@mc00
Freelance journo/researcher. Bylines: Guardian, Mirror, Good Law Project, DeSmog, Byline Times, Democracy for Sale, Index On Censorship, The Nerve etc. Cited: BBC, LBC, The Times, Searchlight etc. mcfoiareturns@proton.me
Labour urged to listen to progressive voters or face ‘political earthquake’ in London
Senior party figures share data suggesting Green surge could put Labour in fourth place in capital in May
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Slap in the face for the Daily Mail. Axel Springer owns Europe’s biggest paper, Bild, as well as Die Welt, Politico and Business Insider.
Conservative peer Peter Gummer has said he will leave the House of Lords after an investigation found he committed five breaches of standards over £50m Covid PPE deals
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
An Al Jazeera correspondent in Tehran describes the bombardment in Iran’s capital as more intense than previously seen.
"The Conservatives have pledged to reinstate the two-child benefit cap and use the money to instead boost defence spending." [Times]
It looks like the Bluesky left in Iran is already trying to force woke purity tests on the next Ayatollah
Hegseth is overtly and publicly outlining the vision of white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and related imperialism that are guiding this administration’s actions.
It’s Nazism without the veil of pseudo-pagan pageantry.
We also need to know whether AI was used to select the target. WaPo is reporting Anthropic and Palantir tech were used to identify 1000 targets in Iran 24 hours. Who vetted those targets? Who pays for errors? It's possible they weren't involved in this strike but this we need to know.
Since last year, I and Al Shaw & @bxroberts.org have investigated the linkages between Trump appointees and the industries they oversee. Today we published a searchable database containing approximately 3,200 financial disclosure forms of roughly 1500 officials.
www.propublica.org/article/trum...
Mark E. Smith, singer, lyricist and only constant member of post-punk group the Fall, was born in Broughton, Salford, on this day 1957. Smith formed the band after attending a 1976 Sex Pistols gig at Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester, and was its leader until he died in 2018.
A court record reviewed by 404 Media shows privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail handed over payment data related to a Stop Cop City email account to the Swiss government, which handed it to the FBI.
It's all just performative ragebait rubbish, none of it is of any value whatsoever.
Of course he's likely lying, he's a thick twat but probably smart enough to know that encouraging anti-intellectualism among his sad, gullible followers is an effective enough way to help keep them interested in his dross.
I was interviewed about how disabled people are impacted by ICE and other immigration policies by a Canadian news podcast. You can listen here. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...
Now that’s what I call investigative reporting
“I think there are a lot of grievances, a lot of fear of men losing social positions,” Chung said. “And there’s a vacuum that’s being filled with rhetoric and voices which are trying to pitch young men against gender equality, against young women, against migrants.”
In 1966 the New Jersey Young Republicans gleefully sang racist and antisemitic songs at their gatherings. The lyrics to one went “Riding the Reich in my Mercedes Benz, shooting every kike, saving all my friends." Hartford Courant, 13 February 1966.
The left, and the centre too, needs to be able to find the language for discussing this kind of person. There is a profound injustice in the selfishness of infantile libertarian people blatantly avoiding paying into the system that allowed them to generate the wealth or earn the incomes they have.
UK must double down on renewables as wars drive up energy costs, experts say
Party Total reported Donations accepted (excl. public funds) Public funds accepted Total accepted in this quarter Alliance - Alliance Party of Northern Ireland £65,140 £20,538 £44,602 £65,140 Conservative and Unionist Party £4,216,224 £2,401,452 £1,614,729 £4,016,181 Co-operative Party £131,180 £131,180 £0 £131,180 Democratic Unionist Party - D.U.P. £104,320 £0 £104,320 £104,320 Green Party £294,069 £189,010 £98,764 £287,773 Labour Party £2,043,007 £1,943,824 £31,836 £1,975,660 Liberal Democrats £2,190,101 £1,314,139 £749,173 £2,063,312 Open Party £197,151 £155,067 £0 £155,067 People Before Profit £8,605 £0 £6,453 £6,453 Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales £63,967 £30,000 £33,967 £63,967 Reform UK £5,473,000 £5,456,000 £0
The funding gap between Reform UK and the Greens is astounding.
New Electoral Commission stats today reveal the reportable donations in Q4 2025:
🟢 Green Party: £189,010
🟣 Reform UK: £5,456,000
Greens are bringing in barely 3.5% of Reform UK's large donations - but still polling around 20%.
If you use generative AI willingly, if you engage in cryptocurrencies willingly, if you need ChatGPT to type out your emails and live your simulation of an actual life then you have compromised your soul unblinkingly and are someone who simply chooses to feed the beast for your own convenience.
Reform UK has blocked another journalist from reporting on one of its events
leftfootforward.org/2026/03/refo...
If there is evidence of irregularities at some polling stations at the Gorton and Denton byelection, then that evidence should be properly and promptly investigated in accordance with due process by the proper authorities. And that is what is being done. Any denunciations of the election result should thereby await the result of this process. The losing party spokesperson candidly admitted the day after the election that any irregularities were not enough to have affected the result, which was emphatic. But this did not prevent the losing party’s leader from loudly promoting grave allegations of sectarian voting, corruption and dishonesty. Yet if the irregularities are not upheld on investigation as invalidating the result, it is unlikely that those findings will be shouted about. And such a response is irresponsible. Parts of the United Kingdom have a history of sectarian violence. Parts of the United Kingdom have histories of racial tension. Responsible politicians should not exploit such allegations for partisan advantage. Making such allegations is to play with fire, literally. Responsible politicians should be careful to avoid subverting the very fundamentals on which a functioning democracy rests. Such “poisoning of the wells” is familiar to those following the politics of the United States, and it lay behind the lethal violence that took place in Washington DC on 6th January 2021.
New
The poisoning of the wells
Why discrediting election results without waiting for due process is unhealthy for a democracy
This week's Weekly Constitutional by me at @prospectmagazine.co.uk
Sorry I'm not more open-minded about LLMs, it's just some fucking maniacs shoveled out a bunch of useless bloatware featuring that technology, did not give me any chance to opt out, reorganized the entire economy around it, zeroed out gains made by green energy, and made it impossible to buy RAM
Have a lovely day, everyone.
Deluded. Labour lost about ten points during the course of the 2024 campaign. A strategic triumph it was not.
In his new book 'Cosmic Music: The Life, Art and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane', journalist Andy Beta charts her expansive life in music. Read the feature below that explores the many worlds she moved through beyond spiritual jazz.
crackmagazine.net/article/long...
If your political strategy is to alienate your entire voter base and pave the way for a hard-right government, sure
There is just something deeply disturbing and offensive about watching a Labour govt keep kicking the most vulnerable in our society.
