RACHEL REEVES’S decision to protect fat cat bankers has lost the public £15 billion — money that could have saved freezing pensioners and hundreds of thousands of children from going hungry, a damning new report found today.
Campaigners for a windfall tax on banking profits slammed the Chancellor after it emerged that Britain’s four biggest banks made a record £45.9bn in profits for 2024.
Positive Money found that the policy, called for by unions and left MPs, would have brought in an additional £14.7bn for the Exchequer this year after Lloyds Bank became the last of the so-called Big Four to announce its £6bn pre-tax profits for last year.
The group calculated that increasing the existing surcharge on bank profits from 3 to 35 per cent, in line with the government’s windfall tax on energy companies, could have raised this sum from Lloyds, HSBC, Barclays and NatWest alone.
This would be enough to cover the cost of scrapping the two-child benefit cap — fives times over.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Ofgem controls the charges made to regional energy networks through a set of assumptions and calculations. Photograph: UCG/Universal Images/Getty
Citizens Advice believes Ofgem made flawed interest rate calculation for companies in Great Britain
The companies behind Great Britain’s gas pipes and power lines have pocketed a windfall of nearly £4bn from household bills during the energy and cost crisis, according to a report.
The analysis, by Citizens Advice, argued that energy network owners were able to make the “excess profits” over the past four years after the industry regulator misjudged their costs.
The companies may have made up to £3.9bn more because Ofgem overestimated their borrowing costs as interest rates began to climb, the report calculated. It found that Ofgem allowed regional network companies to recover these costs from household bills even though many were able to secure fixed-rate terms on some of their borrowing which helped them to avoid the impact of rising interest rates.
The flaw in Ofgem’s regulation, which applies from 2021 to 2028, has meant that households were forced to pay billions in undeserved profits to companies during the cost of living crisis while racking up record levels of debt, according to Citizens Advice.
A toucan in Costa Rica. Most wildlife habitats are being destroyed in countries with tropical forests, the study shows. Photograph: Francesco Puntiroli/Alamy
Consumption in wealthy countries including US and UK is responsible for 13% of global forest loss beyond their borders, study finds
The world’s wealthiest nations are “exporting extinction” by destroying 15 times more biodiversity internationally than within their own borders, research shows.
Most wildlife habitats are being destroyed in countries with tropical forest, according to the study which looked at how wealthy countries’ demand for products such as beef, palm oil, timber and soya beans is destroying biodiversity hotspots elsewhere.
It found that high-income nations were responsible for 13% of global loss of forest habitats outside their own borders. The US alone was responsible for 3% of the world’s non-US forest habitat destruction.
“That just underscores the magnitude of the process,” said lead researcher Alex Wiebe, a doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University in the US. Countries that had the most significant impacts abroad included the US, Germany, France, Japan, China and the UK, according to the paper, published in Nature.
A bald eagle in Kachemak Bay state park, Alaska, one of many species protected from extinction by legislation in the Endangered Species Act. Photograph: Alamy
Fears grow for endangered species as the US president sets about dismantling basic laws to protect them to make way for oil and gas drilling
Donald Trump has already begun dismantling parts of the envied US endangered species protections in his quest to boost oil and gas drilling, in part using a panel with an ominous name: the God squad.
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A ‘God squad’ to decide protections for species
One of Trump’s first executive orders after returning to the White House in January shows, though, that he is prepared to further escalate an overhaul of endangered species laws, experts say. The order, which declared a national energy emergency even amid a record glut of oil and gas drilling, calls for the endangered species committee, a group nicknamed the “God squad”, to meet at least quarterly.
This committee, which would be led by Burgum, five other senior officials from different government agencies and a representative from an affected state, has rarely been used but has the power to override the Endangered Species Act even if it results in the extinction of a species, hence its existential nickname. …
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
A protester holds a ‘This Is A Coup’ sign at a rally against the Trump administration during a “Not My President’s Day” protest on February 17, 2025 in North Hollywood, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Trump’s attempt to incite a coup in 2021 and his subsequent victory in the 2024 presidential election speak volumes of the democratic decline in the United States. We must admit exactly where we are at this point in time.
Over the past few years, there has been an alarming surge of coups d’état across the world, particularly in Africa. The most common definition of a coup is an illegal attempt to seize control of the government. The seizure of power by coup leaders is often justified by pointing to poor governance and/or deteriorating security situations.
Coups are typically irregular transfers of power that occur in countries with weak democratic institutions and may be carried out by military or civilian elites. Consolidated democracies have long prided themselves of being immune to the conditions that generate coups d’etat, but the Trump phenomenon in U.S. politics seems to suggest that there are no absolutes, and that liberal democracy can be brought down.
The storming of the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, was a coup attempt incited by outgoing president Donald Trump, and can be best described as an “attempted auto-coup.” Yet, shockingly enough, not only wasn’t Trump held accountable in the end for being criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election but was allowed to run again for the presidency in 2024. And what is even more shocking is that he prevailed in his third presidential bid by winning both the electoral college and the popular vote.
Trump and his Nazi buddy Elon Musk are trying to destroy civil society by dismantling the State.
Both Trump’s attempt to incite a coup in 2021 and his subsequent victory in the 2024 presidential election speak volumes of the democratic decline in the United States. Citizens’ support not just for a democracy-eroding leader but for one who repeatedly promised during his campaign to be a dictator, even if only for one day, is ample evidence to make the case that the end of democracy in the U.S. (or whatever is left of it as the country was never designed to be democratic) is upon us.
Indeed, an actual neo-fascist coup is now underway. Trump and his Nazi buddy Elon Musk are trying to destroy civil society by dismantling the State. Trump had promised on numerous occasions during his campaign to “demolish the deep state,” and even offered specific details for how he planned to do so. And this is exactly what is happening right now.
During his first month back in office, Trump signed a plethora of executive orders which ranged from a militarized crackdown on immigration and pardoning those who had taken part in the January 6, 2021, coup attempt to shutting down scores of federal agencies and starting mass layoffs across governments. By declaring himself above the law, Trump’s intent is to use executive power not for the purpose of dismantling the “deep state” in order to make federal government more efficient and therefore more responsive to citizen needs, but rather in order to take over government and have it run by loyalists, by people who would faithfully obey the commands of the “Great Leader.”
The aims behind this neofascist coup are threefold: Oligarchic state capture; white Christian nationalism as the hegemonic project; and the rise of a new U.S. empire.
Oligarchic state capture is a key goal of the Trump-Musk strategy behind the demolition of the so-called “deep state.” Dismantling the government bureaucracy is seen by the aspiring dictator and the world’s richest person as an essential course of action if “powerful individuals or corporations” are to have absolute freedom in creating rules and policies that serve their own benefit, at the expense of society. Trump and Musk are both fervent believers in the “natural right” of the rich and powerful to shape society as they please and make government function as they see fit.
Oligarchic state capture is a key goal of the Trump-Musk strategy behind the demolition of the so-called “deep state.”
The assault on regulations and on workers’ rights and vital workers’ institutions by the “two brothers” as prerequisites for economic prosperity forces us to go back to the 1880s when laissez-faire capitalism and social Darwinism ruled the day in order to find comparable situations. Trump has always been anti-labor, but Trump 2.0, influenced as heavily as it is by the anti-labor agenda of Project 2025, that wants to roll back all labor reforms under the Biden administration, outlaw public sector unions and indeedrewrite a hundred years of labor law, could be the most damaging administration the U.S. labor movement has ever faced. Trump’s agenda for the economy revolves around laissez-faire product market regulation and laissez-faire labor market regulations. Thus, the fact that the white working-class, which has been increasingly voting Republican instead of Democrat since 2000, helped Trump to return to power is indeed one of the most disconcerting trends in U.S. society.
Trump’s vision for America’s future is also rooted in white Christian nationalism and, as such, its realization virtually mandates anti-equality and so-called “gender ideology” attacks, along with a host of other “enlightened” undertakings such as book bans and seeking to revoke birthright citizenship. Trump’s white Christian nationalism agenda is born out of the preconceived notion that the rightful owners of this country are losing their political and cultural power. It is thus an exclusionist and nostalgic ideology which transcends social class and thus may explain why a significant segment of white working-class Americans support Trump.
Dark times are ahead—dark times, indeed.
Lastly, Trump envisions a new U.S. empire which includes gaining control of the Panama Canal, the purchase of Greenland, the possibility of turning Canada into the 51st U.S. state, owning Gaza, and even extending America’s manifest destiny into the stars.The acquisition of new wealth, greater security and strategic advantage in power politics are the drivers behind this new U.S. imperialism envisioned by Donald Trump. His imposition of tariffs on imports, which is baffling to economists, is intended to force countries to play according to the rules of the free market, so it is a profound mistake to think that Trump has somehow turned his back on neoliberalism. His deadly anti-regulatory blitz combined with tax-cutting for the rich and corporations and the use of economic rules into politics should be alone sufficient enough to dispel the notion that Trump is somehow waging a war on neoliberalism simply because he is using tariffs as part of his “America First” policy.
This, of course, is not to indicate that the neoliberal world order that the United States created after the end of the Cold War is not in crisis. Economic inequalities, political fragmentation, and social discontent threaten to bring down western liberal democracies and be replaced instead by authoritarian yet staunchly pro-capitalist regimes. The contradictions of neoliberal capitalism have become so extreme that only neofascism may be able to prevent the system’s ultimate collapse. This is precisely why Trump’s billionaire top lieutenant has so enthusiastically embraced far-right parties not only in Europe but across the globe. Neofascism is also needed to defend Christian values from the “radical left” and halt the alleged threat of the Islamization of the western world.
Dark times are ahead—dark times, indeed. And the only question is how to fight back before everything good and decent is lost once again in the return to fascism.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
