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“Fossil fuels are so inherently dirty and toxic, that they require sacrificial people and sacrificial places, they always have.” These are the words of environmental activist Naomi Klein, delivering the Edward Said lecture in London earlier this month. As if following her cue, yesterday an alliance of fossil fuel politicians and lobbyists overruled the villages and voices of Northern England. The land and its people have been sacrificed. Underground rock will be drilled and pumped with high pressure chemicals, sand and water. Local communities...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Another day another scandal at G4S, this time it has been claimed that staff made fake calls to a 999 emergency contact centre to ensure they met targets of answering 92 per cent of calls within ten seconds. This dire situation took place between November and December 2015 reports the Daily Mirror. There have been five staff who are now on suspension after they supposedly made over a thousand “test calls” at quiet times to...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor  A brilliant picture has emerged on Twitter regarding a banner battle between a pro-Brexit and Remain neighbours.The two banners were hung on opposite balconies in Gospel Oak, North London.Frank Chalmers, 61, added to the words "Vote Leave" with a homemade slogan: "... If you want to cut workers' rights."The image has proved an online hit after it was posted on Twitter by Frank's son Malcolm, 33.Unlike the Conservative party there is no bad blood between...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The first fracking application in England for five years has just been approved by North Yorkshire Council. Their planning committee voted seven against four in favour of the fracking plans, by Third Energy a UK firm. Now the company will go ahead and frack for shale gas near the North Yorks village of Kirby Misperton. There have not been any fracking planning approval since 2011, after a series of tests on the Fylde coast in...

Boris Johnson has seemingly leveraged the power of 'the force' after pushing a cameraman over without even touching him. The video was picked up by the team at Have I Got News For You, prompting Ian Hislop to say “for the first time, I’m actually frightened”. @BorisJohnson uses The Force to take down cameraman #starwars #HIGNFY @haveigotnews pic.twitter.com/jW1Cl6wfXu — Alistair Higham (@AlistairHigham1) May 16, 2016 It was later revealed that the cameraman fell back over a palate supporting bulky-looking bags.  Boris...

Boris Johnson is set to receive a £72,000 a year parachute payment for stepping down as London Mayor. The sum is given to every former boss of the capital who leaves City Hall, according to The Sun, and is used as a resettlement grant to ease the blow of the sudden loss of career. But Johnson earned £612,000 last year and is set for a similar sum again as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip as well as various publishing deals and...

London's new mayor Sadiq Khan has announced a 24-hour tube service will begin on Central and Victoria lines from 19 August, with Piccadilly, Jubilee and Northern lines to follow in the autumn. The coup comes almost exactly a year to the date that Boris Johnson tried to launch the 'night tube' only to have his plans derailed by the unions which claimed he bypassed workers without consultation in order to rush through new all-night hours. It is the second major transport...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor As the Government was facing a defeat in the lead up to the hotly debated EU referendum, they have accepted that the NHS will now be protected by the highly controversial TTIP. The amendment was backed by an unlikely alliance of SNP, Green, Tory and Labour MPs. Now there is a guarantee that the NHS will now be protected by the deal. The cross-party alliance of Eurosceptic MPs demanded the NHS is protected from controversial...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Official figures released by NHS Improvement have shown that NHS trust in England, closed 2015-16 financial year, £461m worse off than had been forecasted. This means that we now have a record deficit in England of £2.45bn, the largest in its history. The health service is trying to cope with a large rise in demand and budget constraints, leaving it with this dire financial black hole. NHS financial experts claim the full scale of the...