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In the video, which has no audio, Jacob suddenly jumps off his bike and runs into the bodega clutching his chest.

Meet Britain's New Cabinet Of Fakers, Fraudsters And Hangers-On

Authored by Bruce Newsome The New Nuisance,

Britons are struggling to characterize their new Cabinet, following the arrival of a new prime minister on Monday. The Cabinet is not as northern or female as Andy Burnham signaled. Most members have certainly changed. Most are not loyalists to Keir Starmer, even less so to Tony Blair. Like Burnham, many hark back to a mythical golden age of socialism in the 1970s. Like him, most are alarmingly deficient in popular mandate, external qualifications, and even political trust for their new responsibilities.

Let's start with Burnham himself, a man born in Liverpool who pretended to be Mancunian to win the mayoralty of Manchester. He claims to represent the north but has not lived north or east of Manchester. At best, he represents a narrow part of west-central England, just north of the Midlands.

Burnham has always looked south while talking up the north. Burnham was most newsworthy for agitating for changes in national government, despite sharing a party with Starmer.

As Starmer continued to trip himself up with both feet, Burnham was one of the Labourites who prevailed on ministers to brief against their PM. After Starmer blocked Burnham's candidacy for an accidental by-election in February, Burnham prevailed on a local MP to resign from Makerfield to force a by-election in June, which Burnham won easily, to return to Parliament, which would allow him to challenge Starmer for the leadership (less than two years into Starmer's five-year term). Starmer initially vowed to fight on but announced his intent to quit this month. No MP stepped up to challenge Burnham's presumptive run.

Thus, Burnham has no popular mandate to be PM, even within the party, except in the form of pledges by more Parliamentary partisans in support than against. Opposition parties rightly called for a general election to confirm his premiership, but the constitution does not oblige him.

Burnham's supporters pretend that his easy rise proves the strength of his candidacy. In reality, it proves the weakness of his party. It could not find a new leader within its own MPs, despite a whopping majority. It triggered an expensive by-election and a more expensive mayoral election to reach outside of Parliament. Meanwhile, Burnham unwittingly poured scorn on that same Parliamentary party by criticizing normal politics and the London elite. (Since then, he has aired the idea of moving the Cabinet from London to Manchester. His current plan is to spend at least one day per work week there. That's neither efficient nor effective.)

In the many weeks that Burnham enjoyed as rising PM, he remained vague about his Cabinet and his policies.

On Monday, he spent hours appointing just the highest roles in the Cabinet. The other appointments look set to continue for days.

Of the first day's picks, I must start with the only selectee who can be coded as qualified and mandated (although not loyal).

John Healey becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer, the second most powerful position in government. He had quit as defense secretary six weeks ago, over Starmer's procrastination on filling a hole in defense spending. Healey said that Britain should spend 3 percent of GDP on defense by 2030, which means he will need to find a couple dozen billion pounds per year. Previously, he advocated issuing "war bonds," but who would buy them when the government is running record debt? He will need to cut other departments or raise taxes (probably both). On Monday, Healey said "fiscal control" would be his "first duty." You could see the markets' confidence decline immediately.

Healey's resignation suggests a certain loyalty to Burnham, but otherwise they barely know each other. More usefully, he was a minister in the Treasury under Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Yes, Healey is actually qualified by experience! This is remarkable given that his predecessor, Rachel Reeves, falsified her CV, couldn't add, and quickly became the most U-turn-prone and hated chancellor ever, as well as the most tearful.

Healey remains constrained by record government debt and his party's suicidal unwillingness to cut spending. Remember that Starmer increased spending on welfare and benefits, after backbenchers rejected his proposal to cut them. (That was within Starmer's first year of premiership.)

Burnham is an out-and-proud socialist who had already signaled that his government would spend and tax more. By Tuesday, his administration revealed plans to cut VAT (a sales tax) on electricity, to be funded by cutting the Starmer administration's planned digital ID. But the minister responsible for that plan, Darren Jones, revealed, after being fired by Burnham, that digital ID was never funded. So Burnham is either ignorant or dishonest. This . . . doesn't . . . bode . . . well.

In any case, scrapping VAT on electricity doesn't make much difference to a household electricity bill in which most of the pricing goes to fund green initiatives, debt, stealth taxes, and administration.

Burnham already looks unprepared and unreliable.

Confirmation comes in the form of his deviation from his team's prior briefings that he would appoint either Ed Miliband or Shabana Mahmood to the Treasury.

Red Ed goes to the Foreign Office, for which he is woefully unqualified and an undoubted liability. He infuriated the U.S. (and most Britons) as energy secretary, with his absolutism about reaching net-zero carbon by 2030, at whatever cost to the consumer. Ed also, by the way, reminds everybody of the weakness of the party's leadership selection. He was leader from 2010 to 2015, when he literally and metaphorically stumbled at every election husting. Yet Burnham thinks Miliband is the best person to articulate British interests abroad? This won't last long.

Miliband is already hurt. He has been denied the job he wanted, even though he was the first senior minister to call for Starmer to go, and he helped Burnham with an economic plan. (Some plan: it remains as vague as ever, except for the Soviet-style time horizon of 10 years.)

Meanwhile, Mahmood stays at the Home Office. Under-informed (or biased) souls read this as confirmation of her competence in pushing through controls on illegal immigration in the face of majority opposition from civil servants and backbenchers. In fact, she is hurdling a low bar after decades of government failures to control immigration, despite popular demands and almost every party's commitments to lower net immigration.

Worse, Mahmood is duplicitous. She tells the right wing that her tweaks to the benefits and the timeline of asylum applications will dramatically control immigration. She tells the left wing that she will make the refugee route easier (which is the route by which almost all illegal immigrants get residency, with more privileges than citizens). Also concerning is Mahmood's long history of Islamocentrism, which is bizarrely ignored by mainstream media. She tars normative Britons as racists (whites and Jews in particular: isn't that racist?), campaigned against Israel, played up her status as the first Muslim home secretary, promised that her promotion would serve "her" community, and railed against supposedly routine experiences of racism in her hometown of Birmingham, where her demographic is the largest.

I doubt Mahmood will last much longer than Miliband within Team Burnham. He favors the left of the party, which has characterized her (ridiculously) as a Nigel Farage in Labour colors. For now, Burnham needs to be seen to reward her, if only because one of her allies in Parliament, Josh Simons, was the MP who resigned from Makerfield to make way for Burnham.

So the highest three officers in the land will not last as long as normal, in my estimation. Burnham's administration will not bring the stability that Britons crave, let alone the competencies that the markets and foreign governments crave.

Talking of high ministers who won't last long, we must go next to Wes Streeting, who had resigned as health secretary (the poisoned chalice of all ministerial appointments anyway), to build support for a challenge against Starmer. Yet after the by-election, Streeting said he wouldn't run against Burnham, who now must reward him. Streeting becomes defense secretary. During the weekend's rumor mill, the former chief of the British Army, Lord Dannatt, said that Streeting "knows the square root of nothing about defence." Indeed. He's one acquisition scandal away from a sacking. And that sort of scandal leaks every few months from Britain's MOD.

From a turncoat Starmerite, we now turn to the loyal Starmerites who remain in government on borrowed time.

The highest-profile survivor is Pat McFadden, who will remain as work and pensions secretary - which is strange given that the government has decreased neither worklessness nor liabilities. Excuses abound for his early dismissal. And since Burnham is committed to the so-called triple lock on pensions and to increasing welfare (he talks about social care as the neglected component, but he's not talking about cutting anything), McFadden has no obvious options except to increase spending. That's the vicious cycle that these monkeys refuse to see, hear, or speak.

Jonathan Reynolds was Starmer's chief whip, a role that Burnham talks about deleting (he must think that everybody will love him forever without whipping). Reynolds will take over the merged departments for Science and Technology, and Business and Trade. Burnham has a short-term interest in Reynolds. Reynolds was an ineffective whip, but in his previous role, as business secretary, he temporarily solved the collapse of British Steel by forbidding more foreign ownership and investing in government ownership. Burnham has always liked public ownership of heavy industry and transportation and has already confirmed a policy to fully nationalize British Steel. But once that process is complete, Reynolds-the-Starmerite won't be needed. The backbenches are full of untested socialists who think closer to Burnham on public ownership.

For similar short-term reasons, Burnham kept Heidi Alexander as transport secretary and kept Lisa Nandy as secretary of state for digital, culture, media, and sport. The latter is one of the departments with its own unit for countering "disinformation" (i.e., criticism of government) by spreading disinformation. It's also led the lawfare to punish social media companies for "harmful" content, to restrict children under 18 years of age from accessing social media (an age that makes a mockery of the same government's plans to lower the voting age to 16), to restrict everybody's access to VPNs, and to censor information during election season. Burnham supports such authoritarianism. His hopes for the general election in 2029 depend on it.

Yvette Cooper has been demoted from foreign secretary to health secretary, which seems designed to set her up for further failure. Ironically, she is the most qualified minister by experience, having served through the Blair and Brown administrations, but that experience is to the right of Burnham's ideological bent. (Always strange to describe a Labourite as to the right of anything.) She already has a reputation for indecisiveness, invisibility, and foot-in-mouth disease. She must immediately deal with yet more strikes by medical unions unless exorbitant demands for pay raises are met. These have been going on for years. She won't last years.

Another poisoned chalice is the Ministry of Justice, given mainstream recognition of two-tier justice, increasing political violence, and overcrowded prisons (to be relieved in September by, er, releasing prisoners early, including murderers and rapists). The new justice secretary is Alex Norris, who spent a year as minister for border security. And look how border security improved.

Bridget Phillipson has been sacked as education secretary, having decimated private schools by abolishing their charitable status (one liability is VAT, at 20 percent). She keeps her job as minister for women and equalities, but I don't expect that to last long. At some point she must be sacrificed to protect the administrative state from its foot-dragging over decades of rapes of mostly white children by gangs of mostly Muslim immigrants and second-generation immigrants (with the awareness and sometimes participation of local police, social workers, and politicians, mostly from the Labour Party).

So let's get to high offices that will last, despite lack of qualifications. Get this one. The effective deputy PM goes by the titles of first secretary of state and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Burnham gave the titles to Louise Haigh. She is a strong Burnham ally, which isn't a compliment in my book, although it is some justification for deputizing. Her penchant for dyeing her hair blood-red perhaps helps. Otherwise, she isn't qualified. Her highest prior role was transport secretary, which Burnham loves (he's always banging on about subsidizing public transport and has already announced a cap on bus fares). But she held that role for just a few months in 2024, before resigning after revelations that she was convicted of fraud in 2014. Funny she hid that history on the campaign. (The irony.) So the effective deputy PM is a convicted fraudster. She's also privately educated but opposed to private education. Only in Britain … and other tinpot democracies.

We're not done with (alleged) fraudsters in government. Angela Rayner is back as housing, communities, and local government secretary, having resigned from the same role when she failed to pay a tax ("stamp duty") on her third house. It was an oversight, she said . . . even though she was the minister administering the tax.

Another promotion is Lucy Powell, the new education secretary. Does she claim any expertise in education? No. Except that she is female, which is qualification enough for most progressives of our time, and she is a close ally of Burnham, and she is from "the north" (self-declared). See the pattern?

Alas for her, the Titanic education secretaryship is heading for an iceberg that few in government are willing to admit: blowback for the government's manipulation of safeguarding doctrine to hide information (such as transgender dysphoria) from parents whom teachers think won't be supportive enough, and for a new policy of screening boys for the pre-crime of violence against women and girls, and for decades of politicized, racialized indoctrination of children, at the expense of real knowledge and skills. Is it any wonder that one in six Britons aged 16 to 24 years is not in employment, education, or training? Well, it's still a wonder to the government, conveniently.

A sort-of-incumbent is the new energy secretary. Miatta Fahnbulleh had served as Miliband's undersecretary before she quit in late 2024 when Starmer's administration cut payments to most pensioners for their winter fuel expenses. (Starmer U-turned but didn't recall her to government.) Don't expect her to permit drilling for North Sea oil and gas. Do expect her to stick slavishly to net-zero madness. The inflationary effects on the Consumer Price Index alone are enough to guarantee the defeat of this government in 2029.

In a related portfolio, Dame Angela Eagle is the new secretary of state for environment, food, and rural affairs, coming from the Home Office. Should you have heard of her? No. Her claim to fame is challenging Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership back in 2016, which gives her sort of centrist standing. Anyway, she failed. She withdrew to support Owen Smith - who also failed. It's an inspiring bench.

A surprisingly relevant portfolio to this government's failed economics is Wales. Let me explain. Burnham has asked Stephen Kinnock to replace Jo Stevens as Welsh secretary. Stephen's qualifications are: he is Welsh, and he is the son of Neil Kinnock, who led the Labour Party through general election defeats in 1987 and 1992 and yet is Burnham's ideal of the prime minister we should have had.

Stephen is the exemplar to end with - the exemplar of the terminal mess the Labour Party has got itself into:

• inherited glory within a party that rails against privilege;
• failed politicians lauded as greats;
• doubling down on an unadmitted socialism that has already been rejected by the public multiple times, across nearly half a century;
• the appointment of professional politicians to roles for which they have few non-political qualifications;
• the promotion of ministers based on political ideologies and loyalties rather than functional merits; and
• the retention of incumbents for short-term political purposes, to the neglect of long-term stability.

Strap in: the Burnham administration will be even more calamitous and self-defeating than the Starmer administration.

The silver lining is that it will be entertaining, so far as you can look on the funny side of outcomes that will be very bad for most Britons and catastrophic for some (such as the thousands being imprisoned for tweets, or raped or knifed to death by illegal immigrants).

Yes, Britons must suffer through three years of a premiership even worse than Starmer's before they get a chance to vote it down.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 09:30

"All of Taylor [Sheridan]'s work is super inspirational to everyone," the Ransom Canyon creator said.

The Post's Sean Treppedi makes his prediction for Mets vs. Dodgers, including his best bets for Sunday's tilt.

Two Drones Shot Down Over NATO Airspace In Less Than 24 Hours

This week has witnessed more dangerous Ukraine war spillover aerial activity in Eastern Europe. In a fresh instance, Romania's defense ministry is reporting that two drones entered the country's airspace in less than 24 hours.

The military said that radar systems had earlier picked up a drone "operating in the vicinity of the Ukrainian border" Saturday morning - after which F-16 fighter jets were scrambled and successfully shot it down.

Source: Romanian Air Force

The NATO member state's defense ministry continued by describing that two of the F-16s "safely shot down in an unpopulated area near the border."

A very similar situation played out Friday over an unpopulated area near Padina, northeast of the capital, Bucharest. In that case a pari of Italian air force Eurofighter Typhoon jets were deployed and shot it down.

Authorities did not immediately identify the drone's origin but that are pointing to the Russian military. Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruta was cited in national media as saying "the impact site and the drone wreckage are currently being analyzed" but that "the pattern is consistent with previous confirmed flights by Russian drones."

Early indicators say these were likely Shahed-type drones used by Russian forces; however, there have also been past instances of Ukrainian projectiles entering friendly neighboring countries' airspace.

These types of breaches have been happening with increasingly regularity over the past couple years. In prior incidents, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Moscow of deliberately orchestrating provocations against NATO countries.

He previously said on X during a past incident, for example, that "The Russian military knows exactly where their drones are headed and how long they can operate in the air. Their routes are always calculated."

In prior recent instances of drones entering neighboring airspace, particularly in Baltic countries and also Poland, NATO jets were scrambled - and in some cases drones are safely brought down via electronic intercept means.

But each instance creates new tensions between Russia and NATO, and the typical accusations and threats then fly. The Kremlin has of late been especially alarmed at the Trump administration transferring 5,000 US troops from Germany to Poland, near Russia's doorstep.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 09:00

Those looking to bet on Mets vs. Dodgers can use the BetMGM bonus code NYPMAX1550 for up to $1,500 in bonuses and $50 in BetMGM Reward Points.

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Security video obtained by The Post shows the victim leaving his bike outside the bodega to go in and buy a ball, before coming out again just as a wild brawl breaks out in the street.

France Orders Largest Peacetime Evacuation Since WWII As Wildfires Rage

Thousands of firefighters are battling fast-moving wildfires spreading across Spain and France as extreme heat and strong winds forced more than 300,000 people to evacuate or shelter in place near Madrid, Valencia and Bordeaux.

Via @PCarterClimate

Socialist Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said fires burned about 20,000 hectares over the past 24 hours, with more than 105,000 people affected and two deaths reported so far. France evacuated more than 220,000 people in the Gironde region and mobilized 1,500 troops as roughly 30 fires spread near Bordeaux.

FRANCE: France has evacuated more than 220,000 people as the country’s largest wildfire continues to spread across the southwest, threatening Bordeaux. Officials said the blaze in Gironde has become so intense that it is generating its own winds. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez…

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 26, 2026

Europe is burning. France + Spain: 250,000+ people evacuated this weekend alone. France: 98,000 hectares destroyed, a new national record. Worst wildfire crisis in the country’s history.

Even the Tour de France had to cut its final stage. When wildfires cancel the Tour de… pic.twitter.com/DOXFbJj8bZ

— France Safety Travel (@francesafetytra) July 26, 2026

CNN reporter Max Saltman spoke with wine expert Nicolle Croft, who said the 2026 vintage across Bordeaux is safe for now, but there are mounting concerns.

Saltman continued:

As wildfires burn west of Bordeaux, one of France's most famous wine-producing regions, concerned oenophiles have called wine expert Nicolle Croft to voice concern over the fate of 2026 vintage.

"A lot of people are contacting me from around the world hearing all these terrible stories, but actually the vineyards are not impacted at the moment," Croft, a tour guide based in Bordeaux, told CNN. "But we're all very upset because there are people losing homes."

Croft said at this time of year, the grapes aren't yet large enough to absorb wildfire smoke – a phenomenon known in winemaking as "smoke taint."

"We won't be harvesting until the beginning of September," Croft said, "so there's still time."

Dr. Phil Crews, a winemaker and chemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explained that unripe grapes aren't as vulnerable to smoke taint. Young grapes lack sugars that would otherwise bind with bitter-tasting phenols in wildfire smoke.

Fire Map

 

CNN noted, "Forecasts also indicate no rain in fire-ravaged areas, as officials in France mount the largest peacetime evacuation since WWII."

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 08:35

We'd like to tell you the blunt truth.

Years after learning English from watching John Travolta movies, Sam Asghari can't believe he's starring in one.

Years after learning English from watching John Travolta movies, Sam Asghari can't believe he's starring in one.

Russia Blasts Ukrainian Drone Mass Casualty Attack On Holiday Camp In Zaporizhzhia

Russia has blamed Ukraine for a mass casualty event at a 'holiday camp' in the partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia region on Saturday.

Local Russian officials overseeing Zaporizhzhia have said twelve people were killed and at least 19 more wounded due to a major Ukrainian drone attack. Ukraine did not immediately issue any statements acknowledging the deadly strikes.

Via Sputnik 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated that "Striking civilians is the method used by terrorists" in a press briefing.

ABC News later reported that "Four children were among 11 people killed in the attack on the resorts in Zaporizhzhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Kremlin-installed regional head, said, adding that 16 others were wounded." Russia's RT in an update stated the official number at 12 deceased.

Pro-Russian regional Governor Evgeny Balitsky was cited in Russian media as saying:

“The enemy knew exactly who they were targeting and deliberately struck civilians,” Balitsky said in a statement on Max. “This is a blatant crime and a hallmark of the Ukrainian regime. Unable to confront us on equal terms, they instead target civilians – women and children.”

He said that among the wounded being treated by emergency medical teams are five children.

Zaporozhye Region came under formal Russian control in September 2022, after a 'popular referendum' - following the Russian military ground onslaught across eastern and parts of southern Ukraine.

Overnight, Russian drones unleashed death in Ukrainian towns as well:

Sumy regional head Oleh Hryhorov said on Saturday three people were killed when a large fire broke out after a Russian drone struck a “civilian facility,” adding that the victims were drivers for private Ukrainian postal and courier service Nova Poshta.

Russia’s defense ministry said it attacked a “storage and launch site” for Ukrainian drones in the Sumy region.

Footage of the aftermath shows extensive damage and destruction at the camp:

❗️Consecuencias del ataque ucraniano a campamentos turísticos rusos

12 personas murieron y 19 resultaron heridas en un ataque de las Fuerzas Armadas ucranianas contra campamentos turísticos en la provincia rusa de Zaporozhie. pic.twitter.com/yJQVsaqBQY

— RT en Español (@ActualidadRT) July 25, 2026

Russian regions bordering Ukraine have also been coming under heavy attack from Ukraine, including Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk. These oblasts have frequently been targeted throughout the years-long war.

Currently, Ukraine has been especially targeting not only energy sites deep inside Russia, but logistics hubs and warehouses of the large company Wildberries, which is often called the 'Amazon of Russia'.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 07:35

The former CJ Parker says she’s focused on surprising herself with new roles after The Last Showgirl.

UK Cities Roll Out More Diversity Barriers; Vehicle-Ramming Threat Now The Norm

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A family summer beach event in the UK city of Nottingham now sits behind portable anti-ram steel barrier, the latest admission that open borders have turned public spaces into soft targets.

Local authorities across Britain are quietly installing more of what critics now call "diversity barriers" - heavy portable steel devices designed to stop vehicles being driven into crowds.

The annual artificial "Nottingham Beach" event opened this week behind a line of bright red Husson H-Stop units.

Meanwhile in the UK Local authorities are installing more and more 'Diversity Barriers'. Why? Because as regularly seen throughout Europe - Radical Islamist Terrorists like to murder innocent people by driving their vehicles into crowds of people. pic.twitter.com/hq7tRKYcbW

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) July 22, 2026

About 15 of the barriers now block the four main entrances. They tip upward on impact, changing a vehicle's trajectory and generating enough friction to halt a three-and-a-half-tonne truck travelling at 30 mph.

Councillors and organisers insist the move is simply a precaution. The multi-agency safety group that approved them included counter-terrorism officers.

Councillor Neghat Khan, leader of Nottingham City Council, described them as an "additional safety measure" installed "following advice from the multi-agency events safety advisory group, which includes counter-terrorism colleagues."

Event organiser James Mellors was more blunt: "I don't think they look very pretty. But the Market Square is a very high footfall area. It's not always about how things look, it's about keeping people safe."

A regular visitor, Amanda Hose Hawley, said she was "not surprised" and called the barriers "a sign of the climate we live in."

The language is careful, the justification technical. Yet the reason these barriers exist is no mystery.

Before uncontrolled mass immigration we did not need diversity barriers.

— Edward Oakenfull (@EdwardOakenfull) July 22, 2026

Across Europe, radical Islamists have repeatedly turned vehicles into weapons against ordinary people gathered in public spaces. Britain is simply catching up with the physical reality already visible on the Continent.

Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a country where the problem got resolved rather than putting in precautions for the problem!

— Kate leigh 86 (@KateLee86) July 22, 2026

Last winter German towns were forced into even more extreme measures. In the small Bavarian community of Külsheim, officials resorted to recycled anti-tank barriers pulled from old military barracks.

Four massive concrete blocks, each 1.4 metres wide and weighing several tonnes, were painted red and white and placed around the Christmas market.

The town's mayor, Simone Hickl-Seitz, explained the grim arithmetic: "They know exactly that all cities need this. But the coffers are empty."

Bollards that once cost €800 had risen tenfold in price because demand had exploded. The anti-tank relics saved the town €30,000.

That was not an isolated improvisation. Security spending on German Christmas markets rose 44 percent in three years, according to the Federal Association of City and Town Marketing.

Some towns simply cancelled their markets rather than meet the new requirements. The pressure intensified after the December 2024 Magdeburg attack, in which a Saudi national living in Germany for nearly two decades drove a vehicle through a Christmas market, killing six and injuring hundreds.

AfD politician Ulrich Siegmund cut through the official euphemisms: "Why do we need to protect Christmas markets? Go to Czech Republic, Poland - they haven't opened borders... We are losing our freedom bit by bit."

The same pattern has been documented in footage that circulated widely at the time. One widely viewed report showed Berlin's markets ringed by the same style of heavy concrete barriers once intended to stop invading armies, not shoppers buying Glühwein.

Britain's new portable barriers are lighter and more mobile, but they serve the identical purpose. Hostile vehicle mitigation has become standard guidance from the National Protective Security Authority.

Official documents now list crash-rated bollards, vehicle barriers and stand-off distances as core measures against "vehicle as a weapon" attacks.

Maybe enforcing the barriers called BORDERS and keeping the terrorists out of the country would be the more intelligent effort.

— Renomanz (@Renomanz) July 22, 2026

The threat is no longer theoretical. In October 2025 a man who pledged allegiance to Islamic State used a vehicle and a bladed weapon outside a Manchester synagogue, killing three. Other plots and attacks across Europe have followed the same method: low-skill, high-impact, directed at soft civilian targets.

The Nottingham installation is being described as a trial. Organisers say there was no specific intelligence of an imminent attack. That claim misses the larger point.

Permanent or semi-permanent barriers are appearing at markets, festivals, high streets and public squares precisely because the background risk has become chronic.

Before the era of mass, uncontrolled immigration from regions where Islamist ideology remains mainstream, British towns did not need steel ramps that can stop a truck.

Children played in squares without negotiating "filter" gaps between anti-ram devices. Christmas markets did not require military surplus concrete painted in festive colours.

Now the physical landscape of everyday life is being redesigned around the assumption that someone may try to drive a vehicle into a crowd of shoppers, holidaymakers or beachgoers. The barriers are painted bright red and labelled H-STOP so no one can claim they are invisible. Their very visibility is the admission.

The cost is not only financial. Every barrier is a quiet confession that the post-1990s experiment in open borders has produced a security environment European cities once associated with conflict zones.

Politicians continue to speak of "community cohesion" and "diversity as strength" while the practical response is to harden every public gathering against the most predictable form of attack.

Nottingham's beach will close at the end of the summer and the portable barriers will be stored away. The underlying problem will not. The same devices, or heavier permanent versions, will reappear at the next festival, the next market, the next Christmas period.

Local authorities are not inventing a threat; they are reacting to one that has already left bodies in European streets and forced democratic societies to turn festive spaces into fortified zones.

The choice facing Britain and the rest of the West remains the same one German politicians have already faced: continue importing the conditions that make these barriers necessary, or finally reverse the policies that created the danger in the first place. Concrete and steel can stop a truck. They cannot restore a country that no longer feels safe enough to gather without them.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 07:00

A US-Russian space crew landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Sunday after an eight-month stint on the International Space Station.

The Democratic Socialists of America are plotting to leverage their relationship with their comrade Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stage a radical takeover of New York City Schools.

The Hungarian GP is the last before the annual summer break.

"When you ask somebody to put $20 million or $30 million into a bank account [for a film], they wanna have an opinion and they're afraid and all that stuff," he said.

"When you ask somebody to put $20 million or $30 million into a bank account [for a film], they wanna have an opinion and they're afraid and all that stuff," he said.