Richard P

Dear Lucy On the eve of the by-election, your Labour party spokesperson has admitted to the Huffington Post that a Labour party leaflet has been delivered through doors with your imprint recommending a vote for Labour by a tactical voting organisation which does not exist. This is deeply troubling, it is actually lying to voters. Did you approve this? Do you feel the Labour Party in government should be held to different standards in terms of honesty to the British public? In your last letter to me you mentioned your ‘very extensive data’ and ‘having spoken to over a third of eligible voters’ which led you to an understanding that the by election ‘was a contest between labour and Reform’. Clearly this latest development only tells voters one thing - you will employ any type of political deception (or in Urdu “Dhoka” ) to win. You will be very aware that all three real tactical voting organisations are recommending a vote for the Greens as the best way to stop Reform. Lying to the voters, as you have been caught doing, raises the real prospect that Reform will be the beneficiaries, something you have said that you don’t want. As this is such an important issue, for the sake of your own reputation, I would strongly urge you to apologise to the voters of Denton and Gorton before the polls open in the morning.” Kind regards, Zack Polanski Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales

Dear @lucympowell.bsky.social,

Why did you invent a fake tactical voting company to stop the Green Party beating Reform?

I'm starting to think your letters haven't always been in good faith...

UK suspension of refugee family reunion scheme to be challenged in high court Judge allows Safe Passage International to launch judicial review of halting of right to bring in children and partners

Halting family reunification is one of the most harmful anti-asylum policies in years. Not only does it leave vulnerable individuals separated from loved ones and trapped in dangerous situations, it's also a traffickers' dream, forcing more people into their hands
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The current Green manifesto/ policy platform was exactly the same prior to Zack becoming leader. He hasn't junked or changed anything.

The Green party are a democratic, one member one vote party. Unlike Reform, there isn't a dictator, the leader is the voice of the policy dictated by the members.

🤷🏼

Not exactly the same, but similar enough, we're already seeing EU and UK pushing the same principles of deporting people to "third countries". The outcome, such as with Labour's "return hubs", is stranding people in countries to which they have no ties. We are not so far behind Trump's policies.

Trump’s ICE Is Quietly Stockpiling Weaponry—and It Should Alarm Us All In addition to staffing up at a furious rate, ICE and CPB are acquiring a vast cache of weapons from private contractors, new data reveals. This will not end well—or anytime soon.

Appalling: ICE and CBP contracted for $144 million in weaponry and accessories in Trump's first year, per data obtained by Sen Adam Schiff.

For ICE it's a fourfold increase, much of it for military-style weapons. A heavily armed secret police force. 1/

(new piece)
newrepublic.com/article/2069...

Six concerns about public procurement What is wrong about public procurement - and why it can be hard to do anything about it

NEW

Six concerns about public procurement

What is wrong about public procurement - and why it can be hard to do anything about it

Detailed post by me:
emptycity.substack.com/p/six-concer...

Five members of the US Men’s Gold Medal Hockey team have refused Trump’s White House invitation.

Four of them are from Minnesota.

This is how you resist.

You don’t participate in misogynistic locker room talk.

You don’t disparage other members of your sport.

You don’t visit fascists.

Exclusive Poll: Anti-Reform Tactical Voters Poised to Defeat Nigel Farage’s Party in Gorton and Denton By-election Greens and Labour are in an effective dead heat against Reform UK, with tactical voters leaning towards Zack Polanski’s party

"The poll suggests that tactical voting could easily swing the contest, with anti-Reform voters significantly more likely to switch to the Greens than to Labour."

The state of it has revealed that cabinet ministers privately believe the greens are hammering us by deliberately raising the salience of Gaza in the constituency.

The Labour government object to us talking about Gaza.

Genocide is serious and they should hang their heads in shame for arming it, not complaining to journalists.

Not surprised they're distracting from their other failures - like addressing the cost of energy bills and rent.

It's a reminder that Brexit had nothing to do with our interests. It was an elite project backed by extreme rightwing billionaires and their concierges, many of whom had no vote or standing in this country. Yet it was packaged as patriotism by the very people collaborating with foreign interests.

l've just been attacked by a gang of Muslims outside of East London Mosque in Whitechapel. During the time of Ramadan, and after a Christian preacher was antagonised by Muslims, I decided to do some interviews and debate outside of East London Mosque. Immediately afterwards, a gang of men surrounded me and threatened to mug me

There's a whole thing going down on the right wing X-sphere where vloggers go and stand outside mosques... try to provoke worshippers... and then claim they have been "assaulted" - despite the people on the footage appearing to be entirely reasonable and just asking them to go home.

Look.

People get divorced for all manner of reasons, and it's nobody else's business.

However.

When a politician is using the slogan:

Family. Community. Country.

It's perfectly reasonable to point out that they are recently divorced and live in the SE of England miles from Gorton and Denton.

Lee’s message is to fear immigrants. But fewer than 14% of nearly 400,000 people ICE arrested in Trump’s 1st yr had violent criminal charges or convictions. It’s autocratic fear-mongering. Manufacture a crisis, demonize the minority, and use the panic to justify power for the regime.
zurl.co/GhBw1

SOON … Very soon.

Report: privatisation of the NHS from Keep Our NHS Public

Hearing now how every transfer of resources from NHS into private sector reduces the capacity of public sector. 30 per cent is now more realistic figure for privatisation of the NHS - 5 big cataract surgery firms making 32% return on investment, £169m profit

The defining face of the first day of the full-scale invasion is Ukrainian marine Vitalii Skakun.

He heroically sacrificed his life by blowing up a bridge in Henichesk to slow the advancing Russian columns.

Plans for AI data centres suggest 50 gigawatts of demand — more than the UK’s national peak of 45.

Alarm bells should be ringing. Are we powering genuine public good — or hype? The environmental cost could be vast.

#ClimateCrisis #ArtificialIntelligence

As a whole nation remains in shock, horror, and grief, and families are searching for their loved ones in the aftermath of security forces’ massacres on January 8 and 9, Iranian authorities continue to terrorize the population.

Read HRW’s new investigation. ⤵️
www.hrw.org/news/2026/02...

there are a lot of things i hate about the trump family and one of them is the way that every single one of them, up and down the line, is attached to the federal government like a fucking parasite, bleeding off everything they can before trump expires

Land and Expand - how Palantir captured the Ministry of Defence What a close reading of public domain documents tells us about two concerning contract awards

A very elegantly phrased discussion of the problems the MoD have, now that they've committed to paying Palantir an absolute fortune for what I fear might turn out to be "vapour ware".
emptycity.substack.com/p/land-and-e...

Labour battles disaffection in crucial three-way by-election Activists fear coming third to Greens and Reform, which have both run energetic and populist campaigns

"Former Labour voter Mohammed Sarfaz, who has run the Andaaz clothing shop in Longsight for 24 years, has placed a Green Party poster in his window.

"He said he had concluded that without Burnham as a candidate he would be voting Green."

“You didn’t inherit the freezing of the repayment thresholds. You did that in the last budget..” - Victoria Derbyshire

#StudentLoansScandal

We need to get serious about tackling corruption through political donations The government's reforms are welcome but they won't end political corruption

Reform UK for sale.

It had to return over £200,000 in donations from 18 ineligible overseas donors.

It received £9m from a person in Thailand.

Its former Wales leader received 10.5 yrs prison sentence for accepting bribes to promote pro-Russian narratives.

Elon Musk promised $100m.

First class work from a first class team on an economy class budget. (To which you can contribute…)

I Caught POLITICO and the New York Times Laundering Pink Slime "News" How the sexist backlash to AOC and Gretchen Whitmer at the Munich Security Conference led me to a scammy "local news" outlet pushing a coordinated right-wing narrative

Interesting post about the coordinated anti-AOC smear campaign. It's 2016 again! Fake local news outlets on Facebook getting picked up until eventually it winds up in the Washington Post.

🤷🏼

ICE Whistleblower Ryan Schwank.

"ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution"

Partly, this reflects expectations: the debate over whether Labour or the Greens were best placed to block Reform seemed already settled for this cohort. "I think it's a two-horse race, this by-election between Reform and Green" one participant observed. There was cautious optimism for the Greens - Zack Polanski in particular was viewed positively. Participants highlighted the party's stance on Gaza and its Muslim co-deputy leader, Mothin Ali, and more broadly saw it as "inclusive" toward ethnic minorities. Curiously, no one mentioned the environment, and the Green Party's positions on trans rights or defence - areas other parties perceive as vulnerabilities for Polanski - appeared to concern no one.

Given that “trans rights and defence” are about 60% of the full arsenal of media bullshit, I think the pundits are recognising a nightmarish threat here: a substantial demographic groups that stubbornly refuses to be shitehoused into compliance.