alex thomson

Tonight after 32 years investigation by @Channel4News we review where we are and how it has come to this?

32 years on families still don’t know who ordered a helicopter to fly which RAf knew was unsafe and why? Why top RAF officers William Wratten and John Day blamed the pilots for 17 years without any evidence? Why papers about the disaster are locked up for 100 years?

Families of those killed in Mull of Kintyre chinook disaster lose judicial review to hold an inquiry on a time technicality. Essentially judge Christopher Butcher said they should have complained earlier about alleged cover-up.Lawyer Mark Stephens:

Explained: Impact of extreme heat on over-stretched NHS In the second part of our special Substack mini-series on climate change, @alextomo explores how climate change is affecting health. Read our newsletter here: channel4news.substack.com/p/explained-im…

How climate change made Europe’s extreme June heat worse In the first part of our special Substack mini-series examining the impact of climate change, @liamdutton explores why temperatures are rising and heatwaves are becoming more frequent. 📩Read our latest newsletter here: channel4news.substack.com/p/how-climate-…

@cm_bagot @RedRiverCroft @BBCNews @itvnews @Channel4News @BBCJustinR Not mine

@RedRiverCroft @BBCNews @itvnews @Channel4News @alextomo @BBCJustinR just like, as mentioned this morning, how little has actually been mentioned about global warming during all reports of high temperatures. are we daft? no...

Dear @BBCNews @itvnews @Channel4News @alextomo @BBCJustinR Why is no-one talking about the shockingly poor #airquality in NW England due to Manchester fires? PM2.5 levels are dreadful. This WILL cause health emergencies, if not already doing so. Pollution+ heat = excess deaths.

And today’s Irony of the Day Award goes to ……. Families seeking the truth about the Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash. MoD tries to stop their call for inquiry in court. Just as parliament rushes thru law demanding officials actually tell the truth. You could not make it up….

@n16greenvoile @RupertRead Possibly - but post harvest would be the time

@alextomo good item on climate change tonight . However can you plan an item of food security in UK as a result of climate change? What are farmer’s yields likely to be this year, what were they been last year? ie report the Joint Intelligence Committee/DEFRA report @RupertRead

Hospitals tell @alextomo, in an excellent @Channel4News special on the #climate crisis, that the #heatwaves’ impact on health is greater even than winter’s. Once again, the programme is putting others to shame in its coverage of this, literally, burning issue.,

River Roding in Parliament for the first time Yesterday I took a guest of honour into the Houses of Parliament for a historical first visit. I was able to smuggle this guest in my bag, but it’s arguably more important than any politician who currently works there. This guest was the River Roding. A bottle of Roding water was on the desk in front of me as I was given the chance by Ilford MP Jas Athwal to question Thames Water & the Environment Agency about illegal sewage dumping in the Roding for the first time ever. The facts are damning. Throughout last year I went out on the Roding in a pair of waders with a bucket & ammonia tester & discovered dozens of completely illegal outfalls spewing over a billion lites a year of raw sewage straight into the Roding. In the last 30 years, Thames Water has effectively stolen £10’s of millions of bill payers money that should have been spent on infrastructure upgrades on the Roding, gave the money to shareholders, & then spent almost nothing on the river, safe in the knowledge that no one was likely to call out the tide of illegal sewage that resulted. Up til now, they weren’t wrong: the Environment Agency has not brought a single prosecution for illegal sewage dumping on the Roding since the Agency was founded, despite thousands of crimes being committed. That cosy consensus had now ended. Before I questioned the EA & Thames Water, I made clear that I wasn’t there just on my own, or for the River Roding Trust, but representing the thousands of people who live the Roding & are determined that illegal sewage dumping will stop. I thought my asks to Thames Water were entirely reasonable in the circumstances: they must by the end of this year provide a detailed, costed plan of the specific physical steps they will take to end all illegal sewage dumps on the Roding by 2030. My ask to the EA was also reasonable: that they must prosecute all illegal sewage spills on the Roding to the full extent of the law, but that they could accept enforcement undertaking that the fines for each offence be spent on fixing the outfalls, rather than going to government. I’m sorry to say that neither Thames Water or the Environment Agency was able to say yes to either of these fair & reasonable demands. It therefore appears that Thames Water’s plan is to keep saying good sounding words, but to keep dumping sewage in the Roding for decades. The EA’s plan is to let them do this. The only thing standing between the Roding being killed with sewage pollution for decades to come is all of you. We don’t need ‘citizen scientists’ monitoring the decline of the river whilst justifying big river charity staff salaries to ‘engage’ people in a dying river. We need citizen investigators & campaigners: determined to find where the illegal sewage is coming from & then get it stopped by any (peaceful) means possible.

@Zanzibar_76 @Auldheid @DocMeon If you mean me? I did. See YouTube.

@Auldheid @DocMeon @alextomo Maybe he will also investigate the child grooming gang that knowingly operated within Celtic Park for decades!

Infantino is why UEFA never investigated Rangers use of EBTs in 2012 and the overdue payable that was what Celtic shareholders wanted investigated in 2013. The financial consequences of doing so were too damaging to open the can of worms. He has to go.

@BrianGraham7 @BenGoldsmith Indeed Brian and that’s the point - the extreme east/west rainfall variation pattern across UK - more particularly NW/SE

@alextomo @BenGoldsmith In Glasgow it’s ben pissing down relentlessly since the start of march other than 4 days end of may and a few days 2 weeks ago.

People seem to have forgotten that it rained *constantly* this year in Britain between Christmas and Easter, and again for much of May. There is no water shortage. We’ve drained and desecrated our landscapes to the extent that they are now simply incapable of storing all that rainfall for us. The water is sent barrelling down land drains, ditches, artificially straightened streams and rivers to the sea, causing mayhem as it goes, and leaving us with no water afterwards. It’s so easy to fix this. It’s called ‘natural flood management’. Put back the bogs and marshes, the ponds and wetlands, re-wiggle the streams, liberate and reconnect the rivers to their flood plains, and we’ll find we have way less flooding, fewer hosepipe bans and cleaner water. Yet all we get each winter are hysterical calls for *more* dredging and straightening of the rivers, more draining of the fields. We must be the very last country in the world to grasp this basic natural hydrology.

@JaneMcC149 @andyburnham @Ed_Miliband @BBCNews @SkyNews @itn @DonnachadhMc Very welcome Jane

@alextomo Thankyou. I’m not sure how far it’s part of general public awareness beyond viewers of Ch4. Or part of current political debates re NetZero given latest article in NewScientist. @andyburnham @Ed_Miliband @BBCNews @SkyNews @itn @DonnachadhMc

Source: YouTube reminder for those asking about our AMOC coverage . Successive UK govts should be proud of world-leading science into the possibility that UK climate turns into Canada…. share.google/AAy4HHYdx9CoAS…

@JaneMcC149 @GeoffreyLean @silver_away1 @Ed_Miliband @andyburnham Successive UK govts fund world- leading AMOC measuring via the National Oceanographic Centre. No other nation on earth even comes close. We should be rightly proud of this and govts should make more noise about it. Will send you some links to our reporting on this ….

@GeoffreyLean @silver_away1 When is the UK govt going to even inform citizens about AMOC in the first place? The impact of its reversal would be massive across whole regions of the world. But how many have even heard of it? @Ed_Miliband @andyburnham

The disastrous loss of the Gulf Stream - which would give U.K. the climate of Labrador and blight the whole world - is not inevitable. New research shows that the tipping point could be averted if emissions come down. newscientist.com/article/253239…

‘System of justice has failed Lyra and Northern Ireland’, say family Read our latest newsletter, by @alextomo channel4news.substack.com/p/system-of-ju…