Automated number plate recognition cameras are being used for data laundering

 Flock Safety operates approximately 120,000 automated license plate readers (“ALPRs”), also known as automatic number-plate recognition (“ANPR”) systems, across 49 US states. Its network of cameras includes contracts with over 7,000 organisations, including over 5,000 law enforcement agencies.

Flock cameras promise easier policing by destroying the Fourth Amendment – creating a permanent, searchable, warrantless database of everywhere Americans go, Tanner Turnpaugh explains....<<<Read More>>>...

Food for Thought #1211

 

UK government launches legal action to stop the release of data showing crimes committed by migrants

The Centre for Migration Control (“CMC”) is a think tank committed to controlling and reducing immigration to the UK.

For a year, CMC has been locked in a battle with the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) for the Ministry of Justice (“MoJ”) to release statistics on crimes committed by migrants for the years 2018 to 2024. In June, CMC finally won the battle, and the ICO ordered the MoJ to release the data.

Now, the MoJ is taking legal action, seeking to overturn the ICO’s decision and block the release of this information to the public....<<<Read More>>>....

The True Cost of Green Subsidies is Much Higher Than Politicians Admit

 Intermittent ‘renewable’ (solar and wind) electricity generation is a useful but niche technology, either for off-grid users or as a small portion of on-grid generation. However, British politicians have decreed its central role in an energy transition away from the sources of energy that fuelled our transformation from a remote outpost of Europe to a rich post-industrial economy. Since most renewable generation is highly capital-intensive as well as intermittent, this can only be achieved by taking vast sums of money from electricity consumers to build generation plants and a parallel electricity grid. Maintaining two grids – one reliable, the other not so reliable – is not only vastly expensive but it introduces the risk of major failures, as the near total-blackouts in Spain and Portugal in April 2025 and in Texas in February 2021 have illustrated.

The commitment to an energy transition has been supported, until recently, by most politicians from all the main political parties. However, as explained in other articles, notably by Frank and Prins, the political and bureaucratic elite has never attempted to assess whether the policies adopted were, in any sense, value for money. In this article we will examine the tangled web of subsidies for renewable generation and ask what we are getting from the huge sums involved.

Large scale subsidies for renewable generation were first introduced under the Renewables Obligation, which commenced in 2002. This required energy suppliers to source a minimum proportion of the electricity they supplied from accredited renewable generators whose output was awarded Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs). The original idea was that the value of ROCs would be market-driven with a cap (the ROC buyout price) to prevent excessive costs to consumers. After lobbying by renewable generators, the rules were changed to ensure that the buyout price is effectively a floor price with the consequence that the value of a ROC has more than doubled since 2002....<<<Read More>>>...

How the Climate Agenda is Being Pushed into Our TV Shows

 A new BBC drama with Net Zero-sceptics as the baddies, a TV game show with a heavy-handed "Environment Week" – the climate agenda is being pushed into our TV programmes to ‘educate’ us, warns Charlotte Gill.

This week, The Great British Sewing Bee managed to push the climate agenda into its otherwise harmless show in what was termed “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle Week”.

Sewers were given three tasks “focused on the environment and sustainability”: first to create underpants from old t-shirts; second to transform material intended for landfill into “a garment with drama at the back”; and third to make outfits with an environmental message.

The third challenge was by far the most ideologically heavy-handed. “Throughout history, fashion has been used as a tool for protest, a statement for resistance and a spark for social change,” began presenter Sophie Willan, introducing the task to contestants. “So the judges want you to create an outfit with an environmental message that’s close to your heart.”

When quizzed later about the impetus for the challenge, Sewing Bee judge Patrick Grant told Willan: “Fashion designers have always been people that are kind of very socially engaged, and a big part of that is them having strong views on all sorts of things, and they want to put those forward through the clothes that they make.”

Luckily the designers didn’t seem to mind having their “strong views” decided for them by the judges and programme creators. “It is incredibly important to be environmentally conscious. Because we’re killing the planet,” one sewer was filmed saying. Another making a “Save Our Seas” protest dress was asked by Grant: “Why is the plastic thing so important to you?” She replied: “It’s so detrimental to the animals and the beauty of the sea.”...<<<Read More>>>...

UK government is seeking to bring “bossware” under control

 The UK government is considering forcing employers in Great Britain to consult workers before rolling out “bossware,” opening the door to new rules covering everything from AI-powered productivity scoring to keystroke logging and biometric surveillance.

The Department for Business and Trade wants to know whether the rules governing workplace surveillance still make sense as software increasingly tracks employees’ activity, measures their performance and supports decisions that affect their working lives.

Ministers haven’t settled on an approach. They’re asking whether non-statutory guidance would be enough, whether a statutory code of practice is needed or whether employers should be legally required to consult recognised trade unions or elected employee representatives before introducing workplace monitoring technology (“WMT”).

The consultation says WMT is becoming more common, citing research in which one in three UK organisations said they actively monitored employees’ digital activity. Two years earlier, ICO research found the figure stood at one in five employers.

The government argues WMT can improve productivity, investment and economic growth when used well. But it also highlights several pitfalls, warning of “risks to privacy and autonomy,” “disproportionate or unnecessary surveillance” and “biased or unfair outcomes” where monitoring systems rely on incomplete or inaccurate data.

Artificial intelligence features prominently throughout the consultation, though the proposals extend well beyond AI alone. It notes that WMT can incorporate automated decision-making and algorithmic management, raising questions about transparency, accountability and the impact of technology on workers.

Exactly what counts as workplace monitoring technology, though, is another question. The government is proposing a broad definition covering everything from CCTV and access control systems to biometric technologies, location tracking, keystroke monitoring, productivity software, and systems that incorporate automated decision-making or AI....<<<Read More>>>...

Britons face winter of surging energy bills as Europe facing gas stockpile shortage

 Europe is hurtling toward a potential energy emergency this winter after gas stockpiles dropped to levels not seen in years, according to a report from The Telegraph.

Storage facilities across the continent stand just above 50 percent full in late July—a historically low figure for this time of year—leaving the region on course to begin the cold season with sites only about 75 percent full, well below the five-year average of 90 percent.

The shortfall stems directly from the ongoing conflict involving Iran, which has disrupted roughly one-fifth of global energy supplies and forced heavy drawdowns of reserves....<<<Read More>>>...

The Death of ‘Silly Season’

 ‘Silly season’ is supposedly upon us. Traditionally, the parliamentary recess marked a brief lull in political news. Ministers retreated to their constituencies, MPs disappeared on holiday and newspapers, deprived of Westminster intrigue, filled their pages with escaped llamas, giant marrows, seagulls stealing chips on Scarborough seafront and other harmless absurdities. The absence of serious political news was taken as evidence that, for a few weeks at least, the machinery of government had slowed to a crawl. As a teenager, I remember wondering: “If the news stops when Parliament stops, perhaps less government would mean less news.”

Silly season no longer seems to arrive. Every summer now brings another existential crisis demanding constant commentary. Brexit negotiations gave way to Covid and lockdowns. Covid gave way to Ukraine. Ukraine gave way to inflation, leadership contests, small boats, riots and a seemingly endless succession of emergencies. Westminster has become a theatre in permanent performance. There is no interval, and the actors never leave the stage. There is only crisis....<<<Read More>>>...

The applause for Burnham scrapping Starmer’s digital ID arrived before anyone checked what survived it

The new UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, is in Downing Street, and he has spent twenty years telling you exactly what he wants to do to the internet. He won the Makerfield by-election on 18 June 2026. He then collected the backing of roughly 349 Labour MPs, more than 85 per cent of the parliamentary party. By the time he walked through the black door, the job had been settled for weeks.

His first big announcement was the one privacy campaigners had been hoping for. Starmer’s digital ID scheme for all adults is dead, scrapped before Burnham had finished unpacking, the money moved to the cost of living. The applause came quickly. Perhaps it should not have.

This is a read on a government barely a day old. On speech and privacy, the early signals point one way, and it is not the way that loosens the state’s grip. He is not about to tear up the settlement he inherits from Keir Starmer. The open question is how much further he carries it.

Burnham arrives with a long record on all this. He is one of the few senior British politicians with a documented, two-decade appetite for putting the government closer to what you can see, say and read online....<<<Read More>>>...

The UK’s latest dystopian censorship plans could spell the end of UK independent content creators to save the BBC

 Andy Burnham’s government is proposing statutory changes that force digital service providers to prioritise its preferred sources of “news,” such as the BBC.

YouTube, an American company, is warning that the UK government’s control over its algorithms will make it harder for independent UK content creators to be discovered on its platform.

The UK government is proposing regulatory changes that force social media platforms to prioritise content from established public service broadcasters such as the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.Currently, the public is being softened up to the idea through a government consultation on a Green Paper titled ‘Watch this space: A new strategic direction for UK media’ published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (“DCMS”) on 23 June 2026. The consultation, which takes the form of a survey, closes on 31 August 2026...<<<Read More>>>....

Rupert Lowe: The Fabian Society is deliberately trying to wreck the UK

In a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, Rupert Lowe MP said that the shadowy group known as the Fabian Society was deliberately trying to wreck the UK.

“It’s the most extraordinary organisation,” Lowe told Rogan. “Their emblem is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as if that doesn’t tell you what they’re doing.”

The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation that co-founded the Labour Party, which to this day formulates and controls the Labour Party’s policies. There are over 6,000 members of the Fabian Society and it boasts being “the future of the left since 1884.”

“Every Labour prime minister has been a Fabian and today 100s of Labour politicians are members of the society, including Labour leader Keir Starmer MP and more than half his cabinet, as well as senior figures in devolved and local government. Our elected executive committee currently includes five Labour frontbenchers....<<<Read More>>>...

 

An Attack on All Our Rights

 Have you heard about the new piece of legislation, tabled by the Home Secretary, which is “opening the door to a gradual erosion of all our rights and freedoms”? I ask because I received an email this morning from the human rights charity Liberty alerting me to this danger. Apparently, Shabana Mahmood (that strangest and rarest of beasts – a competent Labour Minister) is plotting to put “people’s rights at risk to score political points” and “weaken the European Convention” by making it easier to deport people. And this will apparently constitute an “attack on all our rights”.

The attack in question is coming in the form of the Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026, which is due to have its second reading on July 13th. The bill does rather a lot, and bits of it are actually very welcome – it indicates that (my goodness) some thought has gone into what the Government is trying to do in respect of immigration policy. But that’s for another day. Today I want to focus in particular on Liberty’s remarks about the aspects of the bill which deal with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the so-called ‘right to family life’, and what this demonstrates about the, frankly, debased and rather silly way in which human rights advocates think (or, rather, don’t think) about the values they hold dear. This will in turn lead us to the problem lying at the heart of human rights law, which is that it is not really law and, moreover, not even a coherent or sensible concept....<<<Read More>>>...

Police Must Stop Engaging in “Woke” Culture Wars, Says Major Government-Backed Report

 Police must stop engaging in “woke” culture wars and “preferencing certain groups” and focus instead on catching criminals, a major Government-backed review has concluded. The Telegraph has more.

The damning report into failings in police leadership said bosses must be “resolute” in “refusing to take sides” and not be diverted from “focusing entirely on the prevention, detection and prosecution of crime”.

Amid renewed scrutiny over ‘two-tier policing‘, police leaders are accused of “preferencing certain groups” in the review, which is one of the most thorough examinations of the force ever undertaken.

Lord Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary who co-chaired the report, said there was “no room for culture wars or woke” causes in policing. “The idea that people should be diverted onto other issues is entirely wrong,” he said.

A commission was set up by the College of Policing with the support of the Home Office, in the wake of a series of scandals, including the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by serving Metropolitan Pc Wayne Couzens.

Its report, published on Monday, called for a “reset” of police culture after finding evidence of ineffective and corrupt leadership, nepotism, poor training and a lack of support for front-line officers.

The murder of Henry Nowak, a student who was handcuffed by police as he lay dying because his killer, Vickrum Digwa, who is Sikh, lied about being racially abused by the teenager, has renewed the debate around two-tier policing in Britain.

Amid the public outcry over the treatment of Nowak, police chiefs announced a review of their guidance that suggested “racial equity” did not mean “treating everyone the same or being colour blind”....<<<Read More>>>....

Andy Burnham’s Operation Hexagon was built to hunt the whistle-blowers, not the rape gangs

 In 2019, Greater Manchester Police began Operation Hexagon. As the Mayor of Manchester with Police and Crime Commissioner functions, the Operation came under the oversight of Andy Burnham.

They led the public to believe Operation Hexagon was designed to investigate allegations of rape gang crimes in Oldham. However, the wording was deliberately vague.

The actual purpose of Operation Hexagon was to investigate people exposing the Muslim rape gangs and those attempting to cover-up these crimes.

In other words, Operation Hexagon was designed not to target criminals but to silence whistle-blowers and others who spoke about the rape gangs and their crimes....<<<Read More>>>...

The outcome of the trial for arson attacks on properties linked to Starmer is not as the BBC said

Crispin Flintoff spent 21 days at the Old Bailey attending the trial of three men accused of arson attacks on properties linked to Keir Starmer. “What I heard in court was not the story later told by the BBC,” he said.

Three young men stood accused of carrying out arson attacks on a car and two properties linked to Keir Starmer. They had been arrested by counter-terrorism police and spent a year in Belmarsh prison awaiting trial. At the centre of the prosecution case was a mysterious Telegram user known as ‘El Money’, who was alleged to have directed the arsons but was not himself in the dock.

Three young men stood accused of carrying out arson attacks on a car and two properties linked to Keir Starmer. Roman Lavrynovych, 22, a Ukrainian national from western Ukraine, was accused of setting fire to a Toyota RAV4 previously owned by Starmer at 2.42am on Thursday 8 May 2025, and then being involved in fires at Ellington Street at 2.05am on Sunday 11 May and Countess Road at 1.35am on Monday 12 May. Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, a Romanian national who had lived in Britain for nine years, was accused of helping connect people and arrange payment. Petro Pochynok, 35, a Ukrainian-born man who had lived in the UK for several years, was accused of involvement but was later acquitted.

The three had been arrested by counter-terrorism police and spent a year in Belmarsh prison awaiting trial. At the centre of the prosecution case was a mysterious Telegram user known as ‘El Money’, who was alleged to have directed the arsons but was not himself in the dock.

There were obvious questions from the start. How did these men know details about Starmer’s former car and two addresses connected to him? Why had they been held in Britain’s highest-security prison? Who exactly was ‘El Money’? And why, if this was such a serious case involving the Prime Minister, were so few people there to watch it?...<<<Read More>>>...

Food for Thought #1148

 

The Government’s Latest Censorship Initiative is its Most Sinister Yet

 Over the last few months, free speech activists have been perturbed by proposals to age-gate social media for under-16s. Meantime, whilst all eyes were looking elsewhere, the Government has just slipped out a new raft of proposals which would profoundly reshape the online media landscape in the UK. In my view, whereas the impact of the proposed social media restrictions for kids on the free speech rights of adults has been overstated, this new initiative poses a far greater and invidious threat to our freedom of speech and access to information.

The proposals are contained in a Green Paper, published this week, called ‘Watch This Space’. Described by Ian Murray, the Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Art, as setting out a “new strategic direction” for the Government’s media policy, the new measures would require social media companies to prioritise content from ‘traditional’ so-called public service broadcasters – the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and so on – over that of independent media outlets. This would therefore (although this is not spelt out expressly in the paper) de-prioritise, i.e., suppress, content from independent content creators. The effect would be to rewire the algorithms according to which content is delivered to our social media feeds. It would take us from content driven by preference and audience demand towards a system structurally hardwired and legally obliged to direct us to traditional media brands – the very titles that such a large proportion of the public have turned away from.

Given that some 70% of all UK news content is now read digitally, the impact of these measures on the online public square and on the ability of UK audiences to access information sources of their choosing can hardly be overstated....<<<Read More>>>...

Food for Thought #1132

 

Rupert Lowe’s independent Rape Gang Inquiry Report has been released

 Yesterday, Rupert Lowe, Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth and leader of Restore Britain, released the full report from the independent Rape Gang Inquiry.

“I urge all Britons to read this report in full. Lessons need to be learned and prosecutions need to follow for the appalling cowardice of those responsible for refusing to resist such horrors. The strongest possible penalties, up to and including death, must also be sought for those yet to be properly punished or indeed punished at all for their vile, unspeakable crimes,” he said.

Because the Government has failed the victims and the public, last year Rupert Lowe MP launched a campaign to hold an independent national inquiry into the UK’s Muslim rape gangs.

The Inquiry began hearings in London on 2 February 2026. It focused on survivor testimonies, systemic failures by public authorities and cover-ups, particularly concerning cases involving predominantly white British girls and perpetrators from various ethnic backgrounds, including Pakistani men. The hearings ended on 12 February....<<<Read More>>>...

Keir Starmer’s Doomed Social Media ‘Ban’

 We’ve been here before. Last December, Australia launched a failed experiment which the UK is now seeking to replicate. Australia purported to ban children from social media, requiring social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to ensure that there were no under-16’s on their platforms.

Most Australian children are still on social media. Even the eSafety Commissioner concedes that at least 70% of the children are still on there – based on a survey of parents. The true figure is almost certainly higher: no children who circumvented the ban are going to tell their parents. This is unsurprising given the official Government-funded study, used to recommend implementation methods, proposed systems that would literally let over 40% of 10 year-olds through (a finding that the authors occluded in their report). The report was prepared by the UK-based Age Verification Providers Association, an industry body with a direct commercial interest in selling these systems. One imagines the UK Government is receiving similarly dubious advice. And then there are VPNs — allowing children to bypass age verification entirely by appearing to connect from a country without a ban.

From a child safety perspective, the failure of the Australian ban is a good thing. Social media platforms operate based on network effects. They persist because of the community that is there. In ordinary circumstances, this provides an incumbent advantage. But if the Government succeeds in breaking these networks down, then under-16’s are suddenly motivated to go elsewhere.

That ‘elsewhere’ could be a completely unregulated startup app or website with no safety measures whatsoever....<<<Read More>>>...