James Slaughter

I’ve written to every Member of Parliament today. Proposals before Parliament would remove jury trials from offences carrying up to three years in prison. Freedoms rarely vanish overnight. They are chipped away in the name of efficiency. Juries did not cause the crisis in our courts. Removing them will not fix it. When the state seeks to take someone’s liberty for serious offences, the judgment of ordinary citizens should never be optional. This is close to becoming law. Please read the letter. Contact your MP now.

@DavidSuttonCars What a wonderful! Car 😉

"One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again." — Thomas Sowell

Enjoying the morning @Brands_Hatch slippy first couple caught many out but always fun sliding around in the Escort. Great to hear @Andrew_Coley on the comms! Proper enthusiasm! Also very proud of Josh on his first competitive outing in his Fiesta R2

@Brands_Hatch Looking forward to our annual opening event of the season for the Hillside Motorsport Team 2 cars out on the event

One week to go until the first event of the Brands Hatch centenary season! 🤩💯 The MGJ Engineering Winter Stages rally brings the first competitive action of 2026 to the Kent circuit on Saturday 17 January💨 Discounted tickets are available now🎟️ 🔗: brandshatch.co.uk/2026/january/m…

Excited to be back racing at Brands in the old Capri!!

Juries have been the last line of defence against the authoritarian cancel mob. When our members have found themselves charged with criminal offences for speaking out, juries have reliably said no dice to overzealous prosecutors. This has infuriated the CPS and the activists who make malicious complaints. One was Jamie Michael, a decorated Royal Marines veteran, who was charged with inciting racial hatred after a Labour staffer reported him to the police for a video he posted on Facebook. Jamie spent 20 days in prison on remand. A jury took just 17 minutes to clear him. The local Labour Party were said to be furious. Now David Lammy wants to scrap juries and give judges — who are required to follow DEI policies — the sole power to convict and jail Brits for up to 5 years for online posts. This move is about power, not saving costs. Nothing in our present national situation warrants abandoning an 800-year-old right: that in a court of law, your peers decide if you're guilty, not the state. We will fight any such proposal with everything we’ve got. Read more below 👇

@RACRMC Where can I find live stages times? The link doesn’t appear to work. Thanks

Next up on the route... two spectator stages at Pembrey Circuit. Two blasts around the home of Welsh Motorsport for our crews... This one is for Dai and Jaffa 💙 ⏱️🔗 results.bg/rac_rally/ #RACRally

@RACRMC Good luck to all the crews! Wish I was there

Ready for the off!🚦 Crews will shortly begin to assemble in Carmarthen town centre for the ceremonial start! Join us there from around 18:30 #RACRally

@RACRMC Amazing entry. Good luck to all the teams!

🚨 Seeded Entry List 🚨 We are delighted to finally reveal the 2025 Roger Albert Clark Rally seeded entry list A sensational list of crews, cars and nationalities will line up to tackle the five-day epic adventure across the 🇬🇧 🔗 racrmc.org/roger-albert-c… #RACRally

@maidstonebc @SGNgas The impact of drivers ignoring all diversions and warnings of unsuitable routes is making residents life misery. We are unable to get on with our day! It is totally unacceptable. These pictures are five days apart and show the chaos you have caused

@maidstonebc @SGNgas you need to rethink your traffic management on the Loose Road. You have to enable at least one way traffic so that the tiny side roads are not blocked! Allowing traffic up (Southbound) the Loose Road and down (Northbound) the Sutton Road. 1/2

@WCreighton1 @BRCrally @Castrol @MIRallyAcademy @Michelin_Sport @MyCreightons @MotorsportIRL @liam_regan55 Congrats! Great job!

🏆 WE DID IT! 🏆 2025 @BRCrally Champions! #MIRallyAcademy #BRCRally

NEW EPISODE: NO SYNERGISING Refreshing to meet 2 CEOs who didn't factor traditional cost savings into their M&A maths. Great conversation with Andrew Robinson of Skyward Specialty Insurance & David Ibeson of Apollo. LISTEN HERE: lnkd.in/eWVN3P-5 #insurance #reinsurance

This has jumped about 250,000 since Monday petition.parliament.uk/petitions/7301…

Blair claims there is growing support for digital id. What do you say?

@DanNeidle The good news is Angela already laid out a few years ago what should happen if someone claims to pay the correct amount of tax and then it turns out that they haven’t. Her position is untenable. She said so herself.

Here's an extract from my @spectator column on the arrest of @Glinner, 'Graham Linehan’s arrest is a turning point': "The hoo-ha over free speech being trampled on has always seemed exaggerated. I earn my living through voicing my opinions, and not once have I ever felt unable to say exactly what I think – especially when that’s controversial or offends large numbers of people. I am, of course, well aware that some people have had a very different experience – such as the comedy writer Graham Linehan, creator of Father Ted, who has robustly pointed out that biology means that men who identify as women are, nonetheless, still men. For that, his career was effectively ended in an industry that has long been in thrall to trans and other ideologies. But I have bridled at some of the supposed examples of free speech being destroyed. I am not one of those, for example, who believes Lucy Connolly is some sort of hero. Her social media post in the wake of the Southport murders last summer saying that hotels with asylum seekers should be set on fire was, to my mind, not merely revolting but incitement. Had it been merely revolting – something which horrified most decent people – then that would be something for which she should have been taken to task, but not by the criminal justice system. Her post crossed a line, however. But there are moments when the penny drops and you realise you are wrong. Today has provided one of those moments. When Linehan returned from the United States yesterday, where he moved to be able to work, he was promptly arrested at Heathrow by five armed police officers. What alleged crime must he have been suspected of to be met by a show of such force? Murder? Terrorism? Armed robbery? None of those. He was arrested, he says in a Substack he posted earlier today, because of three tweets he had posted. Linehan’s tweets are nothing like Lucy Connolly’s. They are merely expressions of his view of trans ideology, albeit strongly worded, in his (entirely legitimate) style. In one, he posted a picture of what seems be a trans rights demonstration, with his caption: “A photo you can smell”. Another reads: “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F— em”. And the third says: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.” You might not like his tone. You might find his attitude confrontational. Trans people will doubtless find the posts offensive. So what? There is no law against giving offence. Except that appears no longer to be true. The Metropolitan Police has confirmed that Linehan was held ‘in relation to posts on X’. ‘The man in his 50s was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence,’ a spokesman said. Criminality is evolving every day in this sphere. Increasingly, giving offence is being taken by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service as prima facie evidence of criminality. The other side of this coin is that taking offence is seen as legitimate grounds for a complaint. Presumably someone made a complaint to the police over these tweets – unless, and this is not beyond the realms of possibility, the police have officers who spend their days trawling the internet looking for posts that offend what they consider to be good taste. Is that really a good use of police time? Trust in the police is at an all-time low. In October 2024, 52 per cent of adults told YouGov that they had no confidence in the police to tackle crime, compared to 39 per cent in October 2019. What the police don’t now do – tackle crime – is just one aspect of the collapse in trust. Allied to that is what the police do now do – such as arresting people over social media posts which merely give offence to someone. It’s of a piece with what is seen on the regular hate marches, where they stand and watch when there are calls for the murder of Jews (such as the widespread ‘globalise the intifada’), but only spring into action when a counter-demonstrator turns up, saying that they are likely to provoke a breach of the peace. What we are seeing is the congruence of two dangerous developments. First is the idea that giving offence is something which should be banned. The government’s current move towards adopting a definition of Islamophobia is part of this, and has rightly been labelled by Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Muslim anti-prejudice group TellMAMA, as introducing a blasphemy law by the back door. Similarly, the onward march of the trans ideologues may have been stopped in its tracks by the Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of ‘woman’, but the ideology has already taken hold of many institutions and spaces. Which leads to the second development – the police’s capture by this and other ‘woke’ ideologies. Linehan describes how in his police interview a police officer mentioned trans people: “I asked him what he meant by the phrase. ‘People who feel their gender is different than what was assigned at birth.’ I said: ‘Assigned at birth? Our sex isn’t assigned.’ He called it semantics, I told him he was using activist language.’ This is the nub of it. The police, supposed guardians of the law, have become players in the activists’ capture of the institutions. It is not that they are no longer concerned with crime, but that they are redefining what crime is. It is terrible that Linehan should have had to go through this. But if it wakes more of us up to what is happening in Britain, his arrest will have served our country well. spectator.co.uk/article/graham…

@nick08120917 @lionsofficial Luckily you know nothing about rugby!!

@lionsofficial rather have Andy than Owen on the pitch