08/01/2025 06:52
The Guardian
In today’s newsletter: The owner of X, who previously said ‘civil war is inevitable’ in Britain, has stoked online unrest with incendiary comments about the UKGood morning. What is a news story in the UK? Whatever Elon Musk says it is. That is the conclusion you might draw, anyway, from the influence of the billionaire Trump adviser’s posts on X claiming that “a quarter-million little girls were – still are – being systematically raped by migrant gangs in Britain”, and demanding a new public inquiry into historic child sexual exploitation in Oldham, Rotherham, Rochdale and elsewhere.There is no reliable basis for the quarter-million figure. In any case, Prof Alexis Jay, the chair of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales that looked extensively at grooming gang scandals and published a series of recommendations in 2022, said yesterday that “we’ve had enough of inquiries, consultations and discussions”, and urged the government to instead implement more of her proposals. But the political energy is still around the idea of a new inquiry as some sort of panacea, and the Conservatives will try to force a vote on one in parliament today.Social media | Meta will get rid of factcheckers, “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship” and recommend more political content on Facebook and Instagram, founder Mark Zuckerberg has said. The suite of changes was met with dismay by critics, who described them as “a full bending of the knee to Trump”.British army | Afghans who were killed by members of the SAS in Afghanistan were described dismissively as having been “flat packed”, according to a former member of the elite force’s sister unit. The soldier, known only as N1799, was giving evidence to an inquiry into the deaths of 80 civilians in Helmand province.California | A fast-moving wildfire erupted in Los Angeles on Tuesday, quickly consuming nearly 3,000 acres and destroying homes in an affluent community along the Pacific Ocean. Amid a significant windstorm across much of southern California, a second unrelated blaze also forced evacuations in a different part of Los Angeles.France | Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s far-right National Front party, who sent shock waves through the country when he made it to the second round of the presidential election in 2002, has died at 96.Drugs | Ketamine could be reclassified as a class A drug by the Home Office after illegal use reached record levels last year. Ministers are seeking “expert advice” on reclassification – it is currently a class B substance – after an estimated 299,000 people reported use of the drug in 2024. Continue reading...
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