I want to believe there's a light shining thru....

This is why we need to Ban All Donations to political parties. We can continue to play ‘whackamole’ with the rules, with our temporary bans on Crypto and bans of foreign donors - but we can’t prevent determined rule breaking. Laws get broken and right wing politicians especially are increasingly brazen, Trump shows us that. Most importantly private money given to politicians is corrosive to our democracy, the actual influence of cash is possibly less harmful than the simple expectation of it happening across the board. The funding is always for something in return. But here’s a thing - entire concept of private donations is not just un democratic, where we have one person one vote at an election - with donations some of us have millions of votes - in effect. It’s anti democratic to run our country this way. It makes no economic sense either - to allow a £3 Trillion economy, to be run by a £20 Billion team of civil servants - at the direction of a government funded by private money. We’re talking just £50m a year of private money funding all political parties including the one in government. It’s wrong. It makes no sense, other than to the rich and powerful. We should fund this publicly, politics is meant to be a public service - it should be funded that way, the cost is a rounding error in our budgets - not doing so is a false economy. And the public are with us. More details in the recent Babelfish donation edition here: babelfish.news/cleaning-up-p… @reformparty_uk @Nigel_Farage @reformexposed

Five heatwaves in one summer - so far. Record levels of wildfires, burnt homes, dead people and Billions wiped from our economy. This story adds global context and emphasis. We are in a climate crisis. People who deny that, like @TiceRichard - are dangerous, he does it out of political expediency, I reckon. But the climate crisis is and should be way bigger thing than that. Maybe it is time to criminalise Climate Denial…? bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/c…