Serious UK prime ministers should be afraid to discipline special forces troops over war crimes because they are so popular with the public. That’s according to Dr. Simon Anglim, who wrote a lengthy essay on the UK’s new ranger and special operations units.

The essay makes a range of (in fairness, very interesting) points about shadowy deployments overseas — including to Ukraine. But the King’s College War Studies lecturer — yes, it’s the KCL War Studies people again — also warned that the current Haddon-Cave inquiry into war crimes in Afghanistan could have serious implications for the use of UK Special Forces (UKSF).

UKSF is distinct from the ranger units and remains heavily protected from even basic democratic scrutiny. The government refuses to comment on what they do — even in parliament.

It’s a distinctly British practice. None of our major allies refuse point blank to comment on their special forces operations. Yet we do. As the now-defunct Remote Control project pointed out in a 2016 report:

this blanket opacity policy is not standard practice, and the UK is lagging behind its allies on transparency over its use of Special Operations Forces (SOF). The US, Australia, and Canada are all more transparent about their deployment of SOF than the UK.

The practice is also deeply undemocratic:

This leaves the British public, and the parliament that represents them, among the least-informed of their foreign allies about the government’s current military activities in places like Syria and Libya stymying informed debate about the UK’s role in some of the most important conflicts of our age.

So what’s happening then?

Special Forces afraid of the light

Anglim said the threat of accountability over the Afghan allegations was “a shadow hanging over UKSF”:

The ongoing Inquiry, presided over by Lord Justice Haddon-Cave, investigating allegations that UKSF members committed unlawful killings in Afghanistan in 2010.

Ireland legacy allegations were also an issue. The SAS investigation:

runs concurrently with the Northern Ireland Coroner’s ruling that soldiers of 22 SAS were ‘not justified’ in killing three members of the Irish Republican Army in an ambush at Clonoe in Northern Ireland in 1992, and the stream of further allegations of unlawful conduct it has set off.

As Anglim pointed out, the cases are sub judice — ongoing — currently. But he expressed a concern they:

could strengthen demands for UKSF to face greater Parliamentary scrutiny, possibly via a Select Committee similar to the one overseeing Intelligence.

Clearly, public scrutiny is a terrifying prospect.

Scrutiny and pressure

This, Anglim said, could result in political pressures which might limit the use of SF:

Given the potential for security breaches and increased hostile scrutiny, this may have a freezing effect on future UKSF deployments and could alter the relationship between the Directorate and its political masters.

Presumably by ‘hostile scrutiny’ he means from the press and public. Anglim suggested he might write about it more once the cases are resolved:

but it is worth noting that, given their high status with the British public, no serious Prime Minister would want to impose collective punishment on Britain’s Special Forces and besides, they are too valuable as national assets to do this too severely if at all.

Anglim makes some very good points in his essay. He is also the definition of an establishment academic. He has worked with the US Department of Defence (currently ridiculously rebranded as the Department of War), the Sultanate of Oman, various establishment think-tanks and has given evidence on readiness to the defence committee.

Here he is talking about how Covid and Brexit affected the military:

But his warnings that some sort of basic accountability could reduce Britain’s ability to conduct secret military operations are telling. As with all things the British establishment says you must turn them upside down to understand them.

Public and journalistic scrutiny are good, actually, because they are a threat to the British ruling class’s hunger for war, war-profits — and for staying close to US imperial foreign policy whatever the cost and whoever is president. The more scrutiny, then, the better. And if ‘serious’ prime ministers would be afraid of the light of said scrutiny, let’s hope for an ‘unserious’ one.

Featured image via the Canary

Seven Kent County councillors and two North Northamptonshire County Councillors have joined Restore Britain. Reform UK previously expelled six of them.

Most of these were thrown out of Reform UK when @LeaderofKCC had her meltdown in the ‘suck it up’ cabinet meeting and the video was leaked. https://t.co/w5NmJN5AH8

— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) February 17, 2026

How do you even get expelled from Reform? Not taking bribes from Russia?

According to the Independent:

The new Restore Britain group members are Paul Thomas, Oliver Bradshaw and Brian Black, who have been sitting as the Independent Group; Robert Ford and Isabella Kemp from the current Independent Reformers Group, and independent-sitting councillors Maxine Fothergill and Dean Burns.

Nigel Farage hoped that Kent County Council would be his flagship Reform council. Look how that one turned out.

Reform won control of Kent County Council in May last year, securing 57 of 81 seats. However, only 48 councillors remain. Nine were removed after they leaked a video showing council leader Ms Kemkaran shouting and swearing at her members.

The Canary’s Joe Glenton described the video as:

a group of dysregulated middle-aged toddlers having an incredibly puerile row

Is it a picture of what’s to come with Restore?

Kent Council was described as being “a window to what a Reform UK government would be like”….

It’s been chaos, full of lies and a wannabe dictator leading it…..so they weren’t wrong!

— AxoAndy (@AxoAndy) February 17, 2026

After all, it’s the same faces, just with a few different letters.

In North Northamptonshire, Jack Goncalvez and Darren Rance have both also defected to Restore.

But Restore Britain has not even registered with the Electoral Commission yet.

Rupert – can you point me towards your Registration Details on the Electoral Commission website… pic.twitter.com/hJEnjmm3cW

— 🦋 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗲𝗺𝗲 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗜𝗧 🧵 🌹 (@graeme_from_IT) February 17, 2026

Restore Britain even more racist than Reform

I can’t believe I’m saying this (except I really can), but this clown show is competing for a number one spot in the  ‘more racist than Reform’ show.

BREAKING 🚨🚨🚨

Restore Britain Party members forced to elect Rupert Lowe as leader after their original 1st choice candidate shot himself in a bunker in 1945. pic.twitter.com/2L0P6cFA2X

Advertisement

— Politics For You (@PoliticoForYou) February 16, 2026

Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party is promising to sweep ‘Anti-British”, “anti-white” elements out of our universities and schools. Doing so, he is copying the Nazi playbook of 1933. If you’re not worried now, you should be. https://t.co/cLV2qCDF36

— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) February 18, 2026

But hey, what’s one more shade of blue? They’re all the same racist, ‘we hate every other country’ but Israel-loving muppets. I wonder if there’s some sort of blue attire-for-hire company setting up in Westminster.

If not, I want a commission when it goes live.

Rupert Lowe is welcoming these vile, racist muppets that are too embarrassing even for Nigel Farage and Reform with open arms.

He’s not even scraping the bottom of the barrel. He’s scraping the dregs up off the floor that no doubt have the remnants of rat shit in them.

Feature image via HG

So, how often should be cleaning bird feeders?

Why you can’t get over your toxic ex

How to get over an ex

Fake foxes covered in blood with League ‘hunter’ on the streets of London outside the National Gallery.

A huge pile of bloody foxes appeared in central London yesterday [Tuesday] to highlight the scale of illegal hunting in England and Wales that has continued since the government took power.

National animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports was behind the stunt, which saw a “hunter” dump 648 foxes in Trafalgar Square – one for each report the charity has received of a fox being chased by hunts since the summer of 2024.

Meanwhile, animal welfare campaigners from the League-led Time for Change Coalition Against Hunting handed in an open letter signed by more than 36,000 people in just one month to Sir Keir Starmer at 10 Downing Street.

The letter, which calls on his government to keep its promise to properly ban hunting wild animals with dogs, comes a year after a 104,000-signature petition calling for stronger hunting laws was handed in to Number 10 on the twentieth anniversary of the Hunting Act coming into force.

Emma Slawinski, League Against Cruel Sports chief executive, said: “The government isn’t keeping its promises, and the dumped bloodied foxes are there to show the scale of illegality that the government is failing to get to grips with.

“The public is repulsed by trail hunting, which is just a smokescreen for foxes and other wild animals still being chased and torn apart by hunt hounds, so we are urging the government to act immediately to end this savage blood sport once and for all.”

The government pledged to ban so-called trail hunting in its manifesto, and further promised to launch a public consultation “in the new year” when it launched its animal welfare strategy before Christmas.

This has not happened.

Emma said: “The time for change is now and the government must urgently launch its consultation, which should also include the removal of the exemptions in the Hunting Act that hunts exploit to get around the current weak law, the introduction of custodial sentences, and the outlawing of reckless, or ‘accidental’ hunting.” 

Polling commissioned by the League Against Cruel Sports and carried out independently by FindOutNow with further analysis by Electoral Calculus in March/April 2024 found that 76 per cent of the public supported stronger fox hunting laws, with only seven per cent disagreeing.

A clear majority of voters in rural as well as urban areas backed new laws to stop foxes being chased by hounds and killed, with 70 per cent of people in the countryside supporting the proposal.

More about how to take part in the consultation, and how people can make their voice heard, is available here: https://www.league.org.uk/hunting_consultation

Cynthia Erivo has insisted that she’s not letting any of the discussions online about her new play Dracula affect her performance.

However, the Oscar nominee has told BBC News that what people have to say about her performance on the internet isn’t something she’s paying all that much attention to.

Cynthia explained: “I’m not paying attention to any of them as no-one knows the experience except me. It’s not for me.

“I have a job to do and I want to do it as well as I can and I want to do it with all my heart. I don’t let the comments take the energy that I should be spending on the stage.”

The British actor conceded that she was “still learning my lines and figuring it out” during her first week of shows, and while Cynthia’s performance has been widely-praised, some reviews from press night acknowledged that there was some “stumbling over her words” and “fumbling” of lines on occasion.

While primarily known for her Oscar-nominated performances in movies like Wicked and Harriet, Cynthia got her start in live theatre, winning a Tony in 2016 for her work in the Broadway musical The Color Purple.

Her new stage venture is directed by Kip Williams, who has previously enjoyed success for his stage adaptations of Jekyll & Hyde and the Olivier-winning The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, the latter of which was also a one-person production starring Succession actor Sarah Snook.

MoMo Productions via Getty Images

What are the potential benefits to following this ‘rule’?

What are the possible downsides?

Yana Iskayeva via Getty Images

What do relationship experts recommend?

A Ukrainian athlete was disqualified from the Winter Olympics for a helmet which depicted fellow athletes whom Russia had murdered.

The BBC labelled it:

The Games’ biggest controversy so far.

The Ukrainian athlete, Vladyslav Heraskevych, was wearing a helmet that displayed images of more than 20 fellow Ukrainian athletes, all of whom Russia has murdered since the start of its invasion.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) made the decision due to Heraskevych’s:

refusal to comply with the IOC’s Guidelines on Athlete Expression. It was taken by the jury of the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) because the helmet he intended to wear was not compliant with the rules.

The IOC Rule 50 states:

No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.

However, nowhere on his helmet did it mention war, Russia, or how Russia killed these people.

Astounding hypocrisy over Russia

At the very same Winter Olympics, Maxim Naumov, an American figure skater, held up a photo of his dead parents as he received his final score.

His parents were world champion figure skaters – but they competed in two Olympics for Russia.

So, athletes are allowed to celebrate dead Russians, but not dead Ukrainians?

Since then, Heraskevych has accused the IOC of fuelling Russia’s propaganda. He added:

it does not look good. I believe it’s a terrible mistake that was made by the IOC.

But the IOC’s hypocrisy doesn’t end there.

Israel is allowed to compete in the event – a literal genocidal terrorist state, with team members who served in the genocidal Israeli Defence Forces who have committed atrocities against Palestinians. Meanwhile, the IOC banned a Ukrainian athlete for wearing a helmet that might upset Putin.

One Swiss commentator called out the Israeli team during a bobsled race. As the Canary previously reported:

Stefan Renna, who works for Swiss Radio and Television (RTS), pointed out that bobsled racer Adam Edelman calls himself “Zionist to the core“. Edelman has also made numerous social media posts supporting Israel’s Gaza genocide. Renna even used the g-word – genocide – that terrifies UK corporate ‘journalists’, referring to the findings of the UN International Commission of Inquiry.

The IOC has maintained that both Israel and Palestine should have equal opportunity to compete at the Games. However, Israel has a team at the Winter Olympics, whilst Palestine does not.

Whilst Palestine has never entered the Winter Olympics, only the summer games, we can put that down to the lack of infrastructure and the continued system of apartheid, which means the country lacks the funding to support its athletes’ development to an elite level. Perhaps Palestine could put a Winter Olympics team together if Israel stopped razing them to the ground every few years.

Israel has murdered over 800 athletes and sporting officials since October 2023. That figure includes more than 100 child athletes. The terrorist state has also destroyed 273 sports facilities – meaning Palestinian athletes who survived have nowhere to train.

Make your mind up

The IOC has banned both Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing under their own flags. Meanwhile, there has, of course, been no equivalent ban for Israeli athletes.

However, in September, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) lifted its ban on athletes from both countries competing at the games, which doesn’t make sense when Russia’s attacks on Ukraine are still ongoing. 

The IOC needs to make up its mind.

Either athletes cannot remember and dedicate their victories or performances to the dead, or they can. And the answer to that should not depend on where they come from.

Similarly, can murderous regimes compete under their state’s flag, or not? Of course, they unequivocally should not. But the IOC cannot have one rule for one and one rule for another.

Obviously, we know why this is. Israel is funding politicians left, right and centre who can put pressure on sporting bodies to have countries banned as and when they see fit, as Lisa Nandy did only this week.

Moreover, the West, the mainstream media, the majority of our politicians, and apparently the IOC, seem to care more about dead white people than they do about dead brown people. The hypocrisy stinks – and Israel should not be allowed to compete whilst simultaneously murdering Palestinians. The double standards are strewn everywhere.

Featured image via ABC News (Australia) & Euro Media News / YouTube

4 min read2 hr

Not for the police, not for forensic scientists, or lawyers and ultimately, it is not working for the public and the criminal justice system.

That’s what our recent House of Lords Science and Technology Committee inquiry heard from Professor Angela Gallop, a renowned forensic scientist. Our report, Rebuilding forensic science for criminal justice: an urgent need, found little to contradict this. The criminal justice system relies on good, solid forensic science to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent. But we have grave concerns about the forensic science system in England and Wales on the basis of our inquiry.

Prior to 2012, forensic science was provided by the Forensic Science Service, which was at arms length from the Home Office. It was shut down and replaced by a mix of a private forensic science market and in-house provision by the police. Witnesses to our inquiry, including Government ministers responsible for overseeing the system, were almost unanimous in saying that this system needs urgent reform. Let me outline why.

When the Forensic Science Service was closed, the responsibility for storing new evidence fell to the 43 police forces, who were apparently not resourced to undertake it properly. Some rose to the challenge. But national guidance was not consistently followed, and many criminal cases are collapsing, often due to lost and damaged evidence. Overstretched police forces are struggling to keep up. This is true in digital forensics as well. It’s increasingly important for fighting crime, but a backlog of over 20,000 digital devices to be analysed has not shrunk in years.

Police provision is patchy, inconsistent, and lacking in oversight. There are 43 police forces in England and Wales, so the quality of in-house forensic provision varies in a ‘postcode lottery’ – some is excellent and some is quite badly underresourced. Our committee believes that forensic science should be at arm’s length from the police to avoid unconscious bias.

There is no equality of arms between prosecution and defence. Defence experts are needed to challenge the claims made by the prosecution, but rely on limited legal aid funding which is often painful to obtain. The defence expert community is being allowed to wither away, which risks leaving claims from the prosecution unchallenged.

The market meant to provide many forensic services has collapsed. Market competition was supposed to provide better forensics at a lower cost. But the market is dysfunctional, with one buyer   – the police – resulting in very thin profit margins; and there are very high barriers to entry for new companies to set up, get accredited, and compete. The result is that now one company provides more than 80% of forensic science to the police. This puts the market in a very perilous position.

The market is also not supporting specialist forensic disciplines like fibres, marks and traces because they don’t make money – but we’ve heard from witnesses about high profile cases that would never have been solved without these specialist disciplines. Without more funding, we will lose these areas of expertise forever, and some cases may become impossible to solve.

Nor are these problems new – this inquiry is a follow-up to one I participated in back in 2019. Many of the problems we identified then have got worse in the intervening years.

Ministers accept that this system has to change. They have launched proposals for large-scale police reforms that will consolidate the number of forces and deliver forensics on a national basis. This is a good first step to finally address some of these problems and hopefully provide consistent and reliable forensic science across the country.

I was struck throughout our inquiry that there was widespread agreement on the issues. No one wants to risk miscarriages of justice when forensic science is used incorrectly. No one wants the guilty to walk free or the innocent to be convicted because of a lack of quality, independent forensic analysis. The forensic science community is full of hard-working, dedicated professionals: in the police, in forensic science providers, in the law, in academia, who do what they do out of a desire to see that justice is done. They are constrained by a failing system.

 These deeper-rooted issues of structural underfunding, market failure, inequality of arms between prosecution and defence, and independence—capacity, resilience, quality, and fairness—must be addressed. We have urged the government to take action now, and not to wait for the end of this lengthy and uncertain policing reform process. Otherwise, there is a very real risk of more miscarriages of justice, which could take years or decades to be put right. These reforms, and the sense of crisis around the sector, provide a real opportunity to address these long standing problems. Will the Government finally seize it?

Lord Mair CBE, Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology