Astonishing advance by the Greens, astonishing implosion of Labour. When will Starmer's government get the message that it is destroying its base with deeply unpopular, rightwing policies?
By chasing Reform, it legitimises the far right while delegitimising itself.
I've never been comfortable with the term comic for books like this, even after reading SMcC's magnificent Understanding Comics. I feel it diminishes such great work. And it's not a novel. It's a graphic biography. Anyway, whatever you call it, it is a breath-takingly beautiful thing.
This new book by @cartoonkate.bsky.social is a breath-takingly beautiful thing: I'd go so far as to say a work of genius.
It's my privilege to be interviewing her about it at the East Gate Bookshop, Totnes on 23rd October. Please join us if you can: www.totnespulse.co.uk/product/tick...
We meet the underdog diplomats who helped the world set the 1.5°C goal, and the champion sailors who can help us set a course for navigating what comes next
There's good reason why the oil and gas industry lobbies so hard for carbon capture - because it's the one 'climate solution' that wouldn't necessarily require shutting down the oil and gas industry
📢 🚨New Report - How the UK oil and gas industry spent 15 years pushing for subsidies & incentives for Carbon Capture and Storage rather than regulatory accountability or science-based emissions reductions; maintaining a funding pipeline for a technology yet to deliver on its promises 👇
George Monbiot - journalist and author Anthea Simmons - co-founder of the South Devon Primary Jonathon Porritt - former director of Friends of the Earth Klina Jordan - former CEO of Make Votes Matter
WOW! The European Parliament just voted to BAN the words 'burger' and 'sausage' when used in sustainable plant-based alternatives. HUGE win for the meat and dairy lobby in the EU, and lots more confusion for consumers if this goes through. Insane! www.euroveg.eu/european-par...
On the one hand, medical science is beginning to get a handle on the very complex physiological basis of this disease. On the other hand, we can expect the greatest medical scandal (so far) of the 21st Century – the mass mistreatment and neglect of ME/CFS sufferers – to continue.
This commission points to where the government is heading. If the problem is “overdiagnosis” – which appears to be its foregone conclusion – then large numbers of people with horrendous conditions will be put through an even more punishing regime of tests and obstacles to qualify for benefits.
To rub salt into their wounds, these patients have watched as the man many see as their tormentor-in-chief has been garlanded with honours, including a knighthood. His latest appointment is yet another blow.
Many patients have been forced into useless and sometimes dangerous “buck up” treatments such as Graded Exercise Therapy and CBT, in some cases long after these “treatments” have been debunked. The most eminent advocate of these treatments? Professor Sir Simon Wesseley.
They desperately want to be able to work, to socialise, to experience all the other joys of life. But because the condition is so poorly understood, they have been repeatedly treated as if they were “malingerers” or “hysterics”. Which suits the government just fine.
In the firing line, as ever, are the UK’s hundreds of thousands of ME/CFS patients. As a practitioner once remarked, “the bastards don’t want to get better”. If there is one characteristic all the ME/CFS patients I’ve come across have in common, it is a desperation to get better.
Like the Tories, the Labour government is trying to drive down the number of people who qualify for disability benefits by insisting there has been an epidemic of “overdiagnosis”: a favourite theme of the BBC and the junktanks of Tufton Street. Never mind the science: what outcome do we want?
Just as we are beginning to understand the biochemical basis of this horrendous condition, the government appoints the man perhaps most responsible for the mischaracterisation of ME/CFS – Simon Wesseley - to its *overdiagnosis* commission. www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/controv...
ME/CFS is a devastating condition that has long been denied, dismissed, psychologised and underdiagnosed. Research is at last starting to catch up with it, with glimmers of hope for those who have been left untreated for so long. There's a huge BUT coming ...🧵 www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Utterly beholden to lobbyists, staggeringly ignorant and dismissive of the natural world: Rachel Reeves might not look or sound like Donald Trump, but she is behaving very much like him. This government is even more of an ecological hazard than the Tories were. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
