Deon

🚨Who is Manchester City Council Protecting When It Hides Emails from Elected Councillors? Manchester City Council redirected a resident’s emails about public loans to Abu Dhabi-linked developers directly to its solicitor. At least one councillor never received the messages and was not informed they existed. The correspondence concerned roughly £55 million approved while Andy Burnham chaired Greater Manchester Combined Authority meetings. The loans went to companies controlled by Sheikh Mansour’s group for developments that included no affordable housing. The money has since been repaid. The council states it acted in response to possible legal action. However, the same team previously requested that emails from the same individual be blocked months before any formal legal letter arrived. When elected representatives are denied access to correspondence questioning the use of public funds, a clear question arises: whose interests are being protected?

🚨Authority Led by Burnham as Mayor Paid Nearly £1m to Anonymous Recipients The Greater Manchester Combined Authority — led at the time by Andy Burnham, who was then Mayor of Greater Manchester, has funnelled nearly £1 million of taxpayer money to completely anonymous beneficiaries since 2024 in a series of secret payments. The total breaks down into clear chunks: £83,000 in rent paid to a hidden landlord, thousands more handed out in anonymous consultancy fees, and a £210,000 capital grant given to a property developer whose name was fully redacted from the public ledger. When journalists asked questions, the authority called the missing developer name a simple “human error” and blamed the rest of the secrecy on data protection laws. Ordinary citizens who make a small mistake on a tax form face investigations and heavy fines. Yet when this body hands a fifth of a million pounds of public cash to an unnamed developer, it is dismissed as a clerical typo. This is how the modern political class operates — using the language of bureaucracy as a legal shield to move public money into private, hidden hands. They are not running an open city. They are protecting a shadow ledger with your cash, and they do not want you knowing who is actually cashing the cheques. For a man who now sits in Downing Street preaching accountability, the fact that this level of secrecy happened on his watch as Mayor is not just embarrassing — it is yet another troubling incident from his past that raises serious questions about the standards he claims to represent.

🚨Labour handed £68m of pensions cash to an energy firm that built ZERO wind farms and paid £58m to its shareholders Labour-linked pension funds, led by Ted Palmer, poured £68m of public workers’ savings into Bute Energy’s unfinished wind farm proposals in Wales. Not a single turbine has spun. Instead, after a paper revaluation, directors Oliver Millican, Stuart George and Lawson Steele pocketed roughly £58m in dividends while projects remain stuck on drawing boards. Seven of eight funds waved it through despite clear risks. Reported close links between the company and Labour politicians include a £3,000 donation and event sponsorship for Cardiff North MP Anna McMorrin, free tickets and hospitality for former Newport East MS John Griffiths, and an advisory board seat given to the partner of Cardiff Central MS Jenny Rathbone. These ties add to concerns about the investment decision. Ordinary pensioners’ money has been treated as play money for green vanity projects that delivered private windfalls, not power. Heads must roll for this brazen raid on other people’s savings dressed up as climate virtue, with Labour politicians looking the other way while insiders cash out.

🚨Labour’s Bill Would Let Energy Firms Dig Into Your Tax Records and House Value So They Can Charge You Extra to Subsidise Others Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh introduced the Energy Independence Bill last week that would hand energy companies access to eight government databases, including your HMRC tax and income records, child benefit, property value and pensions. This is a major expansion beyond the limited fuel-poverty data they already get. Official assessments openly plan “progressivity”: discounts for some households paid for by extra levies on those judged better off. Nothing happens until the bill passes and ministers create a scheme through further legislation. Her department calls it targeting support. The unmistakable purpose is giving private firms the power to inspect your private finances and raise your bill to subsidise everyone else. This is not support. It is a deliberate decision to treat your private tax records and property value as legitimate tools for deciding who gets charged more, then hand that power to private energy companies. Once the machinery exists, Labour will expand it. The only real question is how far they intend to go.