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In the lead-up to what promises to be a consequential budget, the money spent on supporting disabled people is constantly questioned, often in the most simplistic terms.

Thus, to the glee of right-wing politicians and journalists, the National Audit Office has recently reported that local authorities spend £2 billion every year on transporting disabled children to school.

Meanwhile, the reform of the SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) system is endlessly postponed, no doubt because of the political challenge involved in cutting services.

And all the time, welfare benefits are eyed greedily, and recipients are challenged to prove that they are 'disabled enough' to deserve them.

As so often in times of economic crisis, the weakest get hit the hardest.

Those of us who champion the rights and dignities of disabled people, especially those with learning disabilities, tend to avoid talking about money.

We know from bitter experience that learning disabled people are all too often presented as imposing an unsupportable 'burden' on society. We remember that the Nazis showed us where such rhetoric leads, and answer that our loved ones have all kinds of value which cannot be measured in monetary terms.

But, while our silence is understandable, we should, I believe, insist that the financial calculations are more complex. Maybe, just maybe, it is time to follow the money.

The stubborn fact is that the education, healthcare, and social support of people with learning disabilities is relatively expensive.

Young people like my 29-year-old son Joey need a level of one-to-one support that few his age require. The problem is that the conversation is always conducted in such simplistic terms: it is as if learning disabled people represent an absolute financial loss, to be contrasted with their non-disabled peers, who cost the taxpayer nothing at all.

We need to offer a more nuanced perspective.

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Thus, every time we hear mutterings about the bill for children with special education needs, we should insist on subtracting the amount spent (around £8,000 per year) on educating a non-disabled child.

Whenever we read about the money spent by the NHS on people with chronic disabilities, we should subtract the costs of the healthcare of their non-disabled brothers and sisters.

Each time we are warned of the rising bill for the social care of disabled people, let us balance that with the cost of other benefits that most people draw on at some time in their lives.

Yes, supporting people with learning disabilities costs money - but we should be more precise about what we are measuring that against.

We should also factor in the costs of those activities incurred by non-disabled people which tend not to be needed by learning disabled ones: driving on roads and motorways, using public transport, attending college and university, accessing subsidised arts and leisure facilities, even working in the public sector.

The truth is that the simpler, more modest, lives generally led by learning disabled people impose simpler, more modest costs.

Behind all of this lurks a grim but significant statistic: the median life expectancy for a (white) man with learning disabilities is 63, compared with 81 for the general population. There are many reasons for this unwarranted 'social murder', as Sara Ryan calls it in her terrific new book Critical Health and Learning Disabilities: An Exploration of Erasure and Social Murder.

But the dreadful consequence is that the vast majority of people with learning disabilities will never draw a state pension, receive winter fuel allo...

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The UK has become too dependent on Elon Musk and his Space X company for the success of its space programme, and must urgently seek greater independence from it in order to stop the "politicisation" of these services by the far-right billionaire, a new Parliamentary report has warned.

The report, by the House of Lords' UK Engagement with Space Committee, discloses that half of Britain's satellites are now dependent on Musk's company and warns that the UK's capacity now risks being politicised as a result.

Musk currently spends much of his time on his X platform, which he owns, where he regularly attacks the UK's diversity and race policies and predicts civil war in the UK.

He is also a financial supporter and backer of the convicted far-right British criminal Tommy Robinson.

However, the UK Government has so far resisted calls to distance itself from Musk's companies, with ministers refusing demands to come off of his 'X' social media platform. This reluctance could prove particularly challenging when it comes to the UK's space infrastructure.

The report by peers warns Musk could use his dominance to crowd out competitors in satellite communications, before politicising the UK's reliance upon his companies, saying that: "This reliance is challenging in the context of increased demand for SpaceX launch services and the potential politicisation of the Starlink service".

The report calls for the UK Government to reduce its reliance on Space X and use other launch sites abroad and build sites in the UK to launch satellites. One is already under construction in Shetland. The UK last launched its own satellites in 1971.

Under the title "The Space Economy, Act Now or Lose It" the committee hears from witnesses calling for the doubling of spending on space industries from £640 million to £1.2 billion, calls for the creation of a minister for space, and for much more co-ordination in Government to create a unified space programme.

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Brexit Costs

The report also finds that the UK has lost out in European co-operation because of Brexit.

The peers find that "As part of the UK's withdrawal from the EU, it ceased to be a part of the EU's space programme. The UK no longer participates in the Galileo programme, which means UK firms cannot access industrial contracts and UK institutions cannot use Galileo's secure functionality, which provides an enhanced service for military and critical infrastructure purposes (though individual and business use of Galileo remains permitted)."

The committee suggests the UK could benefit by rejoining Galileo and a new programme called IRIS, the Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite, which aims to connect some 290 satellites across Europe

The report also warns that Britain could lose out in the latest planned developments by the European Union which include setting up a big expansion of space investment aimed at ending dependence on the United States for member states and greater military co-operation using satellites. A new EU law will lay down standards for companies outside and inside the EU which companies will have to comply.

"The act will require UK-based providers of space-based data and services to comply with extensive and relatively onerous conformity requirements. The European Space Policy Institute estimated the potential cost burdens of the legislation to be 10% on satellite manufacturers and 20% on launch services firms", it states.

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Unidentified drones overflew a military base in northeast Belgium on Sunday. The affected Kleine-Brogel Air Base hosts Belgian F-16 planes and is also believed to store US nuclear weapons.

The Belgian Defence Minister did not directly blame Russia for the incident but said the tactics point towards it. Recent months have seen multiple Russian incursions into NATO airspace, including drones entering Polish airspace during a large strike on Ukraine and triggering a NATO response, a drone spending nearly an hour inside Romanian airspace, and three Russian MiG-31s violating Estonia's airspace before being intercepted. Russian naval activity also increased, with a Russian submarine surfacing off France in monitored waters and another tracked while entering the Baltic through Denmark.

It's now clear that Russia has entered "Phase Zero," a critical stage of its campaign to prepare for a possible NATO-Russia war, according to the Institute of Study of War. German newspaper Welt agrees: suggesting that war is inevitable.

Ukraine has been warning about this for some time. In a recent exclusive interview series, Ukrainian secret unit officers pointed towards the FSB's secret psychological warfare tactics used during this "Phase Zero" period. The informational and psychological condition setting stage, are as critical as troop buildups, cyberattacks, reconnaissance operations near NATO borders. The West still has time to act, they warn. However, understanding Russia's methods is crucial for fighting back.

An FSB Lifehack

Since KGB times, Russian secret services have conducted preparatory campaigns and psychological operations preparing the ground for invasion. Long before drones arrive, minds are prepared through the spreading of propaganda, myths, and narratives. These psychological and information weapons act like malware in the public mind, weakening national resilience.

The FSB develops tactics to manipulate the global collective mind. Ukrainian 'Elves' officers obtained and shared with Byline Times a document outlining how Russian special services plan psy ops. It serves as a window into the mindset of an invading force, they said. It reads like a mix of a Cold War era spy novel and a refrigerator operational manual and poorly written psychology textbook: a step-by-step guide to preparing and carrying out a psy-op.

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How to Change a Society

From mapping a society to shaping behaviours, every step is designed, measured and adjusted. Russian operatives dissect communities, zero in on movie stars and activists, incept narratives through "information dumps," and infiltrate networks as refugees or officials, corrupting people and institutions until resistance collapses.

Mapping

Each operation starts with mapping. Russian special services analysts scrutinise social groups, identify leaders and participants, and analyse how smaller communities fit into the whole.

They assemble dossiers on key figures, scrutinising every personal trait and habit. They profile small and medium organisations, describing the overall mood, levels of trust, conflicts and dysfunctions. They are hunting for loose links and for traits to be exploited. They monitor broader public opinion and local trends. This analysis aims to expose psychological "weak spots" in the targeted society while also helping to find vulnerable elements.

Resources and Environment

Further planning is based on the above analysis of the targeted groups and individuals, and two more factors: operatives' resources and the operation environment.

The inventory of the analys...

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The Government should consider cutting the minimum wage for young people in order to raise "aspiration" and boost business, Nigel Farage has said.

Speaking at a press conference in the City of London, the Reform leader called on the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to either cut the minimum wage for young people or lift the cap at which businesses have to pay their National Insurance contributions.

Asked if the current minimum wage should be cut for young people in order to boost "aspiration", Farage indicated that he believed it should.

"There's an argument the minimum wage is too high for younger workers," Farage said.

"Particularly given that we've lowered the level at which NIC is paid to £5,000 a year."

Urging the Chancellor to "do something" about it, Farage said that she should "do one or the other, either lift the cap at which NI is due, or lower the minimum wage…"

Young people between the ages of 18-20 are currently entitled to earn a legal minimum of £10 an hour.

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While most the rest of the media seems to happy to give the handful of Reform MPs undue prominence, Byline Times is committed to tracking the activities of Nigel Farage's party when actually in power

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Farage's comments came after he criticised proposals to raise taxes on the wealthiest, saying that it was creating a "wealth drain" from the UK, due to them being "scared" of having to pay more tax.

He called for tax cuts for "young professionals" earning more than £100,000 a year, saying that they were leaving the country due to "this hard left socialist dogma that it's popular to tax the rich".

"So let me make it clear. I want as many high-earning people as possible living in this country, paying as much tax as they legally have to", he said.

Farage also unveiled plans to slash public spending and welfare under a Reform Government, saying that disabilities were being "over-diagnosed".

It comes after one of Reform's flagship councils was forced to ask its political opponents for help to identify potential savings, after failing to find the tens of millions of pounds in cuts it promised to deliver.

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For my entire time as the climate columnist for The Independent, I was allowed complete editorial freedom to cover the issues I thought most important, except for the one key issue that I thought was the most important.

I was constantly blocked from mentioning the visceral opposition or complacency of the powerful UK and global billionaire-owned media to the urgent climate action that is required.

Any time I tried to mention this in a column, it was immediately censored. After all, The Independent itself is owned by the Russian billionaire Lebedev family and at the time its offices were co-located in the Derry Street headquarters of the climate action-trashing Daily Mail Group, owned by the billionaire Lord Rothermere.

This Wednesday, a coalition of UK and international civil society groups, under the banner Media Revolution, are launching the first Media Liberation Day, to highlight the negative impacts on society and democracy by the domination of our media by the billionaire and corporate 0.1%.

I first became aware of how the UK's political system was imprisoned by the billionaire media, when back in 1998 I was on the Liberal Democrats' Federal Executive. I was frustrated that in previous EU elections, the party had not campaigned on any European issues but just on national issues. So, when the Executive discussed the upcoming 1999 European elections, I requested that we should campaign on European issues in the election.

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But when I did so I was told by a senior figure on the executive that would be impossible. I asked why? His response stunned me. He said if we did so, Murdoch would destroy us.

I said then, that if even the most pro-European political party, was too scared to campaign on European issues, even during European elections, then if the UK ever had a referendum on EU membership, we had already lost. Sadly, 17 years later, I was proved right in the Brexit referendum.

But it is not just the existential climate and nature crises that the billionaire media squashes debate.

On almost every aspect of politics, the billionaire media seeks to divide and demonise those working for a better world. These include the disabled, people of colour, refugees, climate and nature campaigners, Palestinian activists, NHS, local councils, Liberal Democrat, Labour, SNP & Green politicians, nurses, the BBC, gay people, gypsies, middle class people, actors, working class, trade unionists, plant-based diet advocates, cyclists, or Muslims.

There is hardly any section of society that they will not demonise, when and if they chose to do so, in order to pursue their agenda.

The aim of Media Liberation Day is to raise awareness of this billionaire capture of our media. They are asking people to print off a "Cover Story" A4 sheet from their website and place it on top of the piles of billionaire newspapers in supermarkets and also urging people to unsubscribe from billionaire online news outlets and to follow independently owned media, instead.

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It is crucial that we address this existential flaw in our democracies.

It is impossible to have a free society if the media is almost all in the hands of the 0.001% billio...

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Geert Wilders' PVV may have lost ground in this week's Dutch parliamentary elections, but the truth is that, contrary to all the talk in the international media, this modest European nation has not suddenly discovered how to defeat the extreme right.

In reality, these elections merely confirm that politics in the Netherlands remains inward-looking, hostile to strangers and politically clueless.

It's fair to say that Wilders himself may be nearing his expiration date. But his one-man party, with its backbenchers recently exposed for fabricating widely-circulated AI images of brown-skinned men harassing a young blond woman and left-wing leader Frans Timmermans being led away in chains by the police, still managed to secure 26 seats in parliament, their second best score ever.

Combined with the like-minded parties JA21, BBB and FvD (whose new leader seriously considers that the Aboriginals might have discovered fire just 50 years ago), the extreme right still command 46 seats in parliament, out of a total of 150, just two down from the previous elections.

Compared to these, the Dutch centrist Libersals Democrats 66, whose leader and possible new prime minister, Rob Jetten, looks like a beacon of reason. The only problem is that over the past decades, D66 representatives taking part in governments, national and local, have barely developed any real distinctive policy. They are like that guy who always shows up at parties: perfectly agreeable, but no one knows who invited him, and when you ask him what he would prefer, beer, wine or juice, he'll just smile and say: sure!

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Before this election, D66 was regarded as being slightly left of centre due to their position on issues like trans rights, although they are often hard to pin down. However, during the campaign Jetten shifted course somewhat, forgetting about his green goals, changing his mind about refugees (who he said should now only apply at the European borders, and not on our soil) and was welcomed by a sea of Dutch flags on his triumphant election night. In short, it's impossible to predict exactly which direction Jetten wants to take this country.

He will need his apparent optimism once he starts building a ruling coalition, however. In a parliament with 15 political parties and no clear majority, any Government will always have to be a coalition. That's why the result would have been largely the same had Wilders' PVV won the elections. Wilders would then have spent two weeks or months trying to get others aboard, but all the large parties have ruled out stepping into a coalition with him, after he spent a year sabotaging his own Government before deserting it in June. Once Wilders gave up, it would be the turn of Jetten's D66, as it will be now. And his only option to build a majority coalition is to gather the four traditional parties left and right of centre.

This would be the equivalent of a new UK Government consisting of Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats - obliged to join forces in order to keep Reform out of power. It would bring together parties who all have their old suspicions and animosities towards each other, on top of their irreconcilable political differences. Just take Gaza, which was barely mentioned during the campaign, one of the reasons why so many voters didn't show up at all. VVD is a strong supporter of the Netanyahu government, CDA deeply believes that Judeo-Christian culture built Europe, GroenLinks-PvdA has chosen to cease all arms trade with Israel - and D66, well, it would welcome a cease-fire.

This coalition will be impossible to form. It will also be impossi...

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Keir Starmer's planned reforms to elections in the UK will still leave gaping loopholes threatening to allow continued foreign interference in British politics, an influential Labour MP has warned.

Cat Smith, who was the party's former Shadow Democracy Minister warned that the proposed measures in the Labour Government's planned Elections and Democracy Bill, were "the bare minimum", "too timid" and represented only a "few welcome crumbs" towards tackling the democratic threats to UK democracy.

The Bill is set to introduce votes at 16 for Westminster elections, a move towards automatic voter registration, and limits to the potential for foreign influence of UK elections through donations.

Asked whether the changes go far enough, when speaking at an event of the UCL's Constitution Unit, Smith said: "Regrettably, a pretty emphatic no."

"The reforms proposed and indeed some of the ones already enacted I think are too timid. they're long overdue measures that the Government has [introduced]."

"I'm certainly not knocking them, but just to be really clear, I don't think they represent brave reform. I think they represent the bare minimum that we need to drag the UK electoral system into the 21st century," she told the panel.

The MP, who is on the left of the party, added: "The true test of a Government's commitment to electoral integrity lies not in the small palatable concessions it makes, but I think its willingness to reinforce the foundational pillars of trust and independence. And this test I'm afraid the Government has yet to pass."

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Under particular fire - from Smith and the independent Electoral Commission itself - is the last Conservative Government's move to introduce a 'strategy and policy statement' to influence the previously-independent elections watchdog.

Labour has opted not to scrap that decision. Cat Smith said: "Creating [the] power for a partisan sitting Government… to issue policy guidance to the neutral body responsible for enforcing electoral law, [is] fundamentally corrosive to public trust. And I think it is the ultimate conflict of interest."

Smith helped lead the opposition to the Conservatives' Elections Bill - now Act - which introduced that change. She said: "I remember saying to Conservative ministers, you will not be in Government forever…You're setting up a system for any sitting Government to influence policy.

"And I say that today to my Labour colleagues who are the ministers responsible for the strategy and policy statement…It might be very nice when you're in Government and you think you can influence it, but it's not fair and it's not right."

Smith warned: "Every Government should remember that you're only in Government today and there's no guarantees for tomorrow…I will not be satisfied until I see the strategy and policy statement taken out of the law but given the Electoral Commission back its independence."

On big donations fuelling British politics, the Labour backbencher said the Government's reforms were "largely ignoring" the "deep structural overhaul of political finance" that was needed. She noted that threats from Elon Musk to donate huge sums to Reform UK, has "completely changed my approach" on the idea of implementing a cap on political donations, something the Government has also appeared to reject.

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Tom Hawthorne, head of policy at the Electoral Com...

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Boris Johnson's former Chief of Staff Dominic Cummings lobbied Government officials to hand Covid 'Test and Trace' tech contracts to a firm run by a Trump-supporting billionaire, after he held a secret meeting with its founder, alongside the Prime Minister.

A recent Guardian investigation revealed that Cummings and Johnson held an undeclared meeting with Palantir founder Peter Thiel in August 2019. According to the report, the meeting was marked "private in a log of Johnson's activities that day and was not subsequently disclosed on the government's public log of meetings".

Now new emails released to Byline Times, following a freedom of information request, reveal the true extent of Dominic Cummings' subsequent involvement in lobbying senior officials to hand over huge Covid contracts to Thiel's company, and another one run by his fellow Trump-supporting billionaire Larry Ellison.

In September 2020, Cummings sent an email to Dido Harding - the Conservative peer appointed by former PM Boris Johnson to oversee the previous Government's £37 billion, flagship Test and Trace Programme.

In an email carrying the subject header "testing fundamentals", Cummings instructed Harding to ignore Cabinet Office procedures, claiming that if the programme needed to spend "100m quid" procuring goods to support the Coving Testing rollout then they shouldn't "worry about the CABOFF [Cabinet Office] paperwork". Crucially, the former advisor also insisted that officials should have "NO MINISTERS ON THESE CALLS".

Cummings demanded that officials should bypass the NHS when building the software to power the Test and Trace programme and instead look towards controversial US tech firm Palantir as well as IT firm Oracle, owned by Larry Ellison.

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Cummings said: "We need a cloud solution for the huge data needs - forget NHSX doing it, we need to get someone like Palantir or Oracle (Larry Ellison is offering free) to do this, but we need someone who really knows what theyre talking about to navigate this.

"Marc Warner/Faculty handled Palantir for the NHS in Feb-May - this was NOT done by NHSx and if left to NHS wd never have happened… this is incredibly urgent as the data infrastructure for millions of tests per day is highly non-trivial and we wont be able to do it in a fortnight, we need to get it going NOW for it to work in November".

In the next paragraph of the email Cummings claimed that the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, who had been CC'd in the message, had advised officials "that all normal processes are binned for testing" and that they could "hire exactly who they want from inside or outside civil service without need to wait even an hour for approval" before claiming that officials will be "absolved from legal blame if JRs [judicial reviews]" against procurement processes arose in the future.

Both Oracle and Palantir went on to secure covid contracts from Johnson's Government during the pandemic.

In 2023, The US firm landed the £330m Federated Data Platform contract from the NHS to Palantir.

As Byline Times previously reported Thiel had likened the UK's commitment to the NHS to "Stockholm syndrome" and backed a complete overhaul of the institution. In a clip still available online, Thiel said of the health service: "Rip the whole thing from the ground and start over".

Speaking at a Q&A event at the Oxford Union, the Thiel spoke of the need to fix the health service with "market mechanisms".

The first step to fixing the Health Service, Thiel said, was to break the public away from the idea that it is "the most wonderf...

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The Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper has launched a full-throttled campaign against higher taxes on gambling in the run up to the Chancellor's budget.

The paper's new 'Save Our Bets' campaign was given star billing on its front page on Wednesday, demanding of the Chancellor to: "Leave betting alone," and hitting out at a potential "budget tax grab" that would supposedly "hit thousands of jobs." The editorial and subsequent raft of articles echo gambling industry talking points that taxes would push "more punters…into the illegal black market."

On Thursday, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage also threw his weight behind the tabloid's activism, writing in the paper that: "Labour's pleasure police have ruined pubs and now they're coming after your innocent flutter…[It's] time, in the inimitable words of The Sun's ­headline, to stick up for your punter" against a mooted "tax blitz."

The tabloid has also roped in 'Blue Labour' peer Lord Maurice Glasman, who claimed to "have a flutter is one of the joys of life, so leave it alone", while Labour MP Gareth Snell claimed higher taxes could cost Bet365 jobs in his seat, a warning echoed by one of Labour's most conservative MPs, Graham Stringer.

The Conservatives have also officially backed the campaign, which comes as the Labour Chancellor is trying to find billions to fix public services and create more "fiscal headroom" in the face of economic pressures.

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However, the stories and editorials have almost entirely failed to mention that The Sun is itself a gambling company - making millions of pounds a year from its Sun Vegas and Sun Bingo arms, and therefore stands to lose out financially by any so-called 'sin taxes' on the sector.

The paper also has extensive commercial advertising and referral partnerships with companies like Paddy Power, even employing senior, dedicated betting staff to further the relationships.

The paper's editorial on Tuesday night (28 October) had just one mention of this potential conflict, towards the end of the article, saying: "Both the Social Market Foundation and IPPR think-tanks want a tax rate of 50 PER CENT on online gaming, which includes our own Sun Bingo and Sun Vegas. The current rate is 21 per cent."

The editorial, and subsequent articles, do not refer to the paper's extensive advertising and referral deals with other betting firms, including BetFred, which is quoted in the article launching the campaign. The publication has often criticised politicians' alleged conflicts of interest.

The official page for the 'Save Our Bets' campaign is tagged, among other topics, alongside: "Betting offers for horse racing," "Betting on the go," and "Bookie offers for football."

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Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and progressive think tanks like the IPPR are among those calling for the Chancellor to raise taxes on gambling in order to fund public services and reduce social harm caused by gambling addiction.

The Sun's owner, News Group Newspapers, latest accounts published in March made clear that betting was a commercial priority for the Murdoch titles: "Throughout the year, there has been a strong improvement in the Betting and Gaming division which has helped drive improved revenues.

"Product enhancements and targeted marketing in the Bingo and Vegas proposition have driven strong monthly active users. Following the success of Sun V...

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Reform UK has received an award for being the organisation that engaged in the "most prolific promotion of pseudoscience" during 2025.

Each year the UK's long-running publication for analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal, The Skeptic magazine, names their pseudoscientist of the year, and awards them the Rusty Razor prize.

The Rusty Razor this year went to Reform UK in recognition of "their widespread embrace of climate change denialism and antivaccine misinformation."

The award was announced in front of an audience of around 700 people at the QED science and skepticism conference in Manchester on Saturday night.

In the Rusty Razor Award category, Nigel Farage's party was recognised for 'promoting pseudoscientific claims'.

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Climate Change Denial

Reform UK has publicly opposed Net Zero and climate change mitigation policies, despite the international scientific consensus on the need to reduce the scale of catastrophic global warming already contributing to natural disasters. Leading Reform UK figures have wrongly claimed that human-produced CO₂ does not contribute to climate change.

Deputy leader Richard Tice MP has made explicit claims denying human contribution to climate change, while Andrea Jenkyns (Greater Lincolnshire Mayor) has called climate change a "money-making racket" and claimed it does not exist.

Senior Reform councillors have described climate change as a hoax, with now Lincolnshire council leader Sean Matthews writing on X last year: "There is no climate crisis".

The Skeptic magazine also cites Reform's opposition to Net Zero policies and its proposed cuts to all renewable energy subsidies as reasons for this year's award.

Research from climate change outlet DeSmog found that since December 2019, Reform UK has received £2.3 million in donations from oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers - representing 92% of the party's donations.

Significant donors include Terence Mordaunt, a trustee and donor to the climate change denialist charity the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

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Covid-19 Vaccine Misinformation

At Reform UK's party conference last month, controversial doctor Aseem Malhotra gave a speech claiming "mRNA jabs have likely killed or seriously harmed millions of people", the World Health Organisation had been "captured" by Bill Gates, and - most infamously, and roundly-mocked - that Covid vaccines were "highly likely" a significant factor in cancer diagnoses amongst members of the royal family.

The year before, Richard Tice called for a full inquiry into the "serious problem" of thousands of people dying from Covid vaccine side-effects, a claim which is unfounded in the UK.

The UK's Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency says that for all Covid-19 vaccines, the overwhelming majority of [adverse side effect] reports relate to injection-site reactions (sore arm for example) and generalised symptoms such as 'flu-like' illness… Generally, these happen shortly after the vaccination and are not associated with more serious or lasting illness." Vaccination remains the single most effective way to reduce deaths and severe illness from Covid and many other diseases.

Other False Claims

In a September LBC interview, Nigel Farage picked up comments from Donald Trump and made "bogus" claims, linking auti...