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The first 100 days of the Reform UK administration at Kent County Council can be summarised as clickbait and chaos.

We were told that Reform UK would act in the interests of the residents of Kent but instead we have only seen chaotic management, bigotry and empty soundbites that help no-one.

The start of the Reform UK administration in May and June was marked by cancelled committee meetings and postponement to training sessions meaning vital decisions about Kent's future were delayed.

The announcement of the 'DOGE' (Reform's Department of Government Efficiency) cost cutting team on 2nd June was announced with great media fanfare. But then the Reform UK chairman and DOGE champion, Zia Yusef resigned from the party a few days later, as did the tech genius, Nathanial Fried, who was supposed to advise him [Yusuf returned to the fold after just a few days].

It's all just theatre to keep Nigel Farage happy and unfortunately Kent residents are paying the price for it.

Reform's Elon Musk-Style 'DOLGE' Team Accused of Making 'False and Misleading' Claims About Flagship Council

A Reform report into spending at Kent County Council was based largely on dubious claims made by the party's own former chairman

Max Colbert

Reform UK told voters they were going to save money - then they appointed a new Cabinet member for KCC's own DOLGE team (the additional L is for local) at a cost of £36,000 a year.

Then they refused to back an opposition motion cancelling the generous allowance paid to deputy cabinet members.

On 3rd July 2025, it was reported that newly elected Reform UK member, Daniel Taylor, had appeared at Folkestone Magistrates' Court charged with three offences (all of which he denied) accused of serious violent offences including allegations of threatening to murder his wife.

At the subsequent Full Council Meeting on 10th July, Kent's Reform UK leader, Linden Kemkaran, refused to support an opposition motion to strengthen the council's resolve against violence against women and girls, on the grounds that she alleged these crimes are predominantly being committed by non-British nationals. These claims were subsequently refuted by leading domestic abuse charities working in Kent.

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Then on the 7th July, KCC leader Linden Kemkaran issued an official statement to announce that Cllr Bill Barrett had made the decision to step down from his role as Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport. A few days later, Mr Barrett told the media he had been ambushed and sacked against his will, after a visit to KCC by Nigel Farage.

On 30th July, the new administration proudly announced £60 million of highways investment - but failed to mention these were agreed under the previous administration, or that there was no new money for fixing potholes.

The announcement of the £16 million reduction in KCC's debt was also scheduled prior to the KCC elections this year and had nothing to do with Reform UK.

Cuts to Net Zero programmes and reversing the decision to sell off County Hall which is known as the "money pit" will cost Kent Council Taxpayers more money in the long term.

One hundred days in, and Reform UK has provided few ideas about where they are going to find £100 million of cuts required to balance the books - instead we just get more chaos and clickbait.

Councillor Mark Hood is Acting Leader of KCC's Green group.

holding farage to account #reformwatch

While most the rest of the media seems to happy to give the handful of Reform MPs undue prominence, Byline Times is committed to tracking the activities of N...

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Campaigners are bracing for potentially hundreds of arrests this Saturday in Parliament Square, after 500 people committed to holding up signs in support of the banned direct action group Palestine Action.

Activists will join a peaceful protest outside Parliament at 1pm on Saturday, organised by the Defend Our Juries campaign, where they will sit in silence holding signs supporting proscribed 'terror' group Palestine Action, and saying they "oppose the genocide" in Gaza.

In a statement on Wednesday (6th August), a Met Police spokesperson told this outlet: "Anyone showing support for the group can expect to be arrested."

Expressing support for a designated terrorist organisation can result in a 14 year prison sentence. England's prisons are currently running near full capacity.

At recent protests against the PA ban, police responses have varied dramatically across locations. Some forces - including Derry in Northern Ireland and Edinburgh in Scotland - have used their "common sense" Crosland says and avoided mass arrests, whilst others including the Met Police have arrested swathes of participants under counter-terror legislation.

However, it is understood that no one has yet been charged, with the Crown Prosecution Service potentially waiting on the November High Court ruling to decide whether to prosecute.

Arrestees have also faced different treatment when in custody, with some released quickly, while others have allegedly been held beyond normal 24-hour limits. In Cardiff, several participants' homes were raided while in custody, Crosland told reporters.

Other protesters will be breaching bail conditions by attending Saturday's protest, potentially facing more severe sentences if they are eventually convicted.

But if the proscription order is ruled unlawful later this year, previous arrests could be deemed unlawful, and grounds for compensation claims against police forces, worth several thousand pounds per person based on similar cases.

In a press conference on Thursday, organisers warned that the recent ban of Palestine Action as a 'terrorist' organisation would have "chilling" effects on other protest groups.

Responding to a question from Byline Times, Defend Our Juries founder Tim Crosland said: "Once you remove that definition of terrorism [as] deliberate violence targeted against a civilian population, which until this point is what it's meant, and you allow it to include people causing economic damage or embarrassment to those in power, that could [include] Defend Our Juries."

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"We had three thousand people sitting in the Strand in January [backing climate activists] - that must have caused some economic disruption. So yes, it could be Defend Our Juries next. It could be the unions next. It could be the racial and climate justice campaigns next. That's why it's so vital that everybody tries to take a stand now," Crosland added.

Palestine Action was founded in July 2020 as a direct action campaign targeting Elbit Systems, described as Britain's biggest weapons producer making weapons "battle tested" in Gaza.

PA targeted the company's manufacturing sites before ultimately being accused of breaking into RAF Brize Norton in July, and allegedly causing £7m damage by spray-painting military planes. Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper quickly pushed through a 'proscription order' outlawing the group and criminalising its supporters.

Speaking at the press conference, PA founder Huda Ammori claimed that over five years, Palestine Action permanently shut down two Israeli-linked weapons factories, severed "dozens" of contracts with Elb...

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I've spoken extensively with survivors of a nation undone by ambition. A city mayor whose family were scattered to the four winds, a radiologist forever haunted by silent burns, an A-bomb survivor whose diaries spoke only of immense suffering and loss.

These people embody the costs of nationalism unchecked by humility or historical memory. Their testimony - a cracked voice recalling "the city turning to glass under dawn's light" - is not just history; it is a reckoning, as set out in my new book, The Hiroshima Men.

From that crucible of fire emerges a lesson we ignore at our peril: identity without self-criticism, economic pride without engagement, nationalism masquerading as preservation, can become pathways to ruin.

That lesson surfaces again in three modern arcs: Imperial Japan's economic autarky catalysing the Pacific War; President Trump's 2018-19 tariff regime which he has continued today; and the rise of Japan's far-right Sanseito party in 2025. These episodes are discrete - but connected. Each reveal how economic anxiety and identity politics feed one another, and how retreat from global cooperation causes inward fracture.

Imperial Japan turned autarky into doctrine - seeking oil in the Dutch East Indies, rice in the Philippines, rubber in Indochina to maintain its dominance in the region. They believed resource sovereignty would shield them.

Instead, they awakened the global powers and invited catastrophe; the country consumed by fire, including infamously, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A wartime bureaucrat in The Hiroshima Men recalled: "We were told we had rice for twenty years. We barely had enough for twenty weeks - and by then, the lie was wrapped in patriotism." That is the human cost of closure.

Fast-forward to modern America. President Trump's tariff blitz - on steel, aluminium, Chinese imports - was hailed as economic self-defence. Yet economists called it "the biggest trade policy shock… in history," imposed "off the charts in terms of scale, speed and uncertainty," in the words of The Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes. She warned that tariffs function as taxes on consumers: "The people who pay this in the end… pay more for the things that they buy." Trade rhetoric disguised real pain.

The Congressional Budget Office projected an annual household income drop of more than $1,200 in 2020. Wharton business school models pointed to long-run GDP losses of up to 6%, suggesting wage declines across multiple sectors. Mark Zandi of American credit-rating agency Moody's estimated a typical family losing $200-$250 per year in purchasing power. And Harvard economists found import prices rising 3% in just four months of tariff escalation in 2025.

Minton Beddoes added a broader caution: "I think we've crossed some kind of a Rubicon… we're not going back to the world as it was before… increasingly, [the US] is a sort of bullying, swaggering, transactional country". Where once global engagement underpinned stability, unilateral tariffs turned diplomacy into leverage and legality into confrontation.

In Japan today, Sanseito's abrupt rise reveals the same tension. A populist movement born online - ironically in platforms of globalist connectivity - it campaigned under the slogan "Japanese First". From a lone upper-house seat, Sanseito leapt to 14 (now reported as 15) seats in the 248-member chamber during the 20 July 2025 election - becoming the fourth-largest opposition force. Analysts attribute the surge to voter frustration over inflation, stagnant wages, a weak yen (¥149 to the dollar), food costs, and over-tourism in cities like Tokyo and Kyoto - rice prices reportedly doubling year on year.

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Sanseito's leader, Sohei Kamiya - a former English teacher, YouTuber, and ex-Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) member - has invoked g...

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For over a decade, Twitter served as a virtual town square where everyone from celebrities, journalists, and influencers, to politicians, entertainers, and heads of state congregated alongside the rest of us.

Twitter became like the public record - a place for news, information, argument and dissent. It was real-time, fast-paced, and unparalleled in the world of social media. But whatever happened to what SpaceX founder Elon Musk called the "world's town hall" when he took over Twitter, that open space no longer exists..

For many of us who used Twitter as a source of real-time information, transitioning to X was like moving to another planet. Instead of light, there was dangerous radiation. Instead of breaths of fresh air, toxic fumes. Instead of reaching out to fellow explorers, we were lost in space with huge time lags in transmission home.

Our old friends and associates had scattered in a desperate attempt to find a more hospitable home. We were alone in a strange land, and the man leading the entire thing seemed too caught up in memes and self-congratulatory tweets to pay any attention to the chaos over which he now reigned.

In short, we got a trial run of what it was like to live on Mars - entirely captured by the whims of an oligarch. Looking back, it's now clear that this was not an isolated event, but rather part of a larger takeover of our digital environment by money-hungry tech companies and powerful billionaires. By seizing control of the pipelines that deliver information, they are effectively holding us hostage from afar. This is the story of how it happened.

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Most Americans think censorship is about banning books, deleting tweets, or deplatforming dissidents. And depending on where and who you are, this can indeed be a primary form of censorship. But in 2025 in America, the most widespread and insidious forms of censorship aren't about takedowns or suppression of speech - rather, they're about tuning the algorithm.

Quietly, subtly, and almost always with plausible deniability, the Trump administration appears to be executing a playbook of what can best be described as reverse algorithmic capture: a process through which government pressure reshapes the architecture of digital platforms, not by direct control, but by engineering incentives that guide algorithms to amplify preferred narratives and suppress dissent.

Of course, you don't have to go to Mars, but if you don't, we can't promise that there will be enough food and water to sustain you. The choice is yours

Put differently, it's the state using soft power to realign platforms' invisible gates toward ideological conformity - but never giving up that element of distance and plausible deniability.

This strategy does not need to issue censorship orders or serve warrants to Silicon Valley tycoons. It works by shifting the terrain on which digital gatekeeping occurs.

In July 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government. It requires that all artificial intelligence systems used by federal agencies be scrubbed of "ideological bias," including references to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), critical race theory, and other progressive frameworks.

Although the order ostensibly applies only to federally procured AI systems, its ripple effects stretch much farther. Any company hoping to win government contracts must now conform to these ideological guardrails - not just in internal memos and tools, but in the public-facing models they train and sell. That includes the algorithms that shape search results, feed curation, ad targeting, and content mo...

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In the six years since its formation, US hard-right group Turning Point has become a fixture on campuses at multiple UK universities.

Using the so-called 'culture war' to promote itself as a "grassroots conservative and free speech activist organisation", TPUK has been the driving force behind a growing network of well-placed political commentators and SpAds dedicated to pushing far-right, Trumpian political views into UK Parliament.

In 2022, it was revealed that a youth group, inspired and educated by TPUK, had secured prominent positions within the Conservative Party with the intent of pushing it further to the Right.

Following the Conservatives' election defeat, many members of the group jumped ship to Reform, while others took up prominent positions in Tufton Street think-tanks. TPUK's other protégés regularly appear in the right-wing press, highlighting the organisation's growing influence on both MPs and those who vote for them.

Their latest offshoot is the Women's Safety Initiative (WSI).

Founded in April by 23 year-old Jess Gill, social media manager for the Objective Standards Institute and a fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education, the WSI appears to be a small organisation created (according to their website) to "expose the dangers of uncontrolled immigration, put women and children first, advocate for victims, and demand real solutions".

Dig a little deeper, however, and their mission and influence become alarmingly clear.

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A post shared by Women's Safety Initiative (@womensafety_uk)

Talking Heads

In the last four months, WSI have amassed more than 65,000 followers across their social media platforms, their spokeswomen are regular guests on GB News and TalkTV, whilst their posts are shared and supported by MP Rupert Lowe and Conservative Councillor Susan Hall.

The WSI's leadership includes two Conservative Party candidates, Grace Turner and Charlotte Whitney-Brown, and Lucy Jayne White, a policy specialist at Tufton Street think-tank, the Centre for Migration Control (CMC).

Gill herself is also a member of the Ladies of Liberty Alliance, a US-based Libertarian women's organisation which is anti-Socialist and pro-Free Market Economy.

Originally a Labour supporter, by 2021, Gill was sharing Instagram videos which showed her campaigning with TPUK. In response to a request for comment, Gill told Byline Times that her "political shift started well before [she] became involved with Turning Point".

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The organisation has a long-standing ideological crusade against the trans community, which has seen them protest Drag Queen Story Hour and falsely claim that children are identifying as cats.

The WSI appears to have started the same way, claiming the Supreme Court's ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex as a "victory".

Later posting a call-out to the rest of the "gender critical" community, Gill urged them to "[speak] up about the dangers of mass immigration".

TPUK's output has changed in the same way, and their social media channels now share call-outs for hotel protests and promote the work of WSI.

In recent interviews, Gill claimed that almost 25% of sexual assaults were committed by "foreign-born men". When we asked her how WSI approaches the other 75% of assaults, she wrote that, "WSI's mission is to protect all women and children, regardless of who the perpetrator is…advocating for tougher sentencing, faster trials, better victim support, and broader cultural change".

Claiming to have begun studying politics at sixteen, Gill said that by the time she got involved with TPUK, she had "already built a ...

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Prime Minister Keir Starmer has described the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as "deplorable" and "indefensible" while dancing around naming what is unfolding by its actual definitions: famine and genocide.

The IPC, a global initiative that classifies food insecurity, has warned that the worst-case scenario of famine is unfolding in the Gaza Strip. Gaza is the only territory in the world where 100% of the population is at risk of famine - and the horror is entirely man made. There are no "two sides". It is not "complicated".

Israel has been operating an illegal blockade on life-sustaining supplies since March, preventing the delivery of nearly all shipments of food, fuel, medical equipment, baby formula and any other goods that could aid the civilian population of Gaza.

As the occupying force, Israel is legally responsible for ensuring the basic needs of the population of Gaza are met.

In January of last year, Law for Palestine released a database of over 500 statements from Israeli sources inciting genocide, many of which were from the lips of government ministers. The persecution and collective punishment of the population of Gaza is demonstrably not about Hamas, nor is it a war; this has always been about the eradication of a people and Israel's dominance over their region.

As part of its grand designs, Israel maintains total control over every morsel of food a Palestinian eats. It has banned fishing, destroyed every inch of land for the cultivation of crops and has dismantled the UN system for aid delivery, replacing it with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) - a dangerous facade wherein civilians on the brink of starvation are lured to militarised aid sites only to be murdered by IDF soldiers, their lives brutally and violently stolen while seeking a bag of flour.

It is grotesque depravity, actioned at the hands of one of the world's most powerful militaries, backed by the US, and facilitated by US contractors in the pursuit of profit.

The GHF is an opaque for-profit operation set-up last November under private security contractor Safe Reach Solutions. To date, its funding, board and operations remain undisclosed. In just over a month, the UN reports that over 850 Gazans have been killed at, or within close proximity to, GHF sites in Gaza.

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The group has been dogged by controversy and condemnation; over 170 aid groups have called for the GHF to be disbanded, and the French foreign minister has said the US-Israeli-backed group has generated a "bloodbath".

The private security firm was legally registered in Switzerland and the United States before dissolving its Swiss entities following human rights investigations. The GHF's former CEO Jake Wood resigned the day before operations began, claiming it was "not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence".

Boston Consulting Group, a US-based firm involved in setting up the GHF, has subsequently fired two senior team members and cut all ties.

Meanwhile, the GHF continues to operate ad hoc at limited locations in Gaza, and civilians - weak from critical malnourishment - are forced to walk for miles in search of meagre rations. Many do not return. The GHF has denied reports of shootings at its sites and often parrots Israeli government messaging.

Reports suggest Israel is insisting that the continued operation of the GHF be a condition in now-stalled ceasefire negotiations. The group is not independent; it is a paid-for extension of Israel's operations with the full backing of the US...

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The UK is poised to open up its borders and supermarket shelves to new forms of genetically-engineered 'precision bred' organisms. But there is confusion among key decision-makers about how it will work - and whether the safeguards are strong enough.

The Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act became law in March 2023 and Labour has now laid down the regulations which will bring it into force in November.

It is set to allow genetically-altered food to hit UK supermarket shelves as soon as 2026. The products are described as 'precision bred' rather than 'genetically modified' as they must be found to contain genetic features which could have - theoretically - been produced by traditional breeding processes, even if there are thousands of genetic variations inserted into the products in the lab.

Leonie Nimmo, Executive Director at GM Freeze, an anti-genetic modification campaign which pushes for a "safe, fair and sustainable" food system, attended the latest meeting this month of ACRE - the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment - which decides on the "precision bred" status of organisms now that the law underpinning it has passed.

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The organisation is concerned that the legislation doesn't provide an upper-limit on the number of genetic modifications which are permitted - provided they could theoretically emerge through traditional breeding techniques.

One member of the committee noted at the meeting: "There isn't an upper threshold - but the burden of proof is with the [product's] applicant to make it plausible that it could be done in a traditional breeding programme. "

Another added: "At what point do you draw the line?" when there could be thousands of genetic modifications in a plant, plausibly permitted under the new rules.

Nimmo argues the lack of a 'maximum' number of genetic modifications is compounded by a lack of strong safeguards on how to ascertain that organisms could have been produced through conventional breeding.

Nimmo told this newspaper: "The discussion was really quite remarkable…It became absolutely clear that the new system for managing newer forms of genetically engineered organisms is not fit for purpose.

"The Committee responsible for assessing their risks is not able to talk about risks. Nor do they have any solid legal grounds for rejecting applications that allow companies to bypass risk assessment processes. This is incredibly bad news for the environment, public health and trust in Government agencies."

She added: "Failure to assess the risks of new GMOs [genetically modified organisms] means a failure to understand the dangers posed."

A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) confirmed there is no specific limit to the number or size of genomic alterations that can be made within a single precision bred plant under the regulations.

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"The scientific view provided by ACRE is that it would be inappropriate to provide an arbitrary limit on the number and size of genomic alterations that could be introduced in precision bred organisms given the variability in the plasticity of genetic elements.

"Those submitting marketing notices for precision bred plants should consider whether the number of genetic changes introduced could have arisen in their plant using traditional processes and provide sufficient evidence to su...

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In another attempt to delay the moment of reckoning, the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on 22 July 2025 in Bradshaw and Others v. United Kingdom seems to serve as an attempt to protect the legitimacy of governments in European countries where Russian interference in democratic processes has been particularly effective.

The case was brought by (now former) British MPs Ben Bradshaw of Labour, Caroline Lucas of the Greens and Alyn Smith of the SNP. It maintained that by denying the country a proper investigation into Russian interference - which would have allowed Parliament to take informed and adequate measures to protect sovereign democracy from foreign manipulation - the UK Government breached the fundamental right, as voters, to free and fair elections. In particular, the case centred on the 2016 EU Referendum and the 2019 General Election.

The Court, composed of seven judges, found no violation of the right to free elections under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights. But could it be that their ruling on this UK claim actually reflected the extent to which the rest of Europe has been affected by Russian interference over the past decade or more?

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A Europe-Wide Decision

The ECHR's judgment was not merely a ruling on UK procedures. The Court itself designated this claim as one of its "impact cases", which can lead to "a change or clarification of international or domestic legislation or practice" across the 46 Council of Europe member states.

Had the Court ruled that the UK failed in its positive obligation to investigate foreign interference, it would have established a legal precedent. Pro-democracy groups, for example, could then have taken legal action against their own national governments to force investigations into Russian interference in those countries.

There is always a chance that such investigations could publicly expose the precise mechanisms of Russian covert disinformation and political funding operations across Europe - their effectiveness, and the roles played by politicians, bloggers, commentators, academics, journalists, international businessmen and others in enabling them.

Such exposure would have had tangible ripple effects across the Continent. European states, from France to Slovakia, would have been forced to scrutinise their own failures. Intelligence and security agencies could have come under increased pressure to release files on Russian meddling, including potentially embarrassing details about the behaviour of political and business elites. Some governments might even have had to face situations similar to Romania, where the Supreme Court ordered a re-run of elections in 2024 following blatant Russian interference.

In countries where Kremlin-linked elites still operate freely, it could have pushed governments towards meaningful transparency and exposed corruption - or even treason - at the highest levels of political and corporate life.

Instead, without much probing, the judges accepted the UK Government's claim that its actions - including two parliamentary reports and subsequent legislation - constituted a sufficient response. But the judgment conceals a deeper institutional failure, with the composition of the chamber raising serious questions of geopolitical impartiality.

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While Britain initially put up a united front, clapping for the NHS during the pandemic and continuing to show support as pressures on the healthcare system persisted, public solidarity was abruptly withdrawn when the British Medical Association (BMA) announced its latest plans for doctors' strikes.

Following a 90% vote in favour of industrial action, on a 55% turnout, the BMA announced a five-day walkout that led to a public outcry.

Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, accused the BMA of "holding the country to ransom", arguing that the strikes would "throttle" NHS progress on waiting lists, which recently hit a two-year low - the first April drop since 2008 (excluding the first year of the pandemic).

Members of the public I've personally interacted with angrily questioned why the BMA had accepted a 22% pay rise awarded between 2023-2024, only to strike again. They also pointed to the fact that resident doctors are set to receive an additional 5.4% pay award in August 2025, comprising a 4% uplift and a consolidated £750 payment, backdated to April 2025.

The issue has even created a generational rift among doctors. From retired GPs on my LinkedIn feed announcing their resignation from the BMA, frustrated that resident doctors are unwilling to endure the "paltry" pay they once did, to consultants labelling the strikes as "unrealistic and unreasonable", the backlash reveals just how divided medical staff have become.

The most notable BMA resignation came from Professor Lord Robert Winston, an IVF pioneering doctor and household name thanks to his popular BBC documentaries. Winston announced the end of his 60-year membership in an interview with The Times in July, branding the strikes as "highly dangerous".

The sentiment behind this disapproval is sound: they're worried about patient safety, which rightly should always be the top priority. In the short term, strikes seem counterintuitive, but in the long term, they serve the very system critics are trying to protect.

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Supporting doctors now means building a stronger, safer NHS in the future and eradicating preventable tragedies, like those seen in the high-profile Dr Bawa-Garba case, that happened due to unfair and unsafe pressures on health care staff.

Even Streeting admitted that this time, strike disruption - which ended Wednesday - "was not that bad" thanks to the "heroic efforts of frontline staff". More operations and procedures were protected than in previous years, and A&E response times improved during the period of industrial action.

Why Resident Doctors Want More - When They Just Got More

But despite efforts to minimise disruptions, the underlying question remains: if resident doctors have already received the highest pay increase across the public sector for the second year in a row, why isn't it enough?

According to the latest analysis by the BMA, doctors have suffered a pay erosion of 21% in real terms since 2008, which means that resident doctors - previously known as junior doctors - are still working more than a fifth of their time for free.

While a 29% pay-rise figure has been widely circulated, the most up-to-date figures published by the BMA show that a slightly less pay uplift of 26% is needed to restore pay to 2008 levels in 2025/6.

Streeting has pushed back on this, asserting that doctors have already received a pay rise of 28.9% over the last three years. However, Dr Emma Runswick, deputy chair of the BMA, told the BBC that this figure only amounts to an 8% increase in real terms when taking inflation into account.

The reasoning behind the strikes, according to BMA...

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Reform-led Durham County Council has been accused of dodging democratic accountability after removing LGBT+ and Ukraine flags from council buildings without any formal decision-making process or paper trail.

In May, shortly after being elected, the Reform UK council - like others run by the party - took down the Pride flag and a Ukrainian flag from its HQ. However, no formal decision has been recorded to enact the move, a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) has revealed - despite the council having an official protocol on flags.

Former lawyer Syd Bolton had requested, "copies of the formal recorded decision of the council to determine which flags may or may not be flown on Durham County Council buildings, including any and all minutes and transcripts of the relevant meetings of councillors and or executive officers at which such a decision was taken by the newly elected Reform-led council".

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The Council responded, saying: "This information is not held…The flag protocol was changed at the request of the Leader of the Council in line with the protocols of the new administration. This did not require a formal decision of the authority."

Bolton, who no longer practices law in the UK, said: "In Durham it's flags, in Kent it's 'DOGE' [Department for Government Efficiency], in Staffordshire, it's book banning [removing LGBT+ books from library displays] and other issues elsewhere like stopping 'woke' equality schemes etc.

"It is predictable posturing in many ways but as we know, it is used effectively by (Nigel) Farage to promote his MAGA-copying agenda into the UK mainstream.

"Needless to say almost nobody has questioned the vires [legal authority] of these actions, instead just walking into the trap of engaging with the latest issue Farage chooses."

Bolton said Durham County Council's response to his question is "even more problematic than I foresaw", explaining: "Not only does the council administration say that it is within the powers of Reform's council leader to change published policy [on flags] by decree, they claim there is no record of any decision making process and no record of the amended policy."

This is remarkable as it means public policy is in effect whatever Reform says it is and even council executive staff don't have written records of the policies they are meant to enact

Syd Bolton, former lawyer

Bolton added the "lack of any transparent records of how and on what basis policy is changed and how the public is unable to see what such policies contain, save for the assertion by Reform of what they say it is", is the most concerning part.

Reform controls 12 councils in England, according to Open Council Data.

Following the May elections, it was Reform HQ who sent letters to Reform-run authorities saying they were sending in so-called DOGE teams of activist auditors to identify potential cuts. Reform-run council staff have faced difficulties since in deciding what data to hand over to these politically-led teams.

EXCLUSIVE

Reform Council Bans All Mentions of Climate Change While Quietly Taking Green Funds From Government

Reform-run West Northamptonshire is removing all references to 'climate change' and 'net zero' from official documents, yet continuing to take government green grants

Josiah Mortimer

Durham's response to Bolton included its last Flags Protocol, which mirrors national legislation in recognising the Pride flag.

The document states that is not due for review until 2026, however, it also notes that it was recently changed by executive powers.

The fact no records of the decision, or any amends to the...