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Politics

ICE thugs target peaceful march in Texas

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2 months ago

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ICE thugs target peaceful march in Texas

Trump’s fascist war on peaceful resistance to his racist ICE purge has moved to Texas. ICE thugs and National Guard troops attacked an entirely peaceful anti-ICE march outside ICE’s Dilley, Texas concentration camp. Dilley is the camp holding five-year-old Liam Conejos Ramos and his father after ICE abducted Liam to arrest his dad. Liam was described as ‘depressed and lethargic’ by a Democrat congressman who visited him yesterday.

Conditions in the camp appear grim. A lawyer who stood outside its wall as the march passed recorded detainees, mostly women and children, screaming for help and freedom:

Trump’s police state continues to grow.

Featured image via the Canary

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UK arms dealers with Gulf ambassadors for some ‘defensive’ action

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3 minutes ago

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19 March 2026

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UK arms dealers with Gulf ambassadors for some 'defensive' action

In the latest “defensive” news from the UK’s role in the Anglo-American-Zionist illegal war on Iran, the UK held a meeting between 13 defence companies and Gulf diplomats to discuss providing “defensive” equipment against Iranian attacks. Defence Minister Luke Pollard hosted the session.

People were quick to point out the greed of British arms companies.

The 13 defence companies present were ADS, MARSS, MSI, MBDA, Frankenberg, Leonardo UK, Thales, QinetiQ, OSL Ltd, BAE Systems, Ocean Infinity, Cambridge Aerospace, and Uforce, and they met Diplomats from seven Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Iraq and Jordan.

New opportunities galore for arms dealers and co

UK military planners have also been dispatched to US Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to help plot a route to unblock the key shipping lane, according to The Times — more “defensive” acts by the UK.

Labour MP Al Carns is beating the war drums particularly loudly. Earlier this week in Parliament, the Armed Forces minister said the government was not ruling out anything when asked if the UK saw “de-escalation is key.”

He told Parliament:

We will continue to work in a comprehensive and calm manner with our allies and partners to ensure that we can come up with a solution to the strait of Hormuz, and we will not rule anything out, because we cannot guarantee where this war is going to go.

Carns also claimed in parliament that Iran’s support to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis “has been killing British forces for 20 years”. Declassified was quick to reprimand the statement on the lack of evidence.

On Thursday, he told the Sun that any mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz would require a massive multinational coalition, warning that operating without allies would be far worse. He said: “We’re not anywhere near that at the moment, but I would say one thing: that there’s one thing worse than working with allies, and that’s working without them.”

He said:

In 1987 when this last happened, it took 30 warships to escort in the Strait of Hormuz. That gives you just an example of the resources required.

UK is relying on flimsy ‘defensive’ grounds

UK PM and other cabinet ministers have repeatedly used flimsy grounds of just being involved in “defensive actions against Iran.

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This use of UK bases for American bombers has been heavily criticised. Journalist and former UK diplomat Craig Murray said:

No other European state is prepared to let US bombing runs on Iran overfly their airspace. Starmer lets them actually load their bombs and take off from UK airfields. He calls it “defensive” bombing.

Electronic Intifada journalist Ali Abunimah argued that assisting an aggressor by protecting them from those attempting to halt their attack does not constitute a defensive act, but rather makes one an active accomplice in the original crime. He was responding to the Foreign Office’s statement that the UK is continuing defensive military support for partners against Iranian strikes, alongside diplomatic activity in the UK national interest.

UK bases, ships and aircraft are already central to the US-Israeli war effort. Starmer has tried vainly to frame British involvement as purely ‘defensive.’

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Featured image via Campaign Against Arms Trade

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RMT calls off March tube strikes after further talks still ongoing

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16 minutes ago

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19 March 2026

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RMT calls off March tube strikes after further talks still ongoing

The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) has called off its planned strikes on the London Underground this month.

The news comes following indications from tube bosses that they’ll negotiate on what RMT is calling the “imposition” of a “fake four-day week”.

However, whilst the March strike dates are off, RMT has stated that its industrial action in April and May will still go ahead. Beyond this, the union has also added two new strike dates on 16 and 18 June.

RMT — ‘Serious concerns around fatigue’

The planned strikes would have taken place from noon on 24 March til 11:59 on 25 March, and the same times on 26-27 March.

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The dispute centers on Underground bosses’ proposals for a condensed-hours working week.

Under the proposal, the majority of drivers would work their 36 hours over four days rather than five. However, in the 4-day plan, the workers would receive paid meal breaks.

To put that another way, the workers would see their hours spent driving each day jump from just over 7 to just under 9.

The proposal is currently being tested on a voluntary basis on the Bakerloo line.

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When RMT first called the strikes earlier this month, general secretary Eddie Dempsey explained that:

We are clear that these proposals raise serious concerns around fatigue, safety and work-life balance.

Despite our best efforts over many months, no satisfactory outcome has been reached so we have no choice but to call strike dates.

There is still time for London Underground to come up with a workable solution but we will take strike action if we cannot get a negotiated settlement.

Instead, the union is advocating for a 32-hour week over four days. This would see drivers working 3 hours less each week.

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Negotiations

However, London Underground has now relented in its position. RMT announced that:

After a year of telling us their imposed plan is non-negotiable they have now agreed to negotiate with RMT.

The dispute over the imposition of a condensed hours four-day week on tube drivers is far from over but LU management have taken steps in the right direction and are now taking the matter seriously.

That being said, unless London Underground can reach a settlement with the union, more strikes are on the way.

RMT has previously announced action for four more 24-hour periods. These will take place on 21 and 23 April, and likewise on 19 and 21 May. Yesterday, 18 March, RMT also announced similar strikes on 16 and 18 June.

Dempsey said:

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Through our show of industrial strength and unity, we have forced management into a position where they are now willing to seriously engage with the issues our members want addressing.

Further talks will take place and the dispute remains live.

The union has stated that it will be meeting for further talks over the coming weeks. However, it remains to be seen whether

Underground bosses will listen to the drivers’ safety concerns ‚ both for themselves, and for passengers.

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Qatar LNG hub blew up, freaking Trump out

Published

53 minutes ago

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19 March 2026

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Qatar LNG hub blew up, freaking Trump out

Iranian retaliatory attacks on its Ras Laffan energy complex in Qatar on Wednesday and the early hours of Thursday have spiked gas prices globally. It has also caused Trump to put out an unhinged statement.

Iran also struck Saudi energy facilities in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of Iran’s South Pars gas field.

Iran said it is planning to attack the energy infrastructure of the US and Israeli allies in the Gulf until its “complete destruction” if its own energy facilities are targeted further.

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Trump claims the US “knew nothing about this particular attack” — the attack on Iran’s South Pars Gas Field on Wednesday — blaming it squarely on Israel.

The South Pars field is located in the Persian Gulf, between Iran and Qatar, and the field is shared between the two countries.

Trump then stated that there will be “NO MORE ATTACKS” by Israel on the South Pars Field unless Iran “unwisely decides” to attack Qatar again. If Qatar’s LNG facilities are attacked again, Trump says the US, “with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field” with a level of force Iran has “never seen or witnessed before.”

Trump’s threat is characteristic of his hyperbolic and escalatory language. We shouldn’t forget that Trump FULLY destroyed the Iranian navy several times so far.

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His core claim that the US “knew nothing about” the initial attack on Iran’s South Pars Field is probably another lie from the habitual liar. But who knows!

Qatar LNG — a weak spot?

Despite the use of hyperbolic and escalatory language, some think this is a de-escalatory effort by Trump. “Trump calls for de-escalation as the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively shut and oil rises beyond $116 a barrel,” Bloomberg said.

Al Mayadeen reported that Trump and ‘Netanyahu’ hoped the attack on Iran’s gas fields would deter Iranian action in the Strait of Hormuz, but the plan backfired, prompting Trump to disavow it.

Writer Philip Pilkington commented that Donald Trump has been drawn into a “suicidal energy war,” arguing that the president’s statement demonstrates the administration has “ZERO control over the situation.”

The undeniable truth

Since it is hard to take what Trump says about the war seriously, the real-world consequences are the best judges. Anglo-American-Zionist illegal war on Iran has escalated this week.

Israel claimed to have killed intelligence minister Ismail Khatib in Tehran Tuesday night, plus security chief Ali Larijani and Basij paramilitary leader Gholamreza Soleimani.

After more than three weeks of war in Iran, thousands of people have been killed, millions more displaced, and billions of dollars have been spent. Arms dealers are lining their pockets.

The only certainty is that the bloodshed and destruction continue while politicians argue over who knew what and the Anglo-American-Zionist axis presses on with its murderous campaign.

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Featured image via the Canary

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Larijani murdered by Israel, a PhD holder who wrote on philosophy

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1 hour ago

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19 March 2026

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Larijani murdered by Israel, a PhD holder who wrote on philosophy

Israel has murdered Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief of security, who was a PhD holder who wrote philosophical papers on Immanuel Kant — a man famous for his ideas on unconditional moral obligation.

According to Azer News:

Larijani combined an aristocratic religious background with a rigorous secular education. He earned degrees in mathematics and computer science at Sharif University of Technology, Iran’s premier technical school, before turning to philosophy. His doctoral work, unusual among Iranian power‑brokers, focused on Immanuel Kant, and he later published extensively on Kant’s philosophy, exploring the relationship between mathematical proof, metaphysics and rational inquiry.

Larijani and negotiations

Larijani was also regarded as one of the Iranian officials most likely to compromise on a peace deal.

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Azer News noted that Larijani’s death would mark the end of “Tehran’s strategic calculus”. He was pragmatic and pro-diplomacy. It added that he was a “measured intellectual”, and was:

a bridge between Iran’s revolutionary ethos and its efforts to navigate a hostile international landscape, a thinker at ease both with complex philosophy and the raw realities of geopolitics.

Which means that once again, Israel has purposefully blown up one of the few people it could negotiate with.

Even one Israeli journalist, Ehud Ya’ari, said publicly that Israel’s murder of Larijani was the wrong move.

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Of course, Ya’ari doesn’t realise that Israel doesn’t really want negotiations. It wants blood and a Greater Israel.

International law???

Importantly, murdering state and political leaders is illegal under international law.

Of course, we have already established (repeatedly) that Israel has no regard for International law, from bombing schools and hospitals to murdering healthcare workers and illegally invading Lebanon.

But unlike Israeli’s, who politicians hide in bomb shelters and flee the country when things get hard, Iranians are not scared of a few bombs.

Israel has a long history of assassinating its political opponents. As Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, said:

In wars, you don’t start by killing political leaders, including elected leaders. That programme of assassination is gangster, it’s terrorism, it’s not the norm of war.

Furthermore, the United States and Israel have not yet realised that the Iranian government does not rely on a single individual. Meaning, one death, or even several, will not destabilise its political system.

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Larijani’s death is a loss for everyone, not just Iranians.

But Shia religious doctrine relies heavily on martyrdom and sacrifice. So, to Larijani, Israel murdering him would have gained him the highest honour.

Feature image via Al Jazeera English/ YouTube

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GB News insisting ‘genocide’ against white people in UK

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2 hours ago

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19 March 2026

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GB News insisting 'genocide' against white people in UK

GB News recently gave Thomas Corbett-Dillon a platform to cynically claim that a genocide is being waged against white people in the UK. Subsequently, the Guardian reported that complaints have been made to Ofcom suggesting his comments even managed to cause offence among their right-wing viewers.

The offensive comments were made on GB News’ US-based Late Show Live last week, during a discussion on anti-extremism strategies in the UK.

Corbett-Dillon apparently advised Boris Johnson and worked on Penny Mordaunt’s failed leadership campaign, so this gross man is no stranger to far-right hateful views.

Showing a traditional lack of humility amongst racist, extremist pricks, Corbett-Dillon stated:

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I hate this idea that England is just a no man’s land. No, there is an indigenous population that have lived on that island for thousands of years.

If this was happening in any other place around the world, everyone would be defending and saying: ‘Wow, there’s a genocide happening in this island because it is being taken over by different people that are not indigenous to that land.’

White supremacists given uncritical airtime

Thomas Corbett-Dillon joined fellow white privileged wankers as they condescendingly judged UK policy to tackle extremism in the Muslim community. Basically, a bunch of far-right extremists came together on the far-right TV news show, coincidentally the broadcast arm of Reform UK, to stoke fears of the extremism of Brown people.

Standard arrogant Western behaviour with precious little self-awareness, obviously.

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Our own Skwawkbox wrote at the time:

Former Boris Johnson adviser Thomas Corbett-Dillon has appeared on far-right broadcaster GB News insisting that the channel is nowhere near extremist but insteaad lovely, cuddly, and “really, really impartial.”

Barely a breath later, he was confidently telling his white, male GB News panellists that the UK is suffering a genocide from all the migrants coming in, especially the Muslims. Not a single one of them disagreed.

Adding:

Corbett-Dillon apparently did a ‘Tommy Robinson’ and changed his original name Craig Dillon to something posher-sounding. He even went so far as to suggest, with horror, that if white people moved to the Pacific and became the majority there would be resistance in the UN.

Perhaps he’s never heard of Australia or New Zealand.

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This sickening display of white supremacy on GB News has resulted in 24 complaints made to Ofcom, however the Guardian inform they are yet to decide whether an investigation is necessary. This is hardly surprising when the “regulator” itself allows biased coverage if it comes from Farage and co.

A blatant bias we wrote about earlier today:

GB News lives by its own rules and Ofcom is perfectly willing to throw the rule book out of the window for this billionaire-interested political party. It would even seem that the supposed regulator believes the hateful views espoused by the channel to be ‘accurate.’

This calls the regulator’s impartiality into question, since biased rule-makers cannot provide un-biased remedies. A functioning democracy does not silence political views. It should make space for diverse perspectives to shape better decisions.

Corbett-Dillon isn’t remotely bothered about the offence he’s caused, of course. Nevertheless, 24 complaints from an audience of far-right viewers in response to a racist comment is quite an achievement:

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A reminder of very real genocides committed by White colonialists and how those horrific actions shape Western perceptions today:

GB News: Lies, lies, lies, and more lies

He’s just a racist idiot inciting hate. As the video below shows, he even seems to forget that the majority of benefit claimants are White British people. In fact, they appear slightly overrepresented among benefit claimants, making up 76.2% compared to 74.4% of the population.

Furthermore, white people do not face the same structural and societal barriers as Black and Brown communities, particularly in access to opportunity and gainful employment. Socio-economic conditions disproportionately affect minoritised groups, therefore we would expect Black and Brown communities to make up a larger share of claimants. Nevertheless, it is White people disproportionately claiming more ‘freebies’ from the state.

As a result, his claim that white “indigenous” people are “taxed brutally” to fund welfare for minoritised groups does not stand up to the faintest scrutiny.

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Racist White men simply just need to feel superior with their fragile egos and lack of self-awareness.

GB News is just amplifying race-baiting, as usual:

Featured image via the Canary

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Nigel Farage ‘s corrupt crypto backdoor is a gift to hostile states

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2 hours ago

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19 March 2026

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Nigel Farage 's corrupt crypto backdoor is a gift to hostile states

The UK’s electoral watchdog is currently flying blind. A powerful investigation from Byline Times has this week exposed how Nigel Farage’s party, Reform UK, is once again shitting on democracy. By exploiting a very obvious and gaping loophole in the political finance system and accepting cryptocurrency donations, Farage is now able to hide who and where he is getting his dirty money from. And the Electoral Commission has finally admit that this is a huge fucking problem.

This danger isn’t theoretical. It’s an immediate and deliberate risk to our entire democracy.

A digital black hole in democracy

Reform UK is the only major political party in the UK actively soliciting funds through cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Tether. And they have downright refused to share its “digital wallet addresses” with the Electoral Commission.

Think of a wallet address like a transparent bank account number. Whilst a traditional bank account is hidden behind corporate walls, a crypto wallet address is public and has an ID. Anyone with the address can look at the “blockchain” which has a permanent, digital ledger and can see exactly how much money is moving in and out in real time.

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By withholding these addresses, Reform is effectively shielding it’s donations from scrutiny. The Electoral Commission is left unable to independently monitor the flow of funds or verify the source of the party’s wealth. Instead, the regulator can only rely on what the party chooses to declare in regards to its finances.

This is a disastrous blind spot. Whilst traditional donations create a paper trail which can be scrutinised, unregulated crypto allows for total anonymity. To date, not a single party has declared a crypto donation to the Commission. So why the fuck have Reform been publicly touting its “crypto-hub” status for months without scrutiny?

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Nigel Farage’s Polish shield and North Korea links

Reform UK feeds its crypto donations through a Polish registered company called Radom Pay. By doing this, the party has placed a legal shield between themselves and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Whilst the UK regulator can demand records from domestic firms, their reach ends at the border.

The Polish crypto register is effectively a financial wild west. Anyone can get a license there in just 14 days. This register previously housed the Cambodian Huione syndicate which was sanctioned for laundering $4bn in illicit funds.

And shockingly, the same register has been used to launder money from cyber attacks by North Korean state-sponsored hackers to finance Pyongyang’s weapons programme. In 2025 alone these hackers stole a ridiculous $2bn in crypto, which accounted for 60% of all funds stolen globally.

And by using this same system, Reform are spitting on our entire democratic structure. They are inviting the same blackhole money into the heart of our politics and it can come from anywhere.

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It’s a whack-a-mole loophole

The mechanics of this financial blind spot are tailored for anonymity. Under UK law any political donation under £500 doesn’t have to be reported. This creates a massive opening for “smurfing”. This means a single bad faith actor can use an AI automated script to split a massive donation into thousands of £499 micro-donations. And these can be sent from burner wallets, making it fucking impossible for the Electoral Commission to see the coordinated source of the funds. Meaning, they can come from anyone, anywhere.

The scale of this is already buck wild. Reform’s largest donor, Christopher Harborne is a major investor in Tether. He’s donated £12m to the party since 2025. In the final three months of 2025 Reform out-raised both the Labour and Conservative parties combined. They raked in a shocking £5.5m in reportable donations.

So… how much are they raking in from these dodgy anonymous crypto donations?

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A billionaire pincer movement?

This is part of a broader attempt to replace our public control with a private, technological power. Whilst Farage uses unregulated crypto to stay off of the financial grid, his billionaire backers are working to put the UK’s public data into their own grid.

And this brings us to Palantir. Peter Thiel, the democracy-sceptic billionaire behind the company, is a key figure in the same “National Conservatism” movement that underpins Reform.

Yet the establishment remains complicit. The “Mandelson Papers” revealed to us that Keir Starmer ignored warnings about Peter Mandelson and his ties to both Russia and Jeffrey Epstein. This same web of lobbyists helped Palantir secure £500m in NHS and Ministry of Defence contracts without a single competitor.

They are creating a system where the public is entirely transparent to the powerful. Yet the powerful remain invisible to the public.

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Nigel Farage happy to put our sovereignty up for sale

The Electoral Commission is currently bringing a pen-knife to a gun fight. It is taking “specialist external advice” because it lacks the internal expertise to track these digital transactions.

The UK government is under a shit load of pressure to act. The Rycroft Review, which is an independent inquiry into foreign financial interference, is due in March. And this is going to be a fucking doozy. Steve Reed, the Secretary of State of Housing, Communities and Local Government has suggested the findings from this review will inform the Representation of the People Bill.

The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy has already called for an immediate “binding moratorium” on crypto donations to keep politics safe from “illicit finance”.

Nigel Farage claims to be the champion of UK sovereignty. However, the evidence suggests he is quite happy to surrender that sovereignty to unregulated foreign platforms and the dark money network of rogue states.

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To put it simply, Farage is a dodgy wanker who needs to declare his party’s finances.

Featured image via the Guardian

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Exclusive: McDonnell’s blacked-out SAR reply hints at another Labour Together plot

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2 hours ago

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19 March 2026

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Exclusive: McDonnell's blacked-out SAR reply hints at another Labour Together plot

A ‘Subject Access Request’ (SAR) by left-wing MP and former shadow chancellor John McDonnell has given a further glimpse at the extent of the spying and plotting of scandal-riddled Israel lobby-funded ‘Labour Together’ against the Labour left.

An SAR is a statutory mechanism, under UK data law, for individuals to demand an organisation reveal what information it holds on them. McDonnell made an SAR to APCO, the firm contracted by Labour Together to spy on journalists who were investigating Labour Together’s plots against the party’s left.

Labour Together

Labour Together was run by Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s disgraced former chief of staff — and then by now-resigned Starmer front-bencher Josh Simons. Both are ardent Israel supporters. But the response to McDonnell’s SAR reveals the extent of the group’s apparent plotting to take over the party even more thoroughly. Or, more accurately, it reveals it by not revealing it.

APCO’s legally-obligated reply to McDonnell’s is little more file after file of black redaction, with nothing else showing than — usually single-line — mentions of McDonnell himself. The rest is redacted as supposedly “personally identifiable information”. Like this one, in which only an anodyne line about McDonnell is revealed:

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Yet the document is marked “Confidential”, despite supposedly showing nothing that isn’t available in the public record — and heavily redacted to black out what is presumably other, equally public information. Or this one, also marked confidential despite showing nothing but information about seats and majorities that could easily be found in moments online — McDonnell’s entry is on a subsequent page that doesn’t show the headers:

More redactions

A few hint at potential plans to oust or undermine, or to coordinate communication campaigns, like this “Communication plan”, made while McDonnell was still shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, in which line after line is, you’ve guessed it, blacked out:

When the information redacted is publicly available and not sensitive, then the question becomes one of the purpose of the document — why was Labour Together paying a company to put together lists that could easily be compiled from Google, or the parliamentary website? And why doesn’t APCO — and presumably Labour Together — want to hide even the names of the people it was listing.

Was it a targeting aid for the Labour Right’s coordinated and underhanded deselection programme to winnow out MPs it wanted replaced by Starmer clones? Was it a list of MPs to be targeted for the hostile briefings Labour Together is now known to have conducted until Corbyn was removed? Something else?

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Whatever it was, Labour Together thought it was worth spending money on. And, based on its disgraceful track record, that can’t mean anything good for the country or the working class.

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Fossil fuels are the stuff of life

Published

3 hours ago

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19 March 2026

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Fossil fuels are the stuff of life

All manner of insults have been hurled at oil and gas in recent decades. Supposedly, it is ‘dirty’, ‘unsustainable’ and, we have been increasingly told, ‘irrelevant’. The war in Iran shows that there was a word missing in the environmentalists’ lexicon: ‘essential’. Last night’s strikes on the South Pars gas field in Iran and Qatar’s Ras Laffan liquified natural gas plant have sent prices soaring. This has compounded a crisis that was already underway, thanks to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil flows. While environmentalists like to claim that this shows the folly of our reliance on oil and gas, really it ought to remind us how important fossil fuels are in keeping civilisation afloat.

Oil and gas aren’t just essential to our energy needs. They are also a critical ingredient in everyday medication, much of which is life-saving. Our Net Zero-loving MPs might have forgotten this, but fortunately, doctors and pharmacists have not. This week, the Independent Pharmacies Association reminded UK health secretary Wes Streeting, that ‘many common drugs’ – including paracetamol, aspirin and antibiotics – ‘rely on petroleum-based ingredients as well as other raw materials sourced from the Middle East and beyond’. Dr Layla Hanbeck, the organisation’s chief executive, called for urgent stockpiling, and said that supply-chain disruptions from the Iran war would impact ‘essential treatments that millions rely on daily’.

Hanbeck is right. Today’s medicines rely on the carbon-based chemistry that defines fossil fuels. Benzene and toluene form precursors for painkillers, anaesthetics and antibiotics. Methanol, ethanol and acetone are vital to drug purification and formulation. Polymers derived from petrochemicals are used in drug-delivery technologies. And so on.

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What about medical equipment? Petrochemicals are the feedstock for polypropylene, polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride. As cheap, light, strong and easily sterilised plastics, these are widely used in medical devices and accessories – including disposable syringes and needles, catheters, intravenous tubing, blood bags, membranes for dialysis and implants. On top of this, carbon fibre is used to build imaging equipment such as MRI machines, CT scanners and X-ray machines. It is in surgical instruments, wheelchairs and prosthetics. Also dependent on carbon fibre are blister packs, bottles for pills, sterile packaging film and tamper-proof seals that protect drugs from contamination and degradation.

Much of this is old hat. Yet we are continually making new discoveries about how vital fossil fuels are to medicine. Just this week, it was reported that recycling that plastic – another hated by-product of fossil fuels – could break down waste bottles into Levodopa, the main drug used to help the 160,000 Brits who suffer from Parkinson’s disease.

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All these boons for health come from dirty – nay, evil! – fossil fuels. So evil, in fact, that energy secretary Ed Miliband believes the UK should make it nigh-on impossible for oil and gas to be extracted from the North Sea. Miliband might believe that he is on a heaven-sent mission to decarbonise Britain, but it is a quest that could soon create a hell for everyone who relies on medication to stay healthy, or indeed alive.

It isn’t just medicine and fuel that rely on fossil fuels, either. In agriculture, petrochemicals are key to fertilisers, pesticides and overall mechanisation. Fertilisers for crops, such as wheat, rice, and maize, are made with natural gas and coal. Also derived from fossil fuels are herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. And tractors, pumps and pipes for irrigation, crop storage systems and food packaging all rely on fossil fuels – either to make them or to power them, or both.

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The ongoing war waged on fossil fuels by the UK’s political establishment doesn’t only defy logic. It defies humanity, too. If ever there was a time to rethink our blind rush to a Net Zero future, this is it. In the meantime, let’s hear it for carbon. It’s about time the stigma was removed from fossil fuels. Without them, we’d mostly be dead.

James Woudhuysen is visiting professor of forecasting and innovation at London South Bank University. Follow him on X: @jameswoudhuysen.

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Gordon Ramsay reacts to his ICONIC moments

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4 hours ago

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19 March 2026

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Gordon Ramsay reacts to his ICONIC moments

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UK Foreign Aid Cuts Threaten Child Hunger Warns Labour Peer

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4 hours ago

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19 March 2026

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UK Foreign Aid Cuts Threaten Child Hunger Warns Labour Peer

The foreign secretary’s statement on UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) allocations has been a year in the making.

I have been dreading this day since the decision last year by the prime minister and chancellor to cut ODA spending from 0.5 to 0.3% of gross national income.

Yvette Cooper’s words about UK values and “supporting those in conflict and extreme poverty” are welcome, but the reality of her statement reveals significant, real-life impacts.

Girls will leave schools and children will go hungry. We will damage our international reputation, increase migration and hinder progress towards self-sufficiency through economic development.

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Sub-Saharan Africa is home to most of the world’s poorest countries, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Malawi. It has a population of 1.3 billion people – and growing. Its land is degraded by climate change, many countries are ravaged by decades of conflict, and its population feels the impact of a volatile global economy far deeper than wealthy countries such as the UK.

Yet this Labour government has decided to disproportionately cut aid to the part of the world where it makes the biggest difference. And there is no clarity yet in what the cuts will mean for the building blocks of sustainable development, in particular education and skills development.

We know conflict flourishes where the population remains uneducated. And, keeping girls in school is one of the most straightforward ways of supporting a country’s development. All the evidence shows girls who complete secondary education are less at risk of teenage pregnancy, HIV and domestic violence.

Crucially, during their lifetime they will help boost their country’s national productivity and wealth, have fewer children, and raise healthier children who are far more likely to succeed at school.

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There is some good news. Britain’s contribution to the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and malaria has been prioritised, and aid to richer countries will be deprioritised. Spending on violence against women and girls, including the prevention of sexual violence in conflict, seems to have been protected.

But we await clarity on conflict prevention and governance programmes. We are currently witnessing how hard power is in danger of destabilising peace and the global economy. While we need strong defences, investment in soft power is how we will build a better world.

I have had my ups and downs with party policy over the years, but I never thought a Labour government would so dramatically slash UK
support for the world’s poorest people.

It is a mistake to cut vital support to people in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere at a time when UK aid is needed more than ever. And it is a matter of deep regret that it is a Labour government that has made this choice.

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No one should be proud of cuts that are proportionately larger than Donald Trump’s cuts to US Aid.

A Labour government that – for the first time ever – spends less on the world’s most vulnerable than the Tories will be remembered for the wrong reasons.

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