Secret Army
BY ANDREW MILNE Evyatar David, 24, has now been held over 700 days in a tunnel below Gaza, his cousin, Tamar Eshet, told a packed fringe meeting at Reform UK’s national conference. Eyatar was abducted by Hamas on 7 October 2023 whilst fleeing the Nova Festival. Deputy leader, Richard Tice MP, introduced Tamar Eshet and showed a video released by Hamas. In it a severely … Continue reading Secret Army
Net Tightens on UK Cadres
BY NICHOLAS ROSE How a Welsh Arrest Exposes the Lingering Threat of Single-Issue Terror In the quiet, misty Conwy valley, where the only disturbances are the bleating of sheep and the changing of the seasons, the arrest of a man known to locals as ‘Danny Webb’ sent ripples through the community. But the tremor was felt far beyond the hills of North Wales. It was … Continue reading Net Tightens on UK Cadres
A Prayer for the Farmers
VICAR We lift our hearts to You today, mindful of those whose labour is written upon the land. Lord, Creator of seedtime and harvest, we ask Your blessing upon our farmers, the steadfast stewards of our countryside. Grant them strength for the long days and patience for the seasons that unfold in Your time, not ours. Bless the work of their hands—the ploughing and the … Continue reading A Prayer for the Farmers
Did Nobody Think to Tell Starmer that the Sequel’s Always Worse?
BY SEAN WALSH If you’ve seen it, you’ll know that A Prayer for the Dying is the worst film ever made. If you haven’t then you’re just going to have to trust me. Its awfulness is incommunicable even by critics far more articulate than this one. You might get a sense of it if I tell you that Mickey Rourke is an IRA gunman with … Continue reading Did Nobody Think to Tell Starmer that the Sequel’s Always Worse?
My First Summer in North Yorkshire
BY ALLISON LEE How incredibly fortuitous that our first year in North Yorkshire has turned out to be one of the UK’s warmest and sunniest on record, with the first half of summer bringing no fewer than three heatwaves. Given that one of the reasons for our move from West to North Yorkshire was the brutal weather conditions, things are turning out well. Our previous … Continue reading My First Summer in North Yorkshire
The Amateur
BY ROGER WATSON Based on the 1981 novel of the same name by Robert Littell, The Amateur (2025) tells the improbable story of a geek turned gunman in pursuit of his wife’s killers. It is an action, suspense thriller and, as such, is diverting enough, but is probably scored accurately at 61% on Rotten Tomatoes. At times it is a bit lacking in action, and you must … Continue reading The Amateur
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
BY ALEX STORY On one side, girls are arrested for waving Union Flags; men for admitting to liking bacon; and comedians for telling jokes. Indeed, playwright Graham Linehan had his collar felt by the armed Old Bill for writing that old-fashioned women, those without a penis, should “make a scene” when a trans woman enters a female changing room and punch “him in the balls” … Continue reading A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
A God-Shaped Hole
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Part of the sickness of the modern British state is a constitutional one. It mistakes the ghost of a single, established faith for its national soul. We are governed by a contradiction: a democracy that grants automatic power to bishops, a plural society whose supreme authority is bound by oath to a specific sect. This is more than an antique absurdity; it … Continue reading A God-Shaped Hole
What’s To Be Done About The Lilliputian London Stock Exchange?
CITY GRUMP In the decline of this, that, and the other on our little island, can be found the increasingly desperate case of our London-based equity markets, collectively known as the London Stock Exchange. As a participant in the junior of these, AIM (Alternative Investment Market), right from the start thirty years ago, I and others have watched it come down from some 1,200 companies … Continue reading What’s To Be Done About The Lilliputian London Stock Exchange?
1472 Wild Boar? How?
BY BERT BURNETT A new report covered by the BBC projects Scotland’s wild boar population will rise by over 60% in fifty years, from a precise 1,472 to about 2,400. This startlingly specific number—1,472—raises an obvious question: how can anyone count these elusive, nocturnal animals so exactly? The answer is that it’s not a direct headcount. The figure is a scientific estimate derived from a population model. … Continue reading 1472 Wild Boar? How?
The Fake Formosan
BY DENE BEBBINGTON Fake news, it’s the bogeyman du jour that Donald Trump is accused of spreading or railing against depending on what suits him at the time. The media warns us about it while fact checkers debunk it, but fake news is as old as the proverbial hills. At one time it took on a more elaborate and, dare I say, more droll form, than we … Continue reading The Fake Formosan
Artificial Dishonesty
BY PAUL T HORGAN A person mentioning the humorous magazine Punch to most people under the age of 50 will be met with blank stares. Punch closed, barring an abortive resurrection, in 1992, when today’s 50-year-old would have been in their teens, and by that time, Punch‘s mass appeal had long gone as monolithic markets began to break into smaller segments. A decision sometime in the mid-1960s had seen the magazine redesigned … Continue reading Artificial Dishonesty
A Prayer for Our Rural Communities
VICAR We come before You today, giving thanks for the ties that bind us and the places we call home. Lord, You who taught us that we are all neighbours, we lift up our community—its people, its spirit, and its shared life. Bless our village greens, our local shops and public houses, our churches and village halls. Where there is fellowship, let it deepen; where … Continue reading A Prayer for Our Rural Communities
Anna’s Little Pink Fordson
BY ALLISON LEE Anna Griffiths is a woman on a mission. Quite simply, she wants to raise awareness and as much money as possible for a charity very close to her heart – Dementia UK. Anna lives on a smallholding in Ringstead, Northamptonshire with her partner, Andrew, and their two dogs, Rupert and Rodney. She works as a freelance groomer and an animal care assistant … Continue reading Anna’s Little Pink Fordson
Locked
BY ROGER WATSON Starring Bill Skarsgård and Anthony Hopkins, Locked (2025) is a comeuppance film where a petty thief and all-round streetwise lowlife suffers for his crimes – one crime in particular – in a fairly horrible way. Skarsgård, or Bill Istvan Günther Skarsgård, has appeared in a few films of note, none of which I have seen and in mainly minor roles. While I liked his … Continue reading Locked
Breaking Bad and the Strange Culture of 12-Step Recovery
BY SEAN WALSH In Season 3 of Breaking Bad, two low-level, sci-fi-obsessed and endearingly hapless addicts and meth dealers, Badger and Skinny Pete (not their real names), infiltrate a 12-Step recovery group, intending to use the “share time” to promote their uniquely pure, trademark-blue “product”. The scheme is misconceived, not least because the healing space generated and curated by 12-Step groups is not controllable. Certainly not … Continue reading Breaking Bad and the Strange Culture of 12-Step Recovery
The Ballad of Reading Station
BY PAUL T HORGAN Were it not for the office blocks dominating the southern, more populous, side of Reading Station, it would be an imposing piece of railway architecture. The building’s striking feature is its wide concourse, mounted above the eight platforms aligned with the Great Western Main Line. Much like Joseph Bazalgette, who built London’s sewers with four times the required capacity, this escalator-and-lift-linked … Continue reading The Ballad of Reading Station
Satan and Paraclete
BY ALEX STORY Satan, in Hebrew, means the “accuser”. He is the archetype who brands the innocent from the moral soapbox he built on the highest ground, the better to cow the sheepish multitudes. To mask his crimes, he fixes his venomous gaze upon a blameless bystander and smears him: first to separate the individual from the rest, and then to convince the crowd that … Continue reading Satan and Paraclete
Miss Christie’s Final Case
BY JOHN DREWRY If you are reading these words, it means I have been dead for at least forty years. I left instructions for this manuscript to be kept ‘under wraps’ after my death so that it would not see the light of day for several decades. For it contains a terrible secret. However, I am somewhat comforted by the belief that there is a … Continue reading Miss Christie’s Final Case
Notes of a ‘Conspiracy Theorist’
BY NIALL McCRAE Parked continuously at a cliff-top near my town in Sussex is a Dormobile, its windows covered in posters about conspiracy theories, particularly QAnon. Recently I had a chat with the owner, giving him a copy of the Light newpaper, a publication that focuses on powerful forces conspiring against the masses. QAnon, however, is discredited by critical thinkers as a CIA trap, a … Continue reading Notes of a ‘Conspiracy Theorist’