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Brent crude plunged below $57 per barrel briefly on Tuesday, marking a new five-and-a-half-year low as traders bet that the global oversupply of oil will continue deep into 2015. The benchmark has fallen more than 45pc since June and is on track for its worst year since 2008, while oil traded in the US is now poised to crash through the $50 per barrel level. "Oil bulls are having another hard week as Brent oil dropped to $56.90, a new five-year low, as lingering worries over supply excess overwhelmed fear of Libya supply disruptions," said Peter Rosenstreich, head of market...

More than a quarter of a million Romanian and Bulgarian nationals now live in Britain – a figure that has risen by almost 50,000 over the past 12 months. The number based here has increased more than fivefold in eight years – making up the equivalent of a city the size of Wolverhampton. The figures, which are published today by Oxford University’s respected Migration Observatory, are based on analysis of the official Labour Force Survey.

Security chiefs have taken the dramatic step of withdrawing Royal Guards from their high-profile posts outside palaces amid mounting fears of ‘lone wolf’ terrorist attacks. Elite soldiers of the Queen’s Guard have pulled back from public positions at many landmarks in response to possible threats from Islamic extremists. For the first time since the height of the IRA’s terror campaign, the soldiers are also no longer allowed on sentry duty alone, and are now accompanied by armed police

Soldiers of the Queen’s Guard have been pulled back from public positions at many landmarks in response to possible threats from Islamic extremists.

DEFENCES on the Falklands are being reviewed after it emerged Russia plans to offer Argentina long-range bombers. The aircraft, which Moscow will swap for beef and wheat, would be able to mount air patrols over Port Stanley. Ministry of Defence officials fear Buenos Aires would take delivery of the planes well before the deployment in 2020 of the Navy’s 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth and its F-35B fighters, leaving a “real window of vulnerability”. Defence cuts have left the Falklands with just four RAF Typhoon fighters, Rapier surface-to-air missiles and fewer than 1,200 troops, supported by a naval warship...

In Britain, these long-suppressed rivers of cultural rot are finally beginning to make headlines in the media, after decades of spreading under cover of media censorship. Pedophile rings have been publicly exposed at the very top of the BBC -- George Orwell’s infamous Ministry of Truth, which only broadcast lies. Recently a ring of 22 pedophiles was exposed in Parliament, with headline allegations of murders of some child victims. In cities like Rotherham, Pakistani gangs victimized thousands of children. Pakistanis criminals were invariably labeled “Asians” in the press during this time of witch hunts. But the word “Asian” never seemed...

Don't say 'illegal immigrants': Whitehall prefers 'clandestine entrants' or 'irregular migrants' to avoid 'connotations' More Buzz Words More Politically Correct Phrases, More Spin, Same Old Trying To Cause Confusion To Cover Up The Fact That Thousands Of Illegal Immigrants Are Still Entering Britain Don't say 'illegal immigrants': Whitehall prefers 'clandestine entrants' or 'irregular migrants' to avoid 'connotations' 19 December 2014 UKIP 11,920 attempts were made to enter the UK between April and July John Vine, immigration watchdog, described them as 'irregular migrants' Home Office wants to avoid 'presumption' they've done something wrong Number does not take into account those who...

Scotland Yard officers have said they believe allegations that a ring of prominent politicians and members of the establishment abused and terrorised children as young as seven more than 30 years ago and went on to kill three young boys. Detectives appealed for victims and witnesses to come forward and identified a flat in Dolphin Square, London, near the Houses of Parliament, as a scene of some of the alleged abuse, as well as military premises and other locations across London and the home counties. So far one victim, known by the pseudonym Nick, has come forward to tell of...

The number of patients forced to endure Accident & Emergency trolley waits of up to 12 hours has tripled in four years. New figures from NHS England show that in November, 23,663 patients in England waited between four and 12 hours on a trolley in A&E. In November 2010, the figure was just 6,579. This month also saw 52 patients waiting in A&E for more than 12 hours, compared with just two in the same month four years ago. The figures show the problems are greatest in London, with 273 waits of between four and 12 hours at Barts Health...

Here's a well-researched and well-argued article that, after investigation, reliably shows that the presence of food banks doesn't mean that welfare cheques are not high enough, but only that "sometimes the state messes up benefit payments and leaves nasty delays. They prove that people aren’t good at managing money. They suggest that not everyone puts rent and food before fags and booze (but we don’t want to get into a discussion about the deserving and the undeserving here). They confirm that supply creates its own demand." My disagreement with the writer is that she seems to be in favour...

This is a conversation I heard. She: "Do we have a card with Jesus on it?" He: "No, we only have Christmas cards". This exchange may go some way to explain the tragicomic results of recent research. A survey of 2,000 UK families carried out in early December showed that a third of children aged 10-13 do not know that Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus. It’s shocking but hardly surprising, as Christ has been progressively removed from Christmas. But the problem does not concern just kids. According to the same survey, half the population considers Jesus’s birth irrelevant...

Britain could be hit 'at any moment' by a Sydney-style terror attack, David Cameron told MPs today. The Prime Minister said the Australian attack, in which two hostages died and Islamic extremist Man Haron Monis was killed, was a reminder of the danger Britain faces. He told MPs there had already been a series of plots by lone wolf terrorists which had been detected and stopped.

We have heard over and over again that America is still the world’s fountain of innovation, the home of fracking and Facebook. The two “F’s” of American innovation are about to become one: The collapse of oil prices portends a collapse of the shale boom. High-yield energy bond yields have soared from 5% to 12% in the past few months, and investors are fighting to get to the door. Most unconventional oil and gas projects are unprofitable at $60 a barrel, and that’s where oil will trade for the next year or two.Facebook is a clever gimmick, but it...

A Scottish monk has been arrested for distributing a series of leaflets in the Cambridgeshire area critical of homosexuality, fornication, contraception, euthanasia, abortion, and divorce. Brother Damon Jonah Kelly, head of the Glasgow based charity the Black Hermits, was arrested by Cambridgeshire Police on December 8 on suspicion of a Section 5 (religious/racial) public order offence after he wrote a letter to the homosexual news publication, Pink News, claiming responsibility for the distribution of leaflets in the city of Ely, as well as in Cambridge, King’s Lynn and several other Cambridgeshire towns and cities. Initially police declined to take any...

David Miliband has said he "passionately" wants Labour to win the general election and for his brother to become the next prime minister. In an interview with the Financial Times, the former foreign secretary said his brother Ed, the Labour leader, had "clarity, vision, determination". He also said it would be "unbelievably stupid" for the UK to leave the European Union

Defence experts said it is 'hugely embarassing' that defence cuts mean Britain can no longer patrol its own waters Britain called in Nato sea patrol planes to hunt for a suspected Russian submarine off Scotland last month, after the Government scrapped its own similar aircraft in defence cuts, it has been disclosed. Maritime patrol aircraft from France, America and Canada flew to Scotland to join Royal Navy warships hunting for the suspected submarine after it was spotted at sea, west of Scotland. At the height of the hunt in late November and first days of December, four allied patrol planes...

G.K. Chesterton had a knack for anticipating future trends but when, in his 1914 novel The Flying Inn, he anticipated the Islamization of England, it seemed so far out of the realm of possibility that it was difficult to take it as anything but a flight of fancy.True enough, the book has a whimsical, Pickwickian quality. It follows the rambling adventures of two British stalwarts, Patrick Dalroy and Humphrey Pump, as they try to stay one step ahead of the law, dispensing free liquor as they go in an England where alcohol has been banned. The “Flying Inn” is...

The deepest and most powerful low pressure system for A CENTURY is currently hurtling towards the west coast where mammoth 50-ft waves threaten mayhem. While waves the height of six-storey buildings are believed to be forming in the North Atlantic, according to the BBC. These terrifying images show a gigantic sea swell on a direct collision course with Britain with landfall expected to hit tonight and through tomorrow.

The task was to re-launch The Sunday Times STYLE magazine. Rather than just making an ad campaign, we created a piece of editorial for the newspaper inventing 'The 50 Best Dressed People in the World’. From this we developed the ‘Fashion Royalty’ campaign and created an iconic series of portraits combining the images of historical royal figures with esteemed members of the fashion world – Victoria Beckham, UK HipHop act Tinie Tempah and Kate Moss.

Britain could be pushed towards a “police state” in which officers are turned into Orwellian “thought police” in the battle against extremism, one of the country’s top cops has warned.Sir Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, said police should not be left to decide what is acceptable free speech as the threat of severe terrorist attack intensifies.Instead politicians, academics and others in civil society should have to decide when radical Islam veers into extremism and when anti-gay or anti-women’s rights sentiments cross the line.The vice-chair of the police’s terrorism committee warned that unless this happened, it would...