Stuart Brown

Manifesto Ask 2: Ensure all Disabled People who want to work can do so. GDA Staff and members tell us how to address the barriers facing disabled people in employment. We need investment in holistic and accessible employability to support, not sanctioning and cutting benefits.

Spain once had the fastest growing solar sector in Europe. A 2007 subsidy law guaranteed huge fixed payments for solar electricity, and investors poured in. Then the economics collapsed, and the government couldn't afford the scheme. Between 2010 and 2012, Spain retroactively cut the subsidies it had already promised. Thousands of solar operators went bankrupt, with more than 62,000 investors hit. Banks wrote off $30 billion. And international investors sued Spain in more than 40 arbitration cases. Across the country, half-built and abandoned solar farms sit idle. Ghost infrastructure from a failed policy. Spain tried to engineer a solar boom with subsidies. Instead, it produced one of the largest renewable bankruptcies in the world.

The cost of living is the number one issue families are facing at the moment. That's why we're going all out for cheap, clean, homegrown power that we control, to bring down energy bills for good.

Filmed this recently in Amsterdam. Many cyclists, e-bike & moped riders took priority over pedestrians at zebra crossings, some at speed. We are told it works in the Netherlands, however, it is very clear that Dutch pedestrians are not at the top of the hierarchy of road users.

The cost of living is the number one issue families are facing at the moment. That's why we're going all out for cheap, clean, homegrown power that we control, to bring down energy bills for good.

The state pension is not a random government favour, it’s the back end of a 35–40 year compulsory “contract” where people are forced to hand over National Insurance on the clear promise of a basic pension at the end. Politicians and think tanks helped design an unfunded, pay‑as‑you‑go system where today’s workers pay today’s pensioners, then have the gall to call it “unsustainable” as if the public dreamt it up. If a private firm sold you a retirement product on fixed terms, took your money for four decades, then announced at 66 that you “didn’t really need it” and would henceforth be means‑tested or frozen, they would be in court for mis‑selling and fraud. The crisis here is not pensioners “leeching off the young”, it’s a political class that built a Ponzi‑style NI system, diverted the proceeds for other spending, and now wants to default on the people who kept their side of the bargain. You do not blame the victims of a defective product for believing the brochure; you go after the people who wrote it.