1. France is getting ready to distribute a 20 page survival manual that instructs citizens what to do if a full-blown war erupts…


2. The French government is also telling their citizens to leave Iran “immediately”… The French Foreign Ministry has issued a warning to its citizens amid the release of one of its nationals who had been imprisoned in Iran for over 880 days.


3. It is being reported that military planners in the UK have ordered special forces units to get ready to be sent to Ukraine…


4. Turkey has announced that it would also be willing to deploy troops to Ukraine “if needed”… The Russians have already stated that they will never accept NATO troops on Ukrainian soil under any circumstances. So why are these nations preparing to send troops anyway?


5. Poland is preparing for a showdown with Russia by “conscripting every adult male for military training”…


6. The Baltic states are jointly constructing a massive defense line that includes six hundred bunkers, tank ditches, dragon’s teeth and rocket systems…


7. In a letter that was delivered to the Iranians, Donald Trump has given Iran only two months to reach a peace agreement…

We really are right on the verge of an apocalyptic conflict with Russia, and we really are right on the verge of an apocalyptic conflict in the Middle East. The final exit ramps for both of these conflicts are rapidly approaching, and so let us hope that global leaders make very wise decisions in the months ahead.

We are living in a time when reality is starting to converge with Hollywood doomsday scenarios. Just look at the pictures of the fireball at Heathrow. You almost expect Tom Hanks to make an appearance as Sir Keir Starmer, with Christopher Walken playing Vladimir Putin and, I don’t know, James Corden as Donald Trump.

But this is serious. Heathrow closed? This sort of scandal hasn’t occurred since the mysterious Gatwick drone incident of 2018, when 140,000 passengers were affected; and before that, the 2010 volcano eruptions in Iceland. The economic damage will be eye-watering. And I can’t be alone in worrying that this is more than a random malfunction.

Details are continuing to emerge as I write. But only yesterday, the Telegraph disclosed that Russian agents had researched fire protocols at a Berlin factory owned by the Diehl group, a German arms firm supplying Ukraine, shortly before it burst into flames last summer. Speculation might not be very helpful, but on the face of it this does seem rather pertinent.

This is the context in which the fireball at Heathrow blazes. Disaster movies are intended to offer a comfortable thrill at the security we all enjoy. But big beasts are stirring in Europe. It was entirely right to support Ukraine from the beginning, just as it is entirely right to support her now. But the light of the flickering airport blaze has exposed our basic lack of readiness. For years, we thought war in Europe was behind us. To the Kremlin, however, it wasn’t even cold.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, commissioned the review of the work of the 10 agencies that make up Australia’s national intelligence community in September 2023.

The report was handed to government in mid-2024 – before the US election in November, and the change in administration in Washington in January. “The world in which Australia seeks security and prosperity is significantly more contested, fragmented and volatile. Major-power conflict is no longer unimaginable. New security threats are prominent, many amplified by technological change.”

“That was the most useful two hours, 34 minutes of my life,” he recalls. Furlough, as it became known, was signed off by Sunak within the hour, and announced two days later, after consultation with unions and business groups. The policy marked a radical – if temporary – shift in the role of the state, as the Treasury stepped in to underwrite the salaries of millions of citizens whose jobs could otherwise have disappeared. The scheme went on to cost £70 billion.

Separate from the impact on the public finances is the direct, long-term effect of the pandemic on public services, many of which are still working through the practical consequences. For the NHS, that means the well documented struggle to deal with waiting lists, which surged as hospitals reorientated towards treating the virus and the public stayed at home.

It also means the challenge of trying to support the many thousands of people still experiencing the symptoms of long Covid – very likely to be one driver behind the surge in people unable to work. And there are myriad more subtle ongoing impacts, too, which are harder to measure – such as the dark shadow cast by the psychological impact of the anxiety and grief that accompanied the deadly outbreak.

IFS research published earlier this month collated evidence to show that the mental health of the UK population appears to have declined since the pandemic. It included the grim fact that there were 3,700, or 24%, more “deaths of despair” – from suicide, drugs or alcohol – among working age people in 2023, than there were on average in the five years pre-Covid.

1. Government spending is expanding at an exponential rate. Federal spending is now roughly 14 times higher than it was back in 1980.


2. US government debt is absolutely exploding. The United States government is 36 trillion dollars in debt. How insane is that? Our national debt is approximately 36 times larger than it was when Ronald Reagan first entered the White House.


3. The growth of our money supply is a horror show. During the pandemic, M1 went from about 4 trillion dollars to more than 20 trillion dollars. The Federal Reserve is clearly guilty of economic malpractice. Is there any way that we are going to be able to avoid paying a very serious price for all of this reckless money printing?…


4. Household debt has soared to almost unbelievable levels over the last 30 years. The sad truth is that it is not just the US government that has a massive debt problem. US households have also been accumulating debt at a staggering rate. Household debt accounts for approximately 18 trillion dollars of this total…


5. The total of all debt (government, business and consumer) in the United States is now well over 100 trillion dollars. This is a debt bubble that is absolutely unprecedented in US history…


6. More than 100 million US adults that do not have jobs are considered to be “not in the labor force”.


7. The price of gold has gone absolutely nuts, and that is not a good sign. When instability hits the financial markets, many investors flock to gold. This is especially true in inflationary times. Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the value of the US dollar has declined by close to 99 percent. When the gold standard ended, an ounce of gold was worth 35 dollars. Today, an ounce of gold is worth more than 3,000 dollars…

But look at what has happened as a result of Elon Musk and his team making some modest cuts to government spending. A significant portion of the population is losing their minds. Our society cannot handle large spending cuts, and our society cannot handle what will come after a financial crash either. We are in far more trouble than most people realize.

Amid this slow-motion disaster, it’s easy to forget that, not so long ago, Britain was a nation of emigrants. It was an exodus of people which kept politicians awake at night, not an in-flow of 1.2 million. Between 1815 and 1914 some 10 million people left these islands to seek new lives and opportunities in Australia, Canada, the US and New Zealand.

After the Second World War, so many fled that Winston Churchill issued a plea against the desertion of “the old land”, later describing emigrants as “rats leaving a sinking ship”. The cost of fighting the most expensive war in history had triggered a series of economic crises – massive national debt, increased rationing, housing shortages – which swiftly dissolved any post-victory euphoria and pushed people to seek prosperity elsewhere.

Even as late as the mid-1980s more people were leaving the country than entering it, despite the near mythologised Windrush generations. Today, tired of flatlining growth and stagnant living standards, the rats are again packing their bags. This is now a country where 28 million private sector workers are expected to support nine million who are economically inactive, six million public sector staff and 13 million state pensioners. Where the top 1 per cent of earners pay 29 per cent of income tax and the top 10 per cent pay nearly two-thirds, and are then pilloried for failing to pay their “fair share”. No wonder 400,000 workers are reportedly planning to move abroad in the next two years. It’s a miracle the figure isn’t higher.

But let’s not stop there, because I’ve got some other extremely uncomfortable facts for Left-wing MPs to ponder. For example: in this country today, according to a recent report by the Centre for Migration Control, around 1.2 million immigrants are on benefits. Between them, in the year 2023, they’re estimated to have received over £7.5 billion in Universal Credit. On top of that, the cost of providing them with public services came to £3.5 billion.

Now here are some numbers that are smaller, but still highly significant. Over the past five years, the Government has spent £27 million on interpreters for benefits claimants who can’t speak English. Last year, according to figures uncovered by erstwhile Reform MP Rupert Lowe, almost 10 per cent of referral letters sent out by NHS England had to be translated into a foreign language, because so many patients can’t speak English. Meanwhile, police spending on translation services has climbed to over £19 million a year. Because, it would seem, many of our criminals can’t speak English, either.

In case the Left-wing MPs still haven’t worked out where I’m going with this, let me draw their attention to an argument made around 30 years ago by Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning US economist. He argued that you can have either a welfare state, or mass immigration – but not both.

Harrison Fields, a White House deputy press secretary, said the executive order “will empower parents, states and communities to take control and improve outcomes for all students”. He said recent test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam “reveal a national crisis — our children are falling behind”.

The order says that despite $1 trillion being spent over the last 46 years, education standards in the US have not improved, with test results in maths and reading for 13-year-olds falling to their lowest level in decades. Trump has repeatedly called for eliminating the department, calling it “a big con job”. He proposed shuttering it in his first term as president, but Congress did not act.

Sweden, in particular, has been at the forefront of pioneering non-cash payment methods using phone apps. A former deputy governor of the country's Central Bank predicted in 2018 that Sweden would probably be cashless by 2025.

Today, just one in 10 purchases are made with cash, with card transactions the most popular form of payment. Yet as Russia steps up its hybrid attacks on Western countries, targeting financial systems and critical infrastructure, cash is once again coming back into vogue. Sweden's government is encouraging its citizens to keep and use cash in the name of civil defence.

The Defence Ministry sent every household a brochure entitled If Crisis or War Comes in November last year. The brochure advised people to use cash regularly and keep a minimum of a week’s supply in various denominations to “strengthen preparedness”.

Norway has already taken steps to reduce its reliance on electronic and card payments, as it prepares for potential Russian cyber attacks. Norway has also urged its citizens to “keep some cash on hand due to the vulnerabilities of digital payment solutions to cyber-attacks”. The former justice and emergencies minister Emilie Mehl put it in stark terms: “If no one pays with cash and no one accepts cash, cash will no longer be a real emergency solution once the crisis is upon us.”