PLANS to allow water firms to increase bills yet again, despite decades of mismanagement and ongoing pollution, were condemned by campaigners today.
Five firms are set to raise charges by up to 5 per cent above the limits initially set by regulator Ofwat.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) confirmed that Anglian Water, Northumbrian Water, South East Water, Southern Water and Wessex Water have been permitted to hike their tariffs following an appeal.
The firms argued that Ofwat’s original decision left them unable to meet the regulatory requirements set out for them.
It follows a ruling in December, in which Southern had already been allowed to increase bills by 53 per cent over the next five years.
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Kirstin Baker, who chaired the independent group of experts appointed by the CMA to consider the price controls, said that the request for significant bill increases were “largely unjustified.”
River Action CEO James Wallace said: “Once again, water bill payers are forced to shoulder the cost of decades of failure.
“Millions of households in England face higher bills while rivers continue to suffer from mismanagement by privatised water companies.
April 2023 Surfers Against Sewage and Extinction Rebellion protests in St Agnes, Perranporth, Truro and Charlestown which unveiled spoof Blue Plaques to the MPs and Conservative Government who allowed raw sewage to be dumped in the sea (Image: Surfers Against Sewage)
Federal law enforcement agents stand guard as they are confronted by community members and activists for reportedly shooting a woman in the Brighton Park neighborhood on October 4, 2025 in Broadview, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
WGN says it “is aware of this situation, and we are actively gathering the facts related to it.”
A longtime TV news producer at Chicago-based station WGN on Friday was forcefully pinned to the ground and then hauled off in an unmarked van by masked federal agents.
As reported by the Chicago Tribune, WGN producer Debbie Brockman was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during a law enforcement action in the city’s Lincoln Square neighborhood on Friday morning, purportedly on the grounds that she was obstructing their work.
Video of the arrest taken by an onlooker showed ICE agents handcuffing Brockman after they forced her to lie on her stomach. As the agents were detaining her, Brockman told the onlooker her name and asked him to let her employer, WGN, know what had happened to her.
She was then placed into an unmarked silver van and taken away to an unknown location, according to the Tribune.
BREAKING: Masked Border Patrol agents aggressively arrested WGN video producer Debbie Brockman in Lincoln Square Friday morning, supposedly for "obstructing justice." (Video via Josh Thomas on Facebook) pic.twitter.com/oirNviFCww
In a statement given to the Tribune, WGN said that it “is aware of this situation, and we are actively gathering the facts related to it.”
Josh Thomas, a local resident who witnessed the arrest, told the Tribune that he walked out of the door of his condominium and saw Brockman “laying on the ground in the street and they’re wrestling with her, trying to get her hands behind her back.”
“They said they were detaining her for obstruction,” Thomas added. “She said, ‘I didn’t obstruct.‘”
The arrest of Brockman comes one day after a judge responded to ICE agents’ recent violence in suburban Broadview by barring all federal officials in the Northern District of Illinois from using riot weapons “on members of the press, protestors, or religious practitioners who are not posing an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer or others.”
Federal immigration officials have been employing increasingly aggressive and violent tactics in the Chicago area in recent weeks, including attacking a journalist and a protesting priest with pepper balls outside the Broadview ICE facility; slamming a congressional candidate to the ground; dragging US citizens, including children, out of their homes during a raid in the middle of the night; and fatally shooting a man during a traffic stop.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Crowds gather in downtown Chicago for an emergency rally, waving flags and holding signs to oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement and National Guard presence on October 8, 2025. (Photo by Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The rule of law is falling apart, so we all need to do something to make sure that it doesn’t keep going in this direction.”
President Donald Trump and his allies have been relentlessly pushing the narrative that the aim of the White House’s deployment of federal immigration agents and hundreds of National Guard members to Chicago is to protect the public in what Trump has called “a war zone.”
But hundreds of people who marched through the city on Wednesday evening were clear about who is wreaking havoc in their communities.
“No ICE, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!” residents of the nation’s third-largest city chanted, demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents leave Chicago and its surrounding suburbs.
Hundreds are marching in downtown Chicago to protest the deployment of National Guard troops and ICE enforcement operations in the city. pic.twitter.com/k23xNvHHOx
Signs at the rally read, “ICE Is Trump’s Gestapo,” “Stop ripping families apart,” and “They blame immigrants so you won’t blame billionaires.”
The demonstration was organized soon after about 300 troops with the Illinois National Guard and 200 Texas National Guard members arrived in the city over the vehement objections of Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker, Democrats who have condemned Trump for deploying masked, armed ICE agents to the city for the past month.
While Trump has claimed that “Operation Midway Blitz” is aimed at protecting the public from undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, US citizens have been targeted in raids and with violence perpetrated by immigration agents, who have shot pepper balls at a priest and a journalist, fatally shot a man during a traffic stop, and “deliberately” attacked peaceful protesters, according to a lawsuit filed this week.
The president has continued pushing the claim that protesters and immigrants are responsible for the chaos unfolding in Chicago and has suggested he could invoke the Insurrection Act, empowering him to order a larger military force to the city, if court cases filed against the administration halt the deployment of the National Guard.
At the protest Wednesday, one man toldSky News he is “concerned the US is slipping away from democracy to authoritarianism.”
Hundreds of people in downtown Chicago are marching to protest the Trump administration's deployment of National Guard troops and immigration authorities here.
Joely King, who is running to represent Illinois’ 1st Congressional District, toldThe Columbia Chronicle that attending the protest was “like standing up to a bully.”
“The thing with authoritarians, which is what we’re dealing with with the Trump administration, is that they need people to comply in advance to have any power, because it really is a weak movement, it does not support the people,” King said. “So showing up and saying no, you don’t actually have the popular support, you don’t have the power—it shows them that we will not give them what they want and just let them roll us over.”
Dozens of people also gathered Wednesday in “free speech zones” that have been designated outside the ICE facility in Broadview where agents have been taking people they’ve detained, and more assembled for a candlelight vigil in Joliet, where Texas troops were stationed before heading to Broadview.
“To people who are scared, who are detained, we are fighting for you,” Meredith Shoemaker, a 19-year-old Loyola University Chicago student who marched downtown, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “We don’t support what is happening.”
On Thursday, Judge April M. Perry in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois heard arguments for and against the National Guard deployment. Illinois officials filed a lawsuit to block the forces from coming to Chicago—a move that prompted Trump to say that Pritzker should be imprisoned for “failing to protect ICE officers.”
Perry, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, declined to rule on the case earlier this week, saying she wanted to hear arguments in a hearing.
At the march on Wednesday evening, another Chicago resident, Jinah Yun-Mitchell, told the Sun-Times that many in the city are determined to “stand up for people that can’t stand up for themselves” as Trump intensifies Operation Midway Blitz, in which more than 1,000 people have been arrested so far.
“The rule of law is falling apart,“ said Yun-Mitchell, ”so we all need to do something to make sure that it doesn’t keep going in this direction.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
In the mid-2000s, soon after becoming Conservative leader, David Cameron hugged a husky on a trip to the Arctic, in what was widely described as an attempt to “detoxify” the Tory brand. Eighteen years later, Kemi Badenoch has promised to scrap the law that once made that rebranding credible.
Her announcement that the Conservatives will repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act if they win the next general election has the potential to be a major own goal – politically, environmentally and economically.
To understand why, we need to remember how the Climate Change Act came about. The bill was put forward by the Labour government of Gordon Brown, but it had enthusiastic support from the Conservative opposition, which tabled several amendments to strengthen it. Cameron had concluded that green policies were a good way to modernise his party and lead it back into power.
It worked, both for Cameron, who became prime minister in 2010, and for UK climate policy, which has enjoyed a unique period of consensus and stability. Over seven governments, multiple economic crises, Brexit, COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, there has been clarity about Britain’s climate change objectives. Policies were chopped and changed, often to the frustration of investors, but the institutional framework was stable and widely appreciated.
The Climate Change Act gives the UK a statutory long-term emissions target – initially an 80% cut from 1990 levels by 2050, strengthened to net zero by 2050 by Theresa May, another Tory prime minister.
Progress is managed through a series of five-year carbon budgets, legislated 12 years in advance and monitored by a powerful independent body, the Climate Change Committee (CCC). For much of its existence, the CCC has been chaired by yet another environmentally-minded Tory, Lord Deben (John Gummer). It is this framework the Conservatives now say they want to dismantle.
Husky hugger David Cameron visits Svalbard, Norway, in 2008. Andrew Parsons / PA
Yet the Climate Change Act has delivered, both in terms of process and substance. Indeed, the UK model has been emulated around the world. Nearly 60 countries have UK-style climate change laws and over 20 countries have CCC-style advisory bodies, cementing the UK’s position as a climate leader.
The act gives the UK a steady institutional rhythm. Relevant businesses and other organisations know the formal set pieces, such as the CCC’s annual report to parliament, and can time their interventions accordingly.
When colleagues and I interviewed people from business and civil society about the act a few years ago, they emphasised the predictable process, the clear rules on accountability and the evidence-based discourse it has enabled. This all reduces uncertainty and enables long-term planning.
Importantly, the Climate Change Act has delivered environmentally too. Compared to 1990, UK greenhouse gas emissions are down by 50%. The UK economy now uses three times less carbon per unit of economic output than in 1990. Emissions are at their lowest level since 1872.
This trend started before the act, but it was helped and accelerated by it. This is perhaps most noticeable in the radical transformation of the electricity sector: coal has been completely phased out, while offshore wind and other renewables have flourished.
Most people want climate action
Voters value this progress more than politicians appreciate. A University of Oxford survey found that internationally public support for climate action is almost twice as high as policymakers assume. In the UK, three out of four people are fairly or very concerned about climate change.
Badenoch’s announcement comes just as households are starting to reap the financial benefits of clean technology. Colleagues and I have estimated that four out of five UK households, particularly those owning a car, would be better off if net zero was achieved. The typical savings are £100-£380 per household and year.
It is true that households do not yet see the benefits of renewables on their energy bills. We are still paying for the high costs of early investments in clean power, before technology and sheer scale brought the price down.
Successive governments have chosen to recoup these learning costs through electricity bills, rather than general taxation, which would have been easier on most households. But recent analysis suggests renewables are now cutting electricity prices by up to a quarter.
The policy uncertainty generated by the Tory announcement and similar pronouncements by Reform UK will eventually find its way into the risk premiums for investors, though for the time being this effect is still small.
But the reputational damage is immediate. Undoing the act would signal that the UK no longer values the long-term stability that has driven clean investment and made its climate policy admired around the world.
Climate policy requires debate. Deeply political choices need to be made about different decarbonisation strategies, how to pay for necessary investments or the role of controversial technologies like nuclear energy. The past 17 years have shown that these debates are best had within an agreed framework, with support from all major parties. That is what the Climate Change Act provides.
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 dustNigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
To keep global warming below 1.5°C, greenhouse gas emissions had to peak no later than 2025. That was a key finding of the IPCC’s most recent major report on the topic, published a few years ago. Yet when we surveyed UK MPs and members of the public in four countries, fewer than 15% could identify this deadline correctly.
This matters. If politicians and voters underestimate how urgently we have to fight climate change, they are less likely to back the tough policies needed. Instead, they risk assuming we have more time, all while climate change targets slip further out of reach.
Our study, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, found that across Britain, Canada, Chile and Germany, about one-third of respondents thought emissions only had to peak by 2040 or later. In the UK, we also surveyed MPs. We found Labour politicians were more likely than Conservatives to answer correctly, but overall awareness was low in both groups.
Among the public, younger people, those worried about climate change, and those less prone to believing conspiracy theories were the most likely to know the right answer. But overall, the pattern was clear: most people – and most MPs – don’t grasp the urgency of the situation.
The distribution of responses was remarkably similar across the four countries. Kenny and Geese (2025)
Why awareness matters
Knowing the scientific facts does not automatically spur action. But political priorities are shaped by what MPs or their constituents consider as urgent (MPs sometimes cite a lack of urgency from constituents as an excuse for not taking climate actions even when they are concerned about it).
If neither MPs nor their voters realise how pressing the problem is, climate change risks being overlooked in favour of other issues. That MPs were largely not aware that much more immediate action was required may help explain why, by mid-2024, the UK was already behind the pace required to meet its own emissions reduction targets.
Partisan divides reinforce the problem. In our survey, 2019 Labour voters were more likely to know the correct 2025 deadline than those who voted Conservative. Political differences in knowledge were greater than the gap between MPs and the public, suggesting that party identity or political ideology, not just parliamentary expertise, is a factor in level of awareness.
Many of those Conservative MPs were replaced by new Labour MPs in the 2024 election, so perhaps a repeat survey today would show greater awareness of climate change among parliamentarians. But even Labour MPs are still not very likely to appreciate the urgency.
Labour-Tory was a bigger divide than public-politician. Kenny and Geese (2025)
The communication challenge
The IPCC and other big institutions produce authoritative reports, but they are not always written in a manner accessible to non-specialists. Policymakers are inundated with these reports and are expected to absorb huge amounts of information, digest it, and act on it. Crucial findings can get lost in the detail. If the urgency of climate action is not communicated clearly and memorably, it is less likely to be a factor in forming policy.
In the UK, scientists have long made “global greenhouse gases need to peak by 2025 for 1.5°C” a centrepiece of public and political communications. For example, it is there in the slogan of the Tyndall Centre, the major climate research hub where we work, that this is a Critical Decade for Climate Action.
But our findings suggest this message is not cutting through, with either politicians or the public. If deadlines are misunderstood, policies will inevitably not go far enough.
Make timelines impossible to ignore
The science is clear: emissions really did need to peak this year for a chance of staying within 1.5°C. A number of studies suggest this target is now effectivelyunreachable given the lack of substantial progress in recent years, but the urgency remains.
To close the gap between science and politics, communications must be sharper. Reports need to highlight timelines and consequences in ways that are impossible to ignore. Politicians and the public need to understand not just the scale of the climate crisis, but how immediate it is.
John Kenny, Research Fellow (Public Engagement with Climate Change), School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia and Lucas Geese, Research Fellow, Tyndall Centre and School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
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 dustNigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
A water bill from Southern Water
