The UK is on a slippery slope towards being in Donald Trump's sights
READ MORE: Where does the UK media draw the line on platforming far-right voices?
We are already on the slippery slope. He has the submarine base, and is at present negotiating a UK-USA trade deal which is unlikely to be in our favour. Add to that the BBC gaslighting and we see that the stage is set. We've had the Israeli 'version' of the attack on the ambulances and rescue teams, and add to that the IDF not taking responsibility for the deaths of 232 journalists.
We are indeed caught up in the right-wing 'news circuit'. Time for Scotland to take the plunge and be independent.
Paul Gillon
Leven
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Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Inside story of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein's friendship after Elon Musk suggested the President appeared in FBI files. So what's the truth about claims of topless girls?
Like two fractious little boys trading playground insults they know are escalating out of control, the pair had been sparring all day – until one of them finally blurted out the slur he knew might end their friendship for ever. 'Time to drop the really big bomb,' wrote Elon Musk on his social media platform X on Thursday afternoon. ' Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!' Musk didn't offer any clarifying evidence but soon added: 'Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.' The extraordinary implosion of the friendship and alliance between the world's richest man and the world's most powerful man has proved mesmerising. But with this thin-skinned pair of blowhards there was always a sense that their friendship could end in recrimination sooner or later. And any possibility of a truce, Washington and Silicon Valley insiders predicted yesterday, has disappeared after Musk effectively pressed the nuclear button. Although he didn't precisely spell out the accusation, Musk was clearly implying that the US government was concealing the truth about Trump's dealings with the notorious late financier and paedophile. It is no secret that Trump associated with Epstein, even if he has been reluctant to admit it. They moved in the same moneyed social circles in Palm Beach, Florida, from the late 1980s until 2004, when they fell out spectacularly over a property deal. Along with the likes of Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton, Trump is one among many powerful people known to have associated with Epstein and who have been mentioned in court documents related to the financier's decades of sexual abuse. Before he was re-elected President last November, Trump said he would have 'no problem' releasing the so-called Epstein Files, the remaining documents from the major FBI investigation into the multi-millionaire, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 ahead of his trial on sex-trafficking charges. While critics have challenged Trump's initial insistence that he barely knew Epstein – pointing out that they were most certainly friends (a fact Trump has since acknowledged) – there has been no evidence that the future President was complicit in Epstein's crimes. However, that hasn't prevented Trump's name being mentioned in some of the conspiracy theories swirling for months over why the US government has still not released the files. Predictably, within hours of Musk dropping his 'really big bomb', some of his 220 million followers on X were dutifully stirring the pot by circulating old evidence of the pre-scandal Trump-Epstein friendship. Musk retweeted several examples, adding a raised-eyebrow emoji. They included a 1992 TV news report on a party at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach resort and home, in which Epstein and the future President can be seen talking animatedly with each other as they stand watching a crowd of dancing cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins, two American football teams. They point to some of the women and Trump, gesturing to one, appears to say: 'Look at her back there, she's hot'. He then whispers in the financier's ear, leading Epstein to double over in laughter. Musk also retweeted a passage from a 2002 magazine article about Epstein in which Trump said: 'I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. 'It is even said he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.' Trump biographer Michael Wolff threw fresh fuel on the fire yesterday, when he claimed to have seen damning evidence from those years – evidence that Trump would never want made public. This supposedly included lewd images of Trump and the sex offender. 'I have seen these pictures. I know that these pictures exist and I can describe them,' Wolff told the Daily Beast. 'There are about a dozen of them. The one I specifically remember is the two of them with topless girls... sitting on Trump's lap. And then Trump standing there with a stain on the front of his pants [trousers] and three or four girls kind of bent over in laughter – they're topless, too – pointing at Trump's pants.' Wolff believes the alleged incriminating photos could have been in Epstein's safe when the FBI raided his New York home after his arrest in 2019. The Trump campaign dismissed Wolff's claims about the photos when he first made them last November just before the presidential election, saying: 'Michael Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics.' But according to Wolff, Trump and Epstein 'shared girlfriends, they shared airplanes, they shared business strategy, they shared tax advice… they were inseparable'. The well-connected writer added, the lives of the two men intersected 'in a very meaningful and profound way… these guys kind of made each other'. Trump bought the Mar-a-Lago mansion and estate for a bargain $10 million in 1985 – and then Epstein purchased his own Palm Beach mansion two miles away five years later. Although Epstein never became a member of Mar-a-Lago, which includes a private members' club, he would visit for parties. The two men also dined together at Epstein's Manhattan mansion and travelled together between New York and Palm Beach, the most famous of Florida's billionaires' playgrounds. Trump and Epstein were photographed together repeatedly at Mar-a-Lago during the 1990s and early 2000s – Trump always wearing a tie, Epstein never wearing one. They were pictured with model Ingrid Seynhaeve at a 1997 Victoria's Secret party in New York. And they were photographed partying with Prince Andrew and enjoying a 'double date' at a celebrity tennis tournament with their respective girlfriends, Melania Knauss and Ghislaine Maxwell. In fact, Epstein boasted to friends that he had introduced Melania – now First Lady – to the future president. (Neither of the Trumps has corroborated this). Trump was between marriages at the time and enjoying his image as a playboy billionaire. His parties in New York and Florida were packed with models, cheerleaders and beauty-pageant contestants thanks to his business links. He owned a modelling agency and an American football team, and ran the Miss Universe pageant. The Mar-a-Lago parties, said eye witnesses, were memorable for the fact that women far outnumbered men, often by ten to one. Trump admitted as much in a 2015 interview, saying he'd been single at the time and adding: 'The point was to have fun. It was wild.' In 1992, Trump arranged for a 'calendar girl' competition for VIP guests at Mar-a-Lago. The 28 attractive contestants found they were competing in front of just two men – Trump and Epstein. The organiser of this vulgar contest, George Houraney, told the New York Times in 2019 that he tried unsuccessfully to raise his concerns about Epstein's involvement. 'I said, "Look, Donald, I know Jeff really well, I can't have him going after younger girls",' Houraney recalled. '[Trump] said, "Look I'm putting my name on this. I wouldn't put my name on it and have a scandal."' Mr Houraney claimed he 'pretty much had to ban Jeff from my events', but that Trump didn't seem to care. A former Trump adviser Roger Stone claimed in 2016 that Trump 'turned down many invitations to Epstein's hedonistic private island and his Palm Beach home', but insisted that he did visit the latter at least once and saw a bevy of underage girls there. 'The swimming pool was filled with beautiful young girls,' Trump later told a Mar-a-Lago member, according to Stone. '"How nice," I thought, "he let the neighbourhood kids use his pool".' Epstein would bring Maxwell to Trump events, too. Often referred to as Epstein's 'madam', the former socialite is now behind bars in the US following her 2022 sex-trafficking conviction. Steven Hoffenberg, a former Epstein business partner who was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme, said Trump 'liked' Epstein but he was 'crazy about Maxwell, a very charming lady'. A court filing would later reveal how Epstein's famous little black book of phone numbers contained 14 numbers for Trump, Melania and key Trump insiders. 'They were good friends,' Epstein's brother Mark told the Washington Post of Trump and Epstein in 2019. 'I know [Trump] is trying to distance himself, but they were.' Mark said Trump even used to give Epstein's mother and aunt free perks at one of his casino hotels in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Another insider who knew Trump and Epstein back then told the New York Post: 'They were tight. They were each other's wingmen.' Alan Dershowitz, a US lawyer who represented Epstein, recalled: 'In those days, if you didn't know Trump and you didn't know Epstein, you were a nobody.' Eventually, they fell out in 2004 when they both tried to snap up the same Palm Beach property, a mansion called Maison de l'Amitie (ironically, the House of Friendship) which was being sold cheap in a bankruptcy sale. Both of them attempted to lobby the trustee handling the sale before the auction. 'It was something like, Donald saying, "You don't want to do a deal with him, he doesn't have the money," while Epstein was saying: "Donald is all talk. He doesn't have the money",' recalled the trustee, Joseph Luzinski. The break-up was well-timed for Trump, as just a few months later, Palm Beach police started investigating claims that Epstein was sexually abusing local schoolgirls. In 2008, Epstein served 13 months behind bars in Florida after admitting 'solicitation of a minor for prostitution', so by the time Trump was running for president in 2016, he would have been keen to downplay this connection. In 2016, his lawyer insisted Trump had 'no relationship' with Epstein, adding: 'They were not friends and they did not socialise together.' A day after Epstein was arrested in New York three years later, Trump – by now President – announced that he hadn't spoken to him for 15 years and that: 'I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.' Trump staff stressed that he had once kicked Epstein out of his Palm Beach golf club. But others countered that, at one time, he most certainly had been a fan. Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide, claimed his boss 'would hang out with Epstein because he was rich'. He said he warned Trump about his Epstein links before his first White House run against Hillary Clinton. However, the aide alleged, Trump was confident that thanks to a close friend who owned the tabloid National Enquirer and who claimed to have compromising pictures of Bill Clinton on Epstein's Caribbean island, Epstein would cause more problems for the Clintons than he would for him. Trump has insisted he never visited Epstein's so-called 'orgy island' – the alleged location of some of his worst offences – in the US Virgin Islands, saying: 'I was never on Epstein's Plane, or at his 'stupid' island.' However, in February this year, US attorney general, Pam Bondi, released Epstein's flight logs which showed the president's name appearing seven times. The first flight on the financier's private jet was in October 1993 and on at least two journeys, Trump was joined not only by Epstein but by his then-wife Marla Maples, along with their daughter Tiffany and a nanny. Epstein owned several planes and it's possible Trump was specifically denying flying on the one dubbed the 'Lolita Express' for the sordid sex that reportedly occurred on board. When Musk notoriously called a British expat cave diver a 'paedo guy' after they clashed online over the 2018 cave rescue in Thailand, he ended up having to defend himself in a US libel trial (which he eventually won). Time will tell how Trump will take revenge on his former 'First Buddy' and his 'big bomb' claim that the President of the United States of America has something unsettling to hide over Jeffrey Epstein.
The Independent
30 minutes ago
- The Independent
Warning UK's housing crisis will deepen if Reeves makes further cuts in spending review
It comes as the struggle between the Treasury and Angela Rayner 's Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government over its budget continues, just days before Ms Reeves is set to outline the spending plans until the next election on Wednesday. With no agreement having been reached on housing, the chief executive of one of Britain's largest housing associations has raised the alarm that of a 'cliff edge' over building more homes – which means money is set to run out by 2026. The warning from Fiona Fletcher-Smith, chief executive of L&Q and until last week chair of the G15 group of London housing associations, comes as the Local Government Association (LGA) has warned that 51 per cent of councils are now running deficits on their housing budgets. Homeless charities are also warning of an impending crisis with new supply unable to keep up with increasing demand for social housing. Crisis has pointed out that over the past 10 years there has been a net loss of more than 180,000 social homes in England. Currently, 1.33 million households in England are currently stuck on council waiting lists for a social home. Ms Fletcher-Smith explained that the problem began with George Osborne's austerity budgets in 2010 when he slashed 63 per cent of the capital budget to build new homes. She said he then 'welched' on a deal to allow them to make up for the loss by charging CPI inflation plus 1 per cent in rent. which housing associations and councils now want restored for a decade. This will allow them to borrow money to build as it comes through as guaranteed income. The cumulative effect now means that housing associations no longer have the funds to build projects. Ms Fletcher-Smith said: 'Housing decisions are so long, it's not just planning permission, you've got to get all utilities, everything else lined up to build. It's a five to seven years to run in to build housing. We could see from our own predictions, we were just going to go off cliff edge, by 2025/2026.' The sector is also still struggling with the impact of the Grenfell fire tragedy in 2017, with thousands of homes now subject to problems with cladding which is costing them £2.6bn in London alone. In London alone, £4 million a month is being spent on 'keeping people in temporary accommodation' because homes with cladding are too dangerous to return to and clogged courts mean legal cases to fix the problem are taking years. Ms Fletcher-Smith also noted that the 'combination of Brexit, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine' has hit the sector not least with inflation which saw building materials go up as much as 30 per cent well above the 11 per cent peak of the headline rate. There are now fears that Ms Reeves and the Treasury will force cuts to the housing budget to balance the books as the chancellor seeks to ringfence health spending, increase defence to 2.5 per cent of GDP and water down proposals on benefit cuts as well as U-turn on ending the winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners. The deputy prime minister is leading a charge to protect budgets and instead push for a series of wealth taxes on big corporations and millionaires. But this has been resisted by Ms Reeves. However, the fears over housing are shared by homeless charities who are calling for 90,000 new social housing homes to be built per year. Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, said: 'This spending review is an opportunity for significant investment to start to see homelessness levels come down. 'Small tweaks aren't enough to fix the problems we face.' Mairi MacRae, director of policy and campaigns at Shelter, said: 'With homelessness at a record high and councils spending huge chunks of their budgets just to keep families off the streets, now is the time to invest in building social rent homes, not cut back." The issue is also vexing Labour backbenchers looking at the party's slide in the polls. One Labour MP said cuts in this area would cause upset among backbenchers, especially those with seats in areas with councils that are already on the verge of collapse. Another pointed out that Labour's flagship housing pledge 'means nothing if the current stock of social housing suffers" as a result of cuts. The government provides financial support to local authorities for social housing provision, including funding for new builds, repairs, and improvements. Commenting on the finding that 51 per cent of councils running a deficit with housing, the LGA warned: 'These trends are not sustainable. There is a growing risk to the financial sustainability of some councils' HRAs, and revenue pressures in councils' HRAs are now being passed directly into their HRA capital programmes.' In the Autumn Statement, the government announced over £5 billion total housing investment in 2025/26 to boost supply, including a £500m extension to the current Affordable Homes Programme which runs out in 2026. At the Spring Statement, the government announced a down payment of £2bn for a successor programme. To make it cheaper for councils to finance new development, the government has extended the preferential borrowing rate available for council house building from the Public Works Loan Board until the end of 2025/26.
Telegraph
36 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Asylum seeker suspected of recruiting child soldiers can stay in Britain
An asylum seeker suspected of recruiting child soldiers for the Tamil Tigers has won a human rights case to stay in Britain. The Sri Lankan has been allowed to remain in the UK despite claims he had 'enlisted children under the age of 15' in the militant group. The French justice system previously ruled that he should be denied asylum in France due to the allegations, an immigration tribunal heard. However, British judges ruled that there was not enough evidence to say the allegations were true, and he has been granted refugee status. The Home Office, which attempted to deport him, tried to fight the ruling, but lost its appeal. The identity of the migrant has not been revealed as he was granted anonymity by the Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber. The hearing, in London, was told that before he arrived in the UK, the Sri Lankan was alleged to have recruited child soldiers for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) - also known as the Tamil Tigers. The LTTE is a militant terrorist organisation founded in Sri Lanka. It was heard that the unnamed Sri Lankan was working for the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) - a refugee charity - but was secretly supplying information. Before arriving in the UK, the French asylum court - the Cour nationale du droit d'asile - found that he 'ought to be excluded from a grant of asylum under Article 1F of the Refugee Convention due to his alleged involvement in war crimes, in this case the alleged recruitment of children'. In Britain, the Home Office refused him refugee status, but in 2023, he won an appeal at the First-tier Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber against the decision. At the time, the judge found that the Home Office 'had not shown serious grounds for concluding that [the Sri Lankan] was guilty of the war crime of conscription or enlistment of children under the age of 15 or using them to participate actively in hostilities'. The judge at the 2023 hearing concluded: 'I am not satisfied even on the evidence of his own admissions, accurate or otherwise, to the French that this goes far enough to show that the [Sri Lankan] was effectively collecting information which he knew was going to be misused, and misused specifically for the recruitment of child soldiers under the age of 15. 'Nor am I satisfied that there are serious reasons for considering on all the evidence adduced that the [respondent] has been shown to have knowingly materially assisted in the recruitment of child soldiers under the age of 15, by the work done by the TRO in gathering information, possibly subsequently used by the LTTE for that purpose.' The Home Office appealed that decision at the Upper Tribunal, but lost its case. Home Office lawyers argued that the judge in 2023 did not attach enough weight to the French court decision. Lawyers argued that the judge 'ought to have followed the French Court and that inadequate reasons were given by the judge for not doing so'. But, Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Adrian Seelhoff ruled that the 2023 hearing considered the French decision 'extensively'. Judge Seelhoff said: 'The Judge assessed that evidence to see if it supported the [Home Office's] case that [the Sri Lankan], whilst working for the TRO, supplied details which the LTTE used to recruit child soldiers. '[The Home Office's] position before us was not that the judge was bound to follow the French court decision, but that he had not given adequate reasons for reaching a different decision or that he failed to attach weight to the decision. 'We find that the judge did give adequate reasons for not following that decision, and for the weight he attached to it and that accordingly there is no error of law in the decision under appeal.'
