cman6

Just wanted to share this brilliant video from Led By Donkeys.

Liz Truss has been abusing her position as a (short-lived) former prime minister to support Donald Trump’s campaign to win back power. She says she “desperately” wants to see Trump back in the White House - despite his racism, misogyny, authoritarianism, cruelty, incoherence, lies etc.

So tonight we dropped in on the latest leg of Truss’ speaking tour..."

JPMorgan Chase was named the biggest fossil fuel financier in the world, having increased its financing from $38.9bn in 2022 to $40.8bn in 2023.

It ranked among the worst banks in terms of financing to companies involved in fossil fuel expansion. It was also one of the biggest financiers of: racked oil and gas; Amazon oil and gas; and methane gas power.

Barclays was labelled the number one fossil fuel funder in Europe, lending $24.5bn in 2023 up from $16.58bn in 2022.

It was singled out for financing what the report describes as 'deadly' coal power plants in the United States, despite high profile climate commitments.

Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been removed from the penal colony where he was serving his sentence and his whereabouts are unknown, his spokeswoman has said.

Mr Navalny's aides were expecting him to be moved to a stricter regime jail, after his prison sentence was extended. They say his disappearance is linked to recent announcements about elections.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared his intention to stand for re-election next March.

Mr Navalny's associates said earlier on Monday they had had no news of him for six days.

He had been absent from several recent court appearances, which he has in the past attended by video link. Prison authorities blamed the absences on technical problems at the colony.

His aide Leonid Volkov said this was "0% coincidence and 100% direct manual political control from the Kremlin".

"It's not a secret for Putin who his main opponent is in these 'elections'," he said.

"And he wants to make it so that Navalny's voice is not heard. So each one of us must become the voice of Navalny."

For more than a decade, Mr Navalny sought to expose corruption at the heart of Russian power. His video investigations have received tens of millions of views online.

A charismatic campaigner, he seemed to be the only Russian opposition leader capable of mobilising people in large numbers across Russia to take part in anti-government protests.

But in 2020, he was poisoned in Siberia by what Western laboratories later confirmed to be a nerve agent.

A later report by the investigative outlet Bellingcat and Russian news site The Insider implicated several agents of Russia's internal security service, the FSB, in the attack.

After recovering from the attack, Mr Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 despite warnings that he could face arrest. He was immediately arrested upon arrival at an airport in Moscow.

Far-right groups and football hooligans are preparing to descend on London on Armistice Day as hundreds of thousands of pro-Palestine protesters march through the capital.

The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC), said it will march alongside activists for the fourth successive weekend as it calls on Israel to agree to a ceasefire after its bombardment of Gaza.

Remembrance events are taking place across the Saturday and Sunday, which has led to home secretary Suella Braverman urging the Met Police to ban the march.

The coalition of groups, which includes the PSC, Stop the War and the Muslim Association of Britain, insisted they will press ahead with the demonstration calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The planned route does not go near the Cenotaph on Saturday.

Now English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson has spoken out against the demo, saying: “British men are mobilising for Saturday to be in London” to “show our Government and show our police and show Hamas and everyone sitting around the world saying ‘Britain has fallen’ that there is a resistance”.

A call to arms has also been issued on social media by the Democratic Football Lads Alliance, a right-wing organisation that uses football fan networks to spread Islamophobic hate.

A post on the group’s Facebook page says: “Vets have reached out and asked for our support due to the threat from the far-left and pro-Palestinian supporters to disrupt the Remembrance Day parade.

“We are calling on all football lads up and down the country to join us in standing shoulder to shoulder with our veterans that fought for our freedom.”

Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a convicted fraudster, joined the British National Party (BNP) in the mid-2000s.

Rishi Sunak has said he will hold the Met Police chief "accountable" over a pro-Palestinian march set to take place this Saturday, on Armistice Day.

The prime minister has criticised the timing of the demonstration in London as "provocative and disrespectful".

Organisers insist their march will not go near commemorations and accuse the government of manufacturing a row.

Protests have been held in London, and other cities globally, each Saturday since the Israel-Gaza war began.

Ben Jamal, of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign which is behind the march, said he believed the government was manufacturing a row and using the Armistice Day angle to try to "delegitimise" them.

"There's something particularly askew with an argument that says a protest calling for a ceasefire is somehow inappropriate on Armistice Day," he told the BBC.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has accused the police of being more lax on left-wing protests than those organised by nationalists or right-wing activists.

The home secretary has voiced her opposition to pro-Palestinian protests in the past, calling them "hate marches" in an interview with Sky News.

Protest organiser Chris Nineham, from the Stop the War Coalition, said: "We do everything we can as stewards to make sure there is nothing antisemitic or calling for violence in our demonstrations. For us, this isn't about religion, it isn't about race."

The demonstration on 11 November is due to begin at 12:45, more than an hour after the traditional two-minute silence.

Hello and apologies if this doesn't fit the No Stupid Questions community exactly... I'm working on a research project in the UK, around food bank usage, and wondered if anyone who uses a food bank would be prepared to answer a few questions...

1. Are you able to get enough food, toiletries, items from your local food bank?
2. Do you have any allergies or illness that makes it harder to use a food bank? ie. they never have any gluten free bread, or everything contains too much sugar
3. Do you care about branded foods versus non branded?
4. Are there items you can never find or are in very short supply at your local food bank?
5. How were you referred to the food bank?

The research project we are working on is looking into all aspects of food banks from someone deciding to donate, to storing the donations, to people receiving them, and seeing if there is some way to improve what is being donated and/or the quantities.

Any help answering these questions would be really helpful 🙂