Back Into The EU? - A Plan, Yes, But What A Disastrous One!

 Latest analysis suggests Britain would have had to hand over the same amount of money this year to the EU as Labour claim they needed to fix the "black hole" in the economy.

Tory MPs issue Brexit warning over EU attempts to rip up fishing deal Steph Spyro Sandeel fishing is banned in the North Sea in an effort to protect the marine ecosystem and seabirds

Pro-Brexit research group Facts4EU say the UK Treasury would have needed to contribute £22.3 billion to the eurocrats in Brussels if the nation was still part of the political bloc.

Birdies.

 

A Pivotal Centre Point of Christianity.

Reform UK - Moving Ever Onwards!

 https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/01/04/establishment-crumbling-labour-voters-flock-to-farages-reform-uk-over-mass-migration-mega-poll-finds/

Much Movement To Orthodox Churches.

The young men leaving traditional churches for ‘masculine’ Orthodox Christianity.

New parishes planned across US to accommodate ‘tsunami’ of young men who have converted since pandemic

Seraphim Holland, a priest at the St Nicholas Orthodox Church in McKinney, Texas, has witnessed a surge of converts in recent years Credit: James Breeden/Breeden Media LLC

Susie CoenUS Correspondent

04 January 2025 5:15pm GMT

Young, single men are flocking to the Orthodox church after discovering the “masculine” Christian religion through online influencers.

Some converts said they felt disillusioned with the “feminisation” of the Protestant church and were attracted to the “authenticity” of Orthodoxy, which they claim pushes them physically and mentally.

Priests are now planning to open new parishes to accommodate the “tsunami” of young men who have converted since the pandemic.

They say that most of the new converts found the Orthodox church by watching YouTube videos or listening to podcasts.

Matthew Ryan, a former atheist, found Orthodoxy after he saw a comment about good and evil on YouTube after “hitting rock bottom”.

The science teacher, 41, who had moved to Salt Lake City in 2022 to escape New York’s “draconian” Covid rules, began researching the Bible.

This eventually led him to a one-hour YouTube video in which a Protestant visits an Orthodox church and speaks to a priest.

“I watched that, and I was like, OK, this makes a lot of sense,” Mr Ryan said.

“What really drew me to Orthodoxy… was the structure, the guidance, the authenticity and the historicity”, he said.

Mr Ryan, who was baptised into the Orthodox church in September, is among scores of men who have joined the strict church since the pandemic.

Matthew Ryan, a former atheist, was attracted to the Orthodox church by ‘the structure, the guidance, the authenticity and the historicity’

A 2023 survey by the Orthodox Studies Institute of Orthodox clergy in 20 parishes across 15 states found there had been a 80 per cent increase in the number of converts to the Orthodox church in 2022, compared with pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

Of these, 60 per cent were men, compared with 54 per cent in 2019.

Many of them had been drawn to the “masculine” nature of church, which puts emphasis on denial and pushing yourself physically.

Worshippers must stand for long services, which can last upwards of five hours. They must fast, too, sometimes for up to 40 days.

This, some felt, was in stark contrast to other religious denominations where they felt the church had been “feminised”.

Emmanuel Castillo, 32, converted to the Orthodox church in 2019, a journey that started when he began reading the Bible while he was guarding al-Qaeda prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

The former wrestler belonged to a Protestant church, but felt his services were not too different to his Saturday night in a bar.

They had the “same kind of lighting, same kind of music, same kind of the same feeling, and after reading the gospels and the book of Acts, you know, I knew that’s not how they worshiped 2000 years ago, I kind of knew, hey, I’m, I don’t think I’m in the right church.”

Searching for something he felt “embodied the teachings and practices of the early Christians”, in 2018 he found St Ignatius Orthodox Christian Church near his home in Mesa, Arizona.

Emmanuel Castillo began reading the Bible while he was guarding al-Qaeda prisoners in Guantanamo Bay Credit: Instagram

The father of two, who has since left the military, was baptised the following year.

His Instagram page is filled with images showing off his muscular physique alongside quotes from Bible verses.

Mr Castillo is open about his faith with his thousands of online followers and receives scores of messages from young men interested in the Orthodox church.

He believes part of the surge in men converting to the Orthodox church is a rejection of the “feminisation” of other denominations.

“It’s unfortunate that feminism has kind of sunk its teeth into all of our organisations to include Christianity,” he told The Telegraph.

He said that at Protestant churches, the majority of the leaders “aren’t good, strong men”, whereas the Orthodox church leaders are more like “father figures”.

He said: “They look like men. They look like fathers, they’re strong, spiritually, mentally, physically... I think young men right now are yearning to follow a good father.”

Jesus Christ, he thinks, is the “perfect example of masculinity”, someone capable “of calling down all of Heaven’s armies to destroy his enemies” but who instead chose to serve others.

“I’m very comfortable with physicality and because of my Orthodox faith, I’m also very comfortable at just, you know, being soft and kind... but being capable also of violence towards, you know, those who would do harm to those I love... I think young men, too, they want that.”

Mr Castillo, right, thinks part of the surge in men converting to the Orthodox church is a rejection of the ‘feminisation’ of other denominations Credit: Instagram

Father Paul Truebenbach agrees that part of what is drawing young men to the Orthodox church is because they “naturally want to be masculine, in the most positive sense of the word”.

Fr Truebenbach, who was the priest Mr Ryan watched on YouTube video when he was looking into Orthodoxy, has seen the number of converts in his congregation triple since the pandemic. Most of these are single, young men in their 20s.

“It’s a tougher form of Christianity... I think a lot of men have embraced that and realised this is a form of self-denial with real results that actually brings peace and joy to the heart like nothing else”, said Fr Truebenbach, of Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Salt Lake City.

He said that men in his parish have started taking cold plunges, as well as making their fasts more extreme to push themselves.

Father Timothy Pavlatos, who leads St Katherine Greek Orthodox Church in Chandler, Arizona, agrees that the “challenge” of the Orthodox church appeals to many young men.

“Orthodoxy is challenging in the physical sense too, and it requires a lot... they live in a world where it’s instant gratification and just take what you want, what you feel you want, what you think you need, Orthodoxy is the opposite of that, it’s denying yourself.”

Whereas before the pandemic a maximum of six people would convert annually, this year he currently has 29 catechumens – people studying the Orthodox faith.

Of these, he said, the majority found the church online.

He had to enlist volunteers to help with the “tsunami of people coming in” and they are looking at starting new Orthodox churches nearby.

Mr Castillo with his family in church Credit: Instagram

Dr Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, an assistant professor of religion and anthropology at Northeastern University, whose research looks at recent Orthodox converts in the US, said that she started seeing an increase in people seeking out Orthodoxy from 2016.

She said this increased “dramatically” during the pandemic, to what she refers to in her upcoming book as the “Covid conversion period”.

She told The Telegraph: “We were at home for a lot of 2020 and even some of 2021, people had time to create content and find content online, and we saw in that period the rise of young males and males in general, who were Orthodox or interested in becoming Orthodox, creating content for people to find Orthodox.”

She said part of the appeal to young men is there is a phenomenon called “muscular Christianity” and the desire for “a sort of strong man religion”, which she said is not unique to Orthodoxy.

“You have people finding Orthodoxy and saying, ‘Hey, this is sort of masculine, this is militarised, this is really hard on my body, it’s aesthetically challenging”, she said.

But she added that alongside the language of strictness and militarisation, she has noticed “problematic ideological issues”, such as misogyny, voiced by some converts online.

It is hard to get an accurate picture of how many Orthodox Christians there are in the US because of a lack of data.

The most up-to-date figures are from 2010, when the Pew Research Center found that 0.5 per cent of the US population was Orthodox.

Seraphim Holland, a priest at the St Nicholas Orthodox Church in McKinney, Texas, has also witnessed the surge of converts in recent years.

His congregation has tripled in size since the pandemic, and the main temple cannot accommodate the 200 people who attend the church on Sundays, so there are now two services.

The congregation has tripled in size since the pandemic at St Nicholas Orthodox Church in McKinney, Texas Credit: James Breeden/Breeden Media LLC

Most of the new converts found the church online and around 60 per cent are unmarried men.

Mr Holland said that one aspect that appeals to newcomers is that while other churches are being drawn into rows about cultural issues, such as debates around the LGBTQ community, the Orthodox church does not shift.

Подворье Новгородского Зверина Покровского женского монастыря - Церко…

“I think there’s a lot with those sorts of things... society kind of goes to the new thing, and people feel pressured to believe the new thing, to talk about the new thing, to accept the new thing. We don’t feel that pressure”, he said.

He added: “We are not anti-LGBTQ... we are pro-Christian morality.”

There are now two services on Sundays to accommodate the 200 people who attend St Nicholas Orthodox Church Credit: James Breeden/Breeden Media LLC

One of the recent converts at Mr Holland’s parish is Longin, 23, who found his Protestant church started to feel “empty” to him.

The small-engine mechanic, who had been studying theology at the time, became interested in the Orthodox church when he began hearing about the “martyrs” who had been persecuted.

This, combined with the world “shutting down” during the pandemic, prompted him “to look for something that gave me that same drive, which I guess the evangelical church didn’t really have”, he said.

Longin, 23, a recent convert at St Nicholas Orthodox Church who found his Protestant church started to feel ‘empty’ to him Credit: James Breeden/Breeden Media LLC

“You have the worship, you know, the guitars and the drums and stuff, and then you sit down for a sermon, and then that’s kind of it, you know,” he said.

This was in stark contrast to the Orthodox church in McKinney, Texas, where he found worshippers standing for lengthy services.

“I just went to go see and I haven’t really looked back since,” he said. DT.

More Lies From Labour in 6 Months Than From The Tories in Six Decades.

 https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1996184/rachel-reeves-exposed-lie-policy-falls-apart?int_source=nba

Anti-Semitism Reigns Supreme In Our Sick World.

The true Palestinian cause.

As Jews are targeted, thousands in the west are parroting falsehoods about Israel.

Melanie Phillips Jan 5

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, meets Hitler, November 28 1941

The tsunami of Jew-hatred that we’re living through has left many in a state of stunned disbelief.

It seems incredible that thousands of people in Britain and the west are parroting falsehoods about Israel that aren’t only outright lies and wilful distortions — such as accusing the IDF of killing journalists and hospital patients when these are actually terrorists — but are also demonstrably ridiculous, such as the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, where the population has increased by 2.02 per cent since the start of the war (according to the CIA factbook).

Jews are being unambiguously targeted. Many Jewish authors can’t get published. Artists, writers and performers have said they’re being frozen out of British cultural life because they refuse to describe Israeli actions in Gaza as genocidal.

It’s as if Britain and the west have gone through the looking glass into a nightmarish, Orwellian world where the meaning of language has been reversed and lies have become unchallengeable truths.

Of course, antisemitism is always with us. But how can so many subscribe to the same insane obsessions and blood libels which, under both Nazism and medieval Christianity, presented the Jews as driven by a lust for money and power to form a murderous and demonic conspiracy against the rest of the world? How can so many in the west have simply lost their minds like this?

To anyone who’s been paying attention to the Middle East over the decades, the answer is obvious. For these claims are all too familiar. They are tropes relentlessly voiced by the Palestinian Arabs — including the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority.

A few weeks ago, a PA official said on PA TV that Jews controlled the media and so had convinced the world of the “lie” that atrocities were committed by Palestinians on October 7 2023.

In a June sermon on PA TV, a popular Muslim preacher declared that Palestinian Muslims didn’t want a state but wanted to kill all Jews for the sake of Allah. Jews, he ranted, “always conspire against humanity, not only against Muslims but against humanity as a whole,” and passed down their “malignant” and “cursed” genes from generation to generation.

In May, a columnist wrote on the website of the official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, that the war had seen a “stream of Israeli holocausts and massacres,” with “Israeli vampires” in the government “dancing the dances of death and crime, while they drink the blood of Palestinian children – and they have yet to satiate their thirst”.

Two months into the war, the top PA official Jibril Rajoub stated: “The Americans, Europeans, and others were deceived to think that the Jew is a victim. The truth is that he is a criminal, a terrorist, and a distorted form of the fascism and Nazism of the last century.”

These aren’t marginal statements from a few extremists. As anyone can see from the websites of MEMRI or Palestinian Media Watch, they pour out of Palestinian Arab society without remission.

Deranged fear and hatred of Jews and the aim of exterminating them define the Palestinian cause — which happens to be the signature cause of the west’s progressive classes.

Western liberals equate this cause with conscience and doing good in the world, even though it’s the precise opposite. Such progressives therefore regard these poisonous tropes of Nazi-style Jew-hatred as understandable and justifiable.

Why, then, is anyone surprised when western liberals seriously entertain the insane idea that Israeli Jews are Nazis and child-killing perpetrators of apartheid or genocide?

The only proper response is to call out these Palestinian lies. But instead of regarding them as a collective psychopathology, politicians and media stoke the flames of Jew-hatred by themselves parroting the propaganda about Israel behaving unconscionably.

Left-wing governments that ideologically support the Palestinian cause, and also kowtow to Muslim constituencies in which Jew-hatred is rife, shockingly recycle the lies about Israel. The worst offenders have been the governments in Britain, Australia and Canada. No surprise, therefore, that Jew-hatred in those countries is now so brazen, pervasive and extreme.

Alas, too many Jews are also part of this madness. They support the Palestinian Arab cause out of a misplaced sense of fairness, a craving for fashionable approval or extreme ignorance about Jewish and Middle East history. So instead of calling out genocidal acts and fabricated claims of Palestinian Arabs, these so-called “moderate” Jews redouble support for a “two-state solution” as a response to exterminatory aggression.

Jew-hatred has not only been normalised. It’s been rebranded as social justice because support for Palestinianism, which seeks to write the Jews out of their country, their history, and the world, is what now passes for a moral sense among swathes of the public, the entire intelligentsia and even — heaven help us — many Jews.

Let’s not hear any protests that you were once a member of Habonim or have a holiday home in Herzliya or have had to unfriend former chums on Facebook because they’ve callously ignored the Israeli hostages. If you support the Palestinian Arab cause today, you are facilitating deranged and murderous Jew-hatred. Own it.

Jewish Chronicle

Grooming Gangs - What Has REALLY Been Happening!

DAN HODGES: The moral case for a full judicial inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal is unanswerable... but this is the REAL reason Labour is refusing to order one.

By DAN HODGES, MAIL ON SUNDAY

Published: 16:53 GMT, 4 January 2025

Imagine the following horror. After years of cover-ups, buck-passing and obfuscation, it is revealed a nationwide network of white paedophiles has been raping, murdering and torturing black and Asian children and teenagers. It emerges the gangs were operating in the open, with the full knowledge and tacit consent of local council leaders, officials and the police.

The scale of the abuse was so vast, entire towns were effectively turned into rape camps. And underpinning the campaign of abuse was a single, malign factor. Race. The girls had been specifically targeted because of the colour of their skin.

What would be the reaction of the political establishment to this outrage? In particular, what would be the reaction of politicians on the liberal Left? Those principled champions of racial tolerance and diversity who – rightly – rushed to the barricades to denounce the Windrush scandal, the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the death of George Floyd.

We all know the answer. They would be out on the streets. Cries of 'no justice, no peace' would echo across our major metropolis. Inquiries would be demanded daily. Prosecutions. The perpetrators, and those whose apathy had enabled the reign of terror, would be vilified. Knees would be taken in support of the victims. It would be framed as one of the greatest scandals of post-war Britain.

The victims were last week treated to a cold, sterile rejection of their appeals for justice by Labour Minister Jess Phillips (pictured), Dan Hodges writes

But that isn't what's happened. The scandal has indeed been exposed. But the perpetrators were predominantly British-Pakistani men, not white. Their prey almost exclusively white, not black.

So instead of an outpouring of righteous anger, the victims were last week treated to a cold, sterile rejection of their appeals for justice by Labour Minister Jess Phillips.

Responding to a call from Oldham Council for a full-scale government inquiry into the abuse, she replied: 'It is for Oldham Council alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the Government to intervene.'

Phillip's rebuff generated a predictable storm of condemnation from her political opponents. Much of which can be quickly dismissed.

'The time is long overdue for a full national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal,' Kemi Badenoch declared. Conveniently forgetting that in 2022 her own government rejected a similar call, telling Oldham Council: 'The Government continues to be clear that it is for the local authorities in individual towns and cities, which are responsible for delivering local services, to commission local inquiries.'

Read More

DAN HODGES: Why Labour bigwigs already wonder if this will be Starmer's only Xmas in Downing Street 

Elon Musk, displaying the latest symptoms of his increasingly virulent Starmer Derangement Syndrome, took to X to rage: 'Who is the boss of Jess Phillips right now? Keir Starmer. The real reason she's refusing to investigate the rape gangs is that it would obviously lead to the blaming of Keir Starmer (head of the Crown Prosecution Service at the time).'

Yet in reality Starmer introduced a series of reforms when he was Director of Public Prosecutions that led to many of the rapists finally being brought to justice, including establishing a new national network of over 80 specialist prosecutors, a Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel and a 'victim's right to review', which finally gave the abused the right to challenge any decision not to prosecute.

But the ranting of Musk, and cynical politicking of Badenoch, cannot obscure a basic truth. Which is that the abuse of thousands of white, working-class children by predominantly Muslim, Pakistani-heritage men is one of the worst and most shaming events in our nation's history. And the moral and rational case for a full judicial inquiry is unanswerable.

The raving of the online conspiracy theorists also cannot be allowed to mask another truth. Which is it that it is once again the toxic intersection of race and politics that really lies behind the Government's decision to reject an inquiry.

The perpetrators of the abuse were, in the main, Muslim men. And Keir Starmer, his MPs and his Government are currently terrified of offending the Muslim community.

At the Election, significant numbers of Muslim voters turned on Labour. In Leicester South, a 22,000 Labour majority was overturned as Shadow Paymaster-General Jonathan Ashworth lost his seat to Muslim independent Shockat Adam, who triumphantly declared his victory was 'for Gaza'.

In Birmingham Perry Barr, a 15,000 Labour majority was lost. In Dewsbury and Batley a notional 14,000 majority. In Blackburn, a majority of 18,000.

This is what is driving Labour's policy on the rape gangs. Fear. Fear of further upsetting their Muslim base and losing seats as a result.

We see evidence of it every week. In Keir Starmer's meek reply to a call from one of his own Muslim MPs for an effective blasphemy law. The Government's callow response to the debate over a ban on first-cousin marriage. The decision to impose a partial arms embargo on Israel.

Abdul Rauf, Mohammed Sajid and Kabeer Hassan were jailed for their involvement in a child sex exploitation ring

Abdul Aziz, Mohammed Amin and Adil Khan (L-R) - three of the nine members of child sex exploitation ring from Rochdale and Oldham

And we can see it most of all in the mealy-mouthed response of Jess Phillips, putative Minister for Safeguarding And Violence Against Women And Girls.

There is no politician of any party who has a more formidable track record of highlighting and combatting gender-based abuse than Phillips. During her time working for Women's Aid, she helped protect countless women and girls from domestic abuse, sexual exploitation and human trafficking.

But at the Election, her majority was slashed by the pro-Palestinian crusaders. So even she has now been cowed.

Revealing again what really lies at the heart of the so-called grooming scandal. Yes, they were horrific crimes of unspeakable violence. But they were also crimes motivated by racial hatred.

The testimony of the survivors is clear. 'I was called a 'white slag' and 'white c***' as they beat me,' one recounted. 'They made it clear that because I was a non-Muslim, and not a virgin, and because I didn't dress 'modestly', that they believed I deserved to be 'punished'.'

Now those survivors are being punished again. Their call for the nation to bear full and formal witness to their suffering casually and callously dismissed. And they are being punished for the same reason they were initially targeted. Because they are white, and their attackers are predominantly Muslim.

We do not need to indulge the deranged conspiracies of Elon Musk and his acolytes. The way the British political establishment has betrayed – and continues to betray – the victims of the Muslim rape gangs is shame enough.

MOS.