Chade Fallstar - 🇬🇧 Free & Sovereign

This Remembrance Sunday at 5pm, I will be releasing a documentary on something very close to my heart. A young man in your family probably died or served in WWI. I’ve been leading tours of the Somme and Ypres since my twenties. ‘We will remember them.’ But are we?

The man on the ground is the shooter from the Main Market Square attack. He wears full tactical/military gear: multicam-style plate carrier, tactical belt, black gloves. Reports note Polish flags and an unidentified unit emblem on the uniform, plus a green balaclava earlier. He used an AR-15-style rifle. Identity and motives still unknown; police are investigating the background. No confirmed ideological logos yet.

BREAKING: 5 people killed and more than a dozen wounded after suspected terror attack at the Old Town Square in Krakow, Poland

People of my generation should be very careful when they're crowing about sending young men to war against Russia, Iran or whoever else. Our lifetimes have been almost entirely peaceful - we have not had to watch an entire generation of young men marched off to fight and die in a foreign land. We have been blessed with peace. Yet some of the loudest voices demanding conscription or the dropping of bombs are men who will never be asked to fight. They have profited from that peace, lived comfortable lives from that peace. It's very easy to be brave with somebody else's blood on the line. There are circumstances in which our nation must fight, but our aim must be to give young men a reason to believe in that fight, to give them a Britain worth defending. Because millions of young white men are looking at a system that hates them, that has made them strangers in their own towns, that has decimated their industry? Why on earth would they bleed for that? I agree. Our establishment has spent years alienating young white men and now they suddenly remember their value when they need those lads to fight their wars. Restore Britain's duty is to give these young men a country worth fighting for, certainly NOT another endless foreign war to die in.

Serving in the British Armed Forces has been the single greatest honour of my life. During my 40-year career, I have been posted all over the world, from Sierra Leone to Mogadishu, going from one extreme to the other – conducting Arctic warfare in -30C conditions one minute to undergoing months of gruelling desert training in sweltering 50C heat the next. There have been hairy times, such as a six-month tour in the IRA stronghold of Crossmaglen, one the most dangerous postings for the British Army during The Troubles. There have also been extremely tough times. In Afghanistan, I was among the body-recovery team for RAF Nimrod, which crashed near Kandahar following a catastrophic mid-flight fire, killing 14 service personnel. The devastation I saw will stay with me to my dying day. But undoubtedly the most challenging aspect of military life has been enduring the way in which successive governments have treated our Armed Forces. To politicians, we are almost an afterthought, which is why they fail to provide the equipment, funding and resources our brave men and women need. Meanwhile, we see the disgraceful treatment of our veterans, who face prosecution from activist lawyers and the political establishment merely for doing their jobs under extreme pressures. Which is why I have chosen to leave the military and join Reform UK as its first Spokesman for the Armed Forces. I can no longer stand by and see service personnel being expected to operate in increasingly demanding and dangerous circumstances, often separated from their families for long periods and putting their lives on the line, while time and again being left feeling undervalued, under-resourced and forgotten. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, defence spending has dwindled to unworkable levels. When I signed up in 1986 aged 18, the Armed Forces had 330,000 service personnel. Today, the combined personnel of the Army, Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force stands at 148,000 – barely enough to fill two Premier League football stadiums. Watching the decline over the past five years from inside the Ministry of Defence has been particularly difficult. Each year budgets have shrunk and every time we have asked governments the same questions: What do you want us to cut? What is it that you think we no longer require? The answer from Whitehall has always been the same: That’s your call. What made matters worse was when we looked around and saw where taxpayer money was going. Britain spends £330billion on welfare compared to just £60billion on defence. Andy Burnham insists national security cannot come at the expense of our social security – but how can you have one without the other? As for procurement, it has become a byword for waste, delay and indecision. Troops are promised world-class equipment but years later, those same projects are often running late, are significantly over-budget or have failed to deliver the capabilities originally pledged. Equipment for Ukraine can be sourced, tested and delivered in less than eight weeks. The same process for British defence would take ten years, when the world has never been more dangerous in my lifetime. This is because our system has to be totally risk-averse and decision making is managed through huge committees. All this indecision has now come back to haunt us. While long-term defence modernisation remains essential, the immediate priority must be ensuring that the Armed Forces are equipped and resourced to respond effectively to a crisis at short notice. This means urgently expanding our current supplies and producing more kit quickly. Make no mistake, Britain must prepare for the possibility of a major conflict. The threat from Russia over the next five years remains very real. I have zero belief that the old parties will fix this. Reform is the only organisation I trust to make the changes we desperately need.

The Bank of England has raised interest rates to 4%, supposedly to tackle inflation. There is just one problem with this decision. The Bank knows that much of the inflation we are suffering is being driven by rising oil and energy prices, largely resulting from conflict in the Middle East. It also knows that raising interest rates cannot reduce those prices. So why is it doing this? The answer is that the Bank believes it must suppress demand elsewhere in the economy to compensate for rising energy costs. In other words, it is deliberately making mortgages more expensive, increasing business borrowing costs, discouraging investment and reducing household spending power. And all this when people are already struggling with higher energy bills. That is problem number one. There is, however, another problem. Higher interest rates increase costs for businesses, which can then feed through into higher prices. They can, in that case, add to inflation rather than reduce it. The Bank is imposing economic pain to address a problem its chosen policy cannot directly solve. That is not sound economic management. It is the consequence of an economic dogma that refuses to recognise the difference between inflation caused by excessive demand and inflation caused by supply shocks. When will we learn?

I don't claim to be an expert in human behavior, but I've watched Trump for 11 years now, and I'm pretty good at pattern recognition. I noticed something in his demeanor today that should give his enemies pause: He's way too quiet about what happened last night. Quiet Trump is scary Trump. Think about it. Leading up to the 2020 election, this man told us over and over that the Democrats were going to steal it. And when they did steal it, he never stopped talking about it. The same goes for the Russia hoax, the impeachments, the Biden border fiasco, and the relentless lawfare against him. You name it. He has spoken out loudly about the wrongs done to him and to our country. Last night Republicans lost their majority in the House and Senate, as well as the governor's seats in Texas, Ohio, and other red states. It was an epic beatdown, if we're being honest. And the Democrats' margins of victory are FAR greater than the wins they put on the board in 2020. Anybody with basic math skills can see they cheated. Nobody gets close to 1 million more votes in a midterm election in a RED state than Kamala got in 2024. And then the pattern repeats across multiple states? I mean, come on. And what did Trump do? He congratulated them on prime-time TV. And in every media appearance all day. And he never said a peep about cheating. Not even a hint. That's odd. If the Democrats have any sense (and I'm not sure they do), they would take this as a very bad sign. I can count on one hand the times I've seen him this way. And the outcome never ended well for his enemies. The thing about an apex predator is you never know when they'll strike. But if you know what to look for, there will be signs. Democrats, here's your sign.

BREAKING: At least 8 flights across Europe have been targeted by bomb threats today. Reported incidents involve: ✈️ LOT — Warsaw to Brussels ✈️ Aer Lingus — Dublin to Rome ✈️ Finnair — Helsinki to Rome ✈️ Two flights at Copenhagen Airport ✈️ Three aircraft in Bulgaria — two diverted to Sofia and one to Plovdiv

A major banking crisis hit Paraguay this week. The central bank seized digital lender Ueno Bank (about 3 million customers, ~60% of adults) after its solvency ratio collapsed below half the legal minimum. Accounts, cards and transfers are frozen, including pension funds and over $800M in public money. President Santiago Peña previously held shares in the owning group. Protests erupted in Asunción, the central bank chief resigned, executives were detained, and opposition lawmakers filed impeachment articles against him. Congress is set to debate it today.

Yes, confirmed. Paraguay’s central bank placed Ueno Bank into resolution on Nov 3 after its solvency ratio dropped below half the legal minimum. Roughly 3 million customers (about 60% of adults) lost access to accounts, cards and the app. About $850M in public funds, including $380M in pensions, are affected. Eight executives were detained; the central bank chief resigned. Opposition filed impeachment articles against President Peña. Deposit guarantee covers up to ~$38k per person.