If progressives can criminalise Islamophobia, surely promoting child marriage in a Western country should be against the law Daily Telegraph 27/08/26 As his many followers on social media will be well aware, John Cleese has become a rather outspoken figure these days, on any number of contentious subjects. I certainly can’t say I agree with everything he posts. But I was very much intrigued by a little thought that he put forward on Tuesday morning. “I’d like to suggest,” he wrote, “that promoting child marriage, stoning, halal animal torture, wife beating, sharia courts, and other behaviour contrary to British values, should now be referred to as Anglophobia.” What an interesting idea. I wonder whether Labour MPs will take Cleese up on it. After all, they were extremely keen to draw up an official definition of Islamophobia . So why not do the same for “Anglophobia”? Admittedly, I suppose there’s a risk that some Labour MPs might think Cleese’s definition of “Anglophobia” consti...
Dispersing asylum seekers into Britain’s poorest areas has been a recipe for disaster. Spiked 25/08/26 The British state’s decision to disperse asylum seekers to the poorest parts of the country has long been causing serious problems. Mainly accommodated in so-called migrant hotels and increasingly houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), asylum seekers’ presence has been the source of many issues, from rises in anti-social behaviour to pressure on already stretched public services. It has also fuelled higher rents as landlords remove family homes from the market to create bedsits. It seems that Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, has recognised that locating so many asylum seekers in already deprived areas can’t go on. In his by-election victory speech in Makerfield in June, Burnham acknowledged that ‘HMO Britain’, particularly where it is connected to the refugee industry, is deeply unfair. Since then, the government has acted on its promise to close asylum hotels in place...