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Category: Analysis

  • Greenwich council at the centre of a growing fire safety scandal in block of new flats

    Greenwich council are endangering the lives of residents in new-build flats.

    For six months, residents at the Ignatius Sancho Road Estate in Kidbrooke have complained of blocked fire escapes, dust from construction sites causing serious health issues, and hazardous air filters that completely contravene fire safety laws.

    Greenwich council: putting tenants at risk?

    Zkiah Smith is 34 and disabled. She moved into the building in November 2024. Shortly after, she started to experience a “serious deterioration” in her “physical health, emotional wellbeing and daily functioning” due to:

    poor indoor air quality, unresolved building issues, and close proximity to an unshielded, dust-producing construction site.

    Zkiah told the Canary:

    Since living in this flat I have noticed my health drastically decline.

    I’ve had a constant runny nose and bloody nose. Excessive sneezing. Sores inside my nose. Extreme nasal swelling to the point I can’t breathe out of my nose at all and was diagnosed with severe allergic rhinitis. I have had a near constant cough, itchy eyes, headaches, repeated illnesses, dry skin, splitting lips. I was diagnosed with a significant birch tree pollen allergy and allergy to apples, things that were not an issue until I lived here. I have had breathing difficulties, tight chest, sore throat and severe sleep disturbances.

    I have also have my pre existing conditions exasperated, such as joint pain and inflammation and anxiety. I have had days where my face and eyes swelled up.

    Other tenants have also reported serious health concerns, including:

    asthma attacks, nosebleeds, breathing problems, hives, fatigue, and repeated hospital visits since being tenants of this block.

    A letter from a specialist doctor confirmed that the conditions insider Zkiah’s flat are significantly impacting her health. She said:

    I have been diagnosed with Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a genetic lung vulnerability that places me at significant risk of permanent damage from prolonged exposure to airborne pollutants. I have also developed new allergies and significant worsening of pre-existing conditions since moving into this property.

    Zkiah told the Canary:

    I began asking other tenants and very quickly discovered most people were experiencing similar symptoms.

    This is no longer about just one case — this is a building-wide environmental health crisis.

    Physically inaccessible

    Zkiah invested in her own personal air purifiers. However, when they became clogged after only three weeks instead of the six months they should last, she realised the environment was making her sick:

    Dust filters clogged
    Photo via Zkiah Smith

    Despite Zkiah’s documented health conditions and the known risks from construction sites, the council placed her next to an active building site, with no protective measures. It wasn’t until months after she moved in that the council told her about the built in Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR) system – which is meant to provide fresh, filtered air.

    The council did not explain the system to her, and it requires regular cleaning, but due to her disabilities she physically cannot access it. Eventually, she discovered it was clogged with “thick grey dust and blackened filters”. One filter was missing altogether. Zkiah says this is a clear fire risk, yet the council had not inspected or checked the system since she moved in.

    Photo via Zkiah Smith

    In emails seen by the Canary, a Housing Occupational Therapist in the Disability and Home Improvement Team from Greenwich council told Zkiah:

    When you moved into the property you would’ve been given a handbook and in there, there should be information regarding the MVHR and how to change the filter. It’s advised that residents change this filter themselves – maybe your friend would be able to help with this?

    According to the Landlord and Tenant act [1985], it it the landlords legal responsibility to maintain ventilation systems. This includes the proper functioning of ventilation systems.

    Make your mind up

    In emails seen by the Canary the same occupational therapist provided a screenshot of part of an agreement, supposedly signed by tenants. Zkiah claims the council never asked her to sign one. Additionally, the form – which a ten year old could have created on Microsoft Word – references ‘Lettings Birchmere’ – which is not even the estate that Zkiah lives in.

    This raises the question of whether the council are using the same filters and not maintaining them in other properties.

    Screenshot via Zkiah Smith

    In footage exclusive to the Canary, Zkiah captured subcontractors from I-MEX along with Greenwich council’s housing liaison officer discussing the MVHR units.

    I-MEX subcontractors can be heard saying the power should be turned off the units before they are cleaned. After going back on that, they are then heard saying “you should always isolate electrical stuff before you try it.”

    Additionally, Greenwich’s liaison officer confirms she wasn’t aware of that. Importantly, she has been telling vulnerable and disabled people to clean the units themselves, without turning them off.

    In total, Zkiah had three I-MEX contractors, a Durkan liaison officer, and the Greenwich liaison officer to hoover two filters – which is totally normal behaviour. I think they know we’re watching.

    In the footage, I-MEX also state that the outside vents don’t get checked as it would be “near enough impossible”.

    Since then, an independent ventilation expert has verified that the outside vents should in fact be checked and maintained regularly, which you can hear in the video.

    Fire safety risks

    As if clogged MVHR units wasn’t enough – the units are also housed alongside tumble dryers in unventilated rooms with no window – according to the manufacturer instructions. Fire doors are also frequently malfunctioning during fire drills.

    Photo via Zkiah Smith

    Back in January, Zkiah also raised the malfunctioning fire doors with the council. One night she got stuck outside, in the cold, in her wheelchair. Eventually, the fire brigade had to smash the locks as it was a fire hazard, and even an engineer could not fix it. This raises questions about the depth of inspections and planning that has gone into the building. What would happen in the event of a fire if the doors malfunction?

    Disability access under Greenwich council

    Greenwich council claim Zkiah’s flat is a “fully wheelchair accessibly property” – however her mobility scooter will not fit the corridors on her floor of the building. The council told her via email:

    We also have to make it clear that the property is not suitable for your current mobility scooter.

    An inaccessible corridor under Greenwich council
    Image via Zkiah Smith

    In a separate email, they stated:

    [property number] is not suitable for the mobility scooter that you have. It is a fully wheelchair accessible property and part of the most accessible housing stock we have. We certainly understand why your scooter is so important to your independence, but it is essentially an outdoor vehicle and it is not realistic to expect you will easily find a property that accommodates your scooter in social housing in this Borough.

    How can a property be fully wheelchair accessible, if one of the most commonly used disability aids will not fit?

    Ultimately, Zkiah had no other option than to accept the flat.

    Greenwich council says…

    In a comment to the Canary, a Greenwich council spokesperson said:

    Everyone should have access to a safe and secure home that meets their needs. Through Greenwich Builds we are delivering 1,750 sustainable new council homes – the most in a generation – for local people on our waiting list.

    At Ignatius Sancho Road have built 122 new homes and a further 330 are under construction including much needed 3-bed and 4-bed family homes that are set to be finished by the end of next year.

    We understand that living next door to building work can be disruptive. Tenants would have been aware that parts of the development were still under construction when they signed their tenancy agreement. Each home has mechanical vents, that are fully in line with building regulations and approved by Building Control, to make sure our new developments are as sustainable as possible, which is greener for the environment and better for the residents who call them home.

    As part of the tenancy agreement, tenants accept responsibility for cleaning dust and debris from the vents of their home every few months, however we will service the filters on behalf of vulnerable and disabled tenants – now this has been brought to our attention. We are aware of concerns about the door entry system and we are working to address them with the contractor as swiftly as possible.

    At risk and an afterthought

    Zkiah says Greenwich council have not only broken the Landlords and Tenants Act [1985], but are also in violation of numerous fire safety laws and safety and quality standards.

    She has created an Instagram account to unite residents facing similar issues. However, residents shouldn’t have to fight their councils just to have habitable, safe, social housing. It’s a damning indictment that Greenwich council has left Zkiah in such terrible living conditions.

    They are not only inaccessible, but actively harmful to her health. Once again, the safety of residents in social housing is being put at risk – and the lack of housing availability is not an excuse. But as usual, the needs of disabled people are an afterthought – as Zkiah’s experience demonstrates all too well.

    Feature image via Zkiah Smith

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Thames Water £3bn emergency loan is going straight into bosses’ bonuses

    Instead of renationalisation, Thames Water is receiving a £3bn loan. Millions of pounds of that loan will go to executive bonuses – instead of bringing down people’s astronomical bills.

    Thames Water is already around £19bn in debt. When it was privatised, the utility was debt free. Capital funds who took private ownership of the company racked up the debt to pay out huge shareholder dividends.

    Thames Water’s “most precious resource”? Its senior management team, according to its boss

    For Thames Water, debt particularly went up under Macquarie, an Australian infrastructure bank known as ‘vampire kangaroo’. Once Macquarie took over in 2007, company debt increased from £3.2bn to £10.7bn when it was sold in 2017. At the same time, 80% of its assets became funded by borrowing and the company paid out billions in dividends. What were once public assets owned by the people are being used as cash cow play things by the rich.

    Bear that in mind when Thames Water chair Adrian Montague tells parliament:

    We have a bonus scheme to protect our most precious resource, which is the senior management team

    No the most ‘precious resource’ is the water itself, which we are now renting back from the transnational capitalist class rather than owning ourselves. Thames Water oversaw sewage spills into the River Thames quadrupling in 2023.

    Across the water companies, bosses received £9.1 million in bonuses for the year 2023/24. Chief executive of Thames Water Chris Weston receives a total pay package of about £2.3 million per year. The included incoming bonuses from the emergency loan are set to be 50% of base pay.

    Outrageous

    Aside from avoiding high executive pay, bonuses and dividends, another benefit of public ownership is cheaper borrowing. Government bonds have about half the interest rate that Thames Water is paying in the new £3bn loan. Then there’s Quantitative Easing, where new money can simply be created in order to fund infrastructure, rather than renting capital from the private sector.

    Public ownership of water is a no-brainer. It’s a success story across the rest of Europe.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By James Wright

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israel kills journalist in Gaza hospital bombing, and its media debates whether that’s OK

    Israel has murdered journalist Hassan Eslaih in an airstrike on the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza. But as is the norm with war crimes against Palestinians, Israeli media is essentially suggesting it was acceptable.

    Israel is concealing and silencing the truth, with Western support

    Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza since at least October 2023. For many years before that, the apartheid state had been isolating the occupied Palestinian territory’s highly concentrated population with a brutal blockade that turned it into “the world’s largest open-air prison”. And because Israel wanted to minimise international outrage, it stopped journalists from outside Gaza going in to document its crimes. Meanwhile, the occupation forces have murdered between 160 and 232 local journalists and tried to smear them as ‘terrorists’ to pre-emptively justify their assassination.

    Western media outlets, meanwhile, have participated in the whitewashing of Israeli attacks on hospitals and health workers in Gaza. They’ve also allowed genocide apologists to silence Palestinian voices in Gaza simply by uttering the name ‘Hamas’. But unlike Israel, Hamas has not advanced an illegal occupation and settler-colonial practices for decades. Palestinian people have the right to resist occupation, but Israel does not have the right to decimate occupied territory. Hamas is neither a progressive champion nor the picture of evil that Israel paints. And it has committed just a tiny fraction of Israel’s international crimes.

    The further deteriorating of an apparently hopeless situation for Palestinians in the 21st century and the lack of a meaningful peace process very much led to 7 October 2023. On that day, crimes undoubtedly took place, but Hamas attacked an Israeli military base with the aim of taking hostages in order to negotiate “the release of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons”. Israel responded by killing its own citizens and launching a genocidal assault on Gaza, in which it has killed at least one Palestinian child every hour, murdering around 17,492 children (including about 825 babies, 895 one-year-olds, 3,266 preschoolers, and 4,032 six-to-10-year-olds).

    ‘Is it ok to kill a journalist?’

    Upon the murder of journalist Hassan Eslaih, Israeli propagandists sought to downplay the crime of attacking an unarmed person in a hospital. They did this by mentioning Eslaih’s reporting on the events of 7 October and his supposed civilian connection to Hamas.

    Eslaih was in hospital. He was unarmed. And Israel murdered him. That’s the story. The rest is an insight into Israel’s barbaric, noxious logic.

    Let’s apply the ‘eye for an eye’ principle to what Israel is saying with its assassination of Eslaih and those like him. Because it’s basically asserting that anyone in the apartheid state who has ever had a connection to its war criminal government, military, or illegal occupation is a legitimate target for people resisting the occupation. Israeli politicians, however, know they have the backing of the US and other Western governments. So they know there’s absolutely no way Palestinians would ever be able to do to people in Israel what the occupation forces have done to people in Gaza.

    The question isn’t what connection Eslaih or anyone else in Gaza had with Hamas as a political organisation. It’s whether we accept that people who are not currently fighting in or directing an armed conflict are legitimate targets for assassination. And if we want a world of peace and reason, we absolutely mustn’t accept that.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Keir Starmer may as well roll out the red carpet to Nigel Farage at this point

    In a speech on 12 May, Keir Starmer suggested the UK is becoming an “island of strangers” because of immigration. This is music to the ears of Nigel Farage because it concedes to the thrust of his main argument.

    On one level, this stokes a racist sentiment that just because someone appears different, say through skin colour, they are less likely to be a friend at a human level. It suggests we should desire for people to have the same background, rather than celebrating cultural differences. But most of all, it obscures the fact that each person is unique beyond where they are from.

    And it plays right into the hand of Nigel Farage. The Reform leader branded the immigration white paper as a “knee jerk reaction” to the party’s success at the local elections.

    Starmer: “shameful and dangerous”

    On social media, people were outraged with Starmer’s approach:


    What’s more, there are already controls on immigration. To emigrate to the UK, one needs either a job offer, significant capital, education prospects, UK ancestry, family or humanitarian reasons. Additionally, UK employers usually must pay an ‘immigration skills charge’ for hiring abroad. The white paper is raising that by 32%.

    The idea the UK is ‘full’ is also misguided. Only 5% of land is used for homes and gardens. That means all 67m of us live in a country where 95% of the land is used for other things. To be sure, 71% of UK land is used for agriculture. And no one’s saying we should develop all of it. But it’s not ‘full’.

    The fact is that 64% of the UK believe immigration has had a positive or neutral impact on the country.

    So, Starmer should not be responding to Reform through presenting immigration from a mainly negative perspective. That only hands power to Farage.

    But then again, during the election the Labour Party leader pretty much gifted Farage his seat. He pulled the campaign of the Labour candidate in Farage’s constituency: Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, a 27 year old Black man. This can only be explained through Starmer actually wanting to boost Farage in order to keep UK political discourse right-wing.

    We know from Starmer’s sabotage of Jeremy Corbyn that he would opt for a conservative regime over left-wing progression. It’s the same with his view on Farage.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By James Wright

  • A damning report into PIP that the DWP tried to hide shows its cuts are pure evil

    While media personalities and politicians are pretending to be puzzled by why so many people are suddenly claiming Personal Independence Payment (PIP), newly published research has the answers- and it comes from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) itself. Yet this report has been hidden by successive governments – including Labour – until one journalist got it via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

    DWP PIP: new data reveals what many of us knew

    The Triggers to Claiming Personal Independence Payment report was published last week, to little fanfare from the DWP and absolutely no attention from the press at all. This is almost definitely down to what the paper revealed, which was definitely not what those backing cuts wanted.

    The department took a sample of 400 “recent” DWP PIP claims between September and October 2021 and after conducting initial telephone interviews, whittled it down to 21 claimants whom they probed further.

    For months, even years now, the media and successive governments have touted the lies that benefits are easy to claim and that people want to live a cushy life on benefits, when in reality of course, this isn’t true – and the research backs that up.

    Claimants were asked questions that ranged from those about health and their knowledge of DWP PIP to straight up why they applied for it now and what influenced them to do so. The questions, though appearing pretty innocuous, seemed to have an edge of “why now?” and “who told you to?” that many disabled people are used to when claiming support.

    Despite the DWP hoping otherwise, the paper revealed what those of us on benefits already know: that the main reason so many more are claiming is because the world has gotten too expensive. That years of disabled people getting the thin end of the wedge have destroyed our health even more.

    Motivations

    When asked about what motivated them to claim DWP PIP, now most claimants said that it was down to financial hardship, worries about employment, and their health deteriorating. They also mostly had never previously tried to apply for the benefit, as they thought they wouldn’t qualify or had never needed to. Some also cited the removal of the Universal Credit uplift, which gave disabled people more security during the early stages of the pandemic.

    When asked about their concerns, many said the application process was daunting and frustrating. Some were even made to feel like they shouldn’t apply and worried they’d “get in trouble” for claiming it if the DWP decided they didn’t qualify for PIP.

    A direct quote from one distressed-sounding claimant made me want to cry in anger

    I felt bad and thought was I going to be in trouble for applying. And there was a question on whether you were turned down before. And I thought should I or not or should I leave it until I couldn’t do anything?

    In my head my friend said it was to help you stay independent. Then I’m thinking should I apply now or should I wait till I can’t move? I’m still a bit afraid.

    Not quite the scheming, work-shy, tax-stealing ghouls the media has portrayed benefits claimants to be, is it?

    The most revealing part for me, and probably why the government hasn’t been crowing about this report, is where claimants heard about DWP PIP and who encouraged them to apply.

    Where are people learning about DWP PIP?

    While some did mention family and friends telling them to apply, many were told by staff at the Jobcentre, at Universal Credit meetings, and even from the gov.uk site.

    One said:

    I had to apply for Universal Credit, through that process the chap asked me if I’d applied for PIP. He said I would qualify suggested my carer did so.

    Another more clearly points to the DWP itself, whilst reiterating fears about not being deserving

    I read what I could on the Government website and that was it really. I wanted to see if it would be beneficial for me. I wanted to see if the amount of money would be worth it or whether it was better off going to people that really need it.

    Despite the media’s love of insisting that disabled people on TikTok are coaching everyone on how to hoodwink the government to steal benefits, social media wasn’t mentioned at all.

    The only media outlet that was specifically mentioned hilariously was the Sun, one of the most right-wing rags who regularly trot out what they consider “trashy” benefits claimants apparently rolling in their DWP PIP money and driving around in fancy cars all day.

    Of course, the report reveals nothing new to disabled people. We claim PIP, as many stated, to get our independence back and mostly survive.

    But it’s odd isn’t it, that when politicians on the morning TV rounds have all been demanding to know why there’s been “dramatic rise” in DWP PIP claimants for months, that they aren’t suddenly ecstatic to finally have their queries answered.

    Well, despite it not fitting their agenda to get the public to support cuts, it’s also probably not a new report to them.

    Here’s the thing

    You see, despite this research only being released last week, as the dates suggest, it was conducted almost four years ago and completed in 2022. That’s right, successive heads of the DWP have sat on it and refused to release it.

    As John Pring reported at Disability News Service, not only did conservatives Chloe Smith and Therese Coffey stop it from being released, but Labour minister Liz Kendall did the same thing.

    The report was originally obtained by Pring through an FOI request in February and, as he said, it:

    provides strong evidence to explain the need for increased spending on personal independence payment.

    This is probably why, despite the department making a big show of releasing a huge chunk of research that the Tory government tried to make disappear, the most damning bit – which explained the risks to cutting benefits and how much people depended on them – was not part of the mass dump.

    At the time, the absolute spineless turncoat Stephen Timms said:

    Things that ought to have been published and made public have been hidden, and that has contributed to a loss of trust.

    Yeah. Nothing says “contributed to a loss of trust” than a man who once chaired a committee into DWP deaths now championing cuts that could kill disabled people more than ever before.

    But wait. There’s more.

    The DWP: burying the evidence over PIP

    Pring also revealed in March that the government purposefully delayed the publication of this research until after the Pathways to Work Green Paper and the cuts were announced.

    Dylan Murphy, a member of Unite the Union and DPAC told Disability News Service that in response to another FOI asking for a copy of the report, the DWP claimed it would be published in “early April”. The department did not acknowledge an email from Pring asking them to explain why they were delaying this until after the cuts had been announced.

    It’s pretty clear to see why Kendall and Co have tried to bury this research.

    Despite them trying to justify that many don’t actually need benefits and that many won’t actually starve to death and that claimants are all lying about ADHD because TikTok told them they can rake in thousands, the DWP’s own report shows why people actually claim PIP – because we need it to survive.

    The DWP wants this PIP research to go unnoticed so they can keep spreading lies about benefits claimants and destroy our lives further.

    So, that’s why we need to shout about it from the rooftops.

    We need to be sharing this under every single tweet and post trying to justify the cuts and every clip of right-wing gobs on sticks spouting off about scroungers.

    They want this research hidden so they can quietly destroy our lives, but we won’t go quietly.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • DWP cuts will throw 670,000 families already in poverty into even further deprivation

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) under Keir Starmer’s Labour government is preparing to strip financial support from 670,000 households that are already in poverty – in what can only be described as another ruthless act of state-sanctioned cruelty.

    DWP cuts: falling on disabled people again

    They’re the latest figures to come out as anger grows over Labour’s proposed DWP Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Universal Credit cuts.

    These households—each with at least one member living with a disability—stand to lose up to £390 per month, according to internal DWP projections. So, these cuts will not fall on the wealthy or the comfortable.

    No, they will fall squarely on people already living on the edge: carers, people with chronic illnesses, individuals managing severe mental health conditions, and those too unwell to work.

    Stripping them of vital support will not encourage them into employment; it will simply impoverish them further, punish them for being ill, and heap pressure on an already threadbare social safety net.

    The move, buried within the government’s so-called “modernisation” of DWP PIP and changes to Universal Credit, shows a disturbing contempt for disabled people. The changes appear to be designed not to support those in need, but to appease a hardline fiscal agenda—an agenda that views the sick and disabled as financial burdens to be slashed from the ledger.

    The most damning revelation is that the government knows the damage it will cause. These aren’t speculative figures from campaigners or charities. They come directly from within the DWP. They know this policy will devastate lives—and they plan to press ahead regardless.

    What has Labour become?

    For the Labour Party, once seen as a defender of the DWP welfare state, this marks a shameful betrayal. Keir Starmer has not only failed to challenge the Tory-era narrative that people on benefits are to blame for their poverty—he has embraced it. He has chosen to champion “tough choices” over compassion, and now disabled people must pay the price.

    Critics have rightly condemned the move as morally reprehensible. The Disability Benefits Consortium has warned that the changes risk stripping away the bare minimum support many rely on just to survive. Meanwhile, organisations like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation point to the obvious: taking money from people in poverty deepens poverty.

    This is not reform. This is not progress. This is a government waging war on the poorest, hitting disabled people with a double injustice—first of circumstance, then of DWP policy. In a civilised society, we measure our success not by GDP or fiscal targets, but by how we treat those who need help the most.

    Labour had a chance to chart a new path. Instead, it has chosen to continue the punitive legacy of austerity. Disabled people will pay the price—with their health, their dignity, and, in some cases, their lives.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • An Indigenous community in India just faced down 130 police to return to their ancestral lands

    A group of Indigenous people who authorities evicted from their ancestral village in Nagarhole Tiger Reserve in south India 40 years ago, have returned to their former homes. The 52 Jenu Kuruba families faced down 130 police and forest guards to do so on Tuesday 6 May. And, on Wednesday, they declared they are there to stay permanently.

    The community has begun to build new houses to replace the ones they were forced to leave 40 years ago. A small group of police and forest guards remain at the site.

    Jenu Kuruba: Indigenous people return to their ancestral homes in Nagarhole

    Their return on Tuesday was an act of tremendous courage, as forest guards had previously shot some Jenu Kuruba. More than 50 Jenu Kuruba families took part in the long-planned operation. Some carried pictures of loved ones who had died since the community’s expulsion from the forest.

    Shivu, a young Jenu Kuruba leader, said:

    We have today returned to our homelands and forests. We will remain here. Our sacred spirits are with us.

    It’s believed to be the first time Indigenous people in India have asserted their rights in this way, to return en masse to their homes after they were evicted from a Protected Area.

    Shivu added:

    Historical injustice continues to happen over us by denying our rights on our lands, forests and access to sacred spaces. Tiger conservation is a scheme of the forest department and various wildlife NGOs to grab indigenous lands by forcefully moving us out.

    When Forest Department officials and police confronted the Jenu Kuruba and warned them against re-occupying their homes on Tuesday, the Indigenous people castigated them for delays in recognizing their forest rights – and then went ahead:

    Forest department officials warn the Jenu Kuruba against re-occupying their homes inside Nagarhole National Park. The Indigenous people castigated them for delaying recognition of their forest rights, and went ahead anyway.

    Some have begun to build houses, using their traditional materials and techniques:

    Jenu Kuruba families begin to construct a house for their ancestors, as they rebuild their old village inside Nagarhole National Park.

    Authorities in India have illegally evicted an estimated 20,000 Jenu Kuruba people from Nagarhole. Another 6,000 resisted and have managed to stay in the park.

    On Wednesday 7 May, police officers and forest guards stayed on the scene, and prevented journalists accessing the area.

    The Jenu Kuruba say they decided to return because their sacred spirits, who still dwell in the old village location, became angry at being abandoned when the community was forced from the forest.

    ‘We resist the current conservation model’: wildlife and humans can coexist

    The Jenu Kuruba of Nagarhole issued a statement:

    Enough is Enough. We can’t part from our lands anymore. We want our children and youth to live a life that our ancestors once lived.

    Tigers, elephants, peacocks, wild boar, wild dogs are our deities. We have been worshiping them as our ancestral spirits for generations. This deliberate attempt to separate us from our lands, forests and sacred spaces will not be tolerated. We resist the current conservation model based on the false idea that forests, wildlife and humans cannot coexist.

    For decades it has been official policy in India, as in many other countries around the world, to evict Indigenous people from ancestral lands in the name of conservation. In many instances, states turn their lands are into Protected Areas, a practice known as Fortress Conservation.

    The Jenu Kuruba’s belief system centers around their connection to the forest, its wildlife, and their gods. This  includes the tigers who live there. However, forest guards harass, threaten, and even shoot members of the community. Those beliefs underpin the community’s careful management of their environment and have ensured tiger survival. Indeed, the healthy tiger population found in their forest is what drove the Indian government to turn the area into a Tiger Reserve. It has one of the highest concentrations of tigers in all of India.

    Director of Survival International Caroline Pearce said:

    The Jenu Kuruba people’s re-occupation of their ancestral land is an inspirational act of repossession. They’re reclaiming what is theirs, in defiance of a hugely powerful conservation and tourism industry that has enriched itself at their expense.

    If the Indian government really cares about tiger conservation, it will not only allow the Jenu Kuruba people to return, but encourage them to do so – because the science is clear that tigers thrive alongside the Indigenous people whose forests they live in.

    Images via Sartaz Ali Barkat/ Survival

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Reform’s new ‘manifesto’ is just catnip for the fat cats

    On Saturday 10 May, Nigel Farage published a “manifesto” in the Daily Mail. While the Mail has described Reform’s pledges as “radical”, you may be unsurprised to learn that they’ll primarily benefit wealthy individuals and large corporations (and in some instances, no one at all). In other words, it’s a continuation of the neoliberal and austerity politics which got us here.

    Reform Manifesto in the Daily Mail

    “No income tax below £20,000”

    The bulleted pledges begin with a promise which sounds like it will benefit your average working person. If implemented today, a person on £20k a year would go from earning £1,493 a month to £1,617 a month – an improvement of roughly £123 (if National Insurance remained the same). Tax would kick in at £20k, so regardless of how much you earned over that, the extra cash you’d have in your pocket would always be that additional £123 a month.

    This isn’t necessarily something to be sneezed at, but it certainly wouldn’t be life changing, and it’s the only measure which Reform have mentioned which would have a notable positive effect on low-wage workers. As other measures they’ve announced will almost certainly make life worse, however, people might not feel the benefit of this £123 at all.

    This Reform policy hasn’t come from nowhere; it’s mirroring a popular campaign which forced a response from the government after receiving over 250,000 signatories on the government’s Petitions site. In response, the Treasury said:

    The Government is committed to keeping taxes for working people as low as possible while ensuring fiscal responsibility and so, at our first Budget, we decided not to extend the freeze on personal tax thresholds. The Government has no plans to increase the Personal Allowance to £20,000. Increasing the Personal Allowance to £20,000 would come at a significant fiscal cost of many billions of pounds per annum.

    This would reduce tax receipts substantially, decreasing funds available for the UK’s hospitals, schools, and other essential public services that we all rely on. It would also undermine the work the Chancellor has done to restore fiscal responsibility and economic stability, which are critical to getting our economy growing and keeping taxes, inflation, and mortgages as low as possible.

    Reform isn’t simultaneously announcing plans to increase taxes for the rich (quite the opposite, in fact), so what does that mean? Almost certainly it means they’ll make up for any perceived tax shortfall by cutting the “essential public services” listed above.

    Communications consultant Ben Cope noted how much this could actually cost us:

    Tweet which reads: "Insane Reform policies - No.3: Raise the income tax personal allowance to £20k and the higher rate threshold to £70k. @DanNeidle 's analysis showed that this would cost £82bn (roughly the education budget). Reform last supported this proposal only three weeks ago, when an e-petition forced a Parliamentary debate taking place on 12 May."

    “Appoint a Minister for Deportations”

    The first problem with this is that we already have a ‘minister for deportations’ – namely the minister for border security and asylum, whose responsibilities include:

    • Border Security Command
    • asylum policy
    • asylum accommodation
    • returns and removals
    • irregular migration policy
    • organised immigration crime
    • foreign national offenders
    • Immigration Enforcement
    • small boat arrivals

    It’s a bit like promising a ‘minister for blackboards’ as if the minister for education wasn’t already responsible for that.

    The current border security and asylum minister is Angela Eagle, and she sits under the home secretary Yvette Cooper – another minister who has responsibility for deportations. This is something you likely already know, because Cooper is constantly out and about on the news talking about who she plans to deport next. Just this morning, in fact, she was talking about her plans to deport people who’ve overstayed their visas and to block care workers from coming here in the first place:

     

    What Reform are doing is pretending the UK has no one taking responsibility for deportations, which is demonstrably not the case. If anything, successive UK governments have been obsessed with migration and deportations to the point of derangement for years. This is incredibly ironic, of course, given that every action we take seems to make more migration inevitable:

    The UK has an ageing population and a declining birth rate; this means that if we all want to retire we have two options to keep capitalism rattling on for another few decades:

    1. Encourage people to have more children.
    2. Encourage working-age people from the Global South to come and work here.

    This is what we’re doing currently:

    1. Make it completely unaffordable to have even one child for a growing number of people.
    2. Encourage working-age people from the Global South to come and work here, but then make them feel as unwelcome as possible.

    Reform seem to be saying that they’re going to move the UK from being a superficially anti-immigration country to one which genuinely cuts off the migration taps. Some people want to see this happen, but they’re delusional if they think it’s going to benefit them. Working people will be forced into shittier and shittier jobs, and wealthy people will lose access to cheap labour and consumers with disposable incomes.

    We can actually see what a crack down on migratory workers will look like, because it’s happening right now in America, as the National Employment Law Project reported in March:

    One of the major engines still powering the U.S. economy is the labor of immigrant workers,” said Rebecca Dixon, president and CEO of the National Employment Law Project (NELP). “Immigrants and their work should be valued and respected. Yet the Trump administration is doing the opposite: Diverting agents from pursuing drug trafficking and sexual abuse to ramp up a program of deportation, putting chained up immigrants on military planes to deport them without due process, stripping hundreds of thousands of workers of their legal status, and cutting off avenues for legal migration. These moves not only harm our immigrant neighbors, they threaten to undermine job growth and pay for all workers.”

    Researchers find that past mass deportation efforts have led to job loss and lower wages for workers who are U.S. citizens. One recent study estimates that if the Trump administration succeeded in deporting 8.3 million undocumented immigrants, the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) would be 7.4% lower and U.S. employment would be 7.0% lower by 2028.

    Deportations can lead to policies that further undercut workers’ rights. For example, policymakers in Florida are now considering weakening child labor laws in order to fill jobs that had been performed by undocumented workers, allowing businesses to schedule children as young as 14 to work overnight shifts on school days.

    Let’s repeat that last part:

    policymakers in Florida are now considering weakening child labor laws in order to fill jobs that had been performed by undocumented workers, allowing businesses to schedule children as young as 14 to work overnight shifts on school days.

    To be clear, the situation in America is very different to the UK. ‘Undocumented workers’ are more common over there, and many of their industries actually rely on them completely. The similarity is that both our economies have built themselves on a foundation of cheap foreign workers, and that suddenly undoing that without putting measures in place to reverse inequality will simply lead to more inequality.

    Reform: “ditch Net Zero”

    Forgetting about the future security of the planet; forgetting about the improvements to air quality, we’re now at a point at which renewable energy sources are often cheaper to generate than fossil fuels.

    That’s right.

    RENEWABLES

    ARE.

    CHEAPER.

    ALREADY.

    AND.

    WILL.

    CONTINUE.

    TO.

    GET.

    CHEAPER.

    In other words, Reform think we should be paying a premium to have dirtier air quality – to have dirtier lungs and shorter lives. This isn’t that surprising given that Nigel Farage is the poster boy for smelling like an ashtray:

    Of course, Net Zero isn’t just about energy. For many businesses and local authorities achieving Net Zero will mean switching from petrol-powered vehicles and machinery to electric equivalents. These technological solutions aren’t as advanced as things like solar power, but they are getting there, and once again the benefits are obvious:

    • Reduced air pollution.
    • Reduced noise pollution.
    • Reduced spills and smells.

    So, why exactly would we be reversing course on the progress we’ve made to go back to being a dirtier, smellier, and less ambitious country?

    Let’s face it – it’s because shareholders want what they always want – and that’s to see a bump on their investment in the next quarter.

    Never mind that tackling the climate crisis now will actually prevent much greater costs a few decades from now – never mind that it would be our children and grandchildren who would have to deal with the worst of it.

    Ben Cope has pointed out some other reasons why Reform’s climate ideas are “insane”:

    The other thing to bear in mind is that the push for Net Zero is a global one. What will it do to our trading relationships if we abandon the pledges that our partners are maintaining? Because emissions targets include the emissions generated in supply chains; i.e. foreign countries would take a big hit to their own climate ambitions if they bought from UK suppliers should we pledge to make our operations as dirty as possible.

    Again – as we’re seeing in Trump 2’s America – when you make it harder for countries to trade with you, many will simply stop trading with you.

    “Scrap Inheritance tax under £2million”

    This is our current system in place for Inheritance Tax:

    Inheritance Tax is a tax on the estate (the property, money and possessions) of someone who’s died.

    There’s normally no Inheritance Tax to pay if either:

    • the value of your estate is below the £325,000 threshold
    • you leave everything above the £325,000 threshold to your spouse, civil partner, a charity or a community amateur sports club

    You may still need to report the estate’s value even if it’s below the threshold.

    If you give away your home to your children (including adopted, foster or stepchildren) or grandchildren your threshold can increase to £500,000.

    If you’re married or in a civil partnership and your estate is worth less than your threshold, any unused threshold can be added to your partner’s threshold when you die.

    As you can see, this is already pretty generous, with ways to get out of paying anything.

    The argument in favour of Inheritance Tax is that without it rich families will continue to get richer and richer while those of us who don’t have £2m to bequeath will see our descendants face increasing inequality. New Statesman provided some figures on this in 2023:

    If inheritance tax were abolished, almost half of the gains would go to the 1 per cent wealthiest in the population. The estates of this group, made up of people with wealth of over £2.1m at death, would benefit by an average of more than £1m each. Around half the money would also go to London and the South East, consistent with the entrenched regional wealth disparities across the UK.

    Surprise, surprise – a policy which will primarily benefit rich people in the South East – who could have predicted it?

    The problem with Inheritance Tax is that people instinctively feel that they should be free to leave their money to whoever they like, and they perceive the tax as being unfair even if they have nowhere near £325k themselves. In part this is because we live in a society which encourages everyone to think of themselves first, their immediate family second, and society not at all.

    For Labour to counter this messaging, they need to do more to tax wealth in this country so as to make people believe that they’re serious about ending inequality. Without that, Reform will continue to capitalise on issues like this.

    Oh, and let’s again point out that all the money in the world won’t mean much if our children inherit the total collapse of the climate.

    “End war on farmers and pensioners”

    The ‘war on farmers’ is just the Inheritance Tax issue again, but in this case it’s mega farms using family-owned operations as a shield to get out of paying anything.

    The ‘war on pensioners’ is a massive own goal from Labour, with Keir Starmer’s disastrous attack on the Winter Fuel Allowance making him one of the most reviled men in British politics (and deservedly so). Nothing Reform have planned will make life easier for pensioners, and yet Starmer has fumbled this issue so badly that they’re once again able to capitalise.

    Reform: “drill, baby, drill”

    This wording comes directly from Donald Trump (sort of):

    What’s interesting here is that right-wing parties in Canada and Australia were hammered in recent general elections, with their failure happening to one degree or another thanks to their close alignment with Trump. To see this in action, the red line in the following chart shows what happened to the Canadian Liberal Party’s polling after Trump began talking about annexing Canada:

    Interestingly, the UK public isn’t currently punishing Reform in the same way; this is despite Trump and his vice president JD Vance actively insulting Britain and its troops. In part, this might be because unlike his Australian and Canadian counterparts, Starmer isn’t making any effort to stand up to Trump, and as a result he’s failing to capitalise on any sentiment against the man.

    It’s also worth noting that the serious damage to the global economy which is now inevitable as a result of Trump’s actions aren’t even fully being felt yet. The next UK election will come a year after Trump has finished his second term, though, and it will be interesting to see if Reform can get away with their links to him by then.

    Beyond the links to Trump, their policy to dig up more fossil fuels is just the same nonsense as above. It won’t benefit working people in the UK; it will benefit the mega corporations to whom we’ve sold our dirtiest assets – many of which aren’t even British companies.

    What reform?

    So, what reform are Reform actually offering?

    Really, it’s all just further rightward nudges to a system that’s been lurching that way for decades.

    Don’t get us wrong, we do think that things could get much worse under Reform; we just don’t think it’s the sort of reform their voters will ultimately tolerate.

    Featured image via Gage Skidmore (Wikimedia) – image cropped to 1,200 x 900

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • UN experts have now accused Israel of ‘genocidal conduct’ in Gaza

    A group of independent human rights experts from the UN have released their blistering assessment of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. In a call for immediate global intervention, they said:

    While States debate terminology – is it or is it not genocide? – Israel continues its relentless destruction of life in Gaza, through attacks by land, air and sea, displacing and massacring the surviving population with impunity.

    They pointed out how Israel has, horrifically, escalated their actions after the so-called ceasefire:

    Since breaking the ceasefire, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians, many daily – peaking on 18 March 2025 with 600 casualties in 24 hours, 400 of whom were children.

    Israel and impunity

    Israel have continued to destroy infrastructure vital to the continuation of human life. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) found that Gaza no longer has any kind of health system:

     due to the bombardment of health facilities by Israeli forces, dire shortages of vital supplies, and evacuation orders forcing patients and staff into life-threatening situations.

    Healthcare professionals themselves have been attacked in addition to healthcare facilities. The Hind Rajab Foundation has shared the extent of the damage to civilian infrastructure:

    Yet, since October 7th, 2023, up to 80% of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli Army…With up to four-fifths of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure damaged or destroyed—including water and sanitation systems, which the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) describes as ‘almost entirely defunct’–one must ask: if this does not constitute an act of genocide, what does?

    Israel has also gone to great lengths to stop any aid, specifically food, from reaching Palestinians. Human Rights Watch has reported:

    Israel did not make any meaningful efforts to ensure that the humanitarian needs of displaced people were met. Instead, Israel has taken steps to ensure that displaced civilians cannot avail themselves of such protections through its attacking of civilian infrastructure and restrictions on water, electricity, and aid leading to starvation and threatening famine.

    What cannot be lost in this discussion is that Israel is not only bombing Palestinians, but doing all it can to destroy any chance of survival. As the UN experts argued:

    Not only is delivering humanitarian aid one of Israel’s most critical obligations as the occupying power, but its deliberate depletion of essential necessities, destroying of natural resources and calculated push to drive Gaza to the brink of collapse further corroborates its criminal responsibility.

    ‘Genocidal conduct’

    Remarkably, Israel’s genocidal conduct is still being reported in Western mainstream media as legitimate. Despite various organisations who have been in Gaza, including Amnesty International, designating Israel’s actions as genocidal they are not being treated as such by media and politicians. The experts continue:

    These acts, beyond constituting grave international crimes, follow alarming, documented patterns of genocidal conduct.

    None of the declarations of the UN experts are being explained for the first time. In fact, this has been the most well-documented genocide in history. As such, the experts write:

    The world is watching. Will Member States live up to their obligations and intervene to stop the slaughter, hunger, and disease, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity that are perpetrated daily in complete impunity?

    This far into the genocide, the most powerful nations in the world have shown the problem is not that they are powerless to stop Israel. Instead, they simply do not wish to. The UN experts are forthright in explaining the consequences of inaction:

    International norms were established precisely to prevent such horrors. Yet, as millions protest globally for justice and humanity, their cries are muted. This situation conveys a deadly message: Palestinian lives are dispensable, and international law, if unenforced, is meaningless.

    Impunity to complicity with Israel

    In continuing to not intervene, states are showing that international law can become meaningless if the political will is not there. Instead, the experts warn that if states continue to do nothing and allow genocide to happen they will complicit in war crimes:

    Continuing to support Israel materially or politically, especially via arms transfers, and the provision of private military and security services risks complicity in genocide and other serious international crimes.

    By allowing Israel’s impunity and enabling their war crimes, states are proving themselves to be complicit in war crimes. States may find it profitable or politically expedient to support genocide for the moment – but that won’t remain the situation forever. Just as they have in every single day since October 2023, states can choose the side of impunity, or the side of complicity alongside Israel.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • DWP PIP cuts will hit one million people aged 50 and over, new FOI reveals

    Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) cuts to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) will impact more older people than any other age group. That’s according to the department itself – which was forced to release the data via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. It shows not only that the Labour Party government has been supressing the true extent of the DWP PIP cuts again – but also that you’d be forgiven for thinking it has a problem with older people.

    DWP PIP: cruel changes

    As the Canary has previously reported, the Labour Party government has now laid down its plans for cuts DWP PIP and the health-based part of Universal Credit. DWP boss Liz Kendall launched its Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working green paper on 18 March.

    The paper included a suite of regressive reforms to make it harder for people to claim disability benefits like PIP. As expected, the changes it’s proposing will target certain claimants in particular, namely young, neurodivergent, learning disabled, and those with mental health disorders.

    Moreover, disabled people who need help with things like cutting up food, supervision, prompting, or assistance to wash, dress, or monitor their health condition, will no longer be eligible.

    Specifically, it’s increasing the number of points a person will need to score in their DWP PIP assessment to access the daily living component of the benefit. This will now require people to score four points or more in a daily living category to claim it.

    Alongside this, there’ll be cuts to out-of-work benefits like the LCWRA health-related component of Universal Credit. Once again, Labour additionally want to make this harder to claim, and all as it ramps up reassessments and conditionality requirements for doing so.

    Lie after lie

    However, Labour and the DWP have already lied about how many people the PIP changes will affect. As the Canary previously reported, according to a DWP impact assessment, as many as 370,000 current claimants (10%) could lose their PIP entitlement due to changes in eligibility rules set to be implemented in November 2026, pending parliamentary approval.

    Crucially, about 430,000 future applicants are anticipated to be denied the benefit, creating an average annual loss of around £4,500 for those affected. People, including children transitioning from Disability Living Allowance to DWP PIP, will lose out. The figure is nearer 20% based on the DWP’s own data – plus 150,000 carers who will also lose their Carer’s Allowance.

    What the department has also failed to even calculate is how many people will lose higher or standard rate Daily Living because of its DWP PIP cuts. The public found this information out after the DWP was forced to release data via an FOI.

    As the Canary previously reported, Martin Bonner submitted a request to the DWP. He wanted to know:

    The number of claimants currently in receipt of PIP daily living component at:
    a) The standard rate
    b) The enhanced rate

    For each of the above, please also state what percentage of these claimants were awarded less than 4 points in all of the ten daily living activities under which their eligibility is assessed.

    The DWP replied – and the figures are shocking. Around 209,000 people getting enhanced rate DWP PIP Daily Living will lose it. Moreover, around 1.1 million people getting the standard rate will lose it.

    That means in total, nearly 1.4 million people could, on reassessment, lose their Daily Living element of DWP PIP.

    What is not clear from this is how many of these people get standard or enhanced Mobility Element of DWP PIP. Therefore, it is impossible to say how many of the 1.3 million would lose their whole entitlement.

    DWP PIP cuts hitting older people hardest

    However, now another FOI has revealed the ages of people set to lose out – and this is just as shocking, too:

    What Sharon found was that:

    the *majority* of people [1.09 million] set to lose PIP Daily Living (nearly 70%) are over 50, and 660,000 of them over 60…

    So, on top of Labour’s callous cuts to Winter Fuel Payments, the DWP is now hammering many of these same people with cuts to PIP. So far, there seems no signs that Labour will be changing course – despite mounting opposition from its own MPs. With calls for ministers to resign, and growing public anger, it remains to be seen how long Keir Starmer will maintain this position – but given his track record so far, it is sadly likely he will.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • North Yorkshire battery site sparks fury – but is there an alternative?

    A proposed Lithium battery storage facility near Northallerton in North Yorkshire has sparked fury from residents.

    NatPower is heading up the project, which it has planned for the village of East Rounton. 

    Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are devices which enable renewable energy to be stored and then released when it is needed. This allows for more efficient use of renewable energy. 

    As the UK moves towards Net Zero by 2050, increasing numbers of BESS are being built across the country. As of January 2024, there were 105 operational BESS in the UK.  

    In Northallerton to date, 283 people have objected to the project online, with only three supporting it. One of the main concerns voiced by residents is the huge fire risk. 

    So far in 2025, there have been at least four fires at BESS sites globally. Three took place in the UK, at Aberdeenshire, Cirencester, East Tilbury, and one in the US, at Moss Landing, CA. 

    27% risk of fire, every year

    Andrew Sheldon-Thomson, of Northallerton, set up a Facebook group opposing the plans. The group has now grown to over 450 members. 

    Sheldon-Thomson pointed to some of the dangers that could arise from a fire at a battery site of this size:

    The Moss Landing Battery site in the USA caught fire in January. The vapour cloud of poisonous gas has made people ill 40-50 miles away from the fire.

    He worries that the same could happen at NatPower’s planned sites:

    There’s a fairly substantial chance of there actually being a fire…  essentially because the site’s so big, one battery in itself is not particularly risky, but you start putting millions of battery cells in a single place, only one of them needs to fail in order to set the others off. And you suddenly have quite a high fire risk.

    Using fire incident data from the Electric Power Institute, alongside information on deployed BESS capacity at various sites from energy analyst company Wood Mackenzie, campaigners have estimated that each 1GW site could pose an annual 27% risk of fire.

    Venetia Bell, resident of East Routon, drew attention to the impact on nearby villages that a fire at the site would greatly impact. Additionally, she pointed out that local businesses would also be at risk. 

    There is only one access road to the proposed BESS site and that is through the Arts and Crafts village of East Rounton. The local businesses could be put in jeopardy by the traffic and noise created by HGV’s, AILs and development staff travelling to and from the site.

    Thermal runaway in North Yorkshire?

    Jon Williams is the CEO at Viridi. The company manufactures BESS that are different from the ones we see in the UK. The systems are fail-safe, so there is no fire risk from thermal runaway, and they are also distributed. This means that instead of one big battery storage facility, a network of smaller battery storage units are attached to electricity meters in homes, businesses or communities. 

    When Viridi began producing batteries, even with its advanced manufacturing technology, the company found that roughly 1 in 10 million NMC lithium-ion cells would still have a manufacturing defect, which causes catastrophic thermal runaway. 

    Thermal runaway happens when lithium-ion batteries overheat uncontrollably, leading to fires and explosions.

    Williams said:

    This is a fuse. When it lets go, everything around it’s fine, but it’s captive energy. And if you let this fuse light off the rest of the energy, then you get an uncontrolled release.

    Whilst Williams came to accept that this is “just a reality of this technology”, he decided that he wanted to try and control it.  

    After 5 years and essentially destroying $5m in inventory on testing, Williams landed on a solution. By ultimately replicating the control valve on a gas furnace, the energy stays within the cell, preventing thermal runaway.

    The really good thing about this cell is when it lets go, it’s about a second and a half. You get all that energy, and it all dissipates. So if you could just stop that energy from transmitting for about two seconds, you have it.

    Once the temperature of the cell reaches around 170º, the fuse trips, which triggers the vent. Instead of exploding, like other lithium-ion batteries, it holds the energy to prevent it from propagating to the next cell.

    We allow it to phase change between liquids and solids that we have inside the pack… it turns into steam. And we don’t get any gas, we don’t get any heat, we don’t get any flame, and we don’t get any detectable release from the pack. 

    And that’s fail-safe. Because what we call fail-safe is that it cannot have any secondary effect.”

    An alternative to grid-scale storage

    According to Williams, grid-scale storage – like the sites in North Yorkshire – are not the best solution for energy storage. Instead, he suggests putting Viridi’s fail-safe technology directly behind consumers’ electricity meters. 

    You can double the units of energy a customer can buy through the meters.

    Whenever the system’s not constrained, the battery can take energy. So in low periods where the system has capacity, it typically burns off in the form of heat. If you have distributed packs and we’re connected through a full IoT controlled system, I can tell the pack when to charge, when not to charge.

    I can connect it to AI. I can monitor the grid and put everything in balance. The pack will take energy.

    By putting batteries behind electricity meters, instead of grid-scale storage, the grid becomes 100% resilient:

    If there’s an accident, an outage, a storm, you never lose power. The battery has a finite amount of energy. But even in that finite capacity, you will know as a consumer how long you have.

    When you distribute storage, the benefits to the entire grid and the consumer far outweigh grid-scale storage.”

    Williams also confirmed that the 1GW of storage that NatPower has proposed at each site in North Yorkshire it could easily achieve through distributed storage. 

    One of Viridi’s lead investors is the UK National Grid, but its batteries have not made it to the UK yet. 

    Currently then, BESS sites are not utilising fail-safe technology like Viridi’s. Local residents therefore continue to have significant concerns about the North Yorkshire sites.

    Kevin Hollinrake, MP for Thirsk and Malton, said:

    The proposed Bellmoor Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) near South Kilvington continues to prompt understandable local concern. Now that the formal planning application has been submitted, many residents remain worried about the potential loss of productive farmland, environmental impacts, and site-related risks.
    I visited the site in November to hear directly from local residents and have been working closely with Cllr Alyson Baker to ensure their views are properly represented.

    Although I do not have a formal role in the planning process and am unable to submit letters of support or objection, I have been clear with the North Yorkshire Planning Authority: we must prioritise the protection of productive farmland for food production over its use for energy infrastructure.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Indonesia’s Pacific manoeuvres – money, military, and silencing West Papua

    ANALYSIS: By Ali Mirin

    On April 24, 2025, Indonesia made a masterful geopolitical move. Jakarta granted Fiji US$6 million in financial aid and offered to cooperate with them on military training — a seemingly benign act of diplomacy that conceals a darker purpose.

    This strategic manoeuvre is the latest in Indonesia’s efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the independence movement in West Papua.

    “There’s no need to be burdened by debt,” declared Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka during the bilateral meeting at Jakarta’s Merdeka Palace (Rabuka, 2025).

    More significantly, he pledged Fiji’s respect for Indonesian sovereignty — diplomatic code for abandoning West Papua’s struggle for self-determination.

    This aligns perfectly with Indonesia’s Law No. 2 of 2023, which established frameworks for defence cooperation, including joint research, technology transfer, and military education, between the two nations.

    This is not merely a partnership — it is ideological assimilation.

    Indonesia’s financial generosity comes with unwritten expectations. By integrating Fijian forces into Indonesian military training programmes, Jakarta aims to export its “anti-separatist” doctrine, which frames Papuan resistance as a “criminal insurgency” rather than legitimate political expression.

    The US $6 million is not aid — it’s a strategic investment in regional complicity.

    Geopolitical chess in a fractured world
    Indonesia’s manoeuvres must be understood in the context of escalating global tensions.

    The rivalry between the US and China has transformed the Indo-Pacific into a strategic battleground, leaving Pacific Island nations caught between competing spheres of influence.

    Although Jakarta is officially “non-aligned,” it is playing both sides to secure its territorial ambitions.

    Its aid to Fiji is one move in a comprehensive regional strategy to diplomatically isolate West Papua.

    West Papuan leader Benny Wenda (left) and Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka
    Flashback to West Papuan leader Benny Wenda (left) meeting Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka in Suva in February 2023 . . . At the time, Rabuka declared: “We will support them [ULMWP] because they are Melanesians.” Image: Fiji govt
    By strengthening economic and military ties with strategically positioned nations, Indonesia is systematically undermining Papuan representation in important forums such as the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), and the United Nations.

    While the world focuses on superpower competition, Indonesia is quietly strengthening its position on what it considers an internal matter — effectively removing West Papua from international discourse.

    The Russian connection: Shadow alliances
    Another significant yet less examined relationship is Indonesia’s growing partnership with Russia, particularly in defence technology, intelligence sharing, and energy cooperation

    This relationship provides Jakarta with advanced military capabilities and reduces its dependence on Western powers and China.

    Russia’s unwavering support for territorial integrity, as evidenced by its position on Crimea and Ukraine, makes it an ideal partner for Indonesia’s West Papua policy.

    Moscow’s diplomatic support strengthens Jakarta’s argument that “separatist” movements are internal security issues rather than legitimate independence struggles.

    This strategic triangulation — balancing relations with Washington, Beijing, and Moscow– allows Indonesia to pursue regional dominance with minimal international backlash. Each superpower, focused on countering the others’ influence, overlooks Indonesia’s systematic suppression of Papuan self-determination.

    Institutionalising silence: Beyond diplomacy
    The practical consequence of Indonesia’s multidimensional strategy is the diplomatic isolation of West Papua. Historically positioned to advocate for Melanesian solidarity, Fiji now faces economic incentives to remain silent on Indonesian human rights abuses.

    A similar pattern emerges across the Pacific as Jakarta extends these types of arrangements to other regional players.

    It is not just about temporary diplomatic alignment; it is about the structural transformation of regional politics.

    When Pacific nations integrate their security apparatuses with Indonesia’s, they inevitably adopt Jakarta’s security narratives. Resistance movements are labelled “terrorist threats,” independence advocates are branded “destabilising elements,” and human rights concerns are dismissed as “foreign interference”.

    Most alarmingly, military cooperation provides Indonesia with channels to export its counterinsurgency techniques, which are frequently criticised by human rights organisations for their brutality.

    Security forces in the Pacific trained in these approaches may eventually use them against their own Papuan advocacy groups.

    The price of strategic loyalty
    For just US$6 million — a fraction of Indonesia’s defence budget — Jakarta purchases Fiji’s diplomatic loyalty, military alignment, and ideological compliance. This transaction exemplifies how economic incentives increasingly override moral considerations such as human rights, indigenous sovereignty, and decolonisation principles that once defined Pacific regionalism.

    Indonesia’s approach represents a sophisticated evolution in its foreign policy. No longer defensive about West Papua, Jakarta is now aggressively consolidating regional support, methodically closing avenues for international intervention, and systematically delegitimising Papuan voices on the global stage.

    Will the Pacific remember its soul?
    The path ahead for West Papua is becoming increasingly treacherous. Beyond domestic repression, the movement now faces waning international support as economic pragmatism supplants moral principle throughout the Pacific region.

    Unless Pacific nations reconnect with their anti-colonial heritage and the values that secured their independence, West Papua’s struggle risks fading into obscurity, overwhelmed by geopolitical calculations and economic incentives.

    The question facing the Pacific region is not simply about West Papua, but about regional identity itself. Will Pacific nations remain true to their foundational values of indigenous solidarity and decolonisation? Or will they sacrifice these principles on the altar of transactional diplomacy?

    The date April 24, 2025, may one day be remembered not only as the day Indonesia gave Fiji US$6 million but also as the day the Pacific began trading its moral authority for economic expediency, abandoning West Papua to perpetual colonisation in exchange for short-term gains.

    The Pacific is at a crossroads — it can either reclaim its voice or resign itself to becoming a theatre where greater powers dictate the fate of indigenous peoples. For West Papua, everything depends on which path is chosen.

    Ali Mirin is a West Papuan from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands that share a border with the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He graduated with a Master of Arts in international relations from Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Labour ‘seems intent on wielding scissors’ to NHS as scale of budget shortfall revealed

    Trade union Unite has condemned further cuts to NHS jobs, following a new report detailing the effects of the health service’s “budget squeeze” in England.

    “Unthinkable” NHS cuts come as staff morale has “never been lower”

    A new NHS Providers survey has revealed that “services are being scaled back and jobs cut” across the nation. The report explained that the “predicted financial shortfall” in funding is around £7bn for this year, and that the expectation is for NHS trusts “to drastically reduce running costs” to compensate. It added that:

    nearly half of trust leaders (47%) surveyed warned they are scaling back services to deliver tough financial plans, with a further 43% considering this option. Virtual wards, rehabilitation centres, talking therapies and diabetes services for young people are amongst services identified at risk

    And in terms of job losses, it said:

    The scale of job cuts is becoming clear with a number of trusts aiming to take out 500 posts or more and one organisation planning to cut around 1000 jobs.

    Almost all survey participants insisted that the measures:

    would have a negative impact on staff wellbeing and culture at a time when morale, burnout and vacancies are taking their toll and disquiet over pay and conditions is rising.

    NHS leaders have reportedly been considering “previously unthinkable” and “eye-watering” measures to balance the books. One mental health trust boss told the BBC morale among staff had “never been lower”.

    “Stark” and “catastrophic”

    Unite’s national health officer Richard Munn responded to the NHS news by saying:

    Further spending cuts to staff or to services in the NHS would simply be catastrophic. The service is already hanging on by a thread and now government seem intent on wielding scissors.

    He added that:

    Patients and staff will have their health and wellbeing put at risk and lives will be lost – it is that stark.

    The union’s general secretary Sharon Graham, meanwhile, asserted:

    This prime minister cannot continue with the Conservative legacy of running the NHS into the ground under the guise of “reforms”. Unite will be aggressively campaigning against any measures that are a byword for cuts or any downgrading to our members’ pay and conditions.

    Industrial action as a result of the plans “is likely to increase”, the union said.

    Despite previous calls for Unite to disaffiliate from Labour due to its rush to the right under Keir Starmer, it has thus far opted to maintain its links with the party.

    “Hospitals already buckling under the pressure of understaffing”

    British Medical Association (BMA) chair Prof Phil Banfield responded to the NHS news by saying:

    It is deeply concerning to hear that so many trusts are still thinking about cutting services, given the state of the NHS today. Patients up and down the country will be wondering how this can be possible when they see hospitals already buckling under the pressure of understaffing, A&E patients lining corridors, waiting lists that seem endless and clinical staff eternally on the verge of burnout. To be in that situation and then to cut the number of doctors will seem absurd to most people. We are already hugely under-doctored amongst comparable countries.

    He added that honesty about the situation is necessary, and the government should be upfront about it:

    What we need is for Government to get a grip of a currently fragmented health system. There needs to be an honesty with the public about the scale of the financial challenge of restoring our NHS and the costs of reorganising services, which must be driven by the clinical need of patients, not managerial expediency.

    If they truly want to meet their targets of cutting waiting lists rather than extending them, Government will need to ensure their NHS plans boost the numbers of doctors, and create – not cut – capacity.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Labour MP Clive Lewis calls out worrying shadiness of US-UK tariff deal

    Labour MP Clive Lewis has criticised the anti-democratic nature of the US-UK tariff deal.

    Clive Lewis: there must be accountability over US-UK tariff deal

    In a PoliticsHome article, Lewis insisted that, while there’s always a worrying “absence of parliamentary accountability” around trade deals:

    the current trade talks with the US stand out. There has been no public consultation, no published mandate, and reports suggest secrecy has intensified, with some documents now classified “top secret”. MPs have been told there will be no guaranteed vote.

    He argued that “MPs must get a say”, saying:

    Eight years ago, we were told we were taking back control. If we are serious about that promise, trade deals – among the most consequential decisions a government can make – must be subject to full parliamentary accountability.

    The Stop Trump Coalition agrees, stressing that:

    The deal has been negotiated in secrecy and looks set to be pushed through without a vote in Parliament. It should be subject to democratic scrutiny and a full vote.

    It asserted that:

    This one-sided agreement is just a precursor to a bigger, worse deal – it fires the starting gun on more rounds of negotiations. Trump will come back for more, and expect Starmer to say “thank you”.

    The next round of negotiations could reportedly include proposals to cut the digital services tax, a UK tax on billionaire-owned big tech corporations such as Amazon and Meta.

    If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s not to trust Keir Starmer

    Starmer has shown time and again that we can’t trust him. And with him now “caving in to Trump’s bullying”, we should be very concerned. As Clive Lewis pointed out:

    If a deal is genuinely in the public interest, the government should have the confidence to make its case. Open debate can improve a deal, as Parliament and the public bring forward concerns and insights.

    This kind of debate is essential, he said, because the absence of democratic scrutiny is precisely what has driven mass discontent with mainstream political parties in recent months and years. He added:

    people feel increasingly shut out of decisions that shape their lives. From calls for public ownership of essential services like water to demands for wealth taxation, citizens feel unheard. The populist right has capitalised on this alienation, tapping into the sentiment that ordinary people lack real influence.

    That’s why the secrecy must end. Because as he explained:

    These negotiations affect every aspect of our daily lives – from the kind of food on our shelves to the cost of medicines and the rules governing foreign investment.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • 15% of children under the age of two in northern Gaza now suffer from acute malnutrition

    يواجه أطفال قطاع غزة أزمة صحية خانقة في ظل تفشي سوء التغذية بشكل غير مسبوق، وهو ما يهدد حياتهم ويُفاقم الأوضاع الصحية المتدهورة،

    وفي الوقت الذي تستمر فيه الحرب والحصار، ويُمنع دخول المساعدات الغذائية والطبية إلى القطاع، حذّر الخبراء الطبيون من تداعيات كارثية لهذه الأزمة التي قد تؤثر على الجيل القادم من الأطفال.

    سوء التغذية تهديد مباشر للصحة العقلية

    ارتفعت التحذيرات الصحية من الأضرار الخطيرة لسوء التغذية على الأطفال في غزة، خاصة في السنوات الأولى من حياتهم. وقال أبو ندى: “سوء التغذية يؤثر بشكل مدمّر على نمو الدماغ والجهاز العصبي للأطفال، وهو ما قد يؤدي إلى تأخر في اكتساب المهارات الحركية والعقلية، مثل الزحف، الجلوس، المشي والنطق.”

    وذكرت مصادر طبية إلى أن نقص البروتينات، الدهون الصحية، الفيتامينات مثل B12، وأحماض الأوميغا 3، إضافة إلى عناصر أساسية أخرى مثل اليود والحديد، يؤدي إلى ضعف النمو العقلي والحركي. كما أن هذا النقص قد يتسبب في اضطرابات سلوكية مثل العصبية المفرطة، ضعف التركيز والتعلم، واضطرابات في التفاعل الاجتماعي، مما قد يفضي إلى إعاقات دائمة في حال عدم العلاج المبكر.

    معدلات سوء التغذية ترتفع بشكل مقلق

    الأرقام تشير إلى تفاقم الوضع بشكل غير مسبوق. وفقًا للتقارير الطبية، يعاني 15% من الأطفال دون سن الثانية في شمال غزة من سوء تغذية حاد، وهو رقم يُعدّ الأعلى على الإطلاق محليًا ودوليًا في فترة زمنية قصيرة. وقال أبو ندى: “نلاحظ علامات هزال شديدة على الأطفال دون سن الثلاث سنوات، مثل الوجوه الشاحبة والأجساد الضعيفة، إضافة إلى انخفاض حاد في الوزن.”

    وقد أظهرت التقارير أيضًا أن 70% من الأطفال دون سن الخامسة قد أصيبوا بالإسهال في الأسابيع الأخيرة، مما يزيد من مخاطر الجفاف وسوء الامتصاص الغذائي، ويجعلهم عرضة لأمراض معدية مثل الالتهاب الرئوي والتهاب السحايا.

    أزمة صحية مروعة

    أدى الحصار المستمر وغياب المساعدات الطبية إلى تفاقم الأزمة الصحية في غزة. إغلاق المستشفيات والمراكز الصحية بسبب القصف والنزوح، فضلاً عن نقص الإمدادات الطبية الضرورية، جعل من الصعب تقديم الرعاية الصحية للأطفال الذين يعانون من سوء التغذية. كما أكد أبو ندى أن قطاع غزة يعاني من نقص حاد في المكملات الغذائية الأساسية مثل الفيتامينات والمعادن للأطفال والحوامل، وهو ما يُفاقم من الأزمة الصحية في القطاع.

    وأضاف أن الوضع الدوائي في غزة كارثي، حيث يُعاني الأطفال من نقص حاد في الأدوية الحيوية مثل أدوية الصرع، اضطراب فرط الحركة، وأدوية الكورتيزون والمورفين اللازمة للتخفيف من الألم. النقص في هذه الأدوية يعقد معالجة الحالات الطارئة ويزيد من خطر الوفاة بين الأطفال.

    الصدمات النفسية وأثرها على الدماغ والجهاز العصبي

    وإلى جانب سوء التغذية، يُعاني الأطفال في غزة من الصدمات النفسية الناتجة عن الحرب المستمرة، القصف، والنزوح. وهو ما تسبب بوجود صدمات نفسية تضر بالقشرة الأمامية للدماغ، وهي المنطقة المسؤولة عن التركيز والانتباه والتنظيم الذاتي. الخوف المستمر الذي يؤدي إلى إفراز هرمون الكورتيزول بشكل مفرط، ما يؤثر سلبًا على المناعة والتمثيل الغذائي، بحسب ما أوضح طبيب مختص واستشاري في أمراض الأطفال في غزة.

    وأوضح استشاري الأطافل أن هذه الضغوط النفسية قد تتسبب في مشاكل صحية جسدية طويلة الأمد مثل اضطرابات القلب، السكري، وأمراض المناعة، مما يضيف عبئًا إضافيًا على الأوضاع الصحية المتدهورة للأطفال في غزة.

    التحرك لإنقاذ الأطفال

    ودعا استشاري الأطفال المجتمع الدولي إلى التدخل العاجل لوقف الحرب فورًا، وفتح معبر رفح للسماح بدخول المساعدات الغذائية والطبية إلى قطاع غزة. كما شدد على ضرورة إعادة افتتاح المستشفيات والمراكز الصحية، وتوفير المكملات الغذائية والأدوية الضرورية لدعم صحة الأطفال في غزة.

    وقال: “الوضع في غزة لا يُحتمل، وإذا لم يتم التحرك سريعًا، فإننا سنشهد ارتفاعًا مأساويًا في عدد وفيات الأطفال نتيجة الجوع والأمراض. إن الجيل الحالي من الأطفال مهدد بتداعيات صحية ونفسية خطيرة قد تؤثر عليه طوال حياته.”

    أرقام صادمة:

    15% من الأطفال دون سن الثانية في شمال غزة يعانون من سوء تغذية حاد.

    70% من الأطفال دون سن الخامسة أصيبوا بالإسهال خلال الأسابيع الأخيرة.

    نقص حاد في الأدوية مثل أدوية الصرع، اضطراب فرط الحركة، الكورتيزون، والمورفين.

    ارتفاع معدلات الهزال بين الأطفال دون سن الثلاث سنوات.

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The climate fallout from Farage and Reform’s rise at the local elections has begun

    Nigel Farage’s party is on the rise. In the local elections, Reform took 31% of contested seats to Labour’s 14%. In fact, Keir Starmer managed to lose 65% of the up for grabs seats that Labour held, the most of any new prime minister. Of course, this would be a resigning matter if Jeremy Corbyn were still leader of Labour, but we hear barely a peep over Starmer’s historic losses.

    Farage: you best “give up” on tackling the climate crisis

    Reform’s local election success is already putting a lot at risk. Deputy leader and multi-millionaire landlord Richard Tice said Reform-led councils will block renewable energy infrastructure:

    We will attack, we will hinder, we will delay, we will obstruct, we will put every hurdle in your way. It’s going to cost you a fortune, and you’re not going to win. So give up and go away.

    Yet analysis shows that in Greater Lincolnshire renewable industries contribute £980m to the economy and provide 12,209 jobs.

    While renewable projects are subject to national oversight, Reform can delay or block smaller projects. Alex Wilson, a Reform member of the London Assembly, has said renewables are “absolute lunacy” and are “sacrificing our economy”. He continued:

    It’s making our bills more expensive. We have the highest electricity costs in the Western world, that’s had a huge impact on industry, it’s why the automotive industry is on the floor, it’s why the chemicals industry is suffering. The impact of net zero on energy prices, on industry, on people’s bills, is absolutely catastrophic. It’s a big part of the contribution to the results we had on Thursday’s elections, ten councils we now control and another four that we’re the largest party in them.

    The idea renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels is the real source of lunacy. Government contracts for offshore wind energy have been under 5p per kilowatt hour. That’s less than a quarter of typical household electricity bills that consumers are facing. A renewable energy transition would not only address spiralling climate disaster, it would greatly bring down our energy bills.

    But it’s no wonder Reform are taking such a stance. DeSmog research shows Farage’s party has accepted £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, big polluters and climate deniers since 2019.

    Wilson also said:

    What we are against is giving up vast swathes of prime agricultural land for these huge solar farms. We want to make better use of our own natural resources to continue to provide the cheap and reliable and secure energy supplies going forwards, so oil, gas, going to keep using those.

    Gas is not cheap. On top of that, Common Wealth notes we have spent £12.5 billion through bill payments to fossil fuel firms for them maintaining their ‘capacity’ in the last ten years. In other words, we rent gas companies for their existence for literal billions – just for them being ‘available’ to sort out supply issues.

    Solutions?

    Starmer, meanwhile, isn’t taking the opportunity to deliver a publicly owned Green New Deal. And he opposed landmark legislation that would make the UK’s targets to tackle the climate crisis emergency legally binding. He’s also investing almost three times more in carbon capture schemes that don’t work than he is in actually funding renewable energy.

    Still, it’s better than Reform who are accelerating rapidly in the completely wrong direction.

    At the same time, Green Zack Polanski is standing to be Green party leader. He wants to challenge Farage on a platform of ‘eco-populism’. All the best to him: it could be the only way out of the political hellscape.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By James Wright

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Pope Leo XIV faces limits on changing the Catholic Church − but Francis made reforms that set the stage for larger changes

    ANALYSIS: By Dennis Doyle, University of Dayton

    Cardinal Robert Prevost of the United States has been picked to be the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church; he will be known as Pope Leo XIV.

    Now, as greetings resound across the Pacific and globally, attention turns to what vision the first US pope will bring.

    Change is hard to bring about in the Catholic Church. During his pontificate, Francis often gestured toward change without actually changing church doctrines. He permitted discussion of ordaining married men in remote regions where populations were greatly underserved due to a lack of priests, but he did not actually allow it.

    On his own initiative, he set up a commission to study the possibility of ordaining women as deacons, but he did not follow it through.

    However, he did allow priests to offer the Eucharist, the most important Catholic sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, to Catholics who had divorced and remarried without being granted an annulment.

    Likewise, Francis did not change the official teaching that a sacramental marriage is between a man and a woman, but he did allow for the blessing of gay couples, in a manner that did appear to be a sanctioning of gay marriage.

    To what degree will the new pope stand or not stand in continuity with Francis? As a scholar who has studied the writings and actions of the popes since the time of the Second Vatican Council, a series of meetings held to modernize the church from 1962 to 1965, I am aware that every pope comes with his own vision and his own agenda for leading the church.

    Still, the popes who immediately preceded them set practical limits on what changes could be made. There were limitations on Francis as well; however, the new pope, I argue, will have more leeway because of the signals Francis sent.

    The process of synodality
    Francis initiated a process called “synodality,” a term that combines the Greek words for “journey” and “together.” Synodality involves gathering Catholics of various ranks and points of view to share their faith and pray with each other as they address challenges faced by the church today.

    One of Francis’ favourite themes was inclusion. He carried forward the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the Holy Spirit — that is, the Spirit of God who inspired the prophets and is believed to be sent by Christ among Christians in a special way — is at work throughout the whole church; it includes not only the hierarchy but all of the church members.

    This belief constituted the core principle underlying synodality.

    A man in a white priestly robe and a crucifix around his neck stands with several others, dressed mostly in black.
    Pope Francis with the participants of the Synod of Bishops’ 16th General Assembly in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican in October 2023. Image: The Conversation/AP/Gregorio Borgia

    Francis launched a two-year global consultation process in October 2022, culminating in a synod in Rome in October 2024. Catholics all over the world offered their insights and opinions during this process.

    The synod discussed many issues, some of which were controversial, such as clerical sexual abuse, the need for oversight of bishops, the role of women in general and the ordination of women as deacons.

    The final synod document did not offer conclusions concerning these topics but rather aimed more at promoting the transformation of the entire Catholic Church into a synodal church in which Catholics tackle together the many challenges of the modern world.

    Francis refrained from issuing his own document in response, in order that the synod’s statement could stand on its own.

    The process of synodality in one sense places limits on bishops and the pope by emphasising their need to listen closely to all church members before making decisions. In another sense, though, in the long run the process opens up the possibility for needed developments to take place when and if lay Catholics overwhelmingly testify that they believe the church should move in a certain direction.

    Change is hard in the church
    A pope, however, cannot simply reverse official positions that his immediate predecessors had been emphasising. Practically speaking, there needs to be a papacy, or two, during which a pope will either remain silent on matters that call for change or at least limit himself to hints and signals on such issues.

    In 1864, Pius IX condemned the proposition that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.”

    It wasn’t until 1965 – some 100 years later – that the Second Vatican Council, in The Declaration on Religious Freedom, would affirm that “a wrong is done when government imposes upon its people, by force or fear or other means, the profession or repudiation of any religion. …”

    A second major reason why popes may refrain from making top-down changes is that they may not want to operate like a dictator issuing executive orders in an authoritarian manner.

    Francis was accused by his critics of acting in this way with his positions on Eucharist for those remarried without a prior annulment and on blessings for gay couples. The major thrust of his papacy, however, with his emphasis on synodality, was actually in the opposite direction.

    Notably, when the Amazon Synod — held in Rome in October 2019 — voted 128-41 to allow for married priests in the Brazilian Amazon region, Francis rejected it as not being the appropriate time for such a significant change.

    Past doctrines
    The belief that the pope should express the faith of the people and not simply his own personal opinions is not a new insight from Francis.

    The doctrine of papal infallibility, declared at the First Vatican Council in 1870, held that the pope, under certain conditions, could express the faith of the church without error.

    The limitations and qualifications of this power include that the pope:

    • be speaking not personally but in his official capacity as the head of the church;
    • he must not be in heresy;
    • he must be free of coercion and of sound mind;
    • he must be addressing a matter of faith and morals; and
    • he must consult relevant documents and other Catholics so that what he teaches represents not simply his own opinions but the faith of the church.

    The Marian doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption offer examples of the importance of consultation. The Immaculate Conception, proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854, is the teaching that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was herself preserved from original sin, a stain inherited from Adam that Catholics believe all other human beings are born with, from the moment of her conception.

    The Assumption, proclaimed by Pius XII in 1950, is the doctrine that Mary was taken body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life.

    The documents in which these doctrines were proclaimed stressed that the bishops of the church had been consulted and that the faith of the lay people was being affirmed.

    Unity, above all
    One of the main duties of the pope is to protect the unity of the Catholic Church. On one hand, making many changes quickly can lead to schism, an actual split in the community.

    In 2022, for example, the Global Methodist Church split from the United Methodist Church over same-sex marriage and the ordination of noncelibate gay bishops. There have also been various schisms within the Anglican communion in recent years.

    The Catholic Church faces similar challenges but so far has been able to avoid schisms by limiting the actual changes being made.

    On the other hand, not making reasonable changes that acknowledge positive developments in the culture regarding issues such as the full inclusion of women or the dignity of gays and lesbians can result in the large-scale exit of members.

    Pope Leo XIV, I argue, needs to be a spiritual leader, a person of vision, who can build upon the legacy of his immediate predecessors in such a way as to meet the challenges of the present moment.

    He already stated that he wants a synodal church that is “close to the people who suffer,” signaling a great deal about the direction he will take.

    If the new pope is able to update church teachings on some hot-button issues, it will be precisely because Francis set the stage for him.The Conversation

    Dr Dennis Doyle, is professor emeritus of religious studies, University of Dayton. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Police ban Jewish anti-genocide protests outside Israeli ambassador’s home in London

    The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) has been committing time every week to protesting against far-right ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, who has previously egged on the genocide in Gaza. But the Metropolitan Police have once again banned IJAN from gathering near Hotovely’s residence in Swiss Cottage, London, where the group had promised to protest until the UK followed the example of other countries by expelling its Israeli ambassador.

    Swiss Cottage protests banned

    The Met released a statement on 7 May saying it:

    has intervened to block a protest group gathering in Swiss Cottage this Friday in an effort to prevent further serious disruption to the life of the community.

    By “the life of the community”, the police are apparently referring to the ambassador of a country currently being investigated for genocide and whose prime minister is a wanted war criminal.

    The Met has placed “Public Order Act conditions” on the IJAN protest, stating that:

    It may now not take place in Swiss Cottage or anywhere in the shaded area on the map below.

    Because of the wide area the police designated as a no-go zone, the ban seriously limits the protest from having any significant impact on Hotovely. But IJAN’s commitment to pushing for Hotovely’s expulsion is clear:

    Previous ban and relocation

    As the Met explained:

    In February, conditions were imposed requiring the protest to relocate outside the Swiss Cottage area. After an eight-week period where protests were held outside New Scotland Yard, the protest returned to Swiss Cottage last week, prompting a further assessment of its impact.

    Chief Superintendent Jason Stewart suggested that “confrontation between this protest and counter protest groups” has played a part in encouraging the police to “use our powers to require the protest to take place elsewhere”. Counter protests have involved particularly aggressive scenes from genocide apologists:

    https://twitter.com/IJAN_Network/status/1918215031264625122/video/2

    Before the previous ban, the Swiss Cottage protest had been growing in size, and increasing police discomfort was clear. Police cracked down on activists – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – who were opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

    One was Haim Bresheeth, a 79-year-old Jewish peace activist and an “advanced cancer patient with a serious heart condition”. His parents survived the Holocaust. He grew up in Israel, and fighting in two wars for the country turned him into a pacifist. Police arrested him in early November because of his opposition to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and its decades-long oppression of Palestinian people.

    Last week, around 200 people turned up at the protest:

    Pro-genocide agitators also attended, but “failed to disrupt” the event:

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • BREAKING: Starmer facing a formal rebellion over proposed DWP cuts

    Keir Starmer is headed for a major rebellion from his own MPs, as shown in a letter signed by more than 40 MPs. Labour’s plans for Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) disability benefit cuts have come in for severe criticism from disabled people, charities, and other organisations.

    As the Canary’s Hannah Sharland reported:

    The paper included a suite of regressive reforms to make it harder for people to claim disability benefits like PIP. As expected, the changes it’s proposing will target certain claimants in particular, namely young, neurodivergent, learning disabled, and those with mental health disorders.

    Moreover, disabled people who need help with things like cutting up food, supervision, prompting, or assistance to wash, dress, or monitor their health condition, will no longer be eligible.

    Certain MPs have spoken out over the proposed DWP reforms. Now, however, that dissent appears to be more organised in a worrying sign for Starmer.

    Labour’s cross-party rebellion

    As the Guardian reported:

    The letter from parliamentarians spanning the new intake and veterans, and from the left and right of the party, sets Keir Starmer up for the biggest rebellion of his premiership when the House of Commons votes on the measures next month.

    The letter sets out how the proposals have created “a huge amount of anxiety and concern” for disabled people. According to the DWP, the proposals would hit 700,000 families who are already in poverty. Even so, Starmer has persisted with the plans in an attempt to deliver a saving of £5 billion.

    However, as Scottish finance secretary Shona Robison said, the government would be:

    balancing books on backs of disabled people.

    The letter continued that:

    Whilst the government may have correctly diagnosed the problem of a broken benefits system and a lack of job opportunities for those who are able to work, they have come up with the wrong medicine. Cuts don’t create jobs, they just cause more hardship.

    It’s unlikely that a broken DWP benefits system is the problem, when just 10% of individuals hold more than half the wealth in Britain. But, it is undeniable that cuts don’t create jobs, or for that matter, savings. Labour’s proposals may wish to pretend that cutting benefits will create savings. However, analysis from Katie Schmuecker at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation actually found that the proposals:

    will drive more people to the doors of foodbanks and more children deeper into poverty – the opposite of what the Labour manifesto pledged to do.

    ‘Impossible to support’

    The letter from Labour MPs calls on Starmer to halt proceedings and change direction over the DWP:

    We also need to invest in creating job opportunities and ensure the law is robust enough to provide employment protections against discrimination. Without a change in direction, the green paper will be impossible to support.

    A list of the signatories of the letter showed MPs from across the left, centre, and right of the party:

    Labour veteran Diane Abbott warned that the proposed DWP cuts were a big reason why voters were turned off:

    Richard Burgon shared calls for a tax on the wealthiest, rather than the poorest:

    Crunch time over DWP cuts

    Meanwhile, YouGov’s latest poll shows that only 15% of adults surveyed approve of Labour’s government. 18% said they didn’t know, a whopping 67% said they disapprove of the government. Whilst Starmer has largely suppressed dissent from within the party – especially over the DWP cuts – it’s clearly going to be more difficult for him to continue to do so.

    This is the least these Labour MPs can do as disabled people face cuts that will leave many of us struggling to survive. However, this government have attacked the rights of the most vulnerable people in society so much that the news of this letter may well be met with justified surprise.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • US backs down amid Yemeni resilience, leaving Israel to fight its own battle

    The US has reached a ceasefire deal with the Houthis in Yemen, ahead of a visit to Gulf dictatorships next week. It seems the Houthis’ resilience cost Washington too much money for too little gain. So the imperial power will now rely on its local enforcer Israel to continue the fight, which the apartheid state began itself with its genocide in Gaza.

    Trump steps back in Yemen, but Israel steps forward

    The Donald Trump administration in the US is incredibly pro-Israel. But despite Washington essentially propping up the apartheid state and its crimes against humanity, it remains the shot-caller. And because the economic bottom line matters to Trump, especially at a time when he’s scored so many own goals internationally, the costly and largely ineffective bombing of Yemen had to stop. So he apparently surprised Israel by signing the deal with the Houthis, though the settler-colonial power was already doubtful about US commitment to its campaign in Yemen.

    The Houthis have been resisting Israel’s genocide in Gaza by targeting ships heading to the apartheid state. And the US and UK have been coming to Israel’s aid, but with little success and much criticism.

    When a Houthi missile managed to evade interception and hit near Ben Gurion International Airport on 4 May, it was the “most significant strike” so far for the group. And it was therefore pretty clear that the efforts of Israel and its Western allies to dampen the Houthis’ will to resist weren’t working. So the following day, Israel sent around 30 warplanes to Yemen to bomb the important port of Hodeidah. Then, just hours before the US-Houthi ceasefire announcement, other Israeli planes hit Sanaa airport in Yemen. They caused “around $500 million in losses” and left it “in ruins“.

    The US failed. But Israel and Houthis will continue to fight.

    Trump standing down in Yemen marks a US failure to stop Houthi resistance. He simply realised it was more cost-effective and less embarrassing to let Israel fight its own battle.

    The US-Houthi ceasefire reportedly doesn’t say anything about Houthis’ fight against Israel’s war-criminal regime. Chief Houthi negotiator Mohammed Abdulsalam said there was no mention in the deal about ceasing resistance to Israel’s genocide in “any way, shape or form”. Far from that, the Houthis have clarified that this struggle “will continue”.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • DWP minister Stephen Timms under pressure as petition calls for him to be sacked

    The organiser of a petition to oust Labour MP Stephen Timms as the minister for disabled people has spoken out about why he is unfit to represent chronically ill and disabled communities after a run-in with the dual social security minister himself. In particular, long-time myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) campaigner Sally Callow made the personal observation that Timms’ language was not “fitting” for his role. This was after attending a meeting in which the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) minister was present.

    In short, the encounter with Timms made clear to her precisely why he’s not the champion that chronically ill and disabled people need, or have asked for. If Timms’ recent outrageous comments over Personal Independence Payment (PIP) weren’t enough, now Callow – who IS a champion for the community – has spelled out why people need to join her in demanding a new and separate minister for disabled people.

    Stephen Timms petition: a separate minister for disabled people needed

    Callow is founder of campaign social enterprise ME Foggy Dog and accredited ME training organisation the Stripy Lightbulb CIC. A prolific campaigner, through her organisations, Callow has been advocating for the ME community for more than a decade.

    Standing up for people living with ME, she has publicly spoken out against the DWP’s suite of callous welfare cuts.

    So now, she has now set up a petition that throws a spotlight on DWP minister Stephen Timms’ role in pushing these cuts.

    This calls for:

    the removal of Stephen Timms MP from his role as Minister for Social Security and Disability and demand the creation of a dedicated Minister for Disabled People role.

    As the petition aptly sets out, the government outlines that a minister for disabled people should:

    represent the interests of disabled people, and champion disability inclusion and accessibility across each government department.

    Of course, this is exactly what the DWP minister has NOT been doing.

    Cruel and obtuse answers around the DWP benefit cuts

    In April, he openly undermined any pretense he is acting in the interests of chronically ill and disabled people.

    Specifically, Timms responded with a particularly callous reply to a written question from MP for Leeds East Richard Burgon. This concerned the regressive PIP reforms. In particular, the government is increasing the number of points a person will need to score in their DWP PIP assessment to access the daily living component of the benefit. In effect, this will deny PIP to many disabled people who need help with things like cutting up food, supervision, prompting, or assistance to wash, dress, or monitor their health condition. As the Canary’s Maryam Jameela wrote, Timms’ response boiled down to him saying:

    that of the various needs Burgon listed in his question, it is the Labour party’s belief that they could be considered “low-level functional needs.” That includes cutting up food, washing your hair and body, and using the toilet.

    This was a cruel, and arguably obtuse answer. Given Timms is meant to advocate for disabled people in his role, his ignorant response is all the more appalling. What it demonstrated irrefutably is that the DWP minister either doesn’t understand the needs and lives of chronically ill and disabled people, or he simply doesn’t care.

    Considering the minister previously lambasted Conservative governments over similar such cuts, it’s likely this is the latter. His role as minister for disabled people has been subsumed by his own interests in maintaining a position in Starmer’s Cabinet.

    Since Callow launched it in mid-April, the petition has taken off, garnering more than 7,500 signatures.

    A ‘DWP spokesperson rather than the empathetic representative of disabled people’

    Now, Callow has seen firsthand how this glaring conflict of interest operates in practice. And she has argued it only cements the case for her petition further.

    Through the Stripy Lightbulb CIC, Callow attended a meeting with other organisations on Tuesday 6 May. The Minister of State for Social Security and Disability Stephen Timms briefly joined to field questions about the government’s Green Paper.

    However, Callow said after the meeting that Timms’ answers to the questions throughout his showed how he wasn’t there in his capacity as minister for disabled people. Instead, she felt he had prioritised his role as a spokesperson for the DWP:

    To put simply, Timms was being a good government lapdog in classic politician’s PR-speak. But he wasn’t being a good minister for disabled people.

    Diluting the minister for disabled people role

    Ultimately, the case the petition makes is one that was clear to disability rights campaigners from the start.

    Attaching the role to the DWP social security minister was always going to be a disaster. In effect, it dilutes the remit, and renders it ostensibly a toothless position. The Canary’s own Rachel Charlton-Dailey was among those voicing this concern at his dual appointment:

    Moreover, as the petition vitally notes:

    Disability issues permeate various government sectors, including health, the DWP, and social services. A minister with exclusive focus and authority is crucial to drive the necessary transformational changes.

    As such, it argues that:

    The absence of a Minister for Disabled People undermines the representation and prioritisation of disability issues across all government departments.

    The petition stipulates that Timms can remain the social security minister. However, he is clearly no champion for inclusion and accessibility for disabled people.

    Not a single representative for chronically ill and disabled people in government or the DWP

    Callow told the Canary:

    The conflict of interest with Stephen Timms MP’s dual role has been made glaringly obvious in recent days when attending disability organisation meetings relating to proposed welfare cuts. He has a dual role but the language he used was entirely leaning towards his DWP ‘social security’ position. He parroted DWP official rhetoric as if he was oblivious that all of those organisations were actively fighting against the proposed welfare cuts.

    Unfortunately, as a ME/disability rights campaigner, I do not feel there is a single person sitting in the government right now that I could comfortably and confidently contact in the knowledge they would support and represent my communities (ME and disabled).

    Not a single minister is in a position to offer dedicated representation and support to 16 million disabled people. We need real allies, not ministers who parrot government propaganda. We deserve better than this.

    Callow is right. As it stands, chronically ill and disabled people have no official representative in the government or DWP fighting in their corner.

    That’s shameful at any time, but right as Labour rips into our communities rights? That should be a lasting stain on the conscience of this ableist government. However, it’s also not any surprise from the neoliberal Starmerites who have refused to enshrine the UN rights of disabled people into law.

    Where accountability is concerned, this Labour government has shown time and again that its focus is to evade it, rather than to listen to the valid fears of chronically ill and disabled communities.

    You can sign the petition demanding a dedicated minister for disabled people here.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Trump’s hatred of queer rights continues to reverberate, as Pittsburgh gay bar raided by swarm of cops

    A gay bar in Pittsburgh was raided for a compliance check by police officers in bulletproof vests. Performers were forced off stage while police emptied the bar and carried out their checks – all while Donald Trump continues his assault on queer rights.

    Given that historically, queer bars are often over-policed via these same compliance checks, attendees were sceptical of the police’s motivations. One witness said:

    Dozens of state police, geared up with bulletproof vests, flooded the bar and told us to get out. None of the officers would explain what was happening. We stood in the rain for maybe 30 minutes or so until most patrons were let back in.

    Pittsburgh response

    Whilst waiting outside, patrons at the bar were joined by Indica, a drag queen, who rallied the crowd as they waited for police to leave. Indica told Qburgh:

    Queer people banded together and showed we are so much stronger than an attempt to make us scared or comply with their rules.

    Pittsburgh mayor Ed Gainey discussed the context of the raid:

    I want first to acknowledge the way in which bar raids were used historically to harass and commit violence against the LGBTQIA+ community. It was not so long ago that police raids on gay bars were routine, and it was one such raid, at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, that sparked the modern movement to establish safe places for people to be open about their gender and sexuality without fear of arrest.

    It is my intent that our actions as a city build upon, rather than undermine, that legitimate desire for safety.

    Officers found that at the time of the raid, the bar had 133 people inside. But, the establishment only has an occupancy permit for 70 people due to overcrowding regulations. However, as Gainey acknowledged, this doesn’t change the intimidation of police raiding a venue during an event:

    However, we need to be thoughtful about the fear that the sudden appearance of multiple armed officers can cause. We also need to have safeguards in place that ensure that NBTF [Nuisance Bar Task Force] complaints cannot be used to target vulnerable populations.

    Historical targeting – and now Trump

    Famously, the Stonewall uprising was one of the prominent examples of patrons at queer bars resisting pressure from police. These raids have been so ubiquitous that the police’s mode of operation is all too familiar:

    Officers would pour in, threatening and beating bar staff and clientele. Patrons would pour out, lining up on the street so police could arrest them.

    This routine is so familiar that as far back as 19th century London, an example can be found of police raiding queer spaces:

    in 1810, we get our first recorded instance of a gay bar—under admittedly unfortunate circumstances. In London, a bar called the White Swan was raided under laws against sodomy. In total, 25 men were arrested, eight were convicted, and two were hanged (one of whom was 16 years old, while neither were even present at the White Swan on the night of the raid).

    The Black Cat in San Francisco ended up taking the state of California to court in the 1950s. The bar would overturn a decision by the local police department to revoke their licence when the supreme court ruled that:

    in order to establish ‘good cause’ for suspension of plaintiff’s license, something more must be shown than that many of his patrons were homosexuals and that they used his restaurant and bar as a meeting place.

    There are numerous existing lists and archives of American and British bars that were raided by police in attempts at state intimidation and surveillance of gay, lesbian, and transgender people.

    Policing queerness

    Being policed in public places is part of being queer, whether gay, lesbian, transgender, non-binary, or otherwise queer. In a climate of Trump increasing anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and legislation, the raiding of a Pittsburgh bar is extremely troubling. Just days after the Pittsburgh raid, a Boston hotel accused a lesbian of being a man in women’s toilets and kicked her out.

    Ansley Baker described how a security guard barged into the stall she was using:

    All of a sudden there was banging on the door.

    I pulled my shorts up. I hadn’t even tied them. One of the security guards was there telling me to get out of the bathroom, that I was a man in the women’s bathroom. I said, ‘I’m a woman.’

    Baker and her partner were escorted out of the hotel, but not before the guard demanded they produce identification to ‘prove’ they were women. And, Baker described how other people in the public bathroom jeered and insulted her and her partner as they were removed.

    Liz Victor, Baker’s partner, said:

    It was a very scary situation, but trans women experience this every single day in the U.S. and across the world.

    Climate of fear under both Trump and Starmer

    Both Trump in the US and UK more broadly are barrelling towards more policing of queer people, and trans people in particular. As the government fans the flames of a culture war, both police and members of the public are emboldened in persecuting and vilifying queer people. The fact that other users of a public bathroom thought it acceptable to jeer at people being removed by security speaks to a wider problem with a rollback of LGBTQ+ rights.

    Unfortunately, these incidents will only become more commonplace in both states. GenderGP, an organisation that campaigns for healthcare for trans and non-binary people, said:

    Denying gender-affirming healthcare, banning pronoun recognition, and excluding trans athletes are not just inconveniences—they are life-threatening. Studies consistently show that access to gender-affirming care significantly reduces rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide among transgender individuals.

    Historically, queer people are over-policed in public spaces, be it bars, bathrooms, or otherwise. States are emboldening bigots with their own bigoted legislation – we cannot allow it to happen.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • WASPI legal fight against the DWP has “fair shot” at proceeding says expert

    In a determined effort to rectify the injustices faced by women affected by changes to the state pension age, the Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) campaigners are making headway in their ongoing legal battle against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – with one expert weighing in that the case has a “fair shot” of being heard.

    WASPI: basic legal standards met

    This case revolves around the significant changes made to the state pension age for women born in the 1950s, which have left many without adequate financial support in their later years. The campaigners are now looking towards the High Court to secure justice that they firmly believe has been denied to them.

    Recent developments suggest that their claim for a judicial review may have a strong chance of success. Legal experts are optimistic about the case being taken up, citing that WASPI’s legal representatives have demonstrated a clear issue of law and garnered sufficient public support to fund their legal challenge.

    Over £187,000 has been raised through crowdfunding efforts, underscoring the widespread backing for this cause and giving campaigners a fighting chance against a government that seems indignant to acknowledge its failings.

    As the Express reported:

    Ashley Akin, tax consultant and senior contributor at Stock Screener Tips, said the legal case has a “fair shot” of being taken on by the judges.

    She said:

    The legal team behind WASPI believes the claim meets the basic standard the court needs to see: a clear legal issue with a realistic chance of success.

    They’ve also already raised enough funds to apply, which shows planning and support. Cases like this get filtered before reaching the courtroom, so just getting past this first step says something.

    The DWP: on the back foot?

    At the heart of the dispute is the government’s decision to increase the state pension age from 60 to 65 and eventually to 66, a move that the WASPI group argues was poorly communicated to those affected.

    An investigation by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman unearthed claims of “maladministration” on the part of the DWP, stating that important notifications about these changes should have been sent out much sooner.

    Yet, despite these findings, government ministers remain resolute in their refusal to compensate the women, claiming that most were aware of the changes and thus denying the need for redress.

    This refusal has been met with ire from campaigners and those affected.

    One group of sisters from Blackpool described the DWP’s stance as a “slap in the face,” highlighting a growing sentiment of betrayal among 1950s-born women who feel abandoned by a system they have paid into all their lives.

    Chancellor Rachel Reeves has defended the government’s position, asserting that acknowledging the claims would represent a misuse of taxpayers’ money. However, this raises serious questions about the government’s responsibilities towards those who have been disproportionately affected by its policies.

    The WASPI campaigners argue that the DWP’s dismissal of their plight fails to acknowledge the real-life consequences of inadequate communication.

    Angela Madden, the chair of WASPI, expressed hope that ongoing legal processes might lead to a different outcome, one that provides justice and compensation to those who were not only misled but, in many cases, left in dire financial circumstances as they approached retirement age.

    WASPI: not backing down

    As this high-stakes legal battle unfolds, it highlights not only the struggles of individual women but also broader issues of government accountability and the duty of care owed to the public. Moreover, with the political landscape in turmoil after the local elections, the WASPI women are sending a clear message to Keir Starmer: ignore this issue at your peril.

    Madden stated:

    The local election results make grim reading for both the Labour and Conservative parties and show the political cost of failing to deliver on your promises.

    She emphasised that continued ignorance of their plight could lead to electoral repercussions, potentially gifting power to Reform in the next election. Madden’s comments underline a growing urgency for the government to address this matter before it spirals further out of control.

    The tenacity of the WASPI campaigners serves as a reminder that behind every statistic is a personal story of hardship, disappointment, and resilience.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • FT slams “the west’s shameful silence on Gaza” while simultaneously gagging its own coverage

    19 months into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Financial Times (FT) has called out “the west’s shameful silence on Gaza”. But in the very same editorial, it remained silent itself about the fact that countless legal, academic, and human rights experts have described Israel’s war crimes in Gaza as a genocidal attempt to ‘cleanse’ the occupied Palestinian territory of its inhabitants. And this constant media gagging of key context is a massive part of the problem. Because how can you expect Western governments, with all their vested interests, to meaningfully hold Israel’s war criminals to account when even the media struggles to do so, despite that being their actual job?

    The FT: speaking one truth doesn’t make up for all the others you conceal

    To be fair to the FT, its editorial mentioned “accusations of war crimes against Israel”. It just didn’t clarify that those accusations have come from the UN, the International Criminal Court (ICC), numerous countries, and human rights organisations.

    The paper also placed blame on Israel for blocking aid, collapsing this year’s ceasefire, and planning to ‘clear and hold territory’ in Gaza. It admitted that “each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land”. And it criticised Donald Trump’s “plan for Gaza to be emptied of Palestinians”, and how “senior Israeli officials have since said they are implementing Trump’s plan to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza”. But the FT couldn’t bring itself to use the term ‘ethnic cleansing‘ to describe this, despite numerous experts doing so.

    Selective blame and context

    At the same time, the FT was unable to accuse Israel directly of massacring tens of thousands of people in Gaza. On average, Israeli occupation forces have killed at least one Palestinian child every hour in Gaza since their genocide began in October 2023. They have murdered around 17,492 children, including about 825 babies, 895 one-year-olds, 3,266 preschoolers, and 4,032 six-to-10-year-olds.

    But the FT simply spoke of “19 months of conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians”. And this matters, because it had no trouble accusing Hamas directly, saying “Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack killed 1,200 people and triggered the war” (even though the group was not responsible for all deaths on 7 October). It even repeated that with an emotive adjective, stressing that “the group’s murderous October 7 attack is what triggered the Israeli offensive”.

    So we’ve established that the FT’s stance is that 7 October triggered Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. But what does it think triggered 7 October? The paper criticised Hamas’s “continued stranglehold on Gaza”, but didn’t mention the long history of the oppressive Israeli stranglehold on Palestine, which clearly led to 7 October.

    There was no mention of the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, Israel’s decades-long consolidation of control via war and oppression after that, Western support for Israel as a Cold War anti-communist power, or its role as an ongoing tool for Western interests in the Middle East via ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and war crimes.

    FT propaganda is part of the problem

    The FT is right, of course, that “US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally… should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity”. But it also needs to turn the mirror on itself as a prominent media outlet. Because it knows full well the very serious evidence of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Just in January 2025, it published a piece acknowledging that “many scholars… would conclude that Israel has committed genocide”. As it reported:

    the Holocaust scholar Raz Segal says multiple Israeli leaders have made “explicit and unashamed statements of intent to destroy”. For instance, former defence minister Yoav Gallant said, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” President Isaac Herzog called “an entire nation” “responsible” for Hamas’s attack. Many scholars, including Israeli Holocaust historians Amos Goldberg and Omer Bartov, say Israel committed genocide.

    In short, the paper absolutely understands the context and can state it when the will is there. It isn’t ignorant or incompetent.

    When the FT says “those who remain silent or cowed from speaking out will be complicit”, it should very much extend that accusation of complicity to itself. Because every time it consciously omits key vocabulary or context from its coverage, shifting responsibility for heinous war crimes away from Israel in the process, it it clearly gagging itself. So although it’s right to call out “the west’s shameful silence on Gaza”, it should accept that its own “cowed” coverage is a big part of the problem too.

    Featured image via screengrab

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Keir Starmer just gave the most appalling response to spiralling inequality

    At Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) on Wednesday 7 May, Lib Dem MP Roz Savage challenged Labour Party PM Keir Starmer on inequality:

    Under the Conservatives, inequality has surged with now over 14 million people… living in poverty while the richest 1% see their incomes soar. Of the developed countries we are now the ninth most unequal. Will the prime minister listen to the Liberal Democrats, the public and many of his own backbenchers and commit to reversing changes such as PIP, the winter fuel allowance and two child benefit cap and introduce clear poverty reduction targets to ensure that any economic growth benefits those who need it most.

    Starmer: anti-anti-austerity

    Indeed, from 2024-2025 UK billionaires saw their wealth go up from an already staggering £170 billion to £181 billion. Meanwhile, the least well off 10% are literally in debt. Nonetheless, Starmer is upholding the Tories’ two child benefit cap (restricting benefits to two children). Analysis from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) shows the cap will increase the number of children living in poverty from 4.5 million to 4.8 million.

    Starmer also cut the winter fuel allowance for some of the least well off pensioners. Yet the prime minister’s own government admitted that the cut will plunge 250,000 more elders into poverty by 2029-30.

    As if austerity 2.0 wasn’t already well on its way, Starmer is also cutting support for disabled people. Again, the government’s own analysis shows that this will impact 700,000 families who are already in poverty.

    Appalling response at PMQs

    Then, at PMQs, Starmer had the gall to say:

    Mr Speaker, we’re already delivering 750 free breakfast clubs boosting the minimum wage for over 3 million that’s the lowest paid workers in our country and the child poverty task force is looking at every lever that can be pulled
    Hold on, Starmer’s pulling the lever the other way with his continuation of austerity.
    The basic funding for free primary school breakfasts Labour initially offered is just 60p per pupil. That has resulted in schools taking part in the pilot either pulling out or paying the rest from existing budgets.

    Also, the status quo for free school meals is unhealthy sponsors such as Greggs and Kellogg’s.

    Starmer has raised the minimum wage by around 80p per hour. Does he expect that to solve the richest 1% owning more than 70% of us? And this approach arguably doesn’t make sense because it treats all employers as the same. When in fact, the UK’s top 100 FTSE companies make an average of £64,000 profit annually per employee. That’s a private tax of double the UK’s average yearly wage for every single employee at those corporations.

    Instead, Labour could make a company’s minimum wage relative to their profits. This would enable small and up and coming businesses to pay less and mean that employees aren’t being ripped off by big business. It would link employee pay directly to the company’s performance, driving up productivity.

    Starmer showed yet again at PMQs that he is taking us in the wrong direction.

    Featured image via House of Commons

    By James Wright

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • India duplicates Israel’s playbook with missile attacks under Operation Sindoor

    India has launched military strikes in nine areas of both Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The BBC reported that:

    According to Pakistan, three different areas were hit: Muzaffarabad and Kotli in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Bahawalpur in the Pakistani province of Punjab.

    Pakistani officials have said that 26 people have been killed, with 46 more injured. Al Jazeera reported that:

    A Pakistani military spokesman had earlier told the broadcaster Geo that at least five locations, including two mosques, had been hit. He also said that Pakistan’s response was under way, without providing details.

    In Punjab, missiles hit a mosque in the city of Bahawalpur, killing a child and wounding two civilians, the military said.

    India has claimed that the strikes were targeted in areas that are part of:

    terrorist infrastructure.

    Israel’s genocide against Palestine has followed a remarkably similar pattern of bombing civilians while they sleep, targeting mosques, killing children, and then claiming that the whole operation was to combat terrorism.

    India’s coloniality

    This similarity, however, is no coincidence. Academic Hafsa Kanjwal sets out how India’s relationship to Kashmir is firmly one of settler colonialism:

    When the British ruled the subcontinent, they sold Kashmir to the Dogras, Hindu chiefs from the nearby region of Jammu, in the aftermath of the first Anglo-Sikh War in 1846…Unlike most princely states, Jammu and Kashmir was one of the few where the religious identity of its ruler was different from those of the majority of its subjects. The Dogras were Hindu, while more than three-quarters of the people in the state were Muslim.

    Just as Israel’s domination over Palestine has roots in British colonialism via the Balfour Declaration, so too do the contemporary politics of Kashmir originate with British and Indian coloniality. Kanjwal argues:

    Kashmir is India’s colony. The exercise and expansion of Indian territorial sovereignty, especially in Kashmir, is a colonial exercise. The exercise of Indian power in Kashmir is coercive, lacks a democratic basis, denies a people self-determination, and is buttressed by an intermediary class of local elites or compradors.

    However, this domination can only be understood within the context of Global North colonialism:

    But it is also colonial because India’s rule in Kashmir relies on logics of more ‘classical’ forms of colonialism from Europe to the Global South: civilisational discourses, saviourism, mythologies, economic extraction and racialisation. As with all imperial or colonial forces, India has sought to rule over Kashmir through subjugating its people and trampling their rights.

    Kashmiris are subject to arbitrary detention, travel bans, and broad state censorship by Indian authorities. Meenakshi Ganguly from Human Rights Watch said:

    Kashmiris are unable to exercise their right to free expression, association, and peaceful assembly because they fear they will be arrested, thrown in prison without trial for months, even years.

    Settler colonialism

    A 2024 UN report found that a “staggering” number of Palestinians are held by Israeli authorities in Israeli detention. Just like Israel, India has also blamed a fight against terrorism as justification for structural violence against native populations.

    As well as a pattern of subjugating Muslim natives whilst claiming to be fighting terrorism, India and Israel also share fascist ideologies. Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, is in step with Zionism in a perhaps unexpected manner. Academic Vikram Visana explains, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is founded on Hindutva:

    Devised in the early 20th century, the politics of Hindutva insist that the country’s national identity be built around those who consider only India’s geography sacred. Muslims and Christians, whose holy sites lay in the Middle East, were therefore considered second-class citizens.

    And:

    Hindutva doesn’t stop at India’s borders. Hindu nationalists have used the ongoing conflict in Gaza to vilify other Muslims globally. BJP troll farms have spread disinformation and anti-Palestinian hatred online, and Hindu nationalist groups in India have organised pro-Israel marches.

    In other words:

    To Hindu nationalists, some Zionists were engaged in a project to reclaim their holy land from a Muslim population whose religious roots in the region were not as ancient as their own.

    India: leveraging US power?

    Both Hindutva and Zionist ideologies are based on purging a holy land from Muslim savages. And, it is that figure of Muslim savages that has a powerful currency in Israeli and Indian culture of Muslims as an uncontrollable, animalistic, Other. Journalist Azad Essa explains how the connecting factor for contemporary iterations of Zionist and Hindutva ideologies is a tussle for US imperialist support:

    The Indian American lobby—or, more accurately, the Hindu nationalist lobby—literally modeled itself on organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as they looked to replicate their methods in hustling for influence over the US government.

    Essa concludes that:

    Ultimately, Hindu nationalists have tried to align Indian interests with US power—and given the silence in the media and among US lawmakers about the rise of Hindutva, the occupation in Kashmir, and the attack on India’s minorities, including Muslims and Christians, I’d say they have been pretty successful.

    India’s latest attacks on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir are yet another attempt to continue the persecution of Kashmiri Muslims. Any similarities to Israel’s mode of operation in Palestine are further evidence of Hindu nationalist ideology built on Islamophobia and colonial domination. And, as with Palestine, the US’ alignment with Indian interests will likely be the difference between life and death for Kashmiris.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • As its good little bitch, the BBC just refused to say why public support for Israel is collapsing

    The BBC‘s racist, institutional bias in favour of Israel has been clear throughout the state’s settler-colonial genocide in Gaza. In particular, its propaganda strategy involves the omission of key context. And a new article about falling support for Israel in the US is a perfect example. Because the BBC couldn’t bring itself to mention Israel’s war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid – not even once. And the only mention of genocide was to note that former president Joe Biden rejected the label “Genocide Joe”.

    The BBC is an utter embarrassment

    Like good propagandists, the BBC has long participated in the whitewashing of Israeli crimes like attacking hospitals and health workers. It has also failed consistently to give a prominent place to key context like the fact that Israel’s prime minister is an internationally wanted war criminal, or that numerous genocide experts have long accused the settler-colonial power of committing genocide in Gaza, the occupied Palestinian territory whose highly concentrated population it had previously isolated with a brutal blockade that turned the strip into “the world’s largest open-air prison”. And the tightening of apartheid structures has met with tumbleweed.

    It’s not exactly like there aren’t enough Israeli war crimes to mention. There’s the murder of children around a refugee camp clinic, “the largest child massacre“, or the flattening of the “only specialised cancer hospital”. There’s the use of human shields “at least six times a day” or the pushing of civilians into “a concentration camp” and “letting starvation and desperation do the rest”. And there’s the murder of hundreds of media workers, more than in any other conflict in living memory.

    But there’s not even a mention in the BBC article of reports or rulings from international legal institutions or human rights organisations.

    They can do journalism. They just prefer to do PR for war criminals.

    The BBC certainly can provide background and research when it wants to. For example, the article outlines fairly well the factors that established Israel as the next step in Western colonialism. It mentions the New York Zionist campaign in the subways to “collect money to try to get England to open the doors” to Palestine when Britain was in control of the territory. It quotes a woman saying:

    My brother would go on the subway trains, all the doors open on the train and he’d shout ‘open, open, open the doors to Palestine’

    The article also quotes historian Rashid Khalidi, whose family British colonialists expelled from Palestine in the 1930s. He said:

    On the one side, you had the Zionist movement led by people whom are European and American by origin… The Arabs had nothing similar… [The Arabs] weren’t familiar with the societies, the cultures, the political leaderships of the countries that decided the fate of Palestine. How could you speak to American public opinion if you had no idea what America is like?

    The piece makes it clear that experts were warning the US government of the risk of intensifying conflict in the Middle East if Washington backed the creation of Israel. It later explains how the war of 1967 showed the US “the importance and the significance of Israel as a major military and political power in the Middle East”, further strengthening the US-Israeli love-in. And it even mentions how Trump’s proposals for Gaza “upended international norms, flying in the face of international law”.

    Just no talk of ‘genocide’. No ‘apartheid’. No ‘war crimes’. And no ‘ethnic cleansing’.

    In short, the BBC is perfectly capable of giving context when it wants to. It cannot plead ignorant or incompetent. It simply chooses to avoid mentioning the international condemnation of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and apartheid. That is a conscious choice, and an utterly despicable one.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

  • Trump was just made to look like a naughty toddler as more sh*t rains on his parade

    Mark Carney, the newly elected prime minister of Canada, robustly pushed back against Donald Trump’s repeated intentions to make Canada the 51st American state. Just two months ago, Trump said:

    Canada only works as a state. We don’t need anything they have. As a state, it would be one of the great states anywhere. This would be the most incredible country, visually…It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state.

    And, with Carney’s visit to the White House, Trump repeated his desire to annex Canada. However, Carney wasn’t having any of it, saying:

    As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale. Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign … it’s not for sale. Won’t be for sale, ever.

    Trump hit back with:

    Never say never.

    And, as he did so, Carney mouthed “never, never, never, never” to the waiting cameras. It looks like ‘never’ is now for Trump’s absurd attempted conquest of Canada.

    Carney pushes back against Trump

    Throughout their encounter in the White House, Carney took the role of an exasperated parent gently berating a smug toddler. A screenshot of the moment Trump was told Canada isn’t for sale looked much like a disappointed toddler being told they can’t have ice cream for dinner:

    The Canadian leader appeared happy to let Trump ramble on, only stepping in to correct the most egregious lies:

    Carney shot a disbelieving look at camera as Trump claimed to be the greatest thing that had ever happened to the Canadian prime minister:

    Meanwhile, Trump continued to blunder answers and just make up whatever he wanted:

    Trump attempted to impress Carney with the gaudy trappings of the redesigned White House:

    Trade boycott

    Trump’s ongoing tariff war has had a distinct response from Canadian consumers: no thank you – perhaps without the ‘thank you.’ Canadian businesses ranging from supermarkets to bars have continued to refuse American products. Instead, they’re opting to go with home-grown options or non-American trading partners. The number of Canadians taking road trips south of the border has also dropped dramatically, with a 23% drop in visits in comparison to February 2024. As Bloomberg reported, this is having harsh impacts on US border towns that rely on tourism sales from Canadians.

    Of course, Trump hasn’t shown any concern or business sense as there appears to be no sign of Canadians relenting. Now, Carney’s visit has set a tone for Canada’s relationship with America as one of exasperation and pushback.

    The thing is, there’s no tactics world leaders can apply for Trump. The orange one has proven himself to be a capricious fool who cannot be reasoned with. Carney is an experienced politician and economist. That doesn’t mean anything to the tangerine tyrant, who is a runaway train of ignorance, conceived policies, and the ever-changing whims of a racist egotist.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Water boss tells public to ‘ration water’ after selling off reservoirs for millions

    Managing director of Southern Water Tim Mcmahon has told the public to ration water in spring time hot weather. But water companies sold off 35 reservoirs in just five years, making £26 million from flogging what were public assets. That’s before Margaret Thatcher privatised them in 1989.

    Southern Water: asset stripping

    Reservoirs that once provided water for dry weather have now been converted to for-profit housing, as well as fishing locations. Ignoring the blatant asset stripping, Southern Water’s Mcmahon said:

    If you look at the south-east of England, it’s drier than Sydney, Istanbul, Dallas, Marrakesh. We have got a very densely populated area and we need to start investing to cater for that.

    We need to reduce customers’ usage. Otherwise we will have to put other investments in place, which will not be good for our customers and might not be the best thing for the environment.

    In other words, water companies sold off the reservoirs and then passed on the later costs to the public through higher bills.

    A 2018 document shows Southern Water will decommission 43 of 93 reservoirs between 2023 and 2030. Yet it only plans to build one more in the coming years with Thames Water. This suggests that for-profit companies are incapable of maintaining vital infrastructure that the country needs.

    And it’s not just the reservoirs losing water. In 2021, water firms lost more than 1 trillion litres through leaky pipes.

    ‘Extracting value’

    Speaking in parliament in March, Labour MP Clive Lewis said:

    In the 35 years before privatisation, almost 100 reservoirs were built. In the 35 years since privatisation, not one major English reservoir has been built… instead of investing in resilience they’ve extracted value. £75 billion paid out in dividends while pipes leak, rivers choke and the public pays the price. My honourable friends says ‘how can we afford it’, how can not afford it?

    The latest research from Greenwich University found that the UK public would save £5 billion per year on water bills through the government bringing water back into public ownership. And that figure would be higher once it didn’t include paying off nationalisation costs.

    Besides, shareholder compensation may not be necessary. Financial ratings company Moody has stated:

    the level of compensation would fall within the wide discretion of parliament

    The government could take into account the mismanagement of the environment, debt, and politically the amount of profit already made.

    From every angle, water privatisation is a failure – not least with companies like Southern Water. Whether, it’s cost, investment or the lack of a public focused management approach.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By James Wright

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Labour caught sending 8,000 weapons to Israel AFTER it banned arms exports

    Although Britain’s political class has stood firmly behind Israel amid its genocide in Gaza, the apartheid state continues to embarrass its allies. In particular, a new report shows Israel recording the entry of 8,630 items of death and destruction from the UK in “four separate shipments… between September 2024 and February 2025”. This was despite the Labour government supposedly banning items the occupying power could use for its war crimes in Gaza.

    The UK: still arming Israel despite ban?

    The report from Drop Site News notes that the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has “refused to specify what the deliveries contained”. But Israel itself apparently described the imports as “Bombs, Grenades, Torpedoes, Mines, Missiles And Similar Munitions Of War And Parts Thereof”.

    528 such items went to Israel in September 2024, 4,500 in November, and 3,602 in January and February 2025.

    Drop Site quotes a British government spokesperson saying:

    In September, we suspended export licenses to Israel for items used in military operations in Gaza. Our remaining licenses relate to non-military items, military items for civilian use or not for use in military operations in Gaza, or components for items for re-export to other countries.

    The outlet also mentions the role that the highly controversial RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus has likely played in helping to supply Israel with the tools it needs to commit war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

    What are a few loopholes between colonial powers?

    The lucrative business of F-35 fighter jets, which has caused so much death and destruction, marked a highly controversial exemption from Labour’s licence suspensions in 2024. The only condition was that F-35 parts couldn’t go straight from the UK to Israel.

    However, it seems the settler-colonial power has received numerous shipments of aircraft parts since the apparent ban. According to defence minister Maria Eagle, “there have been no exports of F-35 parts direct to Israel via RAF Marham since the licensing suspension”. However, as Drop Site mentions:

    evidence suggests that these transfers did not stop in September. The import data shows a further thirteen courier shipments of aircraft parts under “Customs Code 88” directly from the UK to Israel taking place from October 2024 to March 2025.

    Of these deliveries, Israel described 11 of them as “parts of airplanes, helicopters, or unmanned aircraft”. The other two were “parachutes, parachute accessories, and parts thereof” and “rotor parts”. The DBT reportedly refused to confirm if these related to F-35s.

    Serious questions to answer

    Former Foreign Office adviser Mark Smith previously revealed efforts under Tory and Labour governments “to suppress inconvenient truths” about UK allies. He spoke about official use of bullying, manipulation, and stonewalling to prolong “complicity with war crimes“.

    This month, the High Court “will review the decision-making process of the UK government, and rule whether they have acted unlawfully by continuing to export some arms to Israel”. The judgement will probably come a few months later.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.