Rodney sets a tough target

PM urges voters to reject 'toxic' politics as by-election polls open

Sir Keir Starmer has made a final desperate plea to voters in Gorton and Denton, urging them to turn against “toxic” politics and make a choice between “unity or division” in a crucial by-election which experts believe could herald a new era of British politics.

With the vote expected to be a major test of his leadership, the prime minister made a last-ditch attempt to persuade voters to back his party. Ahead of the vote, Labour appeared to be neck and neck with the Greens and Reform in a fight to win the Greater Manchester seat, with any of the three parties in with a chance of winning.

Blimey, no doubt it is just possible to be more divisive than Sir Keir Rodney Starmer, but Gorton and Denton polling suggests he has set a tough target.

Reeves Tries Irony

Andrew must repay any misused taxpayer money, says Reeves

Chancellor says she has never met the former Duke of York and it is 'probably for the best'

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor should repay money to the public purse if he is found to have misused taxpayers’ funds, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves has told The i Paper.

Reeves also said she was glad she had never met Mountbatten-Windsor, who was described by one government minister on Tuesday as “rude, arrogant and entitled”.

Blimey...

Net Zero...

Nope, the list is a long one and we are off out for coffee.

What voters are thinking

‘We’ve already given up on Labour’: What voters are thinking in key by-election

Sipping a cup of tea at Colin’s Cafe in Longsight Market, John Hanrahan believes only a fraction of those perusing the stalls will have heard that Labour’s former US ambassador Peter Mandelson was arrested yesterday...

“I don’t give a toss, they should be sorting out the problems that were all now in.

“You [journalists] write about crap, you don’t write about anything that you should be writing about.


Journalists write about crap? Surely not.


Coronation Street star criticises soap’s ‘crime-heavy’ storylines

Coronation Street star Sally Ann Matthews, who left the show last year, has hit out at the ITV soap for focusing on crime plots.

Gorton & Denton Need The Green Party

 

Sometimes it's better never than late

Energy giants unite for job-creating Humber hydrogen network

National Gas, Centrica, Equinor and SSE Thermal have joined forces to bid for £500m government funding to develop the UK's first integrated hydrogen network in the region

Together, the major employers argue that nowhere else in Britain can rival the infrastructure, expertise and location required to establish the network. They maintain that by supporting the regional proposal the Government will be able to advance its broader industrial decarbonisation strategy, enhance competitiveness, and generate substantial numbers of jobs.


Radical alternate EV tech faltering: Toyota and Honda's hydrogen projects stuttering as alternative electric technology suffers sales smashing in overseas

Nikkei Asia has reported annual sales of hydrogen vehicles decreased by more than 80 per cent since 2021, with the supporting infrastructure available also decreasing...

These stuttering sales numbers are causing major players to retreat in their hydrogen plans, including Stallantis that discontinued development citing "no prospects of mid-term economic sustainability."

Honda and General Motors have also severed ties on their hydrogen joint-venture, which has been running since 2013 and included production of the CR-V e:FCEV.

Transnational, rootless, cosmopolitan ideologies

FSB has an interesting piece on Dr James Orr, Reform UK head of policy. Well worth reading.

The Philosopher King of Reform: James Orr and the Intellectual Reboot of British Populism

When Nigel Farage unveiled Reform UK’s shadow cabinet on 18 February 2026, one much overlooked appointment stood out to me for its intellectual heft and potential to reshape the party’s trajectory: Dr James Tristan Ward Orr, associate professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Cambridge, was named head of policy, succeeding Zia Yusuf. Farage’s choice of a 47-year-old theologian-philosopher with deep ties to the American ‘New Right’ signals an ambition to move Reform beyond headline-grabbing protest politics towards a more coherent, governance-ready programme...

Domestically, Orr has become a leading voice in Britain’s national conservative movement. He frames Britain’s multiple crises of stagnant productivity, soaring debt, social breakdown, institutional decay as fundamentally spiritual. In interviews he speaks of “transnational, rootless, cosmopolitan ideologies” that repudiate national spirit and collective endeavour. Multiculturalism, he argues, has been a “disastrous experiment” turning Britain into “a laboratory for hyper-liberalism” where English culture is under threat and assimilation has failed at unprecedented scale. “This new nation that’s emerging is really no nation at all,” he told PoliticsHome.

On immigration he is uncompromising. He has spoken of “vast swathes of London where you can’t send your kids to school because English is just not spoken anymore” and “the mass rape of England’s daughters by rapist foreigners from morally backward cultures”. Asylum seekers have been described by him in terms critics – BBC types - call inflammatory; he has praised protesters against a new mosque in the Lake District as “heroes”. Diversity, in his view, is a “debilitating weakness”.

To ensure that news is reported accurately

Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ to be regulated by Ofcom in UK

Streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ will be required to follow similar Ofcom rules to traditional broadcasters under new legislation being implemented.

The UK’s biggest video-on-demand services, those with more than 500,000 UK users, will be brought under “enhanced regulation” by the watchdog...

The regulations include an exemption for VoD services provided by the BBC, such as BBC iPlayer, as these services will continue to be regulated under the Broadcasting Code via the BBC Framework Agreement for the time being...

The new legislation aims to ensure that news is reported accurately and impartially and audiences are protected against “harmful or offensive” material.

No doubt this will be the level of accuracy expected for news stories about climate change, sustainable energy, wind farms, solar farms, EVs, heat pumps, recycling, pollution, weather statistics, flooding, immigration, housing, crime, education, health, the NHS and claims made daily by prominent politicians.