Politics
Pippa Heylings MP: ‘Is the Treasury sabotaging Britain’s climate leadership?’
Although it may have been lost amid the doom-laden headlines emerging after COP30 in Brazil, something genuinely hopeful did emerge from the UN Climate Conference: a game-changing global plan to safeguard the planet’s remaining tropical forests.
The Tropical Forests Forever Facility, or TFFF, is an innovative finance mechanism that would become one of the largest multilateral investment funds for nature, quadrupling the global finance available for forest protection.
The scheme is designed to halt the destruction of irreplaceable ecosystems like the Amazon, which are the lungs of our planet and the source of countless resources we depend on daily.
In the run-up to COP30, the UK played a leading role in helping Brazil design the framework. Yet, just as prime minister Keir Starmer flew into Belém, the gateway to the Amazon, the UK government unexpectedly announced that the UK would not join other major nations in contributing to it.
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The justification given was “fiscal circumstances”. In plain speak, they simply did not want to be seen to be funding projects such as these whilst raising taxes in the budget.
But this is lazy, outdated and backwards thinking. The Treasury must recognise that contributions to mechanisms like the TFFF are investments and not costs. The chancellor has at her disposal ways to classify the TFFF contribution as equity investment or as a financial asset which would not impact her debt or deficit rules.
This is not a grant or a handout. It is a genuine win-win investment fund that, for the first time, creates a value for trees that is not carbon, delivers returns to investors while supporting Indigenous and local communities to keep their forests standing.
This knuckle-dragging thinking at the Treasury is creating a blocker to genuinely innovative and game-changing solutions we urgently need to save tropical forests and protect our planet. It’s also the thinking that falsely pits environmental protection against economic growth, despite the overwhelming evidence of the economic costs of a depleted and degraded natural world.
Before entering Parliament, I spent years working across Africa, South America, Central America and the Caribbean, supporting communities dealing with the impacts of nature loss and climate change. I saw first-hand the ravages of climate change and the devastating cost of inaction. I saw how virgin forest trees currently only have a value when they are on the back of a lorry for timber.
But I also saw the transformation that we can achieve when we work together and inspire leadership. That is why I have joined more than 60 cross-party MPs and peers in urging the Government to take up the opportunity it helped to shape and commit to the TFFF.
I welcome the energy secretary’s answer to my question in the chamber and his reply to the environmental audit committee that the UK’s contribution remains under review. The current situation undermines years of diplomatic work and has disappointed Brazil and tropical forest partners. If the UK wants to sustain its proud record of leadership on climate and nature, this cannot be a decision kicked endlessly down the road.
At a time when voices of climate denial and delay are growing louder at home and abroad, tropical forests like the Amazon can buy us precious time in the rapidly closing window to address climate change and nature loss. The TFFF offers a rare chance of a credible, global plan that finally makes keeping forests standing more valuable than cutting them down or burning them.
The UK helped design it. Now, ministers must listen to the cross-party calls across parliament and help deliver it.
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Donald Trump has claimed it’s a “little unfair” that a predominantly brown, Muslim country has decided to actually fight back against US colonialism.
The US and Israel started the war in Iran with illegal and unprovoked attacks. Yet now, it seems that shit got a little too real for him.
I AM LOST FOR WORDS…
“It’s Little Unfair” of Iran to Fight Back.
-Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/S3dm4fvw9M— Earth Hippy 🌎🕊️💚 (@hippyygoat) March 16, 2026
You had no right to bomb and murder nearly 200 little girls in the name of freeing Iranian women. I guess if they don’t reach adulthood, they can’t be “oppressed by the regime”.
“They have no right to be doing what they’re doing” is a crazy statement when you attack someone. https://t.co/ApHFP5jObI
— Gissur Simonarson (@GissiSim) March 17, 2026
Who’s going to bomb the US to free all the women that Trump’s regime is subjugating?
Bro got too used to attacking children and unarmed populations in open air prisons. Cant cope when someone can fight back https://t.co/eP03qQMI20
— Bajii (@bajiipliss) March 17, 2026
This is the type of video you watch four times just to make sure you’re not losing your mind.
The reality is, the president of the most powerful country in the world does not give a shit about Black and Brown people.
I guess Trump and his paedo friends are not used to people fighting back.
Trump: old habits die hard
And in a rare moment of lucidity, Trump admitted he went to war with Iran “out of habit”.
He added that Israel is a great ally, which, of course, is another reason the US should start an illegal war. Israel says jump and Trump asks how high.
Unreal. Trump says he went to war with Iran “out of habit,” adding “which is not a good thing to do.”
Rare moment of lucidity, I guess 😏pic.twitter.com/sniR2htmpJ
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 17, 2026
Imagine bombing school children out of habit? Does he have the same excuse for hanging out with Epstein for all those years?
Trump also talked about “violent and vicious people” who have “destroyed the country. At least bro is self-aware.
“violent and vicious,” “horrible people” who have “destroyed the country.”
Every accusation is a confession. https://t.co/8SQkwiJm7d
— David Marsden (@DvdMrsdn) March 17, 2026
This is the same guy who tried to insult Governor Gavin Newsom’s intelligence, whilst accidentally calling him the “President of the United States”.
US colonialism
Countries, including occupied territories (ahem, Gaza, the Golan Heights, Southern Lebanon), have the right to self-defence under international law.
Article 51 of the United Nations Charter establishes the right to self-defence as a “fundamental exception to the prohibition on the use of force between states”. Specifically, armed attacks justify recourse to self-defence.
The US has the strongest military in the world and Israel is the only state (albeit illegal) in the Middle East with nuclear weapons. Iran has neither of these, which is why the way it fights back may not make sense through conventional frameworks.
As Dr Narges Bajoghli wrote on Instagram:
Iran is targeting Gulf security architecture. For decades, the U.S. built a regional order where Gulf states host American bases, buy American weapons, and maintain stability that keeps oil flowing on U.S. terms.
Iran’s strategy dismantles that.Strike the infrastructure. Make the bases vulnerable. Force Gulf states to question whether American security guarantees are worth the risk of being Iranian targets. Fracture the regional consensus that enabled U.S. dominance.
She added:
So they’re turning that weapon back on the global economy. Threaten shipping lanes. Target refineries in allied states.
Make oil prices spike. Create economic pain that translates to political pressure on governments waging war.
Iran is hitting the US, Israel, and countries in which the US has military bases or infrastructure, where it hurts, and Trump underestimated their willingness to do so.
Maybe if more countries fought back against the US and Israel, the world would be less fucked up.
Featured image via X/AF Post
The High Court has ruled that the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council (DCC) has mismanaged Dartmoor commons. DCC did nothing to assess or prevent overgrazing, resulting in the deterioration of important wildlife areas.
Environmental campaign group Wild Justice brought the claim. It argued that DCC had failed to meet its legal responsibilities towards the conservation of the commons.
The High Court judgment on 17 March ruled that DCC has failed in its legal duty under the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985 to assess the number of animals which should be allowed to graze on Dartmoor.
Dartmoor commons is an open area of land which covers more than two-thirds of Dartmoor National Park, spanning just under 36,000 hectares.
The Dartmoor Commons Act grants certain rights over the land to some 850 landowners, known as ‘commoners’. These include grazing rights and the rights to keep sheep, cattle and ponies.
Monitoring overgrazing on Dartmoor
The Dartmoor Commons Act also contains statutory responsibilities that DCC has to ensure the conservation of the commons. Wild Justice argued DCC failed to meet these responsibilities, alongside general duties under wildlife laws and regulations.
In a July 2025 High Court hearing, Wild Justice successfully argued that DCC failed to make periodic assessments of whether Dartmoor was becoming overstocked. This contravened section 4 of the Dartmoor Commons Act.
In his judgment, Justice Mould found:
Assessment of the number of animals that may properly be depastured on the commons at any given time necessarily implies both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The question for the Defendant is whether stocking levels exceed the capacity of the commons properly to accommodate them.
In order to address that question, among the matters which the Defendant needs to interrogate are the numbers of livestock which commoners are entitled to depasture on the commons, the numbers that are actually depastured in reliance on rights of common, the areas of common in respect of which those rights are enjoyed and exercised, seasonal variations, and so on.
In 2023, the government published an assessment of Dartmoor commons (the Fursdon Review). It found that Dartmoor was “not in a good state”.
In assessing a number of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) on the commons, the Fursdon Review found that many of them were in unfavourable condition. It also noted that Natural England had identified reducing stock numbers as a way to tackle overgrazing and return these areas to a more favourable condition.
Wild Justice began its legal claim in July 2024, when the group sent a pre-action protocol to DCC. It detailed alleged issues with DCC’s management of the commons, citing the Fursdon Review.
From DCC’s response it was clear that it had not taken any steps to control livestock. This led to Wild Justice filing a judicial review challenge in August 2024.
In February 2025, the challenge got the green light to proceed to the High Court, with two further grounds gaining permission in April.
Bob Elliot, CEO of Wild Justice, said:
This judgment shows that the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council failed to do the most basic of work needed in order to understand how many animals the Dartmoor Commons can sustain. When such an important landscape is already in very poor ecological condition, this simply isn’t good enough.
The Dartmoor Commoners’ Council must now carry out the proper assessment required by law and ensure that Dartmoor is managed in a way that allows nature to recover. We will be scrutinising that assessment and, importantly, how DCC acts upon it in areas where overgrazing is apparent.
Senior environmental solicitor Carol Day, of Leigh Day, was a member of the legal team representing Wild Justice. She said:
Wild Justice is obviously pleased that the judge has found that Dartmoor Commoners’ Council has failed in its statutory duty to properly assess the number of livestock grazing on Dartmoor. It has been clear for years that overgrazing is one of the major issues leading to the ecological decline of Dartmoor’s important wildlife habitats.
Wild Justice ‘s legal challenge means the DCC must now comply with its minimum legal duties as the regulator of grazing levels on the commons. The DCC must now urgently carry out a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the number of livestock on the commons so that it can consider whether it must take steps to reduce that number.
Featured image via the Canary
The toxic fallout of the unprovoked, illegal US-Israeli war against Iran will haunt the region for generations. The Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEO) says the pollution produced by military strikes could have terrible long-term effects.
We’ve just updated our overview of environmentally damaging incidents in the Israeli-US war against #Iran. We’ve identified more than 300 incidents and remotely assessed 232 for harm.
Read more about these incidents and trends here: https://t.co/brloxSPBqE #IranWar #Iran 1/5 pic.twitter.com/1xH6isVkOJ
— Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS) (@ceobs_org) March 10, 2026
Iran was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time of the first strike on 28 February. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran while the UN’s atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
The Conflict and Environment Observatory reported:
As of the 10th March 2026, we have identified over 300 incidents, 232 of which have been assessed for their environmental risk. The results are mapped below, showing incidents in Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Jordan, Cyprus, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Azerbaijan. By far the commonest facility type is a ‘Military Object’.
The CEO added:
Of those the most impacted sub-type is ‘Airbases’. Away from military sites, incidents cover a range of facility types, with different pollution profiles, from hospitals, to tyre storage sites, to oil refineries. As the conflict proceeds, we are seeing more attacks on civilian and dual use infrastructure.
CEO listed different kinds of physical, economic and social damage which are likely to have long-term effects, including:
- Pollution from military sites and materiel
- Marine pollution
- Fossil energy infrastructure incidents
- Nuclear facilities
- Desalination plants
- Weakened environmental governance
We examine risks to the region’s terrestrial and marine environments. Attacks on naval and merchant shipping have the potential to cause serious pollution threats to sensitive habitats in the #PersianGulf. 3/5 pic.twitter.com/Xo1W3xIi0m
— Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS) (@ceobs_org) March 10, 2026
The CEO said they would continue to assess damage reports via social and traditional media:
We have seen a continuation — since our 3 day assessment — of pollution incidents that are placing people and ecosystems at risk of acute and long-term harm, and trends that could lead to substantial environmental damage as the war continues
Black rain over Tehran
In an earlier report published on 9 March, CEO assessed the effects of oil production sites being hit in Tehran, underlining the human cost:
Belligerents argue that attacks on oil facilities are militarily legitimate but in Tehran the civilian impact has been huge.
Israeli strikes on oil infrastructure between 7 and 8 March resulted “in a major environmental incident.”
Footage showed thick plumes of black toxic smoke and large fires burning at several facilities. This toxic mix of pollutants subsequently rained out over the city and entered drainage systems, raising concerns about possible surface and groundwater contamination.
With a population of more than nine million, the incident raises serious acute and long-term health concerns for Tehran’s residents.
The environmental impact of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is already being felt as congenital disabilities increase. The toxic legacy of the illegal Anglo-American invasion of Iraq is still unfolding, particularly in Fallujah where invading US forces weaponised depleted uranium and white phosphrous in November 2004 – which the Americans later admitted to.
The use of depleted uranium in the war on Iraq in 2003 has led to exposure of the local population to radioactive uranium dust. This could potentially explain the significant rise in cancer and congenital malformations documented in Fallujah after 2003.
Iran has snubbed US offers to negotiate citing the protection of its sovereignty and territorial integrity as its immediate priorities. The initial strike on Iran occurred amidst Oman-brokered negotiations which the mediating force at the time said had “advanced, substantially.”
Without an end to the war in sight, and with continuing US and Israeli aggression, the toxic potential of another forever war will mount. And a mix of US hubris and Israeli ambition will impose that burden on the people of the region.
Featured image via the Canary
Hello trees, hello sky – hello, Hannah Spencer. All dressed up like a daffodil, the recently elected Green MP looks like she’s off to present a CBeebies show, and is apparently so wholesome that she makes Julie Andrews look like Julie Burchill. How extremely pleased the Greens must have been when she won the Gorton and Denton by-election in Manchester last month – proof at last that they’re not all mad and / or scary. But it’s nice to find out that she’s not perfect, and can fall prey to the sin of pride like so many of us. She told the Manchester Evening News recently: ‘I feel like I’ve already done more in the last two weeks, genuinely, than some MPs will do in six months or a year.’
Steady on, Mary Sue! These achievements, it seems, include delivering her maiden speech (to a Commons so sparsely attended that it resembled a Labour Party disco), in which she came out with salt-of-the-earthisms such as, ‘[W]here I’m from, we’re taught to look after each other’ and to ‘stick up for each other’. (This was only slightly undermined by the fact that Spencer once wrote in 2021 on Mumsnet that she was ‘glad’ to leave the area as it was full of ‘money-laundering takeaways’, according to the Telegraph.) ‘It’s in our blood and in our bones’, she told parliament, ‘we see each other as human’. Human as opposed to what – plant-pot holders? I’m always a bit suspicious of people claiming that a character trait is part of their actual bodily self – rather too blood-and-soil for my liking.
She then went all teary when reading out the names of women who allegedly inspired her (I noted that none of them had penises), before recovering and practically hugging herself with glee at, she says, the girls who went to school on International Women’s Day dressed as ‘Hannah the Plumber’ with ‘trademark hair’. Bit heteronormative – couldn’t they have dressed up as Eddie Izzard? And then there was the predictable shout out to ‘trans siblings’ and ‘Muslims’, but for some reason not to Muslim trans siblings.
In previous speeches, she has quoted children who have apparently said wise things to her – usually a sure sign of a phoney. This includes one child in her by-election acceptance speech, to whom she allegedly answered:
‘I promised you I would try and improve the world you are growing up in. I told you I am not perfect, but that I always try my best. I always try and do the right thing.’
In her Commons maiden speech, we got a long list of people who she was representing in parliament, only leaving out the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, for some reason. What did Uncle Tom Cobley ever do to her, to be so cruelly snubbed? ‘Thank you for putting your faith in this plumber’, she ended.
There’s been no shortage of praise for Spencer from all the usual suspects. The Guardian called the speech she made after her by-election victory ‘endearingly down to earth’ and ‘an object lesson in grace’. This is what we’ve come to expect from a newspaper that has such a tin ear that it recently ran a column describing a business founded by a British Jew having all its windows smashed as a harmless gesture of solidarity with Gaza. Never heard of Kristallnacht, you Hamas-humping clowns?
What else has the busy bee Hannah Spencer been up to in two weeks that her co-workers couldn’t do in a year? Well, she witnessed her first PMQs and called them a ‘pantomime’, whereas to anyone who appreciates democracy, they’re one of the most vital (and entertaining) features of it:
‘Even though I knew what it was going to be like, I think it’s actually worse than I was expecting. That whole façade that people put on, this theatre of playing a certain way. That’s not what we’re there for. We’re there because people have elected us to do the things that we told them.’
This, from a woman who belongs to the same party as Mothin Ali, who once hounded a local rabbi into hiding, and who, when he was elected to Leeds City Council in 2024, stood in front of a Palestinian flag shrieking:
‘We will not be silenced. We will raise the voice of Gaza. We will raise the voice of Palestine. Allahu Akbar!’
Was this pathetic performance a ‘pantomime’, too? Or was it sinister, rather than silly? Either way, that she can criticise PMQs while not raising a peep about this does confirm the suspicion that the lethal teaming of the silly and the sinister is currently happening in the Green Party above all other places.
In her exciting first fortnight as a right-proper politician, lend-a-hand Hannah also found herself given a police escort after ‘scuffles’ broke out at an ‘anti-racism’ event in Manchester at which she had been emoting. As the Manchester Evening News had it, she said becoming an MP has changed the way she thinks about ‘personal safety’: ‘There’s a strange feeling about knowing the things I took for granted before’, she explained. ‘Being able to feel safe – safe enough – when I was walking around, I just can’t do any more. That’s really hard.’ Sensitive Hannah felt ‘real sadness’ to see how ‘angry’ people had become – including those who accused her of lying about being a plumber, a piece of doubtlessly ‘fake news’ which at one point included the naughty altering of her Wikipedia page to inform us that she was born in Kensington and grew up riding ponies.
It’s been erased now, thank goodness, but the question mark over Hannah’s social origins just won’t go away. Maybe because, generally, working-class girls don’t tend to be selected by the Guardian as among the ‘best-dressed of the fest’ at Glastonbury, for the reason that most working-class people would never think it a hoot to wallow in their own filth. It’s the white middle and upper classes who go in for that kind of lark.
Spencer seems to think that if only the media could stop telling fibs, we’d all be joining hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ in Urdu. ‘Once upon a time we’d have been kids that played with each other’, she said in her Commons speech: ‘We’re all human, but some people have been exposed to a lot of misinformation and it’s making them really angry.’ Still, she’ll be struggling bravely on. ‘Just like I’ve given the energy to other jobs I’ve done – because I care about it and I want to get the work done – I’ll do that here’, she opined, upper lip barely quivering.
It’s fascinating the way that questions about Spencer’s social background won’t go away – and, I think, quite healthy, as it’s always good to be vocal when one smells a rat, even when the plumber’s already called and assured us there’s nothing to see here. The fascinating self-described ‘working-class academic’ Lisa Mckenzie still maintains that Spencer is not of the proletarian blood royale, despite the fact that she, until recently, got her hands dirty in a way that Mckenzie and indeed myself do not. I’m of the opinion that a great part of being working-class is having very low or no expectations. My parents did their best to remove my ambition from me, and they were lovely people. They just didn’t want me to get hurt. Growing up with ‘a thousand paper cuts every day’, as Mckenzie strikingly describes it. When I look at Spencer, I don’t get that feeling.
Still, it’s always nice to see a youngster living their dream, and I’m sure that Hannah’s never ridden a pony in her life, unless it was a pit-pony her dad brought home from t’mines and which she, like the earth-angel she is, nursed back to life. Let us mock no more at the fact that she keeps greyhounds – a fashion model’s idea of whippets. And let us snipe no longer that, if indeed she is the salt of the earth, it’s that pink Himalayan stuff that costs a fortune.
Let’s put carping aside and welcome to the bold, believable, real-life roster of Strong Female Role Models, from Rosie the Riveter to Dora the Explorer and now Hannah the Plumber. Even if she gets chucked out at the next election, think what a cracking CBeebies show it’ll make!
Julie Burchill is a spiked columnist. Follow her Substack, ‘Notes from the Naughty Step’, here.
A small set of women in the House of Lords are trying to end access to abortion telemedicine. More commonly known as the ‘pills by post’ scheme introduced during Covid-19 to ensure continued safe access to pregnancy terminations via remote consultations. It was made permanent in March 2022.
MPs tabled a similar proposal to end telemedicine access in summer 2025—however, it was quickly voted down. This time around, Tory peer Philippa Stroud tabled the motion as an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill. This circumvents the Commons, who have already voted the bill through.
Opponents of bodily autonomy
The version of the bill which passed through the Commons effectively decriminalises abortion altogether. As such, Stroud’s motion is an extreme reversal of the bill’s intent, subverting it into an attack on reproductive rights.
Stroud is backed by Kwisher Falkner, former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and Sharon Davies, an ex-swimmer.
It’s notable that all three women are also known for their transphobia. Stroud founded a night shelter/church which attempted to ‘cure’ transsexuality and homosexuality by driving out demons. However, she denies this characterisation—in spite of victims’ testimonies.
Under Falkner’s leadership, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) took a hard pivot from a trans-positive stance to extreme hostility. Likewise, Davies threatened to sue amateur womens’ sporting bodies that allowed trans people to participate. Davies is also a vocal critic of drag, even complaining when the BBC ran a performer’s obituary.
These points are worth bearing in mind, given that transphobes often claim to be ‘defending women’. However, as this attack on abortion rights demonstrates, it’s never just about trans people. Eventually, they also turn out to be opponents of bodily autonomy itself—whether that be sexuality, gender, or abortion rights.
Anti-choice is anti-choice
In an article on the anti-choice motion, the Telegraph stated that critics claim the postal scheme is “open to abuse”. However, the article could not cite even one case of coercive abortion in telemedicine’s four-year history.
Davies describes herself as pro-choice, although that apparently doesn’t extend to choices she doesn’t want people to make. She stated in the Telegraph that:
being pro-choice does not excuse jeopardising safety or allowing a ‘Wild West’ of abortion pills, where pills can too easily fall into the hands of abusers coercing abortions, traffickers covering up abuse or women whose pregnancies are approaching full term.
The practical effect of the scheme is that women at any stage of pregnancy can get hold of abortion pills by misleading abortion providers on the phone about their gestation, either mistakenly or deliberately as in the case of Carla Foster, who was sent abortion pills by BPAS after pretending to be seven weeks pregnant when actually around 33 weeks.
Reintroducing in-person medical consultations for women seeking abortions is not about reducing access to abortion but ensuring safeguarding and best practice.
Note the turn in Davies’ language here. She starts by talking about coercion, and then quickly pivots to ‘concerns’ about people procuring the pills of their own volition. Again, this is not about safeguarding pregnant people; it’s an attack on bodily autonomy.
Lords’ debate
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service itself has stated that people should not have to visit a clinic for abortion pills. Research has demonstrated the safety of the process from a medical standpoint.
Likewise, vulnerable individuals in abusive relationships can also talk to a professional more easily over the phone than by visiting a clinic in person.
Tomorrow, 18 March, the House of Lords will debate the Crime and Policing Bill. In June 2025, the amendment to decriminalise abortion passed in the Commons with a massive 379 votes in favour, versus just 137 against.
As such, the Lords now have the opportunity to strike a historic blow in favour of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. Alternatively, they can follow in Stroud’s footsteps, and impose further unnecessary limits to abortion access.
Featured image via Aiden Frazier/Unsplash
Britain’s MI5 must pay compensation to a woman coercively controlled, abused, and attacked with a machete by a neo-Nazi agent it employed. The agent also had fantasies about eating children. And the victim has warned that MI5 – which was found to have lied repeatedly – was still protecting the abuser.
In a story that gets worse with each sentence the sentence, the BBC reported:
Her legal claim followed a BBC investigation four years ago, which showed that the man, known publicly as Agent X, was a neo-Nazi misogynist who used his security service role as a tool of abuse.
The BBC found he used his status to abuse his partner, known by the alias Beth, before he moved abroad, while under police investigation, to continue intelligence work.
They added:
After subsequently failing in court to discredit Beth, MI5 recently offered to pay compensation to settle her claim. She has now accepted the offer.
Beth’s solicitor Kate Ellis – who also works for the Centre for Women’s Justice – said:
To have this kind of outcome and to win actually against a body like MI5 who are so shrouded in secrecy and in a sense so powerful, is a huge achievement for Beth.
MI5, which was found to have lied repeatedly, had also been forced to own up.
MI5 forced to apologise
The head of MI5 has also been forced to apologise:
We relied on incorrect evidence and our record keeping fell well short of the standard of professionalism that we expect, and to which Beth was entitled. We profoundly regret that our mistakes prolonged the litigation and caused additional suffering for Beth.
MI5 has settled Beth’s claim and we have apologised to Beth directly.
Prompted in part by Beth’s case, MI5 has embarked on a programme of work to reinforce the highest standards of record keeping and information management.
The MI5 chief was accused of trying to get the head of the BBC, Tim Davie, to quash the story in 2021:
In 2021, Sir Ken wrongly claimed the planned story was “inaccurate” when he personally contacted his BBC counterpart Tim Davie in a failed effort to undermine the reporting.
Fantasised about eating children
Details about the man accused are frankly mind boggling:
Evidence showed the MI5 spy, a foreign national, was a right-wing extremist with a violent past. He also engaged in fantasies about eating children.
He had abused a previous partner abroad, before taking on his MI5 role, including threatening to kill her and her child.
Beth met the agent on a dating site. He soon became controlling and physically and sexually abusive:
One video showed Agent X threatening to kill her and attacking her with a machete.
The BBC reported:
MI5 is currently under investigation after the BBC revealed that the security service gave false evidence to three courts while defending its handling of the agent.
In a statement, Beth said the compensation:
can never do anything to repair what I went through at the hands of X.
I’d pay that money so as not to have to experience even a minute of what I had to experience of the worst of his abuse.
She warned that
despite this apology, the MI5 are still protecting this violent misogynistic predator.
The British state has again been caught not only protecting abusers, but lying in order to derail investigations and protect their man. This is nothing new. The Canary has reported extensively on abuse by state agents. Victims like Beth deserve justice – and proverbial heads need to roll over this and many other cases of this nature.
Featured image via the Canary
Shoshana Strook has been found dead at her home in Israel on Sunday 15 March 2026. The Daily Sabah reported that Strook was found:
under circumstances that remain unclear, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Police have launched an investigation into the death, though officials have not publicly disclosed details about the cause.
Israel minister accused of abuse
Strook accused her government minister mother, along with her father and brother, of raping her for years as a child. She had hired lawyers to pursue justice only a few days before her death. In April 2025 Strook, the daughter of Israel’s far-right settlements minister fled to police and asked them to protect her. She accused both her parents and one of her brothers of raping her as a child, over a period of years, and filming the rapes. Her accusations came as other women testified to Israel’s Knesset about the abuse they suffered from political and religious leaders.
Women’s rights organizations in Israel have called for a broader investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death and the allegations she raised before it.
Widespread problem
The issue of child rape among Zionists is not limited to Israelis. The Netanyahu regime is currently ignoring well over 2,000 extradition requests for alleged and convicted paedophiles who fled there from other countries. Others have been convicted in the US, while the Zionist UK Labour party right also has a long record of paedophiles and other sex offenders.
Israeli psychotherapist and trauma expert Dr Anat Gur, head of the Bar-Ilan University trauma therapy program, has said that she believes organised child rape in Israel is widespread:
Organized child rape is one of the most horrific things I’ve encountered. It’s likely much more widespread than we think. It’s happening in places we least expect.
Strook’s death mirrors the long list of suspicious deaths among victims and associates of serial child-rapist and Israeli spy Jeffrey Epstein. These deaths include that of Virginia Giuffre, Epstein’s most well-known victim – who was also found dead after saying she would not. Jean-Luc Brunel, the French ‘modelling agent’ accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein, was found dead of supposed suicide in a French prison in 2022.
Featured image via Instagram
I’m not above a TikTok food trend. I’ve tried the surprisingly delicious overnight Weetabix and the viral Italian wedding soup, and have yet to be let down.
I regularly make some version of “brothy rice”, too.
So, despite its somewhat silly name, I’m more than willing to give its newest trend, dubbed “frambled eggs”, a go.
What are “frambled” eggs?
The name is a portmanteau of “fried” and “scrambled”.
Kait, the apparent originator of “frambled eggs”, made them by beginning to scramble some eggs in a hot pan and then accidentally leaving a yolk intact.
Deciding to leave it rather than mix the golden centre in with the rest of the dish, she kept it; creamy scrambled eggs acted as a richer “white” surrounding the runny centre.
The TikTok creator, however, didn’t name “frambled eggs” – that honour goes to commenter @bunnymuffintime, who wrote, “omg… a frambled egg”.
“Didn’t even know this was an option,” another commenter shared underneath the viral clip, which has racked up 1.3 million likes and over 20 million views as of the time of writing.
What does a frambled egg taste like?
It’s more about the texture than the flavour – runny, golden yolk gives way to a creamy scrambled base.
The yolk crisps up a little more than the scrambled part, too, which makes another nice texture contrast.
I had mine on some avocado, but it’s great on its own too; if you want the creaminess of scrambled eggs and the runniness of fried eggs, I can’t recommend it enough.
How do you make a frambled egg?
Add some butter or oil to a pan on a medium to low heat. Full disclosure: I didn’t use enough, which meant the eggs stuck to the pan a bit. Learn from my mistakes!
Then, crack two eggs straight into the hot pan. Don’t scramble them first.
Using a spatula, scramble the whites and one yolk carefully around the yolk of one egg. Drag the cooking egg away from the sides of the yolk you want to keep, using the flat edge of your spatula.
Flip that yolk halfway through, Kait, the inventor of the recipe, suggested.
I did try to skip that because the yolk is so delicate, but it’s a necessary step; unlike a fried egg, “frambled eggs” don’t have long to cook, because the scrambled part would become rubbery if left too long.
She adds salt and pepper at the very end. I put it in at the beginning, but I can’t see it making much difference.
This article contains spoilers for the new season of Virgin River.
If you’ve already binged through the latest season of Virgin River, you’ll have seen the show’s steamiest scene yet between Brady and Brie, played by Ben Hollingsworth and Zibby Allen.
The memorable sequence towards the end of the new episodes sees Brady and Brie having sex on top of his motorbike, putting an end to two seasons’ worth of back-and-forth about whether the characters would ever get together.
And while the scene has gone down well with fans of the escapist Netflix series, Ben has admitted that shooting it was no picnic.
“The human body is not meant to have sex on a motorcycle,” he told Entertainment Weekly, claiming his “back hurt for weeks” once filming was done.
Ben recalled: “I was arching my back over that thing. Talk about an ab workout … It might’ve translated as pleasure or lust on screen, but Ben Hollingsworth was in pain!”
He added: “There’s an abandon with Brady and Brie that’s raw sexy, unlike Mel and Jack or other couples on the show. The spontaneity is also representational of their relationship. It was spontaneous on day one, and it didn’t add up or make sense on paper. It just works.
“That scene encapsulates that, because we had the pool table in season six, and that was a pretty epic moment, and the way it was pitched to me was, ‘This scene would make the pool table blush’.”
Virgin River has already been commissioned for an eighth season, with the latest run of episodes culminating in Brady having an accident on his motorbike.
While Ben told Entertainment Weekly that he already knows his character, he’s keeping schtum for the time being.
Series regular Tim Matheson recently teased to Tech Radar: “We’ve just had little rough discussions about season eight, so we know vaguely what’s going to happen, but mostly only with our characters.
“I mean, they don’t discuss in detail about what’s going to happen to everybody. You just have to wait and see until you get a script.”
All seven seasons of Virgin River are now streaming on Netflix.
Melanie Phillips – author of Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege – returns to The Brendan O’Neill Show. Melanie and Brendan discuss Iran’s decades-long war on the West, the insanity of the ayatollah apologists and why anti-Zionism is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.
Go to PIAVPN.com/Brendan to get 86 per cent off from our sponsor, Private Internet Access, with four months free!
Join us for the spiked summit, our biggest ever live event, on Saturday 27 June in Westminster featuring Konstantin Kisin, Lionel Shriver, Katharine Birbalsingh, Toby Young, Allison Pearson, Brendan O’Neill, Tom Slater and more speakers to be announced. Get tickets here.
Order your copy of Brendan O’Neill’s new book, ‘Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism and Technocracy’, on Amazon now.
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