Rebecca Boden

Roger O’Doherty: you’re chair of the Labour Party committee that runs the Trades Club. The Electoral Commission has now put the committee/local party under formal investigation for failing to keep proper accounts and failure to make proper returns, with the option to add more. I’d pipe down.

🧵4/4 A problem seems to be that the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 doesn’t make it an offence for parties not to pay their taxes. That, I suggest, needs to change. There needs to be serious consequences for negligence by parties.

🧵3/4 I even wrote to national Labour’s auditors. They passed it on to the finance director - who did nothing. It seems that this is systemic failure by Labour - it just doesn’t care that it’s not paying its taxes. The MP @JoshFG doesn’t seem to care. No one cares.

Adviser says Labour failed to declare Hebden Bridge venue income Prof Rebecca Boden says the party should have declared rent from the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge.

🧵2/4 Last year, I found that Calder Valley Labour Party, hadn’t declared its rental income since 1992. I was met with furious bullying and denial when I spoke up. I even told now MP @JoshFG and he brushed it off. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Political parties’ failing to pay tax on their rental income Investigation reveals widespread failure by political parties across the UK to pay corporation tax on rental income, even when funded by taxpayers.

🧵1/4 Delighted that @DanNeidle has looked into how many local political parties aren’t paying their due taxes on rental income. Dan is generous about the reasons -citing that they are volunteers. But my experience makes me more sceptical. taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/05/11/p...

Calling all journalists.

The questions you SHOULD be asking those politicians and functionaries enthusiastically promoting the exclusion of trans people from a decent life in society are:

@robinmoirawhite.bsky.social Great interview on Woman’s Hour today.

Labour targets international students claiming asylum after election losses to Reform Exclusive: Ministers understood to be drafting white paper this month in move to reduce legal migration

Labour, dragging its sorry ass to the Reform camp. No moral compass, no backbone. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Starmer faces Labour revolt over plan to raid bank accounts of benefit claimants Welfare fraud bill would allow funds to be taken from bank accounts and driving licences to be cancelled

Some backbones have been located? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

So, it appears that the Supreme Court has defined lesbian for me. Am I to be grateful? Is this what all those rabid anti-trans lesbians are celebrating? Being defined by the state?

That’s why the Supreme Court was so muddled.

Philipson on the Today programme - trans people should use the toilets of ‘their biological sex’. So with this government we are lost.

Yup. Trying to out-Reform Reform.

The awful moral deficit of this government- we won’t scrap the two-child cap because it’s ’popular with key voters’. FFS. How low can they sink? www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

"On the important issue of discrimination, Clause 9 makes it clear that a transsexual person would have protection under the Sex Discrimination Act as a person of the acquired sex or gender. Once recognition has been granted, they will be able to claim the rights appropriate to that gender."

The Minister who introduced the Gender Recognition Bill in the House of Lords in 2003 made it clear that "a transsexual person would have protection under the Sex Discrimination Act [the predecessor to the Equality Act] as a person of the acquired sex or gender." /1

Fighting fund for trans rights | Good Law Project Stand up for trans rights 🏳️‍⚧️ Join me and @GoodLawProject and help us fight the rollbacks on trans rights in the UK.

The fight for the rights and dignities of trans people is a fight against the thin edge of fascism. It's a hill we are willing to fight and die on. If you'd like to support us with a donation dedicated to trans rights, you can do so here. I am donating £1,000. goodlawproject.org/crowdfunder/...

This is a very tough day for trans people – with a long legal road ahead to right this wrong | Robin Moira White The supreme court judgment is contradictory and confused. And there seems no prospect of the Labour government sorting this out, says discrimination barrister Robin Moira White

Excellent piece by @robinmoirawhite.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A third of UK school staff report ‘physical underdevelopment’ in poor students A survey of more than 14,000 staff also found schools having to step in to provide basic household items

Where is Labour’s leadership on child poverty? Shameful silence from them. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

When you’re voting in the May elections, here’s the Deputy Leader of Calderdale Council, Scott Patient (Labour), calling voters coming to a council meeting to silently protest exorbitant parking charge hikes that are wrecking their areas, ‘pernicious’. Down peasants.

Orange Juice? Keir Starmer is on the Kool-Aid | Stewart Lee Instead of standing up to Trump, the PM is encouraging people who want to destroy our values to come and do it in our country at reduced tax rates

Totally agree with this. Excellent piece. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Think so. Worrying

‘False teacher’: Trump’s pick to head the ‘White House faith office’ roils some fellow Christians Paula White, a millionaire televangelist who speaks in tongues, was criticized for an alleged cash-for-blessings scheme

US = basket case. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Russell Brand charged by the Metropolitan Police Service The CPS has authorised the charges following an investigation by detectives

Russell Brand has been charged with one count each of rape, indecent assault and oral rape plus two counts of sexual assault.
news.met.police.uk/news/russell...

The government would be prepared to scrap the digital services tax on US tech firms such as Amazon, Alphabet & Meta in exchange for a deal sparing British businesses from tariffs. Meaning the 3 richest men in the world will share £800 million & we all pay for it!
That isn’t a deal it’s appeasement

Labour's populist pantomime over sentencing rules plays into the hands of the right | Janey Starling Forcing the abandonment of commonsense, evidence-based guidelines is a new low for a party that once prided itself on justice reform, says Janey Starling of campaign group Level Up

Labour. Out Torying the Tories. Again. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This government is becoming truly Trumpian.

The ‘anti-woke’ alternative to the National Trust that’s growing by 10,000 members a year

'Come and enjoy the places where we raped and sold enslaved people, placed unmarried mothers into servitude and orphaned children into workhouse.'

UK ministers and officials treated to hospitality 3,500 times in five years. The answer is simple -prohibit it all completely.

Record 4.5m children in poverty in UK as cuts condemned as ‘morally repugnant’

Russell Jones's Week Moment: Billionaires, Miscarriages of Capitalism, and Bin Collections In the week the Government cut £5 billion in benefit payments, Russell Jones takes the UK's tax-dodging billionaires to task and urges Labour to get on with imposing a wealth tax

Wise words. Labour isn’t listening. open.substack.com/pub/bylinesu...