Reform MP Sarah Pochin accused of lying in order to create fear and confusion

Reform MP Sarah Pochin is back, falling out with a wide arrange of leaders in the area she represents based on continuing to make “incorrect and critical” public claims designed only to evoke “fear and confusion” in those people she is supposed to be representing.

In a strongly-worded joint statement, Labour’s Halton Council leader Cllr Mike Wharton, council community safety chief Cllr Andrea Wall, and Cheshire Police and Crime Commissioner Dan Price said Reform MP Sarah Pochin had made a string ‘incorrect and critical’ outbursts about the town, but had not provided evidence for any of them.

Runcorn & Widnes world report on the nature of the claims she made. No surprises here, it’s exactly what you’d expect of her:

Mrs Pochin has made a series of allegations, including that houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) in Runcorn are hotbeds for serious crime, drug dealing, trafficking, prostitution, and grooming. She also claimed local people are ‘frightened to go out of their houses’ because of the number of ‘illegal immigrants’ in the area, and said the town had a ‘real problem with women’s safety’.

Councillor Wharton, leader of the local council, has no idea where she got these opinions from, saying:

…we as a local authority have to date never been approached for information by Mrs Pochin. Our communities deserve factual information,

Her claims to have seen CCTV of crimes taking place near HMOs are entirely unfounded as far as anyone can tell, with the local police commissioner saying that there’s been no reports or evidence provided of that.

On several occasions Mrs Pochin has stated to have seen CCTV providing evidence of criminal activity. To date, no reports or evidence has been provided to Cheshire Police or to my office by Mrs Pochin, despite the MP having had several opportunities to do so.”

Her claims that an increase in the number of people seeking asylum putting pressure on local services and housing is after the closure of a local hotel where they previously were housed is, you guessed it, unsupported by evidence.

Cllr Andrea Wall, executive board member for community safety, said: “The people who previously lived in the hotel have been moved to another region. Government officials have also confirmed that there will be no further increase in asylum seeker numbers in Halton.”

Colleagues call for Reform councillor Joel Tetlow to step down due to his very unpleasant social media posts

Various MPs and councillors are calling for the suspension of Lancashire Reform councillor Joel Tetlow on the basis of some rather irresponsible and unsavoury social media posts.

A man in an entirely unrelated constituency, London, called Apapale Adoum was recently charged with murder. Tetlow has decided, on the basis of his name alone, that he was definitely a refugee and/or illegal immigrant – Tetlow being amongst the surprisingly vast number of people who conflate the two.

He captioned the post: “Refugees welcome. Keep them coming in Liebour [sic] are saying. “When will the penny drop for some people?”

Does his name being a bit unfamiliar to many people really automatically make you a refugee? Tetlow doubles down.

When questioned by a commenter on the post, who asked whether having a foreign name makes you a refugee, Mr Tetlow said that it did, in his opinion…

This isn’t his first unpleasant post:.

This is not the first time Cllr Tetlow has come under fire for his social media activity, having previously come under fire for sharing posts comparing illegal immigrants to Nazi’s and comparing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to the Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

His colleagues are rightfully unimpressed. Sarah Smith, MP said:

Since being selected as a candidate, he has posted about Hitler, shared memes about the Moors murders, and now made an unfounded claim about a murder suspect based on their name.
…
Nigel Farage should suspend him, and the local party should withdraw the whip. This isn’t complicated.

Tetlow, for his part, is leaning into the standard trope of people’s upset being entirely based on some unfounded conspiracy by the press, claiming that

The media in this country often exhibits a bias against those with right-wing views, while left-wing perspectives are given more leniency.

He of course provides zero evidence to support this assertion – if anything, the opposite is more likely true – but that never stopped anyone of his ilk trying to divert attention from their own bad behaviour.

Ever the supplicant to Big Fossil Fuel, Farage is a headline speaker at a gathering of anti-climate extremists

Apparently not content with a mere 92% of Reform UK’s funding already coming from “Fossil Fuel Interests, Climate Deniers, and Polluters” Nigel Farage decided to go speak at a gathering of the Heartland Institute.

Desmog shares what looks to be the (extremely off-putting) invite for a panel called “Net Zero: The new Brexit?”.

Invite from the Heartland Institute for a panel where Nigel Farage is speaking

You would think that that would be an anti-net-zero chat given the devastating failure and unpopularity of Brexit, but, from the context of where it is being delivered and who it is being delivered by I’m certain it’s the exact opposite.

The Heartland Institute is a 55 Tufton Street “thinktank” that is considered by some as the UK’s main group of deranged climate science deniers. It is, unsurprisingly, funded by various huge fossil fuels companies – ExxonMobil and Koch Industries for example.

What is the Heartland Insitute? It’s a think tank, very close to Donald Trump’s administration, that is, or acts like it is, extreme climate change sceptics:

The group promotes false claims that climate change is not potentially catastrophic to the world and it could actually be ‘beneficial’.

It has also incorrectly claimed that heatwaves and temperatures in the US are not increasing as a result of climate change.

Also:

The group has previously expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised”, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet” and should be “two or three times” higher than its current level.

Naomi Klein sees them for what they probably are:

Author Naomi Klein wrote in her book This Changes Everything that staff at the Institute “recognize that climate change is a profound threat to our economic and social systems and therefore deny its scientific reality.”

They do things like mail 8000 textbooks riddled with climate misinformation to schools in the hope that this will brainwash children to reject the truth.

One of their failed stunts was to release absurd billboards that indicated a moral equivalence between the Unabomber, a terrorist, and believe that believe in the truth of global warming.

Heartland began an advertising campaign in 2012 which featured a photo of the Unabomber, a US terrorist who killed three people and injured others. The picture was accompanied by text, which read: “I still believe in global warming, do you?” The group withdrew the billboards a day later.

The institute planned for the campaign to feature murderer Charles Manson, communist leader Fidel Castro and the founder of al-Qaeda Osama bin Laden.

The group justified the billboards at the time, saying: “The most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

Although the billboard didn’t last long, The Guardian lets us witness the horror of truth and design:

The Heartland Institute doesn’t only take money from those with those whose fossil fuel interests will make them ever richer if they are allowed to continue to destroy the environment around them. Perhaps most famously, in the 1990s they worked with the huge tobacco company, Philip Morris, to try and convince law-makers that smoking is perfectly healthy and hence should not be subject to profit-curtailing regulations.

The institute set out to discredit the vast amount of science that says otherwise which is now almost universally accepted. Their former president Joe Bast claimed that moderate smoking doesn’t add to the risk of lung cancer. It could easily be argued that their climate change denial is equally as factually and morally obscene.

Lancashire’s Reform try to take credit for an app that was released 3 years before they took power

Lancashire’s Reform-led council proudly boasted that they just released an app in a “bold move to cut red tape and empower residents“.

The app comes from a partnership with Love Clean Streets and allows residents to efficiently report environmental issues such as fly-tipping, potholes and broken signs so the council can arrange to deal with them.

What’s not to love? Well, conceptually it’s all good. The only issue with Reform’s proud boast is that the app was already being used by the people of Lancashire since 2022. It was brought in by the previous council, which was Conservative led. Reform had nothing to do with its introduction, despite now trying to take all the credit for it.

Councillor Barnes highlights their falsehood:

They have really shot themselves in the foot, and it is their first big announcement, and it is a big lie.
…
It is completely disingenuous.

She also claimed that even if they had released it it wasn’t necessarily something to be quite so proud of, alleging that the app is pretty mediocre.

They are really shouting out and promoting a tool that really isn’t that good, and if you speak to any councillors who used it for the last few years, and it is not that great.

You can report all sorts of stuff, and often they will close it before the work has been done. It is an okay tool, but it is not this all-singing, all-dancing thing that they are saying it is

The Mayor of Lincolnshire is a climate change denying lover of fracking

Lincolnshire mayor Andrea Jenkyns, of Reform UK, joins Richard Tice in being ignorant, wilfully or otherwise, of the basic facts of climate change that almost every expert agrees on.

Until recently she sat on the board of the anti-climate-change-initiative Net Zero Watch – which is a rebrand of a think-tank that has been described as “the UK’s most prominent source of climate-change denial”.

She herself has stated the incredible belief that carbon dioxide “is not pollution” and the misleading lie that “many leading scientists…cast informed doubt on the concept of a ‘climate crisis”.

In reality, 90%-100% of climate scientists agree that humans have caused global warming, the number being highest in those with greater expertise. And the IPCC have stated that “Carbon dioxide is responsible for most of global warming”.

She’s been a huge fan of fracking. recently claiming to have “always been pro-fracking”.

Now she’s putting her fandom into practice by holding talks with a fracking company, Egdon Resources, who would like to frack under Gainsborough, one of the towns that fall under her mayoral remit.

A large part of her mayoral campaign material was about how she would save the area from the apparent curse of having solar panels. But she never mentioned that she would like instead to frack it.

The residents of her area are unlikely to be happy about this. Fracking is very unpopular with Britons.

A Yougov poll showed that, counter to what is offer from Mayor Jenkyns, the British public would far rather see a solar farm in their locality than for fracking to take place.

The poll reveals that the British public are seven times more likely to welcome a local solar farm than a gas fracking field. The survey asked respondents to rate which one local energy development they would prefer to be sited nearby; 40% chose a solar farm, 25% chose a wind farm, 10% a nuclear power station and 6% shale gas fracking and boreholes.

The British public in general support solar power:

More than half of the public said they strongly supported solar power specifically, with a third supporting it less strongly. In all, it is endorsed by 87%, with only 1% saying that they were opposed.

Another Yougov survey showed that solar is the method of electricity generation that the most people have a favourable view of – whereas they absolutely hate fracking, it scoring even lower than oil and coal.

Chart showing shale gas is even less popular in Britain than coal

Even people who are big fans of oil and gas tend to be dislike fracking.

Chart showing that renewable energy is popular even amongst people with favorable opinions of fossil fuels

It is also not allowed to take place at present due to a moratorium on fracking from central government on the basis that it can cause unpredictable earthquakes – but why let a law or a potential environmental disaster ruin your culture war point?

It’s hardly surprising that fracking unpopular. Earthquakes are not the only known downsides of fracking. The process has also been associated with water contamination, air pollution, environmental habitat disruption and an increase in traffic. The set up is also not overly pretty to look at, especially for someone who doesn’t want to see solar panels when they look out of the window.

Image of Fracking site

Image by Joshua Doubek – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Reform’s firing of non-existent DEI staff and a few climate workers probably saves less than 0.02% of Staffordshire Council’s budget

We already saw a saving of £0 following Reform’s attempt to sack all zero DEI workers in Lincolnshire’s council. There were of course no such workers in the first place, but hey, why check reality when the soundbite is attractive to some of your base.

As Reform continue the threat to implement Nigel Farage’s policy that anyone in the council working on climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion should “go look for another job”, Staffordshire Council have been collating the figures of how many of their staff actually work in those jobs in their administration.

The answer, inevitably, is: not many.

Once again, a total of zero workers work in DEI. The effort to count them has presumably cost more than the savings there.

Even if there were some, the Equality Act puts a legal requirement on councils to be mindful of these topics. As Dr Phil Catney says:

…the Equality Act puts a requirement on councils to be mindful of these things. You could choose to de-prioritise them, but you could end up losing money if you get sued for discriminatory practices.

They do have some staff who work in the field of ‘climate change’ though. You know, protecting the environment for their residents and the rest of us. Per Dr Catney, this would include such topics as energy efficiency – encouraging policies that might actually save money.

In any case the total saved by firing them would be £153,000.

That’s 0.02% of the council’s budget, and it isn’t even clear that it would be that high.

For context, last year the council overspent its special educational needs and disabilities budget by £27 million.

When they produce their first council budget, Reform might talk up things like climate change, but it won’t even make a tiny bit of the savings they need to make.

Reform lost yet another councillor as Mark Broadhurst is expelled for his abhorrent social media posts

The losses keep coming. Mark Broadhurst lasted a single month in his job, representing the people of Doncaster as a councillor. As a Reform representative at least.

It turns out his history of social media posting was too grim, which is saying a lot when it comes to the Reform party.

A Facebook page belonging to Broadhurst shared a post comparing black Islamic dress to “bin bags”, and a now-deleted image which suggested Adolf Hitler would have been a “legend” if he had targeted Muslims.

As it stands, he’s still there, as an independent. When asked if he’d do the obviously correct thing and resign entirely he didn’t respond.

Reform’s anti-environment policies will cost Lincolnshire 12000+ jobs and £1 billion of investment

Reform, the party that claims to be obsessed with saving public money and supporting the every-day working person, is pursuing an environmental policy that in one county alone will cost more than 12,000 jobs and risk almost £1 billion in local investment.

But that doesn’t seem to stop Tice claiming Reform councils are going to block building what he calls “net stupid zero” infrastructure, whilst deliberately making any efforts by central government to continue the policies cost the tax-payer who knows how many millions of extra public money:

Says Tice:

We will attack, we will hinder, we will delay, we will obstruct, we will put every hurdle in your way. It’s going to cost you a fortune, and you’re not going to win. So give up and go away.

This is in Lincolnshire, the county that includes the area most at risk of floods. That council has already shut down a committee that actually deals with flood risk – an action that was described as “reckless, foolhardy and wrong”.

The sheer environmental lunacy of banning green projects aside, a sometimes little appreciated fact is that green policies can create lots of jobs and bring in a ton of investment. As well as help save us from already-deadly environmental catastrophes of course.

It’s not like Reform voters are even all that opposed to pro-environmental policies.

The majority support new wind and solar farms and policies to tackle the climate crisis, according to polling this month by the ECIU.

As you’d expect, many organisations are appalled at Reform’s plans, pointing out the external costs of this pursuing this misguided ideology:

RenewableUK’s executive director of policy, Ana Musat:

Any blanket ban on renewables would be costly for bill payers – the ban on onshore wind cost £5.1bn in the financial year before it was lifted – that’s £182 for every UK household.

Shaun Spiers, the executive director of Green Alliance:

.What is really odd is Richard Tice’s apparent determination to drive up energy costs and increase our dependence on imported fossil fuels. That might please Reform UK’s funders, but it’s unlikely to please its voters.

Melanie Onn, a Labour MP near the areas involved:

Reform’s war on the green economy is actually a war on jobs and investment and flies in the face of what hard-working businesses and families need. Reform’s dangerous plan is a threat to British jobs and British workers.

Now Reform have a platform in Greater Lincolnshire, they must come clean on whether they’re prepared to risk damaging the local economy and risk making thousands of workers unemployed.

Richard Tice is a full-on climate change denier

Richard Tice, deputy leader and energy spokesperson for Reform is a climate change denier.

Almost every expert scientist agrees that human activities on this planet are causing or accelerating climate change.

Tice’s take? That idea is "absolute garbage".

He told a reporter from Sky that

There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate change.

And more recently he told the Guardian that:

Do I think that [the carbon dioxide that humans are putting into the atmosphere] will definitely change the climate? No. There is no evidence that it is.”

No evidence! Institutions of science and beyond, of course, virulently disagree.

Bob Ward, policy director at LSE University’s Grantham Research Institute and Geological Society fellow, called the comments "pure misinformation".
"There is not a single credible scientific organisation in the UK or the world that agrees with him about the causes or consequences of climate change," said Mr Ward.

Dr Andrew Jarvis from Lancaster University called the comments "categorically wrong", while Dr Philipp Breul from Imperial College London said Mr Tice was "missing the point".

Dr George Adamson from King’s College London said the idea that Richard Tice had "discovered something that climate scientists don’t know about is of course preposterous".

In fact a 2021 scientific review found an astounding amount of consensus amongst scientists:

We conclude with high statistical confidence that the scientific consensus on human-caused contemporary climate change—expressed as a proportion of the total publications—exceeds 99% in the peer reviewed scientific literature.

How does Tice explain this "feedback"? Well, by seeking recourse once again in the usual wild conspiracy theories.

The Reform UK deputy leader suggested Nasa and the UN were wrong to report that the leading cause of climate change is human activities, arguing he could name thousands of scientists who agree with him but won’t come forward because they are “terrified to speak because they won’t get any research funding if they tell it how it is.

But there’s more:

There is so much money and vested interests who are trying to push this agenda on us. It has to stop and only Reform UK is going to stop it

says a party that had 92% of its funding come from "oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers" in the years leading up to 2024.

Reform council closes adult education centres throughout Derbyshire

The Reform-run Derbyshire County Council is shutting down adult learning centres in places all over their jurisdiction.

Learning centres such as the Eco Centre in Wirksworth, and centres in Alfreton, Ashbourne, Matlock, Shirebrook, Long Eaton and the Toolbox in Glossop will cease to offer adult education courses at the end of July, Derbyshire County Council said.

Says Alan Squires, who is in the middle of such a class:

It’s very sudden – it’s not the end of the next financial year, it’s next month and we’re out on our ear. There’s a lot of people that rely upon the centre for mental wellbeing. People will be lost. It performs a crucial role in all sorts of aspects and other centres do things like teaching basic English and maths and essential skills for life.