Small retrofit firms have asked for an extension to the insulation scheme to protect their businesses. Photograph: Jon Challicom/Alamy
E3G thinktank warns retrofit sector could shed 10,000 skilled jobs as small firms struggle to survive
Cuts to a scheme for insulation and heatpumps for low-income households will leave homes damp, draughty and unsafe over winter, experts have said.
Housing have asked for a one-year extension to the scheme to ensure continuity and prevent small retrofit firms going bust. Companies say funding for solar panels and insulation is already being withdrawn, leaving homes cold and draughty as winter sets in.
Rachel Reeves announced in her budget that she would cut £150 a year from the average energy bill, partly financed by axing the £1.3bn energy company obligation (ECO) scheme that helped fund upgrades for homes owned or rented by households earning under £31,000.
This scheme is due to be end in March. The government plans to launch a “warm homes plan” to provide funding for heat pumps, insulation and other home upgrades but this has been beset by delays.
Experts have said this will affect an estimated 222,000 future retrofit projects that would have cut bills for low-income households.
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Pose for a group photo following the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Foreign Ministers meeting with Japan’s Foreign Minister in Kuwait City on September 1, 2025. [Photo by YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images]
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) called Monday for an immediate and lasting ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all hostages and detainees, and unrestricted humanitarian access to the enclave, Anadolu reports.
In a final communiqué following a ministerial session in Kuwait, the bloc pressed for full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2735, adopted in June 2024, and praised mediation efforts led by Qatar, Egypt and the US.
The ministers condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, citing mass killings, forced displacement, starvation policies and the destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, mosques and churches. They urged the international community to take urgent steps to halt these crimes and hold perpetrators accountable.
The GCC rejected any Israeli attempt to annex parts of Gaza or impose direct military rule, stressing that Gaza and the West Bank must remain united under the Palestinian Authority.
The council also condemned repeated Israeli attacks on humanitarian convoys and aid workers, recalling UN Security Council Resolution 2730 on protecting humanitarian staff.
It welcomed statements by the European Union and a coalition of 26 international partners in July calling for an immediate end to the war and unrestricted delivery of aid.
On the Palestinian issue, the GCC reaffirmed its commitment to a two-state solution, calling for an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, in line with the Arab Peace Initiative and international law.
It praised an international conference held at the UN last month, co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France, which underscored support for setting a timeline to establish Palestinian statehood and ensure regional stability.
The ministers also welcomed the planned recognition of Palestine by France, the UK, Portugal, Malta, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, urging all other states to follow suit.
The GCC condemned Israel’s plan to transfer control of Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque to a Jewish religious council, settlement expansion in the West Bank, and calls by Israeli lawmakers to annex the occupied territory.
Israel has killed over 63,500 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Builders will be required to fit solar panels to the “vast majority” of new build homes in England under changes to be published this year, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has said.
The regulations will require developers to add panels unless the buildings fall under certain exemptions such as being covered by shade.
Speaking to the BBC, Miliband said the move was “just common sense” adding that solar panels would save the typical household £500 a year on their energy bills.
The Home Builders Federation said it backed fitting more panels but cautioned against introducing “burdensome” paperwork which it said could harm government efforts to build 1.5 million new homes by 2029.
The rules will be included in the Future Homes Standard, which will detail a wider plan for improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.
The government says it will be published in autumn but there will be a transitional period for developers to adjust to the regulation changes.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) launched the Madleen, a civilian ship now sailing toward Gaza carrying humanitarian aid and international human rights defenders in direct defiance of Israel’s illegal and genocidal blockade. (Photo: Courtesy of the FFC)
“We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying,” says humanitarian Greta Thunberg, “because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity.”
Many people, armed only with moral and political convictions, would be too intimidated to confront an army or navy directly. But not all.
Twelve nonviolent human-rights activists with the international Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) are currently sailing a small boat, the Madleen, to Gaza. They hope to create a humanitarian sea corridor through Israel’s illegal blockade. If all goes well, they should arrive this weekend, with “baby formula, flour, rice, diapers, women’s sanitary products, water desalination kits, medical supplies, crutches, and children’s prosthetics.”
They know the danger. Ten volunteers were killed by Israeli commandos when they boarded the Mavi Marmara in 2010. But, as Greta Thunberg said before she embarked last Sunday, “We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying, because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity.”
How Palestinians See It
The history is important, and one does not have to approve of Hamas’ attack against Israeli civilians in October 2023 to understand that.
During the Nakba in 1948, at least 750,000 Palestinians were violently displaced from their homelands by Zionist paramilitaries and nascent Israeli forces. As Palestinian-Canadian Samah Al-Sabbagh recently told a crowd, those who survived that colonial onslaught left their “homes, land, olive groves, even the freshly baked bread.”
The occupation has never stopped, and now the violence is more high-tech and all-inclusive in its reach. In Gaza, bombs (largely supplied by the United States) have destroyed homes, apartment buildings, schools, universities, hospitals, mosques, churches, and more—leaving thousands buried under rubble. Adding to that nightmare, doctors report the intentional killing of children with high-velocity bullets that can destroy surrounding tissues and organs.
The death toll is staggering. As of May 27, 2025, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that at least 54,056 people, including at least 17,400 children, have been confirmed as killed in Gaza since October 2023.
For those still living, Israel’s stranglehold on international humanitarian aid has created widespread malnutrition and starvation, with babies and children the most vulnerable. “One in five people in Gaza, about 500,000 people, faces starvation, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification platform said on May 12,” according to the UN. Indeed, the UN calls Gaza the “hungriest place on Earth.”
Israel and its fellow perpetrators, including the United States, refuse to take seriously the rulings by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, much less the many human-rights groups decrying genocide, and less still the students and people in the streets making a ruckus for justice.
Perhaps the perpetrators think that ignoring the voice of the people will make it stop, that heartbroken people will give up their moral and legal agency. They should think again.
A Global Civil Society Initiative of Unarmed Civilians
Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian-American lawyer and activist. She has worked with the International Solidarity Movement, the Free Gaza Movement, and more recently the FFC. Her rationale for sending small, unarmed boats in nonviolent direct actions against Israeli policy? “Our governments have failed. And so the people are taking action.”
Lawyers Arraf and Luigi Daniele assert that there is a strong legal basis for citizens taking action, as world governments ignore their “clear and urgent humanitarian obligations.”
Included in the aid they brought were 200 pairs of hearing aids—far short of the 9,000 requested—because so many children were experiencing hearing loss as a result of Israel’s sonic booms.
Two years later, on May 31, 2010, the Israeli navy swarmed the Mavi Marmara. This ship was part of a larger flotilla, carrying nearly 700 people, which was attempting to deliver 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Israelis killed 10 activists—one died after being comatose for four years—and wounded fifty more.
Although the UN Human Rights Council declared the attack illegal—and despite Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apology to Turkey, whose citizens were killed—Israel continued its oppressive blockade.
Between 2010 and 2024, the FFC continued to challenge the siege. But “all ships were pirated by the IOF, and participants were assaulted, kidnapped, interrogated, imprisoned, and/or deported.” (“IOF” identifies the IDF as an occupation force.)
By May 2, 2025, the FFC had prepared their next attempt. The ship was named Conscience as an appeal to the world’s conscience. It was sitting in international waters near Malta, waiting for the volunteers to board and set out for Gaza. But the crew heard drones, and Conscience was struck by two explosives.
“The bombing was a deliberate act of aggression and intimidation,” the FFC wrote on their website. “Four crew members were injured, the ship was set ablaze, communications were severed, and the vessel was left adrift and taking on water. The attack occurred in European waters, in violation of international law.”
Madleen: Never Give Up
The activists say of the Madleen, “She may be small, but her mission is powerful: To break the silence. To challenge Israel’s illegal blockade through nonviolent direct action. To stand firmly and unapologetically, with Gaza.”
The Madleen set sail on June 1, one day after the fifteenth anniversary of the murderous assault on the Mavi Marmara. Activists gathered in Catania, Sicily, in preparation for their launch. The boat is named for Gaza’s first gender-role-defying fisherwoman; she personifies FFC’s steadfastness.
The ship’s namesake, Madleen, fell in love with the sea as a young child. When she was only 13 years old, she took over her injured father’s fishing boat and became the main breadwinner for her family. Although Madleen’s focus was on her family’s survival—not politics—she shared the fishermen’s encounters with Israeli patrols. She recounted, “They often directly attacked my boat. They stole my fishing nets more than once. The thing was that each time they attacked me, I would get a little stronger. I never gave up.”
Years later, she hopes her two daughters will become “two strong fisherwomen.”
May Madleen and the activists happily meet in Gaza this month. And may this stubbornly committed “civil society initiative of unarmed civilians” help the world see that legal and moral obligations are not overridden by governments’ corrupt colonial agendas.
To that end, the FFC asks that people raise their voices and contact the media and government officials to express support for breaking the siege against Gaza.
Readers can track the progress of the Madleen in real time and explore ways to support the FFC’s work. They promise: “We sail until Palestine is free.”
Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, speaks during a press conference at Buswells Hotel in Dublin, Ireland on March 20, 2025. (Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Images via Getty Images)
“To end it, we must first be willing to see it.”
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese pushed back Tuesday against Israel and its defenders, who for years have attempted to gaslight and malign the Italian legal scholar for tirelessly condemning what an increasing number of international experts—including many Israelis and diaspora Jews—agree is a genocide in Gaza.
“I call it genocide because IT IS a genocide,” Albanese wrote on the social media site X on Tuesday, amplifying a video she recorded last week in which she said that “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.”
“It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact,” the 48-year-old Georgetown University scholar asserted. “Top international experts, including Israelis, agree upon that.”
I call it genocide because IT IS genocide. Defined by intent, not by method or means. Visible without magnification—if we look with context, at the victims: what they share is being part of a group, as such. Because of it, they get killed, tortured, maimed, starved, raped,… https://t.co/137BWEN5vG
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) June 3, 2025
Under Article II of the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide is defined as killing, “causing serious bodily or mental harm” to a group of people, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,” or “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Israel is currently facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) brought by South Africa and supported by dozens of nations, either individually or via regional blocs. The ICJ has issued three provisional orders for Israel to take steps including avoiding genocidal acts and ending weaponized starvation in Gaza. Critics say Israel has violated all three orders.
The International Criminal Court has also issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including extermination and forced starvation.
“In Gaza, Israel has killed nearly 60,000 people with bombs bullets, and drones, including 16,000 children,” Albanese said in the video. “It has flattened homes, schools, churches, hospitals, water networks, farms, even cemeteries. The death toll from hunger, disease, untreated wounds, an[d] deprivation could reach 300,000.”
“Prisoners, including medics and journalists, have been tortured. Many have been raped, using dogs and sticks; some have died in Israeli prisons,” she continued. “Forced displacement continues in the West Bank, and over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in 20 months, and 1 in 5 is a child.”
“Beware of those who use Hamas’ crimes or the fate of the hostages to justify this massacre,” she said. “Civilians are never legitimate targets. Israel has masked everything with legal words: ‘evacuations,’ ‘safe zones,’ ‘human shields’—it’s fiction.”
Israel and its leaders deny they are committing genocide and say those who make such allegations—including Jews—are antisemitic. Albanese has been a prominent target of such smears, in which the Biden and Trump administrations as well as members of U.S. Congress, both Democratic and Republican, have taken part while supporting tens of billions of dollars in U.S. armed aid for Israel.
Albanese has called the U.S. and other Western nations that support Israel an “axis of genocide.”
“And what about us? We are failing the test of our humanity.”
Gaza officials say Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockades have left at least 193,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more forcibly displaced, sickened, or starved— sometimes to death. Israeli forces are currently carrying out a plan by Netanyahu’s far-right government to conquer, indefinitely occupy, ethnically cleanse, and possibly recolonize Gaza, which U.S. President Donald Trumpsaid he wants to make into the “Riviera of the Middle East”—presumably devoid of Palestinians.
“And what about us?” asked Albanese in the video. “We are failing the test of our humanity. Too many media, governments, companies, universities, too many guilty consciences and dirty hands. This genocide bears our fingerprints. It’s under our eyes. Denying it today means being ignorant, or complicit. Stopping it is the only way to remain human.”
“Genocide is a process, not a single act,” Albanese added. “A collective act. A criminal venture. To end it, we must first be willing to see it.”
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
