commentary
-
Edward Torsney critiques Andy Burnham’s 2026 schools reform, asking whether tailoring the curriculum to local employers emancipates working-class pupils or grooms them for a life of servitude — drawing on Rousseau, Freire, Bowles & Gintis, Bourdieu, Gramsci, and Dickens
-
The great swindle of our age is the conflation of capitalism with commerce. It is a semantic trick that has, for decades, persuaded millions of ordinary, hard-working people to defend a system designed to squeeze them dry. The British left, frequently caricatured as anti-business, anti-enterprise and anti-aspiration, is in fact the only political force making…
-
The UK Government is running a public consultation called “Watch this space: a new strategic direction for UK media.” The proposals include mandatory changes to how content is discovered on YouTube. In further attacks against independent voices, after last week ‘debanking’ The Canary news platform, the British Government is now considering forcing YouTube to down-rank…
-
Edward Torsney takes a critical look at how modern democracies risk sliding into information control through censorship, debanking, propaganda, and the narrowing of acceptable opinion – from the RT Germany ruling to wider concerns about authoritarian creep, thought control, and the enduring warning of George Orwell’s 1984.
-
A proposed UK national security law could impose terrorism-level penalties on those accused of quoting foreign groups or states designated as a “threat”, raising serious concerns for journalists, free speech advocates, and humanitarian organisations. Critics warn that vague wording around “support,” “foreign interference,” and information-gathering could criminalise public-interest reporting and chill democratic scrutiny
-
Ed Torsney considers Keir Starmer’s UK social media ban for under-16s isn’t just about online safety—it’s a dangerous act of social engineering. By mandating mass age verification and digital ID, the government paves the way for a surveillance state that silences free speech and stifles truth outside state-approved narratives. This analysis explores why the policy…
-
Israeli forces are systematically targeting journalists in Gaza and Lebanon, killing them and their families in brutal “double‑tap” strikes. From the murder of documentary filmmaker Fatma Hassona to the assassination of reporter Amal Khalil, evidence points to a deliberate strategy of eliminating witnesses to conceal war crimes and genocide. This investigation traces the pattern, the…
-
In the spirit of Roland Barthes, Ed Torsney’s philosophical analysis explores the terrifying alchemy of Israel’s “Generative AI for Good” deepfake initiative. By manufacturing synthetic testimony of rape survivors to justify political ends, we have entered a new rhetorical age where the image no longer records the world—it remakes it. This essay unpacks the semiotics…
-
EMPIRE IN RETREAT: US SUFFERS MAJOR SETBACKS AS IRAN HOLDS FIRM DATELINE: TEHRAN — In a dramatic turn of events that Western corporate media is largely ignoring, the United States appears to be facing a catastrophic military and geopolitical defeat in its illegal war against Iran, according to on-the-ground reporting and independent analysis. Iranian People…
-
Prologue: The Ghost of the Desert The sun over Mesopotamia has not changed in two thousand years. It is the same merciless eye that watched the legions die, that boiled the blood in Roman veins and baked their scarlet cloaks into the earth. And now, in the early spring of 2026, it watches again—this time…
Edward Torsney 