Homeowners are being forced to tear out air conditioning from their private properties under climate laws, despite rising temperatures.

Council planning officers ordered residents to remove air-con units over fears they produce too much carbon dioxide, stating they should only be used as a “last resort”.

The net zero clampdown is part of building regulations that state “active cooling” should only ever be allowed when all other means of “passive cooling”, such as opening windows or using fans, have been exhausted.

The Tories said Britain was being “kept in the dark ages” under a net zero mindset that denies people “modern conveniences that are completely normal in other countries”.

It’s not happening everywhere in Britain, but it’s happening. And it’s a reminder that the commitment to liberty in Britain and in much of Europe is lukewarm at best.

Of course, our own leftists are salivating at the chance to do the same here – to exercise more and more control over every aspect of people’s lives “for our own good.”

Plus, Europe has been experiencing a heat wave of major proportions:

Temperatures soared to record highs from Switzerland to the Czech Republic and Denmark on Saturday, as a heat wave that baked western European countries this week moved to central and eastern parts of the continent.

Unusually high temperatures were recorded even in the Nordic countries not known for sweltering summers. Denmark’s Meteorological Institute reported a record 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in Ødum north of Aarhus — the warmest day since records there began in 1874. …

Germany’s famous Autobahn was overwhelmed, too, as temperatures were expected to hit 40 C (104 F). In two places outside Berlin, the concrete of the A2 burst due to the high temperatures and the highway had to be closed. …

The Czech Republic also saw its hottest day on record, with 40.8 C (105.4 F) in the northern town of Doksany. Forecasters said it may still rise.

That’s hot, all right. But in the US, not all that unusual. Even the New England states reach high levels at times, with record highs generally more in the 105-107 vicinity.

As a young child, I lived without air conditioning in New York, in a home that didn’t have much cross-ventilation. It was pretty brutal at times in the summer. I also remember that a lot of homes had awnings on the windows that went up in the summer, to create at least a slightly cooling effect. On very hot days, sometimes we’d go to the movies – thirty-five cents admission – because they were usually air conditioned. Ah, the relief!

The post No wonder Brits here for the World Cup sometimes praise our air conditioning appeared first on The New Neo.

Starmer showed more emotion in his leavetaking than I’m aware of him showing before in public life. But I think he may be the only one crying:

Sir Keir Starmer choked up as he announced his resignation as UK prime minister Monday — less than two years after the Labour Party stormed to a landslide general election win.

Starmer, 63, set out a timetable to stand down after coming under mounting pressure following last month’s local elections, in which the governing Labour Party lost over 1,000 seats.

The prime minister announced his intention to step down after admitting the Labour Party was questioning whether he could lead it into the next general election, which must be held before July 2029 …

This represents a change of personnel rather than anything else:

Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor, is the overwhelming favorite to succeed Starmer.

He defeated Reform UK by almost 20 percentage points in last week’s by-election in the pro-Brexit northwest England constituency of Makerfield. …

Starmer’s popularity has plunged after repeated missteps and U-turns on policies such as welfare reform, as well as his disastrous decision to appoint Peter Mandelson, a scandal-tarnished friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as Britain’s ambassador to Washington.

The Labour government has also failed to deliver promised economic growth and ease a longstanding cost-of-living crisis.

And yet, Labour will remain in charge. And who is Andy Burnham?:

Until last week, Burnham had been the Mayor of Manchester, Britain’s fifth largest city, for about a decade. He stepped down from that role to stand in a local by-election last week, easily clinching the seat in Makerfield, Greater Manchester, to become the local Member of Parliament in the House of Commons.

This was almost certainly no coincidence; Burnham stepped down and ran for the seat in order to pave the way for replacing Starmer. The seat he won makes it interesting:

Burnham’s recent victory in the Makerfield by-election was significant not only as it cleared his potential path to the premiership, however, but because he won decisively in exactly the type of constituency Labour has struggled to hold onto in recent years.

The seat is predominantly white British, traditionally working-class, post-industrial and voted heavily to leave the European Union in the 2016 “Brexit” referendum. Communities like Makerfield across the U.K. were considered Labour heartlands for decades, but they have become increasingly contested as many voters drift toward right-wing, populist parties such as Reform UK.

Burnham has spent years positioning himself as a viable alternative to Starmer, criticizing Labour’s leadership at moments of weakness while carefully cultivating his own national profile.

How Burnham would differ from Starmer as a national — and international leader — isn’t exactly clear.

Indeed. My guess is that it’s mostly a stylistic difference:

[Supporters] portray him as an authentic voice for post-industrial Britain — a man who understands communities that feel neglected by London. His “everyman” presentation and his easy communication style, they argue, contrasts with the rigidness and technocratic approach to politics that former government lawyer Starmer never managed to shed.

Critics argue, however, that Burnham has failed to make clear his views on some of the most defining issues of the day.

And that is no accident.

The post Say buh-bye to Starmer appeared first on The New Neo.

The sex-trafficking ring in Rotherham may well be the worst in the West ever, or so one would hope. British officials have now identified at least three hundred suspects in a crime syndicate that raped and trafficked underage British girls for years, while local police ignored signs and clues for years…

It was already known that the perps were almost exclusively what the Brits call “Asian men” – in this case, Pakistani – and the victims were underage white girls, mostly poor and often neglected. So, what’s new?

It’s the stunning scope of the abuse and the extent to which the system of police and social services, tasked with helping the girls, ignored or often exacerbated the problem. The initial abuse was really only the first step for many of these girls and families.

The numbers are staggering. A summary:

Here are eight essential quotes from @RupertLowe10’s Rape Gang Inquiry.

1) This was a nationwide, not merely local, phenomenon.

“…that this was never a series of isolated local failures. It was a coordinated, nationwide pattern of organised child sexual exploitation that repeated in town after town, city after city, from the far north to the south coast.”

2) The scale was enormous, more than anyone dared to think.

“The scale of the crimes committed is staggering. It has been previously established that, at the very least, 250,000 young white girls have been subjected to repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking, torture, pregnancy, forced Islamic conversion, and lifelong trauma. The true number is probably higher.”

3) As has been reported, the vast majority of perpetrators were Pakistani Muslims.

“In court records and official inquiries, around 87% of those convicted in these group-based child sexual exploitation (‘CSE’) cases bore distinctively Muslim names… Dr. Taj Hargey, an imam with the Oxford Islamic Congregation, believes the true proportion of gang members who are Muslims to be around 95%.”

4) Vulnerable girls were targeted using a consistent method.

“Organised networks of perpetrators built coordinated operations that transported victims between locations, supplied them with drugs and alcohol, recorded abuse for distribution and blackmail, and passed girls between multiple adult men.”

5) The police, and other institutions, knew what was happening and ignored it.

“Police forces ignored repeated reports, criminalised victims instead of perpetrators, destroyed evidence, and allowed known rapists to walk free on bail. Social care services undermined protective parents, placed children in trafficking hubs inside children’s homes, closed cases despite clear indicators of exploitation, and retaliated against whistleblowers. The NHS recorded genital injuries, multiple sexually transmitted infections in children as young as 13, pregnancies caused by rape, and suicide attempts, yet discharged victims back to their abusers without safeguarding referrals or trauma care. Schools observed older men collecting girls at the gates, heard disclosures of rape on school premises, and responded by excluding victims rather than protecting them.”

6) Those in these institutions did so because they were afraid of being called ‘racist’.

“Political correctness, fear of accusations of racism, and fear of losing electoral support from certain demographics have taken precedence over the protection of British children.”

7) Parts of the foster and orphan care system became exploitation hotspots.

“Children’s homes became trafficking hubs where staff failed to stop older men collecting girls at night. Local authorities often returned children to unsafe homes and placements despite repeated disclosures of grooming… Social care across England systematically enabled organised grooming and the rape of children. Children’s services, local authorities, foster carers, children’s homes, and independent units repeatedly returned vulnerable children to known risk.”

8) Multiple offenders explicitly linked their treatment of these girls with their own religious and cultural beliefs, and the girls’ white ethnicity.

“They were taken to houses, flats, restaurants, and hotels where they were raped repeatedly by groups of men, tortured, filmed for blackmail, and told they were “white trash” or “kuffar” who merited punishment.”

I haven’t read the actual report; it’s over 200 pages long. It can be found here, if you care to wade through it. I assume that summary hit the most salient points, but I hope to read the report soon or at least skim it heavily. In the meantime, here are some of my thoughts and questions (the full report may answer some of the questions, however):

(1) Was this multi-culti virtue-signaling run amok, or some even greater evil on the part of British authorities?

(2) Note that there were whistleblowers, so not everyone was a cowardly enabler. But there were “retaliations” against whistleblowers, and this almost certainly had what in the law biz is called a “chilling effect” on further whistleblowing.

(3) What finally changed and resulted in the news coming out?

(4) And what of Starmer? This tweet mentions that Starmer himself let off 13,000 of the perps.

(5) Will there be any further consequences now, or will the whole thing be a case of, “we’ve aired it and it’s time to move on”?

Some quotes from the report can be found at Ace’s. Here are some:

The behaviour is deeply tied to tribal structures prevalent in parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East, North Africa, and Somalia:

– Family honour is primarily vested in the conduct, modesty, and virginity of girls and women. Strict codes require obedience, covering, and restricted interaction with outsiders. Breaches within the community trigger severe sanctions, including honour killings or collective retaliation by male clan members.

– When the target is a non-Muslim girl — particularly White British girls perceived as unguarded, dressed in Western styles and lacking male protectors — the risk calculation shifts. No retaliation is expected from the girl’s family or community, so some young men feel emboldened to treat her as property and then approach, assault, groom, share among the group, and sell her services.

– This proprietorial view of women escalates into organised networks that traffic girls across regions. Impunity fuels the cycle: initial assaults without consequences create a perception of Britain as a place where such behaviour carries no risk, turning vulnerable girls into commodified products.

I would say it wasn’t just a perception of Britain as a place where such behavior is risk-free. The perception was correct for a long long time.

More:

While the foundational system is tribal rather than purely religious, Islamic elements provide ideological justification, communal shielding, and strategic expansion. Perpetrators sometimes hide actions from families, mosques, and imams because the behaviour brings disgrace to the community. Yet remorse toward British victims is limited because non-Muslim girls are not viewed as fully human individuals deserving protection, but as unprotected outsiders available for abuse without moral consequence. This fosters widespread silence within affected communities.

The Inquiry evidence points to a fundamental clash of worlds. Across the West, our historic respect for the individual has, thanks to mass immigration, been overpowered by the more primitive attitudes that prevail elsewhere, according to which group membership matters first and foremost. The elite obsession with diversity has invited the latter to take advantage of the former. Scare-words like ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘racism’ have been deployed to exploit the good will of Western host societies, paralysing investigation and enforcement.

Again, there’s nothing really new there – except for the scale of the horror. And horror it was.

There’s also the class issue; these girls were not from rich families. They were disposable, according to the politicians, sacrifices to the need not only to virtue-signal as a non-bigot, but to get the votes of the growing population of “Asian” voters.

I see no indication that the present government in Britain will change anything, and I’m not even sure that a replacement on the right would do much. Democrats here are fully capable of similar enabling, although I don’t think the problem here is anything like it was across the pond. Here it seems to take the form of winking at massive fraud and theft of government largesse, and the red cities and states are not immune.

What a terrible mess.

NOTE: In 2008 I wrote two posts on cultural and moral relativism. I believe this one is particularly apt. An excerpt:

But somehow the idea that we cannot, and should not, judge other cultures at all has taken hold in recent years; not just in anthropology but in the West as a whole, and especially in our school system. The proper name for this is moral relativism, as opposed to cultural relativism. This phenomenon is a combination of a decline in our own previous attitude of celebration of Western civilization—and an emphasis instead on its sins, its mea culpas—combined with a romantic Rousseauvian attitude toward the other, of which the “noble savage” is a familiar subset.

One of the reasons that judgment of other cultures has been nearly abandoned is that one of our highest values has become that of tolerance. But tolerance was only meant to mean that we not look down on others merely because of the fact that they are different from us. It does not mean we need to tolerate their destructiveness, their hatred, or their intolerance—the latter of which should always define the limits of “tolerance,” or tolerance would become a value that would lead inevitably to its own contradiction and destruction.

The post In the UK, there has been widespread child sacrifice on the altar of diversity and tolerance appeared first on The New Neo.

This first clip is two minutes long:

This second clip is about three and a half minutes long

That’s from 1969, and a lot has happened since then, as you might imagine. Here’s a short summary:

Since 1945, immigration to the United Kingdom, controlled by British immigration law and to an extent by British nationality law, has been significant, in particular from the former territories of the British Empire and the member states of the EU and EFTA. Since the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, migration from countries outside the European Economic Area has dominated immigration to the UK. The British Nationality Act 1948 granted residency rights to all colonial subjects, approximately 800 million, enabling mass post-war immigration. The Commonwealth Immigrants Acts (1962, 1968) and Immigration Act 1971 rescinded these rights by introducing work vouchers and ancestral requirements that favoured those with parent or grandparent to have been born in the UK. The British Nationality Act 1981 abolished the 1948 citizenship status.

Since the United Kingdom acceded to the European Communities in the 1970s and the creation of the European Union in the early 1990s, people have migrated from member states of the European Union, exercising one of the European Union’s Four Freedoms. Migration to and from Central and Eastern Europe increased since 2004, following the accession of eight Central and Eastern European states to the European Union. Following the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020 at 11 pm GMT, this freedom of movement ceased. Citizens of EEA+CH member states no longer had an automatic right to move to or reside permanently in the UK without a visa. A smaller number have come as illegal immigrants, many of which have claimed asylum. …

The UK Government can also grant settlement to foreign nationals, which confers on them indefinite leave to remain in the UK, without granting them British citizenship. Grants of settlement are made on the basis of various factors, including employment, family formation and reunification, and asylum …

Long-term net migration is estimated to have reached a record high of 944,000 in the year ending March 2023, with immigration at 1,469,000 and emigration at 525,000. According to the Office for National Statistics’ provisional estimate, released November 2025, long-term net migration in the year ending June 2025 was +204,000 … Total immigration was 898,000: non-EEA+CH nationals accounted for 75% of total immigration (670,000), British nationals comprised 16% (143,000), and EEA+CH nationals constituted 9% (85,000). The top three nationalities from non-EU+ countries immigrating on work-related visas were Indian, Pakistani, and Nigerian.

It’s complicated, to say the least.

The post Enoch Powell again: on how third-world immigration to Britain got going appeared first on The New Neo.

The United Kingdom’s ruling Labour Party is on track to suffer a major defeat in Thursday’s local elections as Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK surges in support, prompting calls for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to resign.

British local elections are widely viewed as a functional referendum on the popularity of the ruling party and its head. With Labour having already suffered a net loss of nearly 500 local council seats with just over half of the councils called, multiple Labour MPs are saying that Starmer must agree to a timeline for his exit from office.

He should, but must he? Not really – not so far, anyway.

Not only did Starmer’s Labour Party do poorly, but the Conservatives continued to do poorly as well. The results seem to indicate a major sea change, with the Greens and Reform in the ascendance – Reform more than the Greens:

Alan Mendoza, executive director of the London-based Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital, “The era of two-party politics is definitively over with Reform UK’s stunning national success and the Green Party’s more localized wins. The two traditional parties of government, Labour and the Conservatives, have been routed nationally and in some cases have ceased to exist as a meaningful force in whole swathes of the country. By backing Reform across much of the political landscape and the Greens in pockets, British people are indicating they’ve had enough of the politics of the past and are ready to embrace different ideas.”

As I said, good news.

The post Starmer is in trouble after local elections appeared first on The New Neo.

Yesterday afternoon there was an anti-semitic knife attack in a neighborhood called Golders Green in north London. A man with a knife walked through the streets and stabbed two Jewish men at random before police showed up and tased him.

The assailant has now been identified as a man born in Somalia named Essa Suleiman.

Sulieman had a criminal record: he had stabbed two policemen and a police dog back in 2008, and was sentenced to nine years. The violence occurred when the police were responding to a call about a knife attack in progress.

Guy seems to love knives.

The question is why he was not deported back then, and the answer is that he may already have been a citizen – although that’s not clear. But Nigel Farage says that, had his party (Reform) been in charge at the time, the man would have been stripped of his citizenship and deported. It seems to me that such action might have been legal:

Depriving someone of their British citizenship for the public good is generally used in the context of national security or counter-terrorism. The aim is to prevent a person who poses a threat to the United Kingdom from returning to the country, which they would otherwise have a right to do as a British citizen. There are also rare cases involving serious or organised criminals.

Will it happen even now? I tend to doubt it.

The post The Golders Green stabber had a record appeared first on The New Neo.

The monarch is supposed to be very much involved, although it’s somewhat complicated:

Although the monarch’s authority over the Church of England is largely ceremonial and is mostly observed in a symbolic capacity, the position is still relevant to the established church. As the supreme governor, the monarch formally appoints high-ranking members of the church on the advice of the prime minister of the United Kingdom, who in turn acts on the advice of the Crown Nominations Commission. Since the Act of Settlement of 1701, all Supreme Governors have been members of the Church of England.

In addition, the monarch is known as the “defender of the faith”:

In common with his predecessors for almost 500 years, The King is known as Defender of the Faith. This is part of his full formal legal title and appears in many official items such as proclamations and Parliamentary Writs of Summons. …

The Church of England is known as the “Established Church”, meaning that it is established by law and has a unique relationship with the state, forged in the settlement developed in the time of Elizabeth I and subsequent reigns intended to calm the upheavals of the Reformation period.

At the coronation King Charles III, like every monarch since George I, takes a special oath to maintain “the settlement of the Church of England and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established”. He also undertook a separate oath at his Accession to uphold the security of the Church of Scotland.

And yet neither England nor Britain is a theocracy, and all religions are allowed and protected. In fact, Elizabeth II emphasized this:

At her Diamond Jubilee in 2012, Queen Elizabeth II delivered a landmark speech explaining the concept of the Established Church in a multi-faith society.

She said: “The concept of our Established Church is occasionally misunderstood and, I believe, commonly under-appreciated. Its role is not to defend Anglicanism to the exclusion of other religions. Instead, the Church has a duty to protect the free practice of all faiths in this country.

But not all religions are equally tolerant of other religions, and many (not all, but many) Muslims would like Islam to become dominant. What’s a faith defender to do?

King Charles doesn’t seem to be doing a lot of defending of the Church of England or even of Christianity these days, and his failure to issue an Easter statement, combined with his issuance of a recent statement for Ramadan, has a lot of Christians worried:

Buckingham Palace previously confirmed that the king would not be giving an Easter message. The palace told GB News that an Easter message from the monarch is not an annual statement, like the Christmas message.

It is expected that Charles’s silence would upset some Christians as he wished Islamic practicing people a “blessed and happy Ramadan” on social media in February.

It’s actually not a royal tradition to always give an Easter message, although it often occurs. This year, I think the sharp contrast between the Ramadan message and the lack of an Easter message has caused the intensity of the problem, plus a widespread perception that King Charles isn’t a believing Christian and hasn’t been one for a long time (including rumors that he’s a secret Muslim).

This has prompted Anglican Bishop Ceirion H. Dewar to issue this open letter to King Charles. A few excerpts:

His Majesty, Charles III,

King of the United Kingdom and the Realms,

Supreme Governor of the Church of England,

Bearer of the ancient title Defender of the Faith. …

For more than a thousand years the Crown of this realm has stood in solemn covenant with the Christian faith.

The laws of this land were shaped by it.

The liberties of our people were nurtured by it.

The conscience of our civilisation was formed by it. …

Yet today that inheritance is being quietly but deliberately eroded. Across the institutions of this nation there is a growing hostility toward the faith that built them.

Christian belief is mocked in the public square. Christian morality is dismissed as intolerance. Christian institutions are pressured to surrender doctrine in order to conform to the ideology of the age.

Within the very Church that bears the name of England, voices have arisen that appear more eager to mirror the spirit of the age than to proclaim the eternal truth of the Gospel. …

The Sovereign of this realm bears a title that is not merely historic but sacred in its origin and meaning: Defender of the Faith. Those words are not decorative. They are a charge.

They speak of a monarch whose duty is not merely to preside over the ceremonies of the Church, but to stand as a guardian of the Christian inheritance of the nation.

Yet many among your subjects now ask, with increasing anxiety: “Who will defend that inheritance today?” …

Your Majesty, may I be so bold as to observe that your coronation oath was not a poetic formality. It was a solemn vow made before Almighty God to maintain and preserve the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law.

Those words bind the conscience of the sovereign. They remind the Crown that its authority is not merely constitutional but moral. The monarch is not merely a symbol of national continuity, but a custodian of the spiritual inheritance that shaped this realm. …

The issue before us is not nostalgia. It is civilisation.

[NOTE: Please see also this post of mine on the decline of Christianity in Europe.]

The post King Charles: defender of <i>which</i> faith? appeared first on The New Neo.

Certainly not the waves:

“Currently the Royal Navy has 63 commissioned ships. But of this number only 25 are really fighting ships. That is submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates. The balance are support patrol and survey vessels which, though armed, are not true fighting warships.”

“Britain is of course involved with a variety of defense tasks worldwide. But due to endless defense cuts, the Navy is hard-pressed to fulfill them. So of the fighting ships in 2026, Britain possesses ten submarines, two aircraft carriers, six destroyers, and seven frigates.”

“Such a small fleet might be sufficient for a small nation engaged only in self-defense. But Britain still has some 15 overseas territories, many of which, like the Falkland Islands, require naval protection.”

Much more at the link.

I used the song “Rule, Britannia!” in the title of this post. Then I became curious to see the rest of the words. First, the chorus, which is repeated many times:

Rule Britannia!
Britannia rule the waves
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves

Some of the verses minus the chorus:

… till more majestic shalt thou rise
More dreadful from each foreign stroke
More dreadful from each foreign stoke
As the loud blast that tears the skies
Serves but to root thy native oak …

Thee haughty tyrants ne’er shall tame
All their attempts to bend thee down
All their, all their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame
To work their woe, and thy renown.

Well, what can you say? It was written in 1740.

The post Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the … appeared first on The New Neo.

A generic one.

So instead of past (or present) heroes to be pictured on future British currency, the pound will henceforth feature wildlife. I wasn’t aware that Britain was famous for its wildlife. No one goes big game hunting there anymore.

Here’s the story. The public seems to have voted for this, and the notes will continue to have the monarch’s face on them:

It marks a shift after more than 50 years of showcasing people from Britain’s history on the banknotes, including Winston Churchill, Alan Turing and Jane Austen.

The Bank of England said the change to wildlife imagery creates an opportunity to celebrate another important aspect of the nation.

It also makes it more difficult for the notes to be counterfeited while making security features more distinguishable, according to the central bank.

I don’t think the change in image theme itself makes the notes more difficult to counterfeit, I think it’s improved techniques connected with the issuance of new notes.

The vote went like this:

The move follows a consultation in which the UK wildlife theme received the highest proportion of nominations, at 60%.

Architecture and landmarks was a close second at 56%, followed by notable historical figures (38%) arts, culture and sport (30%) innovation (23%) and noteworthy milestones (19%).

Obviously, people were allowed to choose more than one theme. The total number of responses was 44,000, which isn’t all that many.

The definition of “wildlife” is broad, however:

A second consultation will be run this summer to gather views on the specific wildlife they would like to feature, which can include plants, landscapes and animals.

So they could choose the White Cliffs of Dover, for example. That would be kind of nice. Or the dandelion – not so nice. As for fauna, I immediately think of the hedgehog. Looking it up, we see the following:

The island of Great Britain, along with the rest of the archipelago known as the British Isles … contains a relatively small fraction of the world’s wildlife. The biota was severely diminished in the last ice age, and shortly (in geological terms) thereafter was separated from the continent by the English Channel’s formation. Since then, humans have hunted the most dangerous forms (the wolf, the brown bear and the wild boar) to extinction, though domesticated forms such as the dog and the pig remain. The wild boar has subsequently been reintroduced as a meat animal.

How about the English Springer Spaniel? A noble beast:

The post As the sun quickly sets, not on the British Empire – that’s already gone – but on Britain itself appeared first on The New Neo.

National Landscapes, a charity mostly funded by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), has 46 landscapes, previously called areas of outstanding natural beauty. Management plans for each area are aiming to address the barriers faced by underrepresented and diverse groups to accessing the countryside.

What are these “barriers”? Are the Brits who live there banning “people of color”? No, they’re not. It’s the latter who don’t want to visit. But hey, that needs to change:

Reports that have been published gradually since a Defra report in 2019 reveal that many communities perceived the countryside as “being for white people and middle-class people”.

The 2019 report said: “The countryside is seen by both black, Asian and minority ethnic groups and white people as very much a ‘white’ environment. If that is true today, then the divide is only going to widen as society changes. Our countryside will end up being irrelevant to the country that actually exists.”

“The country that actually exists” is becoming less and less white – thanks to unlimited “migration” – and so the countryside must become so, too. The tourism seems to be just the beginning of a larger plan, because why else would they be caring what people do with their vacation time?

More:

The latest region to update its five-year management plan was Cranborne Chase National Landscape, which overlaps the boundaries of Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire and Somerset. Its plan, published last month, said that it would “develop strategies to reach people or communities with protected characteristics such as people without English as a first language” and “diversity of ethnicity”.

On Monday, National Landscapes published an update titled “Nature is for everyone”.

It read: “There are innumerable reasons why people don’t spend time in the outdoors and National Landscapes teams are committed to reducing the barriers to access.”

“Protected characteristics”? What does that mean? And again we have that phrase “barriers to access” – as though there’s some sort of de jure apartheid going on, rather than the choice of members of those “protected” ethnic and language groups.

In Luton, the Nature Calling project coordinated visits from groups from all backgrounds including people seeking asylum who had mainly been indoors since arriving in the UK. …

… [T]he management plan for Malvern Hills covering 2025-30, published in March, acknowledged that attitudes varied within ethnic minority groups.

“Many minority peoples have no connection to nature in the UK because their parents and their grandparents did not feel safe enough to take them or had other preoccupations,” the report said.

It added: “For some people with a recent history or lived experience of subsistence within the family, having come from rural areas in developing countries, nature can be associated with hardship and struggle in having to work the land.”

Nidderdale National Landscape in North Yorkshire said there were a variety of barriers stopping ethnic minorities from visiting areas of outstanding beauty. The consultation draft for its management plan, published last August, read: “These can be practical issues such as lack of transport and a lack of awareness but may also involve concerns about how they will be received when visiting an unfamiliar place.”

You will visit nature, and you will like it.

And I’m sure these programs will help the people who live in the area be even more “receptive” to the visitors.

The post The British elites want to make the British countryside more diverse appeared first on The New Neo.