As I have already noted today, The Times has chosen to question whether Chris Packham is really autistic, despite the fact that he has a diagnosis saying that he is. I have already discussed some aspects of this issue. I also think it is worth asking why they have done this.
I stress that question because I cannot know the motivation of those involved. I have no access to the editorial discussions at The Times, and I am not suggesting that I do. But newspapers make choices. They decide whom to feature, what questions to ask, which doubts to amplify and what associations they want their readers to make. So asking why Chris Packham has become a target is entirely reasonable.
There are, I think, several possible explanations, and they obviously overlap, creating a credible explanation as a consequence.
The first is that Chris Packham is becoming an important figure in British public life. He is no longer simply a television presenter who talks about wildlife. Increasingly, he appears to be assuming the mantle that Sir David Attenborough wore for decades.
That matters. Attenborough acquired authority because millions of people trusted him. He could talk about the destruction of the natural world in a way that politicians could not because people did not think of him as a politician. They thought of him as someone who knew what he was talking about.
Packham has some of that authority, but there is an important difference. He is more explicitly political. He does not simply say that a species is disappearing or that an ecosystem is under threat. He asks why that is happening, who is responsible and what we should do about it. That makes him potentially threatening to some powerful interests.
Packham is a prominent advocate of action on climate change. He challenges the fossil fuel economy. He questions environmentally destructive forms of agriculture. He supports environmental protest. More broadly, he challenges the idea that the pursuit of profit should take priority over the survival of the ecosystems on which human beings depend.
…
Chris Packham’s diagnosis tells us nothing about whether he is right about climate change. The evidence on climate change stands or falls on its own merits. If The Times, or anyone else, disagrees with what Packham says about the climate, biodiversity, fossil fuels or the environment, there is an obvious response available to them. They should challenge his arguments. But what they should not do is challenge who he is, or seek to undermine him, and others, by doing so. That is not just unethical, it provokes prejudice to support profit at cost to many.
We should not be surprised that profit is promoted at cost to many. That is what extractive capitalism does. That is not a flaw in its design. It is what it is designed to do. The well-being of millions and maybe billions of people have been sacrificed to that false god over decades and maybe centuries. But should Chris Packham be added to that list, to be discarded by being discredited because he asks awkward questions? I think not. And that is why this case matters.
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Israeli forces demolish two Palestinian-owned houses using heavy machinery on the grounds that they were built without permits in the town of Anzah, south of Jenin in West Bank, Palestine, on July 27, 2026. [Nedal Eshtayah – Anadolu Agency]
About 12,360 settlement units have been approved in the occupied West Bank this year, while nearly 7,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from more than 260 communities, Palestinian Land Authority head Alaa Al-Tamimi said.
Speaking to broadcaster Cairo News on Tuesday evening, Tamimi said briefings given by UN envoy at the UN Security Council today were important in exposing what he described as Israeli crimes in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, as well as ongoing crimes in the Gaza Strip.
He said that since the fragile ceasefire in Gaza came into effect, more than 1,200 Palestinians had been killed, including women and children, while Israeli bombardment and other attacks had continued.
“During 2026 alone, the establishment of 12,360 settlement units was announced,” he said.
Tamimi also described attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank as “settler terrorism”, saying their aim was to forcibly displace Palestinians from their communities.
“The number of Palestinian communities that have been displaced has risen to more than 260, with more than or nearly 7,000 Palestinians displaced during 2026,” he said.
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Israeli forces conduct a raid, taking extensive security measures on August 09, 2026 in Nablus, West Bank, Palestine. [Nedal Eshtayah – Anadolu Agency]
UN officials said Tuesday that the occupied West Bank has reached a critical “breaking point,” citing a record surge in violence by Israeli occupiers and a systematic unraveling of Palestinian statehood, Anadolu reports.
“Humanitarian organizations cannot create the political conditions that children need to be safe,” UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hannan Sulieman told the Security Council. “That responsibility rests with member states who have the power to change them.”
She presented four urgent requests to the international community: prioritizing the protection of children by ending administrative detention, halting forced displacements through diplomatic pressure, ensuring safe access to schools and hospitals, and allowing vital humanitarian supplies to move without delay.
Sulieman reported a harrowing toll on minors, noting that 174 Palestinian children have been verified killed in the occupied West Bank since January 2024. “That is more than one child every week,” she noted.
She revealed that at least 355 Palestinian children are being held in military detention, the highest in eight years, with nearly half detained without charge or trial.
Systematic displacement
Deputy Special Coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov echoed the alarm, describing the situation as an emergency requiring immediate action to prevent de facto annexation. He said that in 2026, dozens of Palestinians have been killed and approximately 3,800 displaced due to demolitions, evictions and attacks by occupiers.
“Settler violence has reached unprecedented levels,” Alakbarov emphasized, citing more than 1,400 documented incidents this year affecting 260 communities. He warned of a clear pattern where Palestinian populations are forcibly removed from their villages before occupiers seize the vacated land. The official noted that for the first time, land was explicitly seized in “Area A” to build infrastructure for occupiers.
Fiscal, political instability
Alakbarov also highlighted the acute fiscal crisis facing the Palestinian Authority (PA), which reportedly lacks $6 billion in clearance revenues withheld by Israeli authorities. Amid the turmoil, he welcomed preparations for legislative elections scheduled for Nov. 28.
Alakbarov concluded that they are “interconnected steps, not isolated developments,” aimed at weakening Palestinian governance.
He said if the situation continues to unravel, it will undermine implementation of resolution 2803 (2025) and erode the prospects for realizing a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace based on the two-state solution, urging an immediate “and in full” implementation of resolution 2803, together with the New York Declaration.
Resolution 2803 endorses a peace plan proposed by US President Donald Trump for the Gaza Strip and a temporary international force in the enclave following two years of war.
Since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023, Israeli forces and occupiers have escalated attacks in the West Bank, killing more than 1,183 Palestinians, injuring 13,000 and arresting nearly 25,000, according to Palestinian figures.
Palestinians warn that the escalation is part of Israeli efforts to impose facts on the ground, paving the way for annexation of the occupied West Bank and undermining the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders under relevant UN resolutions.
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UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.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.
Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage speaking at a Reform UK press conference on 3 June 2024. Credit: Reform UK / YouTube
The Reform UK leader is a vocal opponent of net zero policies, and has questioned the basis of established climate science.
Pro-Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage has announced that he will be standing to be an MP at the upcoming general election and will be replacing Richard Tice as leader of the populist party Reform UK.
Farage, who says that he hopes to become “the voice of opposition” in Parliament, has long been a vocal opponent of climate action and a critic of climate science – campaigning for a referendum on the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target.
When he was the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the party’s 2015 and 2017 election manifestos pledged to rip up green measures, repeal the UK’s Climate Change Act, withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement – the flagship deal to tackle global emissions – and support fossil fuel extraction.
These reflected Farage’s personal views on climate action. In 2015, he told the libertarian website Spiked: “I think wind energy is the biggest collective economic insanity I’ve seen in my entire life. I’ve never seen anything more stupid, more illogical, or more irrational.”
Farage is a presenter on GB News, the right-wing broadcaster that has regularly provided a platform to climate science denial and attacks on green reforms since it launched in June 2021.
Speaking on GB News in August 2021, Farage said that he was “very much an environmentalist” and that he couldn’t “abide things like plastics in our seas, pollution in our rivers.” However, on the issue of climate change, he added: “What annoys me though, is this complete obsession with carbon dioxide almost to the exclusion of everything else, the alarmism that comes with it, based on dodgy predictions and science.”
The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has stated it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”, while scientists at NASA have found that the last 10 years were the hottest on record. Earth’s average surface temperature in 2023 was the warmest since records began in 1880.
The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.
Farage has been a vocal critic of net zero. He has claimed that the policy is an “act of self harm” and has called for it to be scrapped.
He has said: “It will not bring economic benefits. It will make everybody a whole lot poorer. And yet the lemmings in Parliament are taking us towards an economic cliff,” adding: “I can’t think of an issue on which the public and politicians are more divided.”
In fact, politicians are markedly less in favour of climate action than the general public. New polling by YouGov for the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has shown that almost two-thirds (62 percent) of the public believe the best way to achieve energy security is to reduce the use of fossil fuels and instead expand the use of renewable energy, compared to 48 percent of MPs.
The Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on its net zero policies, has estimated that the cost of achieving net zero will be less than 1 percent of UK GDP, while the government independent spending watchdog – the Office for Budget Responsibility – has said that, “the costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.
Farage has also claimed that, “If green technology is going to work, it ought to work without ordinary folk subsidising it” – referring to the government grants and investment dedicated to developing clean energy sources. The UK government has given £20 billion more in support to fossil fuel producers than their renewable energy peers since 2015.
Farage has also spread conspiracy theories about anti-pollution measures being used to control people’s lives.
In a video posted on Twitter, he argued that Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s calls to reduce air pollution by cutting car engine use would pave the way to “climate lockdowns”.
He said: “Mark my words this isn’t going to end with 20mph zones and low-traffic neighbourhoods. No no. This is the beginning of climate lockdowns. We will have, in years to come, days where we’re told we can’t drive, we can’t do this, you can’t do that while Sadiq Khan is leading the way. Remember you heard it here first. Climate lockdowns.”
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue has highlighted how climate lockdown claims are part of “a conspiratorial narrative which claims that global elites are using climate change as a pretext to restrict individual freedoms and civil liberties.”
Farage and Reform UK
Farage used his announcement to state his belief that Labour will win the general election, which will be held on 4 July, and that the Conservative Party has “crushed itself”. With the Tories predicted to lose in a landslide, Farage appears to believe that he can lead a new right-wing movement.
The Reform leader was already a key figure in the party prior to today’s announcement, effectively owning the party as well as serving as its president. Reform operates as a private company without a democratic structure, so Farage’s majority shareholding meant that could have appointed himself as leader at any time.
Despite Farage failing to be elected as an MP when he stood in seven previous general elections, and Reform only winning two councillors in May’s local elections, polls indicate that Farage may succeed in becoming the MP for Clacton.
If this is the case, Farage will be advocating in Parliament for the anti-climate policies that have been proposed by his party.
Reform has called for the UK’s net zero emissions target to be scrapped, and has proposed holding a referendum on the policy – a campaign launched by Farage in 2022.
The party’s policy agenda states that: “Westminster’s net zero plans send our jobs and money overseas, making us net poorer and net colder”, adding that net zero policies are “net stupid”.
The party’s former leader Tice, who will now become its chairman, is a prominent climate science denier. Tice has claimed that “there is no climate crisis”, and has also expressed the view that “CO2 isn’t a poison. It’s plant food”.
Of the £2.5 million that Reform UK has received in donations since the 2019 election, around 92 percent (£2.3 million) of that income has been given by fossil fuel interests, polluting industries, or climate science deniers.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
