Politics
River Island closing stores is an opportunity
In 2026, High Street chains are continuing to close due to a lack of consumer spending power and the move to online shopping. River Island plans to shut 32 of its stores this year. And there were 30% less High Street stores in 2024 then there were in 2014.
But maybe that’s a good thing? Arts venues, independent outlets and community spaces could replace Big Brand consumerism, turning the centrepiece of towns from dull shopping centres to vibrant creative development.
The number of grassroots music venues (GMVs) is still shrinking, but they are making a comeback – unlike High Street chains. That perhaps shows an appetite for the move away from such consumerism and towards creative nourishment. In 2025, the number of GMVs shrank by just nine, the lowest since 2018. Half of GMVs make no profit.
Questionable losses
The thing is, charity shops and stores like Poundland are also closing. Low income people rely on these places for basic goods. While the existence of charity is a sign the system isn’t working, it’s better than nothing. Cancer Research UK plans to close around 90 of its shops by May. At the same time, the government can always take a stake in such necessary outfits, lowering prices and reducing inflation. It can also provide more funding towards cancer research, a disease responsible for over a quarter of all deaths in the UK.
Your town, your choice?
The direction of the town centre could be delivered through people’s engagement with the city council, making each town different rather than endless boring chains in every part of the UK. While Neighbourhood Planning is already a thing, big capital often takes priority under the current system. Another issue is people are too busy working long hours on low salaries.
We can do better than our town centres consisting of people working retail hours on the minimum wage in grey, lifeless buildings. They should be places of excitement, varied education and community, but spaces that still recognise the individual. Pubs and cafes, definitely – but also arts venues, independent stores, and grassroots spaces.
Featured image via the Canary
Two young people have died following an outbreak of meningitis in Kent. According to BBC reporting, a further 11 individuals are critically ill in hospital.
The first individual to die was an as-yet-unnamed student at the University of Kent. The second was Juliette, a year-13 student at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in Faversham.
The outbreak is thought to be linked to an event at Club Chemistry, a nightclub in Canterbury. As of yet, the specific strain of the infection hasn’t been identified.
Meningitis outbreak: UKHSA response
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is currently managing the response to the outbreak. The organisation is contacting over 30,000 people in the Canterbury area with information.
The University of Kent has stated that it’s moving assessments and exams online as a precautionary measure. Given that we’re currently in an exam season, this is likely to cause a not-insignificant level of disruption.
A spokesperson also said that students who have been in contact with infected individuals are being offered advice.
On campus, hundreds of students stood in line today wearing masks, waiting for preventative antibiotics. Students also reported seeing ambulances and hazmat suit-clad teams outside of their accommodation.
Meanwhile, the guardians of pupils from Norton Knatchbull School in Ashford have also been warned that a sixth-former has been admitted to hospital on suspicion of meningitis.
What to watch out for
Meningitis is a bacterial infection of the meninges, the protective membranes that wrap the brain and spinal cord. It’s most common in young people, from babies to young adults, although anyone can be affected.
If it isn’t treated quickly, the infection can cause permanent brain and nerve damage, or even life-threatening sepsis. Having been infected before is not guarantee that you can’t be re-infected.
Asymptomatic carriers of the infection can spread it to others via spit or saliva. Usually, this will take the form of coughs and sneezes, although it can also be transferred by sharing cutlery or kissing.
Trish Mannes, the regional lead for UKHSA South East, stated that:
Meningococcal disease can progress rapidly, so it’s essential that students and staff are alert to the signs and symptoms of meningococcal meningitis and septicaemia.
Students are particularly at risk of missing the early warning signs of meningitis because they can be easily confused with other illnesses such as a bad cold, flu or even a hangover.
According to the NHS website, symptoms to watch out for include:
- a high temperature (fever)
- being sick
- a headache
- a rash that does not fade when a glass is rolled over it (but a rash will not always develop)
- a stiff neck
- a dislike of bright lights
- drowsiness or unresponsiveness
- seizures (fits)
A rare outbreak
After a confirmed meningococcal outbreak, specialist lab testing is needed to confirm the exact strain of the bacteria responsible. Blood and cerebrospinal fluid tests allow technicians to determine the bacterium’s serogroup and genome.
This information is highly important, as it allows healthcare workers to determine whether a targeted vaccination programme is needed, and whether individual cases are linked. In this case, the wait to know the exact strain may be anywhere between three and seven days.
Outbreaks of meningitis of this magnitude are rare in the UK. However, the BBC reported that senior scientists believe that group B meningococcus bacteria are the most likely cause.
Just last October, the UK government announced that there were 378 cases of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) in 2024-25. Of these, MenB accounted for 313 (82.6%) of the cases.
Crucially, the Men B vaccine was introduced back in 2025, but only for babies. This means that the teens and young adults who are being affected in Kent wouldn’t have received the vaccine. As things stand, the only way to access the vaccine for individuals outside of infancy is privately, through high-street pharmacies.
Vaccine skepticism on the rise
With vaccine skepticism on the rise in the UK, the US and elsewhere, the current outbreak in Kent is a tragic reminder of the lifesaving necessity of immunisation.
In the US, the rise of anti-vaxxers was underlined by Trump’s appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a noted vaccine conspiracy theorist, as health secretary. And sure enough, last year, the American Centre for Disease Control was forced to take down its statement that ‘vaccines don’t cause autism’.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Reform leader Nigel Farage is also busy stoking up the conspiracists. In particular, he made vague claims that the Covid-19 jab wasn’t a real vaccine, stating that:
I believe in vaccinations when they’re vaccinations. I don’t think what happened with Covid were vaccinations. You have to keep having them every 6 months.
This anti-science pandering to the extreme right is dangerous – it’s an active threat to public health, and one that we must oppose at every turn. If not, we’ll only see more tragedies like the scenes unfolding in Kent right now.
Featured image via the Canary
HOCHUL’S AD CAMPAIGN: Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office is using taxpayer money to fund an advertising blitz promoting her agenda, brushing up against a ban on governors appearing in promotional material.
State law prohibits elected officials from appearing in ads paid for with state funds.
Hochul doesn’t directly appear in any of the ads. Instead, they encourage people to visit a state-run website where she’s prominently featured talking about wanting to cut red tape to build affordable housing.
“They’re skirting the very intent of what that law was meant to do, and that’s using taxpayer dollars to promote the image or likeness of the governor,” Republican Assemblymember Matt Slater said. “It’s clearly something that needs to be looked into so we can figure out what consequences she should be facing if she is in fact violating the law.”
The ads have appeared over the past week on Facebook, YouTube, and at least one billboard. The governor’s office said a FOIL request would be required to see the full scope.
One example is a YouTube commercial that simply states “Let Them Build” and directs people to the state’s website. The Executive Chamber has spent between $10,000 and $15,000 on that ad — one of 21 to air on YouTube or Google over the past week. The ad has been viewed one million times.
“The state routinely engages in awareness and education campaigns on critical policy priorities and this campaign was designed in compliance with all ethics laws,” said Hochul spokesperson Jen Goodman.
Reinvent Albany’s Rachael Fauss said that if the 20-year-old law had been written today, “it probably would take into consideration” campaigns like this.
“From a technical perspective, she may not be violating the law,” she said. “But I think the spirit of the law is to not have the governor’s likeness be promoted through the use of taxpayer funds. That was the intent of it. Unfortunately, this is an area where the law hasn’t kept up with the way people consume media and ads these days.”
The ban on advertising came about after former Gov. George Pataki ran state-funded commercials during an election year in which he encouraged people to register in a new healthcare program. Ethics reforms passed as part of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s inaugural agenda included language prohibiting the practice.
Hochul isn’t the first elected official to brush up against the intent of the law in recent months. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s likeness has appeared on WiFi kiosks, a practice that’s permitted since the city is given the screentime for free. And Mamdani, unlike Hochul, isn’t up for reelection anytime soon.
“She’s got plenty of campaign funds that she could be using to pay for these things,” Slater said. “What she’s doing right now is spending taxpayer money to enhance her image when she’s on the ballot this year.” — Bill Mahoney
FROM THE CAPITOL
PRICING POLITICS: Democratic state Attorney General Letitia James is throwing her support behind a bill meant to crack down on retailers’ use of algorithmic pricing.
James was in Albany this morning to back legislation meant to halt the practice, which uses a consumer’s personal data to set individually tailored prices.
The bill, backed by Assemblymember Michaelle Solages and Deputy Senate Majority Leader Mike Gianaris, is part of a broader push being made by elected officials to address peoples’ pocketbook concerns.
“This online pricing model hits hardest where it hurts the most — food, medicine, diapers and other essentials,” James said at a news conference. “We all have all been focused on the issue of affordability across this state.” — Nick Reisman
FROM CITY HALL
EVIDENCE HUNT: The former NYPD sergeant accusing former mayoral aide Tim Pearson of sexual harassment wants to get her hands on the evidence that prompted the Mamdani administration to stop paying for Pearson’s legal bills.
In 2024, the former sergeant, Roxanne Ludemann, sued Pearson, a confidant and top adviser to former Mayor Eric Adams, accusing him of sexually harassing her at work and then professionally retaliating against her when she rejected his overtures.
Thanks to an unusual arrangement greenlit by Adams’ Law Department, Pearson received taxpayer-funded private lawyers to defend him against Ludemann’s suit. But Mamdani’s corporation counsel, Steve Banks, announced last week that he had rescinded Pearson’s arrangement, citing unspecified “new evidence” that warranted terminating it.
In a court filing late Friday, John Scola, an attorney representing Ludemann, demanded that the Law Department provide his client with access to the evidence in question, arguing it’s relevant to her ongoing case.
“Produce all documents, records, evidence, reports, memoranda, and materials of any kind that constitute, refer to, or relate to the ‘new evidence’ relied upon, reviewed, considered, or referenced by corp counsel in making its determination to decline or withdraw representation of Defendant Timothy Pearson in this matter,” Scola wrote in the filing.
Also last week, Banks terminated a similar arrangement that allowed Jeffrey Maddrey, an Adams ally and former NYPD chief of department, to receive taxpayer-funded attorneys in the Pearson matter, too. Maddrey is accused by Ludemann of helping Pearson retaliate against her.
Scola’s filing demanded access to the information that prompted Banks to slash Maddrey’s arrangement as well.
Pearson and Maddrey, who resigned from city government in late 2024 after being ensnared in unrelated corruption investigations, have denied any wrongdoing.
A Law Department spokesperson did not comment when asked today about Scola’s demand.
New York City taxpayers have already paid more than $620,000 to cover Pearson’s legal tab alone. — Chris Sommerfeldt
FINANCE SHUFFLE: Mamdani is zeroing in on a pick to run the Department of Finance, a normally under-the-radar agency that has taken on new prominence amid the mayor’s push to raise property taxes.
Mamdani’s administration is in talks to hire Richard Lee for the job, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions who were granted anonymity to discuss an internal personnel matter.
Lee currently serves as director of the City Council’s Division of Finance. That means his move to Mamdani’s finance department would leave Council Speaker Julie Menin without her top budget adviser amid increasingly tense negotiations over the city’s $127 billion spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year.
The Council is conducting budget oversight hearings throughout the month to better ascertain how city agencies are planning to operate amid a precarious fiscal situation. The city is facing a projected multi-billion dollar deficit over the next fiscal year, and Mamdani’s administration is relying on cash reserves, optimistic revenue projections and an increase in property taxes to bridge that gap and balance the spending plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
Increasing levies on property owners would require approval from the Council, and Menin has dismissed the idea as a nonstarter. She has argued the city needs to look for other ways to cut costs beforehand. The mayor, by contrast, says drastic steps like property levy hikes can be avoided if Albany gives the city the authority to raise local taxes on millionaires and corporations — proposals Menin has declined to support.
Lee, should he ultimately join Mamdani’s administration, would be working for the finance department as it tabulates a key variable — the assessed value of property in New York City — which helps determine how much revenue the city collects from owners each year.
Read the story from Joe Anuta and Chris Sommerfeldt in POLITICO Pro.
AROUND NEW YORK
— MACHIAVELLIAN MAMDANI: The mayor forced his political will on fellow lefty lawmakers, including by squashing Tiffany Cabán’s congressional prospects and threatening Chi Ossé. (The New York Times)
— ADAMS OFFICIAL UNDER PROBE: The former commissioner of the city’s probation department under Mayor Eric Adams is being investigated by the Manhattan district attorney. (Gothamist)
— MAYOR DINES WITH KNICKS: Mamdani broke his Saturday Ramadan fast with Senegalese Knicks player Mo Diawara. (GQ)
Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.
Health secretary Wes Streeting has delivered a statement to the House of Commons in which he confirmed that funding for mental health has fallen as a proportion of NHS spending in England.
While there has been a real terms increase of £140m, this amounts a 3.2% reduction in share of spending from last year. Streeting’s statement makes this seem smaller by expressing it as a drop from 8.68% to 8.40% of the total.
This spending reduction comes despite confirmation that one in five people aged 16-64 (22.6%) in England now have a common mental health condition, a 20% increase since 2014. This rises to one in four among young people.
Mental health problems are the leading health condition among young people out of work.
Mark Rowland, chief executive at the Mental Health Foundation, said:
Poor mental health is at record highs, including millions of children and young people on waiting lists for treatment or out of work with mental health problems without adequate support to return to the workforce.
This is a human and economic catastrophe, costing the UK at least £118bn a year. In the midst of a national mental health crisis, a cut to the share of spend for mental health raises real concerns about the government’s commitment to mental health.
We support essential NHS reforms to focus on early intervention and prevention (such as Mental Health in School Teams) as well as a focus on Neighbourhood health centres. However, a reduction in spend relative to other areas of health spend undermines this effort. We wouldn’t accept rising cancer rates and falling share of spend and we shouldn’t for mental health.
Without an effective, co-ordinated ‘invest to save approach’, the mental health crisis will only get worse. It will continue to cost the UK billions of pounds, and millions of people will continue to suffer the consequences of preventable mental health problems.
Featured image via the Canary
When someone speaks of a genocide against indigenous peoples, you could be forgiven for thinking they’re referring to historical events. Maybe Europeans’ devastating, disease-spreading conquests of the Americas during the 16th century. Or Japan’s campaigns of assimilation and dispossession directed at indigenous Ainu in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
But not anymore. Today, a ‘genocide of indigenous people’ is just as likely to be used to describe the supposed ‘ethnic cleansing’ of white Europeans as it is an event from centuries ago. Take a recent viral GB News clip, featuring someone called Thomas Corbett-Dillon. Introduced as a ‘former Boris Johnson adviser’ (a seemingly tenuous claim), Corbett-Dillon declared that ‘there is a genocide happening on this island because it is being taken over by different people who are not indigenous to this land’.
That pundits are prepared to make such a claim on live TV is a sign of just how normalised elements of the so-called Great Replacement Theory have become among parts of the right. Popularised by French writer Renaud Camus, the theory holds that Western elites are conspiring to replace white populations with immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Camus was banned from entering the UK last year – a decision that only amplified his arguments and allowed him to pose as a truth-teller silenced by the elites.
The likes of Corbett-Dillon are far from the only ones to invoke the spectre of ‘genocide’ to advance their cause. Over the past decade, the concept of genocide has been stretched far beyond its historical meaning, which was rooted in the singular horror of the Holocaust. Trans activists have spoken of a ‘trans genocide’. Anti-abortion activists have described abortion as a ‘silent holocaust’ or an ‘American genocide’. And Israel has relentlessly been accused of committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza while waging war against Hamas, the terrorists responsible for the 7 October massacre, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. In fact, the accusations began in the immediate aftermath of that tragedy, before Israel had even responded militarily.
The likening of abortion rates or high levels of net migration to the most horrendous event in human history may be grim, but it serves a propagandistic purpose: to dress up, in this case, demographic change as a form of genocide that demands extreme action – hence, extremist right-wingers’ fantasies of ‘total remigration’ (the removal of all non-whites from Western countries).
What’s especially striking about the right’s growing willingness to frame anti-immigration arguments in terms of genocide is the extent to which they’ve adopted the morally charged language of the left. After all, the discourse of indigeneity and victimhood was long associated with ‘progressive’ politics. Many conservatives usually recoil from the language of indigenous rights in the context of Australia, Canada, New Zealand or the US. But they now appear all too comfortable invoking it in the context of Britain. In one YouTube video, commentator Carl Benjamin, also known as Sargon of Akkad, even asked why the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples should not apply to the English.
Instead of advocating equality before the law and a shared national identity that transcends ethnicity, too many on the right are now pursuing their own identity politics, complete with their own claim to victimhood.
In the absence of a serious vision for the betterment of society, it seems parts of the right have embraced rhetorical hysteria instead. It is less a political analysis than it is an emotional release. Talking up a fictitious ‘genocide’ allows parts of the right to avoid confronting the significant challenges we face, including those brought about by migration and multiculturalism, from failures of integration to a lack of social cohesion.
None of this means that questions of culture, ethnicity and demographics don’t matter. Concerns about segregation, the entrenchment of ethnic and religious identity politics, and the social consequences of poorly managed immigration are urgent topics for public debate. Too often, anyone airing these concerns has been dismissed as racist or reactionary.
But describing demographic change as ‘genocide’, because migrants settle in Britain and have children, is not only inaccurate, it is morally grotesque, too. It is using the worst crimes in history to score political points. Plus, it poisons the debate and sets people against one another. By pushing the discussion to its most hysterical extremes, some on the right are making the serious conversation we need about immigration and demographic change harder rather than easier.
Those warning of a ‘genocide’ may think they’re speaking for ordinary Brits. But just like the woke left before them, they’ve mistaken their social-media echo chamber for the nation at large.
Inaya Folarin Iman is a spiked columnist and founder of the Equiano Project.
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Missing: Britain’s “war-fighting readiness” defence investment plan. Expected arrival date: last autumn…
The much-talked-about action-thriller was an awards season front-runner, despite some criticism from audiences over certain portrayals in the film, particularly over the fetishization of Black female characters like Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills.Speaking to HuffPost from the Oscars press room after the show, the filmmaker acknowledged that he knows “a little bit about that critique,” noting “it’s complicated.”
Deputy leader of Reform Richard Tice has claimed that reports his property empire avoided almost £600,000 in tax is “a desperate Establishment trying to smear” him. Of course, exploiting rent from people’s need for housing with net property assets of over £30 million is entirely anti-establishment and doesn’t epitomise the housing crisis the country is facing.
Tice chats shit
According to the Times, Tice channelled shareholder dividends into an offshore trust and dormant businesses. Doing so, he reportedly avoided hundreds of thousands in tax from the majority of 2018 to 2021. And that’s on multi-million pound profits.
Apparently, a thriving member of the rentier neoliberal capitalist class who treats the essential of housing as an asset is going to help struggling Britons with the cost of living.
Tice recently said:
The cost of living is the number one concern of everybody, and everything that this Government does is just adding to costs for businesses, and they have to pass it on to consumers.
Labour has added ‘costs’ to businesses. But the issue with the government’s rise in employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) is that they were flat rather than progressive. Labour’s business tax rise impacted less profitable small and medium size outfits. Whereas, highly profitable businesses can afford to pay more in tax to address inflation (through reducing available pounds – the main function of tax).
For example, private equity and venture capital UK firms make as much profit as £5,206,406 per employee. Meanwhile, real estate – like the company Tice owns – is the most profitable overall industry in the UK.
Instead, housing design, location and features should be provided at cost price by the state with that amount paid off in monthly installments. It should be a not for profit industry.
Featured image via the Canary
Adding it was “terrible” of the UK not to back the US in Iran…
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