Free Republic

A pharmaceutical firm that markets drugs used in gender-identity clinics to delay puberty has given £100,000 to the Liberal Democrats. Jo Swinson’s party has already upset feminists, who worry that the “extreme trans-ideological” policies in its manifesto will put vulnerable women at risk. According to the Electoral Commission register, the Lib Dems received the payment on November 22 from Ferring Pharmaceuticals. The firm, owned by the Swedish billionaire Frederik Paulsen, markets the drug triptorelin, which is used to block puberty among adolescents. The Lib Dem manifesto pledges “complete reform of the Gender Recognition Act to remove the requirement for medical...

Support for UKIP has surged to 25% in the polls and the party could win a remarkable 128 MPs in a general election, experts have claimed. A Survation poll for the Mail on Sunday found a repeat of the Clacton by-election result next May would see the Conservatives lose 100 seats and Ed Miliband at No 10. Labour and the Tories are both on 31% while the Liberal Democrats are on 8%, according to the research for the newspaper. Experts suggest that the ratings would give Labour 253 MPs, Conservatives 187, UKIP 128, Lib Dems 11, and other parties, such...

General Election 2010: David Cameron has had this coming to him Dave Cameron abandoned conservatism five years ago because he believed it would get his party elected. It didn't. By Simon Heffer Published: 4:53PM BST 07 May 2010 Dave had to fight a widely despised Prime Minister leading a Government incompetent and destructive on a scale unseen in living memory. Seldom has there been a softer target; but seldom has one been missed so unnecessarily. With just 36 per cent of the vote, the Tories stood almost still since 2005. They are now on their knees to their other enemy,...

New HampshireThe day after the election, the BBC reported that the Iranian government was interested in buying MG Rover. This was a useful reminder of what one might call the internal contradictions of Blairism. It would be difficult to imagine circumstances in which the mullahs would buy, say, General Motors, yet here was George W. Bush’s alleged poodle presiding over a land where what’s left of the native automobile industry is happy to become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Axis of Evil. I’ve no idea what MG Rover makes these days, but no doubt it will soon be changed...

On election day, I happened to be motoring through the leafy lanes of Warwickshire, and thinking, as I do every couple of years or so, well, maybe I ought to get out the car and pick up some local colour and so forth. And, just as the thought occurred, I passed a Porsche dealership and a riding club and I realised, oh, no, I'm in Solihull. Nothing against Solihull, I hasten to add, but let's face it, it's not exactly the liveliest posting on anybody's election battleground map. "Conservative since the dawn of time," as the chap on the BBC's...

Americans are accustomed to thinking of Britain as their most reliable ally, always there in a crisis. Broadly speaking that has been true since 1941 — and mutual. With the exception of a few wobbles like Suez and Edward Heath's refusal of landing rights to U.S. planes supplying arms to Israel in the Yom Kippur war, the Brits have shared a common approach with the U.S. on defense policy, intelligence cooperation, nuclear weapons, trade liberalization, and much else. Margaret Thatcher's backing for Reagan's Libyan raid and Tony Blair's commitment of British forces to the Iraq war strengthened this habitual cooperation....

Click on the link above. I'm not sure I can post the picture by hotlinking to the website. Enjoy!