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1 week ago | 
thecanary.co | James Wright
Former director of communications for Jeremy Corbyn James Schneider took former communications chief for Reform Gawain Towler to task over inequality on GB News.
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1 week ago | 
thecanary.co | James Wright
The disaster of water privatisation is never ending. It turns out, water companies have overseen a large increase in serious sewage pollution incidents. They’re at a ten year high, according to data that Surfers Against Sewage obtained. There were 2,487 incidents in 2024, which is over twice the limit that the Environment Agency (EA) set. This is separate to the total number of sewage spills, which stood at 3.614 million hours of spillages into our lakes, rivers and seas in 2024.
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1 week ago | 
thecanary.co | James Wright
Dozens of Labour MPs, including cabinet ministers with flimsy majorities, risk losing their seats over the government’s incoming Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) cuts to disabled people’s support. Data shared between MPs shows there are over 80 seats where majorities are slimmer than the number of people who may lose their Personal Independence Payment (PIP).
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1 week ago | 
thecanary.co | James Wright
As the Keir Starmer-led government cuts the UK foreign aid budget (by more than the Tories, and to pay for increased defence spending), it’s important to remember that rich nations like the UK already extract much more wealth from countries in Africa than they pay back in aid. The Labour government is reducing foreign aid to just 0.3% of GDP, it’s lowest level in 25 years. In 2019, it was more than double that (as a proportion of national income) at 0.7%.
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1 week ago | 
thecanary.co | James Wright
Keir Starmer has done next to nothing to address the Conservative Party-led austerity cuts that decimated Birmingham city council between 2010 and 2020. The maintenance of George Osborne’s legacy under Labour is austerity 2.0. This is the root cause of the Birmingham bin strike over the removal of a role. It amounts to a pay cut of up to £8,000 per year for some.
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1 week ago | 
thecanary.co | James Wright
In case you didn’t know, our NHS has a landlord. Yes, our supposedly public health service is renting hospitals from a private company. And now that company, Assura, has made £1.61 billion selling off its assets like GP surgeries to a US private equity giant. The NHS: robbed in plain sightAssura was established in 2003 and owns over 600 healthcare buildings, the majority of which it leases to the NHS.
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2 weeks ago | 
thecanary.co | James Wright
Families are now waiting more than 100 years for social housing in some areas of the UK, according to analysis from the National Housing Federation (NHF), Crisis, and Shelter. Waiting times for at least a three bedroom social home exceed life expectancy in the London boroughs of Enfield at 105 years, Westminster at 107 years and Merton at 102 years. Only 100 years later… and you can get social housingAnd it’s still ridiculous in other local authority locations.
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2 weeks ago | 
thecanary.co | James Wright
The UK government has reviewed the rules for its petrol and diesel vehicle sale ban and decided that posh cars will be exempt. Luxury vehicles McLaren, Aston Martin and Bentley will no longer have to follow the electric vehicle (EV) mandate and can continue making fossil fuel chugging cars beyond 2030. As long as rich people are doing it, it’s fine to drop the EV mandateA Labour government statement said that they are “preserving some of the UK car industry’s most iconic jewels for years to come”.
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2 weeks ago | 
thecanary.co | James Wright
A University of Greenwich study for We Own It has found a “privatisation tax” of 35% on our water bills. In other words, we’re spending over one-third more than we need to every time we turn on the taps. Water privatisation = costly failureThe latest research found that the UK public would save £5 billion per year on water bills if the government brought water into public ownership. And that figure would be higher once it didn’t include paying off nationalisation costs.
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2 weeks ago | 
thecanary.co | James Wright
Forbes has released its annual World Billionaires list and a record 3,028 people control an ungodly amount of wealth. That’s 247 more billionaires than last year. In fact, they are worth £12.4 trillion – more than the GDP of every country in the world, other than the US and China (193 countries). And their net worth is £1.54 trillion more than a year ago. That means, according to Oxfam figures, just 3,000 people (the 0.000036%) have more wealth than 99% of the planet – around eight billion people.
