UK
Anger grows over Afghan journalists still stranded by Home Office inaction

Mark Townsend Home Affairs Editor
Sat, 4 March 2023

Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Hundreds of Afghan journalists remain stranded in increasingly “dire” circumstances as frustration mounts over the UK government’s refusal to share the latest entry criteria for its flagship resettlement programme.

This weekend, a coalition of press freedom and free expression organisations, including Index on Censorship, the National Union of Journalists, PEN International and English PEN, have written to home secretary Suella Braverman asking why details of the next phase of the Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme (ACRS) have yet to be revealed.

Germany, France and Kosovo are among the countries that have offered safe refuge to a number of journalists, with critics accusing the UK of failing to meet its obligations to the journalists who supported the west’s mission in Afghanistan.

Martin Bright, editor-at-large of Index on Censorship, said the organisation had received a “deluge” of relocation demands from Afghan journalists in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran who had been offered no reassurance, despite apparently being prime candidates for resettlement, because of the UK government’s unwillingness to offer clarity.

“Without clarification on progress for ACRS, there is little if any support that can be provided, and this leaves the journalists vulnerable to threats of disappearance, violence, arrest, imprisonment and assassination,” said Bright.

Estimates indicate that 200 Afghan journalists have fled to Iran and Pakistan, many of them women, where they report being targeted as their visas expire, with little sign of getting their paperwork renewed. Index is talking directly to 35 at-risk journalists in Afghanistan and Pakistan via an encrypted platform.

One case involves a female Afghan journalist who fled to Pakistan, itself a perilous place due to the presence of Taliban sympathisers – and was routinely harassed there due to her nationality and ethnicity, culminating in a street attack during which she was sexually assaulted.

Last month, reports emerged that a number of Afghan journalists had been arrested in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and their phones, laptops and cameras seized.

A Taliban fighter stands guard as a woman walks past in Kabul, Afghanistan, in December 2022. Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

Eight Afghan journalists who worked for the BBC have recently had their UK visa applications reopened after legal action against the Home Office.

In August 2021, then prime minister Boris Johnson announced the creation of ACRS with priority for those who stood up for democracy, women’s rights and freedom of speech – including a specific reference to journalists.

It officially launched in January 2022 for those already evacuated, with a second “pathway” later opened for refugees in neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Iran.

After giving priority to contractors who worked for institutions like the British Council, the third pathway is planned to fully open this year, with journalists expected to be among its priority groups, though no details are yet available.

A government source said more information “will be set out in due course”. Index, PEN and the NUJ are urging Braverman to explain how the scheme will help at-risk journalists.

Meanwhile, accounts are increasingly emerging of journalists, particularly women, who have escaped to Pakistan only to continue to face threats. One reporter and women’s rights activist, whose work led to her publicly denouncing the Taliban, is now living in poverty in Pakistan with a five-month-old baby boy.

Another, a prominent young Afghan broadcast journalist, also made it across the border, where she now survives in a slum and goes days without food.

“During this period, I have gone through hell. There is much discrimination, racism and prejudice in Pakistan society, and hostility towards Afghan women in particular,” she said.

Her Pakistani visa expired in August 2022, with the authorities yet to offer her an extension. Any Afghan in Pakistan without a valid visa could be jailed for three years or deported back home.

A spokesperson for the British government said that 24,500 people had so far been brought to safety from Afghanistan, including “campaigners for women’s rights, human rights defenders, scholars, journalists, judges and members of the LGBT+ community”.

They added that, since the evacuation of Kabul, the UK had helped “7,000 vulnerable people leave the country. Our work continues to help other eligible Afghans.”

‘You saw all your bones in your hands’: British veteran recalls atom bomb test horror

While successive British governments have denied troops were exposed to unsafe levels of radiation in the Pacific, the US has a dedicated compensation programme for its nuclear veterans.

Darren Calpin
Tue, 7 March 2023 

Mayor Alan Dowson - Suppplied by Darren Calpin

Councillor Alan Dowson was just 19 when he witnessed most people’s worst nightmare – a nuclear explosion.

After entering the RAF Catering Corps to carry out his National Service, the teenager from Sunderland was ordered to do his bit for Queen and Country on the other side of the world in the spring of 1958.

On a balmy hot day beneath clear blue skies, Dowson found himself on an idyllic beach on Christmas Island (now Kiritimati), one of more than 30 low-lying Pacific islands that make up the tropical nation of Kiribati.

Sitting within the grand, present day surroundings of the Mayor’s Parlour at Peterborough Town Hall, the now 84-year-old closes his eyes and takes us back to that day: April 22, 1958.

“When the blast went off, you saw all your bones in your hands,” he recalls. “The X-rays ran through your body.”

This was Operation Grapple – an H-bomb detonation which was part of the UK’s atomic weapons testing programme. The awestruck 19-year-old had just seen for himself an H-bomb airdrop with an explosive yield of around three megatonnes. It remains the largest British nuclear weapon ever tested.

Operation Grapple – an H-bomb detonation – was the largest British nuclear weapon ever tested

“There was a heat…” Dowson says painfully, tears appearing with the memory. “There was a heat coming through, and there was a whiplash of sound.”

Regaining his composure, he continues: “The blast went over you and after 20 seconds you were allowed to get up and watch. There was one person who was allowed to watch it [all]. He went blind, [but] he got his sight back a few months later.”

Dowson, who was an Acting Corporal at the time, remembers looking around and seeing “thousands and thousands of dead birds.”

In total, the British government dropped nine thermonuclear weapons on Kiritimati between 1957 and 1958. Around 22,000 British servicemen, along with soldiers from New Zealand and Fiji, took part in the tests.

Utilising all three branches of the armed forces, the controversial weapons testing programme was the largest British military undertaking since D-Day. Upon its completion, Great Britain declared itself the world’s third nuclear power, alongside the United States and the Soviet Union.

‘Things were not right with the airmen’

Dowson and his comrades were driven to the beach in a lorry on that fateful day. Despite being just 40 miles from the blast, the men were issued no personal protective equipment of any kind, Dowson claims.

Safety guidance on the day was, he recalls, scarce: personnel were advised to wear a hat and make sure their sleeves were rolled down. The men were then ordered to “sit down with your back towards the blast area and cover your eyes.”

Despite assurances given at the time that the tests posed little risk to health (via radiation exposure), a significant number of veterans went on to experience significant repercussions.

Former servicemen and veterans associations, such as the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA), believe these nuclear tests ruined their lives, causing cancers and fertility problems, as well as birth defects that have been passed down through the generations.

Dowson, who was an Acting Corporal at the time, remembers seeing ‘thousands and thousands of dead birds’

The Ministry of Defence has declared that no link has been found between the tests and ill health. Dowson, who was last year elected as Peterborough’s mayor, disagrees fervently with the MoD’s findings.

“When we came back,” he says, “there started to be rumours that things were not right with the airmen.” Dowson believes his inability to conceive a child with his wife was caused directly by his presence on Kiritimati. “Most of us were infertile,” he says, visibly upset.

Of those veterans who were able to conceive, Dowson reiterates the issue of birth defects: “A number of them have had children and grandchildren who have been directly affected by the radiation.”

Nuclear test veterans have campaigned for decades to have their contributions to Britain’s ‘ultimate deterrent’ officially acknowledged. In November 2022, the Prime Minister finally decided to award medals to all those who participated in the UK’s atomic weapons testing programme.

Rishi Sunak described the medals as “an enduring symbol of our country's gratitude” for those involved in the test programme. “It is,” he said, “only right their contribution to our safety, freedom and way of life is appropriately recognised with this honour.”

Alan Dowson with a fellow serviceman

Dowson during Operation Grapple

Dowson welcomed the decision with mute enthusiasm: “It’s some acknowledgment, but I don’t think it goes far enough.”

Gazing out of the window over the busy street below, he muses: “Knocking out a medal for 1,500 people is little expense for the cost they’ve created in the past.

“The cost has been borne by the servicemen and their families.”

The mayor, who is a committed supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), is clear about what he and his former comrades really want from the government: “I think they’ve got to apologise,” he said.

The US Government has already paid compensation to British personnel who were present at Operation Dominic, a separate nuclear test program which the US and UK worked on together in the Pacific during the early 1960s

Yet the mayor acknowledges the chances of receiving a public formal apology are slim. It will, he admits, open the floodgates for compensation claims.

“If the British Government can ignore facts then they will, if they can get away with it,” he adds. “And they have got away with it – so far.”

The cost of nuclear fallout

Analysis, by Paul Nuki

Here’s a not-so-funny thing about the atomic tests that took place in the Pacific: if you were a US serviceman stationed there who has since developed cancer, you are compensated. If, on the other hand, you are a Brit like Mayor Dowson, you get a medal but nothing more.

“The MOD does not accept that participants at the UK atmospheric nuclear test and weapons experiments were, as a result, exposed to ionising radiation that adversely affected their health,” the Foreign Office told the Telegraph last week.

Quite the reverse in fact: “The findings … show that over the entire follow-up period of 1952-2017, overall mortality, and cancer mortality of the test veterans and military controls remain lower than the general population,” it added.

Can it really be that 20,000 British servicemen stood unprotected and at close quarters to a series of nuclear explosions and suffered no ill effects whatsoever?

And if that really is the case, why are the Americans compensating their people? Indeed, why worry about nuclear fallout at all?

While successive British governments have denied troops were exposed to unsafe levels of radiation in the Pacific, the US has a dedicated compensation programme for its nuclear veterans.

A mushroom cloud rises over the Pacific moments after the detonation of Britain's second Hydrogen bomb - Gilbert Carter/Mirrorpix via Getty Images

The scheme provides $75,000 for those who served in the Pacific and went on to develop one or more of 20 cancers known to be linked to radiation exposure.

In one case, the US government paid out to a critically ill British ex-serviceman who had been seconded to the US military on Christmas Island.

Roy Prescott died aged 66 of lung cancer, which he believed was caused by nuclear tests he witnessed. “I am a casualty of the cold war,” he said before his death in September 2006.

There is, of course, no doubt that exposure to radiation can cause a range of cancers.

After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more leukaemias and solid cancers were observed among the survivors than expected, for example. Historically, nuclear workers have also been found to be at higher risk of leukaemia and many other cancers.

Then there are studies of soldiers who served in the Pacific. One US study of 3,020 nuclear veterans revealed increases in leukaemia; a study of 10,983 Australian veterans also showed an increase in leukaemia, as did a study of 528 men from New Zealand.

So how does the UK government justify its view?

The truth is the studies it relies on – ones it commissioned itself – are not as clear cut as it pretends.

Members of the press and naval ratings aboard HMS Alert 35 miles offshore of Malden Island, Kiribati. Seen here dressed in protective suits known as Goon Suits. The ships crew and passengers where there to witness the second test of Britain's Hydrogen bomb - Gilbert Carter/Daily Herald

Yes, it is true that Pacific veterans have better health than the general population but that is to be expected. It is true of all soldiers who are selected for their fitness and is known as the “healthy soldier” effect.

The long-term UK study tracking Pacific veteran's health actually finds they have a 2 per cent higher mortality rate than a control group of similar soldiers. They are also more likely to have contracted leukaemia as well as other cancers.

“The overall mortality rate in the [nuclear] test participants was slightly higher relative risk than that in the control group”, say the study authors. “This difference was driven by similar increased risks for both all cancers combined and all non-cancer diseases. Leukaemia … showed evidence of being raised relative to controls”.

Of course this link between watching nuclear bombs explode in the Pacific and a raised mortality and cancer risk is only an association. Proving one caused the other is a different question and would rely on the MOD having taken detailed and accurate radiation exposure reading at the time.

For Mayor Dowson and his colleagues who took part in Operation Grapple on Christmas Island this information hardly exists, with just 2 per cent of the men involved monitored for their exposure to radiation.

“Consequently… the power to detect any increasing risks with measured [radiation] dose was limited,” note the study authors.

Gas industry knew about indoor pollution from stoves 50 years ago, investigation reveals

Lottie Limb
Tue, 7 March 2023 


The gas industry has known that its stoves could be harmful to human health for more than 50 years, rediscovered documents reveal.

Back in 1972, the American Gas Association (AGA) wrote a draft report citing concerns over indoor air pollution caused by gas cookers. But this section completely vanished from the final report, which was designed to inform the US government’s anti-pollution efforts.

The evidence against gas stoves has been stacking up in recent months and years. In January, a report from the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) and other organisations found that - without ventilation - the home appliance regularly exceeds safe air pollution limits.

The nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide and ultrafine particles that stoves produce have been linked to a range of health problems - including asthma in children.
The gas industry’s tactics

But the US trade group wasn’t operating totally in the dark about this, the draft and other documents show. Exposing the findings in DeSmog, research fellow at the Climate Investigations Center Rebecca John writes, “[AGA] knew much more, at a far earlier date, than has been previously documented.”

There’s a through line from AGA and the wider gas industry’s efforts to conceal (or self-sponsor) research, to its continued lobbying of MEPs.

The US releases by far the biggest bulk of CO2 emissions from fossil gas - emitting 1.6 billion tonnes of the greenhouse gas in 2021, followed by Russia, and the EU at 783.75 million tonnes.

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US got a record-breaking 40% of its energy from carbon-free sources in 2022, report reveals

What do the AGA documents show?

Missouri residents use their gas stove to keep warm during a power cut in 2007. - Dan Gill/AP2007

Gas industry distancing itself from other fossil fuels

The gas industry has always been at pains to paint itself as being cleaner than coal and oil.

To avoid being tarred by the same brush as these other fossil fuels, the draft and final report from the National Industrial Pollution Control Council (NIPCC) - an old advisory council peopled by powerful industrialists - made much of a quote from William Ruckelshaus, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“Unhappily, no perfect accommodation is possible between the energy and environment,” he said. “Nuclear reactors give off radiation, coal produces sulfur dioxide [...] transport of oil causes spillage into fragile marine systems [...] and natural gas is in short supply.”

As John points out, this extremely non-exhaustive list of fossil fuels’ ills was leapt on by a gas lobby keen to portray its resource as having a supply problem, rather than a pollution one.

In the final report, NIPCC argued for a massive expansion of US domestic gas reserves and a rapid rollout of gas-based infrastructure, in order to wean the nation off coal and onto gas.

“In residential uses, gas for space heating, water heating, and cooking is vital to the comfort and health of these consumers,” the report stated, referring to the 150 million people then served by America’s national network of pipes.

Exxon makes record €51 billion profit. Only 5% is going to ‘low-carbon’ projects

Exploring tech fixes and conducting ‘test home’ research

But behind the scenes, AGA was looking into the air pollution stemming from gas stoves, and exploring technical fixes.

In the January 1972 draft, a subsection on ‘Indoor Air Quality Control’ notes that the need to control the indoor home environment is “of continuing interest” to gas industry research.

“The unique and critical health requirements of millions of individuals has dictated the need for a [sic] cleaner air within [industrial] plants and dwellings,” it goes on.

Projects are now underway to conceive [...] devices [...] for the purposes of limiting the levels of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides in household air.

“In recognition of this need to develop techniques for the maintenance of pollution-free indoor environment for the individual, projects are now underway to conceive, design, construct, and evaluate prototype devices to be used in conjunction with conventional residential heating and cooling systems for the purposes of limiting the levels of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides in household air.”

An “absorptive-reaction” device was being developed, the paper states. And industry staff had for a few years been collecting “environmental control data” from “test homes” in Ohio to compare levels of indoor and outdoor pollution.

Though specially constructed research houses were used routinely by the gas industry in the 1980s, the DeSmog investigation says it’s not clear what data was collected in these earlier homes, and what it showed.

Carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides in household air; absorptive devices; test homes: all were cut by the NIPCC’s Utilities Sub-Council after it received the paper from AGA.

Two other newly unearthed documents from 1981 - an AGA paper entitled ‘Putting Gas Range Emissions in Perspective’ and another from the industry-sponsored Gas Research Institute (GRI) - show Big Gas grappling with its “NOx problem.”

Gas stoves found to be constantly leaking methane into our homes, says US study

AGA still questions health impacts of stoves

A woman in Pennsylvania uses an electric stove to prepare dinner in 1954. - Anonymous/1954 AP

When contacted for comment by DeSmog, the outlet says AGA did not dispute the gas industry’s history and motivations for studying the indoor air pollution potential of gas appliances in the early 1970s.

In a statement, AGA CEO Karen Harbert said, “AGA supported a 1982 review of the available research that found no causative link between gas stoves and asthma, a conclusion shared by regulatory agencies.”

Harbert reportedly reiterated AGA statements questioning the conclusions of recent studies related to the health impacts of gas stoves.

The EPHA report with energy efficiency NGO CLASP and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), followed a December 2021 study by US-based environmental think tank RMI and others which made a bigger splash across the Atlantic.

It estimated that “nearly 13 percent of childhood asthma cases in the United States can be linked to having a gas stove in the home.”

UN to hunt sources of climate warming methane from space using satellites
How you can minimise indoor air pollution from gas stoves

Some 100 million people in the EU use gas cookers, including more than half of all homes in Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and Hungary.

There are ways of minimising the indoor air pollution that cooking on gas causes. Most cookers come with range hoods, but if yours doesn’t actually extract air from the kitchen then it’s worth using a nearby extractor fan - in the bathroom, for example - or opening the window.

Though people are understandably reluctant to do so given the high host of keeping homes warm at the moment, this is the surest way of ventilating.

Researchers have also suggested that cooking on the back burners gives your range hood a better chance of capturing pollutants.

Ultimately, replacing a gas cooker with an electric one is the best way to actually tackle the indoor and outdoor pollution from methane-burning stoves - especially as they’ve been found to leak even when off.

Voices: We finally have proof: there’s no point working if you’re a mum

Joeli Brearley
Sat, 4 March 2023 


The Budget is coming, and parents across the UK are clamouring to find out if Rishi Sunak really meant it when he committed to making childcare more affordable, flexible and accessible. Today, new data from my campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed reveals that for three-quarters of mothers who pay for childcare, it no longer makes financial sense for them to work.

So, let’s talk about our childcare sector – why it’s in crisis, what this means, and why we should all care.

First, to be clear, this is not a new problem. For years, campaigners and providers have been warning that the sector will collapse without proper investment and care. Between March 2015 and March 2022, 20,000 early-years providers in England closed.

Unlike other countries, UK childcare has never been properly funded. In 2017, the government introduced 30 hours of free childcare a week for three- and four-year-olds during school term time. But through a freedom of information request, the Early Years Alliance found that the government purposely underfunded the scheme by almost £3 per child per hour. Shockingly, the minutes from the government meetings also reveal that they were aware this would increase costs for younger children forcing more parents out of the labour market.

Though it may not sound like a lot, £3 per child per hour is a massive financial shortfall, and over the years, that gap has grown wider as care costs more to deliver; but the subsidy isn’t keeping up with those rising costs. Inevitably this means that costs keep rising for parents. In 2017 costs had risen seven times faster than inflation. More recently, OECD data has shown we have either the most expensive childcare in the world or the third most expensive childcare in the world (depending on how you cut the data).

Our research with over 20,000 parents found that two-thirds pay the same or more for childcare as they do for their housing. One in five women who had an abortion in the last five years said that childcare costs were the reason they terminated a wanted pregnancy. And our latest figures show that more than half (54 per cent) of parents who use either formal or informal childcare say they have had to reduce the number of hours they work due to childcare costs or availability.

What’s particularly galling is how childcare is constantly ignored. Private schools receive an 80 per cent discount on business rates, but the struggling childcare sector pays full price. If you’re self-employed, you can claim for a game of golf, but you can’t claim your childcare costs – go figure.

The government keeps talking about helping those who are ‘’economically inactive’’ back into work, without ever making the obvious link that parents may not work due to childcare issues. They talk about the need to “bonk for Britain” as the birth rate slows, but fail to acknowledge that mothers are currently terminating wanted pregnancies because of the cost of childcare.

The increasing cost of childcare has meant that many people cannot afford to work. A shocking 84 per cent of the more than 1.7 million people who have given up work to care for their family are women. Forty-three thousand women have dropped out of the workforce to look after their family in the last year – a 3 per cent increase on the previous year.

Why might that be? Could it be because childcare costs are increasing faster than wages? While securing a childcare place can feel like digging for gold on Blackpool pier?

The Centre for Progressive Policy estimated that 1.7 million women are prevented from taking on more hours of paid work due to childcare issues, resulting in up to £28.2bn economic output lost every year.

According to journalist Lewis Goodall, the Norwegian government recently valued the contribution of working mothers to the country’s GDP, and found it equivalent to the value added by its oil reserves during the same period.

But childcare isn’t just about ensuring parents can financially contribute to their family and to the economy. It’s an investment in children. Report after report shows the first five years of a child’s life are the most critical to their future.

Good quality childcare that can be accessed by all children reduces the attainment gap between the richest and poorest kids, improves wellbeing, advances social skills, and improves life chances for all. And by good quality childcare, we mean the kind provided by early-years educators who are paid a decent wage, are given progression and training opportunities, are highly qualified, and have tight staff-to-children ratios. Not the system we currently have, where you are paid inadequately and treated like a babysitter.

This government has failed when it comes to the early-years education of our children. Their decisions (or lack of them) have led to a sector in crisis, pushing mothers out of work and families into poverty while fewer and fewer child can access a critical facet of their education.

And we are all poorer for it.

Unless we see a significant investment in childcare during the Budget on 15 March, we will lose thousands more providers, costs will increase even further, tens of thousands of parents (predominantly women) will leave the labour market, and child poverty will increase.

The question isn’t whether we can afford to invest in childcare; the question is whether we can afford not to.

Joeli Brearley is the founder of campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed

UK
Aunt of murdered lawyer Zara Aleena joins march calling for end to male violence

Helen William, PA
Sat, 4 March 2023 

The aunt of murdered aspiring lawyer Zara Aleena has said she is “always hopeful” that a system, which is “broken across the board” and does not protect women, can change.

Farah Naz was speaking as she joined hundreds of people who marched to remember and grieve for women and girls killed through male violence and to call for action to tackle it.

Supporters of the Million Women Rise (MWR) collective who walked through central London’s West End shopping district to Trafalgar Square on Saturday claimed that the lack of action against male violence amounted to state inflicted or sanctioned abuse.

They drummed, chanted and carried signs saying “together we can end male violence” and “women are not the problem” during the protest ahead of International Women’s Day on Wednesday.

Farah Naz, the aunt of murdered aspiring lawyer Zara Aleena, holds up a banner (Helen William/PA)

Ms Naz told the PA news agency: “Zara’s loss is society’s loss.”

She added: “Zara has brought me, my sister and my friends here but we are here for all women, all girls, to make a change and to make some meaning out of the tragedy that has happened to us.

“We are in trauma but at the same time we are really heartened by the support in society of all sectors and leaders.

“We are hopeful that things can change for other women and girls.

Failings in the probation service were among the issues which meant a known perpetrator was free to murder Ms Aleena.

Jordan McSweeney, 29, was handed a life sentence and jailed for at least 38 years after admitting sexually assaulting and murdering the 35-year-old law graduate in Ilford, east London, in June last year.

Zara Aleena was murdered in east London (Family/PA)

With her voice breaking, Ms Naz said: “We lost Zara but we don’t want her death to be the end.

“Zara’s loss is society’s loss and we have, as victims, to become more than that. There has to be work with communities and leaders.

“The protest today is shining a light on the mistakes and on a system that is broken across the board.

“We know from Zara’s case that probation made a series of mistakes, huge errors, that are so deeply painful for us as a family, and for us as a society to be aware of, because it means that women are not safe.”

The number of women who are murdered is a sign that something is wrong, she added.

Ms Naz said: “We already know that domestic violence leads to so many deaths and, that as it is not treated as any other form of violence, we have seen a lack of convictions which then releases men to murder women.

“We know that probation has collapsed because of the privatisation that has happened and has then led to a system that is broken and has not been attended to.

“We know that reviews have been written from when other people have been murdered and the recommendations have not been followed up.

“We know that government leaders have failed us.

“We know that the systems have failed us but there are also people working to change that.”

Danyal Hussein was jailed for a minimum of 35 years after murdering sisters Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, in 2020.

Deniz Jaffer and Jamie Lewis, a pair of Met Police constables who took photos of the murdered sisters and shared the images on WhatsApp groups, were later jailed.

In a video message of support, Mina Smallman, the mother of the sisters, told the marchers: “We have so much important work to do.

“The slogan I would like us all to adopt is that ‘it’s time’. We have had enough talk. We have had enough rhetoric. Now we are demanding that those in power put girls and women’s safety at the forefront.”

MWR also noted that serial rapist David Carrick kept his job as a Metropolitan Police officer despite multiple reports against him, allowing him to commit a string of offences over almost 20 years.

The disgraced 48-year-old Pc, who was described as a “monster” and “evil” by some of his dozen victims, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 32 years after carrying out a “catalogue of violent and brutal” sex attacks between 2003 and 2020.

The cost-of-living crisis is also trapping women with perpetrators and decimating vital support services, MWR warned.

Revealed: cabinet ministers warned of legal action over UK’s failure to tackle climate crisis


Toby Helm Political Editor
Sat, 4 March 2023

Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Cabinet ministers have been warned by senior civil servants that they face court action because of their catastrophic failure to develop policies for tackling climate change, according to secret documents obtained by the Observer.

The leaked briefings from senior mandarins – marked “official sensitive” and dated 20 February this year – make clear the government as a whole is way behind in spelling out how it will reach its net zero targets and comply with legal duties to save the planet.

Related: The UK’s battle cries on net zero have led to nothing – and now time is running out


The restricted, highly sensitive documents are another severe embarrassment for Rishi Sunak, who originally planned to stay away from last November’s Cop27 climate summit in Egypt, but was shamed into attending after his predecessor but one, Boris Johnson, announced he was going.

Sunak then declared that acting to cut carbon emissions was a moral duty “because if we do not act today, we will risk leaving an ever more desperate inheritance for our children”.

Now, with just weeks to go before a crucial court deadline for the UK government to submit its latest climate plans, the damning leaked documents make clear the government is falling far short of its legal policy obligations to match its rhetoric with action.

The documents say that as a result of evident lack of policy there is an increasing “legal risk” facing the secretary of state for energy security and net zero, Grant Shapps – who is held responsible under law for failing to act.

At one point, officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) state that their own department’s failure to develop policies for cutting carbon emissions “increases the legal risk on the DESNZ (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero) SoS (Shapps) if the reduced savings cannot be made across the economy, which DESNZ have indicated will not be possible.”

The papers, circulated by Defra officials to other senior Whitehall figures, will place particular pressure on environment secretary Thérèse Coffey, who was booed recently at a conference by farmers, who are already highly critical of the government’s agenda for agriculture post-Brexit.

The documents show Coffey’s department is by far the worst offender in failing to develop green policy, lagging a staggering 24% behind its official target, while the transport department has a gap “that is considerably over 5%”.

The documents show Coffey’s officials pleading with her to adopt an improved climate plan for the agricultural sector within weeks, not only to meet a legal deadline but also in response to stinging rebukes from the government advisers on the climate change committee (CCC).

They say: “The CCC has been calling for Defra to publish a decarbonisation plan since 2018 … The CCC has also criticised the ‘glacial progress’ in reducing emissions from agriculture.”

In our last report we said that it is abundantly clear Defra is off track to deliver key climate policies
Lord Deben, CCC chairman

The papers add: “It is likely that if we do not commit to a plan in response to the CCC’s recommendations, we will be singled out for further scrutiny by the CCC and other stakeholders.”

Green groups say Coffey is nervous of triggering a bigger anti-Tory rural revolt if she announces policies that will force farmers to adopt more green ways of farming, such as enforcing limits on the size of livestock herds, large-scale tree planting and reducing use of fossil-fuel-based fertilisers on farms.

Coffey’s difficulties highlight a central problem with the green agenda for a Tory government, which draws much of its support from rural voters and communities, including farmers.

The high court ruled last year that by the end of March 2023 ministers must publish their workings on how individual departments plan to get on track to deliver net zero climate targets and be compliant with the Climate Change Act 2008.

As the legal deadline approaches, every Whitehall department is currently in the final stages of reviewing policies and counting up carbon savings before an expected new “Net Zero Growth Plan” set to be unveiled by the prime minister within the next month.

The announcement by the Biden administration of its Inflation Reduction Act – with incentives for US manufacturers of clean technologies – has added to a sense of urgency in the UK that it could miss out on a green “industrial revolution”.

Lord Deben, chairman of the CCC, told the Observer on Saturday night: “The CCC does not comment on leaked documents, but in our last report we said that it is abundantly clear that Defra is off track to deliver key climate policies. It is our statutory duty to highlight these failings to parliament, to help them in their scrutiny over government plans.

“Defra is unique across key Whitehall departments in not having a net zero strategy, which must cover critical aspects of farming, land use, nature and our critical food system. That is a huge gap as we head into a critical period for the achievement of the UK’s statutory climate goals.”

The Observer understands that No 10, the Treasury and DESNZ are angry that Defra is dragging down the whole government’s climate progress.

A Defra spokesperson said: “We cannot comment on potential leaks.”

Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary of state for net zero, tore into the Conservatives’ record on climate policy: “Years of failure in a number of departments; the ludicrous ban on onshore wind remains in place; billions channelled to fossil fuel companies in tax breaks, instead of investing in homegrown renewables; slashed investment in energy efficiency; and a refusal to follow the example of President Biden to invest in the green industries of the future here in Britain. It’s 13 years of failure which explain why this government isn’t a leader on net zero but is a lawbreaker.”

Clouds of disinformation and climate change

Adam Manning
Sat, 4 March 2023 


Cloud is the term used for remote storage of images, files and other stuff in this digital age.

Highlighting the needy, with Anthony Bernard.

Every smartphone is connected to its cloud, just as midges follow scotsmen in summer. Maybe it is an acronym, CLOUD - Calamitous Load Of Unexpected Doom? Enormous amounts of energy are required to keep all this information instantly available, with lots of cooling because energy generates heat. We are all fooled into believing smartphones and computers have no carbon footprint, but in reality they seriously add to global warming.

Software in new computers and smartphones monitor everything we explore on line. Users have their interests categorised and are then fed further information to support their original thinking and reinforce their perceptions, however ill advised. News will be skewed towards preferred items, advertisers will be alerted to further opportunities to sell them gambling, pizzas, funeral services or anything.

Ireland has 20% of its electricity taken up feeding clouds of "data hubs", helped by Irish tax laws encouraging international operators to be based there while serving customers in other countries. Lots or water is needed to cool electronics. Water shortages in the London area last summer were exacerbated by cooling data hubs in Slough with water from the Thames. Don't worry, this column is typed on a 1999 iBook, made before all this clever stuff, with its own memory, not using clouds, just coffee for the operator!

"Influencer" is the term for a regular user whose contributions are widely read; recently a major promoter of macho violence has been in the news after being arrested. Years ago, in the playground, such self promotors might be surrounded by ardent admirers who became a gang, available to follow the leader. Vlad Putin's schooldays could be revealing, maybe some of his school chums are now oligarchs!

Nowadays, with social media, a crowd can be gathered to follow a particular policy, theme or whim; "dislikes" cause people to be excluded from the group. Nowhere is there a better nor sadder example than the furore around poor Nicola Bulley's disappearance. In the three weeks while she was missing, before her body was found, maybe a hundred other people would have gone missing according to average statistics. Most would have been found unharmed, but some would have had an unhappy outcome mixed up with drugs, alcohol, gambling or mental health. Maybe a thousand police officers were doing their best, mainly getting it right. None of these were in the news; the only story was Nicola Bulley.

Reports tell that every day someone commits suicide as a result of gambling, which is a catastrophe for their family and friends but passes unnoticed by the rest of us.l

Massive and easy data storage facilitate social media frenzies on particular issues, to the exclusion of balanced news. This adds to global warming and places a significant burden on electricity and cooling water. We all assume that the internet does not cost anything, but we all pay through our mobile phone and wifi charges and suffer the effects of climate change.

Social media does open up communications, but software is skewing how messages are handled, gathering like minded thinkers together. This makes it a haven for activists to shout louder than the fair minded majority.

We should avoid being confused or caught up in these trends. Global warming remains an issue; cattle exhale methane; data hub clouds are worse

WAR ON LGBTQ

Conservative Pundit Calls for Trans People to Be 'Eradicated'

The Pink Triangle

This symbol dates back to Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s. Homosexuality was outlawed and gays and lesbians were sent to the concentration camps. Gay men were forced to wear the pink triangle just as the Jews were forced to wear the yellow star to identify which group they belonged to.

Symbols of PRIDE

Children's Aid Society of Toronto

https://www.torontocas.ca › outandproudsymbols

Laura Bassett
Sat, 4 March 2023

Photo: Getty (Getty Images)

It’s long been clear that the subtext of Republican attacks on trans healthcare, drag story hours, books that even mention LGBTQ+ people, and “pronouns”—which really reached a fever pitch in state legislatures this week—is that trans people do not have a right to exist. But few have come out and said it in as chilling of terms as Daily Wire host Michael Knowles at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Saturday morning.

“If [transgenderism] is false, then for the good of society, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely,” the rightwing commentator told a cheering crowd amid what HuffPost reporter Chris Mathias described on Twitter as a “straight-up eliminationist anti-trans tirade.”

Knowles has said before that this overtly genocidal rhetoric is not, in fact, calling for the murder of millions of people, because he doesn’t believe trans people actually exist in the first place. “There can’t be a genocide,” he said on his show last week, because “it’s not a legitimate category of being. They’re laboring under a delusion. And so we need to correct that delusion.”

Of course, Knowles is not some lone, unhinged extremist at CPAC or in the Republican Party writ large, which is collectively whipped up into an anti-trans frenzy lately that seems to preclude discussing any other issue. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) joked at CPAC this week that Biden spent “four or five days asking the Chinese spy balloon what pronouns it uses before we shot it down.” Former Donald Trump advisor Sebastian Gorka railed at the conference this week about “mutilating boys and girls” and “sacrificing them on the altar of their transgender insanity.” Former Vice President (and likely 2024 presidential candidate) Mike Pence made the nonsensical claim without any evidence this week that school nurses in Iowa require parental permission to give out aspirin, but just dole out “gender transition plans” to kids willy-nilly without telling anyone.

It’s pretty clear to me, after Republicans underperformed in the midterm elections due in large part to the fall of Roe v. Wade and their extremely unpopular views on abortion, that they needed to invent another culture war issue to whip up their base in lieu of abortion. And telling parents in red states that doctors are “mutilating” their kids, that Democrats and teachers are “grooming” them to be trans and just secretly doling out hormones at recess, is a pretty easy way to drive paranoid Fox News viewers out to the polls.

Unfortunately, like the war on abortion, this one also comes at the expense of people’s lives. The rhetoric is fascist and genocidal, and it’s being accompanied by actual laws that will kill people and/or destroy their lives. We can ignore the extremist talking heads at CPAC, but I would argue that we shouldn’t.

Jezebel

CPAC Speaker’s Trans Comments About ‘Eradication’ Sound Downright Genocidal

The conservative movement’s annual confab was creepily obsessed with trans kids and showcased the GOP’s alarming and intensifying anti-trans rhetoric.

By Christopher Mathias
Mar 5, 2023

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Thousands of conservatives, including prominent Republican lawmakers and presidential hopefuls, flocked to a suburban Washington, D.C., convention center this week to discuss children’s genitals.

They were there for the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the preeminent annual gathering of America’s conservative movement, where speaker after speaker held forth on the urgent need for the Republican Party — an institution ostensibly dedicated to limited government — to criminalize the act of doctors and parents providing minors with gender-affirming care.

Sebastian Gorka, an alleged member of a Nazi-collaborating political order in Hungary who served as an advisor to former President Donald Trump, kicked off proceedings Friday morning from the main stage inside the Gaylord Convention Center. Democrats, he warned the crowd, are “mutilating boys and girls” and “sacrificing them on the altar of their transgender insanity.”

A short time later, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — a featured speaker at a white supremacist conference last year, where her fellow speakers praised Adolf Hitler and cheered on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — took to the stage to make a big announcement.


Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at Gaylord National Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 3, 2023.
SARAH SILBIGER VIA REUTERS

“So last Congress, I did something radical and extreme because remember Marjorie Taylor Greene, ‘she’s so extreme,’” she joked. “I introduced a bill called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act. And let me tell you my great news this morning, ladies and gentlemen: It couldn’t pass last Congress because Nancy Pelosi was the speaker of the House. She doesn’t believe in gender at all, but we have a new speaker in our Republican majority… and I’m going to be re-introducing my bill… that will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender!”

The crowd roared. Greene’s cruel piece of legislation — based on a multitude of lies — would prohibit transgender Americans under 18 years old from receiving crucial health services that have long been endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association.

Such endorsements were of little concern at CPAC, where politicians and right-wing influencers fine-tuned the anti-trans messaging that will likely be a staple of next year’s presidential campaign news cycle — the Republican Party clearly having decided that trans kids are worthy enough of a wedge issue to win back the White House.

But it also became clear at CPAC that the Republican campaign against trans kids isn’t just a mere ploy to energize its base — it could also be the beginning of an insurgent fascist campaign to erase trans people from public life altogether.

Michael Knowles, the host of ”The Michael Knowles Show” on The Daily Wire, gave a speech at CPAC that, at moments, sounded genocidal. “The problem with transgenderism is not that it’s inappropriate for children under the age of 9,” he said. “The problem with transgenderism is that it isn’t true.”

There are an estimated 1.6 million trans people in the United States. Knowles essentially told the CPAC crowd that these people should not have a right to exist.

“If [transgenderism] is false, then for the good of society... transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely,” he said.

Eradicated. The crowd roared again.

Another speaker, Tom Fitton, president of the right-wing website Judicial Watch, called gender-affirming care for minors “a demonic assault on the innocence of our children.”

And there was also a panel on the main stage called “A Time for Courage” featuring panelists Riley Gaines, a former collegiate athlete who made a name for herself complaining about competing against a transgender swimmer, and Chloe Cole, a woman who identified as a transgender male as a minor but later “detransitioned.”

Cole’s story has featured prominently in right-wing media to demonstrate the apparent dangers of allowing children to receive gender-affirming care. But stories like hers are very rare. Only about 1 to 3% of people who start a gender transition later express regret for doing so and then “backtrack or travel elsewhere across the landscape of gender identity,” as Slate once explained.

But for CPAC attendees, stories like Cole’s prove that gender-affirming care for minors is always evil.

Donald Ruthig, a 73-year-old retiree from Onancock, Virginia, told HuffPost he recently left the Episcopal Church over its decision to support transgender youth. He drove three hours to CPAC to “meet people that think the way I think” who are “dedicated to restoring the Judeo-Christian morality that we’re losing.”

Part of this restoration, he explained, is to “stop torturing our children with gender transitions, to stop this whole LBGTQ alphabet nonsense, and start treating people like God’s people created in God’s image. We are all alike. We don’t need to partition everybody by their little fetishes.”

Donald Ruthing, 74, attends the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland on March 3, 2023.

CHRISTOPHER MATHIAS FOR HUFFPOST

Tim Roberts, 57, traveled to CPAC from East Lansing, Michigan, with his two daughters, who he recently removed from public school “because of all the woke stuff that’s going on in there.”

He echoed a sentiment expressed a lot at CPAC — that the mere acknowledgment of transgender people in the classroom is tantamount to indoctrination.

“I graduated [high school] in 1985, and it just wasn’t a thing, and now [my daughters] said a better part of their classes have a lot of trans kids or kids that think they’re trans,” he said. “Like the first thing [school administrators] do when they come to school is say, ‘Hey, write down your pronouns, and that’s what we will go by.’ They’re encouraging this.”

James Clark, 37, a political public relations consultant from Kansas City, Missouri, expressed enthusiastic support for Greene’s bill. Gender-affirming care for minors, he said, was “child abuse.”

“It also leads into the human trafficking, sex trafficking, pedophilia, and different things like that,” he started before HuffPost asked him what gender-affirming care had to do with pedophilia.

“It has a lot to do with it,” he replied. “If you have an adult grooming a child to become trans...” HuffPost interjected again, asking what evidence is there that they’re being groomed.

“Well, you know, I’m just speculating,” Clark conceded before insisting that there is probably a lot of science that can “back up” the conservative argument against providing transgender youth with gender-affirming care — he just didn’t know it offhand.

He simply added, “I’m not a psychologist.”

CPAC offers a platform for an avalanche of anti-trans attacks


Alex Woodward
Sat, 4 March 2023

In speech after speech and panel after panel, the guests on the stage at one of the biggest platforms for right-wing activists and Republican officials lobbed casual attacks against transgender Americans, made jokes at their expense, or threatened to strip them of their healthcare and remove them from public life.

The guests at 2023’s Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, revived familiar right-wing tropes aimed at “safe spaces” and “wokeness” and “socialist” Democratic lawmakers, but prominent GOP elected officials and right-wing media personalities repeatedly returned to their alarmist visions of children in danger from LGBT+ people and gender-affirming care.

Their claims run parallel to a wave of legislation targeting LGBT+ Americans, particularly young trans people, and proposed federal legislation that would restrict that care nationally under threat of felony prosecutions.

Far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told the conference that she plans to introduce a bill she is calling the Protect Children’s Innocence Act that would make it a felony to perform “anything to do with gender-affirming care” for minors.

One panel on 3 March featured Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, among interest groups advancing legislation across the US to end gender-affirming care for trans youth and, ultimately, end affirming care for all trans people. He intentionally misgendered two prominent transgender women activists as men in his remarks on the panel.

That panel also heard from Chloe Cole, a “detransitioner” who has become a central figure in a right-wing campaign to restrict gender-affirming care, despite the vast majority of trans people maintaining their gender identity.

Riley Gaines, an American swimmer who repeatedly called trans swimmer Lia Thomas a “biological male”, also appeared on the panel to speak out against trans athletes; Ms Thomas has been routinely attacked by her former competitors, sports stars, politicians, activists, and even some of her teammates’ parents.

Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire sparked widespread alarm on 4 March with remarks derided as eliminationist and genocidal.

“If [transgenderism] is false, then for the good of society, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely,” he said.

Mr Knowles had previously claimed that he doesn’t believe his rhetoric is genocidal because he doesn’t believe trans people exist, Jezebel noted.

“There can’t be a genocide,” he said on his programme last week, adding that “it’s not a legitimate category of being. They’re labouring under a delusion. And so we need to correct that delusion”.

A panel on 2 March rejected transgender Americans from team sports as well as honest classroom teachings on race, racism and LGBT+ people, with former college football turned Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville listing a string of right-wing targets in a series of baseless statements against trans athletes and US education.

“All this woke, transgender athletes, CRT, 1619, they don’t teach reading, writing or arithmetic,” the senator said, referencing “critical race theory” and The 1619 Project, an award-winning New York Times project that reframes the nation’s founding through the lens of slavery.

His remarks on a panel titled “Sacking the Woke Playbook” panel dismissed transgender girls and women as “biological boys”; sports, he said, must be “protected” because “sports have built this country”.

The senator also falsely claimed that “half the kids when they graduate they can’t read their diploma” as he condemned “the progressives, the crazies” who he baselessly claimed are “trying to change family, change things that are our moral values”.

At least 150 bills in 2023 would specifically restrict the rights of trans people, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Several proposed laws would specifically target trans healthcare for adults.

On the opening day of CPAC, Tennessee became the eighth state in the nation to ban gender-affirming care for youth, the fourth to do so this year. A similar measure was signed into law in Mississippi one day earlier.

Gender-affirming care can span several kinds of treatments, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and social transitioning support. Care standards from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and other leading medical groups do not recommend that affirming surgeries be performed on minors.

Such care is considered safe, effective and medically necessary by most medical organisatons. The American Medical Association, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians, among others, have established clear clinical guidelines for treating young trans people.

Dozens of bills introduced in state legislatures across the US to restrict such care are supported and in many cases drafted by influential right-wing legal groups, conservative Christian organisations and fringe medical groups that have aligned with right-wing public officials to advance their agenda.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the nation’s largest professional association of pediatricians, recommends a “gender-affirming” and “nonjudgmental approach that helps children feel safe in a society that too often marginalizes or stigmatizes those seen as different.”

“The gender-affirming model strengthens family resiliency and takes the emphasis off heightened concerns over gender while allowing children the freedom to focus on academics, relationship-building and other typical developmental tasks,” according to the organisation.

But remarks from elected officials and waves of legislation aimed at trans Americans, alongside what appears to be the makings of a newspaper crusade focused on trans rights, have insisted that something is dangerously wrong with the ways in which children and their families navigate a nuanced and personal process, similar to a concurrent battle for abortion rights against an avalanche of restrictions.

CPAC’s personalities, meanwhile, unjustly linked trans people to “grooming” and “pedophilia” or used “pronouns” as a punchline.

“There is no middle ground on transgenderism,” right-wing activist Candace Owens said in her remarks on 2 March. “If you don’t have the courage to say what needs to be said, we truly don’t need you.”

Speakers at the conference accused their political opponents of “targeting” children with “gender ideology” while within the same breath advancing legislation and proposals that would severely restrict care for young people.

“I don’t know about you,” congresswoman Greene said on 3 March, “but when it comes to kids, I think the Republican Party has a duty. We have a responsibility, and that is to be the party that protects children.”

Nearly one in five transgender and nonbinary youth attempted suicide in 2022, according to a nationwide survey from The Trevor Project. Fewer one in three trans and nonbinary youth reported living in a home that was gender-affirming.

Legislation and inflammatory political debates surrounding it have radically impacted the mental health of a majority of young trans and nonbinary people, according to polling from The Trevor Project and Morning Consult.

A vast majority of trans and nonbinary youth, 86 per cent, reported that debates and laws targeting LGBT+ people have negatively impacted their mental health, weighed down by “anger, sadness, stress, and fear,” with fear “most intensely felt” among trans and nonbinary young people, according to The Trevor Project.

With her Libs of TikTok accounts and attacks against LGBT+ people, teachers and doctors, Chaya Raichik has emerged as an influential right-wing media figure making appearances on Tucker Carlson’s programming and Newsmax, with millions of social media followers and a high-earning blog.

She made her debut at CPAC stage alongside several prominent right-wing media personalities on 2 March.

Libs of TikTok has been linked to harassment and threats against drag performers, LGBT+ people and their advocates, particularly teachers, and doctors and hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to young trans people. Hours after five people were killed and several others were wounded inside a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs LGBT+ nightclub, Libs of TikTok drew negative attention to a drag performance in the state.

At CPAC, she was hailed as a “hero” and “courageous”.

She called a recent VICE article previewing her CPAC appearance as an “insane hit piece”.

Ms Raichik also claimed that the term “stochastic terrorist” was invented because of her, though she also admitted she doesn’t know what it means; the term has been used to describe the leveraging of hateful rhetoric through large social media platforms to promote violence.

“Nothing I love more than to mock and clown the liberal media,” she said.

If you are based in the US and seek LGBT+ affirming mental health support, resources are available from Trans Lifeline (877-565-8860) and the LGBT Hotline (888-843-4564), as well as The Trevor Project (866-488-7386 or text START to 678-678).

UK rivers are too polluted to enjoy, says Ray Mears

Danny Halpin
Sat, 4 March 2023 


Ray Mears has said he would not canoe in some of the UK’s rivers because they are so polluted.

The television woodsman made his career teaching bushcraft and survival techniques, but in an interview with the i newspaper he lamented the state of British waterways.

He told the paper: “I have seen rivers full of effluent, bubbling like they are full of detergent.

“It’s heartbreaking. I’m a canoeist and there are some rivers I wouldn’t put a canoe in to paddle on, which is how bad it is in some places.

“One of the joys for me is to make a canoe trip in wild places and at the end of the day’s hard paddling is to literally jump in and swim and to feel nature envelop me, and I think that’s magical. We should have those opportunities.”

Only 14% of rivers and lakes in England meet good ecological status and none meet good status for persistent, bioaccumulative or toxic chemicals.

Monitoring of PFAS, an industrial chemical that builds up in the body and has been linked to cancer, liver damage and decreased fertility as well as an increased risk of asthma and thyroid disease, has found widespread contamination in UK rivers.

The Times reported on Saturday that water companies plan to pump rivers if more drought conditions threaten drinking water shortages, raising concerns about the transportation of chemicals and the threat to wildlife.

Environment Secretary Therese Coffey has been accused of backing away from fining water companies up to £250 million for polluting (Kirsty O’Connor/PA)

Data obtained by the Labour Party last year showed that monitored discharges of sewage into waterways had increased by more than 26 times between 2016 and 2021 – from 100,533 hours to 2,667,452.

Water companies are only permitted to release sewage during periods of heavy rain so that the system does not back up and pump sewage into people’s homes.

But Surfers Against Sewage said they found 143 “dry spills” between October 2021 and September 2022 by using Met Office data to identify sewage discharges when there had been no rain in the preceding two days.

They also said that more than half the people they asked in a recent survey had reported being sick after wild swimming or water sports.



In his interview with the i, Mr Mears said rivers are part of the “poetry” and “psyche” of the UK and that we have a hardwired, spiritual need to be by water.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it has increased transparency of sewage discharges by making water companies monitor and publish more data on overflows.

It said the number of monitored overflows has increased 15-fold, from 800 in 2016 to more than 12,000 in 2020 and plans to have all 15,000 overflows covered by the end of this year.

In January, Conservative MPs introduced a new target for water companies to reduce the level of phosphorus, a chemical present in human waste, from treated wastewater by 80%.

The Liberal Democrats and others said the Government had effectively voted to allow sewage to continue for another 15 years.

In response to the vote, Extinction Rebellion began putting up satirical blue plaques, in the style used by English Heritage, by waterways across the country, naming and shaming MPs who had voted in favour of the Government’s new target.