Richard Whitehead competed in the New York City Marathon earlier this month. Photograph: Jeenah Moon/Reuters
Paralympian Richard Whitehead ‘gobsmacked’ at Tory leader’s speech over proposed £36bn welfare cuts
The double amputee marathon runner Richard Whitehead has criticised Kemi Badenoch for “weaponising his sporting success” to justify her proposed £36bn welfare cuts.
The Conservative leader used the example of “double amputees running marathons” in a speech this week to explain the reasoning behind her proposed cuts to disability benefits, which she said were enabling people to “live a life of dependency”.
Whitehead said he had been surprised at her comments and angry that his achievements were being used as part of a campaign to take money “from the most vulnerable that actually need it”.
“I was gobsmacked that somebody’s sporting success would be weaponised in this way,” he said. “To say everybody should work because double-leg amputees run marathons, I was like, wow. It’s very divisive language.
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Whitehead immediately expressed his concerns about the comments on social media. “Disability should never be judged through isolated examples of individual achievement, but through an understanding of the barriers people and families face every day,” he wrote.
“One person’s ability to overcome significant challenges should never be used to justify withdrawing support from others.”
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘not a genocide’ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from Unicorn horn dust
A screen shows Andy Burnham addressing Cop31 in Antalya, Turkey, on Thursday. The prime minister told fellow leaders the UK was still aiming for net zero by 2050. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
Andy Burnham’s newly appointed climate adviser used report to warn of national security risk from collapsing ecosystems
The UK government still has no plans to publish an explosive report showing the national security risk from the collapse of ecosystems around the world – even after handing the key official behind the report a new advisory role. …
The report was supposed to be launched at last year’s Cop, but was suppressed by Keir Starmer’s government. The Guardian revealed – through a leak – the key contents of the report ahead of its intended launch last year, and early this year a redacted version was put out. Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, has briefed foreign governments on the findings and the report clearly influenced Burnham’s decision to appoint Alessandri, but the report itself remains under wraps.
Burnham told Cop31 that Britain was ready to play its full part. “The message I carry here, in my first Cop as prime minister, is that the UK remains determined to reach net zero by 2050 and to work with our partners to build a clean energy future,” he said.
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Ami McCarthy, head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said of Burnham’s speech to Cop: “[It] hit the right notes, but noises offstage about a massive new oilfield and looser rules on electric cars almost drowned him out.
“Appointing the world’s first climate security envoy is a welcome move, but approving Rosebank would only increase the climate threat level to communities in Britain and around the world.
“There are so many elephants in the room, you’d think it’s a zoo. Burnham needs to start bridging the widening chasm between words and deeds on climate action.”
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that he’s delayed the go-ahead for Jackdaw and Rosebank North Sea oil and gas extraction until after the Holborn and St. Pancras by-election – don’t want democracy interfering with Capitalism.Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion Siân Berry. Image by Kelly Hill, Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0.
Responding to reports in The Times this morning, Green MP Siân Berry who holds the party’s Work and Pensions brief said:
“So the solution to young people without education or jobs is to continue demonising young and Disabled people instead of addressing the structural inequalities stacked against them?
“What is the point of a deep review like this if the conclusion is that the Government goes on blaming young people for needing help?
“The Prime Minister must remember that social security is a human right whatever your age.”
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A view of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Headquarters in London, United Kingdom on July 14, 2023. [Raşid Necati Aslım – Anadolu Agency]
BBC News presenters repeatedly put Israel’s position to guests who criticised its conduct in Gaza, but rarely put the Palestinian position to guests who defended Israel, a new study of three years of the corporation’s coverage of the Gaza genocide has found.
The study, BBC: The Would Say Files, was published on 5 November by the media monitoring platform NewsCord and written by Nima Akram. It examined broadcast interviews and written articles from October 2023 to this month.
The researchers searched the subtitles of more than 51,000 BBC News channel programmes for phrases such as ‘Israel would say’, then checked each result by hand to confirm that a presenter was putting one side’s position to a guest from the other side.
The BBC Israel Would Say Files. The full results are in for both broadcast and articles.
Analysis of 267 broadcast interviews between October 2023 and October 2026:
– BBC presenters put Israel's case, in Israel's name, to guests criticising Israel's conduct in Gaza in 252… pic.twitter.com/xZ5kKGvP2v
Of 267 such interviews, BBC presenters put Israel’s case to critics of Israel in 252. They put the Palestinian case to Israel’s defenders in 15. The plainest form, “Israel would say”, was put to critics in 75 interviews, while “Palestinians would say”, or the same phrase naming any Palestinian group, was put to defenders in four.
NewsCord has compiled clips of these exchanges to show the scale of the gap. Its compilation of BBC presenters putting Israel’s case runs to 48 minutes and 12 seconds. The compilation of presenters putting the Palestinian case runs to 2 minutes and 38 seconds.
The study also found that the Palestinian case almost disappeared from BBC interviews after the first weeks of the genocide. Ten of the 15 cases came in the six weeks after 7 October 2023, and only five in the three years that followed. Presenters were still putting Israel’s case to its critics in 2026. NewsCord says this points to an editorial shift, in which the BBC stopped conveying what Palestinians were saying but continued to tell audiences what “Israel would say”.
The same imbalance appeared in the BBC’s written coverage. In 1,618 articles, when the BBC reported criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, it added Israel’s position 49 per cent of the time (1,771 of 3,648 claims). When it reported Israel’s claims, it added a Palestinian or UN position 38 per cent of the time (914 of 2,431), and a Palestinian position alone only 25 per cent of the time.
The gap was wider when the researchers compared official sources. When the authorities in Gaza made a claim against Israel, the BBC added Israel’s response 58 per cent of the time (334 of 575). When the Israeli government or army made a claim, it added a Palestinian or UN position 39 per cent of the time (855 of 2,165).
Looked at article by article, 71 per cent of articles reporting criticism of Israel gave Israel’s position at least once, compared with 53 per cent of articles reporting Israel’s claims that gave a Palestinian or UN position. NewsCord said this means Israel’s claims went entirely unchallenged in almost half of the articles in which it made them.
The study cites a ruling by the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit on an interview broadcast on 3 November 2023. In that ruling, the unit defended putting opposing views to public figures, saying this does not mean an interviewer endorses them. NewsCord’s findings question whether that principle has been applied equally to both sides. The full report, including every broadcast and article in the study, is free to read online.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence on the BBC’s coverage of Palestine. In 2024, a study by the Centre for Media Monitoring found that British media consistently favoured Israeli narratives over Palestinian perspectives in the first month of the genocide. An investigation by journalist Owen Jones, based on interviews with 13 current and former BBC journalists, described how senior figures skewed coverage in Israel’s favour and ignored internal complaints. The BBC also faced criticism for declining to air Gaza: Medics Under Fire, a documentary on attacks on Palestinian healthcare workers. More than 600 media figures signed a letter in 2025 urging the corporation to broadcast it.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objecting.Ed Miliband claims that he and Andy Burnham have reformulated Blair’s triangulation strategy. Their new formulation entails acknowledging that they were wrong on Israel and Palestine but entails doing absolutely nothing about it and continuing exactly the same policies hoping that you’re too stupid to notice.
