Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall speaking to the media outside the Department for Work and Pensions in Westminster, London, December 17, 2024
LABOUR’S repeated attacks on disabled people are cynical, cruel and, in providing an excuse to legislate for ever-greater state intrusion into private citizens’ lives, a threat to all our freedoms.
Liz Kendall chases headlines with the latest gimmick (banning those found guilty of benefit fraud from driving). More sinister is the resurrection of Tory plans to make banks share information from private accounts and powers for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to seize funds without a court process.
The state already has ample power both to detect and punish benefit fraud: it can make banks share clients’ financial information if there is suspicion of fraud, while those found guilty can be jailed for up to 10 years (courtesy of Keir Starmer in a previous iteration, as director of public prosecutions egging on the then Conservative-Lib Dem coalition’s war on welfare).
This is not about fighting crime. Nor even about cutting costs: benefit fraud amounts to less than 3 per cent of social security spending, and ministers say the new legislation is aimed at saving £1.5 billion over five years, an almost irrelevant sum given annual spending on social security excluding pensions is over £130bn.
It is about creating a climate of fear.
The approach echoes that toward immigration, where endless scaremongering about “small boats” obscures the rarity of such arrivals compared to immigrants who arrive legally.
Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, October 2022. Image: Bristol Green Party, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Green Party Co-Leaders, Adrian Ramsay and Carla Denyer released a joint statement ahead of President Trump’s inauguration saying:
“We must stand up for peace and democracy in what will be a dangerous turn toward right-wing populism in the wake of Donald Trump taking office.
“The antidote to Trump in the US, and the likes of Reform in the UK, is to offer people a real hope for real positive change that will transform their lives.
“That means a new offer to people beaten down by decades of low wages, insecure work, decimated public services and a realisation that the impact of the climate crisis is all around us in the form of floods, wildfires and a devastating loss of nature.
“We need the green investment to deliver the jobs of the future – well-paid, meaningful and secure – and we need the UK government to invest properly in schools and the NHS, and stand up for international law and human rights.
“A greener future is a more just and fairer future.
“The Green Party is clear – President Trump is a misogynist, a racist, a convicted criminal and, we believe, a fascist.
“We will be pressing the Labour government to recognise that to defeat fascism, political parties that believe in democratic values must work together to keep the flame of democracy alive and show people that democratic politics can deliver real change.”
Chris Nineham – deputy leader of the Stop the War Coalition and Chief Steward for many of London’s demonstrations against the Israel Hamas War and the British government’s involvement (source) – was arrested for some reason at the Gaza protest in London yesterday. There’s also a video of him getting arrested.
This video is from 2 months ago. Among other things, he says
The police and the establishment in this country … are conducting a campaign of vilification and repression against the movement … it’s really a campaign against freedom of speech in general in this country and certainly on the issue of Palestine.
…
We should take no lectures from the Metropolitan Police or any other police force about hate crime and about intimidation …
FORMER Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has hit out at the Met Police over its handling of a Palestine rally in London on Saturday.
More than 70 demonstrators were arrested on suspicion of breaching protest conditions after reportedly breaking through a police line as they marched from a rally in Whitehall.
Police clash with protesters at the rally (Image: Jeff Moore/PA Wire)
…
Corbyn, who sits as an independent MP, responded to a post from the Met Police on Twitter/X which said: “The group that forced its way through the police line is now held at the north west corner of Trafalgar Square.
“Anyone in that group should now disperse and leave the area. Anyone remaining in breach of the conditions, or inciting further breaches, will be arrested.”
In his response, the former Labour leader said: “This is not an accurate description of events at all.
“I was part of a delegation of speakers, who wished to peacefully carry and lay flowers in memory of the children in Gaza who had been killed.
“This was facilitated by the police. We did not force our way through. When we reached Trafalgar Square, we informed police that we would go no. further, lay down flowers and disperse.”
…
This is not an accurate description of events at all.
I was part of a delegation of speakers, who wished to peacefully carry and lay flowers in memory of children in Gaza who had been killed.
This was facilitated by the police. We did not force our way through.
Original article by Jasper Jackson republished from TBIJ under This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
With tech titans openly disregarding the truth ahead of Trump’s second term, 2025 is likely to herald a new era of disinformation
The online information ecosystem has been in critical condition for some years now, but the prognosis for 2025 is looking more dire than ever.
Already this year two of the world’s richest men, who between them control a huge chunk of our communications infrastructure, have made it clear that they are not interested in our access to the truth.
On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – would be scrapping its fact checking programme. The only exception to this for now will be in the EU, where strong regulations require it to police its platform.
The core purpose of this programme was to check content that had been flagged as containing potentially harmful misinformation, such as false claims about vaccines or military conflicts. These checks were carried out by third-party organisations, which had to follow rules around process and transparency – and which received significant funding from Meta.
In their place, Meta will now adopt a “community notes-style” system, which enables users themselves to weigh in on content that might be false. A similar set-up has already been adopted by X, where it has proven open to manipulation and failed abysmally to curb misinformation on the platform.
To be clear, Meta’s fact checking programme was not without its problems. For a start, there was no way it could catch every falsehood on the platforms. Meta’s financial arrangements with these organisations also raised questions. And ultimately, there is no definitive proof that showing people fact checks has any real impact on whether they believe the false claims.
But the programme did provide vital financial support to newsrooms that did hugely valuable work, from uncovering Russian propaganda campaigns to exposing online scam artists. And while it was only ever a partial solution at best, Meta’s programme was a sign that the company at least wanted to be seen to care about the accuracy of the information spreading across its platforms.
Zuckerberg’s about-turn came after a week in which another tech tycoon, Elon Musk, had been weighing in on UK politics, most notably with twisted falsehoods about the handling of child grooming cases and messages of support for Tommy Robinson, the far-right figure currently in prison for contempt of court after targeting a Syrian refugee with lies. On Monday, Musk suggested in a poll posted on X that “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government”.
The recent behaviour of Zuckerberg and Musk can only be seen in light of the impending second term of Donald Trump, whose propensity for lying is legendary. Musk was already all in on Trump’s presidency. But since the election, much of the rest of the tech world has sought to curry favour with the incoming president, with many prominent figures making big donations to his inauguration.
Like the Trump presidency itself, Musk and Zuckerberg’s dismantling of systems that help protect the truth are logical consequences of the digital structures we have built. An online economy that rewards attention above all else has given new power to false claims. Outlandish lies spread quicker than boring truths. Telling people what they want to hear is more engaging than telling them what they need to hear.
And all the signs suggest that the problem will only be worsened by the tech world’s latest obsession: generative AI. Systems such as ChatGPT, which can come up with content that seems human and accurate but is often simply a convincing lie, are rapidly being incorporated into all our major channels of information and communication. Apple is putting inaccurate headlines on curated news articles. Meta is planning to flood its social networks with AI bots mimicking humans. Google is pushing AI-driven search that regularly throws up false results.
A huge amount of money has been poured into generative AI, and much of the tech industry is banking on it to deliver another lucrative boom. But it has turned out to be even worse than humans at telling fact from fiction – and even more willing to make things up. Dealing with this problem is vital for democracy, but it also threatens the industry’s next big payout. As Zuckerberg proved this week, it’s a lot easier to simply give up on accurate information altogether.
Big Tech is no longer even keeping up the pretence that it is committed to the truth. Keeping our information ecosystem healthy is going to be up to the rest of us.
Reporter: Jasper Jackson Deputy editor: Katie Mark Editor: Franz Wild Production editor: Alex Hess Fact checker: Frankie Goodway
TBIJ has a number of funders, a full list of which can be found here. None of our funders have any influence over editorial decisions or output.
Original article by Jasper Jackson republished from TBIJ under This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
This image added 11/1/25
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
