Politics
Debunking Ageing Myths: I’m A Widow Travelling With My Boyfriend
Three years ago, I stood beside my husband Al’s bed and prepared to say goodbye.
After 25 years of marriage, cancer was taking him where I could not follow. Before he died, he looked at me and said something that shocked me at the time.
“Diane, you’ll need another man.”
I immediately dismissed the idea. I was 80 years old. I had already experienced a full life. What on earth would I need another man for? I certainly wasn’t looking for one.
Then life did what life often does. It ignored my plans.
Just a few months after Al died, friends introduced me to a man named Bob. I welcomed it because I was experiencing what I later discovered, after many late-night Google searches, was called “widow’s fire,” a fierce longing for intimacy and closeness after losing a spouse that, despite being surprisingly common, few people talk about.
Some people, including some of my children, thought it was too soon for me to begin dating. But grief doesn’t follow a timeline.
I wasn’t looking to replace Al. No one could. But for 25 years of marriage, I had been part of a pair. Suddenly, I was standing alone. The silence and loneliness were overwhelming.
What I realised was that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. I wanted companionship, laughter, conversation and, yes, physical attraction. And to my surprise, I found that in Bob, a kind, funny and handsome man who understood that loving him didn’t mean I loved Al any less.
Bob and I have been together for more than two years. We are deeply committed to one another, but marriage isn’t part of our equation. At our age, we’ve learned that relationships don’t need to look a certain way to be meaningful. What works for us is love, honesty and a healthy dose of practicality.
That practicality was put to the test recently when Bob and I embarked on a 22-day adventure through Norway, France and Spain. With me at 82 and Bob at 83, travelling halfway around the world requires a little more planning than it did a few decades ago.
Before we left, I sent an email introducing my daughter and son-in-law to Bob’s brother and sister. Not because we were planning a family reunion. Because we were 82 and 83 years old and about to cross an ocean together.
“Should we get lost along the way and need your assistance,” I wrote, “you now can connect with one another and try to retrieve, grieve or rejoice from our far distant travels.”
I also informed everyone that I had travel insurance in case my body needed to be shipped home and that Bob had thoughtfully prepared his own end-of-life arrangements. My children thought it was hilarious. Bob’s family may have thought I was crazy. They’re not entirely wrong.
But if you’re going to travel the world in your 80s, you learn to laugh about the realities that come with it. Like money. People don’t like talking about finances in matters of romance, but they should.
In our case, I happen to have a larger wallet than Bob. Before we left, we talked openly about expectations. I agreed to pay for the trip itself, including the airline tickets. Bob was perfectly willing to fly economy. I was perfectly unwilling to sit in first class without him. The good Lord knows I’m spoiled, and I wasn’t going to be up front sipping champagne while the man I loved was squeezed into seat 34B. Besides, I like him next to me.
We agreed that he would cover many of the extras along the way, including meals, excursions and spontaneous treats. There were no complicated contracts. Just two adults having an honest conversation.
Widowhood taught me many things. Like I wish more people understood that discussing money isn’t unromantic. Avoiding it is.
Photo Courtesy Of Diane Heiler
The trip itself became a lesson in something even bigger. Standing in Norway, surrounded by glaciers that looked as though they belonged on another planet, I found myself thinking about Al. He loved to travel.
The glacier train rides were breathtaking. The scenery was so beautiful it almost didn’t seem real. It was colder than a witch’s teat but magnificent. Al and I had never made it to Norway together, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how much he would have loved it.
Unexpectedly, I didn’t feel guilty. For a long time, widows are made to feel that happiness somehow betrays grief. It doesn’t. Missing Al and loving Bob can occupy the same space. Both things are true.
Bob understood that. He never tried to compete with my memories. He simply stood beside me while I carried them. That’s one of the many reasons I love him.
Norway also introduced me to two things I never expected: iced cider and brown cheese.
The cheese was downright addictive.
I liked it so much that I packed half a pound of it in my suitcase and hauled it through France, Spain and all the way back home to Florida.
At 82 years old, apparently, I travel internationally with contraband cheese.
Photo Courtesy Of Diane Heiler
The minute we arrived, I announced to Bob, “I could live here.”
It had everything I love: beauty, charm, walkability and friendly people. We spent our days wandering old streets, taking in spectacular views and pretending, just for a moment, that we belonged there.
Of all the places we visited, Normandy affected me the most.
Standing among the endless rows of white crosses at the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, I felt humbled in a way that is difficult to describe.
The older I get, the more familiar loss becomes. Friends die. My spouse died. Parents die. Even pieces of ourselves disappear. The woman I was at 40 no longer exists. Neither does the woman I was before widowhood.
Yet there I was, halfway around the world, still creating memories. Still laughing. Still planning. Still living.
Spain brought its own lessons.
I use wheelchair assistance because of a painful foot. Bob uses a cane. Airport assistance services managed to leave us at the wrong gate on two separate occasions, causing us to miss our flights.
After missing our second flight, I told Bob I could have learned to become a professional tango dancer in less time than it took airport personnel to move my behind through that airport. For two days we were shuffled from gate to gate while trying not to lose our sense of humour. Thankfully, we succeeded.
By the time we reached Mallorca after nearly three weeks abroad, we realised something. We may have been tourists, but we didn’t particularly want to be around tourists anymore.
Maybe we were tired. Maybe we missed our own beds. Or maybe we had officially become old people. Either way, home was sounding awfully good.
Traveling at 82 also comes with one unexpected advantage: I no longer care about impressing anyone.
Photo Courtesy Of Diane Heiler
When I was younger, I packed as though every day required a completely different outfit, matching shoes, jewellery and accessories. These days, I pack for comfort, practicality and the occasional nice dinner.
For 22 days abroad, Bob and I shared one checked suitcase, and we each carried a small bag. It wasn’t because we were trying to prove anything. It’s simply that we’ve learned what matters and what doesn’t.
I’ve discovered that one scarf, one pair of comfortable shoes and a little confidence can carry you remarkably far. That’s one of the gifts of ageing. You spend less time worrying about how you look and more time enjoying where you are.
At this age, I’ve learned that nobody really cares what you’re wearing, whether your hair is perfect or if you’ve packed the right shoes. What people remember is whether you laughed, loved, showed up and enjoyed the journey.
And that’s true whether you’re standing on a glacier in Norway, wandering the streets of Barcelona or simply sitting beside a koi pond at home with someone you love.
The greatest surprise of the trip wasn’t Norway’s glaciers, Normandy’s history or Barcelona’s architecture. It was realising how comfortable I have become with this unexpected chapter of my life.
If you had told me three years ago, while I was sitting beside Al’s hospital bed, that I’d be crossing Europe with another man, I would have told you that you were out of your mind.
If widowhood has taught me anything, it’s that we don’t honour those we’ve lost by stopping our lives. We honour them by continuing to live them.
When Al died, I thought my story was winding down. Instead, it simply changed genres.
Photo Courtesy Of Diane Heiler
These days, I’m perfectly content sitting beside that pond with Bob discussing books, sports, grandchildren, politics or whatever we’re streaming on Netflix. Twenty years ago, I would have called that boring. Now I call it happiness.
One of the most damaging myths about ageing is that life becomes smaller. I’ve found the opposite. Life becomes more precious. At some point, every one of us realises our time is finite. The horizon becomes visible. Oddly enough, that’s what makes each day matter more.
At 82, the future looks different than I imagined. It includes a new love. A few more aches and pains. Occasionally a wheelchair. And gratitude for every single day I still get to wake up and see what comes next.
Al knew all this before I did. He knew I would need companionship. He knew I would need laughter. He knew I would need someone to sit beside me on airplanes and hold my hand during life’s inevitable turbulence. Most of all, he knew I would need a future.
As it turns out, he knew me better than I knew myself.
Diane Heiler is the author of “A Widow’s Fire: An Intimate Memoir of Heartbreak, Survival and Moving On.” Widowed in 2023 after caring for her husband through his battle with cancer, she writes about grief, resilience and finding joy again after profound loss.
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Darline Graham Nordone, Lindsey Graham’s younger sister and close confidant, will serve the remainder of the late senator’s term in Washington.
“It’s my honor to ask his little sister Darline Graham to finish his work for him now,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said Monday, formally appointing Nordone after recounting stories of Graham’s legacy.
President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune both publicly expressed support for McMaster choosing Nordone as a tribute to Graham.
Her appointment as an interim caretaker triggers a wide-open race ahead of the Aug. 11 primary. Several Republicans are already weighing bids to take over Graham’s place as the GOP Senate nominee.
A video of a Muslim woman, Nora Mubarak, capturing a seagull in a white sheet in Grimsby has gone viral for the wrong reasons.
One of Britain’s self-styled “patriots” shared the video, with many claiming the woman was catching the bird to eat it — parroting the same racist theories that falsely accused immigrants in the US of eating pets.
However, Mubarak was actually doing a good deed in rescuing the seagull that had fallen from a roof. More footage shows her working with other locals — white locals, for the record — to reunite the gull with its mother.
Nevertheless, despite it being a load of nonsense pushed out to stir up racial hatred, the misinformation has reached far further than the truth.
This comes as another reminder that X has far too much power to shape perspectives and far too little regulation or accountability. A Brown woman’s safety was needlessly put at risk, without any reprisal, because of dangerous misinformation.
The first video posted by Active Patriot on X, with 5.2m views, is below.
At this rate we won't have any wildlife left — Active Patriot (@ActivePatriotUK) July 8, 2026
This has happened in my town Grimsby on the corner of Lord Street 
Poor Stephen 
pic.twitter.com/ydx7utmH0x
Muslims are too often victims of the ‘Robinson’ effect
Active Patriot’s misleading video, as has become pretty typical, was reshared by Tommy Robinson. As a result of the ‘Robinson effect’ and the size of these two bad actors’ followings, 8.1 million people saw the video and likely believed the nefarious suggestions made. They also received 69,000 likes with nearly 19,000 reposts.
Robinson made a disgusting suggestion that the video showed:
Invaders catching and killing gulls in broad daylight in “Modern England”.
Get these backwards people out!
In fairness to Active Patriot, he subsequently posted that he was mistaken. Tommy Robinson, of course, hasn’t felt inclined to do so because truth has never been very important to that weasel.
A video I shared yesterday of a woman catching a seagull in a blanket, was Not what it looked like, the woman in question was actually concerned for the small seagull after it has fell off the roof previously, as you can see in… https://t.co/X4ae0MxvCR pic.twitter.com/36ONNaUHu6
— Active Patriot (@ActivePatriotUK) July 9, 2026
WOMAN WAS RESCUING SEAGULL, NOT STEALING IT
X user admits he was ‘quick to judge’
The correction read:
WOMAN WAS RESCUING SEAGULL, NOT STEALING IT
A video I shared yesterday of a woman catching a seagull in a blanket, was Not what it looked like, the woman in question was actually concerned for the small seagull after it has fell off the roof previously, as you can see in this video that the woman in question shares with the seagull society on Facebook, she asked locals to help her it on to a flat roof so it could be back with its mother.
Like many people yesterday I saw the video shared round of her catching it and jumped to conclusions, for that I apologize and hold my hands up I was quick to judge.
But the post rectifying the misinformation didn’t reach nearly as far, receiving only a million views, 3,200 likes and 741 reposts.
We are living in dangerous times where bad actors can put people’s safety at risk by posting misinformation and lies. While they whip up racialised hate towards marginalised groups in a press of a button, social media platforms aren’t prioritising sanctions and regulations for this behaviour.
Anti-Muslim rhetoric called out by the Canary
We know the woman in this video (who was rescuing the seagull). So we'd recommend you remove this post and apologise for your anti-Muslim, racist tirade.
* tirade means angry verbal outburst if your followers were wondering https://t.co/dEjOsMhqkT — Canary (@TheCanaryUK) July 10, 2026
Mubarak says she will hold liars accountable
Mubarak spoke to ITV following these dangerous allegations, saying she was helping a number of other locals to assist the distressed bird. She added:
They have an agenda to divide us, and we should not let them do so.
I hope Nora sues people like Tommy Robinson, who lied about her when she was just trying to help rescue the seagull. pic.twitter.com/7LihuGnIDH
— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) July 11, 2026
The leader of Northeast Lincolnshire Council, Oliver Freeston, who represents Reform, joined the bandwagon in assuming the woman had bad intentions. Needless to say, he has failed to apologise for demonising her.
As a council leader, he has a responsibility to all his constituents, including those who are Muslim, so how does he justify such behaviour?
Those who come out to defend truth never seem to even come close to the astronomical reach of those pushing ridiculous, sensationalist lies. In fact, the government minister responsible for regulating social media platforms, Lisa Nandy, has instead walked away from the platform taking her whole department with her.
Clearly, she recognises it is a cesspit of disinformation and abuse, as she stated in her ‘Goodbye X’ post. But she has notably held back from doing anything about it, other than turning the other cheek as if a statement will suddenly make Elon Musk change his ways.
The far right will abandon all truth and reason
One thing is abundantly clear: truth does not matter to the far-right. All that matters is their explicit intention to convince British people that immigrants and asylum seekers are the reason why living standards, opportunities, local investment and social cohesion are declining. Anyone who is not white is a threat according to them.
However, they miss the point repeatedly. It’s the super-rich, who have spent decades playing politicians like instruments in an orchestra with compliant leaders happily dancing to their tune, that is the real problem.
The result? Politicians have demonised and scapegoated harmless people — and even the premise that humans have basic needs — while handing the richest in society ever more tax breaks, lucrative contracts and generous subsidies.
There is a pretty easy, and perfectly doable, way of fixing this corrosive issue in our society and political discourse. Regulate social media and make lies and misinformation expensive for those capitalising off of it.
After all, we all know rich people do not like to put their hands in their own pockets, instead they want to fleece ours.
Featured image via ITV
US president Donald Trump wants to create an automatic retaliation policy if Iran manages to assassinate him. The erratic US leader’s idea emerged as Iran and the US returned to open hostilities around a month into the Oman-brokered negotiating period to end the war.
Associated Press (AP) reported on 13 July:
President Donald Trump is suggesting he has left standing orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran “ at levels they’ve never seen before” if Tehran follows through on its long-standing threats to kill him.
The news agency added that:
the U.S. government has no way to create an automatic, preauthorized “dead man’s switch” that would prompt immediate retaliation.
In the vanishingly unlikely event that Trump were killed by Iran — or died for any other reason — vice-president JD Vance would become president. In such a scenario:
Vance could do exactly what Trump called for, though there also is a chance he could decide not to follow his predecessor’s orders — or offer a direct response in a different way.
AP said:
Trump nonetheless posted on his social media website Saturday that Iran had made threats “to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate” him and he said 1,000 “missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat.”
Rumours of an assassination attempt emerged on 9 July. The Wall Street Journal said that new intelligence:
indicated a fresh Iranian plan to kill President Trump, people familiar with the matter said, a finding that would mark an escalation in the war between Washington and Iran.
Trump said at the time:
They want to take out the U.S. leader—me. I’m on every list. I saw this morning, I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a little bit lucky, but that maybe doesn’t last very long.
The intelligence reportedly originated from Israel. No evidence that the claim is true has been produced. No source was named and the Israelis have not given any further comment.
Flailing Trump still can’t escape Iran mire
The bizarre ‘kill-switch’ plan came as the US-Iran peace process, such as it was, seemed to be falling apart fully. The two countries have exchanged missiles in recent days and Trump posted on social media:
We are reinstating the THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE. All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait.
The US and Israel attacked Iran first on 28 February without provocation. Iran was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
The US has achieved none of its original war aims. Iran predictably closed the Straits of Hormuz, a vital oil channel, once attacked — creating a global energy crisis. Far from being defeated, Iran has made clear the war will continue until “the enemy’s inevitable and permanent humiliation, disgrace, regret, and surrender”. Trump came to power on an anti-war ‘America First’ ticket. He now faces worldwide humiliation as the front man for US imperial decline.
Featured image via the Canary
By Joe Glenton
With Britain sweating through its third consecutive heatwave, the Green Party has moved to introduce a maximum workplace temperature bill:
"From bus and train drivers sweltering in their cabins to bakers working in over 40 degrees, and builders whose workplaces offer no respite from the heat – the government has a duty to protect all of us."
Today Hannah Spencer is tabling a maximum workplace temperature bill. pic.twitter.com/0ofCXCDx4M
— The Green Party (@TheGreenParty) July 13, 2026
“Absurd”
Speaking to the Guardian, Hannah Spencer said:
This is something workers and trade unions have been raising the alarm about for many years. It shouldn’t have taken this long to act, but the unsafe temperatures we’re seeing now should be a huge wake-up call.
We’ve seen absolute chaos as a result of these recent temperatures, and such a massive human cost, yet we haven’t heard a peep from government about how they plan to protect us all.
Spencer branded the situation “absurd”. She also said:
From bus and train drivers sweltering in cabins that are hotter than the soaring temperatures outside and bakers working in temperatures of over 40°C, to builders whose workplaces offer no respite from the heat, the government has a duty to protect all of us.
I had one constituent contact me about the appalling conditions he faced laying Tarmac on roads in Gorton and Denton in temperatures he called unbearable.
Spencer used Spain as an example of what can be done. As she noted, workers there are given the ability to adjust their hours to avoid the hottest hours of the day. This allows work to continue without putting workers at risk. And the risk is real too. We experienced 2,700 excess deaths during the first two heatwaves this year; we’re now in the middle of the third. This problem won’t go away in our lifetimes either.
This affects all of us
We reported on this issue before — namely when Zack Polanski made the following intervention:
Climate justice is social justice. https://t.co/b2I31KSLWf
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) May 26, 2026
As we noted at the time, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) were among those calling for maximum workplace temperatures. A report from the CCC said:
Maximum working temperature regulations would address the increasing risks that high temperatures pose to workers’ safety and incentivise the deployment of the necessary cooling. Businesses are largely responsible for investing in their own adaptations but must ensure that workplaces and working practices are safe for employees, including for those working outside.
The TUC, meanwhile, flagged the negative health impacts that can result from extreme heat:
- Dizziness.
- Delirium.
- Fatigue.
- Rashes.
- Collapse.
- Cramps.
- Exhaustion.
- Stroke.
- Death.
The Greens’ bill is expected to enjoy cross-party support. As the Guardian reported:
Her bill is expected to receive cross-party support and will be backed by the leftwing Labour MPs Rebecca Long-Bailey, Alex Sobel and Nadia Whittome as well as Graham Leadbitter from the Scottish National party, Liz Saville Roberts from Plaid Cymru and the independent MP Jeremy Corbyn.
Still, not everyone is happy about the idea of making things moderately better for workers:
#GMB discusses a maximum temperature limit in workplaces.
Alex Mansuroglu says yes & talks about tradespeople having to work in 38 degrees. Daisy McAndrew says they'd lose money. Ranvir Singh responds, maybe there should be statutory pay. Watch the look on Ed Balls face! pic.twitter.com/D4CV2a7p0L
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) June 24, 2026
Progress
While this bill is certainly a progressive measure, it’s happening because progress on climate action did not come fast enough. And the reason we failed is because hostile oil barons hid the truth from us for as long as they could — later promoting denialism and misinformation.
As journalist Benjamin Franta reported in 2021, we should have been acting decades earlier than we were:
At an old gunpowder factory in Delaware – now a museum and archive – I found a transcript of a petroleum conference from 1959 called the “Energy and Man” symposium, held at Columbia University in New York. As I flipped through, I saw a speech from a famous scientist, Edward Teller (who helped invent the hydrogen bomb), warning the industry executives and others assembled of global warming.
“Whenever you burn conventional fuel,” Teller explained, “you create carbon dioxide. … Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect.” If the world kept using fossil fuels, the ice caps would begin to melt, raising sea levels. Eventually, “all the coastal cities would be covered,” he warned.
1959 was before the moon landing, before the Beatles’ first single, before Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, before the first modern aluminum can was ever made. It was decades before I was born.
This climate catastrophe we’re living through is happening because of wealthy interests. And if people have a problem with workers needing some degree of flexibility, they should take it up with the oil industry.
Featured image via the Canary
By Willem Moore
According to the Times, Labour is planning to restrict migrants from being able to access benefits. In response, the Green Party’s Zack Polanski has labelled their immigration plans “performative cruelty”:
Labour plans to withhold benefits to people who have been granted Indefinite Leave to Remain.
Performative cruelty and total cowardice.
That’s why the Greens will replace Labour. https://t.co/UxqPjdOjG6 — Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) July 13, 2026
Polanski slams Labour’s “cowardice”
Steven Swinford of the Times noted that so-called ‘Boriswave migrants’ wouldn’t have to wait ten years to be granted indefinite leave under the unveiled plan. At the same time, they’d face a longer wait to be eligible for benefits — which Polanski sharply criticised.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out how this could all go wrong.
If you have a class of people who can’t claim benefits, you have a class of people who will do anything to earn money should they find themselves unemployed. Employers will take advantage of this, and shadow economies will form. Once these shadow economies become established, we’ll find ourselves one step closer to a government which can strip away welfare for all citizens.
Things don’t get worse all at once; they get worse one step at a time, and this latest proposal is a significant step towards a state which works solely for the rich. Polanski has repeatedly warned against these creeping changes.
Zoe Gardner spoke further on this, stating:
This all sounds tough, but in reality it’s not just performative [cruelty], it’s incredibly stupid.
People fall into difficulties sometimes, they just do. You don’t have to be British to be impacted, we saw that with Covid for eg.
If you blanket deny the state safety net to one group, all you do is create child poverty, vulnerability to loan sharks, destitution & misery in our communities. This actually is bad, not to mention more costly in emergency services, for everyone.
The cost of managing destitute people often eclipses the cost of eliminating destitution in the first place. An example of this is that it costs more to house a homeless person than it does to let them sleep on the streets. This is because the various services which supposedly ‘help’ these people (or criminalise them) cost money, and as it turns out this adds up to more than simply giving people shelter.
Gardner added:
These are people who do & will live here for the long term, probably their kids will always live here.
Forcing them into poverty, debt & homelessness just because “foreigners bad” is not good for society, actually.
We’ve reached the point where this needs spelling out…
Labour has a chance to reverse this stupidity, but instead they’re doubling down.
They should hang their heads in shame for pathetically dancing the Xenophobic polka to Farage’s tune.
Unclear
Since the Times’ reporting above, HuffPost have claimed that Burnham will actually back Shabana Mahmood’s bill as it is. Polanski responded to that too, saying:
Labour had one last card to play.
That after Keir Starmer they could find themselves a progressive leader.
We're speed running crash and burn faster than anyone could have imagined.
We're building the alternative of hope with a plan to replace Labour.https://t.co/0qbagSvIYp https://t.co/XRLDDSrN2S — Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) July 13, 2026
As we’ve reported previously, ‘wishy washy’ doesn’t begin to cover Burnham’s approach to migration. As such, we have no idea how he’ll vote this evening, and we imagine that neither does he.
Featured image via the Canary
By Willem Moore
As deadly heat covers Europe, governments must act quickly to protect lives and force fossil fuel companies to foot the bill. That’s the view of campaign group 350.org.
There were more than 10,000 excess deaths across Europe during record-breaking heatwaves in June. Deadly wildfires are still raging in France and Spain. And even in the normally less extreme UK, the death toll has topped 2,700 and multiple fires have taken hold.
Climate campaigners urge European governments to take urgent measures to protect the public, especially vulnerable populations, from heat impacts. This includes measures such as upgrading hospitals, care facilities, schools and universities and providing emergency support for farmers.
France’s High Council on Climate has warned that the country’s infrastructure, cities and public services were built for “a climate that no longer exists”. It says that current adaptation policy is insufficient to protect people.
In response, 350.org campaigners called on European governments to invest massively in heat adaptation, while accelerating the shift to affordable renewable energy to reduce emissions and lower bills. 350.org analysis shows that the heatwaves drive up households’ energy spending.
Adaptation measures, however, must be borne by fossil fuel companies through stronger and permanent taxes on oil and gas profits, says 350.org. It shouldn’t be down to people already burdened with high energy bills and other extreme heat impacts.
Fanny Petitbon, 350.org France country manager, said:
This heatwave isn’t just about lack of preparedness, it’s gross negligence. Scientists have sounded the alarm long ago, but governments chose to keep burning fossil fuels.
We’ve been saying for decades that climate inaction is deadly. And now it has a body count of more than 10,000 in Europe in June alone. It’s never too late to protect people. Investing in adaptation now can save thousands more from harm in the months and years to come.
We don’t need endless debates in parliament nor austerity measures that slash the funds meant for climate action, we need decision-makers to wake up and act now. The scale of action needed and who must foot the bill is clear.
Europe’s heatwaves are sponsored by fossil fuel companies. The industry must pay both for the destruction and urgent measures like better thermal insulation of social housing, schools and hospitals, greening of public spaces, and heat warning systems for outdoor workers.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
Referrals to LGBTQ+ youth charity The Proud Trust increased by 171% following the Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers.
This prompted the charity to launch a major new national campaign highlighting the challenges LGBTQ+ young people continue to face and call for greater understanding, safer spaces and better support.
The Proud Trust, one of the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ youth charities, has launched #DeserveBetter, a nationwide campaign calling for greater understanding, safer spaces and better support for LGBTQ+ young people throughout the year.
The campaign comes as national research continues to paint a stark picture of the challenges many queer young people face. Nearly half of LGBTQ+ pupils experience bullying because of who they are, almost six in ten have seriously considered suicide, while almost a quarter may never complete secondary school, twice the national average.
The charity says there’s a growing demand for specialist LGBTQ+ support. Over the past year alone, The Proud Trust delivered nearly 400 youth group sessions and held more than 820 support conversations with LGBTQ+ young people, parents, carers and professionals.
Almost 10,000 people visited The Proud Place, its LGBTQ+ community centre in Manchester, while more than 1,400 teachers, youth workers and other professionals received specialist inclusion training.
Through its Rainbow Flag Award programme, which helps schools create safer and more inclusive environments for LGBTQ+ pupils, the charity also reached almost 50,000 young people.
Campaign will highlight issues affecting LGBTQ+ young people
Through #DeserveBetter, The Proud Trust will shine a spotlight on many of the issues affecting LGBTQ+ young people today, including bullying, discrimination, healthcare, education, barriers to employment, family acceptance, identity, belonging and access to safe spaces.
To kick off the campaign, The Proud Trust is sharing powerful first-person stories from people speaking publicly for the first time about growing up LGBTQ+, while also shining a spotlight on the key issues affecting young people today through expert insight and lived experience.
Award-winning spoken word artist myndstate has written an original poem inspired by his own experiences of growing up gay, while the campaign will also feature a special film bringing together a host of LGBTQ+ celebrities and high-profile allies, with the full contributor line-up to be revealed in the coming weeks.
Liam Swanston, director of development and partnerships at The Proud Trust, said:
A 171% increase in referrals isn’t just a statistic, behind every referral is a young person looking for somewhere they feel safe, someone who understands what they’re going through, or simply reassurance that they’re not alone.
Every day we work alongside LGBTQ+ young people who are navigating bullying, discrimination, isolation and uncertainty while also trying to understand who they are and where they belong. We also work with adults who want to understand and support the young people in their lives better.
No young person should grow up believing they have to hide who they are, face those experiences alone, or feel there’s no place where they truly belong.
#DeserveBetter is about ensuring those young people’s voices are heard. This campaign shines a spotlight on the realities many LGBTQ+ young people continue to face today, while celebrating the extraordinary difference that acceptance, visibility, community and support can make.
We hope it encourages greater understanding, challenges misconceptions and reminds every LGBTQ+ young person that they deserve to feel safe, valued, understood and able to thrive, every single day of the year.
For more information about The Proud Trust and the #DeserveBetter campaign, visit www.TheProudTrust.org
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
As of the 13 July, new regulations have come into effect for all police forces which will impact vetting procedures and suspensions. The government is rolling out the “complex and wide-ranging” rule change as part of its pledge to end violence against women and girls (VAWG). It follows a campaign from the charity Refuge, ‘Remove the Rot’, which kicked off in 2023 and subsequently found a “shocking scale of police-perpetrated VAWG” which meant women and girls could not trust the police to protect them. Refusing to allow there to be no place to turn for justice, the domestic abuse charity pushed for change, saying:
as an institution designed to protect the public from harm, the police cannot be allowed to let perpetrators slip through the net.
Refuge welcomed the changes which came into effect from today, adding that:
We hope today represents the beginning of a future where women and girls finally feel protected by the police, as they deserve.
Refuge: ‘Remove the Rot’ campaign
UK police forces have long been under mounting pressure to own up to the misogyny and racism that have been allowed to take root among many male officers.
These calls intensified after the appalling — and preventable — kidnapping, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens. He abused his position of power with deadly consequences, conducting a false arrest of Everard and using police handcuffs to take her into his ‘custody’.
However, men that abuse women and girls do so because it makes them feel ‘superior’ and ‘dominant’ over their victims. This makes the police force quite an appealing line of work for these pathetic and dangerous types of men, making it the perfect breeding ground for these malicious, abusive attitudes.
Couzens shared “grossly offensive messages” with fellow officers before murdering Everard. This surely shows just how deeply these toxic attitudes can run within policing. Given another police officer was spared prison time for spying on a 14-year-old girl back in October, it doesn’t seem like the force has suitably recognised the severity of the threat facing women and girls across the country.
And that is what makes this so frightening: the police are supposed to protect the public, but when women and girls fear the very people meant to keep them safe, who are they supposed to turn to?
Given they amount to half the UK population, this has been a huge failing by the police and reform has been long overdue. This also comes at a time when the safety of women and girls is hugely under threat, with violence against women and girls rising and reported rapes increasing by over 500% in the last two decades alone.
“Refuge decided: enough is enough”
CEO of Refuge, Gemma Sherrington, welcomes the rule changes:
Women’s confidence in policing has been in crisis for far too long. Finally, the tables are starting to turn. As new vetting and suspension regulations come into force, today (July 13th) marks the success of Refuge’s Remove the Rot campaign.
For years, we have pushed for automatic suspension of officers accused of violence against women and girls (VAWG) alongside stronger vetting procedures. At long last, the police conduct and vetting regimes have been amended to bring new regulations in.
Launched in 2023, Remove the Rot uncovered the shocking scale of police-perpetrated VAWG, including domestic abuse, sexual assault and sexual harassment. Having seen firsthand the catastrophic impact this was having on women and girls’ trust in the police, Refuge decided: enough is enough. VAWG is already at epidemic levels, and as an institution designed to protect the public from harm, the police cannot be allowed to let perpetrators slip through the net.
The new regulations, which were first announced in the government’s 2025 VAWG strategy, will require all police officers to hold and maintain vetting clearance, with new requirements to tighten suspension for those under investigation for specified VAWG offences. While these regulations depend on consistent implementation across police forces and cannot reverse the harm caused by police-perpetrated VAWG, they do send a clear message that such behaviour will not be tolerated.
This campaign win was made possible by the tireless efforts of our supporters, with over 48,000 of you signing our Remove the Rot petition which was delivered directly to Downing Street in 2024.
The head of Refuge finished with a reminder that this is just the start of long-overdue reforms of the kind of people the police force is willing to hire and empower:
We hope today represents the beginning of a future where women and girls finally feel protected by the police, as they deserve.
We deserve to feel safe with the police
Many women and girls won’t even consider contacting the police for abuse they have suffered. They may stay silent because they fear nobody will believe them, or because they want to avoid a criminal justice system that often puts victims on trial instead of holding perpetrators to account — further deepening their trauma.
However, these changes introduced to the police force, lobbied for by Refuge, are only effective from today. Those within the ranks will likely not face any penalties unless they choose to reoffend.
Yes, abusers often reoffend, so they will likely expose themselves eventually, but this again puts the burden on victims of police-perpetrated abuse to have the courage to speak up to the colleagues/mates of the very man who hurt them.
Therefore, officials should have applied these changes retrospectively to remove those already hiding within the force and tackle the rot at its very core.
After all, Refuge found over 1.1k cases of police perpetrated VAWG just between October 2021 and March 2022.
Refuge rightly says that women and girls deserve to be protected by the police — not to be abused by them.
Featured image via the Canary
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‘Please don’t speculate.’ If I hear that chilling instruction one more time, I’m going to flip. It’s been the deathly, censorious chorus of the police, politicians and every media prick since Ann Widdecombe’s body was discovered at her home in Dartmoor last week. Don’t speculate. Don’t be a conspiracy theorist. Don’t exploit this tragedy. Don’t say it was political. Don’t call it terrorism. On and on they droned. And yet now it seems the ‘speculators’, those defamed as fantastists, may have been on to something.
Today it has been announced that counter-terrorism cops are taking over the investigation of Ms Widdecombe’s death. The body of the veteran Tory / Reform politician was found on Thursday. Shock tore through the nation when it was later announced she had sustained serious injuries and there would be a murder investigation. But cops were quick — weirdly so — to dampen ‘speculation’ that it might have been a political killing or a terroristic act. There is ‘nothing to suggest’ it was politically motivated, they said.
To many of us, it just didn’t stack up. How could they be so sure so soon? What’s more, the first suspect they arrested – a ‘26-year-old white man’, they told us, with the emphasis on ‘white’ – was swiftly released without charge. Without a suspect, how could they decipher a motive? Then came the news of the arrest of a second suspect, and that’s when folk really started scratching their heads. He was arrested in Rotherham, more than 250 miles from Widdecombe’s home. We were expected to believe that a random from Rotherham allegedly drove across England to the exact address of a famed politician and that there was nothing to see here? Nothing to ruminate on? Nothing unnerving?
Then came the Sun’s publication of CCTV footage seeming to show the suspect getting into his car in Rotherham on the morning of Widdecombe’s death, apparently with a large wooden stick. Naturally, the Sun, too, was accused of dangerous ‘speculation’, but in truth its intrepid sourcing of the CCTV footage contributed enormously to the public’s bristling, democratic concern over this strange death in Dartmoor. Even the BBC is now saying that the Sun’s reporting was swiftly followed by today’s jolting announcement: that Widdecombe’s death is now being investigated by counter-terror cops.
It was a moral outrage to shame the masses for ‘speculating’. People have serious, burning and entirely legitimate questions about this horrific incident. They knew it didn’t feel right that a possible political motivation was so swiftly discarded. They knew it didn’t add up that a man would allegedly trek from Yorkshire to Devon and allegedly knock on the door of a Tory turned national treasure without some kind of motivation. It’s possible the demonised speculators will be vindicated following today’s announcement that ‘new information and evidence’ has been discovered, and that counter-terrorism will take over.
It was officialdom’s supercilious tone that was most grating. And the media class’s, too – these prigs looked down on everyone asking questions as X-brained conspiracy nuts driven loopy by populism. They dolled up their opposition to ‘speculation’ as an effort to ringfence the legal sanctity of a future trial from the grubby BS of the little people. In truth, there has been a clear censorious impulse to their reprimanding of social-media oiks: pipe down, plebs, and leave it to us of a more refined, educated bent.
Maybe the chin-scratching public were right and the haughty elites were wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. Let’s see. Of course, justice must not be prejudiced. And Widdecombe and her loved ones really do deserve justice for the horror that appears to have been inflicted on her. But respecting justice does not preclude querying police narratives, especially when they are asking us to believe that an alleged Rotherham-to-Dartmoor journey, with an alleged weapon, where a simultaneously loved and hated politician was the alleged target, is a random thing with no motivation. We must be free to query that. It was good that people did.
It’s the double standards of the speculation shushers that really stands out. When a ‘progressive’ individual is attacked, it is instantly narrativised as the horrible consequence of right-wing ‘culture’ and angry tabloid criticism. Yet when a figure on the right is attacked, it’s all ‘Don’t speculate’, don’t point a finger, don’t weave a self-serving narrative. Shorter version: we can ‘exploit tragedy’, but you can’t. It’s preposterous, and sinister. We need justice for Ann, and we also need the right to put pressure on officialdom if we think they are selling both us and her short with their investigations.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His new book, Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism and Technocracy, is out now. Find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.
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