Benefits of mushroom coffee

How I tested London Nootropics

Review of London Nootropics mushroom coffee

Final verdict

Pros:

Cons:

3 min read22 min

Writing in The House on Friday, Labour MP Cat Eccles said that the proposal is “not only misguided but harmful”, and that the focus should be on addressing “chronic underinvestment, poor coordination, and systemic inefficiencies” in the justice system.

The MP for Stourbridge said she had recently visited Birmingham Crown Court, the second-largest court in the country, where one barrister told her: “You won’t find a single person in this building who thinks juries are an issue.” 

Justice Secretary David Lammy has said that the reforms are a bold but necessary way to help tackle the national court backlog in England and Wales.

Under the changes, announced by the Labour government in December, juries would no longer be used for crimes with sentences of less than three years. More extreme offences, such as rape and murder, will still be put before a jury, however.

The government has sought to stress that around three-quarters of all trials going to the Crown Court will continue to be heard by juries under the proposals, and points to the fact that many countries, including Sweden, Canada and France, only use juries in some cases.

However, ministers are seemingly facing a growing Labour backbench rebellion.

This week, Labour MPs tabled an amendment to the Courts and Tribunals Bill, putting forward plans to introduce specialist rape courts, which would have both a jury and a specialist judge. The amendment, revealed by The Times, is reported to have the support of as many as 90 Labour MPs, and is seen as the main route to “kill off” the jury trials policy.

The proposals are in the name of Charlotte Nichols, the Labour MP who waived her right to anonymity last month and spoke publicly for the first time about being raped, accusing Lammy of “weaponising” the experiences of others like herself to push through the reforms.

It is supported by Labour MP Stella Creasey, who said on Thursday that it was possible to “cut the backlog and improve the experience of victims in our courts without compromising due process”.

Writing in The House, Eccles listed what she described as the actual reasons for delays in the legal system, citing unused courtrooms, long distances between prisons and court buildings where defendents’ cases are heard, and cases being listed before they are ready for trial.

“Ultimately, the focus on jury trials as the cause of court delays is a distraction,” she wrote.

“The real issues lie in chronic underinvestment, poor coordination, and systemic inefficiencies that span the entire justice process. Reform is undoubtedly needed, but it must target these root causes, not one of the system’s most vital safeguards.”

Veteran MP Karl Turner recently lost the Labour Party whip after weeks of voicing strong opposition to the jury reforms and severe criticism of the Keir Starmer government.

However, party sources insisted that his suspension was over a pattern of behaviour, not a specific incident.

The use of remand (holding a person in custody before trial or sentencing) is at its highest level in over 50 years. Today, one in four women in prison are being held on remand. Women on remand are less likely than men to be granted bail, and racially minoritised and migrant women are significantly overrepresented in the remand population.

Court delays mean women can wait months in detention, sometimes longer, without knowing their future. Even a short period in custody can lead to a woman losing her job, housing and care of her children.

A briefing by the Howard League for Penal Reform noted that for women remanded by magistrates:

almost two-thirds … go on to be found not guilty or do not receive an immediate custodial sentence.

A new key findings paper by the chief inspector of prisons reinforces the scale of the problem. People on remand now make up 19% of the total adult prison population. Suicide is more common among this group and the report also found that 67% of people on remand report mental health difficulties.

Together with six other women-led organisations working for justice, Women in Prison has formed The Remand Collective. The other organisations are:

This is a bold new partnership committed to ending the unjust, unsafe and unfair use of remand for women. Together, we are calling for fewer women to be imprisoned whilst awaiting trial or sentencing, and for alternatives that are based in care, safety and trust.

One woman involved in the Remand Collective highlights its importance:

I’ve never been asked what I need to feel safe – only told what’s expected of me. This space was different.

Change is possible and it starts by listening to women and investing in alternatives that keep women safe while upholding justice and dignity.

Featured image via the Canary

What is the military sleep method?

Does the military sleep method actually work?

My verdict

In the realm of international relations, negotiation is traditionally regarded as the art of extracting the possible from the impossible.

However, in the political lexicon of the current Lebanese administration, this process has devolved into a demonstrable act of political folly – a reckless gambit that transcends mere incompetence to border on a deliberate conspiracy against the very survival of the state.

By scurrying towards ‘direct negotiations‘ with the Israeli enemy, the authorities are not only flouting the 1955 Anti-Israeli Boycott Law, which criminalises the slightest contact. They are placing the entire Lebanese entity, spearheaded by its military, into the firing line of a comprehensive civil war.

The art of exchange or the trap of liquidation?

At its core, negotiation is a trade-off – a quid pro quo. The Israeli enemy – a power that has never offered ‘charitable gifts’ – will not be satisfied with mere technical or maritime border arrangements.

The transparent Israeli demand, which lies beneath every diplomatic overture, is the total dismantlement of the Resistance.

Here, the ‘political idiocy’ of the government is laid bare: how can a decaying authority negotiate the disarmament of a force that is fundamentally beyond its executive reach? How can it promise what it does not possess, unless it is planning a suicidal bet that gambles with the blood of its own citizens?

The fatal trap

Any negotiated outcome that mandates the Lebanese army to disarm the Resistance, raid its depots, or arrest its combatants is, in reality, a death warrant for the military institution itself.

The administration, believing it can appease ‘foreign agendas’ through such commitments, is effectively pushing the army into an inevitable collision with the very people it is sworn to protect.

This path leads to three catastrophic certainties:

1. The Fragmentation of the Military: The collapse of the army along sectarian and ideological lines at the first sign of internal confrontation.
2. The Disintegration of the State: Lebanon’s transformation from a political entity into an open ‘militia playground’, where the central government loses the final vestiges of control.
3. An Israeli Playground: Once the army falls and sedition is ignited, Lebanon becomes a security vacuum, totally vulnerable to the enemy’s whims, allowing them to achieve through internal strife what they failed to secure through direct military aggression.

Slaughtered National Pact and legal treachery

The purported consent of the President cannot be used as a shield to bypass this ‘legal treason‘.

The Anti-Israeli Boycott Law is not a mere detail to be sidestepped by a ‘political understanding’; it is a pillar of the Lebanese national doctrine. To circumvent it through direct talks is to demolish the foundation of Lebanon as a state of confrontation.

Furthermore, the ‘National Pact’ (Mithaqiya) is slaughtered the moment a faction in power decides to gamble with the fate of an entire people. By turning the Lebanese people against one another, they seek to satisfy external diktats that view Lebanon as nothing more than a ‘security file’ to be liquidated.

Perpetuating conflict, not ending it

This trajectory does not lead to peace; it perpetuates war in its most hideous form: internal strife.

The rush to negotiate from a position of profound weakness, devoid of a vision that preserves national unity, renders the government a mere tool for the implementation of the Zionist agenda to fragment Lebanon.

Sovereignty is not reclaimed by tearing the national fabric, and dignity is not preserved by conspiring against those who defend the land.

Those who believe the path to ‘stability’ passes through the destruction of Lebanon’s elements of strength and the dismantling of its army are either political simpletons or agents for hire, driving the country toward the ultimate abyss.

What did the research involve?

You don’t need to be perfect

Maher Rizq Abdullah Naasan lives in the village of al Mughayyir, north east of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. His home is in the south of the village, only 100 metres from his sizable plot of land.

Two kilometres away in the al Khaleel valley is a newly established illegal settler grazing outpost and, unfortunately for Naasan, 60, the settlers have now constructed a dirt track.

He said:

This dirt track runs from the outpost to our area, almost to the edge of my house. Every day, the settlers are with their sheep, damaging the olive trees growing on our land, many of which are more than 100 years old.

The army then turns up to protect the settlers and expels us from our land. They prevent us from taking care of our land and when they see us with our olive trees, they fly a drone overhead.

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Naasan had recently found himself being filmed by a drone. Then, five minutes later, a Hummer vehicle belonging to Israeli occupation soldiers arrived on the scene. They dropped gas bombs on the homes close to Nassan’s. Settlers then appeared and began grazing their livestock on his land.

Several days later on 2 April, at 1pm, the Israeli occupation vehicle again arrived in the area, this time with five soldiers inside and went straight to Naasan’s house.

He said:

I didn’t leave the house because if I did, they would have assaulted me. These aren’t regular soldiers but a militia dedicated to protecting settlers. My car was parked in front of my home and I have video footage documenting what they did to it.

They searched the car first, then opened the bonnet and put a substance in the oil reservoir to destroy the engine. They cut all the wires and cables inside the car, including to the battery, and they damaged the fan. After that they withdrew.

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Israeli attacks on Palestinians exceeded 23,800 in 2025

‘The goal is to seize our land and surround our homes’

Naasan, who said there was no reason for this behaviour because his car was legal, added that the drone was hovering above him taking pictures when he made the video of his damaged vehicle.

The reason for all this harassment is to remove us from our land, and for the occupation’s soldiers and settlers to let us know that they can do whatever they want.

The goal, in general, is slow evacuation — to seize our land and surround our homes. The army is protecting these settlers while their livestock are eating the olive trees. They have plenty of land already but now come to ours to make us leave it.

Surveillance cameras have now been placed on a tall tower to monitor Naasan and other Palestinians when they go to their land.

“The soldiers then arrive and start firing heavy gas at us,” Naasan added.

A 2022 report by Israeli human rights organisations, Kerem Navit and Peace Now, says that huge areas of land are stolen through the use of grazing outposts. A huge 70% of all Palestinian land seized by settlers has been taken under the guise of grazing activities. These grazing outposts either directly displace farmers and shepherding communities from their land or use violence, harassment and intimidation to force them away.

Nearly one in four people in the West Bank are settlers

The Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission’s new report states that the Israeli occupation now controls more than 42% of the West Bank through settlements, outposts, bypass roads and military zones.

It adds that more than 780,000 illegal Israeli settlers live in more than 540 settlements and outposts across the area.

Almost 60 outposts were established in 2025 alone. Attacks by colonial settlers have become a “functional tool to reshape geography in the West Bank, particularly in Bedouin and agricultural communities,” Mu’ayyad Shaaban, head of CWRC, said. This undermines projects for a viable Palestinian state.

Data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics indicates Israeli occupiers now make up more than 23% of the West Bank population, so nearly one in four.

The organisation also shared that in 2025:

• More than 23,800 attacks were carried out against Palestinians by Israeli occupation authorities and settlers
• Some 5,770 of these attacks involved the killing of civilians, burning of homes, facilities and vehicles, and property theft
• There were 16,664 attacks on individuals and nearly 1,400 attacks on land and natural resources
• More than 35,000 trees, including about 26,990 olive trees were damaged, bulldozed and uprooted during these attacks

Attacks on Palestinians are continuing at unprecedented levels, with nearly 3,800 attacks recorded in January and February of this year alone.

The sole purpose of this land theft is to forcibly displace Palestinians and ethnically cleanse the West Bank.

Featured image via the Canary

Overflowing bins. Closed sports centres. Libraries run by unpaid volunteers. That’s the reality in towns and cities up and down Britain. Austerity is the cause, introduced by the Conservative-LibDem coalition.

Labour have continued with austerity. Reform have promised austerity on steroids, with something between £40 billion and £150 billion of cuts per year, but they refuse to specify how or where.

The pressure group Greens Organise have launched their pledge to oppose austerity for the local elections.

Four principles

The pledge commits Green councillors to four principles:

1. Hold an emergency summit to make our communities heard to kick-start a mass campaign.
2. Community organisation and mobilisation to push for long-term national solutions.
3. Democratic control of local assets, including a full range of Community Wealth Building approaches.
4. Transparency over spending and responsible use of financial powers. At the moment, council finances can be impenetrable, even to elected councillors.

A false logic

Austerity is a false logic. It takes money out of local economies. 13,649 shops closed for good in 2024, costing 119,405 jobs. 17,349 shops closed in 2025, costing 201,953 jobs. As a result, councils receive less in business rates. High streets become run down.

Infrastructure is effected too. In December 2024, Gateshead Council closed a major road flyover with zero notice. A lack of inspections led to deterioration going unnoticed. It created havoc, closing the Metro tunnels underneath it for weeks. Fifteen months later, it’s still closed with diversions in place.

There are also countless undocumented stories about inadequate healthcare and spiralling mental health crises.

Councils end up spending time and money fixing what could have been prevented.

National solutions

The solutions are national. Any government with a sovereign currency can earn, borrow, tax or create money. The use of monetary policy in conjunction with wealth taxes could reverse austerity. All of us would live in a cleaner, safer, more prosperous country. Sure, a handful of people might have to buy a smaller yacht. But we’d have a healthier, happier, more skilled workforce. We’d also have cheaper energy and infrastructure that works.

Local councils don’t have the same freedom to implement these measures. But it’s not much good throwing your hands up and saying there’s nothing we can do. We’re all sick of politicians blaming the last lot who were in power.

Community Wealth Building

In local government, Community Wealth Building has been proven to work. It’s perhaps best known for making sure anchor institutions – councils, hospitals, etc. – spend their money with local suppliers. Whether this is a local joinery firm or a co-operative of education psychologists, this keeps money from leaking out of local economies.

This needs work – the big outsourcing companies have professional bid writers. Small, local firms often don’t know where to start. The pledge means making it easier for local firms with diverse ownership to compete with the billionaire-owned multinationals. In fact, the Social Value Act allows councils to weight procurement in favour of social impact. Contracts are awarded extra points if they create jobs locally.

It means standing up to the business-as-usual approach of doing quick and easy deals with developers. As Regional Mayor, I stopped £3.5 million of public money subsidising luxury apartments and a hotel right next to St James’ Park. Newcastle’s Labour council had signed it off, but I refused to put any money into a project that had no affordable housing.

Rebalancing the economy

Care homes are perhaps the single biggest source of wealth extraction from our councils. Care workers are paid a pittance and around 30% of staff leave every year. Yet companies are structured so very rich people make profits by running them into the ground. Councils are left to clean up the mess. We need a National Care Service. In the meantime, we should restructure these deals.

Community energy companies are working across the UK. Community housing trusts can convert old town halls into flats that are collectively owned by all residents. They pay their rent into their joint cooperative, preventing landlordism and property speculation.

As Mayor, I set up venture capital deals where the Combined Authority financially supported start-ups in return for equity stakes. It made millions of pounds for the Combined Authority. Every £1 invested returned more than £3 to in payroll taxes alone. I’d like to see more community bonds and regional finance institutions.

Rebalancing the economy, reversing austerity, ending rip-off Britain. Whatever you call it, there is no lever in No. 10 that you can switch from ‘capitalism’ to ‘socialism’. We need a cohort of leaders at every level with the skills and motivation to run the economy in the interests of the people who do the work.

You can read the full text of the Pledge to Oppose Austerity in Local Government here.

Featured image via the Canary