Heather Smith 💙 #The99% #StopRosebank #FBPA #FBPE

Well this is perfect timing! @99Organisation has an event hosted by @BarryGardiner 1630 today for Labour MPs. @pollytoynbee @williamnhutton @martinwolf_ @MrMarkEThomas will discuss the #Budget2025 for national renewal @OpenBritain @DMinghella @marcuschown @EconChange @NEON_UK

@AllanGPaterson 10am

@TheSolarShed This is tremendous news! I wrote about the coming new wave last November: open.substack.com/pub/allanpater…

Tomorrow's news. Today. We killed coal and we're getting gas gone. Next, we end oil. #SolarLove in the #SolarNation

I can no longer hold my tongue seeing the utter lies being spread about Britain, our history of migration, and how this country was built into what it is today. For those so deeply buried in fake news, manufactured outrage and billionaire‑funded propaganda, I’m going to lay out the truth – and exactly why you’re being fed all this poison. Britain was never a sealed white island. From Roman times there were African soldiers stationed on Hadrian’s Wall and living in British towns, people from across the empire walking these roads nearly 2,000 years ago. Through the Middle Ages and Tudor England you still find Black people in the records – sailors, craftsmen, servants, musicians – even Black musicians at the royal court and Africans being baptised, marrying and being buried in English parishes like anyone else. This isn’t some modern experiment; it’s older than half the castles people visit on their bank‑holiday tours. As Britain went out into the world, the world came here. Sailors and traders from India, Yemen and beyond were arriving in British ports from the 1600s. Some of those men were practising a new faith to most Britons at the time, praying quietly in boarding houses near the docks while they worked brutal shifts in the engine rooms of British ships. Over the centuries, more people from North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia passed through and settled, bringing their languages, foods and beliefs into port cities that were far more mixed than today’s nostalgia merchants like to admit. After two world wars, the truth is simple: this country asked the Commonwealth to come and rebuild it. People from the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia didn’t sneak in; they were recruited. They came to drive buses and trains, staff the NHS, work in mills and foundries, clean offices, run corner shops, open takeaways and small businesses, and yes, build prayer spaces and community centres alongside churches and temples in the neighbourhoods everyone now pretends were always “traditional” and “unchanged”. They did the work that kept Britain going while being told to go home, refused housing, and treated as permanent outsiders. And what have they been paid back with? Scandals where people who’ve lived, worked and paid taxes here for decades get told they don’t belong. Policies designed to make life so hostile that some give up and leave. A media that uses their names, accents, clothes or places of worship as props in endless scare stories. The message is always the same: you might toil for this country, but you will never fully be of it. So when you hear that “Britain was white until recently” or that the country has been “overrun”, understand that you don’t arrive at that belief by accident. You get there because your history has been deliberately ripped out and replaced with a comforting myth: that “real” Britain is white, homogenous, and constantly under siege from people who look, speak or pray differently. Now look at when this myth has been turned up to max volume. Wages frozen. Housing a sick joke. Energy and food prices out of control. Public services hacked to pieces. At the same time, the number of people hoarding unimaginable wealth at the top has exploded. Funny, isn’t it, how every front page is about boats and “swarms” and “our culture”, and almost never about the landlords, hedge funds, private equity and offshore trusts quietly buying up your city and your future. That’s because this isn’t just prejudice; it’s a strategy. If you’re sitting on a mountain of wealth, the last thing you want is ordinary people – of every colour and background – realising they have the same problems and the same enemy. Much safer if the factory worker is furious at the new family down the road. Much safer if the person who can’t see a doctor blames the nurse with an accent instead of the minister who cut the funding. Much safer if a man who can’t afford his rent spends his rage on the woman in a headscarf at the bus stop instead of the billionaire who owns half his city. Racist rhetoric, religious dog‑whistling, all of it, exists to break solidarity. It turns neighbours into enemies and stops people seeing that Black, brown and white working‑class communities have far more in common with each other than any of them will ever have with the people flying in on private jets. It keeps you so busy policing skin colour, passports and prayer mats that you never get round to asking why your kids can’t afford a home, why your parents can’t get a hospital bed, why you’re working harder and standing still. The real story of Britain is this: a crossroads, not a fortress. Africans on Hadrian’s Wall. Black people in Tudor courts and city streets. Sailors, traders and workers from South Asia, the Middle East and beyond in the ports. Caribbean, African and Asian workers rebuilding the country after the war, staffing surgeries and hospitals, driving cabs, running shops, cooking food, teaching kids. Today’s multi‑ethnic, multi‑faith working class is not a glitch; it is Britain. It built this place and it keeps it running. If you’re genuinely angry about what’s happening to this country, good. You should be. But aim it where it belongs. Britain was never pure, never untouched, never “theirs” to take back. The people ruining your standard of living are not the ones risking their lives to get here, or the ones whose names you struggle to pronounce. They’re the ones buying politicians, owning media outlets, writing the story of this country so you never learn your own – and never realise who is standing beside you.

Murton (Durham) Council By-Election Result: 🌹 LAB: 50.6% (+17.6) ➡️ RFM: 39.6% (-4.5) 🌍 GRN: 4.8% (New) 🌳 CON: 3.1% (-2.0) 🔶 LDM: 1.9% (-2.3) No Ind (-13.6) as previous. Labour GAIN from Reform. Changes w/ 2025.

"Half the welfare budget is spent on in-work benefits. That is a direct subsidy for low wages, so the corporations can get higher profits” – Eddie Dempsey at the @DurhamGala. Hear more from Eddie @RedhillsDurham tonight. Doors open 6.30pm. Tickets: buytickets.at/marras/2064884

@m0w4q45 @RichardBentall @SarahForRuncorn 1000% and 1000 times over 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Does wealth make you happy? Our member @Phil_White_99 shared his thoughts with LBC

BREAKING⚡️The High Court has just ruled that the government's draconian ban of Palestine Action was unlawful. This is a massive blow to the Government’s authoritarian approach. They need to stop criminalising people protesting a genocide and start ending the UK's complicity

A fantastic evening with University of York Debating Society. Thanks to members Sunil and @Kinsellas who took part in a wealth tax debate alongside the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Institute of Economic Affairs. Delighted students voted in favour of the proposal to #TaxTheSuperRich

Greta Thunberg MUST get the Nobel Peace Prize. Imagine how much Donald Trump and Netanyahu would rage.

🚨 @WestNorthants Council’s new boss to get £200k/yr, work from home 3 days/wk! 😮 Reform promised to cut salaries, bring staff back into office & freeze council tax, yet they’re hiking taxes & offering MORE remote work. OUR money! I’ll be writing to our cllrs to challenge this😔

Reform's pro-fracking agenda threatening 180 constituencies friendsoftheearth.uk/climate/reform…

Hugh Grant, "Politicians mistakenly believe that their entire careers and fate rely on sucking up to the owners of tabloid newspapers" "But such was the pressure of the big newspaper barons on government, and such was the cowardice of government, that they found a tiny technical loophole in the legislative process" "Here we are 12 years later, having waited 12 years for a Labour government, Labour said to victims of press abuse with their terrible stories. Labour said: its ok guys, the Tories are awful, once we're here we'll take care of this" "Suddenly as the election loomed last year, dead silence from Labour" "Since Labour have been in government, absolutely nothing" "On the contrary, what we're now seeing is a repetition of what happened under the Blair government" "Where you have a Labour government sucking up to the very organisations that perpetrated these abuses in the first place" "You have Keir Starmer the Prime Minister writing articles for The Sun. Having lunch with Lachlan Murdoch last year. Hiring the ex Chief Operating Officer of News UK, the Murdoch news company in this country, as the most important communications civil servant in Number 10" "Arranging for Rupert Murdoch to be at the big state banquet for Trump. And having him sit right next to Morgan McSweeney who is the PM's chief of staff" "And it's pretty hard to stomach for the families who were promised so much by Labour" Tom Bradby, "Are you saying to me that the pledge that Keir Starmer made to you and other victims was unequivocal, and that you feel personally betrayed by the fact they have done nothing about it" Hugh Grant, "Yeah, all the victims feel personally betrayed by all the politicians and most depressingly by this Labour government" "Labour were marvellous in opposition" "Labour politicians were very supportive to these families who were really brave, and then when push came to shove, they made this decision clearly. And it's a mistaken decision" "That it's more important for them, for their political careers. For the sake of their party, their bl**dy party, that they make nice with the big newspaper barons, than they do what's right for these families" "And lets face it, for the country" "And what Hacked Off if here to do right now is to try and put pressure on this government on this prime minister to finally do something that will protect those families" "We're asking the PM to do something, to create a law, that makes newspapers obey basic standards of decency" "And in doing that to create a press in this country that we can be proud of, that we can rely on. Which is absolutely essential in this day and age" "I watch, we all watch, liberal democracies that we have happily enjoyed for 30, 40, 50 years, gradually start to disappear" "If you don't have a reliable press, you're in real trouble. You're left to the cowboys of social media"

Corruption and profiteering during the pandemic cost lives. Anyone involved in that scandal has no place making our laws. Sign our petition calling on the Government to strip Michelle Mone of her peerage: chng.it/JvCb5QxzZm

I’ve participated in the monitoring of the flotilla. The volunteers on the ships are heroes. I am urging the government to intervene to protect them from the Israelis. The Global Sumud Flotilla INTERCEPTED By Israeli Navy - YouTube youtube.com/watch?v=iCAN2A…

Drop a ❤️ If you support Greta Thunberg 👋🏽

@Hamzasharif5750 ❤️

So horrifying. Both the terrible violence in Manchester and the fear this creates for Jewish people everywhere, especially as they mark Yom Kippur. My thoughts with everyone affected