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A protester seen with a “Stop Arming Israel” placard during the demonstration. Tens of thousands of people marched in Berlin under the slogans “All Eyes on Gaza” and “Stop the Genocide,” demanding a ceasefire, peace talks, and an end to German arms exports to Israel, on 27 September 2025 [Vasily Krestyaninov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]
A group of activists chained themselves to railway tracks at the Port of Hamburg in Germany to protest the government’s arms exports to Israel and draw attention to civilian suffering in Gaza, Anadolu reports.
Around 40 demonstrators took part in the action on Friday, blocking the rail line between the Eurogate and Burchardkai container terminals. The group prevented freight transport by occupying the tracks for several hours.
Jule Fink, a spokesperson for the activists’ group, said they took part in civil disobedience to show solidarity with Palestine.
“It is clear that the Israeli government has been committing war crimes in Palestine for a long time. This is genocide, and the German government is actively complicit. Germany continues exporting weapons to Israel through its ports. Why do the people of Hamburg allow their port to be used for arms shipments?” she said.
Due to safety concerns, the 15,000-volt power lines above the tracks were grounded during the protest.
Some port workers showed support for the demonstration. The protest was ended by police officers who carried the activists off the tracks one by one.
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Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.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.Vote Labour for Genocide.
In this photo illustration, the age-restriction warning screen of the website PornHub is displayed on two digital screens, in London, England [Leon Neal/Getty Images]
The Online Safety Act, sold as child protection, now hides Gaza’s suffering, silences dissent and exports censorship to the world.
The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act was meant to keep children safe. Instead, it is keeping the public uninformed. Within days of the law taking effect in late July 2025, X (formerly Twitter) started hiding videos of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza from UK timelines behind content warnings and age barriers. A law sold as safeguarding has become one of the most effective censorship tools Britain has ever built. What is unfolding is no accident. It is the result of legislation that weaponises child-protection rhetoric to normalise censorship, identity verification and online surveillance.
The roots of Britain’s online censorship crisis go back almost a decade, to MindGeek, now rebranded as Aylo, the scandal-ridden company behind Pornhub. This tax-dodging, exploitative porn empire worked closely with the UK government to develop an age-verification system called AgeID, a plan that would have effectively handed Aylo a monopoly over legal adult content by making smaller competitors pay or perish. Public backlash killed AgeID in 2019, but the idea survived. Once one democracy entertained the notion that access to online content should be gated by identity checks, the precedent was set. The Digital Economy Act 2017 laid the groundwork, and the Online Safety Act 2023 made it law. Today, several European Union states, including France and Germany, are exploring similar legislation, each cloaked in the same rhetoric of “protecting children”. This is not conspiracy; it is the natural convergence of corporate capture and state control, wrapped in the moral language of child safety.
The Online Safety Act empowers Ofcom to police almost every corner of the internet, from social media and search engines to adult content platforms, under threat of fines of up to 18 million pounds ($24m) or 10 percent of global revenue. Platforms can be designated as “Category 1” services, triggering the harshest rules, including mandatory age verification, identity checks for contributors and the removal of vaguely defined “harmful” material. Wikipedia now faces this exact threat. In August 2025, the High Court dismissed the Wikimedia Foundation’s challenge to the categorisation rules, clearing the way for Ofcom to treat it as a high-risk platform. The foundation has warned that compliance would force it to censor vital information and endanger volunteer editors by linking their real identities to their writing. If it refuses, the UK could, in theory, be legally empowered to block access altogether, a breathtaking example of how “child protection” becomes a tool for information control. Already, Ofcom has opened multiple investigations into major porn sites and social networks over alleged non-compliance. The law’s chilling effect is no longer hypothetical; it is operational.
Age-verification systems are fundamentally incompatible with privacy and security, in fact, any id-verification system should immediately raise suspicion. The July 25 breach of the Tea dating app, with thousands of photos and over 13,000 sensitive ID documents leaked and circulated on 4chan, or the even more recent Discord data breach exposing over 70 thousand government ID documents after a third-part service was hacked, proved the point.
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Strip away the child-protection rhetoric, and the Online Safety Act’s true function becomes clear: it builds the infrastructure for mass content control and population surveillance. Once these systems exist, expanding them is easy. We have seen this logic before. Anti-terror laws morphed into instruments for policing dissent; now “child safety” provides cover for the same authoritarian creep. The EU is already entertaining proposals that would mandate chat-scanning and weaken encryption, promising such measures will be used only against abusers, until, inevitably, they are not. The immediate consequences in the UK – restricted Gaza footage, threatened access to Wikipedia, censored protest videos- are not glitches. They are previews of a digital order built on control. What is at stake is not just privacy but democracy itself, the right to speak, to know and to dissent without being verified first.
In a letter to the chancellor, more than 60 groups and companies said slashing funding for energy-efficient homes would be a damaging ‘short-term fix’. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Energy firms and charities urge chancellor to avoid short-term fix that could also harm low-income households
Rachel Reeves has been told that cutting funding for home insulation at the budget would risk the UK’s climate goals and hurt low-income households in a joint intervention by energy firms, fuel poverty charities and environmental groups.
In a letter to the chancellor, more than 60 groups and companies urged Reeves not to take such a damaging “short-term fix” to slash funding for more energy-efficient homes to pay for a reduction in energy bills.
The Guardian revealed this week that Reeves is finalising a multibillion-pound energy support package that is likely to cut green levies paying for energy efficiency as she looks to save as much as £170 from the average bill.
In particular, the Treasury has been looking at cutting or getting rid of the energy company obligation (ECO), which pays to improve energy efficiency for low-income and vulnerable households.
In their letter, the dozens of organisations – from Age UK and Citizens Advice to Friends of the Earth – called for the Treasury to reconsider cuts to the ECO programme, saying it would “call into question the ability to meet both the UK’s fuel poverty and carbon budget targets”. They also warned that it was putting thousands of jobs at risk in the £20bn energy efficiency industry and supply chain.
CORRIDOR care is a “crisis in plain sight” with elderly patients watching others die while themselves waiting to be helped for days on end, a leading charity warned today.
A patient gave a first-hand account likening hospital corridor care to war films with “queues of stretchers and people suffering” in a new report by Age UK.
The charity raised concerns that poor quality care “is now almost expected” in some A&E departments.
It warned the situation could get worse as the NHS heads into winter and urged ministers to produce a plan to end long A&E waits and corridor care, with specific deadlines and milestones.
Royal College of Nursing general secretary Professor Nicola Ranger said: “Corridor care is a moral stain on our health service and this report is yet more evidence of its devastating consequences.
“The reality is nursing staff and patients are being set up to fail by a system that simply isn’t working.”
Then chairman of the John Lewis partnership Charlie Mayfield, October 6, 2015
Ex-John Lewis boss calls for action against Britain’s ‘sick note culture’ as unions fear proposals target disabled
UNIONS raised fears over disabled people facing benefit cuts for not taking so-called “personal responsibility” to return to work today.
The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union said that it has “real concerns about proposals that would impose conditionality on workers for health issues” following the publication of a major review on how to keep people in work.
Other unions stressed that bosses should be doing more to keep people with disabilities in jobs and “not simply sending them to the dole queues as shirking their responsibilities.”
Former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield’s report urged a reduced reliance on GP sick notes amid an “enormous” cost to employers from ill health among workers.
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PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “We all want to tackle workplace ill-health and there are some interesting proposals which now require wider consultation — not just with employers but vitally with trade unions representing workers, and those who claim benefits.
“We have real concerns about proposals that would impose conditionality on workers for health issues.
“Rising ill-health in the UK has coincided with lengthening NHS waiting lists, a worsening housing crisis and a rise in poverty. Tackling these issues will be essential to improving public health.
Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.
