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Reform candidates in one of the party's newly claimed councils exploited a legal loophole allowing them to send out mass mailouts to voters from Nigel Farage, which did not count towards local election spending limits.

At least a dozen Reform UK councillors elected in May did not declare costs for two direct mail campaigns from their party leader, expenses records analysed by Byline Times suggest - despite the Reform leader talking about Durham County Council and its handling of taxpayer funds.

At least two mass mailings from Reform UK leader Nigel Farage went out to residents ahead of May's local elections, which explicitly mention Durham County Council. Reform won control of the council, one of 12 areas now in their hands.

This outlet has obtained electoral expense declarations from Durham County Council for newly elected Reform UK councillors.

Failure to declare election spending would constitute an offence under the Representation of the People Act. The Act requires declaration of any expenses "used for the purposes of the candidate's election" including free services or facilities.

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If the leaflets had counted towards local spending limits, in most cases analysed the maximum threshold would have been breached, and the votes would likely have to be re-run.

However, it appears that the mailouts do not legally have to be declared locally due to a legal loophole which excludes communications that do not specifically mention the candidates' names. Transparency campaigners at Spotlight on Corruption say this is a 'glaring loophole' in the rules, which are designed to create a level playing field.

Several other areas received similar locally-facing leaflets from Nigel Farage ahead of the local elections, including Devon, Shropshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, and Staffordshire. Reform won control of Staffordshire.

The posted mailouts ahead of May from Reform leader Nigel Farage sent to Durham residents attacked the then-Lib Dem coalition administration. The posted letter states: "Your local council in Durham has wasted vast amounts of your taxpayer money…

"They have racked up debts of £409m and raised your council tax bill by £461 over the last four years."

All of the 12 Reform councillors' spending returns analysed would have been pushed over the legal spending limit, had they been made to declare the Durham-facing leaflets from Nigel Farage sent by Reform HQ.

Tim Picton, Senior Advocacy Advisor at Spotlight on Corruption, told Byline Times the findings "underlines yet again the importance of robust campaign finance rules."

"Campaign spending limits exist for important reasons. There is a golden opportunity in the [Government's] upcoming Elections Bill to close this glaring loophole and level the playing field when it comes to local election spending."

"Otherwise, it will continue to be exploited by larger parties, such as Reform UK, who have significant resources to back their local candidates, unlike independent candidates or those representing smaller parties."

Spotlight on Corruption is now calling on the Government to give the Electoral Commission the responsibility to centrally publish local election expenses to improve transparency and enable greater public scrutiny.

Deputy leader Darren Grimes' expenses include £850 for a promotional video by an unexpected videographer, "moody/arty" Turkish-Scottish music artist Sel MacLean. But, like the others analysed, Nigel Farage's two Durham-focused letters to local residents were not declared. There is no suggestion of rule-breaking.

Opposition figures suggest "very considerable undeclared funds" may have been pumped into Reform's local election campaigns. But the Electoral Commission suggests no rules have been broken.

It is possible that similar practices occurred in many...

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At 11.45 a.m. on 29 July, 2024, a 17-year-old boy called Axel Rudakubana walked into a community studio on Hart Street in Southport and attacked a class of children who were attending a Taylor Swift-themed bracelet-making workshop. Armed with a kitchen knife, Rudakubana killed two children, six-year-old Bebe King and seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, and wounded ten others, one of whom, Alice da Silva Aguiar, aged nine, died the following day.

The unimaginable horror of this crime sent shock waves across the country. A group of little girls, enjoying a summer holiday activity, had been attacked by a stranger with a knife, and three of them were now dead.

Rudakubana had a long history of troubling behaviour. From the age of 13, he had become increasingly obsessed with violent online videos and had repeatedly made worrying comments about mass shootings to classmates. Teachers had reported him to Prevent, but his case was turned down on account of him not displaying any extremist tendencies.

However, Rudakubana had become ever more unpredictable, and he had caused considerable alarm among his school community. He seems to have been worried too, because in October 2019, he rang the NSPCC's ChildLine and admitted to having murderous thoughts and confessed that he had often taken a knife into school.

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Matters came to a head when he was first accused of carrying a knife and then, having been excluded, returned to the premises and broke a fellow student's wrist with a hockey stick. Permanently expelled from his school, he failed to settle anywhere else and became ever more the outsider, slipping through the system and falling largely out of sight before going on to commit that terrible crime.

However, none of this was public knowledge in July 2024 and so a scapegoat was needed.

As news of the attack broke, a 41-year-old, Northampton-based child minder called Lucy Connolly was following events, and she and others in her online world knew who to blame. Connolly was an avid X (formerly Twitter) user with a growing following among right-wing users, and as she drank in the barrage of disinformation circulating on the platform, she came to believe that the attacker was, (according to the CPS) 'a Muslim asylum seeker who had come to the UK on a boat.'

It was untrue. Radakubana was born in Cardiff in 2006, four years after his parents, evangelical Christians, had emigrated from Rwanda.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Connolly was not the sort of X user who waits for facts to emerge and so, having returned home from work, at 8.30 pm that evening she sent out the following tweet to her 9,000 followers:

"Mass deportations now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care, while you're at it take the treacherous government & politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it."

The post rapidly blew up. Amplified by far-right users, it was shared some 940 times, making about 310,000 impressions, until fearing repercussions - she deleted it four hours later. But by then, the damage had been done, and her words helped kindle the inferno of hate that followed.

The very next day, riots erupted. A mosque in Southport was besieged by a drunken mob yelling "No Surrender" and chanting Tommy Robinson's name. The following day, supporters of Patriotic Alternative gathered in Whitehall, and more than 100 arrests for offences including possession of knives followed.

That same evening, another mob descended on a Holiday Inn at Newton Heath, Manches...

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Far-right groups across England are transforming extremist activism into premium lifestyle services, offering everything from personal safety escorts to lifestyle mentorship through apps, QR codes and subscription models.

Advertising services including walk-you-home escorts, street patrols, SOS apps, and premium mentorship, they are creating potential revenue streams that fund their broader political activities.

Paid Advice and Unregulated Patrols

At the top end far-right activist Tommy Robinson charges £28 per minute for coaching through the slick app Minnect, where followers can get his advice and viewpoints on topics related to anti-Islam activism and political commentary. However, across the country other local patrol groups are posing as charities and soliciting donations for 'equipment' while operating without police recognition.

Together they offer what can best be described as a new form of 'concierge nationalism', extremist ideology delivered as an on-demand lifestyle service. Robinson's model demonstrates the premium end of this commercialisation. However, at the grassroots level, groups like Essex Spartans deploy similar tactics.

This publication recently revealed that similar safeguarding patrols were launched in Bournemouth by far-right activist Gary Bartlett. We can reveal that this strategy has now moved into Epping, Essex, home to the Bell Hotel, housing asylum seekers and the scenes of recent unrest, where Reform UK candidates posed solely as 'concerned parents', while giving interviews concealing their political status.

Red Flags and Child Safeguarding Issues

A group, which formed this month, calling itself Essex Spartans, formerly Epping Spartans, is actively recruiting volunteers and expressing the need for "boots on the ground" while describing itself as a "volunteer service protecting vulnerable residents, particularly women, children, and the elderly."

In an Instagram post of 19 August they claim charitable status: "This is a charity set-up team AND WE ARE ALWAYS HERE TO HELP." Their adverts also suggest they are DBS checked and have a police partnership.

Like Robinson's premium app model, the Essex Spartans deploy QR codes and donation platforms, claiming that funds will be used to develop their app and purchase equipment, including stab vests. On their fundraising page, the group suggests that "Contributions will help us equip our volunteers with radios, stab vests, protective clothing, and other essential gear - allowing us to respond safely and effectively. " An Instagram post on 24 August announced plans to launch street patrols on Friday, 29 August.

However, Byline Times can confirm that Essex Spartans isn't registered with the police or any local authorities, isn't recognised by community safety schemes, and despite their claims to the contrary, has no charitable status. Their services include offers to "listen without judgement if you don't feel comfortable speaking with family, or while waiting for mental health services, to walking you home if you feel you are being followed."

One of their banners features a shield with the words 'Child Protection.' A post on the group's Instagram page from 18 August states: "We are Epping Mothers, Fathers, Aunties and Uncles…" Their 'about' page describes them as volunteers with backgrounds ranging from ex-military personnel to concerned residents.

Earlier this year, the Metropolitan Police issued a warning to parents over the rise in child radicalisation, warning families to be alert to any signs their child may be being drawn into violent extremism.

Byline Times spoke to a former teacher who volunteers at the Epping Against Racism Network, part of the Stand Up to Racism Network, who told us: "There are serious safeguarding concerns. I find it deeply troubling that this group appear to be offering t...

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The only road connecting the Ukrainian city of Kherson to the rest of the country came close to being shut on Tuesday, August 26, 2025, after the Russian drone attacks on civilian vehicles escalated, leading to the first drone siege in modern warfare. With the main road closed, the city risks becoming a trap for 60,000 civilians.

"On the M-14 Kherson-Mykolaiv highway, traffic restrictions are possible," wrote Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of Kherson Regional Military Administration. "In case enemy drones are detected, the road will be temporarily closed. Please take this into account when planning trips and, if possible, choose an alternative route. Together with the military, we are doing everything possible to stabilise the situation."

Former MP and serviceman Ihor Lutsenko wrote about the "drone semi-encirclement" of Kherson. The Russian press widely covered the "air siege" of Kherson.

Kherson, a regional capital located on the right bank of the Dnipro River in the South of Ukraine, was occupied by the Russian troops in March 2022 and liberated nine months later, enduring constant shelling and bombing since its liberation.

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Due to its proximity to the Russian forces, the city became the stage for the world's first "human safari," first-person-view (FPV) drone attacks on civilians, as first reported by Byline Times in July 2024. This new form of warfare is now recognised as a war crime and a crime against humanity by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch.

One year later, the tactics of drone attacks mark a new stage in Russia's assault on the city. This horrifying tactic - a drone siege - opens a new chapter in human and military history.

Cutting Off Supplies

The M14 highway, linking Kherson to Mykolaiv and further west to Odesa, is the city's only secure road connection to Ukraine-controlled territory. The highway is located approximately 20 km from the Russian military positions. The only alternative road to supply Kherson, located in proximity, is also under drone attacks.

Every day for the last two months, civilian vehicles on the M14 highway have been hit by explosives dropped by various types of drones. On August 25, a drone hit a prosecutor's office vehicle on the M14 highway. A 58-year-old driver and a 38-year-old prosecutor were injured and hospitalized. Later, two more drone strikes occurred - no injuries were reported, but the cars were destroyed by fire. On August 26, several vehicles were damaged, a family, a 47-year-old healthcare manager and a 38-year-old doctor were injured, said Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, head of the press office of the Kherson Oblast Military Administration in an interview with this paper.

"Since attacks on the M14 have increased, the police will control traffic until we ensure traffic safety," said Tolokonnikov.

Drone strikes also ignite dry fields along the roadside, spreading flames through farmland and creating thick plumes of smoke, further disrupting transit in the area.

The drone siege of the Kherson road comes amid broader Russian efforts to escalate military attacks on the city of Kherson. A Ukrainian military source speaking to Byline Times on condition of anonymity reported that up to 30-80 drones are attacking the area daily. Drones are used to drop explosives and anti-personnel mines on city streets and infrastructure. Fires have been reported across Kherson's suburbs, and critical facili...

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"This weekend, West London roared back to life for Notting Hill Carnival, Europe's largest street party. And what a party it was: Mas Bands paraded in outfits months in the making, every jewel and feather stitched or glued by hand; sound systems pumped out soul and ska, as revellers danced the days away to dancehall, dub, and drum and bass; smiles on their faces, children paraded hand in hand with their parents on the Sunday afternoon, all of them proud of their part in this extraordinary event.

Attracting visitors from around the world and generating almost £400m for our economy, Carnival is a celebration of sheer, unadulterated joy. Today, this festival of music, food and fashion is an unforgettable part of our country's cultural fabric. But it's more than that, too; born of protest and resistance, it's a symbol of our capital city's diversity, and a sign of how far we've come.

When the Carnival began in the 1950s, organisers hoped that it could unite a community torn apart by racist riots. In the decades since, generations of people from our Black and Caribbean communities have brought their own carnival traditions to the streets of Notting Hill, and the event has gone from strength to strength.

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Today, Carnival is the second largest street party in the world. It's a place where everyone is welcome, no matter their colour, creed, or culture. Just like the London I know, it's loud, proud - and people love it. It embodies the reason why so many choose to call our capital city home: our shared belief that, no matter who you are, you are loved and wanted here.

Wherever you go in the capital, that ethos of openness and inclusivity is impossible to ignore. Last month, I joined tens of thousands for Pride. At a time when many seek to turn back the clock on the freedoms which LGBT+ people have fought so hard for, Londoners stood defiant. Whether they were voguing with drag queens or dancing to Chaka Khan, their message was clear: faced with fear and division, love and solidarity will always win.

Carnival captures our city's indomitable spirit. As summer draws to a close, the success of this year's event is also yet more evidence that, when it comes to cultural clout, there's no match for London. In the last few months, millions have filled our sold-out stadiums and festivals to listen to some of the biggest names in music, swinging in time with Beyonce's country ballads and singing along to old Coldplay classics.

Over 500,000 came to London for the biggest Wimbledon ever, joining fans of cricket, netball, athletics, and Formula E for what has been a superb season of sport in the capital. And, in the last few weeks, City Hall's 'Summer Streets Fund' has seen thousands of Londoners flock to car-free al fresco hotspots to drink, dine and dance in the sun. From restaurants in Covent Garden and bars in Shoreditch to street markets in Leyton and DJ sets in Brixton, London has come alive.

I might be biased, but I think the case is clear: the greatest city in the world is better than ever. Speak to any of the Londoners who lined the streets of Notting Hill this weekend, and they'll tell you that our city's success story hasn't happened by accident. Today, London is thriving because of the vibrant, multicultural community we have built together. Because we believe that our diversity is a strength to be celebrated, not a weakness to be hidden.

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The Labour Mayor of the North East has criticised the Government for holding power "too tightly in Westminster" as she claims that calls for powers to introduce a tourism levy have been blocked.

The Government's landmark English devolution bill has its first proper debate a week today (September 2) when Parliament returns from recess.

The bill promises to give every area in England a devolution deal by 2030 - handing more powers to local and mayoral authorities. But while welcoming the bill, Labour's elected North East Mayor, Kim McGuinness, suggests Rachel Reeves' Treasury is blocking moves to give them powers to introduce a small tourism levy, as is common in many European countries.

Tourism hotspots including Cornwall and Bath have recently written to the Treasury urging ministers to let them implement a fee for visitors to bolster local services.

In a foreword to a new report from the progressive think tank Compass, McGuinness writes: "There is a long way to go until we truly devolve power…Progress has been slow because as a nation our leaders haven't trusted local people."

The Labour mayor, who was elected in May 2024, adds: "I want to charge a visitor levy, a small fee to stay in hotels. It's a charge that's so mainstream across the rest of the world you barely notice it. Yet, despite widespread support amongst mayors, we're struggling to get this off the ground. Power, once again, is being held too tightly in Westminster."

She is calling for Keir Starmer's Government to go much further than its current devolution plans, giving mayoral authorities powers to control taxes in their areas.

"Devolution cannot just be a tick box. It's not completed once a mayor is in place. We'll never see the true success of our regions without fiscal devolution. I'm not calling for it all at once, but small steps, including a visitor levy, would be a positive move to demonstrate the Government's commitment to a real dilution of power," McGuinness says.

She writes: "Mayors are using the powers we already have to deliver, but for us to make the difference that local people need, those in Westminster must go further. Ultimately, they must trust local people to know what's best for them."

The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill was introduced to the House of Commons in July, part of a manifesto pledge from Labour to move power outside of Westminster.

As Compass notes: "The bill brought the most wide-scale reform to local Government in England since the establishment of directly elected mayors in combined authorities outside of London in the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016."

The bill establishes 'Strategic Authorities' - larger, single-tier councils across England, serving populations of approximately 500,000 people.

It will grant mayors enhanced powers to accelerate housing delivery, and enables mayors to borrow for major projects and infrastructure. It will also provide the new strategic authorities more oversight of transport (including e-bike regulation), adult education, housing planning, local healthcare, and the development of local growth strategies.

A new Local Audit Office will help scrutinise council expenditure amid a collapse in local Government financial scrutiny since the coalition-era abolition of the Audit Commission.

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The bill's two most significant provisions, in Compass' view, are the restoration of the supplementary vote system for mayoral elections and the introduction of a 'community right to buy', giving communities first refusal to purchase local institutions ...

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James Orr likes to present himself as a populist with esoteric tastes: cigars in the garden shed, bagpipes louder than Alastair Campbell's, bookshelves lined with Kant and Thucydides in their original languages. Interviews have had him, his blond hair swept back like a young Heseltine, talking about fox hunting, toxic femininity, the decline of British institutions, and the "spiteful technocratic metropolitan animus".

They have also found in him something more striking: a philosopher at the centre of the populist right, one who says that if Reform ever got to No 10, Nigel Farage would have to do "very unpopular things."

Orr is no longer just a don in Cambridge's Divinity Faculty. This 46-year-old is described as JD Vance's "intellectual mentor" and a recent guest at the now (in)famous barbecue in the Cotswolds that gathered Trump's running mate, Farage and a clutch of Conservative MPs. He is loyal to the project, calling Vance "the future of MAGA". He is also very much central to it.

Today, Orr sits as the UK chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation; chairman of the advisory board of the pro-Reform think tank(s) Resolute 1850 / Centre for a Better Britain; on the advisory board of the Prosperity Institute (aka the Brexit-backing Dubai-based group Legatum); and on the board of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (it sets out to "re-lay the foundations of our civilisation"). He also managed to find time to organise the Now and England event in June, which had shadow minister Robert Jenrick and one-time Reform MP Rupert Lowe on the ticket.

He's a man so busy that his list of publications includes a claimed 2022 book, Being and Eternity (Bloomsbury) that, three years on, seems yet to have gone to print. It might take some time.

But judging by what he has published and said, Orr's views are clearly absolute. He opposes abortion at every stage of pregnancy, including in cases of rape. He thinks the US Capitol riot of January 2021 was exaggerated by the "global left". He believes diversity weakens nations. He finds Britain's armed forces compromised by inclusive recruitment adverts. He admires American gun laws.

He also sees secularism as hollowing out "the human world of meaning, significance (and) transcendence". And Orr seeks certainty against this godless world. He's a man, in his own words, who stands "committed to the objective existence of the lawful regularities that order the world".

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Such a stance has won him full-page interviews in The Times and The Spectator, outlets eager for a philosophical gloss that offers more than the often inarticulate rump of the far-right. Politico has even called him the "English philosopher king".

Certainly, Orr is an attractive sell to a political strand that all too often seems limited to serving up reactionary anger and bigotry. Orr's unwavering belief in God and foundations offers a grounding on which to stack the warm beer and St. George flags.

In his 2019 book, The Mind of God and the Works of Nature, Orr argued that the very notion of natural law only makes sense within a theistic framing. "Metaphysical theism and nomic realism are indeed historically and conceptually conjoined philosophical positions," he wrote. His argument is rather dense, but his point simple. Science relies on the conviction that nature follows laws, but - he argues - unless those laws rest on divine ideas, they are just brute accidents.

"No God, no powers," he subsequently concluded.

In 2021, in his essay Divine Lawmaking: Powers and Kinds, Orr tu...

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What an observer says about a situation often reveals more about themselves than the object of their commentary.

Such is the case with the latest annual global human rights report issued by the State Department earlier this month, which reveals far more about the US's changing priorities than anything about the actual state of human rights and democracy in the world.

Previous iterations of this report, mandated by Congress since 1978, aimed to provide an objective assessment of a country's performance against the benchmark of standards in the main international human rights conventions.

This year's report is a vastly scaled-back affair, with entire categories of abuse watered down or erased, and countries' reports cut by dozens of pages in many cases.

It is also nakedly partisan in its assessments, giving countries perceived to enjoy friendly relations with the Trump administration far softer treatment than those with which it is perceived to be in conflict.

According to the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, a coalition of former State Department officials opposed to the Trump administration's foreign assistance cuts and many of its other policies, "This is not an oversight; it is deliberate erasure."

Friends With Benefits

Amongst the countries coming in for softer treatment are El Salvador - whose authorities have cooperated closely with the Trump administration in receiving deported migrants from the US into the notoriously abusive CECOT prison, and Hungary, whose strongman leader, Viktor Orban, has formed a strong bond with Trump, and whose autocratic rule is seen as a role model for right wing conservatives in America.

For example, the 2023 report noted El Salvador's overcrowded prisons and reports of "arbitrary killings; enforced disappearance; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention," and more.

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The 2024 report found "there were no credible reports of significant human rights abuses", celebrated that "reports of gang violence remained at historic low" thanks to mass arrests, and even commended the government for its "credible steps" to identify and punish officials guilty of abuses.

By contrast, elsewhere in Latin America, Brazil, whose leader, Lula da Silva, has repeatedly clashed with Trump over the treatment of former President and Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro, comes in for scathing criticism.

The 2024 report asserts that the human rights situation there has declined, with the government allegedly undermining freedom of speech and democratic debate, disproportionately targeting supporters of Bolsonaro, and failing to tackle reported abuses credibly.

It is no coincidence that Brazil-US relations are at their lowest level in decades, in the wake of Trump's decision to levy 50% tariffs on Brazil and impose sanctions on its main judges as punishment for Brazil's prosecution of Bolsonaro for attempting to overturn the result of the 2022 election. Ironically, the effect has been to boost popular support for Lula and accelerate Brazil's strategic pivot towards China.

Likewise, this year's executive summary for Hungary notes, "there were no significant changes" and "no credible reports of significant human rights abuses". Last year's report included extensive mention of "serious government corruption" and restrictions on media freedom.

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Vladimir Putin's aim is restore the USSR and dominate Europe - Ukraine is but a step along the way

Putin's invasion of Ukraine caused European populist parties to row back on previously sympathetic attitudes to the Kremlin. As Donald Trump and Putin's aim of forcing Volodymyr Zelensky to cede 20% of Ukraine to Russia gets nearer achievement, expect Putin apologists to argue that Zelensky could have avoided the war by abandoning his NATO ambitions.

Nobody should believe them.

President Zelensky's aim to join NATO figured in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Russia had demanded that NATO allies sign a treaty ruling out any new members and naming Ukraine in particular, but it is absurd to claim that Ukraine was invaded to prevent it joining the alliance.

In response to the invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden applied for NATO membership. Finland borders on Russia both by land and sea, and Sweden has a maritime border with Russia in the Baltic sea. But after an initially aggressive response, Putin said he saw no problem with these countries joining NATO.

The Moscow line that expanding NATO is an assault on Russia's essential security interests has no corollary that countries which spurn NATO will be safe from Russian subversion or invasion. The nations at risk from Putin are at risk because of Putin's imperial ambitions in Europe, and will find no safety in declarations of neutrality or rejection of the EU or NATO.

Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 picked up where the annexation of Crimea left off in 2014 - reuniting Ukraine with Russia, and seeking to rebuild the USSR which had been dismembered after the fall of the Berlin wall, and humiliated by NATO.

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Putin believes that Russians and Ukrainians - and Belarusians too, for that matter - are one people, which is part of the explanation for his attempts to take over Ukraine. Another key part, is his belief in their shared destiny as heirs to the legacy of Imperial Russia and to its more recent manifestation in the USSR. That legacy calls for the Russian family of nations to regain the power and prestige they once enjoyed in Europe and the world.

When Putin joined the KGB in 1975, the USSR's 15 Republics had a population of 250 million. It was a co-equal superpower to the US and outstripped China economically and militarily. Its military and economic position in Europe was reinforced by eastern European puppet states linked militarily to the USSR through the Warsaw Pact, and linked economically through Comecon.

The USSR was a global superpower with a European empire.

It was at a high point in Putin's career that all that was to change. The USSR lost control of the Warsaw Pact countries, and at the same time the USS fell apart, losing a quarter of its territory and nearly half its population.

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Russia stepped into the shoes of the USSR, and fourteen other independent republics emerged, including Ukraine, the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Georgia, Moldova, and the central Asian republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Not just the USSR had disappeared, but much of the family of nations that had been imperial Russia.

Putin does not put this down to inevitable geopolitical evolution but rather to the US and its allies tricking the USSR in its dying days into allowing the reunificatio...

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Britain's broadcasting regulator is refusing to investigate GB News over comments about starving and shooting disabled benefit claimants, or another programme in which one of its presenters used the slur "tranny" to describe trans people.

An Ofcom bulletin released this week revealed that the regulator received 96 Ofcom complaints over the broadcast segment on benefit claimants in June.

GB News presenter Patrick Christys told viewers that "welfare needs to be cut" before asking the guest, purported comedian Lewis Schaffer, how he would "get them off their backside".

Schaffer replied: "Just starve them, that's what people have to do, that's what you've got to do to people, you can't just give people money."

He added: "What else can you do? Shoot them? I mean, I'd suggest that, but I think that's maybe a bit strong."

Christys responded: "Yeah, it's just not allowed these days."

Ofcom also revealed that it has decided against investigating a segment where former Loaded editor turned GB News presenter Martin Daubney used the slur "tranny" on 2nd July.

The presenter asked a guest: "I'm assuming the notion of dropping Winnie [Churchill on banknotes] to replace him with a tranny fills you full of repulsion?"

It comes after prominent former BBC and Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick accused Ofcom of letting GB News "get away with murder" during a debate on the channel on 14th August.

Crick called for the heads of Ofcom, Michael Grade and Melanie Dawes to be fired. He told the station: "I think it's outrageous the way Ofcom - and I've said this many times on your channel - lets you get away with murder."

"We all have to operate under Ofcom, who basically have gone to sleep on the job. They're incompetent. They've no longer got any decent leadership and they have changed the rules for channels like you without any public debate."

The journalist told the hosts: "You're a propaganda channel, not a news channel and Ofcom should have done something about this."

He also complained about the prominence of Reform on GB News.

Commenting on Ofcom's inaction over the spate of anti-disabled and anti-trans attacks on GB News, Richard Wilson, director of Stop Funding Hate, said: "Ofcom's repeated failure to do its job is putting disabled people and trans people at risk.

"Hate in our media leads to hate crime on our streets. Yet just when a robust and effective regulator is most needed, Ofcom's leadership seems to have effectively suspended the rules they are tasked with enforcing.

"In doing so, they have enabled a surge of media hate which is causing grave harm in communities across Britain."

He added: "Ofcom's job is to protect the public, not act as an enabler. If it is no longer willing to do that job, then it's time for Parliament to step in."

A spokesperson for regulator Ofcom responded to the criticism, telling Byline Times: "All regulated broadcasters must comply with our broadcasting rules. We enforce these rules fairly and proportionately, acting independently and impartially at all times.

"Our Broadcasting Code takes account of the right to freedom of expression and enables broadcasters to take different editorial approaches to their services, including broadcasting from a particular stance or viewpoint, provided that they comply with the relevant rules."

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They added that the regulator assesses each individual complaint and the programme as broadcast before they decide whether to investigate.

"The volume of complaints we receive does not determine our decision. Where we find a breach of our rules, we publish fully reasoned decisions based on the evidence. At all times, we take into account the fundamental importance of the right to freedom of expression," the spokesperson said.

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