Blessed are the warmongers…

In the news today, a cyclist on the pavement who killed a man is charged with manslaughter. By contrast, here's a van driver who killed a little girl. He was driving on the pavement: common, and illegal. Killed her. Only charged with dangerous driving. Fully let off. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-engl...

Oil prices wouldn't be all over the news today if more of our economy was powered by local, secure renewable energy. This isn't an "energy crisis". It's a fossil fuel crisis. 44% of UK electricity came from renewables in 2025. More of that plus an electrified economy => no more oil shocks.

The Daily Mail has said it obtained "internal documents" revealing the Green Party's migration policy. As a long-term Green Party activist, I'm very familiar with the actual policy. And what the Mail describes and what the document says are two very different things. A thread 🧵

With the Gorton and Denton win, our opponents have been working overtime to misrepresent Green Party drugs policy. Heroin in corner shops? Crack for kids? Let's clear this up. 🧵

I see Reform are desperately trying to spin their crushing defeat last night as a positive. It really is anything but. They garnered just over 5,000 votes in 2024, with the Tories getting just under 3,000. Given their recent absorption of so many Tory dropouts…

For anyone who likes to quote Electoral Calculus as "polling", just a note that they're still predicting a solid Reform gain in Gorton and Denton. They maybe need to update their model…

In a symbol that nothing has changed from the BBC's perspective despite the Green Party's seismic win overnight, it gave its main Today 8:10am interview slot (when listenership peaks) to Heidi Alexander of the Labour Party. Naturally this allowed Heidi to frame this incredible victory as a negative.

Narrator: Labour did not have it in the bag.

A new dawn has broken, has it not? Hannah Spencer elected as the new MP for Gorton and Denton with a majority of over 4,000!

Sadly no surprise to see Reform following Trump's playbook to the letter. If your hateful bile doesn't get you over the line, cry election fraud and claim the system is rigged against you. Utterly pathetic from Matt Badloss in Gorton and Denton.

Cycling to work can literally save your life. A major UK study of over 250,000 commuters found that people who cycle to work have a 41% lower risk of dying from any cause. A 52% lower risk of dying from heart disease. And a 45% lower risk of developing cancer. A separate study found they're 20%…

On the eve of the Gorton and Denton by-election, @itvpeston.bsky.social has spent about a third of the show talking about the Green Party, but apparently haven't invited anyone from the party on. 2 x Labour 1 x Tory 1 x Reform 0 x Green Great job, folks. 🤦🏻‍♂️

On BBC Politics North West discussing Reform's appalling Gorton and Denton by-election candidate, Matt Goodwin. In addition to the many disgusting things he has said, he has featured dreadful people on his show like Renaud Camus. Camus is the man behind the Great Replacement Theory.

As in the US, also in the UK - our voter ID law didn’t fix the vanishingly tiny amount of fraud. It disenfranchised marginal groups and suppressed turnout. We must reverse the voter ID law and give everyone their voice back. constitution-unit.com/2025/02/21/h...

On BBC Politics North West yesterday discussing the appalling comments Jim Ratcliffe made last week.

Back from a wonderful time campaigning to get Hannah Spencer elected in Gorton and Denton. It's a close race with Reform, so we knew we had to bring out the big guns in the form of our chihuahua, Pablo! Big hit on the doorstep and with fellow campaigners.

There seems to be a lot of confusion around about which types of e-bike are legal. But the law in the UK is very clear, legal e-bikes are officially known as EAPCs. This stands for 'electrically assisted pedal cycle', and these bikes are restricted to 15.5mph, with a 250W motor, and no throttle.

Amstel, Amsterdam in 1979 and today

Briefly looked at the hellscape formerly known as Twitter… one of these things is not like the others.

Bike theft isn't inevitable. While there's no 100% guaranteed way of stopping your bike getting stolen, there are several things you can do to make it much less likely.

There's a pervasive idea that using an e-bike is somehow cheating. If you're in a race where e-bikes are banned, yes: that's cheating. Otherwise, in what way is an e-bike a cheat? And why don't we apply the same logic to those who opt to drive by car instead of cycle by bike or e-bike?

Can you replace your car with a bike? Perhaps not for every journey, but possibly more than half of them. In the UK, 60% of car trips are under 5 miles. Making these journeys by bike instead means not having to pay for parking, getting some exercise and seeing more of the world!

Do you suffer with cold hands when cycling in the winter? In my experience, even the warmest cycling gloves on the market aren't up to the job when the temperatures really plummet.

You don't need an excuse to ride an e-bike. So many customers give various reasons why they feel they qualify for one, such as a long-term injury. But the truth is that e-bikes are a legitimate form of transport in their own right.

Today's column is on the relentless march of blithering idiocy, which includes denying climate science while your house is - literally in this case - burning down. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Matthew Bowles works for the IEA. Funded by the fossil fuel industry, gambling and tobacco. Times up. Merry Christmas! Join.greenparty.org.uk

“The transformation is astonishing. [Paris] has quietly—& quickly—become one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world. What started as a series of emergency “coronapistes” or pop-up bike lanes, built during the pandemic has evolved into a permanent bike network spanning hundreds of kilometres.”

Listened to Rory Stewart grilling Zack Polanski on The Rest Is Politics. Rory’s been rightly critical of the Tories’ economic failures, and Labour’s continuing inability to improve our situation. I think he genuinely wants to hear something better.

So they really were planning to cap it? Well, now is the time to support campaigns from bodies including the Association of Cycle Traders and the Bicycle Association in removing the "commute to work" element altogether.

Them: The Greens' proposed wealth tax is flawed because other countries with different tax systems have tried it and it hasn't worked. Us: *highlights countries where it has worked* Them: You can't use other countries with different tax systems as an example of how something can work! 🙃

Huge relief: Cycle to Work is untouched in today's Budget. The salary sacrifice changes are specifically about pension contributions – the scheme that helps people swap their car for an e-bike remains exactly as it was.

UK: 29th of 30 countries for e-bikes 📉 Norway (NORWAY!): 17x more than us 📈 We can salary sacrifice £150k Porsches but not £4k bikes? Bike industry at 1970s sales levels. Tomorrow's budget could finish us off.

There's always money for more driving

A Government of cowards. Rather than tackle inequality - they've gone for pensioners, disabled people and now it's people fleeing war and persecution. They can't get away with this. Join.greenparty.org.uk

As it’s Sunday, take a moment to imagine how good life would be if your neighbourhood was built for people.

Since the counter was fixed, well over half a million cycle journeys have been made in less than two months. At peak times, records show that rush hour traffic consists of 250 motor vehicles ph in the am & 350 in the pm, considerably less than the number of bikes. Time for another cycle lane

This is what many of us have been saying. Part 3 of the Planning & Infrastructure Bill is based on a myth: that we don't have enough homes because wildlife and green spaces are protected. It will solve nothing, and inflict terrible harm on our remaining ecosystems www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

According to the FT, Rachel Reeves wants to cap the cycle to work scheme. This is lunacy, and represents a curb on what is effectively the UK's only active travel incentive.

This news is so dispiriting. Plenty of e-bikes around the £4,000 mark are absolutely not luxury items, such as this Tern. We should be expanding cycle to work. Especially when it seems the “drive to work” salary sacrifice scheme for cars will be untouched. www.cyclingweekly.com/news/taxpaye...

A £4,000 e-bike replaces a £35,000 car. An e-bike saves the NHS £1,400/year. An e-bike cuts emissions immediately. Yet Rachel Reeves wants to limit the cycle to work scheme while preserving tax breaks for £60,000 Teslas? Make it make sense.

Once more for those at the back: 👏🏻 Zack 👏🏻 Polanski 👏🏻 hasn't 👏🏻 changed 👏🏻 anything 👏🏻 about 👏🏻 what 👏🏻 the 👏🏻 Green 👏🏻 Party 👏🏻 stands 👏🏻 for 👏🏻 What he is doing is communicating our party policy more effectively than any of his predecessors.

"If you increase taxes on the wealthy, they'll just take their wealth elsewhere!" Said the gullible lackey for the wealthiest people on the planet who has fallen hook, line and sinker for one of the most readily disprovable lies going. join.greenparty.org.uk

Victoria Derbyshire dismisses the Green Party's wealth tax by citing that Switzerland's similar policy ONLY raises £9.5 billion a year. Switzerland's population is about an eighth the size of the UK's, and its economy is about a quarter the size of ours. So… we're right on the money?

An LMGFY for those who still haven’t got it. Green politics – and by extension the Green Party – has never been simply about the environment. If you’re a journalist saying that we’ve “moved away from only talking about the environment”, you’re only demonstrating your own ignorance.

So tired of this loop… Media: But isn't the trouble with the Green Party that it's just a single issue eco-party? Green Party: Founded as the PEOPLE party, and has always had broad, progressive policies. Media: Who do the Greens think they are, talking about anything other than the environment?

Motonormativity in action: my city's main hospital has been built miles outside the city, up by a motorway junction. You want to get there but you can't drive? Tough, your time has no value

It’s Google’s 27th birthday and they’re celebrating by reminding us of the excellent search engine they used to be. A perfect opportunity to share this excoriating talk on enshittification by Corey Doctorow: youtu.be/_Ai-fC-2Bpo?...

Both funny and depressing how quickly "Your Party" has descended into Judean People's Front-ery. join.greenparty.org.uk

How do we fix this mess?