Tim Rayner

'It’s just that if climate change leaves Europe’s ports underwater, Brexit may seem a bit less important'. A great line (in this very welcome BBC blog) neatly encapsulating the competing calls on my attention, as both citizen and academic policy/governance researcher.

"Our school is destroyed, there's nothing left." - Roa’a, 12, West Bank, State of Palestine. Her dreams of graduating grade 6 were shattered when her school - a place she loved to learn and play at with her friends - was reduced to rubble by settlers and Israeli forces. There have been 99 documented education-related incidents in 2026 alone, including the killing, injury and detention of students, the demolition of schools, military use of school buildings, and denial of access. Watch and share Roa'a's story.

Nigel Farage has committed prosecutable election offences with this video under the Representation of the People Act 1983. The Act prohibits inducing voters through the threat of “temporal injury”, which includes material disadvantage such as the targeted imposition of government burdens. Threatening to specifically house illegal migrants in a constituency if it does not vote Reform is coercive and constitutes a criminal offence.

I know there is a lot of news around but can someone at the Beeb explain to me how a man they keep telling us might be the next PM getting an undisclosed donation of FIVE MILLION POUNDS from a Thai based crypto dealer (with a BS explanation about it being for lifelong security) is not even a news story when the man he wants to replace led the news for days over some glasses and Arsenal tickets?

Excuse me. But banned why? Are we seriously saying Farage UK should have its own 24/7 news and propaganda channel with barely a peep from @Ofcom but if another party uses what Farage and Co have said in an election broadcast they can’t show it. Madness. Anyway do watch it. It is very powerful

Kill a chalk stream just to save some grass. Yet more greenwashing from the building sector wouldn't that be right @CB1_Development who apparently are building a "sustainable mixed used community" in Cambridge. Sustainable? Cambridge is surrounded by chalk streams the Granta, Rhee and the Cam itself, they are all failing massively because of over abstraction. The very chalk aquifer that feeds those rivers is listed by the EA as being in "Poor" over all condition due simply to pollution and over abstraction and yet here we are turning on the sprinklers. What hypocrisy.

Collapse of ecosystems around world is serious national security concern for UK, threatening peace, stability, food supply, leading to conflict + social/economic disaster. So say UK spy chiefs.Why no response from highest levels of govt? Podcast here theguardian.com/environment/au…

VIDEO | "I received direct threats targeting me on my phone from the Mossad, from the Israelis, and they threatened to kill me. They were literally saying they would sever my head from my shoulders if I didn’t leave south Lebanon." In an interview recorded before her targeted killing, Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, from the southern village of Baysariyyeh, reflects on the threats she received while covering Israeli aggression in south Lebanon for Al-Akhbar. "Before 23 September, I definitely didn’t take precautions and I didn’t pay attention to these threats, because I said if I’m going to do what they want, why would I let the Israeli enemy impose its own narrative on me? It brings journalists onto my land and promotes the narrative it wants, while preventing me from moving freely on my own land." Amal Khalil, along with her colleague Zeinab Faraj, was deliberately attacked and subsequently killed by Israel yesterday in the southern Lebanese village of Tayri. Zeinab Faraj was severely injured and, as per latest reports, remains in stable condition after undergoing emergency surgery.

🚨BREAKING🚨Israeli forces are now issuing direct death threats to Lebanese journalists on WhatsApp as well as besieging them. Al-Akhbar correspondent @AmalKhalil83, who has been documenting the devastation across southern Lebanon, received these messages from an Israeli number (+972 54-869-5113): “We know where you are… we will reach you… leave if you want to keep your head on your shoulders.” First message: “Alright, my lady, you are moving from one village to another, but you still haven’t gone to enough funerals or hospitals. There is a lot of grief & sorrow behind that smile you try to show on Twitter. Let’s see what your answer will be… Is your house still standing, Anisa (Miss)? I hope so?” Second message: “We know where you are & we will reach you when the time comes. Even though you are not important to us, in the end we will take everything into account. I suggest you flee to Qatar or somewhere else if you want to keep your head connected to your shoulders :)” This is not intimidation. This is the IDF issuing an explicit death threat to a journalist for covering their crimes. At the same time, Israeli forces besieged Amal al-Khalil & journalist Zeinab Faraj in al-Tayri, blocking the Red Cross & Lebanese Army from reaching them. They were in a delegate vehicle when a drone strike hit a vehicle behind them, killing two people. Both journalists were trapped at the scene. Amal contacted the Red Cross before her phone died. Her last message confirmed she was still safe. Rescue teams still cannot reach the two besieged journalists, Amal al-Khalil & Zeinab Faraj. They are just 500 meters away, but the road has been cut off by an Israeli strike, according to Red Cross paramedics. This is targeting journalists in real time. This is a crime. Pure state terrorism against the press.

Three years ago a magazine wanted me to interview Sanchez. I said that although he was important for the future of the left in Europe I was focused on geopolitics. Three years later he has become a world leader, Spain a geopolitical center and his government a source of ideas and influence spanning the globe. Incredible achievement. No one else in Europe has been able to even come close in past few decades. Macron could only dream about it

This is Bint Jbeil in South Lebanon. A historic town with roots stretching back over 3,000 years. Israel is erasing an ancient village that is at least 40 times older than Israel itself. And not a peep from the so-called “international community.”

For people who say it couldn't be predicted that the Iran war would be this consequential for the global economy, watch this 2012 video of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski 👇 He predicts what did in fact happen: "[Iran] can hurt us a lot... Can you imagine what the consequences would be for us if [...] Iraq was massively destabilized, if Bahrain was set on fire, if the North-Eastern oil fields in Saudi Arabia were attacked... The consequences, the costs would be cumulative... The global economy would be affected so we're playing with fire here." All of this happened. Which goes to show that the US government has been acutely aware for decades of how globally destructive a war on Iran would be for all of us (including on America itself and on its Gulf allies): when Trump says that “nobody” expected Iran to retaliate by targeting US allies in the region (reuters.com/world/middle-e…), it's a bold-faced lie. So the real question is rather: if you know something will set the world on fire, and you do it anyway, and the consequences unfold exactly as predicted - at what point does the rest of the world stop looking at Washington as a fireman and start reckoning with the fact that they're dealing with an arsonist? Source video: youtube.com/watch?v=VjbZ4V…

Left: Amiram Ben-Uliel, burned alive a Palestinian baby & his parents. Israel's new death sentence law doesn't apply to his likes. Israel's deputy head of parliament calls him a "holy saint" Right: Marwan Barghouti, Palestinian Mandela, condemns violence against civilians & calls for the 2 state solution. Tried in an Israeli kangaroo military court & sentenced to 540 years in prison. Netanyahu keeps him in prison "because can unify Palestinians," as Bibi once admitted. The death sentence would apply to people like Marwan only because they're Palestinian. It wouldn't apply to convicted terrorists like Amiram only because they're Jewish. Apartheid?!? How dare you?

An unarmed Iranian ship was invited, along with the U.S., to be part of an Indian Naval exercise, and its sailors paraded on land before the president. The U.S. at the last minute pulled out of the exercise and instead attacked the Iranian ship with a torpedo. Breaking with all norms of civilization and warfare, we then refused to rescue the drowning survivors. The Sri Lanka Navy was left to pull the dead bodies from the water. I am hard pressed to think of any other nation throughout history that would do something so cowardly and despicable. We are genuinely in a league of our own, and American media — mostly shrugging off the bombing of a girls school and acting as if carpet bombing Tehran is a normal military tactic — is deeply complicit.

The problem with fossil fuels is their intermittency 😅

"ITV News has seen extracts of the full report and can now reveal some of the warnings the government chose not to publish." Read some of what the Government tried to keep hidden, from the National Security Assessment, here👇 itv.com/news/2026-02-2…

Let us in. For more than two years, we’ve been barred from entering Gaza to report freely. It’s long past time for Israel to lift this ban and #LetUsIn. Join us. Share this post. And sign the FPA’s petition: c.org/BfXbQdXjd9

Ahh nothing to see here but @Dominic2306 spouting pure Putin/Kremlin propaganda, while wishing the death of British citizens. Brexit making more sense now?

Tactical Choice has been made aware of fake leaflets distributed by Labour in Gorton & Denton that falsely purport to be from our organisation. Please be aware, we DO NOT advocate voting Labour in tomorrow’s by-election. To stop Reform, the best vote is for the Green Party.

But China…

I have to say, it’s v funny that the working class plumber is green and the southern academic is reform. Goes to show stupid and reductive media narratives are.