The Heartlands Tribune

25/09/2026

They call it the beautiful game. But there’s nothing beautiful about a competition if the rules on the pitch matter more than the rules governing the clubs playing on it.

One of the biggest scandals in English football history may finally be reaching its reckoning.

Manchester City have reportedly been found guilty of the majority of the 115 Premier League financial rule breaches brought against them. City continue to deny wrongdoing and the process is moving towards appeal.

The punishment has yet to be announced. Points deductions, huge fines and even expulsion from the Premier League are among the possible sanctions.

And then comes the question that could shake English football far beyond Manchester: if the rules were broken while trophies were being won, what happens to the clubs that played by them?

25/09/2026

“I will always support the side that wants people fed, housed, educated and treated with dignity; that defends women’s rights, their right to safety, single-s*x spaces, and the freedom to assemble and speak.”

25/09/2026

Around 40% of global illicit financial flows are reported to pass through the UK, its Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories. In the Lords, the government was asked a simple question: why have successive governments failed to stop it?

The Minister’s answer was rather less simple. We were told the government takes the issue “very, very seriously”, that Britain has secured a presidency role, and that work is under way on money laundering and fraud.

What we did not get was an answer to the question.

For years, governments have promised tougher laws, greater transparency and harder enforcement. Yet Britain and its associated jurisdictions remain central to the movement of dirty money.

And then look at how quickly the state can move when the target is a family out of work claiming Universal Credit. Suddenly there is no shortage of scrutiny. Bank accounts can be checked, transactions examined, and ministers have pushed for wider powers over benefit claimants’ finances.

Now they want to control what the poorest people in society and those down on their luck can buy.

Billions can wash through the financial system and we get warm words about taking it “very, very seriously”. A struggling family claiming a few hundred pounds, and the machinery of the state knows exactly where to look.

That tells you something about where power points its torch.

Paul Knaggs , The Heartlands Tribune

25/09/2026

Manufacturing Consent.

A new survey says 43% of the public support compulsory military service for young people.

That headline sounds rather different once you ask who is expected to do the serving.

Among 18 to 24-year-olds, the very people who could find themselves ordered into uniform, support is just 15%. Among the over-65s, safely beyond the reach of conscription, it rises to 66%.

So the strongest support for compulsory military service comes from those least likely ever to be compelled to serve.

Funny how easily “national duty” rolls off the tongue when it is somebody else’s youth, somebody else’s freedom and, if the politicians get their war, somebody else’s blood.

Perhaps the more revealing headline is this:

85% of 18 to 24-year-olds do not support compulsory military service.

Consent looks rather different when you ask the people expected to pay the price.

And there is another question almost nobody bothers to ask: who is supposed to train thousands of unwilling young people who do not want to be there?

Britain has long prided itself on a professional volunteer force. That matters. A volunteer joins knowing what they have signed up for and is trained inside a military culture built around commitment, discipline and cohesion. A conscript army is a very different proposition.

You do not create an effective fighting force simply by dragging reluctant young people through the barrack gates. You need instructors, accommodation, equipment, time, money and an entire training system capable of turning unwilling civilians into competent soldiers. What sort of training do you get when the intake does not want the job and the existing forces are expected to absorb them?

Perhaps the more revealing headline is this:

85% of 18 to 24-year-olds do not support compulsory military service.

Before Westminster starts dreaming of conscription, it might first explain who will train them, what sort of army it expects to create, and why the generation being volunteered for it wants so little to do with the idea.

It is easy to demand national service when somebody else is being served up.

25/09/2026

🇪🇺🇺🇸🇮🇷 NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has rather inconveniently lifted the curtain on Europe’s role in the war on Iran.

Rutte says between 4,000 and 5,000 US flight missions operated from bases across Europe during Operation Epic Fury, including around 500 US aircraft movements from bases in Italy. He also said “country after country, ally after ally” made bases available to support the operation.

That sits rather awkwardly beside the public insistence from some European governments that they weren’t participating in the war. Italy, for example, disputes the suggestion that it authorised combat operations, saying its support was limited to technical and logistical activity.

Apparently Europe wasn’t involved. It merely supplied the runways, bases, logistics and thousands of flight missions.

The old saying needs updating: if you want to keep a secret, don’t tell a Rutte.

24/09/2026

Andrew Neil gives the Rejoin EU fantasists a dose of reality they rarely get on Question Time.

The argument is still being conducted as though Britain left the Europe of 2016 and can simply climb back aboard the same train. Neil’s point is devastatingly simple: that Europe no longer exists. The political balance has shifted, its biggest economies are struggling, and rejoining the single market or customs union comes with obligations and costs that are too often waved away by those selling Brexit reversal as free money.

He also reminds Remainers of something they prefer to forget. There were serious economic arguments for staying in the EU in 2016, but the official campaign squandered them with a relentlessly negative campaign and then spent years raging at the electorate for delivering the wrong answer.

You cannot rerun 2016 in 2026 and pretend nothing changed.

The EU is rapidly becoming a Goose step away from 1933

24/09/2026

UNISON, ASLEF, USDAW and the Musicians’ Union are boycotting Labour’s Women’s Conference because its formal proceedings are reserved for women.

That is the betrayal at the heart of this dispute. Union leaders have taken political representation purchased by women workers and thrown it away to make an ideological gesture against women organising as a s*x.

“No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her s*x” - women's rights pioneer Susan B. Anthony, 1894

https://heartlandstribune.com/the-empty-delegation-how-four-trade-unions-sold-out-their-female-members/

Recently, I have made a habit of steelmanning the arguments this column takes on: giving the other side its best case, stated fairly, before answering it. On

24/09/2026

: 🇺🇳🇮🇱 delegates walk out of the UN General Assembly as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu begins his speech

24/09/2026

You couldn’t make the hypocrisy up.

Emily Thornberry: “There are men who have cervixes.”

Quite the brass neck, then, to lecture the public about disinformation. Before politicians appoint themselves guardians of truth, they might want to explain why biological reality became negotiable whenever ideology demanded it.

At this rate, Room 101 will be reserved for anyone guilty of remembering that reality exists independently of government-approved language. They can insist that two plus two equals five until the telescreen burns out. It will still equal four.

23/09/2026

Burnham says Britain needs a new National Centre for Information Defence to fight Russian lies. Fair enough. Russia runs information warfare against this country.

But when a Prime Minister starts talking about a “negative, corrosive narrative” of British decline, the question becomes: who decides what counts as disinformation?

Closed factories, broken public services, unaffordable homes and young people without work aren't narratives manufactured in Moscow. They are material facts experienced across Britain.

Orwell warned us where governments can end up when they begin managing truth.

👉 Read: Burnham Introduces the Ministry of Truth

https://heartlandstribune.com/burnham-introduces-the-ministry-of-truth/

On Tuesday night in New York, Prime Minister Andy Burnham stood before the United Nations General Assembly and told the world that "over the last decade we