BBC TV Licence Fee To Be Raised By £5.50 to £180

The TV licence fee will rise by £5.50 to £180 a year in a bid to ‘help keep the BBC on a stable financial footing’, the Government said today in another cost-of-living blow.

Viewers reacted with anger after the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) revealed the 3.12 per cent rise from £174.50 would come into force from April 1.

The hike was calculated using the annualised average of the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation rate from October 2024 to September 2025, which was 3.14 per cent. 

Viewers bombarded social media with outrage at the rise, as some claimed they simply would not pay, while Reform UK MP Lee Anderson said: ‘The BBC has a death wish. 

He told the Daily Mail: ‘With families facing soaring bills and taxes, it is indefensible to demand more money for an institutionally biased BBC. Reform UK would overhaul a national broadcaster that is clearly unsustainable in its current form.’

Senior Conservative MP Nigel Huddleston, the shadow culture secretary, added: ‘It is increasingly difficult to see how the BBC can justify any rise in the licence fee when serious questions remain over its impartiality and governance.’

The new licence fee is higher than the streaming fee for Netflix in the UK, which costs between £5.99 and £12.99 a month, equating to £71.88 to £155.88 a year.

Prime Video costs £8.99 per month or £95 a year as part of an Amazon subscription; while Disney+ is £5.99 to £14.99 a month, the equivalent of £71.88 to £149.90 a year.

The cheapest annual cost of subscribing to Netflix, Prime and Disney+ combined is currently £238.76 a year, which is only £58.76 or 33 per cent more than the licence fee. 

Mr Huddleston added: ‘At a time when households are under real financial pressure from Labour’s economic mismanagement, asking people to pay more for a service that is losing trust is simply not credible. Pushing through another increase will only accelerate this decline.

‘Instead of demanding more from struggling families, the BBC should be focusing on getting its house in order.’

William Yarwood, media campaign manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, also said: ‘Taxpayers will be rightly furious that the licence fee is going up.

‘After a year in which our state broadcaster brought itself into disrepute on what seemed like a weekly basis, it is shocking that bosses thought an increase in fees was even remotely appropriate.

‘Only more reason for Lisa Nandy to tell the Beeb that their days of relying on a TV tax to fund their operations are coming to an end.’

News of the price increase comes after the BBC was revealed to have lost more than £1 billion in a year as a record one in eight households refused to pay the fee.

The BBC licence fee should be discarded because we watch it via our provider – in my case, my Sky provider – and besides, it’s all full of repeats and woke rubbish, and the BBC are not helping themselves because now, more people will refuse to pay it.

You do not have to let TV inspectors into your dwelling unless they have a search warrant. If they do not have a search warrant, you do not have to permit them entry to your home. However, this does not mean they will not go away and come back with a search warrant – by then the offending TV is gone, or the plug is cut off.

Also, I’ll never understand how the BBC have the cheek to raise the licence fee, when numerous people want it scrapped – perhaps it’s one last hoorah before their closure.

Taxi Ban For Asylum Seekers

After it was discovered that migrants had travelled great distances at the cost of taxpayers, a restriction on asylum seekers using taxis to get to doctors’ appointments went into effect.

In one case, an asylum seeker billed the Home Office £600 for a 250-mile journey to see a GP for a check-up on his knee, according to a BBC investigation.

Following this, the Home Secretary initiated an immediate assessment and announced that the system had now been discontinued.

Under new rules, taxis can still be utilised for rare circumstances such as disability, severe illness or pregnancy. Any journey where a taxi is used will now need sign-off from the Home Office.

Taxis can also be used for asylum seekers travelling between accommodation, but this is still under consideration by the Home Office. 

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told the BBC: ‘I have ended the wasteful use of taxis for medical appointments to protect the taxpayer’s purse.

‘I will stop at nothing to remove the incentives that draw illegal migrants to Britain to restore order and control to our borders.’

One taxi driver said his firm would do around 15 daily drop-offs from a south-east London hotel to a doctor’s surgery around two miles away.

He claimed that these journeys alone would cost the Home Office £1,000 a day.

Another taxi driver, named Steve, said that firms would purposely increase the mileage on trips by dispatching drivers from areas further away from the pick-up.

He said that while working for a subcontractor, he was sent from Gatwick to Southampton ‘more than once’, driving more than 275 miles a day with half of his journey without a passenger in his car.

It comes after figures released in November revealed that an average of 15.8 million had been spent in a year on taxis for asylum seekers.

A total of 41,472 migrants arrived in the UK in 2025 after crossing the English Channel, the second-highest annual figure on record, 9 per cent below the all-time high of 45,774 in 2022.

The total for 2025 was 13 per cent higher than the figure for 2024, when 36,816 migrants made the journey, and 41 per cent higher than 2023’s total of 29,437.

For much of 2025, the number of arrivals was operating at the highest level since data on Channel crossings was first published in 2018.

But the rate slowed during the last two months of the year, and there were extended periods when no migrants arrived, including a 28-day run from November 15 to December 12.

The basic reality is that they shouldn’t be here in the first place, especially if they arrived illegally, but our government don’t care, and they have destroyed this country, and they only care about themselves, and don’t overlook all those soldiers that fought for Britain during World War II, they must be turning in their graves. It’s just a mass takeover, and so very sad because all of our beautiful history and British heritage is being eroded.

These migrants are taking over everything. NHS waiting lists, Accident and Emergency departments in hospitals, and almost all of them are non-English speaking people screeching into their mobiles. Our system is being abused, but our government is allowing this to happen to our once-great country.

They disrupt everything. They take over everything, even our buses, and God forbid an elderly person needs a seat, they don’t stand a chance, and these people are always on their phones, which is on speaker phone, so you can hear their entire conversation, even though you can’t understand it, and if they go to places like the A&E department, they bring their whole family along as well, taking up seats that other sick people could sit on.

Labour Pays Hospitals £3 million To Remove Patients From Waiting Lists

Ministers have been ridiculed for paying hospitals £3 million a month to remove patients from waiting lists, making it appear that the NHS is treating more people than it actually is.

Sir Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting have frequently bragged about Labour’s triumph in cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment since they came to power.

But new analysis of NHS figures suggests hundreds of thousands are being deleted from lists without receiving the treatment they were waiting for in a process known as ‘list cleansing’ or ‘validation’.

It involves paying consultants to trawl their backlog to look for patients who may have died or no longer need or want the procedure they were waiting for.

NHS England paid hospital trusts a total of £18,818,566 for validation exercises between April and September last year.

The organisation said trusts were paid about £33 for each patient removed from the list, indicating more than half a million were deleted through the validation process in six months alone.

A source in the last government told The Times that Rishi Sunak had vetoed a plan by the NHS to conduct a similar exercise when he was prime minister because it involved paying the organisation for ‘doing something it should be doing anyway’.

They added that ‘artificially’ reducing the waiting list gave a misleading impression of the NHS’s performance.

Experts also warned of the risk of patients being taken off lists when they still needed care.

Two weeks ago, the prime minister claimed figures showed that NHS waiting lists were down by ‘more than 86,000’, which was the ‘largest fall in a month for over two years’.

‘These aren’t just numbers – it is thousands of people getting the care they need,’ he said.

However, this reduction was only achieved by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list via the ‘validation’ process.

In November – the month that Starmer was referring to – 346,300 were removed from NHS waiting lists. This was 82,000 more than the month before and almost the entire claimed drop.

However, NHS data also shows hospitals carried out about 10 per cent fewer operations and appointments in November than they did in October, indicating fewer people were being treated.

Sarah Scobie, deputy director of research at the Nuffield Trust think tank, said: ‘The balance between referrals for treatment versus treatment delivered hasn’t changed much over the past few months, so it’s likely that a big proportion of recent waiting list reductions have happened due to reasons other than the NHS boosting activity.

‘One example of this is data cleaning exercises. A lack of transparency about this can sometimes create an illusion that the NHS is delivering more care than it is.’

Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of the King’s Fund think tank, said the NHS ‘reasonably regularly’ opts to ‘cleanse’ the waiting list, which is accounting for a large drop numbers.

But she stressed it is not a sustainable long-term strategy and said the government must do more to cut waits.

Ms Woolnough told Times Radio: ‘If people no longer need treatment, they may choose not to have treatment, their condition may have resolved, or they may have died whilst waiting on a list.

‘Bearing in mind, our waiting list for elective care stands at 7.3 million, and that’s over six million people waiting for care, it’s a legitimate exercise to do.

‘I think the question … is the Health Secretary, are the Government, over-claiming?

‘And this is no long-term strategy.

‘These exercises are kind of one-off that you do reasonably every few months, but they’re no substitute for increased activity levels to actually bear down on the wait list.’

She said list cleansing needs ‘to be handled incredibly carefully’ to ensure legitimate patients are not removed, adding, ‘it’s no substitute for increasing activity levels, really bearing down on the wait list.

‘This is the Government’s flagship policy to fix the NHS,’ she added.

‘It’s promised to re-meet the constitutional standard, this is the big promise, to make sure that the vast majority of people on a wait list are seen within 18 weeks, and it’s nowhere near that.

‘The dial has to shift, whereas at the moment there’s a very incremental decline, partly driven by this validation exercise.’

Wes Streeting is a liar, but should anyone be surprised by that? I suppose not. Starmer warned us not to trust Farage with the NHS; perhaps it should be Starmer who can’t be trusted.

Let’s be honest: everybody with an NI number is aware that Labour’s promises to have reduced waiting queues were wholly untrue, but nothing in this corrupt third-world country shocks me anymore.

Our government are worse than we realise. The system is broken – the NHS is broken, unless you’re a migrant, of course.

NHS hospital waiting lists are going up, they’re not going down – don’t believe the lies, but like everything else, our government want to paint you a pretty picture, but it’s lies, lies and more lies.

NHS To Cover Petrol Costs, Parking Fees And Train Fares

Families of young cancer patients who have been left hundreds of pounds out of pocket on petrol costs, train fares and parking fees will now receive money towards travel expenses from the government.

On average, families spend approximately £250 a month trekking to the hospital to see their poorly child, which has caused some to cut back on necessities, like food and heating, to cover the cost.

However, it has now been announced that the NHS will set aside £10 million each year to recompense these families for travel costs.

About 4,000 children and young people are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK, with many facing long trips to 13 specialist centres across the country.

The money will be made available to all children, teenagers and adults under the age of 25 undergoing treatment, regardless of their family income. 

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘When a child is diagnosed with cancer, their family’s only focus should be on helping them recover and getting them well, not on whether they can afford the petrol or bus fare to get to their next appointment.

‘Our plan will leave no family out of pocket while their child goes through cancer. It doesn’t matter what you earn if your child needs treatment; we will help you get them there.

‘When a child is fighting cancer, their family should never have to fight the system too.’

Emma Wilding experienced first-hand the financial hardships of cancer treatment when her son Theo was diagnosed with Infant Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in October 2024, when he was only five months old.

Alder Hey Children’s Hospital is 45 minutes from their home, meaning the family was forced to spend hundreds of pounds on petrol and parking costs.

She said: ‘When Theo was going through treatment, we had no choice but to pay out for fuel and parking at the hospital, as we had to be by his side. 

‘However, at a time when our household income had gone down, this was a struggle financially.

‘Sat on the ward, I met so many other families also struggling with these costs, many travelling much further away from hospital as well.’

Victoria Ward, from the Isle of Wight, was diagnosed with Lymphoma at 21 and had to travel via ferry for treatment at Southampton General Hospital.

The return ferry ticket alone could cost anywhere between £80 and £200 at peak times, alongside a taxi to the hospital. The costs forced her to give up her flat.

Miss Ward said: If I was having my chemo in the morning and my clinic was 8 am during rush hour, a taxi could be anywhere from £12 to £15 just to go up the road. 

‘The parking alone would cost us £20 to £23 a go. As much as people say “it’s only £20”, that £20 is my week’s food.

‘It was a case of I either keep my own safe space or die. I was previously homeless a year or so before I started my cancer treatment, so my flat was my achievement, so it was sad giving that up, but it had to be done.’

Would it not be a more suitable system to start by rescinding the exorbitant fees that NHS car parks charge to patients and families? Is it just me who thinks charging for parking at hospitals is morally wrong?

All maladies that need hospital treatment are a financial grind, especially the life-threatening ones. Yes, the taxpayer may have to pay for it, and they may constantly complain about it, but they must keep in mind that one day they may find themselves in the same situation—grovelling off the taxpayer.

Radio And Website Licence Fees May Apply

The contentious new ideas being considered by BBC executives would compel British citizens to pay a license fee to access its news website or listen to its radio programs.

With fewer customers paying the charge annually, the company is presently considering other methods to finance its operations.

Another possibility being considered is extending the fee so viewers would be charged to stream shows on external services such as Netflix or ITV. 

A third change could involve introducing a model where wealthier households pay more, in turn subsidising the licence fee for lower-income families. 

The Daily Mail reported in November that one in eight households now say they do not need a TV licence, leading to losses estimated at up to £550 million.

Over the past decade, the cost of the licence fee, which must be paid to watch ‘live’ television or iPlayer, has soared to £174.50.

However, some BBC bosses have complained that below-inflation increases in recent years have held them back.

They are lobbying for a new deal before 2027, when the royal charter that governs the BBC is due to renew.

It is understood that one possibility discussed at a board meeting on Wednesday was to spread out the cost of the licence fee by increasing the number of people who need to pay it.

This is intended to reduce the average cost per family while raising more money overall.

An insider told The Times: ‘Our priority is ensuring the BBC is sustainable as a universal public service beyond just the next few years.

‘That shouldn’t mean the price for ordinary households goes up. We’re very sensitive to that pressure.

‘Ministers have set out an ambitious agenda of what the BBC should be, and we are open to all ideas that, as the consultation says, ensure the organisation “not just survives, but thrives” in this competitive media landscape.’

At the moment, British citizens who watch ‘live’ television or any show on BBC iPlayer are required to pay the license fee.

It is not necessary, however, to visit the BBC’s website, listen to podcasts, or tune in to any of its radio channels.

Last year, angry Brits spoke to the Daily Mail about why they are no longer paying their licence fees amid a series of scandals at the broadcaster. 

Former Tory MP and ex-BBC staffer Matthew Offord revealed that he quit paying his licence fee after standing down from his post.

Many people now won’t pay for a scandal-plagued, woke, anti-Semitic organisation.

Your TV licence is not a contract, but it is still a legal requirement in the UK to have one if you watch or record television broadcasts, even though you have not entered into a contract with the company.

However, they are extremely crafty because, if you watch the channels on your TV for which you have entered a contract, they take advantage of you in that way.

I believe that the BBC are going to lose more money this way because people will simply not watch these channels. Why don’t the BBC make it subscription-based like Netflix and Amazon Prime? Let the population decide rather than forcing people to pay for the old boys’ brigade who are riding the gravy train.

In all honesty, I find it impossible to watch any terrestrial TV these days due to the mind-numbing amount of garbage they produce.

If you want to watch it, then by all means pay for it. If you don’t want to watch, then don’t, and the same applies to radio.

The TV licence fee was originally intended to pay for infrastructure and programmes. This was back in the day when you only had a couple of channels, now we have all kinds of subscription services, and private companies that deliver the infrastructure, but generally when a tax is introduced people just get used to paying for it and that is seen as money forever, and it’s simply never taken away, even if it ceases to be functional.

The BBC doesn’t really deliver the infrastructure anymore, and it now has competitors. The reason was that it was about ‘live’ TV because of the infrastructure, mostly, the means by which it was transmitted.

When it was created, there were none of these streaming services, and so it’s impossible that they can be deemed to come under the licence requirement, ‘live’ or not.

Snow In Florida!

A powerful snowstorm is bringing chaos to parts of the country not accustomed to perilous cold conditions.

More than 35 million Americans were under severe weather alerts as a bomb cyclone, a kind of ‘winter hurricane’ that causes fierce winds when air pressure decreases quickly, swept in. 

States including the Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia have been worst impacted, with snow seen falling as far south as Tampa, Florida. In central Florida, temperatures as low as the high teens are possible. At this time of year, thermometers are more typically hitting the 70s.

There has been havoc on the roads, with North Carolina alone suffering 750 car crashes on Saturday, according to the highway patrol.

Around 100 vehicles were left stranded in the snow along a northbound section of Interstate 85 north of Charlotte, North Carolina, where more snow fell in a single day on Saturday than the city has seen in two decades.

A late afternoon crash involving a car and a tractor-trailer led to only one lane being open along the road near Kannapolis. That in turn caused long traffic jams just as heavy snow began accumulating on the highway, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol said.

Snow fell so fast that it caused tractor-trailers and cars on I-85 to become stuck, stranding drivers.

‘Once they’re blocking the interstate, everybody stops,’ North Carolina State Highway Patrol 1st Sgt. Christopher Knox told CBS 17. ‘We’re just limited in what we can do because of the interstate not being physically passable.’

‘It sounds like initially it is not necessarily a 100-car collision, but it’s just traffic that is stopped because we’re having to remove a vehicle that is blocking the roadway,’ Knox said.

The latest misery came about a week after a monster storm hit a wide swath of the United States, killing more than 100 people and leaving many communities still struggling to dig out from under the snow and ice.

Heavy snow fell in North Carolina and neighbouring states Saturday, with authorities advising residents to stay off the roads and warning that oceanfront structures were under threat as a so-called ‘bomb cyclone’ strengthened off the coast.

A winter storm warning was in effect for all of North and South Carolina, parts of Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and Kentucky, as well as southern Virginia.

The area near the North Carolina and South Carolina border closest to the coast is where moderate to heavy snowfall is most likely until about 1 am EST, with up to an inch of snow per hour falling.

Southern states aren’t equipped for snow or ice. They don’t brine, salt or sand roadways, and motorists often have no experience driving in these situations, so it’s not surprising that there have been numerous casualties and deaths.

We should also spare a thought for those with solar panels that will now be covered in snow, now generating zero electricity, and all those wind turbines frozen with ice, generating zero electricity. There are billions of dollars invested in these technologies, with zero electricity being generated. I bet the kids are having a blast, though?

It’s a lot of snow if you’re not used to it, so I hope everyone stays safe.

People talk about Global Warming, but it’s not, it’s climate change because climates change, and it has been doing so for billions and trillions of years. It’s just the natural order of things.

But just to make things a little more light-hearted. “A businessman is away on a work trip and he phones his wife, ‘We have snow here.’ Wife, ‘Yes, I got 8 inches last night, and it was fantastic.'”

I do hope nobody snorts coffee all over their keyboard!

Elon Musk’s Brain Chip

One of the first British patients to receive Elon Musk’s controversial brain-computer implant has explained what it is like to live with the futuristic chip.

Sebastian Gomez-Pena is taking part in the first UK clinical study of the Neuralink gadget, which allows users to control a computer using just their thoughts.

The former medical student, who was left paralysed from the neck down after a devastating accident two years ago, told Sky News: ‘It is a massive change in your life where you can suddenly no longer move any of your limbs. 

‘This kind of technology kind of gives you a new piece of hope.’

The billionaire tech tycoon has suggested the implant could one day be rolled out to the general public, saying his ultimate ambition is to create a mass-market brain-computer interface that would directly link human minds with powerful machines to achieve ‘symbiosis with artificial intelligence’.

Mr Gomez-Pena, a keen cellist and rugby player, was in his third year of medical school when, aged 21, he dived into shallow water on holiday and hit his head, causing permanent spinal cord damage.

He is now one of seven participants in the UK trial assessing the safety and reliability of the device in severely paralysed patients. 

Neuralink has said its mission is to ‘restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs and unlock new dimensions of human potential’.

The implant was inserted during a five-hour operation at University College London Hospital, with British surgeons and engineers working alongside Neuralink staff. 

The procedure itself was carried out by the company’s R1 surgical robot, designed to insert microscopic electrodes into delicate brain tissue with extreme precision.

The device connects to 1,024 electrodes implanted around four millimetres into the brain’s surface in the area responsible for hand movement. 

Ultra-thin threads – ten times thinner than a human hair – carry nerve signals to a small processor embedded in a circular opening in his skull.

From there, data is transmitted wirelessly to a computer, where artificial intelligence software learns to interpret his brain activity.

Once implanted, Mr Gomez-Pena can simply think about moving his hand or tapping a finger to move a cursor or register a mouse click on a screen.

‘Everyone in my position tries to move some bit of their body to see if there is any form of recovery, but now when I think about moving my hand, it’s cool to see that… something actually happens,’ he said. 

‘You just think it, and it does it.’

I truly do hope that this is 100 per cent successful because it gives back life to those who need it.

I don’t personally like Elon Musk, but he is the genius of our time; there is no doubt about it. Some might even say he’s a mad genius, but Frankenstein’s creator was a mad genius as well. What seems impossible is not always impossible – my great granny said they would never get an aeroplane off the ground, but they did. James T Kirk from Star Trek said, ‘Beam me up, Scotty,’ and then we had mobile phones. Nothing is impossible, and if my great granny could see a talking robot, she would probably faint!

What Elon has brought to us is fantastic. Love him or hate him, he is awesome because he brings a vision together and the ability to create it, and this technology is a potential game-changer for all of us.

However, we also need to be mindful that we’re talking about implanting a control device into someone’s head. Perhaps I just read too much science fiction, but the potential for cybernetics can go horribly wrong in the hands of those people with little or no oversight, which means that these devices could end up being used for far more oppressive functions other than their existing therapeutic implementations.

Elon Musk Asked Jeffrey Epstein About Paedophile’s Wild Island Parties

According to federal documents, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, emailed the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein about the best day to visit the financier’s notorious island for a wild party.

‘What day/night will be the wildest party on =our (sic) island?’ Musk emailed Epstein on November 25, 2012, according to Department of Justice documents released on Friday.

‘Probably just Talulah and me,’ Musk said, referencing British actress Talulah Riley, his ex-wife. 

The Tesla CEO’s inquiry was in reply to an email Epstein sent Musk the day before, asking: ‘How many people will you be for the heli to the island?’ 

At the time Musk emailed Epstein, the financier had already been convicted of sex crimes against minors in Florida. 

Musk’s appearance in the files comes after he accused President Donald Trump over the summer of covering up the vile documents to protect himself – a claim that provoked a high-profile rupture between the two. 

Musk’s cosy association with the dead paedophile was revealed on Friday as part of the Justice Department’s release of more than 3 million documents relating to Epstein.

Musk emailed Epstein again in the following year, in December 2013, to coordinate a trip to the sordid paedophile’s Caribbean island. ‘Will be in the BVI/St Bart’s area over the holidays,’ Musk wrote to Epstein. ‘Is there a good time to visit?’

Epstein replied by assuring Musk that the start of the new year would be a good time to visit, adding: ‘always space for you.’

The pair spoke again on Christmas Day with Epstein writing, ‘the 2 or 3 would be perfect. I will come and get you.’ 

Musk stated that he would need to travel back to Los Angeles on January 2, 2013, before claiming he could delay his departure.

‘When should we head to your island on the 2nd?’ Musk concluded to Epstein. 

Although it’s unclear if Musk eventually paid Epstein a visit on his island, their correspondence suggests they were cordial.

The latest DOJ release is expected to include previously unseen material from the investigation into Epstein, who was discovered hanged in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking underage girls.

Previous releases have shed light on Epstein’s links to the global elite, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates.

In an email obtained exclusively by the Daily Mail on Friday, it was revealed that Epstein astonishingly claimed that Gates caught a sexually transmitted disease from ‘Russian girls.’

This is nasty because they were all in on it, and they are repulsive, the lot of them.

We don’t know if Elon Musk went to the island with his wife, but remember this was a honeypot designed to snare influential people, and Epstein would have been emailing everyone influential and powerful, or was just plain rich.

The problem with a honeypot is that you will accept an offer if it is something you want or desire. Even if you are a billionaire elite who wants for nothing in this world, you are not being duped; you know what the score is, but they want what they want, and they don’t care how they get it. Creepy birds of a feather that flock together!

All these men were involved, yet only one person is sitting in jail, and it’s a woman! She was the scapegoat.

These people are leaders – captains of industry. The rock stars, the politicians, the sports stars. They are the monsters who want more and more, while Joe Bloggs has less and less. These are the people who want us replaced by AI and want us fighting against each other. Old vs young, black vs white, working class vs middle class, and it goes on and on, but this only just scratches the surface, and it’s the real world we live in – horrible, isn’t it?

‘Keir Starmer Does Not Give A S*** About Us’

The bereaved family of a woman who was killed randomly by a Channel boat migrant have turned their anger on Keir Starmer for failing to act on illegal migration.

Mother-of-one Rhiannon Whyte, 27, was stabbed 23 times with a screwdriver by ‘evil’ Deng Chol Majek, who ambushed her after her shift at the asylum hotel where he had been living.

The ‘demonic and inhuman’ Sudanese national had arrived in the UK just three months earlier and lied about everything from his age – falsely declaring he was 18 – to his responsibility for the October 2024 killing.

Once back at the Park Inn Hotel in Walsall, he was even captured on camera dancing and drinking with other migrants, clearly thrilled with his horrific act of violence.

As he was jailed for at least 29 years at Coventry Crown Court, Ms Whyte’s sister, Emma, accused the Prime Minister of failing to take women’s safety seriously and called for migrant hotels to be ‘shut down’.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, she delivered a stark statement to Sir Keir: ‘Let’s hope it never happens to you.’

She continued: ‘Keir Starmer would not listen, he does not give a s*** about us.

‘He’s the worst thing that ever happened to us.’

Standing alongside Ms Whyte’s mother, Donna, she suggested Sir Keir was ignoring concerns about the dangers posed by migrant hotels because they were mainly being raised by women.

‘Nobody wants to listen to women,’ she said.

The family is now advocating for more stringent measures against unauthorised immigrants, such as Majek, who are housed at government expense even if authorities are unaware of their past.

Ms Whyte’s mother said, ‘We don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Why are we allowing this to continuously happen?’

By forcing Ms Whyte’s family to endure a trial while putting up a tenuous defence against the overwhelming evidence against him, Majek had made a mockery of the legal system in the United Kingdom.

He accused a forensic expert of lying about finding Ms Whyte’s blood all over his clothes and insisted it was a man dressed in identical clothing – not him – caught on CCTV stalking Ms Whyte to Bescot station, where she was attacked.

Three days after a train driver discovered Ms Whyte gravely injured in the platform shelter, she passed away in the hospital.

In a final affront to the family, Gurdeep Garcha KC, representing Majek, announced at the sentencing hearing that he was continuing to maintain his innocence.

Majek had no documentation upon arrival in the UK and claimed to be aged 18, despite previously telling German authorities he was actually eight years older.

Keir Starmer and his cabinet have blood on their hands, and this needs to stop now!

Why does Keir Starmer continue to let migrants into the UK? He gives them every incentive to come here – free accommodation, free food, extremely generous pocket money, free healthcare and the list goes on and on and on. These migrants should be grateful, but instead they go around killing people, and think that it’s all extremely amusing as well. They are accountable for so many crimes, and the people that they have killed would still be here today if they were not allowed into the UK, but Keir Starmer is allowing it!

Meanwhile, our Labour government is deceiving us about important matters, such as migration. They are the most despicable and deceitful government in history.

Almost every day, I read about rape, violent sexual assault, and this time murder.

Our women and children are not collateral damage, and because of this, it is wilful neglect by our government. The first role of any government is to protect its people – we never asked for this!

Polar Bears Are Getting FATTER

Their icy hunting grounds is rapidly shrinking, but polar bears in Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago have defied the odds by bulking up instead of wasting away, a study has found.

The Barents Sea has lost its ice at a faster rate than other areas populated by polar bears, as temperatures have risen there more rapidly than in other Arctic regions, according to research published in the journal Scientific Reports.

However, polar bears in Svalbard have acquired body fat rather than becoming slimmer, unlike those in other Arctic regions, because the sea ice where they hunt is receding.

‘The increase in body condition during a period of significant loss of sea ice was a surprise,’ said Jon Aars, the study’s lead author and a scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI).

Polar bears in Svalbard have become plumper by feasting on land-based prey such as reindeer and walruses – species that have recovered after being over-exploited by humans, the study said.

Warmer temperatures have also made it easier for them to hunt ringed seals that now crowd in smaller sea ice areas.

The scientists analysed the body condition index (BCI) of 770 adult bears between 1995 and 2019 to determine how much – or how little – fat they bear – pardon the pun!

They discovered that their BCI fell until 2000 but increased in subsequent years despite a period of rapid loss of sea ice.

The total polar bear population of the Barents Sea was estimated at between 1,900 and 3,600 in 2004 and may have increased since then, the study said.

The increase in air temperature has been two to four times higher in the Arctic than the global average over recent decades.

The Barents Sea has experienced even more significant increases in temperature than other areas in the Arctic over the past four decades, increasing by up to 2 °C per decade in some places.

The area has also lost sea ice habitat at a rate of four days per year between 1979 and 2014, more than twice as fast as other regions hosting polar bears, it said.

The Svalbard findings may seem surprising because they contradict the results of studies conducted in other polar bear populations’, said Sarah Cubaynes, a researcher at French environmental research centre CEFE who was not involved in the study.

The physical condition of polar bears in Hudson Bay, for example, ‘has greatly declined due to warming’, Cubaynes told AFP.

Now you can call me a conspiracy theorist, but I do not believe in climate change as such.

Because of the variations in water density, melting sea ice has a small impact but does not considerably raise sea levels.

Sea Ice: This is ice that forms from seawater and floats on the ocean’s surface. When sea ice liquefies, it doesn’t contribute greatly to the sea level rise because it’s already displacing its own weight in the water.

The melting of sea ice results in fresh water that is less dense than the surrounding salty ocean water, which can lead to a slight increase in volume, but this effect is minimal.

Land Ice: This includes glaciers and ice sheets that are found on land. 

When land ice melts, it adds more water to the ocean, directly contributing to sea level rise. This is an important factor in global sea levelshifts.

The Impact of Melting Sea Ice

While melting sea ice doesn’t cause a substantial elevation in sea levels, it can still have minor effects. For example, the fresh water from melting sea ice is less dense than the salty ocean water, which can slightly raise the overall volume of water in the ocean. However, this contribution is much smaller compared to the effects of melting land ice.

Studies reveal that the melting of sea ice has contributed about 0.04 inches (1.1 millimetres) to sea level elevation between 1994 and 2017, which is somewhat insignificant compared to the contributions from land ice melt.

Conclusion

In summary, while melting sea ice does have a small impact on sea level elevation due to its lower density compared to saltwater, the overall impact is minimal. The primary concern for rising sea levels comes from the melting of land ice, which adds considerable quantities of water to the oceans. Understanding these dynamics is essential for accurately assessing the impacts of climate change on sea levels.

Yes, of course, over centuries of pollution from large industrial metropolises and coal mining towns, so there was going to be some form of global warming, but it’s not all down to pollution. Volcanic eruptions can discharge considerable quantities of CO2 and ash into the air, and as the sun changes, energy output can affect the Earth’s climate, but these variations happen over long timescales and are not responsible for the rapid warming observed in recent decades.

Natural Climate Cycles, which the Earth has experienced with its natural cycles of warming and cooling due to factors like shifts in its orbit and axial tilt. However, the current rate of warming is unusual and cannot be explained by the natural processes alone.

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that human activities are the primary driver of the recent changes in climate, particularly since the 

Industrial Revolution. While natural processes do contribute to climate variability, they cannot account for the rapid transformations we are witnessing today.

So, by all means, think green, that’s awesome, but we destroyed this wonderful planet of ours an extremely long time ago.

We are told to think green, live green for our environment. Electric vehicles are now the thing that are powered by lithium batteries, and what does that do to our environment?

Lithium batteries involve several stages, each with its own environmental impact.

The process starts with the extraction of lithium, cobalt, and other minerals, which can lead to significant environmental degradation, including habitat destruction and pollution.  

The manufacturing method is also energy-intensive, contributing to carbon emissions unless renewable energy sources are utilised.

At the end of their life, if not properly recycled, these batteries contribute to electronic waste, a growing environmental concern. Recycling lithium-ion batteries can mitigate these effects by recovering valuable materials and reducing the demand for virgin resources.

Then of course, there is the matter of plastic, paper and cotton tote bags, which all have sustainability issues.

Aldi, Asda and Sainsbury’s have increased their plastic bag charges by up to 50 per cent in the past two years. Now you’ll pay anything from 10p to 60p for a reusable plastic bag at major supermarkets, with stores expected to donate the proceeds to good causes.

Supermarkets supplied 133 million single-use plastic bags in the 2022-23 financial year – a huge 99 per cent reduction on the 1.33 billion they supplied just after the charge was introduced in 2016-17.

On the face of it, this is good news. You’re definitely less likely to see carrier bags littering the road or caught in tree branches these days – but behind the scenes, is enough being done to recycle the plastic bags that are still used? And what is the most sustainable way to carry home your shopping?

Single-use plastic bags are a nightmare for the environment, taking decades to decay in landfill. 

Most supermarkets have replaced their old thin bags with thicker versions, usually dubbed ‘bags for life’. These bags are stronger, so you can reuse them on numerous shopping trips.

When your bag for life breaks, shops return the damaged bag for recycling, and you may often exchange it for a new one for free.

But this is where things get tricky. Most supermarkets accept all manner of soft plastics for recycling – not just shopping bags – so it’s difficult to measure the amount of plastic bags that do get recycled.

If customers are choosing to recycle or reuse bags at home for other purposes – for instance, using them as bin liners for general waste – the bags could still end up in landfill.

Since recycling soft plastics and film can be tricky, especially if they’re contaminated with food waste, it’s possible that some won’t end up being recycled at all. An investigation by Bloomberg that put trackers into plastic bags discovered that some soft plastic was being dumped at an industrial estate in Turkey.

When the carrier bag charge was introduced in 2015, the intention was for supermarkets to spend the proceeds on projects that helped the environment.

The government’s plastic bag guide for businesses presently says: ‘Once you’ve deducted reasonable costs, it’s expected that you’ll donate the proceeds to good causes, particularly environmental causes.’ 

However, this doesn’t seem to be happening at every major supermarket.

Although Tesco claims to spend more on its community initiatives than it does on plastic bag sales, the company treats plastic bag revenue as general revenue.

Asda said that it treats funds generated by plastic bag sales the same as sales of any other item it sells. Like all supermarkets, though, it does donate money to community projects.

Other supermarkets said plastic bag sales fund charitable projects, though these aren’t always related to sustainability.

When choosing a bag, the key thing to consider is how often you’ll reuse it. The more you reuse it, the more sustainable it is as an option.

A 2020 report from the Life Cycle Initiative (LCI), which looked at the impact of several types of plastic bags over 10 years, said: ‘The number of times a bag is used directly influences its environmental impacts.

‘For instance, if a bag is used for shopping twice instead of once, it has only half the environmental impact per shopping round.’

M&S may have started offering reusable paper bags in its stores since paper is thought to be more recyclable than plastic.

Paper shopping bags tend to be less durable than the plastic alternative, however. And according to the LCI report, a paper bag’s climate impact can vary greatly, depending on factors like the fuel used in production.

Waste charity Wrap says you can reuse plastic bags ‘well over 50 times’ depending on what they’re made from.

When plastic bags are incinerated, the CO2 they release is harmful to the planet, whereas the CO2 emissions from incinerating paper bags are part of the natural carbon cycle, according to the LCI report.

However, the methane emissions from paper bags will be more detrimental if both plastic and paper bags wind up in a landfill.

On the surface, compostable and biodegradable bags appear to be a good choice, but you are less likely to reuse biodegradable bags since they are weaker and thinner.

Although cotton tote bags are often the most durable shopping bags, they are only environmentally friendly if they are used repeatedly.

According to the LCI study, you need to use a tote bag 50 to 150 times for it to have the same environmental impact as one single-use plastic bag. In short, if you already own a tote bag, don’t buy another – just reuse that one again and again. 

Indeed, the question of which bags are most sustainable is extremely complex. The only impact-free way of getting your shopping home would be to carry it without using any bags. But assuming you’re buying too much for that to be possible, try to reuse any bags you already have – and always recycle them once they’ve become unusable.

Some people use plastic boxes or cardboard boxes. My father used to do this. He would go into the store, buy his shopping, and at the checkout would put it back into the trolley as it was being scanned through and then take the trolley out to his car and put the shopping into the boxes, but of course, not everyone owns a car, but for those that do, this is a great idea, and no plastic bags have to be used. I myself use a shopping trolley to bring my food back home because I don’t drive.

At the end of the day, I loathe the term ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainable development’ because I believe it’s an oxymoron, as development is inherently unsustainable.

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