More than four in ten British adults are now deliberately cutting back on how much artificial intelligence they use, according to a report from King’s College London and Responsible AI UK.

The number is 42%. And it isn’t down to people who don’t understand the technology or can’t work it. Plenty of them like AI. They are choosing to keep it at arm’s length anyway, because they don’t trust what happens to their information once it goes in.

Data privacy is main concern

Data privacy and security topped the list of reasons. Nearly a third of people who limit their use said that was why. The next most common reason was simpler still: they just prefer doing things the way they already do them.

Here is the part that should worry the companies building this stuff. The people closest to AI are not its biggest fans.

“The companies selling us new technology often assume that people most familiar with it will like it most,” said Professor Jack Stilgoe of UCL, one of the report’s authors. “Our findings show that this isn’t true. People are becoming more concerned about AI over time, and even the people who use it most are ambivalent”.

Gen Z is backing away

Take Gen Z. They use AI more than any other age group. They also think it carries more risks than benefits, and they are more likely than older people to rein in their own use of it. The generation that grew up with this technology in their pockets is the one quietly stepping back.

The mood is souring across the board. Back in October 2023, 48% of us thought AI carried more risks than benefits. By June this year that figure had climbed to 52%. The share of people who see more upside than downside slipped the other way, from 38% down to 34%.

You can’t opt out

There is a bigger problem lurking underneath all this. Seven in ten people said it would be difficult or impossible to avoid AI even if they wanted to. It is being folded into our phones, our banks, our workplaces and our doctors’ surgeries, whether we asked for it or not.

So what does saying no even look like, when you can’t opt out?

“People need meaningful ways to consent to the use of AI, namely the ability to choose when it is applied, how it interacts with them, and how they can opt out where it matters,” said Professor Kate Devlin of King’s College London, the report’s co-author.

AI should be built to be fair

She made another point worth holding onto. This isn’t a nation split neatly into fans and critics. Most of us are both. “Many individuals hold both opinions at once,” she said. “People acknowledge potential uses and benefits while simultaneously worrying about possible downsides”.

That is the honest picture. Ordinary people are not luddites and they are not cheerleaders. They can see AI might do some good. They can also see it hoovering up their personal information and being pushed on them by companies who stand to make a fortune, and they want a say.

Fair AI would put that say front and centre. It would ask before it took your data, not after. It would let you switch it off in the places that matter, your bank, your doctor, your kids’ school. Consent as the starting point, not an afterthought buried in terms nobody reads.

The technology is coming either way. The report suggests that most of us have quietly decided we want it on our terms, not theirs.

For now, more than four in ten of us are voting with our feet.

A former plumber turned MP will this week try to force through a law protecting workers from dangerous heat, as Britain bakes through yet another record summer with no legal limit on how hot your workplace can get.

Hannah Spencer, elected in February, is introducing a bill that would set up an independent body to recommend safe upper temperatures for the places we work, and spell out how those limits get enforced. It won’t set a hard cap itself, but it drags into the open a question ordinary workers have been asking for years: why is there no limit on how hot a workplace can get before someone has to act?

That’s the maddening part. However high the mercury climbs, there is no figure in law your employer has to answer to. No cap. No trigger. No protection at all when the heat turns dangerous.

Bus drivers baking in their cabs, builders with nowhere to hide

Spencer has been blunt about who this is for.

“From bus and train drivers sweltering in cabins that are hotter than the soaring temperatures outside and bakers working in temperatures of over 40 degrees, to builders whose workplaces offer no respite from the heat, the government has a duty to protect all of us,” she said.

These aren’t office workers with a desk fan and a window. They’re the people who keep the country moving, feed it, build it. One of her own constituents got in touch about laying tarmac on the roads of Gorton and Denton in heat he could only call “unbearable”.

Spencer calls it absurd that Britain has no maximum temperature guidance. “This is something workers and trade unions have been raising the alarm about for many years,” she said. “It shouldn’t have taken this long to act, but the unsafe temperatures we’re seeing now should be a huge wake-up call.”

Other countries fixed this years ago

The people who benefit from leaving things as they are never set foot on the floor. They’d rather stick a fan in the corner and call it sorted than spend money keeping their staff safe.

The Health and Safety Executive says a fixed upper limit is difficult, because in some jobs the heat comes from the work itself and not the weather. Think of the ovens in a bakery. There’s something in that, but “it’s complicated” has become the excuse for doing nothing while people faint at their posts.

Other countries manage it. Spencer points to Spain, which ties its heat limits to how physical the job is and lets people move their shifts when the worst of the sun hits. It isn’t exotic. It’s just sensible.

The backers are lining up: the heat isn’t going away

Spencer isn’t alone on this.

Her bill is expected to draw support from across the political map, with Labour MPs Rebecca Long-Bailey, Alex Sobel and Nadia Whittome behind it, alongside the SNP’s Graham Leadbitter, Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts and the independent Jeremy Corbyn. Unison and the TUC have long pushed for a cap of 30C, or 27C for strenuous work.

The pressure keeps building because the weather keeps forcing it, all thanks to the polluters driving climate change. Every record summer sends the same message to the same workers. Cope, or clock off unpaid.

A bill like this rarely becomes law on its own. It’s a marker in the ground. Your boss can legally let a room get hot enough to make you ill and so far the government has offered no plan to stop them.

Seventy-eight years ago this month, Britain built something the rest of the world envied. A health service free to everyone, funded by everyone, there when you needed it. No bill. No credit check. Just care.

That promise is now on life support.

A coalition of health campaigners, doctors and workers has sent an open letter to Andy Burnham, the man widely tipped to be the next Labour leader, and the next Prime Minister. Their message was blunt. The NHS has been carved up over 15 years by cuts, underfunding and privatisation. And they laid out the human cost in a single line: “tens of thousands of patients needlessly losing their lives and burnt-out staff leaving faster than they can be replaced”.

Read that again. Not statistics. People. Someone’s mum on a trolley in a corridor. Someone’s dad waiting for a scan that never comes.

Free at the point of use: that was the deal

The letter does not spare the current government either. Two years in power, and the campaigners say ministers have entrenched the damage rather than fixed it. They point to a deal signed with the US and the pharmaceutical giants. They point to another wave of PFI (Private Financial Initiatives), the same accounting trick that saddled hospitals with crippling debt the last time round. They point to job cuts across English hospitals and more of your care handed to companies chasing a profit.

Then there is the technology. The letter names Palantir, describing it as a “human rights abusing corporation”, now being rolled out across the NHS. Your medical records, your data, handed to a firm most people have never heard of.

Meanwhile the basics collapse. Dental care is disappearing. Maternity scandals keep breaking. The corridor care figures keep getting worse. This is what happens when a public good is treated as a market.

Millions of us built it: millions of us can save it

Here is what the campaigners want. They want Burnham to think again on the US pharmaceutical deal, the new PFI centres, the hospital job cuts and the Palantir contract. They want a meeting with workers and patients before summer recess ends. And they want a clear timetable to bring NHS services back into public hands over seven years.

They are not asking for the moon. They are asking for the health service to belong to the people who pay for it, again.

The letter carries a sting aimed squarely at Burnham. Back in 2012, as Health Secretary, he warned that Labour had gone too far in privatising the NHS and that the coalition was going further and faster. He was right then: the question is whether he means it now.

After his win in Makerfield, Burnham called this Labour’s “final chance to change”. The campaigners threw his own words back at him. This is also, they wrote, Labour’s final chance to save the NHS.

The letter was signed by 19 organisations: doctors, nurses, firefighters, teachers, pensioners, disabled people. Ordinary working people who have watched something precious get sold off from under them and decided they had seen enough.

The NHS was never a gift from politicians. It was built by ordinary people, for ordinary people and paid for out of every wage packet in the country.

Now they want it back.

You did not ask for any of this. One day artificial intelligence was a thing in films. The next it was deciding whether your CV ever got read, what you pay for your insurance, and how long you wait to see a doctor. Nobody knocked on your door to ask permission. It just arrived.

And here is the thing the people in power keep missing. Britain is not split down the middle on AI. We have already made up our minds. A major new study from the research group Diffusion, drawing on a survey of nearly 3,000 of us and focus groups across the country, found a public that is worried, watchful, and clear about what it wants.

Sixty-nine per cent of us are concerned about where AI is heading. Just 19 per cent are excited. Two thirds say it is moving too fast. Almost nobody thinks it is too slow.

Not us: just the billionaires

But scratch the surface and this is not really about robots or science fiction. It is about fairness. Sixty-eight per cent of people believe AI will mainly line the pockets of the wealthiest households and big corporations. Only one in ten think working people and ordinary families will see the benefit. As one woman in the study put it plainly when asked who wins: “Not us. Just the billionaires.”

That feeling runs deep because people can already see it in their own lives. The same clever systems that promise progress are being used to jack up your prices, filter you out of a job before a human ever sees your name, and squeeze more out of services while the people who run them pay fewer wages. One participant described the playbook exactly: get ordinary people hooked on the technology, then cut corners so the firms do not have to pay anyone’s salary, and pocket the difference.

So when the government talks about “charting a responsible course” and a “journey” into the AI age, it is speaking a language the public simply does not use. People are not picturing a gentle path forward. They are asking a much harder question: who is this actually for, and who is being left to pick up the bill?

What the country actually wants

Here is the good news, and it is genuinely good. There is already a settled public view waiting to be acted on. Eighty-five per cent of us want strong laws to make AI safe and secure. Only 10 per cent are happy to trust the companies to police themselves. That is not a narrow, contested debate. It is one of the clearest things this study found, and it holds across every type of person it spoke to.

People want a strong, independent watchdog with real teeth, able to test these systems, inspect them, and switch off the dangerous ones. They want British creators paid for the work that gets fed into these machines, not robbed of it. They want ordinary working people to have a proper seat at the table when decisions are made about their livelihoods. And they want it made plainly, so families are not stitched up by powerful firms acting in secret.

What they do not want is more reassuring noise from people who seem a little too comfortable with the very companies they are meant to be keeping in check.

Fair AI or none at all

The message could not be simpler. People are not against this technology. They are against being treated as an afterthought by it. Britain will welcome AI gladly, but only on one condition: that it is fair, that it is safe, and that it works for ordinary people rather than against them.

Here is something to feel good about. All over Britain, ordinary working people are landing stable, well-paid jobs in the new clean energy economy, and a lot of them are doing it without going back to college for years on end. That is the picture painted by new figures in the LinkedIn UK Green Skills Report.

Old skills, new jobs

Take the plumbers and gas boiler engineers. The skills they already have, pipework, central heating, the lot, transfer almost directly to fitting heat pumps in people’s homes. One major firm, Octopus Energy Services, is retraining qualified tradespeople in as little as two to three weeks at its own training centres. Thousands have already made the jump. Apprentices on its scheme are paid while they learn and can expect to earn over £40,000 a year by the time they qualify.

And the appetite is enormous. When that firm launched its heat pump apprenticeship in 2024, 2,000 people applied in the first three weeks. Up in the Humber, one training organisation gets 600 to 700 apprenticeship applications a year for around 120 places. In Aberdeen, the city that built its fortune on North Sea oil, a new £10 million skills hub is helping local workers move into wind and other clean energy work. Roughly 90% of the area’s oil and gas workforce already has the skills to make the switch.

The doom-mongers have got it wrong

This is the part the doom-mongers always miss. We are repeatedly told that ordinary people get left behind when industries change. The report’s figures say something different. The number of full-time jobs in Britain’s clean industries jumped by nearly 28% between 2015 and the end of 2024, climbing from around 500,000 to more than 650,000. Workers with these skills are now being hired 38% faster than the workforce as a whole. In plain English: if you have the right skills, you get the job.

Good for your wallet too

It is good news for your wallet. New clean power contracts signed over the next few years are expected to add enough capacity to create up to 10,000 jobs while bringing down household and business energy bills, according to research cited in the report. The engineers fitting heat pumps, solar panels and electric vehicle chargers are connecting homes to cheaper, cleaner power. One Octopus apprentice put it simply, saying he believes the kit he installs “works in homes, and it will make energy bills cheaper for everyone”.

For many of these workers, it is life-changing. One apprentice from Leeds, who could not previously afford to take on a low-paid role, said the opportunity had “changed the trajectory of my life”, giving him the confidence to think about buying a home and starting a family. That is what secure, decent work does. It lets people plan a future.

A catch worth fixing

There is a catch, and it is a hopeful one. The report finds demand for these workers is growing almost twice as fast as the number of people gaining the skills to fill the roles. The jobs are there. The bills savings are there. What is missing, so far, is enough training places and clear routes in, especially for young people, who are queuing up for these careers in their thousands.

That is exactly the kind of thing we can fix, together, if we make enough noise about it. Britain has the workers, the will and the wages on offer. We just need the people in charge to keep their foot on the pedal.

Want more clean air and secure work for ordinary people? Tell your MP to back the training places that turn this opportunity into jobs in your area.

Most of us were raised on a simple, decent idea. Your vote counts the same as the next person’s. The shop worker and the company boss walk into the same polling booth, draw the same little cross and come out as equals. It is one of the fairest arrangements this country has ever come up with, and most of us would defend it to the hilt.

So here is a question worth chewing over with your morning cuppa. If we each get one vote, why is it that a single wealthy individual can hand a political party millions of pounds and walk away with something the rest of us could never dream of buying: the ear of the people who run the country?

New polling for Transparency International UK, carried out by More in Common, shows the public has clocked exactly what is going on. More than four in five Britons, some 83 per cent, believe wealthy individuals use political donations to influence the government in their own personal interests. More than half feel that strongly. Just five per cent strongly disagree.

A rare moment of agreement

Here is the remarkable part. In a country that cannot agree on the weather, this view crosses every line. It is shared by 84 per cent of Labour voters, 78 per cent of Conservatives, 88 per cent of Liberal Democrats, 92 per cent of Greens and 79 per cent of Reform UK voters.

Read that last figure again. Reform voters want the big money cleaned out just as much as everyone else. Asked how they would feel about a party that capped large donations, Reform supporters backed the idea by almost ten to one. Across the country, nearly half of us, 47 per cent, would think more highly of such a party. Only seven per cent would think less of it.

There is an awkward irony here that will not be lost on anyone. Reform’s own Nigel Farage has been the recipient of one of the single biggest political gifts in recent memory, a donation running into the millions. Yet his own voters are among those saying loudly that this is exactly the sort of thing that has to stop. The people are miles ahead of the politicians cashing the cheques.

The fix is already on the table

This is not a problem without a solution. A Bill is passing through Parliament right now, the Representation of the People Bill. Ministers have promised to block donations from overseas and to pause cryptocurrency gifts, which is welcome as far as it goes.

But it does not go nearly far enough. The biggest hole of all, the unlimited cheques a handful of British mega-donors can write, is left wide open. As things stand, one person with deep enough pockets can bankroll an entire campaign. We all know what that kind of money expects in return.

Transparency International UK is clear that a sensible cap “would not stop ordinary people supporting the parties they believe in”. It would simply stop anyone buying a louder voice than the rest of us.

Now it is our turn

The public has done its bit. We have told the pollsters, plainly and repeatedly, what we want. The job now is to make sure MPs cannot pretend they did not hear us.

So talk about it. Share it. Ask your MP a straight question: will you cap big donations before this Bill becomes law, yes or no? A fair future is one where your voice counts as much as any millionaire’s. It is time we secured it.

Most of us want the same simple thing. A warm home. A boiler that works. The peace of mind that the person fixing it knows what they are doing and will not put our loved ones at risk.

That should never be a luxury. Yet new research shows more and more of us are being backed into a corner where safety becomes something we can no longer afford.

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A nation pushed into taking risks

A study of 2,000 adults found that more than 18.2 million Brits, over half the nation, have turned to unregulated goods and illegal or unqualified tradespeople to save money. The reason is no mystery. Rising fuel prices and shrinking household budgets are named as the biggest drivers. More than half of us have changed how we spend over the past year, with many now putting low prices ahead of safety.

This is not recklessness. It is what happens when ordinary people are squeezed too hard for too long. When the bills keep climbing and the money keeps shrinking, something has to give. Too often, it is our own safety.

When saving money backfires

The gamble rarely pays off. More than half of those who chose the cheaper option said it backfired, leaving them to replace the product or pay again to put the work right.

The numbers around gas work are alarming. Almost one in five admitted cutting costs on boiler servicing or appliance maintenance, work that should only ever be done by a legally registered Gas Safe engineer. Sixteen per cent have delayed routine gas safety checks. Twelve per cent said they would consider using an unregistered gas worker to save money.

Shaunagh Brown, a former England rugby player and former Gas Safe registered engineer, knows the dangers first hand: “I understand why people are looking to save money right now, but when it comes to gas work and essential safety checks, cutting corners simply isn’t worth the risk,” she said.

The real cost of being skint

Let us be honest about what is happening here. Families are not gambling with gas leaks and carbon monoxide because they are careless. They are doing it because money is tight, and because the cost of living has turned every household decision into a fight.

Ronan Howard of Gas Safe Register put it plainly. It shows, he said, “just how normalised risk-taking has become when household budgets are under pressure”.

That is the real scandal. Not the choices of struggling families, but the pressure that forces those choices in the first place. While ordinary people ration their own safety, the firms profiting from sky-high bills carry on regardless.

How we look after each other

Here is the good news. Millions of us are already looking out for one another, sharing advice, checking credentials and refusing to be taken for a ride.

And let us keep asking the bigger question. Why are careful, decent people being priced out of their own safety? A family should not have to choose between a warm home and a safe one. Those who keep bills high while ordinary households go without are betting on our silence.

Together we can prove them wrong, look out for one another, and demand fairer bills and a country where keeping your family safe is never something you have to gamble on.

Picture it. You walk into your local supermarket, pick up the family joint, and have no idea what you are really buying. Within weeks, that could be the reality.

New laws are about to let companies sell meat from gene-edited animals in England. Pigs, chickens, sheep and cattle have all had their DNA rewritten in a lab. Soon it could land on your plate.

We all want the same simple thing. We want good food we can trust, and the right to know what we are feeding our children. That is fair. It is not too much to ask.

But right now that basic right is being quietly stripped away. The government plans to avoid labelling that would tell you whether you are eating a gene-edited animal. So you would never know.

This is not progress for ordinary families. It is a gift to a handful of powerful firms who stand to make a fortune. As one expert warned, “you should never be industry-led on something that is this ethically problematic”.

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Who really wants this?

Make no mistake about who is driving this. The big breeding companies want animals that grow faster and produce more, whatever the cost. Peter Stevenson of Compassion in World Farming put it plainly: “It’s very clear from the industry that one thing they want to do with gene editing is to push animals to higher productivity, faster growth, higher milk yields”.

We have seen where this road leads. Years of pushing animals to their limits has given us chickens too breast-heavy to walk, lame and sick dairy cows, and sows with more piglets than they can feed. Now the same industry wants an even more powerful tool.

And the experiments are not always clean. In New Zealand, official reports recorded a gene-edited calf born blind. Campaigners there logged animals suffering chronic foot problems, fused organs and deformities. The facility behind it shut down last year.

Here in England, you are being kept in the dark. A recent survey found three in four people had never even heard of gene editing. That is no accident. The less you know, the less you can object.

The tide is turning

Here is the good news. You are not alone, and the tide is turning. Campaigners have already dragged this into the open and won. In New Zealand, ordinary people forced the labs to publish what they were doing, and the trials collapsed. One British group has now taken the government to the High Court over plans to scrap labelling.

This is what happens when ordinary people refuse to be fobbed off. We are not against science that genuinely helps. We are against being treated as guinea pigs by firms that see us as customers to be managed, not people to be respected.

What you can do

So here is the ask. Learn what is really being cooked up behind closed doors. Talk to your family about what is heading for the dinner table. Demand that every product is labelled clearly, so you can choose for yourself. And back the people fighting to keep our food honest.

Good food, fairly produced, clearly labelled. That is not a lot to ask. It is the very least we are owed. Stand together, and we can win it.

While you scrape together the money for your energy bill, one MP has been quietly stuffing his pockets with cash from a billionaire’s social media platform.

Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe has trousered more than £72,000 from X since being elected in 2024. In April alone, he banked over £10,000. That’s more in one month just from X than many of us earn over months.

Think about that. While ordinary people work themselves into the ground, this politician gets paid simply for posting online.

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Click bait

How does it work? Since US billionaire Elon Musk bought the platform, X pays users based on engagement. The more likes, reposts and replies you rack up, the more you earn. And Lowe knows exactly how to play the game.

His posts are packed with provocative language designed to get people riled up. The angrier the response, the fatter his payout. Outrage pays, and Lowe has turned it into a nice little earner.

It helps to have friends in high places. Musk, who has more than 240 million followers, has repeatedly amplified Lowe’s posts. Last June he cheered on Lowe’s breakaway party with a string of Union Jack emojis. Just last Sunday he did it again, sharing one of Lowe’s posts with the caption “Restore Britain”.

So a foreign billionaire boosts the politician, the politician rakes in the cash, and the rest of us are left footing the bill for everything else. Is this what passes for serving the public these days?

Not in it for the money?

Lowe insists he isn’t in it for the money. He told PoliticsHome: “If I were in politics to make money, I wouldn’t donate my entire net MP salary to charity in my constituency. Would I?”

“This is the most expensive job I’ve ever had. Trust me - if I wanted financial gain, I wouldn’t be doing this.”

Make of that what you will. But the numbers don’t lie. Lowe has earned more from the platform than Nigel Farage, Richard Tice and Lee Anderson combined. Farage managed £19,866. Tice and Anderson trail far behind. Lowe leaves the lot of them in the dust.

The system rewards division

And here’s the thing. This isn’t just one greedy MP. It’s a system that rewards division. The platform pushes the loudest, angriest voices to the top, while the quiet majority who just want to get on with their lives are drowned out. The more heat you generate, the more cash lands in your account.

So while you’re told there’s no money for clean air, decent healthcare or affordable energy, there’s apparently plenty sloshing around for politicians who shout the loudest online.

And don’t think this is about one party or one side. Politicians of every stripe have spotted the same trick. Others earn from the platform too, dressing it up as donations to good causes. But the game is the same. Say something inflammatory, watch the engagement roll in, collect the cheque.

The truth is they’re all feeding from the same trough. While we argue among ourselves, the people at the top keep cashing in.

That’s the real scandal here. Not just one greedy MP, but a system that rewards division and pays the powerful to keep us at each other’s throats.

We deserve better than this. We deserve politicians who serve us, not their own bank balances. It’s time we stopped being pitted against one another and started standing together. Because the only people who win when we’re divided are the ones already laughing all the way to the bank.

Picture the World Cup. The beautiful game on the biggest stage. Billions watching. And players collapsing in heat that human beings were never meant to work in.

That’s not scaremongering. That’s the warning now coming from professional footballers themselves.

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Open letter to FIFA

More than 60 players from around the world have signed an open letter to FIFA demanding urgent action on heat stress ahead of this summer’s tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Among them are dozens of British players from across the football pyramid, including Chuba Akpom of Ipswich Town, Jordan Rhodes, who earned 15 caps for Scotland, former Norwich City and Wycombe manager Russell Martin, and players from clubs including Oxford United, Derby County, Stevenage, Colchester United and many more.

These aren’t fringe voices. These are people who have spent their lives on pitches, in training grounds, in the heat.

And they know what it does to you.

Impact of heat

“It can make you feel light-headed, dizzy, experience fatigue, muscle cramps and worse,” the letter states. “You can run less and it becomes impossible to play with the same intensity as with more average temperatures.”

Think about that the next time you watch a World Cup final. Those aren’t peak athletes underperforming. Those are human beings being asked to compete in conditions that are increasingly dangerous, on a planet that is getting hotter year by year.

The players are backing a call from medical experts for FIFA to update its heat-stress protocols before the tournament kicks off. That’s the minimum. A basic duty of care. You’d expect it for workers in any other field. Why should footballers be any different?

Stop taking money from polluters

But the letter goes further. Because the players understand something that the executives in their air-conditioned boardrooms apparently don’t: you cannot tackle the symptoms while you’re funding the cause.

The signatories call on FIFA to drop its fossil fuel sponsors. Full stop. The polluters who have pumped filth into our air for decades, who have lobbied governments to delay action, who have raked in record profits while ordinary people sweat and suffer. FIFA is taking their money. And that makes football part of the problem.

“It would be a missed opportunity,” the players write, “if a sport so impacted by the climate crisis doesn’t take its responsibility in addressing it.”

They’re right. Football has form on this. The game has taken stands on racism, on gender equality, on inclusion. Those fights weren’t easy. But they were right. This one is too.

A lighter environmental footprint

The players also call for a smaller, more regional football calendar. Less burden on players already stretched to breaking point by an overcrowded schedule. And, they point out, it would also reduce the sport’s impact on the environment. What’s good for the players is good for the planet.

British footballers are putting their names to this. Ordinary professionals from League One, League Two, non-league. Not just the superstars. Real people who love the game and want it to survive and flourish.

The question is whether FIFA and its backers in the fossil fuel industry will listen. Or whether they’ll carry on counting their money while the pitch gets hotter.

We all love football. We all want to see it thrive. But we can’t keep looking the other way while the people who run it take cash from the very polluters making our world less safe, less healthy, less fair.

It’s time FIFA picked a side.

You have felt it at the checkout. You have felt it at the petrol pump. You have felt it when your energy bill landed on the mat. Now an official report confirms what millions of us already knew in our bones. When extreme weather hits Britain, it is the people with the least who get clobbered the hardest.

The Climate Change Committee’s new assessment is a 500-page wake-up call. Its most explosive finding? The poorest neighbourhoods in this country are over seven times more likely to be highly vulnerable to dangerous overheating than the wealthiest. They are over ten times more likely to be highly vulnerable to flooding.

Same country. Same storms. Wildly different odds.

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A two-tier Britain

The report calls it a “protection gap”. We call it what it is. A stitch-up.

When the floodwaters rise in your street, the well-off cash in their insurance and rebuild. Many low-income families cannot get insurance at all, or face premiums they have no hope of paying. The report warns that by 2050 many homes in flood-risk areas “may not be able to access insurance due to lack of coverage or high premiums”, and that this “impacts those with low incomes the most”.

When the next heatwave bakes our cities, the comfortable retreat behind air conditioning. Pensioners on fixed incomes swelter in poorly built flats. The report projects heat-related deaths could rise from up to 3,000 a year today to as many as 10,000 a year by 2050. The dead will not be evenly spread across the postcodes.

When the power grid buckles and the lights go out, who picks up the tab? The report spells it out. The cost will eventually be passed onto households, again often impacting those on low incomes the most.

Your dinner is in the firing line

It gets worse. Forty per cent of the food on your plate is imported. When climate shocks hit the countries that grow it, prices rocket here. Extreme heat across Europe in 2022 pushed food prices up that was felt by many.

The report is brutally honest about what comes next. Crop failures abroad will lead to higher food prices, “hitting those on low incomes the hardest”. Ordinary families. Pensioners. Single parents. Working people who already cannot stretch the budget to the end of the month.

Who is responsible?

The committee’s Chair, Baroness Brown, writes that “what governments have been doing on adaptation clearly isn’t working”. She concludes that “whether or not to prepare for the changing climate is now solely a political choice”.

Not an accident. Not an act of God. A choice.

For years, the polluters have been raking it in while ordinary people pick up the bill. Their cronies in government have dithered, delayed and pretended this was somebody else’s problem. Meanwhile your roof leaks. Your bills climb. Your high street floods. Your kids’ school overheats. Your insurance gets cancelled.

The good news

Here is the part they will not put on the front page. We already know what works. Better cooling in homes. Proper flood defences. A secure water supply. Targeting the homes most at risk could cut heat deaths by more than half. Every pound spent on flood resilience saves five. Every pound on heatwave plans saves up to thirty.

This is not rocket science. It is a question of will.

For too long we have been told that protecting ordinary people from the chaos the polluters have caused is too expensive, too complicated, too political. The truth is the opposite. Doing nothing is the expensive option, and the bill always lands on the same doormats.

It is time to stop paying for their mess. It is time for fair protection, fair prices and a fair future. Together, we can demand it.

Forget keeping the lights on in your living room. The real energy hogs are the cavernous warehouses stuffed with whirring computer chips that now devour a staggering 5.9% of Britain’s electricity supply.

That’s the eye-watering finding from new research by the International Data Center Association, which reveals that AI-driven data centres are gobbling up power at an alarming rate. Globally, their energy consumption has surged 15% in just two years. Annual investment in these digital fortresses is approaching $1 trillion. That’s nearly 1% of the entire world economy poured into server farms.

And here in Britain, we’re feeling the squeeze.

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A grid under siege

In early 2025, the UK government reckoned data centres were using 2.5% of our electricity. That figure has more than doubled. The queue to plug new data centres into the national grid has ballooned by an astonishing 460% in the first half of last year alone.

Developers are now waiting years to connect. And the government predicts data centre electricity use will quadruple by 2030.

So who pays when demand outstrips supply? You do. Through higher bills, through strain on infrastructure, and potentially through dirtier air.

The polluters’ back door

Here’s the bit the tech evangelists don’t want you thinking about. When demand for power explodes this fast, something has to give. And there’s a very real danger that something will be Britain’s progress on clean energy.

Greenpeace UK has sounded the alarm, warning that an “unchecked AI boom” risks becoming “a new lifeline for fossil fuels”.

Doug Parr, the group’s chief scientist, didn’t mince his words. “Before being swept along by the enthusiasm of tech billionaires whose profits depend on this expansion, we should pause and ask ourselves whether it’s worth the price.”

He’s right. Because every gigawatt those server farms swallow is a gigawatt that could be powering homes, hospitals and schools with clean, affordable energy. Instead, the polluters are licking their lips at the prospect of fresh demand keeping their dirty industries alive.

Parr called for “more transparency about the amount of water and energy used by data centres, proper environmental impact assessments, and a ban on new polluting plants being built to power AI.”

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? You’d think our politicians would jump at it.

Whose AI is it anyway?

But there’s a bigger question lurking behind the meter readings. Who actually benefits from all this?

AI is being sold to us as a revolution that will transform our lives. Yet the profits are flowing in one direction only: upwards. The same handful of Silicon Valley giants and their cronies are quietly building an empire on the back of OUR power grid, OUR water supplies, and OUR communities.

The IDCA itself warns that “significant community and political pushback starts to occur in nations once their datacentre footprints have reached the 5% consumption level of national grids.” Britain has already crossed that line.

Worse still, the research found that 13% of US data centre consumption comes from “zombie” services. Apps nobody uses, running on machines nobody switched off, burning electricity nobody needs. Over 3GW of pure waste.

Time to take back the power

Ordinary people didn’t ask for any of this. We weren’t consulted when our grid was carved up to feed the appetites of a few tech moguls. We won’t be sent a thank-you card when our bills go up.

The technology might be new, but the story is as old as time. The elites grab the gains. The rest of us pick up the tab.

That has to change. AI should serve all of us, not just the chosen few. And it must never come at the cost of the clean air, clean energy and clean water that ordinary families deserve.

It’s time to pull the plug on this stitch-up.

Britain is in the grip of a renting nightmare. A staggering 2.4 million households across the UK are now paying rents they simply cannot afford, according to a new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

That’s nearly half, 45 per cent, of every family renting privately. And the rot is spreading fast: an extra 250,000 households have been dragged into unaffordable rents since 2023.

Two and a half million households. Working families. Pensioners. Young people just trying to get a start. All handing over more and more of their hard-earned pay just to keep a roof over their heads.

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Hungry in plain sight

The human cost is staggering. More than one in five renting households with sky-high housing costs are now skipping meals or shrinking their food portions just to make ends meet. Hunger. In one of the richest countries on earth. In 2026.

Almost one in ten private renters are forking out more than 70 per cent of their take-home pay on rent. What’s left for food? For heating? For the kids? Nothing.

And it’s about to get worse. Another 340,000 households will be tipped into unaffordable rents by the end of the decade without intervention. The war in Iran is pushing inflation up, and mortgage rates are rising, the perfect storm for landlords to pass the pain onto tenants.

Working families squeezed dry

Don’t believe the lie that this is just about people on benefits. Three-quarters of working-age renters with crippling housing costs live in households where at least one adult is in work. The report makes clear that significant numbers of households in trouble receive no direct housing support through the benefit system.

Dr Maya Singer Hobbs, senior research fellow at IPPR, pulled no punches. “Millions of renters are being pushed to the brink by a housing market that simply isn’t working for them,” she said. “This is no longer a marginal issue affecting a small group, it is a mainstream cost-of-living crisis hitting working households across the country.”

The market won’t fix this

The same old voices will tell you the market will sort itself out. Just build more houses, they say. Wait for supply and demand to work their magic.

But rents shot up by 9.1 per cent in a single year to March 2024. Wages haven’t kept pace since 2023. As Dr Singer Hobbs warned: “The current system leaves renters exposed to global shocks and rising costs they have no power to control.”

The rental market isn’t free and fair. It’s rigged. Moving costs thousands. Landlords hold all the cards.

Time to fight back

The IPPR has a plan. They’re calling for a “double-locked” rent system that ties rent increases to the lower of wages or inflation. Landlords still get a fair return. Tenants get protection from being fleeced.

Had this policy been in place since 2020, rents would now be at least 7 per cent lower, saving the average renting household £850 a year in England and £1,700 a year in London.

London’s Deputy Mayor for Housing, Tom Copley, is on board. “The evidence clearly shows that Londoners would overwhelmingly back new plans to put a cap on rent increases,” he said, urging ministers to devolve the power to cap rents to City Hall.

It’s not pie in the sky. France, Ireland, Spain and Scotland are all acting. And 75 per cent of UK adults back rent controls.

The government has the tools. It has public support. What it needs is the guts to act. Whose side are they on?

It’s the cruellest joke of the cost-of-living crisis. The less you’ve got, the more they take.

Skip a boiler repair this winter because you can’t stretch to it? Brace yourself for a £50,000 nightmare down the line.

That’s the bleak warning from new research by CompareNI.com, which surveyed 800 householders and found that nearly half of UK homeowners (47%) are now putting off vital maintenance jobs. Leaks. Damp. Dodgy wiring. Cracked walls. All being left to fester because families simply cannot afford to fix them.

And here’s the kicker: small problems become big problems. A dripping pipe today is a collapsed ceiling tomorrow.

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Squeezed until the pips squeak

Read the numbers and weep. Almost a third of people (29%) are leaving broken boilers unfixed. Nearly one in five (18%) are turning a blind eye to mould and mildew. Some 14% are ignoring structural defects in their own homes. Another 11% are crossing their fingers over dodgy electrics.

These aren’t lazy homeowners. These are families being stretched to breaking point.

When asked why repairs get delayed, 27% blamed the soaring cost of materials. Another 20% said tradespeople were just too expensive.

So what do people do? They roll up their sleeves and have a go themselves. A whopping 61% have attempted DIY fixes rather than hire a professional. And here’s where the trap snaps shut. Some 39% had no idea their botched DIY job could invalidate their home insurance. So when the ceiling caves in, the insurer waves them away. The bill? All theirs.

Heads they win, tails you lose.

A country held together with gaffer tape

This isn’t just about houses. This is about people.

We are a country where ordinary people are forced to gamble with their own safety to keep food on the table. One in four householders (25%) admit they’re worried that delaying repairs could put their family at risk. One in eight (13%) have stayed in a property knowing a repair issue could be dangerous.

Children are sleeping in mouldy bedrooms that can trigger asthma and respiratory illness. Families are living with electrical faults that can spark fires. Pensioners are shivering through winters with broken boilers, knowing full well that tampering with a gas appliance can mean carbon monoxide poisoning or worse.

Why? Because the cost of living has spiralled out of control while wages have flatlined.

Ian Wilson, home insurance expert and Managing Director at CompareNI.com, put it bluntly: “Many homeowners are having to make tough choices right now as household budgets continue to be squeezed by rising food and energy costs, so when faced with unwelcome home repairs, it is understandable that these can get pushed down the list of priorities”.

Tough choices. Between heating and eating. Between fixing the roof and feeding the kids.

Who’s getting rich while we get screwed?

Make no mistake: this crisis didn’t fall from the sky. It was built. Brick by brick. Bill by bill.

While families patch up leaks with buckets and prayers, the polluters and the elites who run our energy system are raking in record profits. Your sky-high gas bill is their bonus. Your damp wall is their dividend. Your cracked ceiling is their share buyback.

They have rigged the game so that the people with the least pay the most. Delay a £200 repair, end up with a £20,000 bill. Try to fix it yourself, lose your insurance. Call a tradesperson, can’t afford the quote.

Every door slams shut. Except the one marked “pay up”.

Time to fix the country

Britain shouldn’t be a place where ordinary families are one leak away from ruin. We deserve warm, safe, dry homes. We deserve clean energy that doesn’t bankrupt us. We deserve a country that works for the many, not the polluting few.

The roof is leaking. The walls are cracking. The whole house is shifting on its foundations.

It’s time we stopped patching things up and started rebuilding. Together.

Because if we don’t fix the country, the country will fall in on us.

Picture, for a moment, the kind of bloke Nigel Farage says he stands up for. He drives a knackered estate car. He worries about the gas bill. He queues for the bus in the rain. He gets the train home from work and hopes it’s on time. He breathes the same air the rest of us do and pays the same prices we do.

Now picture the man himself. Between 30 January and 27 April this year, Nigel Farage was associated with at least 57 private jet flights, using eleven different aircraft, on 24 separate days. That is according to a confirmed flight log compiled from Farage’s own social media posts and public ADS-B aircraft tracking data.

Eleven jets. Fifty-seven flights. In not much over three months.

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The roll call

Here is the fleet that has been ferrying the people’s champion around in the first months of this year. A Bombardier Challenger 604. A Hawker 850XP. A Cessna Citation Excel. A Cessna Citation XLS+. An Embraer Phenom 300. A Dassault Falcon 8X. A Pilatus PC-12. The aircraft are operated by an alphabet soup of charter companies—Volare, Voluxis, Luxaviation, Ortac, Silver Aviation, Black Panther Aviation—and registered in places like Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

This is not someone who occasionally finds himself on a private jet because no other option was available. This is a settled, routine, jet-shaped lifestyle.

The 35-mile question

One stretch in the log stands out. Between London Biggin Hill and Farnborough airfield, a distance of around 35 miles as the crow flies, jets in the log made the hop seven times in four months.

Thirty-five miles. The kind of distance you could cover on a leisurely Sunday cycle. On the M25 in normal traffic, in about an hour.

The compilers of the log describe these short hops as “repositioning flights for Nigel Farage”: that is, jets being moved into place to ferry the great man around the country. Whether you agree with that label or not, the question stands: what kind of person leaves a trail of 35-mile private jet hops behind them?

It is not the bloke at the bus stop. It is not the family in the food bank queue. It is not the pensioner choosing between heating and eating.

And the headline acts

If the short hops are the warm-up, the main programme is no less eye-watering.

The same log records jet flights to Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds Bradford, Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham, Glasgow, Aberdeen: every single one of which is reachable by perfectly functional trains.

There is a Bristol-to-Luton round trip on the same day, a route a Megabus could handle.

These flight numbers do not include those put on by dodgy donors to brown-nose the elites in Davos or do social media stunts in the Chagos Islands, nor the helicopter rides that are apparently essential to Farage’s existence.

Who pays for the dirty air?

Here is the bit that should make your blood boil, gently and over a cup of tea.

Private aviation is the most polluting way to travel a human being has ever invented. The fumes do not stay politely up in the clouds. They drift down. Into the lungs of the kids walking to school near the airfield. Into the chests of the pensioners on their morning walks. Into the air the rest of us have no choice but to breathe.

The bill for that pollution does not land on Nigel Farage’s desk. It lands on yours, in dirtier air and a sicker country.

Eleven jets. Fifty-seven flights. Twenty-four days.

Our Fair Future believes in something simple. Clean air for everyone, paid for fairly by everyone. Not a separate sky for the polluters and their cheerleaders, and a polluted one for the rest of us to choke on.

Three million households across Britain are now skipping meals to keep food on the table for the rest of the week.

Let that sink in. Three million.

That is the staggering verdict from consumer champion Which?, whose latest Consumer Insight Tracker paints a grim picture of a country buckling under a cost-of-living squeeze that simply will not let up.

Confidence in the economy has plunged to minus 62 this month. You have to go back to the darkest days of 2022 to find a number that bleak. A whopping 71% of UK adults reckon things are about to get worse. Just 9% believe they will get better.

And who can blame them?

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Skipping meals to make ends meet

The numbers are nothing short of shameful. A full 85% of British adults are now worried sick about food prices. Two thirds of households have changed how they shop or eat in just the last month, scrambling to make the weekly shop stretch a little further.

People are buying cheaper products. They are loading their trolleys with supermarket own-brand basics. They are stockpiling whatever happens to be on offer.

And when even that is not enough? They go without. One in seven households is now cutting out certain foods entirely. One in ten, equivalent to three million homes, is skipping meals altogether.

This is Britain in 2026. A country where parents quietly push their plate aside so the kids can eat.

Pumps, bills and broken family ties

It is not just the supermarket aisle where ordinary people are being clobbered. Fuel prices are tightening the noose too, with 83% of adults now worried about what it costs to fill up the tank, up from 71% in February.

The result? Families are seeing less of each other. A third have cut back on leisure trips. Nearly a quarter are planning every journey down to the last mile. And one in eight say they are visiting friends and family less often than they used to.

Think about that. The cost of living is not just emptying our fridges. It is fraying the bonds that hold our communities together.

In the month to 10 April alone, an estimated 15 million households made cutbacks just to cover the essentials. Some dipped into savings. Some flogged their possessions. Some borrowed from loved ones who can barely spare it themselves. And 7.7% missed a bill, loan or credit card payment entirely.

Whose side is the government on?

Here is the question nobody in Westminster wants to answer: how did we get here?

While ordinary families ration meals and skip seeing the grandkids to save on petrol, the polluters and their cronies in government carry on raking it in. Energy giants post record profits. Supermarket bosses pocket eye-watering bonuses. And the politicians who are supposed to stand up for us shrug their shoulders and tell us to tighten our belts another notch.

Which? is calling for urgent action through its newly launched Cost of Living Manifesto, including a long-overdue reform of the Healthy Start food scheme, whose value has failed to keep pace with rocketing food inflation.

Rocio Concha, Which? director of policy and advocacy, did not mince her words: “Many are already making difficult choices, such as skipping meals. Without meaningful interventions the number of people taking drastic measures is likely to increase”.

She is right. But manifestos and ministerial reviews will not feed a hungry child tonight.

Ordinary working people deserve clean air, clean energy, good food and a fair shot at a decent life. Not crumbs from the table of those who have spent decades hollowing out our country.

It is time we came together and demanded better. Because nobody is coming to save us.

It is on us.

The British public has delivered its verdict. And it is brutal news for the fossil fuel barons clinging to our energy system like barnacles on a sinking ship.

Fresh polling from YouGov shows ordinary Britons want clean energy, and they want it now. A whopping 72 to 73 per cent of us are backing more electricity from tidal and solar power. Two thirds want more offshore wind or hydro. Even onshore wind, the punching bag of every pro-pollution columnist going, is backed by a clear majority of 55 per cent.

And the dirty stuff? A measly 14 to 22 per cent want more fossil fuels.

Let that sink in. When asked which single power source they most want ramped up, just 6 per cent of Britons picked gas or coal. Six. Per. Cent. You could fit the entire pro-coal lobby into a Wetherspoons on a Tuesday lunchtime.

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By contrast, 58 per cent of Britons say wind, solar or tidal energy is the form of power generation they support most for the country’s future needs.

This is not a fringe view. This is not the opinion of pink-haired protesters glueing themselves to the M25. This is the settled, common-sense position of the British public. Clean. Cheap. Homegrown. Ours.

So why on earth are we still being held hostage by polluters and their cronies in government?

A nation united, a Westminster asleep

The polling, marking 40 years since the Chernobyl disaster, also looked at nuclear. Britons back the use of nuclear power by 51 per cent to 29 per cent, with 37 per cent wanting more of our electricity to come from it. Fine. A reasonable debate to have.

But what’s striking is how every clean source, nuclear included, leaves fossil fuels eating dust.

And here is the kicker. The same poll found that even Reform UK voters, the supposed bogeymen of the green movement, are firmly in the clean energy camp. Asked which source they support most for Britain’s future needs, 29 per cent of Reform voters picked wind, solar or wave power. Just 15 per cent picked gas or coal.

The myth that “ordinary people” want to burn more oil and gas is exactly that. A myth. A lie peddled by columnists on the payroll of polluters and politicians who take their donations.

Working people in Leeds, retirees in Manchester, designers in London, property developers in Exeter. We disagree about plenty. But on this we are united. Give us the clean stuff. Give us the cheap stuff. Give us energy that doesn’t choke our kids or cook our planet.

Whose side are they on?

So the question must be asked. If the British people want clean energy by overwhelming margins, who exactly are our politicians serving when they hand out fresh oil and gas licences? When they water down clean power targets? When they let energy bills balloon while gas giants post record profits?

The answer is obvious. The polluters. Their shareholders. Their lobbyists. Their friends in the press.

It is not the bloke in the warehouse. It is not the nan worrying about her grandkids. It is not the council worker in Bristol or the product manager in Birmingham. It is not you. It is not us.

The British people want clean air, clean energy and a fair future. The numbers prove it beyond any doubt.

It is time our politicians caught up. Or got out of the way.

Because make no mistake. The country has decided. And we are not turning back.

Tea towels, seaside windbreaks, a Greggs sausage roll. A London black cab, Nelson’s coat and the Magna Carta. These are some of the everyday treasures that have made the cut in a nationwide campaign to reclaim St George’s Day from the shouters and the dividers.

A Very English Chat has asked the English public a simple question: what five objects tell the story of your England? More than 3,000 suggestions later, the answers have been stitched together into a “pocket museum” called The Story of England 2026 in 50 Objects, launching today.

And it turns out that when you actually ask people, you get a very different picture from the one served up by the usual culture warriors.

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What’s in the pocket museum?

Marmite made the list. So did the Pearly King’s jacket, the Windrush suitcase, Shakespeare and the humble pie and mash shop plate. Up and down the country, towns and cities have their own local line-ups: Newcastle Brown Ale and the Angel of the North in the Toon, Henderson’s Relish in Sheffield, Yorkshire Tea and the flat cap in God’s own county.

The message is clear. England is not a slogan. It’s a mosaic made up of millions of small, ordinary things that ordinary people actually love.

The campaign, backed by the Jo Cox Foundation’s More in Common Network, has pulled together a genuinely broad coalition, from former Conservative Minister Sir Sajid Javid to folk hero Billy Bragg and environmental campaigner Caroline Lucas. You won’t often see that line-up in a photograph. And that’s the whole point.

Sir Sajid said: “St George’s Day is a great day to celebrate what we all have in common. When people talk about what they value, what they trust, and what they share, it becomes easier to build understanding. I’m glad my suggestions of the local bobby and war memorials made the final cut.”

Billy Bragg struck a similar note, saying St George’s Day “should be a day for celebrating the positive things we have in common. A day for recognising the sense of community that comes from the identity and values that we share in this place called England. Through listening to each other, we can find that common ground from which to resist hateful division.”

Caroline Lucas added: “With the UK more divided than ever, by bringing individuals and communities together to share their own reflections on national identity, we can discover far more compelling and inclusive stories of who we are and who we can be.”

Why it matters

For too long the national conversation has been hijacked. On one side, flag-waving finger-pointers telling you who doesn’t belong. On the other, lecturers telling you that loving your country is a bit embarrassing. No wonder so many of us have switched off.

But the truth is most of us agree on far more than we disagree on. We want a country where our kids can breathe clean air, drink clean water and grow up healthy. We want fair wages, decent homes and streets that feel safe. We want to look out for our neighbours. None of that belongs to the left or the right. It belongs to all of us.

That is the England worth celebrating. Not the one carved up by politicians and pundits who profit from keeping us at each other’s throats, but the one you see every day at the bus stop, the school gates, the corner shop and the seaside.

So this St George’s Day, grab five objects. Sit down with a friend, a neighbour, a stranger. Have a very English chat. You might be surprised how much common ground you find.

Breathing dirty air is making people in the UK fall seriously ill years earlier than they should, a major new study has found.

Researchers tracked the health of nearly 400,000 people over up to 15 years, looking at when they first developed any of 78 different illnesses. Their conclusion is alarming: for some conditions, people are getting sick more than two years too soon, simply because of the air they breathe.

“Our study demonstrates that air pollution is not just a risk factor for falling ill”, said the lead researcher of the study, Prof Hualiang Lin. “It acts as a silent accelerator that robs individuals of their healthiest years”.

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Staggering damage

The scale of the damage is staggering. If the UK had met World Health Organization air quality guidelines, the 360,000 people in the study could have avoided a combined 539,000 years of illness. That is more than a year of healthy life handed back to the average person.

And the illnesses involved are not minor. The research found dirty air is linked to earlier onset of high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma and thyroid problems. More shockingly, it is also associated with earlier development of serious neurological and psychiatric conditions, including dementia, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.

“The most striking finding was the sheer breadth and severity of the impact”, Prof Hualiang Lin said. “We found that air pollutants were significantly associated with the accelerated onset of different chronic diseases, spanning almost every major organ system. We were particularly surprised by the high sensitivity of neurological and psychiatric disorders”.

By cutting particle pollution alone, the onset of schizophrenia, bone fractures, high blood pressure and diabetes could each be delayed by at least six months on average.

Polluters acting with impunity

This is not some distant, abstract threat. It is happening now, in our towns and cities, to ordinary people who have done nothing wrong. The polluters are not just harming the environment. They are taking years of good health from working people, parents and grandparents across the country.

Dr Amy Ronaldson of King’s College London, who has studied the same group of people in earlier research, said the new findings go further than anything seen before.

“Our earlier work highlighted that people exposed to higher levels of air pollution were more likely to develop multiple chronic conditions”, she said. “This new study goes further by suggesting that pollution may also accelerate the onset of many diseases”.

She added: “That means more illness, earlier in life, concentrated in the communities already most exposed to poor air quality. Reducing air pollution has to be part of any serious strategy to reduce health inequalities, ease pressure on the NHS, and improve population health”.

The NHS is already on its knees. Our GPs are overwhelmed. Our hospitals are stretched to breaking point. And all the while, the polluters continue to pump filth into the air that ordinary people breathe every day, with little accountability and even less urgency from those in power.

Clean air is not a luxury. It is a basic right. And right now, that right is being stolen from us, one lost year of healthy life at a time.

Britain is bleeding people. Not the super-rich packing up for Monaco, but ordinary working families, graduates and pensioners who have simply had enough. They are looking at the bills, looking at their wages, and heading for the door.

New figures make for grim reading. Emigration jumped by over 6% in 2025. Last year, 252,000 Brits left the UK while only 143,000, returned. We are losing more than we are gaining. And the reasons are not complicated.

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Priced out

61% of Brits planning to move overseas blame Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, while a full half point to the economy. These are not people chasing adventure. They are people chasing a decent life. The kind of life that used to be possible here.

So where are they going? Amsterdam is leading the charge, pulling in an average of 9,000 annual “move to” searches. Singapore, New York, Sydney, Paris and Berlin all feature heavily too. The pattern is clear. Brits are scanning the globe for somewhere that actually works for ordinary people.

Asad Mirza, Logistics Specialist at Cargo Force, puts it plainly: “What we’re seeing is a mix of lifestyle-led and opportunity-led destinations, with cities like Amsterdam and Singapore offering a balance of career prospects, quality of life, and international connectivity”.

Gen Z exodus

But perhaps the most troubling part of this story is who is leaving. It is not just the over-50s dreaming of sunshine. It is young people. It is the next generation. And they are going earlier than ever before.

A new report from The TEFL Academy, dubbed The Great Gen Z Exodus, reveals a major shift in life planning, with people in their 20s increasingly choosing to build careers abroad rather than waiting until their 30s.

The numbers are stark. In June 2025, departures among those aged 20 to 29 reached 130,000 to 140,000, significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels of around 92,000 to 95,000 in 2018. Around 195,000 Brits under 35 emigrated in the past year, meaning younger adults now account for the vast majority of those leaving the country.

Why? Ask them and they will tell you straight. Among respondents aged 18 to 34, more than 86% agreed that UK wages do not reflect the cost of living, while around 79% said they feel constant financial pressure living in the UK. Confidence in long-term UK prospects averages just 2.44 out of 5.

According to the British Council, 72% of UK adults aged 18 to 30 say they would consider living and working abroad, while 63% believe their standard of living is worse than that of their parents’ generation.

Running toward opportunity

Read that again. Nearly two-thirds of young Brits think they are worse off than their parents. That is not a blip. That is a failure. A failure of those in power to protect the people they are supposed to serve.

Rhyan O’Sullivan, Managing Director at The TEFL Academy, says: “Young Britons aren’t running away from the UK, they’re running toward opportunity”. He is right. But we should be angry that opportunity is something they have to run toward rather than find at home.

This is what happens when the polluters and extractors and their cronies in government put profit before people. Ordinary Brits, young and old, are left to pick up the bill while those at the top pocket the rewards. Enough is enough: no one should have to leave the country they love just to live a decent life.