Emissions from the Drax plant near Selby on a winter’s day
ACIVISTS occupied the London offices of a lobbyist for Drax power plant today, protesting against the government’s decision to bankroll Britain’s top carbon emitter.
Labour announced yesterday that it will provide subsidies to the wood-burning power plant for at least four more years.
The plant has received billions from taxpayers because it is classed as a source of renewable energy, a claim long disputed by campaigners as it emits the largest amount of carbon in Britain.
Drax has also been fined £25 million by Ofgem for misreporting where its wood is sourced from after a BBC investigation found that it had used wood from environmentally important forests in Canada.
This morning, 20 activists from Axe Drax occupied the offices of 5654 & Company, a corporate affairs consultancy they say lobbies for the power station, with staff forced to leave for the day as a result, according to the campaign group.
Rosie, who only shared her first name, from Axe Drax said: “The decision to back Drax is a disaster for the climate and our energy bills.
“Funding the biggest carbon emitter in the UK in the name of green energy is insane.
“It is time for Labour to dump Drax and their lobbyists, not double down support.
“We are sick of their unaccountable power, while millions of us have our bills hiked.”
Staff on a NHS hospital ward at Ealing Hospital in London, January 18, 2023
Damning report finds migrant workers propping up Britain’s crumbling care system are trapped in awful working conditions
CAMPAIGNERS demanded reform today after a damning report laid bare shocking conditions facing migrant workers propping up Britain’s crumbling care system.
Unison surveyed more than 3,000 people who came to Britain on health and care worker visas to tackle shortages in the sector.
It found that nearly a quarter had paid fees to an employer or an intermediary upfront in return for a job — with dozens handing over more than £20,000.
Many workers, who are from countries including Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Zambia as well as India and the Philippines, were given no shifts when they arrived, or not the number promised.
Around 18 per cent said employers had deducted money from their salaries since arriving, with firms claiming the fees were for expenses such as training and administration.
Pay issues impacted three in 10 migrant care staff, with problems including unpaid travel time between care visits and no sick pay.
More than a quarter were paid below the legal minimum wage of £11.44 an hour.
In one shocking testimony, a worker reported having to sleep on the streets because their employer did not pay them for shadowing other colleagues.
And 9 per cent described the accommodation they were provided with as poor or very poor.
…
Public Services International care organiser Huma Haq said the findings reflect a broader global crisis in care: “The exploitation of migrant care workers in the UK is not an isolated incident but a symptom of a broken system globally where governments have increasingly privatised and underfunded essential care services.
“Governments must step up and take responsibility for providing quality public care services.”
I’m writing about someone without naming him or her. It might be worth using these metrics with anyone, see if they’re capable and adjusted?
She is easily manipulated because: She is not able to appreciate anyone else’s perspective and is therefore incapable of empathy. She can’t distinguish her own interests from the interests and responsibilities of her office or position.
The second issue may derive from the first: if you haven’t progressed from – or regressed to – infantile self-interest then there are no responsibilities and interests other than your own. Rich people are taught to only be concerned for themselves.
…
12 Feb 2025
Since writing this yesterday I’ve realised that this might also apply to myself [edit: i.e. “… can’t distinguish her own interests from the interests and responsibilities of her office or position.”] I was appointed to a position without my knowledge or consent in the early 90s. Some would say that I wasn’t appointed and that it was instead a recognition. Soon later I went off grid and disappeared. My attitude is that since I didn’t have an option in it, FU you’re stuck with me and I’ll do as I like which in practice means I had chosen my path and I continue. Seniority appears to apply to this position and to me. I’m surprised that some people respect this position while many others seem to rebel against it and me, use their positions to try to entrap and persecute me. [14/2/25 Not so much now, used to happen so much when Bliar was PM and into late 00s.] Life is interesting and strange and then you die.
Displaced Palestinian children sit on a sand mound overlooking tents set up amid destroyed buildings in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on February 6, 2025. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)
“Palestine is not just an idea—it is a place. It is a homeland to the Palestinian people,” the coalition wrote.
A coalition of over 100 organizations on Monday forcefully denounced U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and take over the coastal enclave recently decimated by an Israeli military campaign conducted with American weapons.
Led by A New Policy—a group founded by Biden administration officials who resigned in protest—and the Quaker organization Friends Committee on National Legislation, the coalition said that “we are deeply alarmed by President Trump’s recent statements, tracing them back to January 25, just days after the Republican returned to power.
“We, the undersigned organizations, decry and oppose any effort or initiative, and any calls for, the forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, and support the joint statement of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab League that similarly rejected any such steps, the coalition wrote, citing the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The letter highlights the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the 1940s during the formation of the modern state of Israel, which Palestinians call the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe; that since 2006, Gaza “has been in a state of siege,” with residents enduring repeated bombardment and restrictions on necessities; and that since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, they have faced what various experts have found to be a plausible case of genocide, with over 48,000 people killed.
“Through this all, the Palestinians in Gaza have stood with remarkable dignity and perseverance, insisting throughout the immense suffering and loss that they will never abandon their homeland,” the letter continues, echoing recent remarks from residents. “We are deeply concerned by clear statements of intent from Israeli government officials over the past year concerning the creation of new Israeli settlements within the Gaza Strip, which further reinforce the intent of ethnic cleansing.”
“The United States has no right to dictate to the Palestinian people in Gaza to leave, and direct other countries to participate in their displacement. We are also aware that even a temporary external displacement could be used by Israel to enact permanent exile,” the letter says. “While we agree that the short and medium-term humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza may be difficult to meet given the nearly complete destruction that Israel has wrought, if the necessary services cannot be provided in Gaza, the people of Gaza must be able to access them elsewhere within the historic borders of Palestine and must be able to return.”
The coalition also expressed alarm over “an uptick in settler violence” and deadly Israel Defense Forces operations in the illegally occupied West Bank, writing that “these actions are part and parcel of a strategy that seeks to make not just Gaza, but all Palestinian areas across historic Palestine, unlivable for the Palestinian people, and are thus contributory to a process of ethnic cleansing.”
“Palestine is not just an idea—it is a place. It is a homeland to the Palestinian people,” the groups stressed. “To participate in, facilitate, or endorse their removal from it would violate every precept of international law, devastate the rules-based international order that protects us all, do irreversible harm to America’s global influence, and be an act of unconscionable immorality.”
The letter concludes with a poem from Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish, who wrote:
My country is not a suitcase I am not a traveler I am the lover and the land is the beloved. The archaeologist is busy analyzing stones. In the rubble of legends he searches for his own eyes to show that I am a sightless vagrant on the road with not one letter in civilization’s alphabet. Meanwhile in my own time I plant my trees. I sing of my love.
In addition to the coalition leaders, signatories to the letter include ActionAid USA, CodePink, Democracy for the Arab World Now, Demand Progress Education Fund, Democratic Socialists of America, IfNotNow Movement, Just Foreign Policy, Madre, National Iranian American Council, Oil Change International, Peace Action, Progressive Democrats of America, and September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
The letter came amid a fresh wave of alarm over Trump’s latest comments about Gaza and Palestinians, which aired Monday morning on “Fox & Friends.” He said: “We’ll build safe communities a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is. In the meantime, I would own this—think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land.”
Asked by Fox News‘ Bret Baier whether Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza, the president said, “No, they wouldn’t.”
The letter also came as Hamas on Monday suspended its next planned release of hostages taken in October 2023, citing Israel’s deadly violations of a fragile cease-fire deal that took effect last month.
The mother of 5-year-old Neda Muhammed al-Amudi, who was killed in the Israeli army’s January 27, 2025 attack on a horse carriage in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp—a violation of the cease-fire with Hamas—mourns over her body at Awda Hospital in Gaza City, Palestine. (Photo: Fadel A. A. Almaghari/Anadolu via Getty Images.
One group says that Israeli forces have killed at least 110 Palestinians since the cease-fire took effect last month. Among the victims are multiple children, including a 5-year-old girl.
Hamas on Monday announced the suspension of its next planned release of hostages kidnapped during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, accusing that country of violating the fragile cease-fire agreement it signed last month.
Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades—Hamas’ armed wing— said in a statement that hostages will “remain in place until the occupying entity complies with past obligations and compensates retroactively.”
“Over the past three weeks, the resistance leadership monitored the enemy’s violations and their noncompliance with the terms of the agreement,” Obeida explained. “These violations include delaying the return of displaced persons to northern Gaza, targeting them with shelling and gunfire in various areas of the Gaza Strip, and failing to allow the entry of relief materials in all forms as agreed upon. Meanwhile, the resistance has fulfilled all its obligations.”
Since the cease-fire took effect on January 19, Israeli forces have bombed and shot civilians in Gaza, killing at least 110 Palestinians, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Palestinian civilians killed over the past few weeks reportedly include multiple children—one of them a 5-year-old girl—and an elderly woman.
“Israel continues to commit genocide in the Gaza Strip by denying Palestinians the basic necessities for survival and imposing conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction,” the group alleged on Friday.
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor continued:
Since the cease-fire, only a handful of injured and ill Palestinians from Gaza have been permitted to travel abroad for treatment, leaving thousands at risk of death due to Israel’s ongoing denial of their right to receive treatment. In addition to ensuring a severe shortage of specialized medical personnel, generators, fuel, and oxygen stations, Israel has obstructed the rehabilitation of destroyed hospitals and blocked the entry of medical supplies, medications, and equipment.
Further, in addition to blocking equipment needed for maintenance and restoration, the ongoing and illegal restrictions by Israel are preventing the entry of temporary shelters, tents, and basic supplies for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians whose homes it has destroyed…
Israel is deliberately obstructing the restoration of essential infrastructure, including water and sewage systems, endangering civilian lives and worsening environmental and health crises.
This, after over 15 months of Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing in Gaza and around 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and international humanitarian agencies.
U.S. President Donald Trump—whose proposal for an American takeover and redevelopment of the Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East” has sparked international condemnation—said Monday that the cease-fire should end, letting “all hell break loose,” if all the remaining 40 or so Israeli and international hostages are not released by noon on Saturday.
The Qassam Brigades on Monday reaffirmed Hamas’ “commitment to the terms of the agreement as long as the occupation adheres to them.”
