Politics
Spectator front page is grotesque
The Israel lobby’s frantic attacks on the Green party continue, this time from the Spectator. The colony’s UK mouthpieces have been targeting the Greens and their leadership intensively since members tabled a motion to declare the party explicitly anti-Zionist.
The front page of the latest issue of the Spectator – edited by ultra-Zionist Islamophobe Michael Gove – is a naked attack on the party for, supposedly, ‘abandoning its roots’.
Spectator push slop
The cover image shows Green party leader, Zack Polanski, deputy leader Mothin Ali and new Green MP Hannah Spencer hacking away at trees as if they are now anti-nature. But in reality, the attack is all about Israel – the Greens’ environmental policies haven’t changed. And of course, it’s not long before the article’s author Angus Colwell gives that away.
Colwell’s support for Israel has long been on show, including in previous Spectator spew like the “The Ultras: meet Britain’s new Islamo-socialist alliance‘. But on the Greens’ “environmental” “betrayal” he soon exposes his real agenda, ranting about “Palestinian activism” and courageous pro-Palestinian author Sally Rooney [emphases added]:
Climate activism begets trans activism begets Palestinian activism. The author Sally Rooney gave a speech at a progressive conference this month that’s a good example of the sentiment. ‘The adversaries we confront in the Palestinian solidarity movement… are the same forces driving catastrophic climate change and destroying the very basis for our shared survival,’ she said. Each issue is yet more proof of a permanent crisis.
At this weekend’s online-only conference, party members will have an opportunity to vote on a motion declaring that ‘Zionism is racism’. Two similarly named splinter groups – Greens Anti-Zionist Alliance and Greens for Palestine – have been leading the effort, and Polanski (himself Jewish) hasn’t really condemned it: ‘If we’re talking about the definition [of Zionism] that this Israeli government are clearly perpetrating through a genocide in Gaza, then yes, absolutely. That’s racist.’
Backing the motion more vehemently is Mothin Ali, Polanski’s deputy. He’s a keen gardener, has been on a BBC show with Marcus Wareing and has a ‘My Family Garden’ YouTube page with 56,700 subscribers. The most recent video opens with him taking a chainsaw to a tree, then removing his headgear to reveal a Palestine beanie. ‘As-salamu alaykum,’ he says. ‘So today, what I’m going to do, is I’m going to show you how to cut down trees for profit’ – which is an interesting thing for a Green deputy leader to say. He then shows everyone how to prune fruit trees. He is genuinely liked on a personal level in the party: one senior figure tells me he’s a ‘gentle soul’.
A Palestine beanie. The horror. But clearly the motion is what has Colwell and the Israel lobby so rattled. Good. Polanski, for his part, showed his trademark lack of you-know-what-giving and used the whole nonsense as a vehicle to invite people to join the Greens, wondering aloud what was wrong with the poor souls at the Spectator:
The motion must pass. No political party that thinks building an apartheid ethno-state on land stolen from its people isn’t racist has any place in British politics – and you can tell from their pearl-clutching panic that the Israel lobby knows the British public is catching on.
Featured image via the Canary
Salt has been a major industry in Britain for centuries. The salt deposits in Cheshire, the West Midlands and Teesside are huge and still are – in fact, they could be viable for decades to come.
Yet now the UK is on the verge of becoming a net importer of salt, for the first time in history. Inovyn, the company that produces roughly 50 per cent of Britain’s salt, has announced that it will likely have to close its facility in Runcorn, Cheshire, unless it receives government support. Like the rest of the UK’s manufacturing industry, Inovyn is struggling to cope with the UK’s breathtakingly high energy costs and crippling carbon taxes. In other words, Britain’s salt industry is to be sacrificed at the altar of Net Zero.
The decline of salt would be an economic disaster. The chemical and pharmaceutical industry is one of the largest manufacturers in the UK. Salt, which is used in 90 per cent of pharmaceuticals, is a vital component in a surprising number of everyday products. Only the food industry contributes more to the domestic economy – and the food industry also needs high-quality salt, for taste and preservative reasons.
Salt is integral to sectors that employ hundreds of thousands of people. The consequences of Britain becoming a net salt importer will have a huge impact on these industries. Salt is difficult to store and transport. That is the major reason why chemical plants are located very close to the point of production. Those chemical and pharmaceutical industries that depend on local supplies will, inevitably, either close down or relocate closer to salt sources. If Runcorn goes, don’t expect the chemicals industry or pharmaceuticals to survive in this country.
Salt is a vital part of an integrated industrial supply chain. And that is what Britain had, for most of the 20th century, in the shape of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). ICI was, for decades, the largest manufacturer in the UK. It owned and operated plants, production and distribution along the entire supply chain, from salt extraction in Cheshire to Dulux paint in your local hardware store.
When ICI was still in business, the less profitable elements were maintained because they fed the valuable downstream activities. Since the demise of ICI in 2008, the separated upstream operations like salt production have been allowed to decline, following years of underinvestment.
While demand for salt and its derivatives has fallen, that cannot be seen in isolation. It has been a long time coming. The removal of ICI’s integrated supply of salt and derivatives has led production of cosmetics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals to move elsewhere. If the Runcorn plant closes, a full sector collapse will inevitably follow.
Inovyn is part of INEOS, whose owner, Jim Ratcliffe, is hardly short of a bob or two. I would argue that Inovyn should be recognised as a key, national strategic asset. There is a case for public funding. But we should avoid the normal no-strings giveaway with which we have become all too familiar. It should be co-investment, matched by the owners and interested parties from the private sector more widely.
Pleas to change the current government’s entire energy strategy in order to rescue Runcorn will fall on deaf ears. But calls for targeted support for Runcorn may be better received – especially if the current government wants to have a fighting chance of reclaiming the local parliamentary seat from Reform UK.
To allow Runcorn to close – and lose 50 per cent of Britain’s salt production – would be a catastrophic folly. The UK is already far too vulnerable to the slings and arrows of international events. We must not allow salt to join the manufacturing funeral procession.
Ruari McCallion is a freelance journalist specialising in manufacturing. He tweets at @RuariJM.
Widespread press coverage has been given to the attack in Golders Green, London, where arsonists set fire to four ambulances owned by Jewish charity Hatzola.
Golders Green attack
At around 1:45am on Monday 23 March, the London Fire Brigade contacted the Met Police with news of the arson. The Met issued a statement three hours later, confirming that they’re treating the attack as an antisemitic hate crime.
The BBC reported that
Met Police chief Sir Mark Rowley said officers were investigating whether a group with ‘potential Iranian state links’ could have been behind the attack. He stressed it was too early to attribute the attack to Iran but expressed concern at the “rapid growth in recent years of Iranian state threats” in the UK.
Others such as the Telegraph led with headlines such as “Counter-terror police investigating ‘Iran-backed firebombing’”. The Telegraph appear to have particularly good access to Israeli government information channels. Israeli Embassy sources told them that the firebombing had all the hallmarks of an Iran-backed attack. They additionally had this nugget of information:
An internal report by the Israeli government, seen by The Telegraph, claimed the group probably hired local criminals online to carry out the attacks.
Numerous politicians and public figures have come out to immediately condemn the attack and frame it as an antisemitic hate crime carried out by some sort of Islamic group linked to Iran. Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust told the Telegraph:
Iranians have long used terrorism against Jewish communities around the world for decades.
So that’s the mainstream media narrative. Is that replicated on social media? Well, no.
Social media response
In a post on X gaining 1.2M views, Lowkey pointed out that:
It is worthy of note that the group which is claiming responsibility for the burning of ambulances last night refers to Palestine as “the land of Israel.” It does so in both English and Arabic, which is particularly unusual.
Lowkey was right to point this out, but he missed that the statement capitalised the ‘L’ in Land, even more clearly making it a term specifically used by pioneers of the current State of Israel such as David Ben-Gurion to describe historic Palestine, or the current State of Israel plus East Jerusalem, the Occupied West Bank, and Gaza.
The idea that a pro-Palestine and Iran-linked group would use this term rather than ‘the Zionist entity’ or simply ‘Palestine’ does not stand up to scrutiny. Aaron Bastani of Novara Media weighed in to support Lowkey, saying that “Iranian schoolbooks don’t even refer to Israel on a map.”
But there is more about the statement by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (HAYI) that deserves careful attention.
“A clear lack of fluency in Arabic”
Other attacks attributed to the group on Jewish targets have taken place in Europe in recent weeks, one of which was an explosion at an Orthodox Jewish School in Amsterdam, and a follow up one at an Amsterdam business premises. The attacks have been covered by Dutch News.
Younes Saramifar, a political Anthropologist at VU University Amsterdam, has posted in detail about HAYI’s online post on his LinkedIn profile, and is also quoted in the article in Dutch News. He makes numerous points which cast serious doubt on the Arabic language portion of the statement, including:
The language of announcements shows a clear lack of fluency in Arabic. The language is generated by an AI tool. Furthermore, the electronic device on which the new video was edited does not have Arabic or English as its native language in its operating system. This is clear from where the colon and the exclamation mark are placed in the sentence. This shows that the group is neither native Arabic nor English speakers. Native speakers are habituated to managing these technical glitches. Based on their language use, I don’t think they are a direct proxy or a sleeper cell associated with the Axis of Resistance.
Dutch News reported that five teenagers in total have been arrested in relation to the attacks, aged between 14 and 19, all from Tilburg in the Netherlands. But if this is an Iran-linked group then we would expect the young people to be members of the Tilburg Muslim minority, possibly Shia?
Sadly for the purveyors of the currently dominant narrative, no. Tilburg does have a Muslim minority, with around 7.6% of the citizens in 2024/2025 being of Turkish, Moroccan, or Syrian origin, but the five teenagers arrested were reported by Dutch News as all being of Antillean heritage. This refers to the overwhelmingly Christian Dutch Antilles islands in the Caribbean.
Along the right lines
It seems then that the author of the internal report by the Israeli government mentioned above (that the Telegraph mysteriously has access to) is thinking along the right lines.
A group that doesn’t know how to sound pro-Palestinian in English and needs to use Chat GPT to produce broken Arabic and still doesn’t get it right hires some young people, including children, of no particular faith background to carry out attacks on the Jewish community. These attacks are immediately propagated across the media and political system in a way which heightens fears of antisemitism and links it to Iran and the pro-Palestinian movement, without any supporting evidence.
When we are investigating a crime, it’s always good to look first for a motive and ask the question, ‘who benefits politically?’.
Do Iran or its proxies stand to benefit? It’s very obvious that they don’t. Not only could proof of Iran’s involvement be used to provide political justification for more UK involvement in the US and Israel’s illegal war, attacks on Synagogues and other Jewish community organisations have been used in the UK, Australia and other countries to give politicians cover to clamp down on protest and speech rights.
As Younes Saramifar points out:
The Axis of Resistance has shown consistent disinterest in antisemitic expressions and discourse that target Jewish faith and communities. They have focused on Zionism and Israel within their rhetoric.
But surely the suggestion that pro-Israel interests could be behind a so-called false flag incident in London is both shockingly antisemitic and completely fanciful? It is worth looking at just a few of many historical incidents to provide context on this subject.
A history
The eminent British-Israeli historian, Emeritus Fellow of St Anthony’s College Oxford and fellow of the British Academy Avi Shlaim, has written extensively on how he can demonstrate that Mossad carried out bombings to drive Jews out of Iraq and hasten their transfer to Israel during his childhood in Baghdad in the 1950’s. His book Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, gives more detail and was Times Literary Supplement and New Statesman book of the year in 2023.
The Lavon Affair is one of the most famous Israeli false flag operations, in which a group of Egyptian Jews were recruited in 1954 by Israeli Military Intelligence to plant bombs inside Egyptian, American, and British-owned civilian targets: cinemas, libraries, and American educational centres.
The case of the 1994 London Embassy bombings was covered in detail by Skwawkbox in 2025.
More recently, in Australia and Canada there have been numerous cases which suggest that a pro-Israel motive is a rational thing for law enforcement to investigate when it comes to attacks on the Jewish community.
And now, as Skwawkbox recently reported for the Canary, there’s been another twist to the story. The Guardian noted that:
Two men arrested in connection with a suspected arson attack on four ambulances operated by a Jewish charity in north London have been released on bail.
The men, aged 47 and 45, who are both UK nationals, were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life after the incident in Golders Green. On Thursday the Metropolitan police said the pair had been bailed until April while the investigation continues.
What really happened in Golders Green?
Bailed? Really? Well, as Skwawkbox concluded:
As Irish comedian and political activist Tadgh Hickey pointed out, this “weirdly lenient” decision doesn’t really fit with the idea of a ‘terror cell’.
We trust that the Metropolitan Police will leave no stone unturned in their zeal to follow up the points we have made in this article, and that all of the media organisations and politicians will retract statements which suggest that there is proof that Iran is behind the attack.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
DiEM25’s landmark event united Yanis Varoufakis, Jeremy Corbyn, Zack Polanski, Grace Blakeley, Laura Pidcock and Brian Eno in an electrifying night of radical politics. It proved that cross-party, cross-movement solidarity is not a distant dream, but something that can begin tomorrow.
On the night of 24 March, the historic Troxy in London’s East End was packed to capacity, with an audience that was treated to a mix of poetry and provocation, moments of grief and speeches of passion.
DiEM25’s Resistance Is Existence brought together some of the top minds of the political Left, who offered both warnings about the current situation but also practical solutions on how to get involved and bring about tangible change.
The evening opened with comedian and DiEM25 Coordinating Collective member Francesca Martinez. She brought the house to life with a searingly funny and deeply personal account of what resistance means to someone who has spent years fighting for a more humane world.
Following her was Nigerian poet and playwright Inua Ellams. Her performance cut to the heart of the contradictions of our age.
In the first panel, DiEM25’s political director Erik Edman brought together co-founder Varoufakis, former MP Pidcock, and musician and long-time DiEM25 supporter Eno. The message from all three was urgent and unambiguous. Eno warned:
We are dealing with fascism now. It intends to end the game of democracy, it intends to smash it.
Reflecting on a decade of political upheaval, Eno called on everyone in the room to stop watching from the sidelines. Find someone doing something you admire, and help them. Pidcock echoed the call in her own register. She urged the audience to reimagine democracy beyond the ballot box in workplaces, in communities, in every space where people organise together. She said:
We have to widen our conception of democracy… let us expand our imagination for everywhere we can build power for ourselves.
DiEM25 brings together Polanski and Corbyn
The second panel produced a very significant moment for British politics.
Eno had said it plainly in the first half. The climate movement, the anti-war movement, the fight for democracy, these are not separate battles. They are the same fight, wearing different faces.
Former Labour leader Corbyn and Green Party leader Polanski took the stage together, where recognition and threads connected. Polanski set the tone from his very first words, reframing what resistance actually means:
Resistance is making things more accessible, more inclusive, making sure we are talking to friends, family, even strangers sometimes…
Resistance is joy, is art, is culture. And resistance is saying: what is happening in this country, where 50 of the wealthiest families own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population. That’s not right, that’s a political choice. Let’s make different political choices.
From there, the conversation moved outward to electoral reform, a wealth tax, an end to homelessness, and accountability for Britain’s role in Gaza. Corbyn named it without flinching:
If the ICJ [International Court of Justice] has decided that acts of genocide are taking place… that makes the British government complicit in genocide.
Alongside them, DiEM25 Coordinating Collective member and author Grace Blakeley delivered the structural analysis. That all the hope in the room counts for nothing without rebuilding worker power from the ground up. Blakeley stated:
For the first time in a long time I do see some hope that we might be able to come together and translate it into something that really scares those at the top.
Varoufakis, who anchored both panels, drew the threads together: democracy is not something we inherit. It is something we have to make, again and again, in the face of those who would unmake it.
You can watch the full event on YouTube here.
Featured image via Chloe Chia (Haych) / DiEM25
Leading UK civil society organisations have called on the Chancellor to increase levies on corporate profits to help address the cost of living crisis. This follows predictions that numerous sectors will make huge profits from the economic fallout of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
War with Iran set to increase household bills
In a joint letter to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, 40 organisations are urging the government to take action and curb profiteering.
The signatories represent organisations across various sectors, demonstrating the breadth and depth of support for action to tackle corporate profiteering and the affordability crisis. They include the Cost of Living Action coalition, Global Witness, Women’s Budget Group, National Education Union, New Economics Foundation, Patriotic Millionaires UK, and many more.
The signatories say that the Iran war crisis should be a “turning point for the UK” as “energy bills, fuel costs, and essentials are set to increase in costs for households and businesses already struggling with affordability after years of a cost of living crisis”.
The letter goes on to say that “It is not right that extraordinary profits, generated off the backs of ordinary people during periods of crisis, are siphoned off into private hands and corporate bank accounts.” The letter also notes that the government’s own cost of living champion has called for measures to prevent profiteering.
Faiza Shaheen, executive director of Tax Justice UK, said:
Too often UK governments have failed to protect households and small businesses from the profiteering corporates and super-rich individuals who circle around crises like vultures. Spain has already frozen rents, yet our government fails to show urgency. The Chancellor needs to get a grip on the situation to help people already struggling, and show that this will not be yet another crisis where the rich get richer, while everyone else foots the bill.
Profits increase across sectors
New data recently released suggests that North Sea energy firms are already set to make extra profits.
Areeba Hamid, Co-Executive Director of Greenpeace UK, said:
The oil-majors are set to make gargantuan profits from global instability while ordinary people pay the price of Trump’s war in Iran. Calls to scrap the windfall tax early are not just misguided—they are a slap in the face to people struggling with rising energy costs, and more drilling in UK waters won’t cut bills or protect UK households. The fossil fuel industry should be contributing more tax, not less.
Banks and mortgage providers will also increase revenue as a result of increased mortgage costs. Meanwhile, costs for agricultural inputs have risen extraordinarily. Defense contractors have already posted record revenues recently.
It is not the first time these sectors have profited from crises. The letter notes that previous moments, like the Covid-19 pandemic and invasion of Ukraine, “saw the wealthiest households and super-rich amass even greater fortunes … while millions were left struggling.”
Simon Francis, Coordinator of End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said:
Gas prices have more than doubled since late February, and households are already struggling with energy bills that have been stuck at elevated levels for five years. The latest global disruption is a stark reminder of the cost of our dependence on imported fossil fuels. Every time conflict or instability strikes overseas, ordinary households pay the price through their energy bills.
The Government must act urgently to protect households from the impact of rising prices and ensure that the billions in excess profits energy companies are making during this crisis are redirected to support the people who need it most. Wiping out household energy debt, strengthening the Warm Home Discount and accelerating investment in home insulation would all help cushion the blow.
New policies needed
The policies put forward by the organisations are a strengthening of the existing energy profits levy on North Sea oil and gas companies. They are also calling for a new levy on UK bank profits made from the British public.
Additionally, excess profits taxes are specifically called for on industries such as defense, big agribusiness, and associated artificial intelligence and big tech firms, which are predicted to make bumper profits as a direct result of the war on Iran.
As well as providing direct cost of living support, they propose the tax revenue is used to invest in the long-term resilience of the UK economy. This will make the economy less susceptible to fuel price shocks in the future.
Featured image via the Canary
Sula Sgeir is Scotland’s worst-performing gannet colony. But the body responsible for protecting it is still allowing hunters to kill gannet fledglings. A freedom of information request has exposed the colony’s collapse, even as the nature agency continues to permit the controversial seabird hunt.
Each year a group of men from the Isle of Lewis travels to the remote uninhabited island of Sula Sgeir. They go there to kill young gannet seabirds, known as “guga”, as part of a traditional hunt. It is the last legal seabird hunt in the UK. The activity is carried out under licence from NatureScot, and the bird’s flesh is eaten as a local delicacy.
The hunt has become increasingly controversial, triggering protests, political pressure in the Scottish Parliament, and even a dramatic rooftop occupation by activists calling for it to be banned. 45,000 people have now signed a petition against the guga hunt.
Last year, NatureScot allowed the killing of 500 birds and said this number is unlikely to affect the long-term stability of the gannet population.
An underperforming gannet colony
But wildlife advocacy group Protect the Wild obtained relevant documents via a freedom of information request. And the data shows Sula Sgeir is uniquely underperforming relative to every other comparable gannet colony in Scotland.
In a scientific assessment used to inform the 2025 licence, NatureScot’s adviser warns that Sula Sgeir is the only Special Protection Area (SPA) for gannets in Scotland whose population has shrunk.
Between 2001, when the island first became an SPA, and 2024, the number of apparently occupied nesting sites at Sula Sgeir fell by almost 2%. Meanwhile, all other colonies showed increases between 9% and 314%.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) outbreaks caused a further 23% crash in 2023. But the decline was already in progress.
As NatureScot’s adviser states:
This indicates that the population growth rate has been suppressed compared to other gannet populations outwith the influence of HPAI.
In other words, bird flu didn’t cause the gannets’ decline – it only worsened a problem that was already underway.
Devon Docherty, Scottish campaigns manager at Protect the Wild said this shows the Guga hunt is driving the colony’s decline:
NatureScot says the Guga hunt does not negatively impact the gannet population. But their own data says otherwise. Sula Sgeir is Scotland’s worst performing gannet colony – the only one in decline while every other comparable colony grows.
This is not a coincidence. The hunters slaughter hundreds or thousands of chicks every year at their most vulnerable and critical life-stage, while causing chaos and distress throughout the entire colony.
NatureScot must use their discretionary power and stop licensing this cruelty immediately.
Featured image via John Ranson / the Canary
Today, 26 March, the government released its latest sewage spill statistics, as gathered by the Environment Agency (EA). The banner headline boasted “Fewer and shorter storm overflow spills” over 2025. Well, that’s just marvellous, isn’t it?
However, once we get about a third of the way into the document, we get to the meat of the matter:
Much of this improvement reflects unusually dry conditions in 2025 following a particularly wet 2024.
So, the water companies are dumping less sewage, not because they’ve done their goddamn jobs, but because they got lucky with the weather.
Or, to put that another way, companies dumped untreated sewage once every two minutes over 2025. However, the UK water industry is such a (literal) shitshow that this constitutes a genuine improvement on 2024. And we’re chalking this up as a fucking win?
Laying cover for the polluters
The EA announced that 2025 saw 291,492 monitored spill events. That represents a 35% drop in storm overflow spills compared to the previous year. It also means that each individual overflow experienced an average of 20.5 spills, down from 31.8 in 2024.
Likewise, the overall duration of those spills also fell massively, by around 48%. Depending on the company, the durations decreased by between 40% and 70%.
However, these drops are to be expected, given that 2025 was an unusually dry year. Storm overflows will naturally see less use when the UK experiences fewer storms. Consequently, we’ll get a more accurate idea of whether the water companies have done their job when we get another year of heavy rain.
It also means that, in spite of the fact that storm overflows should only be used in extreme weather events, the water companies were still making regular use of them. Spring 2025 was the driest in over a century, and the year was the warmest on record overall.
Some water companies even instituted hosepipe bans for the public, and then continued to dump sewage themselves. Yorkshire Water, for example, imposed a 5-month hosepipe ban. Meanwhile, the company’s official performance rating was downgraded because it actually increased its pollution incidents.
Karen Shackleton, representing the Ilkley Clean River Group, said:
Today’s report creates a cover for water companies’ illegal pollution and neglect of our infrastructure. The figures for last year, in drought conditions, take us back to the level of pollution we had two to three years ago in normal weather. This is not a good news story. Yorkshire Water is still polluting illegally and the government is still failing to hold them to account.
Sewage — £6.9m in fines isn’t enough
2025 also brought with it an increase in the monitoring of sewage spills. In particular, all storm overflows in England are now fitted with ‘event duration monitors’ (EDM), giving us a more accurate picture of the extent of individual water companies’ crimes.
Along with this, the EA has also updated its online map of storm overflow monitoring. The EDM Data Portal publishes open-access monitoring information for overflows across England.
Along with this increased level of scrutiny, water companies have been slapped with numerous fines for their crimes. In 2025, these enforcement undertakings ran to a total of £6.9 million for breaches of environmental law.
However — and flogging a dead horse here for a minute — these fines clearly aren’t working. Sophie Conquest, lead campaigner at anti-privatisation pressure group We Own It, said:
Under our privatised system, pollution is rewarded with profit. Less money invested in crucial infrastructure means more of billpayers’ money lining the pockets of shareholders.
Sewage pollution is a dire threat to public health, and has decimated our rivers and seas. This government must stop rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic, and bring water into public ownership without delay – starting with the collapsing Thames Water.
This is a cycle, and by now it’s a familiar one:
- The water companies don’t maintain their infrastructure.
- They dump sewage into our lakes, rivers and seas.
- Then, the Environment Agency slaps them with fines and sanctions.
- But the water companies go and jack up their prices, ostensibly so that they can fix their shoddy infrastructure.
- Return to Step 1.
So tell me again who’s actually paying the fines here?
Featured image via the Canary
Painful… UPDATE: Per GB News, the correct answer is 12 frigates.
Donald Trump has repeated his favourite piece of misinformation about Nato as he took another swipe at the military alliance.
The US president said the organisation – of which America is a founding member – “will never come” to the Unites States’ rescue, despite the fact it did just that after the September 11 terror attacks on New York in 2001.
That remains the only time Nato has invoked Article 5 of its constitution, which obliges all member states to help defend another if it comes under attack.
Trump also repeated his criticism of Nato for not sending warships to help re-open the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic – even though it is a purely defensive alliance.
Speaking at a meeting of his cabinet in the White House, Trump said: “We’re very disappointed with Nato because Nato has done absolutely nothing.
“And I’ve always said, 25 years ago, I was somebody that wasn’t a politician but I was always involved in politics and I understood politics.
“I said 25 years ago that Nato’s a paper tiger, but more importantly that we’ll come to their rescue but they will never come to ours.
“And I want you to remember that we said this. They never came to our rescue. Now they all want to help when the other side is annihilated.
“They made a statement a couple of them that ‘we want to get involved when the war’s over’. No, you’re supposed to get involved when the war’s beginning, or even before it begins.”
Trump sparked a furious row in January when he said Nato troops had “stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines” during the war in Afghanistan which followed 9/11.
Keir Starmer urged the president to apologise for the “insulting and frankly appalling” remarks.
Frustrations are growing, and fast…
Donald Trump has described Britain’s two aircraft carriers as “toys” in another swipe at the UK over the Iran war.
The US president insisted America “doesn’t need” the UK’s help in the conflict, despite repeatedly criticising Keir Starmer’s reluctance to get involved.
Trump has been angry with the prime minister ever since he refused America permission to launch its initial strikes on Iran from RAF bases.
Starmer has also rejected the president’s request for warships to help re-open the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane.
He made his latest comments during a cabinet meeting in the White House.
Trump said: “We had the UK say that we’ll send our aircraft carriers – which aren’t the best aircraft carriers, by the way. They’re toys compared to what we have.
“We’ll send our aircraft carrier when the war is over. I said ‘oh that’s wonderful, thank you very much’. Don’t bother, we don’t need it. And we don’t need them.”
The UK’s two aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, cost around £6 billion each to build and weigh 65,000 tonnes. They are the largest warships ever built for the Royal Navy.
Senior UK government sources have previously insisted that America has never requested aircraft carriers, and that the government has never offered to send any either.
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