Author: Mick Hartley

Jonathan Spyer argues that Israel, prior to October 7th, was guilty of concentrating on the empirical and ignoring the ideology of Hamas – the power of political Islam:

To understand the dynamics and likely direction of events, one must study ideas, and the societies that adhere to those ideas, and not only military systems.  This was Israel’s mistake before, and it was its mistake in 2023, too.  But the Jewish state was hardly alone in this error.  In the west, where supporters and apologists of political Islam have been permitted to burrow deep into the key systems of political power and of the formulation and dissemination of ideas, the problem is yet more acute.  Israel may have been gravely in error and allowed itself to be attacked.  But the society that could produce people like Roi Beit Yaacov, and Gal Shabbat, and Shani Louk too possessed the vitality and cohesion to mobilise effectively in its own defense.  In the case of the west, partly as a result of the years of neglect, it is not at all clear that the same can be said.  In any case, capacities like those displayed by the 202^nd battalion of the paratroopers brigade in Jebalya, with the heavy price incurred, are of the type which only need to be deployed when something has gone terribly wrong.  The failure to take an interest in the enemy and his mode of thinking was what began the road to October 7.  The west should learn from this as well as Israel, and with no less urgency.   The old slogan of the Polish patriots was ‘For your freedom and ours.’ 

d to that because it taps into my desire never to retire. There is no fear of death because the fear is of failing on something I’m working on right now.”

Columbus, who is warm and ingenuous, is ensconced in a swanky Mayfair hotel that he calls “posh” and is, he says, worlds away from his Pennsylvania roots as the only son of a father who worked as a coalminer and a mother who was a factory worker. There’s a winning wholesomeness to Columbus that has made him the perfect “family movie guy” (he also wrote The Goonies, Gremlins and Young Sherlock Holmes) and that he brings to his best films. The Thursday Murder Club is infused with it.

The interview is with the Times' film critic Kevin Maher, who gave The Thursday Murder Club a gushing 4-star review. And now gives the director a gushing interview.

I thought the film was awful. It set my teeth on edge. I'm old enough to enjoy a bit of "cosy crime", but this was one of the worst. I've never liked all that Richard Curtis, Marigold Hotel stuff anyway – selling a gentrified hammy vision of Britain to America, it seems to me.

Compare perhaps to the Marlow Murder Club. Nonsense, of course, but, in the first episode at least, quite clever: three killers swapping victims. Yes, it's been done before with Patricia Highsmith/Hitchcock Strangers on a Train, but it was well handled. And it didn't take itself too seriously. Low budget – and there weren't any megastars strutting their stuff. Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley in The Thursday Murder Club, though – godawful. And the dim lower class policeman bamboozled by all the clever Oxford-educated, ex-MI5 toffs….

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— Graham Linehan 🎗️ (@Glinner) August 31, 2025

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Believe me we can always tell #Bornmalealwaysaman pic.twitter.com/duXIMC8NdS

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Like Ricky Gervais in The Office.

A tale of our times from the Telegraph:

A disabled child was banned from summer camp after his mother expressed gender-critical views, The Telegraph can reveal.

The eight-year-old was preparing for his first residential trip in July organised by Over the Wall (OTW) – a Derby-based charity that runs getaways for disabled children and their families.

But he and his mother, 52, were turned away after she insisted, during a heated discussion with an organiser from the camp, that people could not change sex.

The phone call took place after the boy’s mother was asked to explain why she had replied to a question on her son’s application form asking her to state the eight-year-old’s pronouns, by saying: “Seriously?”

In a statement, the charity claimed its decision was not based on the mother’s objection to the question about pronouns, but her “aggressive” conduct over the phone and the fact that a potential “conflict” might arise given there was going to be a transgender child at the camp.

But internal papers documenting the incident state that the eight-year-old was barred after the summer camp concluded that the mother’s “views on gender and inclusivity” did not “align” with its own.

A report on the incident read: “We will be making the family unsuccessful for this year’s camp due to the lack of alignment with our inclusive environment.”

God, these people…

Susan Smith, from the feminist campaign group For Women Scotland, said: “This is a clear-cut case of discrimination.”…

“As ever, it seems that ‘inclusion’ only extends to those who share a narrow world view. It is extremely troubling that a charity dealing with children with special needs are insistent that they will coerce them to deny the reality of sex, something that the children may experience as profoundly upsetting and confusing."

And, to complete today's Beeb focus, here's Helen Joyce – Why the BBC deserves to be defunded: 

Lots of people put in complaints about the [Brighton] samurai killer, and they all got the same stock response last week. The Beeb says that its style guide requires journalists to refer to people as they wish to be described, and that when it comes to criminals, it uses the language that is used in court. This amounts to saying: “We have a shitty internal policy that prioritises a fringe counterfactual belief system over accuracy and impartiality – which are legal requirements in our charter – and if an arm of the state, namely the criminal-justice system, decides to gaslight the nation, we will too.”

This isn’t journalism; it’s propaganda. And we’re being forced to pay for it via the licence fee. To say that I resent this, having worked in the commercial media sector for almost 20 years during which search engines and social media cannibalised nearly the entire revenue base of journalism, driving countless outlets to the wall, is a gross understatement. The BBC is in an incredibly privileged position, and it misuses that privilege so grossly that it deserves to have it taken away.

I’m sure lots of people will complain about the young man who killed two children and severely wounded others being referred to as a woman too, and almost certainly with no greater success.

I'd add their Gaza coverage to the charge sheet – every Hamas press release straight on to front page news – alongside the trans capture.

BBC News' Drag queen section has posted more stories in August than BBC News' Women section pic.twitter.com/4P4v9bIjcC

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) August 30, 2025

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Michael Deacon in the Telegraph – BBC Verify can’t be trusted to tell the true facts – and this trans row proves it:

“As soon as the name Robin Westman emerged online as the suspect,” wrote a BBC Verify staffer, “[we] found a YouTube channel which appeared to be associated with her.” In a notebook, the staffer added, Westman wrote about “how she [was] planning to shoot without aiming”.

As far as I can see, there are two possibilities here. Either the BBC’s rigorously impartial fact-checking service has conducted a landmark study of human biology, and confirmed that male child-killers can indeed turn into women. Or its staff are as ardently committed to promoting deeply contentious ideological beliefs as just about everyone else who works for our national broadcaster these days.

Open letter to the BBC from Seen in Journalism:

We call on the BBC to embrace accuracy in its coverage of ‘transgender’ issues and adopt an editorial policy of accurately describing sex. 

The BBC has a unique responsibility to deliver accurate, impartial, and transparent reporting to its diverse audience. The current default, of using preferred pronouns and the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ according to a person’s ‘gender identity’ is at best highly misleading and at worst a betrayal of the BBC’s public service remit.  

The adoption of self-identification of sex has eroded trust and harmed vulnerable groups. Reversing it is essential to upholding journalistic integrity and foster informed public discourse….

The BBC has a duty to ensure that it is not captured by any ideological viewpoint, including gender identity ideology. The belief and understanding that biological sex is binary and unchangeable, and that it matters, are not only legally protected, they are based on fundamental truths.  Yet the BBC persists in telling its audience the opposite. This is a dereliction of the BBC’s Charter responsibilities…

Israel has been banned from UK’s flagship defence show. Stephen Pollard in the Telegraph:

What more is it going to take to bury the notion that the UK remains an ally of Israel? It’s been revealed today that the Government has banned Israeli officials from attending DSEI, the international defence conference and exhibition which is due to take place in London between 9 and 12 September. Although Israeli companies are still being allowed to come, all Israeli officials – political, defence or administrative – have been told to stay away.

The message could not be clearer or more consistent. From its first days in office, Labour has been ever more zealous in its treatment of Israel as an enemy, rather than a key strategic ally.

Within weeks it had restored funding to Unrwa, the UN agency, despite allegations that it employed some of the terrorists behind the October 7 2023 massacre….

As the only UN agency devoted solely to one particular group, it also provides official licence to the idea that Palestinians are permanent refugees whose troubles can only be ended by the destruction of Israel – never mind that its funded schools taught Jew-hatred and the glories of jihad, allowing Hamas to ignore all the tedious business of running a country so they could concentrate on building tunnels and stockpiling arms.

The UK Government now seems so hostile to Israel, perhaps Israel will take the hint. It is not as if Israel does not have cards to play. The UK and Israel have had decades of cooperation in counter-terrorism and work closely in cyber-security and defence technology. Our joint military exercises have helped keep British troops safe, especially through drone technology, missile defence and radar systems based on Israel’s world-leading expertise.

Israel has also shared critical counter-terror intelligence with the UK on threats to Britain posed by Iran, ISIS and others. Our intelligence services regard that cooperation as vital to security. If Israel is regarded as a bad actor to be punished, why should it work to help the Government seeking to punish it?

At a time of grave threats across the globe, when the reliability of the US in these areas may be compromised, we should be deepening and strengthening our links with countries with which we have always worked so well. Instead, we have a Government which regards political posturing, perhaps driven by fear of a Muslim vote backlash, as more important. For shame.