Berlin’s, for example, and 60 times that of Switzerland’s.  The people least concerned with black lives would seem to be the Black Lives Matter activists and their media mouthpieces. If BLM activists have shown up to protest a black toddler being gunned down in a drive-by shooting, the record does not reflect it. The reason for this silence is that drawing attention to black crime victims means drawing attention to black criminals, who are almost invariably the victims’ assailants. In Washington, D.C., from 2019 to the end of 2020, blacks made up nearly 97 percent of homicide suspects, according to the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. Whites accounted for 0.8 percent of homicide suspects. The black homicide commission rate was roughly 99 times higher than the white homicide commission rate, and remains so.  When Trump decries urban crime, therefore, he is by definition decrying the victimization of blacks... There were four white homicide victims in D.C. in 2024, or 2 percent of the black homicide victims. Trump’s D.C. crime initiative redounded disproportionately to the benefit of blacks.  But the Times saw only racism in Trump’s National Guard actions. The paper quoted the widow of the late D.C. mayor Marion Barry. The Trump era resembled the Emmett Till era with its state-sanctioned “racism, oppression and violence,” Cora Master Barry said. “Black folks” were and are “disappearing all over the place.” The reason “black folks” are currently disappearing is that other “black folks” are killing them.  When Trump first called up the Guard, the Times complained that the soldiers were making “black folks” feel scared and under siege. At the same time, it complained even then that the deployment favored white areas over black ones. Now the Times complains only that the Guard is ignoring black neighborhoods... About 30 percent of the arrests made by federal agents under Trump’s increased policing initiative come from just one of the city’s eight wards. Ward 8 is 10 percent of the city’s population but 81 percent black. It has the highest number of violent crimes in the city. The federal officers are not ignoring black victims; they are picking up their assailants.   As predictably as clockwork, the Times has lamented the fact that the “overwhelming majority” of arrestees in the first two weeks of the D.C. crime blitz were black, a “markedly disproportionate share for a city where Black people make up a little more than 40 percent of the population.” That complaint not only contradicted the claim that federal agents were slighting black neighborhoods but also ignored the truth that blacks commit a “markedly disproportionate” amount of crime in D.C. Police officers are damned if they concentrate their resources on areas with the highest incidence of crime and if they allegedly stay out of high-crime areas. In both cases, they are racist.  Contrary to the Times’s characterization, Trump’s outraged reaction to the November killing of a National Guard soldier and the wounding of another had nothing to do with the victims’ race. Assassinations of law enforcement officials tear at civilized order. Such attacks aim at the country itself. They necessarily rise to a level of significance not possessed by the daily gang killings that the media do their best to conceal, however heartbreaking such quotidian violence is to the victims’ survivors.  The power of the taboo in elite circles against noticing black-on-black crime cannot be overstated. One would never know from mainstream media coverage that dozens of blacks are murdered every day across the U.S., more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined, though blacks are only 13 percent of the U.S. population. The Chicago Tribune is the exception in regularly reporting on local Chicago gang crime... The media activate wall-to-wall reporting on a lost black life only in the rare instance that a black person is killed by a police officer. The rest of the time, what Trump has rightly called urban “carnage” is out of sight, out of mind.   Only the Times’s revulsion for Trump could have led it to breach the contemporary code of racial etiquette. The breach will be temporary. Trump’s focus on crime and disorder will not be. His refusal to treat urban violence and squalor as inevitable features of life in American cities is among the most salutary aspects of his presidency, however undisciplined his rhetoric."

John Ʌ Konrad V on X - "I spoke today with a well-known European journalist. Most MAGA folks would label his outlet “woke,” but he’s actually center-right.  His main point stunned me: right now Europe’s elites are desperate for the United States to keep carrying the load. They’re oscillating between being angry at Trump… and quietly praying Republicans lose the midterms so things “go back to normal.”  They’re terrified of the new National Security Strategy, not because it’s extreme, but because it tells them to finally pull their own weight. And they know they can’t.  They want the old spigot… USAID, foreign support, kickbacks, endless funding… turned back on like it’s 2016.  Here’s what they don’t get: even if Democrats do win the midterms, Trump isn’t signing a massive European rescue package—and the Dems aren’t getting a supermajority to overrule him. Washington would simply grind to a halt, including the spending they rely on today.  If Democrats won Congress and the presidency in 2028, maybe Europe gets its funding fantasy… but that requires an extraordinary collapse inside the MAGA world. I wouldn’t bet on that outcome.  And I’m worried about the midterms myself. After a week inside DC, it’s obvious: many newcomers in this administration don’t yet grasp the scale of the lawfare and bureaucratic obstruction that’s waiting for them. Veterans of the first Trump term I met with absolutely do, and they’re nervous that lawfare will return with vengeance.  But here’s the other side: I’ve watched this administration move fast when cornered (the UN carbon tax reversal is a perfect example). It’s hard to do everything at once, sure, but when pushed, they hit hard and move quickly. I’m not betting against that instinct.  So maybe we will win, maybe we won’t. Either way Europe ain’t getting a free ride.  So if I had a message for Europe it would be this: stop hoping a midterm result will magically save you. Tone down the rhetoric, stop reacting emotionally to the outrageous press narrative about Trump, and start cutting real deals now. Small concessions today could buy you stability tomorrow.  The real problem is emotional, not strategic. Too many European leaders (and frankly, American elites too) are furious at Trump because they’ve internalized media narratives instead of looking at actual geopolitical realities. They’re panicking.  And panic loses. Always.  In geopolitics, and in markets, the riches go to the actors who stay calm, think rationally, and make small strategic concessions while everyone else is screaming into the void. That’s how power actually works."

Links - 15th February 2026 (2 - Left Wing Economics: The UK)

CJ on X - "For at least 30 years Britain has been actively prioritising the redistribution of resources from those who don’t need (nominally functional), to those who do (nominally dysfunctional).   This extends well beyond economics and into law and order too where numerous needs-based mitigations exist to prevent the state from acting in the interests of others and engaging in what would previously have been considered basic operational functionality.  The result has been the creation of a leviathan state that exists to meet the statutory obligations it has set itself toward the dysfunction of the bottom quintile of society.  The money required to fund this is assumed to exist because the need exists, and if the money doesn’t exist then it up to someone else to hand it over through whatever redistributive mechanisms the state has at it’s disposal."

Labour’s non-dom gamble backfired – now it wants them back - "“The people with the broadest shoulders have the longest legs and they are using them,” says Leslie MacLeod-Miller, the chairman of Foreign Investors for Britain.  The exodus has obviously alarmed the Government amid warnings that the tax raid could backfire and end up losing money for the Exchequer.  Andrew Griffith, the shadow business and trade secretary, claims: “Labour have presided over the biggest exodus of investors and wealth creators since the 1970s and it is ordinary British taxpayers who will end up having to pay more.” Last month Reeves ordered officials to carry out a review into the impact of the abolition of non-dom status.  Officials are now listening to ideas such as the introduction of an investor visa or extension of the tax exemption on earnings from abroad in an attempt to stem the flow of rich people moving abroad and win back the wealthy... The pledge to abolish non-dom status was a key part of Labour’s manifesto before the 2024 general election and the Government is already under heavy fire for its succession of about-turns, which are now in double digits."

Lukas Ekwueme on X - "The UK is regulating itself into irrelevance. The plan was to build 531 km of high-speed rail. Before laying track, contractors had to:
- Complete a 350-page “social value” assessment
- Guarantee 30% female representation
- Guarantee 20% ethnic-minority representation
The outcome was predictable.
- Original timeline: 2010-2026
- After years of delays and overruns, ~50% of the project was cancelled
- Remaining construction now stretches beyond 2033
- Cost: ~£70B for just 40% of the route (~£311M per km)
Meanwhile, China:
- Built ~50,000 km of high-speed rail in 17 years
- Averaging ~3,000 km per year
- At a cost of ~£14M per km China builds high-speed rail ~200x faster and ~22x cheaper.
Now apply the same regulatory mindset to the energy transition.... and the scale of waste becomes obvious."
Time to proclaim that capitalism has failed and that more regulation is needed

‘Red tape lunacy means it’ll cost me £16k to replace two windows’ - "Chris Howell, an accountant who lives in a ground-floor apartment in Westminster, was expecting to spend about £2,500 to install standard PVC double-glazed windows to replace two rotting frames. But planning restrictions and building safety regulations, which categorise the building as “higher-risk”, have meant the price has ballooned. Mr Howell says he now faces an exorbitant cost and believes he is being “punished” for following the rules. He said: “If someone smashed my windows tomorrow, I could replace them straight away because it’d be an emergency. “But because I’m trying to follow the rules, I’m trapped in months of paperwork and thousands of pounds in fees. The system punishes people for doing the right thing. “All I want to do is replace my old windows. It’s not like I’m trying to do anything crazy, like dig a super-basement.” Mr Howell must apply for planning permission to change his windows under Westminster council rules – with a £528 fee for the application. Based on other cases in the area, Mr Howell expects that the council will reject cheaper PVC replacements and require aluminium frames instead, which could double the cost of the project from £2,500 to £5,000. Consultants quoted between £5,000 and £12,000 to prepare the application, which also attracts a £288 submission fee and hourly charges of £144 for the regulator’s time. Any work on the block of flats – which is eight storeys high – must also be approved by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR). But when Mr Howell contacted three approved glazing bodies, each said that they would not sign off work on high-risk buildings. This left him with the sole option of applying directly to the BSR, resulting in further consultancy fees. Government figures show that about 70 per cent of applications to the BSR are rejected, with some homeowners waiting up to nine months only to be told their planned renovations are unacceptable. Mr Howell could face prosecution and up to two years in prison if he carried out work without approval, under the Building Safety Act. Sam Richards, chief executive of pro-growth campaign group Britain Remade, said: “It is simply extraordinary that a repair as straightforward as replacing rotting wooden windows required a planning application, multiple consultants, specialist firms and a national regulator."
Time for more regulation to protect people. Anyone suggesting any regulation is bad is an evil right winger who wants people to die because all health and safety regulations are good

Mike Jones on X - "We all need to be clear about what kind of person Zack Polanski is. He has publicly claimed that shoplifting can be justified, even saying he would do it himself if he were poor. This tells us three things.   First, since the vast majority of poor people do NOT shoplift, Zack has effectively admitted that his moral compass is completely out of step with the struggling Britons who still cling to a sense of decency and fair play in everyday transactions.   Secondly, it reveals his rather jaundiced view of Britain’s poor - as though they are somehow predisposed to crime whenever hardship strikes.   And thirdly, it shows he has no interest in supporting businesses, protecting their staff, or upholding basic order for law-abiding citizens.   A totally revolting man."

‘I’m not hiring untrained 18-year-olds any more – their pay is too high’ - "Rachel Reeves promised young people that they would no longer be paid less because of their age. Now, many won’t be paid at all... More than 100,000 jobs have been lost in hospitality since the Budget, according to analysis by UK Hospitality. Reeves’s first Budget meant 2025 was the most expensive year on record for businesses employing those on minimum wage, a Centre for Policy Studies report found. Britain is struggling with higher numbers of 16 to 24-year-olds who are “Neets” – not in education, employment or training – with 948,000 people falling into this category in the three months to June. The Government announced plans to offer graduates who claim benefits work experience in bars and on building sites, as Labour grapples with skyrocketing youth unemployment.  Beale called the scheme “nonsense”, telling The Telegraph: “My message is, butt out. What hospitality wants is to be left alone.”  Kunkler also hit out at the scheme, adding: “I don’t understand how the Government is saying they’re going to get 200,000 people at that age in work. How can you get them into work when there are no jobs?”"

Profit is a dirty word for some ministers, says Labour-backing Iceland boss - "  Some Labour ministers are too anti-business and believe profit is a dirty word, a new peer appointed by Sir Keir Starmer has warned.  Richard Walker, the executive chairman of Iceland, admitted he has been taken aback by the lack of business knowledge displayed by some of the MPs he has encountered during his time running the grocer.  Mr Walker said there was a “lack of understanding and knowledge of business generally within the Government that they need more help with”.  He added: “Some of them think profit is a dirty word, when actually profit is what lets you invest, employ people and pay tax.”... many politicians had consistently failed to acknowledge how difficult it was to run a company on tight margins.  Beyond frustrations with individual ministers, he also criticised a broader lack of clarity across the Government, which he said pulled businesses in different directions."

Profitability in Britain falls to lowest level since 1982 under Labour - "Surging employment costs under Labour have punched the biggest hole in corporate profits in more than four decades.  Profit margins at non-financial firms this year fell to their lowest level since 1982, according to analysis by the Bank of America (BoA). Profits across the entire economy are now at their weakest level since before the financial crisis."

Labour’s spending juggernaut is crushing the economy - "Another £800m will be spent on re-joining the Erasmus scheme that allows students to study across Europe.  Money has been found for the spiffy new livery for Great British Railways.  Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, has even found some extra cash for vegan “fish free” supplements made from algae on the site of the former Grangemouth chemicals plant – which unfortunately couldn’t survive the crippling energy costs he imposed on it.  With every week that passes, the Government embarks on yet more extravagant spending. There is just one catch. As yet another terrifying set of public borrowing figures made clear, Labour’s spending juggernaut is crushing the economy – and leaving it far weaker with every week that passes... We can all see where the money is going. Despite all the talk of a “black hole” inherited from the last government, there is always extra cash available for this government’s favoured projects.  The Erasmus scheme is going to cost hundreds of millions while public sector salaries are now rising at 7.6pc a year, compared with less than 4pc for the hard-pressed private sector – and with 62,000 extra people added to the Government’s payroll last month alone. There is even money for Miliband’s madcap schemes. While, for the sake of politeness, none of us would wish to underestimate his skills as a venture capitalist, it is hard to feel confident that vegan food supplements will ever replace petrochemicals as a major industry or replace all the jobs lost at the old Grangemouth plant... There are three big problems. To start with, it squeezes out private spending. Every pound that is spent by the state means that there is one less pound available to be spent in the private sector.  Sure, as Keynes pointed out a long time ago, there may well be exceptional circumstances where government spending boosts output. But that definitely does not apply to Britain in 2025, where there are scarce resources and increasing numbers of people who are not willing to work at any realistic wage.  Extra government spending just means that there are fewer resources left for the private sector.  Next, escalating public sector wages makes it impossible for private companies to compete in a competitive labour market.  It is hard to believe that many pubs or restaurants will be able to offer their staff 7pc-plus pay rises this year once they have seen their rates bill for the coming year on top of the extra NI they are already expected to pay.  Likewise, it is hard to see how care homes will compete with rising NHS salaries or construction companies can compete with what is on offer from the local council.  If they can’t get the people, then ultimately there will be no choice but to close those businesses down.  Finally, confidence starts to ebb away. Every time the Government starts boasting about how they are giving away lots of free stuff, then any rational person makes a quick calculation in their head. Their taxes will have to go up to pay for it all. A year and a half, and two horror Budgets into the Starmer administration, and the pattern has already been set.  Taxes go up by around £30bn to £40bn a year just to pay for the relentless rise in welfare spending, public sector pay and all the virtue-signalling schemes the ministers roll out to keep the backbenchers and the trade unions happy... There was nothing especially shocking about the latest borrowing data. What was sobering was the way that spending has gone up and up – and despite taxes hitting an all-time high, the Treasury still can’t balance the books.  Sure, the Government can just about keep the show on the road and keep the gilts market quiet by raising taxes. But it has killed off any hope of growth.  Even worse, with every week that passes the private sector economy gets hollowed out and it is left in an even more fragile state."

Urgent action needed to halt exodus of firms leaving UK, says CBI

UK suffers only deal-making slump in Europe as Labour hammers confidence - "Britain was the only European country to record a decline in dealmaking this year, as higher taxes under Labour hammered business confidence."

Free TV licences for the benefits class will be the end of Labour and the BBC - "In the depths of the Second World War, economist William Beveridge drew up radical plans to tackle poverty. Among his recommendations, set out in the historic Beveridge Report, were a universal system of social insurance and the creation of a national health service.  To the best of my knowledge, however, he did not add: “Oh, and one other thing. To banish Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness once and for all, the unemployed must be entitled to spend all day watching Homes Under the Hammer free of charge.”  That, however, is the proposal apparently being considered by our current Government, as it weighs up potential reforms of the BBC licence fee. Obviously no Labour administration would abolish the licence fee altogether – that would be like Stalin abolishing Pravda. But ministers are at least thinking about changes to the funding system. And one idea is to exempt benefits claimants from paying the licence fee at all... Good luck dreaming up a slogan to sell that policy. “Pay more, so that others can pay nothing. Work harder, so that others don’t have to work at all.”  Obviously the whole suggestion is ridiculous. Which is why, I suspect, the Government will end up going for it. After all, it’s Starmer’s Labour in microcosm. Yet another way to make the productive fund freebies for the unproductive. Just like raising taxes on businesses while abolishing the two-child benefits cap. Labour politicians endlessly tell us that their approach is motivated by “compassion”. But in reality it’s cynical self-interest. The party is deliberately cultivating an ever-growing culture of dependency, because it’s confident that, come election time, it can count on the dependents’ votes... Of course, you can see why such a concept might appeal to party strategists, given the perpetually soaring number of claimants. Just this week, it was revealed that more than 300,000 young people – twice as many as five years ago – are now claiming out-of-work benefits with no requirement to look for a job. And so a new generation of loyal Labour voters is born... Such outrage, I suspect, would spell the death of Starmer’s Labour – and indeed its glorified broadcasting arm. Last month, a parliamentary committee calculated that the BBC is losing more than £1bn a year of potential revenue from households either evading the licence fee or deciding they don’t need one.  The brazen injustice of the “reform” above, I feel sure, would prompt millions more to follow suit. And then who’d be left to pay?"

Britain’s ‘benefits queen’ claimed £60k a year for her 15 children. Now she disagrees with handouts - "Cheryl Drew, 43, is a woman who has gone by many names – few of them flattering. For a decade, she has been best known in the red tops as a “benefits queen”, “dole queen”, a “baby machine” and even Britain’s “most shameless Mum”.  Formerly known as Cheryl Prudham, Drew is a mother of 15 who, until relatively recently, was reportedly claiming up to £60,000 a year in benefits.  Now, she has completely reinvented herself, resurfacing in the press as a tax-paying entrepreneur who disagrees with Labour’s decision to axe the two-child benefit cap which comes into effect from April next year. She was reported in The Sun as saying that “handouts don’t always help”.  “I can’t believe what Rachel Reeves has done,” Drew said, accusing the Chancellor of encouraging parents to rely on taxpayers’ money rather than supporting themselves. “She’s going backwards, not moving mums forwards.”... Drew has now re-emerged as an entrepreneur, with a small but successful business empire that spans a number of beauty salons in her new home of Rhyl and in Llandudno, North Wales. She owns a 10-bedroom house, where 12 of her younger children live. Her benefits bill is £0, and she reportedly pays for her 18-month-old daughter’s nursery place privately. All six of her children who are of school-leaving age have jobs. What’s behind this dramatic reinvention? Sources who spoke to The Sun suggested that, ironically, it was actually down to the Conservative government’s decision to bring in the benefits cap in 2017. The move limited parents to claiming child tax credit or Universal Credit to the first two children in the family only. Under the current Labour government, this measure is set for the chopping block.  Around the same time, Drew split from her former husband and truly had to stand on her own two feet. She reportedly said that the benefits cap was “the making of [her]”. A source quoted by The Sun said: “Suddenly she had all those kids to feed and decreasing money to do it. She rolled up her sleeves and grafted hard for what she’s got.” Drew is currently said to be happily married to her business partner, Mark Drew. The pair are thought to be supporting their super-sized family independently. Proof, perhaps, that despite the widespread despair felt in Britain over an ever inflating welfare bill, dependence need not be a lifelong condition after all."

Nick, 30 on X - "The NHS spends more on medical negligence cases for maternity than the actual budget for maternity. If this was a private company it would have been sued out of existence. But because it’s the state religion, it carries on with no consequence. Insane."

Peter Hague on X - "Money is an abstraction of work. Everyone who decides they are deserve money from “the government” is in every single case taking it out of the hide of someone doing productive work, who does not deserve to be forced to work free to feed your sense of entitlement."
James Clark 📈📉¯\_(ツ)_/¯ on X - "Imagine you lived on a street where all the people on the even numbers side of the street worked, but everyone on the other side of the street either couldn't work, no longer worked or refused to work. That's Britain right now. In this example, only 30% of the houses on the even numbers side of the street are actually paying in more than they take out.  And everyone else on both sides of the street resents them and demands they pay more."
Thread by @mr_james_c on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I seem to have upset people by pointing out that if the 70m people in the UK, only 32m pay income tax. Of those 32m, only about 9m are net contributors to tax.  So in our hypothetical street, just over 13% of houses put in more than they take out... and other households resent them.
The point of these posts is this:
- overall the UK is not taxed very heavily
- but a vast majority of tax is paid but a relatively small group
- that relatively small group is constantly told they must pay more because that's "fair"
- if the UK wants services and infrastructure that works then it has 2 choices: 1) tax everyone more, especially lower earners, or; 2) cut spending in ways that reduce dependency on the state.
My preference is the latter, we should means test state pensions, we should move public sector workers into DC pensions, there's a large and rapidly growing people claiming all kinds of benefits who really don't need it. All this money is taken from other taxpayers.  All the about would increase the number of net contributors. Someone has tried to attach a Community Note to my post but the note confuses "households" with individual payers. Which is incorrect.  To be clear, my post is about individual taxpayers. I used the metaphor of a street of houses because it makes it easier to picture than abstracted numbers."

Keir Starmer lied to my face over tax raid, says drinks tycoon - "Hotel operator Steve Perez has claimed Sir Keir Starmer lied to his face over taxes.  The businessman, who runs a string of upmarket hotels and restaurants in the East Midlands, criticised the Prime Minister over the Government’s stealth raid on the hospitality sector.  Mr Perez accused Sir Keir of a betrayal. He said the Prime Minister assured him before last year’s election that he had “nothing to fear from Labour”.  In particular, Mr Perez claimed Sir Keir had pledged to reform business rates if Labour came to power, acknowledging at the time that the property tax system was damaging the hospitality sector.  However, Mr Perez – who also runs Global Brands, the drinks company behind Hooch and Franklin & Sons – said this was a lie.  Instead, he said hospitality businesses have received the “opposite of support” from Labour, which has abandoned the “very sector that keeps Britain’s high streets alive”."

Amazingly, a lot of people think this Labour Government isn't Left-wing enough - "the party is losing support to the hard-left Greens and the Unite trade union is threatening to sever links and cut off its donations. What more do the Left want?   Just 18 months after winning a landslide election victory the latest opinion poll put Labour on 14pc, an extraordinary collapse in support. The socialist agenda pursued by Sir Keir seems not to have worked. More of the same will surely see a further slump."

Never, ever trust the Tories - "The Tories might think they are on an easy winner by attacking Reeves and Starmer for breaking their election pledges. Do they seriously imagine that the British public has forgotten 14 years of Conservative governments trashing promises, raising taxes, piling up national debt and saying one thing and doing the opposite?  Listen to Kemi Badenoch slamming Labour’s plans to raise welfare spending by another £9bn as “a Budget for Benefits Street” based on “hiking taxes to pay for welfare”. Nice try, Kemi. But the fact is the welfare spending surged under the Conservatives, rising from £211bn in 2013/14 to £297bn in 2023/4, according to estimates.  In refusing to tackle the unaffordable burden of Britain’s bloated welfare state – including handing billions in benefits to foreign nationals – Labour is only carrying on where the Conservatives left off. Little wonder that, by the time the Tories were kicked out last year, interest payments on the Britain’s huge national debt had already reached £100 billion a year – around twice what we spend on defence. Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, also hammered Reeves’s Budget as “a huge tax grab” and a “clear breach” of Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise taxes on working people. Given Reeves stuck another £26bn on tax, he might have a fair point, were it not for the small matter of the previous Conservative governments loading the British people down with the highest tax burden since the 1940s.  As for Labour overtaxing businesses, Badenoch assured us only last month that “we want lower taxes on businesses. We want more businesses”. Then why, businesses might ask, did the last Tory government raise the main rate of corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25 per cent in April 2023? Higher taxation has inevitably meant less money for companies to invest in jobs and growth.  The truth is that, under Conservative governments from 2010 to 2024, over a quarter of a million companies went into insolvency in England and Wales. So much for the “we want more businesses” Tory Party. Then there is the big issue of energy prices, with Badenoch announcing a “Cheap Power Plan” to cut bills for British families. This, we should remember, is the same Conservative Party which, when in power, increased the energy price cap and presided over record household bills.  Most importantly, it was the Tories who introduced the crazy net zero targets which have left Britain with some of the highest energy prices in the world and driven small and family businesses and farms to the wall. Ed Miliband covering the British countryside with solar panels is only a continuation of the net zero zealotry of Boris “make Britain the Saudi Arabia of wind” Johnson. When it comes to probity, Stride has said that Reeves’s “downbeat briefings were all a smokescreen” and has asked the Financial Conduct Authority to probe “possible market abuse” over the pre-Budget briefings and leaks.  This might be more convincing if the Conservatives hadn’t faced similar accusations over Liz Truss’s 2022 mini-budget, when Labour asked the FCA to investigate whether leaks had enabled the markets to short the pound."
Of course, left wingers hate them viciously just because they're supposed to be right wing