The Birmingham bin strike has reached its fifth week. Rubbish is piled high, rats are infesting the streets, and experts are concerned about Weil's disease.

🧵on how the Equality Act contributed to this, and how it may cause similar strikes across the country. 1/ In 2012, 174 former Birmingham Council employees brought an equal pay appeal to the Supreme Court.

They argued Birmingham City Council had provided lower pay to women in predominantly female jobs (cooks, cleaners & care staff) compared to refuse collectors and road workers.

Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust are "decolonising" their collection. They think the artefacts in their care are "racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise harmful".

In 2023 they received £948k from the taxpayer. In 2020, £5.69 million.

🧵on historical vandalism at the site 1/ On Sunday, the news broke that the trust tasked with conserving Shakespeare's birthplace would be "decolonised" following claims the author was being used to promote "white supremacy".

This is ridiculous, and raises serious concerns about their ability to conserve the site.

Why have Arts Council England just been directed to spend taxpayer money on compensation for their diversity manager?

The answer gets to the heart of the DEI racket which has infested the Arts Council.

Short 🧵 1/ Arts Council England are a taxpayer funded "national development agency for creativity and culture".

They fund around half a billion pounds worth of projects every year.

Decisions about who to fund and how this money will be allocated have been almost entirely captured by activists.

Having now read this case, it is even worse than is being reported.

The story involves 20 years of falsified documents, €300,000 of theft, and an endless appeal process. Chicken nuggets are just the tip of the iceberg.

Short 🧵

https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1888689740171416056

1/ In 2001, the appellant (Mr Disha, an Albanian National) entered the country illegally.

He makes an asylum claim on the basis of political persecution.

Given this would be quite difficult to pull off from Albania (a safe country) he lies about being from Yugoslavia.

Jess Phillips thinks that the Telford locally led inquiry into grooming gangs meant "things changed, way quicker".

Short 🧵of all the delays and problems faced by the inquiry due to lack of government backing:

https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1876698259168657449

August 2016: Telford's new MP Lucy Allan calls for an inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation after meeting survivors and campaigners.

The previous MP never mentioned grooming gangs in Parliament.

Victims of grooming gangs were described by the police as "child prostitutes". In some cases, they were arrested instead of the perpetrators.

No one has been arrested for this negligence.

🧵of girls failed by the institutions which were meant to protect them. After being groomed and trafficked by a violent sexual predator, an assessment by the Police and the Children's Social Care authority blamed a 13 year-old girl for "placing herself at risk of sexual exploitation and danger"

One of the worst things about these crimes is the scale of institutional cover-up.

Back in September 2016, local officials in Telford - including current Labour MP Shaun Davies - said that further investigation of child sex abuse wasn't "necessary".

🧵Screenshots below...

https://twitter.com/sam_bidwell/status/1873847554368217263

In 2016, when Lucy Allan (former MP for Telford) requested an inquiry into the grooming gangs which had scarred the area, the council leader and 9 of his colleagues wrote a letter to the Home Secretary.

Britain's heritage is under threat.

People often claim the 'culture wars' are over. However, @Policy_Exchange's History Matters Compendium, a year-long review of changes to the presentation of history, shows that activists continue to rewrite the past.

🧵of our findings: 1/ The Government have dropped plans to require local councils to hold a referendum before renaming streets.

This means that any activist council seeking to rename a potentially 'offensive' or 'imperialist' street name will not be required by legislation to consult residents.

In August the Home Office introduced a Zombie Knife amnesty. They agreed to pay £10 per knife.

They expected that 472 Zombie Knives would be surrendered.

Instead, one wholesaler alone has surrendered 35,000 blades.

🧵thread on incentives and what went wrong with the scheme. 1/ In September 2024 amendments to the Criminal Justice Act (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988 were passed which added zombie knives and machetes to the list of prohibited knives.

Labour's 'strengthened' football governance bill will force clubs to engage in EDI to maintain their license.

The government claim this is a product of a 'fan-led review'. In reality, they're using long debunked research from McKinsey to justify a toxic agenda.

Short 🧵 1/ Much has already been written about the hubris of trying to regulate football.

@PaulGoodmanCH has an excellent thread on the bill here:

and @Fox_Claire spoke wonderfully in the Lords on freedom of speech and EDI in football.

https://x.com/PaulGoodmanCH/status/1856982819513274569?t=JpaAdMu2hMN90s68w2eojw&s=19

The American election was dominated by the long shadow of inflation and the crisis at the southern border.

So why did Trump pour $215 million dollars into TV ads about Harris' transgender advocacy?

Short 🧵 1/ The ad was simple but remarkably effective

A short clip of Kamala promising to use taxpayer money to fund sex change surgery for prisons, and the tagline:

“Kamala is for they / them/ President Trump is for you”

Of course children aren't reading for pleasure anymore.

We've spent a decade sanitising literature, feeding kids politicised, socially progressive drivel. It's not shocking they've stopped reading it.

Short🧵on what's happened to publishing

https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1853688474060124399

1/ It's basically impossible for a children's or young adult's book to get published without input from a 'sensitivity reader'.

These are EDI professionals who scour books for any hint of themes which might attract controversy.

The claim Heathcliff was "one of the most famous people of colour in literature" is a fundamentally absurd misreading of Wuthering Heights.

It emerges from a misunderstanding of the Victorian use of the descriptor "dark"

🧵thread on what Brontë (and other writers) meant.

https://twitter.com/SketchesbyBoze/status/1838956586242302097

1/ To start with - it's pretty clear that Linton Heathcliff is probably not a "person of colour".

He is described in Ch. 19 as a "pale, delicate, effeminate boy"

The devolved Welsh Government has just spent £135,000 of taxpayer money on a guide to "anti-racist libraries".

Short 🧵on this ludicrous report and the chilling impact it may have on freedom of speech in Welsh library collections. Libraries in Wales are chronically underfunded. Jobs in the sector have been reduced from 1,241 (2010) to 979 today.

Library funding is usually less than 1% of local council budgets.

Rather than address this - the Welsh government has chosen instead to 'decolonise' libraries

Are Deliveroo offering illegal migrants a backdoor to the UK economy?

Short 🧵on why the Deliveroo business model seems to be dependent on illegal migrants working for less than half of minimum wage. 1/ Deliveroo drivers are paid as little as £2.90 per food delivery.

Drivers report earning around £5.80 an hour.

9.7% of businesses are experiencing labour shortages. So when there's a surplus of minimum wage jobs - who wants to work for deliveroo?

Rachel Reeves claims she has just discovered a £22 billion black hole.

She's announced cuts to major public infrastructure projects which could have driven enormous growth and prosperity.

Short 🧵on wasted public money that could be cut. 1/ 15.6 billion a year on Net Zero

Aurora Energy Research have costed Labour's commitment to Net Zero by 2030 at 15.6 bn/year (with a total additional investment of £116 bn over the next 11 years)

The National Gallery have taken the decision to brand John Constable's Hay Wain as a "contested" landscape due to his "conservative" attitudes and "privileged" position.

🧵on why we should oppose this sort of politicised curation from a museum funded by the taxpayer 1/ The National Gallery is a non-departmental body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The collection is free to view and in 2023 the gallery received £30.7 million from the taxpayer.

Their curatorial decisions are therefore in the public interest.

Royal Parks have branded the Albert Memorial as “offensive” as it “reflects a “Victorian view of European supremacy”.

This decision does not meet the rigorous standards set by the Government’s “Retain and Explain Guidance” or Policy Exchange’s “Principles for Change”. Why? 🧵 2/ The Royal Parks website claims that the statue reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today … though the Empire has traditionally been celebrated as a symbol of British supremacy, many today consider this view as problematic”.