Nigel Betteridge 🇬🇧

telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/2… Hamit Coskun in the @Telegraph ".....Little did I know that the worst was yet to come. The Metropolitan Police arrived. Far from protecting me or properly investigating what had taken place, they arrested me. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) then prosecuted me. Initially, for “offending the religious institution of Islam” but latterly for a religiously aggravated public order offence. For the past year, they have sent top barristers to argue – at taxpayer expense – that burning a Koran constitutes a crime whenever it is done in public. Were it not for the help of the Free Speech Union and the National Secular Society, who funded my appeals, they may well have been successful. Thankfully, judges rejected that argument. Last year, Mr Justice Bennathan summed up the issue well when he overturned my Magistrates’ Court conviction in the Crown Court. “Burning a Koran may be an act that many Muslims find desperately upsetting and offensive,” he said. “The criminal law, however, is not a mechanism that seeks to avoid people being upset, even grievously upset.” “The right to freedom of expression, if it is a right worth having, must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb.” The CPS, in its wisdom, challenged that acquittal, arguing that because I was attacked outside the consulate by a knife-wielding Muslim, I was guilty of causing public disorder. Thankfully, the High Court has today denied that appeal. Had it not ruled in my favour, the Islamic blasphemy code would now be, in essence, embedded into English law...."

@SpeechUnion @mattwridley Where did they get the £50,000 from? Why are they giving anyone money?

I’m currently in a caravan. Spending the night being absolutely battered by Storm Dave. Er- Squeaky bum time, to put it mildly! 😉🤣😩 Gotta love Great British bank holiday weekend weather… 🤣😳💨

This is Walker Smith. After dedicating 17 years to Waitrose, he was recently dismissed. The reason? For attempting to stop a shoplifter nicking Easter eggs. Yes you read that right. He should be applauded, not sacked. Shameful @waitrose. Re-employ Walker Smith!

You are aware that oil and gas together still account for 73–75% of the UK's total primary energy consumption (which covers all energy needs across electricity, heating, transport, industry and other sectors, measured in primary energy terms)? So explain to me exactly how ‘you will make it happen’ that we don’t use fossil fuels.

In 2016, 17.4 million people voted to stop sending money to Brussels and stop being subject to its rules. In 2026, Keir Starmer is in talks to send Brussels £2.9 billion a year — permanently — and is openly not ruling out returning to the Single Market. Nobody voted for this. Nobody was asked. The people who howled loudest about “respecting democracy” after 2016 are now engineering the reversal of it, one “ambitious trade deal” at a time.

Restore Britain is being attacked for a lack of ‘diversity’ at our local branch meetings. I really cannot put in words how little I care.

SACKED after 17 years… for stopping a thief. A Waitrose worker in Clapham Junction has lost his job after intervening to stop someone stealing Easter eggs. Walker Smith, 54, had given 17 years of service only to be shown the door for trying to do the right thing. No warning. No loyalty. Just gone. What message does that send to staff and to every other would be shoplifter wanting an easy target. Do your job… but don’t actually protect the business. Waitrose have ABSOLUTELY no loyalty to their staff they are quite happy to dispense of Loyal partners like yesterdays rubbish.

This cannot be right. Those who uphold the law as they do their job should be protected. We are working on a change in the law to give good citizens like Walker Smith unambiguous protection. theguardian.com/business/2026/…

Yesterday I was advised by my optician to go to A&E about an eye condition that I'd developed. This morning I drove to Torbay Hospital, parked up, walked into the A&E department past about 6 ambulances waiting to offload patients, saw a sea of people in the waiting room with absolutely no idea when their ailment might be looked at and immediately decided to turn around, walk out the door and go home. The UK is becoming more of a third World country than some of the third World crap holes we send money to. Meanwhile I'm having to work longer hours just to stand still. You have to wonder EXACTLY how this will all end. If basic services are ALL declining while the amount of money we pay in taxes is forever increasing it surely won't be long before the whole system completely collapses. I give it 5 years.

Ditto!! Meantime we buy ever more from China! Destroy uk manufacturing & our ability to be independent or self sufficient, as those ‘in’ net zero rake it in. Make it make sense please?

Five years on, the Batley teacher who showed a cartoon in a free speech lesson is still in hiding – cleared of any wrongdoing, but abandoned, traumatised and with his life in pieces. dailysceptic.org/2026/04/05/wha…

What did ⁦@BBCRadio4⁩ choose to broadcast on Easter morning? A documentary whitewashing a woman who joined ISIS, giving her half an hour to explain why we shouldn't think badly of her. The BBC is beyond parody bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3…

Anyone who joined the diabolical ISIS is not welcome in our country. Under Any Circumstances!

Take me back… (Tho we weren’t posh enough to have a video player. But it was ok ‘cause my mate did 🤣) How life has changed. Some for the better but so much not…

telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/0… ".....a whistleblower in the asylum system told me that she and her colleagues were not allowed to reject claims from Afghans and Eritreans because – and I quote – “It’s not considered safe for them to return to their country.” So it’s fine for them to make our country less safe instead, is it? That is one of the points made so devastatingly by Prof Matt Goodwin in his new book Suicide of a Nation: Immigration, Islam, Identity. As the academic and Reform UK candidate at the Gorton and Denton by-election puts it: “For decades, the institutions that once embodied our nation – Parliament, the Civil Service, the courts, the police, the BBC… have drifted away from the public they exist to serve… Our country is now in the grip of a new ruling class whose members see themselves not as custodians of a living nation, but as supervisors of a global humanitarian project that has no borders and no loyalty to the people whose taxes fund their salaries… Their defining ideology is ‘suicidal empathy’ – a deeply twisted world view that is destroying our country in the name of showing empathy to others… regardless of the consequences for our own people.”...." This article by @AllisonPearson aught to be required reading by all UK politicians.

£12,000 per annum to a British pensioner whose paid NI and tax for 45 years? Or £50,000 per annum to a family of Somalians who've never paid tax or NI. And never will? But 'refugees' welcome, eh? 🙄😡

Wouldn't it be fantastic to have a farming minister who has actually farmed? Or a business minister who has run a business? A teacher as education secretary? Individuals with ANY relevant experience, instead of boring robotic career politicians. Our system of Government STINKS.

@Miss_Snuffy Unless something is done about this, the UK is on a downward spiral to chaos.

“…the current epidemic of childhood disability is not a medical problem. It is a cultural failure. Telling children that they are disabled, and unable to cope with the demands of life, is setting them up for a life of dependency and unfulfilled potential” spiked-online.com/2026/04/03/why…

Ofcom has some serious questions to answer. As the media regulator stifles free speech through its draconian, overzealous enforcement of the Online Safety Act — both in the UK and the US — it is also handing out donations to its favoured news outlets. So much for impartiality. It has now been revealed that Ofcom provided £50,000 in funding to the Guardian Foundation last year. General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Lord Young of Acton, has said: “It’s genuinely odd that Ofcom has given £50,000 to The Guardian when, almost alone among UK newspapers, The Guardian eschews any regulation of its content. “If you’re misrepresented by The Guardian, your only recourse is to complain to its internal ombudsman – in other words, it marks its own homework. If only Ofcom granted the same latitude to GB News and Elon Musk.” Read more below 👇