Rather than August being the traditional ‘silly season’ the news agenda this year has been busier than ever, with desperate straits in Gaza and Ukraine including Netanyahu’s latest plan, growing opposition to Netanyahu from the army and the public, the collapse in authority of the UN with no concomitant genuine authority from Trump and his inexperienced team, the Trump/Putin summit coming up, shocking bloodshed in Sudan, Palestine Action protests, increasing arrivals of migrants on ‘small boats’ and measures to counteract them, anti-immigrant protests whipped up by the right wing media, the rise of Reform, no let up to the cost of living crisis, NHS strikes and millions still on waiting lists and more unsavoury news about the Royal Family. And there will be more…. I strongly believe that it’s important to keep up with the news (and not just what the biased BBC churns out) as ignorance allows charlatans to gain a foothold, but agree with Jonathan Freedland, who has felt the need for some light relief from the relentless flow. ‘The world’s in flames. But these are the ways I’ve found hope this summer amid the gloom… Tentatively, I want to make a moral case for escapism – for allowing oneself a break from world events… The supply of bad news is voluminous and apparently without end. You lament what is happening now, with the proliferation of social media pumping out falsehood, whether AI-generated or human-made, and hate …’
His own ‘guilty pleasure’ was the cricketing contest between England and India but everyone will have access to something which truly absorbs them and which provides some respite from the sense of impotence we can easily experience when faced with world events. IT’s about protecting our mental health but also retaining a realistic perspective. ‘None of it makes any of the other stuff go away. Trump is still there when the Test match ends; death still stalks Gaza when you close Leslie’s book. But it is a useful antidote all the same. No, not useful – essential. For it’s when we feel ourselves plunged into the abyss, when our despair at our fellow human beings pulls strongest, that we most need to look upward – and glimpse the stars’.
Yesterday there were mass protests against the law proscribing Palestine Action (the judicial review challenging the ban won’t be until November), hundreds of protesters in central London deliberately testing the police with placards announcing support for PA. There’s no way the Met would have the resources to process so many but they did arrest 474 people (later amended to 500, then 532 but only 18 actually charged), 466 for supporting PA. What a shocking abuse of state power, this absurdly authoritarian measure mainly being to obscure the government’s embarrassment at having supported the genocidal regime in Gaza for so long. The sight of so many pensioners being manhandled in some cases and a blind and disabled man being wheeled away was sickening. The conduct of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is also something to conjure with – how cowardly that she darkly hinted at reasons why such measures were deemed necessary but wasn’t at liberty to disclose them. She said that ‘the ban “only applies to the specific and narrow organisation, Palestine Action” and did not affect the freedom to protest about Palestinian rights. (But protesters rightly flouted this false distinction and held up signs of their support for PA). ‘Cooper was at pains this week to say that proscription was decided based on strong security advice, citing ‘disturbing information referencing planning for further attacks, the details of which cannot yet be publicly reported due to ongoing legal proceedings’.
A former UK government lawyer turned activist and co-founder of Defend our Juries, Tim Crosland, said: ‘How has the government got itself into this mess … over people peacefully expressing their opinions?” He anticipated that the protests would ‘see Britain’s backbone on display’ and that’s about right. The entire stance makes the UK look stupid, inhumane and authoritarian and it’s been condemned by numerous influential organisations and individuals, including ‘the UN’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, who said it was at odds with international human rights law; Amnesty International; more than 300 prominent Jews in the UK, who described it as “illegitimate and unethical” and dozens of global scholars including Naomi Klein and Angela Davis who applauded a “growing campaign of collective defiance” against the ban’.
It’s interesting that Palestine Action’s challenge to the ban has Gareth Pierce, representing them, ‘a veteran human rights lawyer with a record of repeatedly taking on the British state – and often winning – over a career spanning more than half a century’. Also that if this ban is overturned those detained will be able to sue for wrongful arrest. As many as 600 people could be within that category, although no doubt suing would be made difficult. One protester declared: ‘The rights to demonstrate and other rights are being eroded systematically by the government. We are on a slippery slope to all demonstrations being banned’. If this actually happened imagine the outcry from the Right, who continue to protest against‘illegal migrants’ in their areas (but also elsewhere as quite a few have been bussed in to boost numbers), cynically and unforgivably whipped up by Nigel Farage and his followers and others such as Tik Tok Tories Robert Jenrick and Chris Philp.
Farage and others have been instrumental in fermenting unrest, constantly citing the ‘tinderbox’ cliché and others such as ‘the country is on fire’, their social media posts full of angry flag wavers, some accompanying images having been identified as old material recycled. Journalist John Harris notes that ‘rightwingers warn of another blaze of summer riots in Britain – but they’re the ones striking the match…. But for now, behold a fascinating spectacle: a country quietly refusing to chaotically combust, despite being endlessly encouraged to do so.. All this noise is part of a much bigger political development: a ballooning narrative about complete social breakdown’. Both Right and Left have their respective narratives, the Right that social breakdown will be due to ‘rampant wokery, crime, failed immigration policy, weak policing and general establishment decay and corruption’, the Left attributes it to the culmination, after 150 years, of capitalism being about to chaotically implode under the weight of its own contradictions’. The right wing media have a lot to answer for here, using the ‘kind of con trick used by reactionaries and authoritarians down the ages: warning of the country’s supposedly likely collapse in the hope that the rest of us support all the hardline policies they say would stop the rot’.
‘Neither Farage nor Jenrick’s parties offer anything that would assist its renewal and revival’ but, it will be difficult to counteract the cynical, siren voices of these media. You hear them all the time in media vox pops – people interviewed spout straight from the Daily Mail or GB News. But the government can’t afford to sidestep the real decline many areas have been sinking into, which community spirit can only go so far to address. The powerful ‘grim predictions of ‘societal collapse’ and ‘civil war’ will hit home so long as Labour fails to address the country’s problems’.
It’s pretty clear that the government’s Middle East policy has (apart from the strength of the Zionist lobby and its hold over politicians) been driven by wanting to remain onside with Trump. We’ve been there before. The arrogant and imperialist stance of these American wannabe politicians is something to behold: most recently US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee lambasting the PM for calling for an immediate ceasefire and while with Foreign Secretary David Lammy at the country seat of Chevening J D Vance having the nerve to tell Keir Starmer not to recognise a Palestinian state. They really seem to think they can order Europe and the UK around. We understand that J D Vance has now departed for his family holiday in the Cotswolds. I wonder how the protest preparations have been coming along and when Vance will be meeting up with his friend James Orr, the far right Cambridge academic heading up Reform’s new policy making think tank (Centre for a Better Britain).
In the wake of the resignation of her ministerial post by MP Rushanara Ali following the outcry over her conduct regarding her tenants, it then came to light that 1 in 8 MPs are landlords. Why, when their salaries are high and they get much via via expenses? This is not a healthy situation when lawmakers are seen as profiteering from the housing shortage. Although in some cases it’s MPs renting out their houses while they operate from a constituency some distance away, that would not account for so many. Like so many found at fault, Ali played the ‘I’ve done nothing illegal’ card, but as we’ve seen so often, it’s not solely about what’s ‘legal’ as plenty of wrongdoing can be legally allowed but at the same time be quite unjustifiable morally. It looks as if we’ve not yet heard the last of what could be tip of an iceberg.
On worse territory, it’s interesting how the media continue to protect certain kinds of wrongdoers. We’ve heard very little in the mainstream media about Lord Dannatt being under investigation by the House of Lords for the third time (yet still regularly platformed by the BBC) and Lord Chadlington, who profited from the notorious VIP PPE procurement lane during the Covid 19 crisis. Although he denies the allegations, Dannatt apparently urged ministers ‘to crack down on Palestine Action at the request of a US defence company that employs him as an adviser. Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British army, wrote privately to two separate Home Office ministers asking them to address the “threat” posed by the group after its activists targeted a factory in 2022’. Only because the court proceedings against one of the PA activists were later obtained by the Guardian do we even know this- yet another example of news omission when it comes to public figures. At the time the judge ruled that Dannatt could not be named. I’ve not yet see this come up in relation to the current Palestine Action news but it’s important in illustrating inappropriate under the radar influence from those in high places. Just see the exchanges between Dannatt, the weaselish Chris Philp (responding on behalf of Suella Braverman) and Dan Jarvis – this is what those involved and the judge in that case didn’t want you to know.
The second example (and I admit to never having previously heard of him) is Lord Chadlington (formerly Peter Gummer, a PR chief), found to have participated in the corrupt PPE VIP lane during Covid, the company linked to this peer going bankrupt (besides providing unusable PPE) and leaving the government owed £24m. This is typical of so many of those crony contacts we later heard about. ‘The erstwhile adviser to John Major has “close personal friendships with many senior Conservative party politicians”, and as president of the Witney constituency association in the Cotswolds is “close friends” with its most notable MP: David Cameron. When the pandemic reached Britain early in 2020, Chadlington was a director and shareholder of a company registered in Jersey, majority-owned and run by David Sumner, a serial entrepreneur then based in Dubai’. Cameron duly made the relevant introductions, leading to the company Chadlington was linked to being awarded two massive contracts, worth nearly £50m.
Here we are, in August 2025, but those involved had another think coming if they thought this disgraceful episode could just be buried. ‘The full story of how this £50m example of the government’s VIP lane commissioning turned out is only becoming clearer now…’ because the company went bankrupt and the liquidators have only recently completed their report, which reveals that it went bust owing HMRC £1.1min taxes. Information has also come to light because of coverage of the much-criticised VIP lane by the Covid Inquiry. Chadlington denied all knowledge of these financial difficulties but these journalists found evidence to contradict this assertion. Chadlington had also been investigated twice by the House of Lords and now there’s a third but, as so often, nothing seems to come of these exercises, possibly because these people get well lawyered up. The brass neck of these entitled people beggars belief. Despite all that’s been uncovered ‘In his witness statement to the Covid inquiry, Chadlington said: “While I was not involved in the awarding of contracts for PPE, I was proud that, by making the necessary introductions, I had played a very small role in helping the country during a national emergency.”
Another long term ‘wrong’un’ has been yet again in the news recently. Partly because of the links to Epstein dogging the Trump administration but more because of the recent unflattering biography by Andrew Lownie, Prince Andrew, who still enjoys a lavish lifestyle, is again under fire. A royal correspondent has even said ‘It puts Andrew back at the front and centre of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal at a time when Donald Trump is facing serious questions about his own friendship with the late paedophile…It’s a scandal that just won’t go away for the Royal Family, even though they’ve tried to distance themselves from Andrew’. Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, is quite a hefty tome, currently serialised by the Daily Mail. Although one commentator thought it contained much that we already knew (the Epstein links, posing a security risk, his gaffes in important roles, opaque financial dealings, alleged obsession with sex, lack of self-awareness, arrogance in staff dealings etc) but also numerous snippets that we didn’t.
I can’t be sympathetic but I’ve often thought what a seriously miserable existence he must have, holed up in the decaying Royal Lodge on the Windsor estate, with no real purpose and shunned even by his own family. ‘Now in disgrace, Prince Andrew is claimed to spend his time, when not riding or golfing, cooped up watching aviation videos and reading thrillers, with The Talented Mr Ripley said to be his favourite. It is about a con-man taking on the identity of a wealthy playboy’. Re Epstein it’s no surprise that Lownie writes: ‘“Epstein played Andrew. The prince was a useful idiot who gave him respectability, access to political leaders and business opportunities. He found him easy to exploit’.
‘He’s been afforded every type of privilege, all his life, while displaying very poor judgement and getting into highly compromising situations…There are details of his unhappy knack of getting involved with all the wrong people in his money-making ventures, from Libyan gun runners and relations of dictators to a Chinese spy’. But this buck doesn’t just stop with Andrew: the entire luxurious Royal Family, whose financial opacity, hypocrisy and political meddling have increasingly come to light, is further compromised by their harbouring and financing of this black sheep.
On a positive note, we endlessly hear about the amount of food wasted but could growing our own vegetables reduce or eliminate this undesirable modern habit? One woman has made what felt like a key discovery: ‘When I started caring for some tomato plants, it was as if a switch had been flicked in my mind. I knew I had to stop throwing food away. I immediately became much more creative with the meals I was making …’. With a busy work life and long commute, she used to study recipes and plan meals but kept finding that she was too tired to put these good intentions into practice: ‘By Wednesday, I would fill up with shop-bought sushi or soup. More often than not, I would get to the end of the week with a fridge full of wilted ingredients, which I would quietly chuck into the food waste. I felt guilt and shame, but I was stuck in a loop’. An audit of her spending had been the catalyst for trying growing her own vegetables, which enabled her to ‘truly understand the value and timescale of food production’ and to fundamentally change her habits. She describes how she’s become less ambitious but far more creative and wasting nothing. All this may sound simple but it would take quite some effort if one had long been bogged down in wasteful habits. Besides cutting out waste the act of cultivation is also good for mental health – harking back to the first piece above, such activities are even more important in these difficult times!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 