Politics
Moog 4 prepare to stand trial
The Moog 4 are comprised of four pro-Palestine activists who were arrested and remanded to prison for six months in August 2025. Their trial is due to start at Birmingham Crown Court on 4 June 2026. Regardless of the outcome, it is an action that has shed new light on the UK government’s facilitation of the genocide in Gaza
Moog Inc.
You might associate the name Moog with electronic instruments and synthesisers. It turns out Robert Moog had an equally inventive cousin, Bill, who went into aviation and engineering.
The company that bears Bill’s name supplies key parts to the global F-35 programme and for the M-346 trainer aircraft – specifically, flight actuators. These are essential parts that no other company makes.
In the recent Al-Haq judicial review, the High Court ruled that exports for the F-35 to Israel could not be suspended, because the programme is overseen by the US. The M-346 is another matter.
M-346
Reporting from Declassified UK explains how the M-346 trains would-be Israeli fighter jet pilots, who have carried out much of the destruction of Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. The Israeli Air Force, always prone to brag, claims that they can have pilots go from training to live deployment is as little as six months.
The UK government knows all about this. In an internal briefing written by the Foreign Office, they concluded that the M-436 “facilitates the development of an offensive capability”. In their own words, the M-346 facilities genocide, but they have spent more time prevaricating about what the words “facilitation” and “genocide” mean rather than doing their due diligence to halt even the risk of the slaughter of Palestinians, as is their duty under international law.
Chris Bryant MP was asked about all of this during a select committee meeting in 2025. He said:
the assessment is that the training of an aircraft pilot on such equipment would take so long that they would not be among the people who would be engaged in fighter combat in Gaza.
But the briefing Bryant received on the M-346 does not mention anything about the time taken to train pilots, and if he’d done his own research he’d know it does not take long at all, so it appears Bryant was simply making this up on the spot.
The only argument that Bryant’s briefing made was that, since these trainer aircraft are not used over Gaza themselves, because they have no direct “combat utility”, then exports can continue. This contradicts the government’s own assessment of the M-346 facilitating an offensive capability.
Moog’s shipments to Israel
Last year Declassified reported that they had acquired records of at least 10 shipments going from Wolverhampton to Israel. (They now have many more.)
Moog has done everything in its power to keep its shipping routes open, with the full support of the UK government and its courts. Following the Moog 4’s action, the company took out an injunction – an characteristically American tactic not often used in the UK – that makes any disruption outside the factory illegal. They also changed their shipping patterns in response.
If Moog did this to avoid scrutiny, they probably shouldn’t have started shipping parts via Belgium… Unlike the UK, Belgium does have a full arms embargo on Israel, which includes shipments from other countries over land or through its airspace. As previously reported by the Canary, Moog were caught trucking their military components to Liege airport, before flying them out to Israel from there. Their shipments were seized and a criminal investigation has been opened in Belgium into Moog’s activities as a result.
This hardly comes as a surprise. In 2024, Moog were fined almost $2m for bribing Indian officials to acquire public tenders. They are a company that will do anything to maintain its profits, with no concern for business ethics, never mind human life.
Moog 4 on trial
Despite all of this, Moog are not on trial or under investigation — at least not in this country. Instead, the UK government seeks to convict four people for trying to do what they should have done two years ago, which is stop this country’s corporate facilitation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The activists are alleged to have caused £1.2m worth of damage to Moog’s factory. Given that four of the Filton 6 may be sentenced as terrorists for their direct action, similarly on the basis of a high level of property damage, there are concerns that the Moog 4 will face the same repressive treatment.
There is a clear pattern in this country showing that the UK wants to designate protestors as terrorists, when all they have done is try to uphold international law and save Palestinian lives. Under their scaremongering use of the Terrorism Act, which is having a chilling effect across this country, what is really happening is that the moral conduct of normal citizens is being outlawed by a government that would rather sit on its hands and rake in profits. They will brutalise anyone who puts human life before their pockets. We cannot allow this to continue.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
Labour lost control of Enfield Council at the local election but, with more coordination and cooperation, progressives could have easily taken even more seats from Labour.
Enfield Independent leader to Greens: ‘If we had formed an alliance, we would have won’
A strong independent campaign hoped to play a key role in taking overall control away from Labour. But while there had previously been talks with local Greens, the Green Party chose to stand across Enfield, including in wards independents were targeting. Conservatives ended up with 31 councillors, Labour with 27, and the Greens with 5.
In Upper Edmonton ward, for example, Labour got all three council seats. But if Enfield Community Independents and Greens had run a joint campaign, it’s very possible that Labour would have got no councillors at all.
Enfield Community Independents (ECI) leader Khalid Sadur stood in Upper Edmonton. And as he told the Canary:
If one of us had stepped down, we would have won. If we had formed an alliance, we would have won.
The lesson is clear, he said:
If we stand separately, we will lose, and Labour will get in.
Both progressive forces, Sadur stressed, had something different to offer in the election. The Greens had a big national media profile, especially considering the wave of attention current leader Zack Polanski has received. But ECI had been out in the community for years building connections with local people. As Sadur insisted:
We know the people on the ground… We are local residents – we came from a really grassroots approach, where we literally brought people along and got them to vote for the first time…
The people that we spoke to are the people who voted for us, and they absolutely bought into the idea that they needed local people to represent them on their local council — people who knew their area, weren’t taking them for granted like the existing Labour Party, who don’t have councillors who live in the ward.
He even added that, in the areas ECI was campaigning:
There was no one on the ground apart from us. We were out canvassing, leafletting. But we never saw any other party on the streets.
‘We have to put egos aside’ to stop Reform
In our current political system, many voters do depend on a national profile and vote accordingly. And partly on this basis, Greens made some gains in Enfield. But even without a national profile, ECI candidates got hundreds upon hundreds of votes from hard campaigning on the ground, and were a real challenger in some areas.
The point Sadur made was that the Greens couldn’t win solely with a national profile on their side, and ECI weren’t able to win on local campaigning alone (without a big national profile behind them). With this in mind, he said:
The goal really is to try and get us together, such that we can then come together and actually campaign together, bring the expertise that we have — in terms of the campaigning history and background and experience – together with the profile of the Greens, and form a challenge.
In a call for unity, Sadur said:
The battle lines need to be drawn for the next general election very clearly. It’s going to be left versus right.
There needs to be a single candidate on the left who’s going to be able to take on the right.
We cannot afford to split the left vote and allow Reform in.
We have to put egos aside and do actually what’s in the best interests of our residents, our constituents, and frankly, our country.
He added:
There needs to be a commitment to do this together. Because we’ve got three elections’ worth of data. So we know where our voters are, we know where the postal voters are. The Greens need our help and assistance on that. Together, we are a formidable force locally. We need unity, not division.
This is an important message not just in Enfield, but across the country. Because it’s clearly no longer time for party political games. It’s time to join together in a spirit of cooperation and mount a strong resistance to the fascists of Reform.
Featured image via Leon Neal/Getty Images
By Ed Sykes
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Ameer Kotecha – CEO of the Centre for Government Reform – joins Tom Slater and Fraser Myers for the latest episode of the spiked podcast. They discuss the stakes of the Makerfield by-election, why Labour can’t get over Brexit, and what HS2 reveals about broken Britain.
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More than 2,000 people gathered at Mission Valley River Park in San Diego for the funeral prayer for the three men killed while trying to stop the attack on the city’s largest mosque. The men are being hailed as heroes for confronting the attackers and preventing further… pic.twitter.com/Jr7ns2YoF2
— TRT World (@trtworld) May 22, 2026
“God is the greatest,” attendees chanted in Arabic, raising their hands. Police have indicated that the three victims took action that prevented further bloodshed and casualties — an act that deeply affected the local muslims present.
More than 2,000 people gathered for funeral prayers in San Diego for three men killed while confronting gunmen at the city’s largest mosque.
Community members said the victims’ actions helped save lives during the assault. pic.twitter.com/f2GGar4QPH
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 22, 2026
The US House of Representatives also held a moment of silence on Wednesday to commemorate the men.
The US House of Representatives on Wednesday observed a moment of silence for victims of the recent shooting in the Islamic Center of San Diego
Three people were killed in a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego in the US on Tuesday, May 19, when two teenage gunmen opened… pic.twitter.com/MYnAcRoo6f
— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) May 22, 2026
The tribute was led by San Diego Representative Sara Jacobs, who said:
This tragedy didn’t happen in a vacuum.We let it happen by refusing to actually do something and stop the rise of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate, and hatred of all kinds. For decades, the Islamic Center has been the target of hate speech and vandalism and yelling by people driving by.
Disturbing pattern
According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), there has been a disturbing pattern of anti-Muslim attacks targeting mosques in the US. This includes a litany of hate crimes from planned mass shootings, to arson attacks, bomb threats, and violent assaults against Muslim worshipers in Tennessee, Michigan, Virginia, Florida, and Minnesota. These incidents have deeply impacted the muslims in those communities.
It said the latest civil rights report documented 8,683 anti-Muslim bias complaints in 2025. This is the highest recorded number since the organisation began compiling these reports in 1996. It lays bare a worrying trend for muslims nationwide.
CAIR has also reported a 1,450 percent increase in anti-Muslim extremist rhetoric by officials in the 15 months after February 2025; such rhetoric contributes to heightened anxiety among muslims living in affected areas.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria had previously declared that San Diego ‘stood with Israel.’ Later, he was heckled. This happened when he was supposedly offering sympathy to San Diego’s Muslim community earlier this week.
A San Diego resident publicly confronted Mayor Todd Gloria during a press briefing following the deadly attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego, where two teenage gunmen killed three mosque attendees including a security guard in an attack authorities are investigating as a… pic.twitter.com/cxktU2G9Ir
— VPol (@VocalPolitics1) May 19, 2026
The woman accused Gloria of ignoring repeated warnings from Muslim residents and amplifying pro-Israel rhetoric amid rising anti-Muslim hostility.
The moment was captured on video and quickly spread across social media, with many echoing the woman’s criticism.
Featured image via Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images
By The Canary
So another Green Party candidate has stood down to spend more time with his anti-Semitism allegations.
Yesterday, a mere nine hours after being announced as the Greens’ man in the Makerfield by-election, Chris Kennedy withdrew, citing ‘personal and family reasons’. Shortly after, The Times revealed Kennedy had shared social-media posts suggesting the firebombing of Jewish-run ambulances in Golders Green was a ‘false flag’ – staged, presumably, by those sneaky Zionists.
We used to call Jeremy Corbyn the world’s unluckiest anti-racist – mocking the remarkable consistency with which the disgraced former Labour leader, and supposed lifelong opponent of bigotry, would end up absent-mindedly praising an anti-Semitic mural, or being photographed in front of a Hezbollah flag at a protest.
Truly, the Greens have taken up Corbyn’s hapless mantle. Barely a day goes by without the world’s unluckiest anti-racist party – which draws its pungent sense of moral superiority from its supposed opposition to ‘racist’ right-wingers – being forced to appear shocked and surprised when presented with its own candidates’ ugly missives about Jews, Israel and anti-Semitism.
Kennedy reportedly shared a video on Instagram which described the arrests of two men in connection with the arson attack on the Hatzola ambulances in north London in March as ‘total bullshit to keep the false flag flying’. He also shared a similar post by a Jew-bashing ethnonationalist named Hugh Anthony, who I gather is a Poundland Nick Fuentes. The Horseshoe Theory lives.
Here we go again. This comes after record-breaking local elections for the Greens, in which they racked up more seats and more anti-Semitism scandals than ever before. Two of their candidates were arrested on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred. Almost 20 others were found to have aired their own fetid bigotries online, including a would-be councillor who called Jews ‘cockroaches’. Who have they got vetting these people? The IRGC? The ghost of Heinrich Himmler? Candace Owens?
Kennedy ‘apologises for the offence caused’, the Greens assure us. You would have thought he had thoughtlessly said ‘coloured people’ instead of ‘people of colour’, rather than wondered out loud if an anti-Semitic attack had been staged for political reasons. Kennedy, a nurse and children’s safeguarding specialist, is not some crypto-Islamist, either. His careless Insta-fingers are an alarming indication of how marinated your average ‘progressive’ now is in online Jew-baiting conspiracism.
And to think the Greens continue to fancy themselves as doughty defenders of multicultural Britain – standing athwart populism, yelling ‘stop’. In a statement following Kennedy’s resignation, but before the social-media posts were made public, the party said it was ‘redoubling our efforts on campaigning to expose the risk of Reform, a party who seeks to divide our communities’. Apparently, railing against mass and illegal migration – a sorry mess opposed by most Brits, including half of ethnic-minority Brits – makes Reform ‘divisive’. Meanwhile, the Greens’ giddy embrace of Israelophobia has turned its candidates lists into a putrid melange of Hamas apologists, Islamic sectarians, leftish useful idiots and even some unabashed anti-Semites.
The defenestration of Kennedy comes after a drip-fed cancellation campaign against Reform’s candidate, local plumber Robert Kenyon. Supposed anti-fascist groups and their media handlers have been trawling through Kenyon’s old – and recently deleted – social-media accounts, desperate to patch together a rap sheet. So far, we’ve learned that he called illegal migration an ‘invasion’, dabbled in vaccine scepticism and praised one Donald Trump. You can agree or disagree with his opinions, or the way he chose to express them, but none of this amounts to the rantings of a dangerous extremist.
You can almost smell the desperation of the offence archaeologists at this point. Yesterday, Hope Not Hate accused Kenyon of ‘calling for violence’. The truth? He said – clearly in jest – that those who broke lockdown rules during Covid should be waterboarded by the police, which HNH soberly reminds us is ‘a method of torture which is prohibited by international human-rights law’. He also said Richard Branson should be hanged for taking furlough money. I can’t claim to know Kenyon’s mind, but I’d be amazed if he meant this literally. This is just taking testy, risqué, jokey online comments as if they were dead-serious statements of principle. You hear worse in most pubs most nights.
Easily the most headline-grabbing accusation hurled at Kenyon is that he was once Facebook ‘friends’ with a full-blown fascist. Gary Raikes, leader of far-right micro-party the New British Union, appears to be an Oswald Mosley cosplayer, complete with the tragic little uniform. Those old enough to still be on Facebook will have collected some colourful characters over the years, but few as unsavoury as Raikes. Nevertheless, Reform insists Kenyon never interacted with the man and does not endorse him. Reform leader Nigel Farage has since suggested Raikes was one of ‘hundreds’ of people who flocked to Kenyon’s Facebook page when he first stood for parliament in 2024. Until the Hope Not Haters uncover a picture of Kenyon in his own fashy bib and tucker, this remains guilt by tenuous online association.
Candidacy means scrutiny. The decision to hastily delete some of Kenyon’s accounts and posts has clearly backfired. But this tale of two candidates and their social-media histories tells us something about our strange political time – in which progressives tone-police working-class people when they dare to pipe up about immigration, while those same progressives unthinkingly share anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; in which we’re told the populists are sinister and divisive, while proudly ‘anti-racist’ parties become magnets for Jew haters.
In Makerfield, the warped morality of the cancel-happy left is plain for all to see.
Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater_.
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I first got my hands on the reMarkable Paper Pro last year and it’s safe to say that I haven’t shut up about it since. Swapping to an e-ink tablet ended my years of lugging notebooks and half-finished diaries everywhere, and having my notes, calendars and to-do lists all in one place (without the risk of losing a sheet) turned out to be the answer to so many of my organisational issues. So naturally, when the Swedish tech firm invited me to roadtest their latest offering, I couldn’t have said yes faster.
Enter the reMarkable’s new entry-level tablet, the Paper Pure.
As with all of reMarkable’s products, the Paper Pure is essentially a digital writing tablet for reading documents and textbooks, sketching and note-taking that attempts to fully replicate paper writing. Unlike the slick, slippery glass of typical tablets, the display on the Paper Pure has a special surface that mimics paper, so every pen stroke has just the right amount of resistance, making writing, doodling, or annotating documents feel totally natural.
HOWEVER, while the new 10.3-inch black-and-white paper tablet still offers reMarkable’s renowned paper-like writing feel and workflow-focused features, it instead comes with a much lower price tag – and a whole whack of new upgrades.
What affords it a lower price tag you ask? Well, unlike the Pro, the Paper Pure is strictly black and white only (so no more colourful highlighter options) and there is no backlight. The pay off? reMarkable Paper Pro starts at £559, while the Paper Pure starts at £359. For many, that £200 saving is going to be the deciding factor.
“With reMarkable Paper Pure, we challenged ourselves to make the signature reMarkable writing experience more accessible to even more people,” said Mats Herding Solberg, Chief Design Officer at reMarkable. “Together with reMarkable Paper Pro and reMarkable Paper Pro Move, it completes our transition from reMarkable 2 to a family of third-generation paper tablets. Whether you want a colour display, frontlight, and all the other latest technology, or just an excellent digital notebook, there’s a reMarkable Paper tablet for you.
It’s a solid idea – I’ve recommended my Paper Pro to everyone, but the price tag does mean it’s not as simple as just casually popping out and buying one willy nilly. And after a month of road testing the Paper Pure myself, I can safely say that you’re not missing out by opting for this new, more bank account-friendly model.
Like its predecessors, the Paper Pure has 100s of templates you can use for each of your individual projects, as well as standard lined paper options and blank pages for scribbling. Everything can be tagged and organised into folders, making it easy to find everything (instead of wondering where the hell you left that post-it note in your kitchen).
You can cut, copy, and resize content effortlessly and even convert your handwritten notes to typed text. If I don’t manage to get something done on my to-do list, I can simply circle it, cut it and paste it onto the next day within seconds. Instead of scrambling through my bag looking for my paper diary, I can switch between my to-do list, my diary and whatever notebook I’m working on seamlessly.
However, for me, the upgrades are where the Paper Pure really sings.
With the new model, you can link your reMarkable to your Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook, and your tablet can create meeting notes prefilled with information with a tap, reducing time spent preparing for meetings. As someone who needs to scribble notes, I love being able to import documents from my Google Drive and having them automatically turned into paper tablet-native text documents – which I can then easily reupload back to my Drive when I’m done (tell you what, it’s a blessing for when you need to sign documents!).
With the Paper Pure you can also convert webpages saved through Remarkable’s Chrome extension or mobile apps into editable notebooks and you can now link your tablet to Slack for an even smoother workflow.
The reMarkable Paper Pure is 100% distraction free – there are no notifications, pop-ups or apps. I have an attention span that is utterly non-existent and I often struggle on my laptop (especially when I’m meant to be focusing on just writing) as I have too much temptation to go and check emails. Yes you can connect your tablet to the internet, but there’s no chance of you getting distracted by apps.
Less distraction, more focus, and £200 left over? That’s the kind of tech upgrade we can actually get behind.
reMarkable Paper Pure, available bundled with Marker for £359, or with Marker Plus and Sleeve Folio for £399, reMarkable.com
A brave animal advocate has announced he will throw his hat into the ring for the upcoming Makerfield by-election. But there’s a catch. He’s going to be running dressed as a giant fox.
Robert Pownall aims to directly defy Labour and its failure to strengthen the Hunting Act. This stunt is a direct message to Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, as he attempts to re-enter Westminster.
Chasing accountability with tail held high
Pownall is the founder of wildlife protection organisation Protect the Wild and confirmed his bid for parliament on Friday 22 May 2026. His campaign will see him scurrying around the constituency totally kitted out in a full fox costume. His aim is to encourage people to respond to the government’s hunting consultation and to support stronger legislation against fox hunting.
This symbolic protest lands in the middle of a political battleground. The by-election was triggered by the sudden resignation of Labour MP Josh Simons. But Burnham is facing a challenge from Reform, after Labour lost all of its 22 seats in Wigan just a few miles away.
Pownall previously stood in the May 2026 Scottish parliament elections dressed as a giant gannet. For those of you who aren’t sure what a gannet is, it’s a stunning seabird and Pownall pulled that stunt to bring attention to the controversial guga hunt in the north of Scotland.
Now, he is turning his focus – and his tail – to the loopholes that allow illegal fox hunting to continue in England.
Beyond party politics
It was over 20 years ago that the Hunting Act banned chasing and killing of foxes with hounds. But it hasn’t stopped the hunt at all, and I have seen it with my own eyes.
Currently, huntsmen can claim that they have laid ‘scent trails’ and that they’re merely following these through the woods with baying hounds. It’s bullshit and nothing more than a smokescreen to allow them to go out and murder innocent wildlife.
Pownall stated:
For over 20 years, hunts across the country have continued chasing and killing foxes, deer and hare because of loopholes, exemptions and weak enforcement of the hunting ban. Labour supporters were promised stronger protection for wildlife. We intend to make sure that they don’t quietly wriggle out of delivering them.
Protecting the wild
Protect the Wild is absolutely fierce in what it does, exposing instances of wildlife persecution regularly. Its campaigns have managed to get several major landowners to totally ban trail hunting on their properties.
The group was the first in recent times to expose a hunt mercilessly killing a hound, purely because it wasn’t quite up to standard. It’s disgusting, the way these people can see sentient life, a living and breathing creature, like it’s nothing but a tool.
This new campaign focuses heavily on ending legal loopholes. Pownall wants to increase police enforcement powers – something that I personally believe needs to happen, as I have been there during illegal hunts and witnessed the police refusing to even attend.
Vitally, Pownall also wants to drive public participation in the current government consultation. Most people in the UK are entirely against fox hunting. I mean, come on. Who actually thinks it is okay to murder a defenceless, fluffy little fox? Especially when it’s done by jumped-up rich parasites on horses. The political delay on the matter doesn’t match public opinion. At all.
This isn’t about left versus right; this is about saving lives. The public settled this debate years ago. The problem is that politicians are dragging their feet. So, if these politicians won’t speak for foxes, then maybe foxes need to start standing for parliament themselves.
Featured image via Carl Court / Getty Images
By Antifabot
We hope you love the products we recommend! All of them were independently selected by our editors. Just so you know, HuffPost UK may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page if you decide to shop from them. Oh, and FYI — prices are accurate and items in stock as of time of publication.
News flash: you need to wear sunscreen all year-round.
But if there’s one time you desperately need to slather yourself in SPF, it’s when there’s a literal heatwave happening.
I know, remembering to take it with you, let alone reapply it all day, can be a bore. Just remember that you’re doing it for your future self, though, and all complaints will suddenly be out the window.
Or, most likely, finding a formula that you really love will make putting it on feel like a meaningless task.
Plus, if you need an excuse to stock up, iHerb has a buy one, get one 50% off deal until the end of the summer, to save you excess cash on necessities (there are more fun things to splash out on in summer, after all!).
To help you find the suncreen on your dreams, I’ve rounded up seven of the best for every kind of skin type to shop now.
Politics
The House | We will be judged by how we responded to climate collapse, not Westminster psychodrama
5 min read
While we have yet another circus of internal party politics in Westminster, the Government has failed to keep its eye on the ball when it comes to some of the biggest threats facing the country.
After nearly a decade of Conservative psychodrama, we cannot afford more lost years where Parliament fails to address the big challenges facing the country. The most fundamental duty of a Government is to protect its citizens, in the here and now, while also protecting them from foreseeable risks in the future. And the Government is failing to meet the moment, distracted by by-elections and leadership challenges.
Even before they began plotting to remove the Prime Minister, this Labour Government had learnt all the wrong lessons from the Conservatives’ time in office, gradually chipping away at Parliamentary scrutiny and weakening democratic accountability. There have been too many key announcements made outside the Chamber, and too many important areas not given time for debate. The clearest example is the Government’s failure to give proper time to scrutinise reports in Parliament that go to the heart of our national security, our economy and, ultimately, our very way of life.
Take the Joint Intelligence Committee’s National Security Assessment on global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, which provides a clear picture of what the near future may hold. It shows that the loss of nature and biodiversity collapse is no longer just an environmental issue. It is now a direct threat to our national security, economy, and way of life. One of the most alarming projections is that a worsening global food supply could leave the UK food system increasingly vulnerable to hostile states. Another is that due to climate breakdown, the report says GDP could be 12% lower than it would otherwise have been by 2030. This fact, which was left out of the redacted report, was only revealed by ITV’s investigation, and is deeply problematic for the Government given that it has put so much stall on growth policy and failed to recognise that a healthy natural environment is fundamental to the operating of the economy. Climate-driven migration will also increase pressure on national infrastructure and contribute to more polarised politics.
The only reason we know anything about these redacted reports is because of a freedom of information request from Green Alliance, which forced the Government to release the information. I first called for Parliament to be given time to scrutinise the report on 22 January. Since then, I have written to the Leader of the House, the Cabinet Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs asking for a response.
Amid all of this, in the last week, another report was published. This time, from the Government’s own watchdog, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), making it clear that we are dangerously ill-prepared for the impacts of climate change. After twenty years of successive Governments’ failure to properly confront the climate crisis, the CCC has now laid out a clear pathway for the action needed to better protect communities, infrastructure and essential services from the worsening impacts of extreme weather. Among the most dire warnings is that, in just a couple of decades, 9 in 10 of our homes are at risk of overheating. Water supply shortages may exceed five billion litres per day. And 40°C heatwaves will become the new normal across the UK, potentially leading to an additional 10,000 heat-related deaths per year. Without action, the Committee is clear that an increase of up to 4°C by the end of the century remains a possibility. To put it simply, if that happens, we won’t be able to adapt. There are no mitigations that will fully protect our food systems, infrastructure, economy or public health from the scale of disruption such a world would bring.
These are issues with profound long-term consequences, yet they have received no Parliamentary time and far too little media attention. The only logical conclusion is that the Government seems to have decided it is easier to avoid discussing these reports and confronting these warnings than to spell out what it plans to do. I understand the issues are very difficult, but it’s all the more reason to start addressing them sooner rather than later. Ministers know that the implications for food prices, the cost of living and national security are serious. Yet, instead of leading an open debate about how we respond and proposing a blueprint for where we go from here, they appear to be trying to avoid the issue and hoping it goes away.
Whoever leads this Government after September must have a laser focus on the transformative change needed to tackle the climate and nature emergency, and with it the cost of living crisis. The gravity of the warnings means there is no time to waste. The Government must focus on building the resilience of our food and energy systems to prepare the country for increasingly extreme conditions. While this is happening, we also need to heed the warnings of the dangers of ecosystem collapse.
What this would mean in practice is investing in flood defences, starting a programme of mass home insulation to cope with colder winters, and adapting buildings for hotter summers. All while preparing the public for what is coming, including opening mass cooling centres during extreme heat events and supporting communities in adapting their homes, workplaces, and daily lives to a rapidly changing climate.
We have a clear choice here: politicians can continue to be consumed by political theatre, or finally confront the realities of climate breakdown. Future generations will rightfully judge us on whether we rose to the moment, whether we acted on the warnings, or whether we kicked the can down the road yet again. The threats posed by our ecosystem’s collapse are no longer abstract, and the Government should take them with the seriousness they deserve. Ultimately, if the Government fails to prepare the country for it before the consequences become immeasurably worse. We will all pay the price.
We’re all about biodiverse gardens here at HuffPost UK, and no-mow May is a great time to rewild your backyard.
But sometimes, as is the case with invasive Japanese knotweed (which can cause structural damage to your home if not treated ASAP), certain plants are better off out of your yard.
So, we thought we’d ask the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS)’s chief horticulturalist, Guy Barter, about which ones you should banish on sight (and others you should keep a careful eye on, as well as the ones you should bear with).
1) Plants not to let grow in the first place
“Some alliums, such as:
- three-cornered garlic, and
- crow garlic
are extraordinarily tricky to winkle out as they leave little bulbils behind when uprooted,” the gardening expert told us.
“Never let them gain a lodgement in the first place, ideally.”
Three-cornered garlic (AKA three-cornered leek) is an invasive species that can smother native wildflowers. It’s an offence to cause it to grow in the wild, and it can be removed by hand-weeding the bulbs.
Crow garlic, meanwhile, spreads very easily and can take over your garden if you’re not careful. Fork out seedlings or smother plants with e.g. cardboard and bark.
2) Plants to stop in their tracks
“In general, gardeners would be unwise to leave invasive weeds such as:
- bindweed,
- ground elder, and
- couch grass
to their own devices,” Barter told us.
“Not only are they very invasive, but [they] are [also] hard to dislodge.”
Bindweed, while sometimes beneficial for wildlife, can be very hard to remove from your garden due to its enormous and rapidly spreading roots. It can be controlled by placing physical barriers at least 45cm into the ground, deadheading flowers, smothering young plants, mowing often, and forking out seedlings.
Ground elder can lead to a “carpet of leaves”. Fork out plants, smother them, place a barrier 45cm or more deep around them, mow more, and pull off new growth.
And couch grass, which can spread like wildfire, can be forked out or smothered.
3) Plants to keep a close eye on
“Many garden plants are very ‘willing’ and although valuable in places where other plants won’t grow, can run amok in fertile, sunny, moist soil,” Barter said.
- Solidago,
- certain bamboos,
- montbretia,
- mind-your-own-business [Soleirolia soleirolii],
- borage,
- horseradish, and
- mint
“Come to mind,” he added.
That’s not to say they need to be removed, though.
“Constant vigilance and an occasional going round with a spade ensure these plants stay in [their] lane. Repeat transgressors must go, however.”
4) Plants to let grow, despite being a bit of a pain
Slightly annoying plants can still be worth it, considering how useful they are to your garden’s ecosystem.
“Some unwanted plants like:
- nettles,
- green alkanet,
- thistles,
- sow thistles, and
- hedge mustard,
although apt to spread, can be given a little slack in view of their value to insects.”
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