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Barry Gilheany ⚽ Marcelo Bielsa is the most iconic figure in recent Leeds United history for his role in steering the club back to the promised land of the FA Premiership after our sixteen year spell of banishment among his many feats in football.

He was likely watching the World Cup Final between his native Argentina and Spain and must have felt deep shame and disbelief at the thuggish and boorish reaction of his compatriots after the final whistle sounded to confirm their 1-0 loss.

How can a nation that has produced a man of such sporting integrity that he ordered his Leeds team to permit their opponents in a match with Aston Villa to walk the ball into the Leeds net after Leeds had scored despite Villa players standing still and entreating referee to stop the game so that one of their injured number could be attended in the ultimate act of sportsmanship also produce a squad that violated every tenet of it on Sunday in front of a global TV audience of 1.2b people? How can a nation that produced a man of such humbleness that he constantly reminded his squad of their (relatively) privileged position in society and their responsibilities to 36,000 plus fans who dispensed with hard earned money to adulate their heroes every fortnight at Elland Road yet also produce the yobbery that unfortunately is a feature of a footballing culture that for every Maradona, Messi and Kempes it produces also throws up a Rattin or Simione?

All (non-Argentine) devotees of the beautiful game breathed a collective, global sigh of relief when Ferren Torres of Spain scored the only goal of 120 minutes of exceptionally turgid fare to prevent the possible obscenity of a team who had precisely zero on target attempts at goal lifting the trophy due to the cruel arbitrariness of a penalty shoot-out. The tragedy for football purists is that Argentina en route to the final featured in some of the most memorable games of the tournament from their dicing with the mothers of all humiliation in their 3-2 wins over Cape Verde and Egypt and their semi-final comeback after Thomas Tuchel decided to retreat to his version of the Maginot Line when Anthony Gordon gave them the lead. But controversy was never far away with dubious refereeing decisions in the Egypt game fuelling hardly paranoid conspiracy theories that FIFA needed the golden calves of Messi and Mbappe in the Final and, in a Clausewitzian dictum that football is an extension of war by other means, came the players’ on pitch articulation of the irredentist nationalist claim to the Falklands/|Malvinas Islands after their triumph over England.

However, apart from the (grievous) noises off such as the overturning of the ban on the US forward Balogun on the direct intervention by Donald Trump; the vindictive treatment of the Iranian squad and backroom staff by the US authorities and the hostile environments created for the supporters of certain countries by ICE, the World Cup was largely a glorious global moment as it was in 2018 and 2022 despite the distinctly anti-global hosts: Putin’s Russia, Quatar and Trump’s USA (notwithstanding the more amenable co-hosts; Mark Carney’s Canada and Claudia Schenbaum’s Mexico). Fans of all participant countries mingled freely in the stadiums and the various fan zones. The exploits of debutants Cape Verde will live long in the memory, and I was delighted that Canada, under Bielsa’s successor at Leeds Jessie Marsch, achieved their first World Cup victory and got out of their qualifying group. I reckon that Wisconsin born Jesse might have to seek permanent asylum in Canada due to the enthusiasm with which he sang their national anthem! The race for the Golden Boot was enthralling with the eventual winner Mbappe in the hunt with Kane, Dembele, Messi and Bellingham almost to the death.

The expansion of the tournament to 48 teams didn’t have the bloating effect that many feared and, with the possible exception of Curacao, did not produce any “punching bags”. While hydration access was an absolute priority, the mandatory breaks for this purpose proved a major irritant for coaches, players and especially non-American TV viewers who rightly saw this as the bowdlerisation of the game into quarters to suit an American football audience. 

For as long as Trump stayed away, it was possible to forget about the malign backstories of the tournament but the incessant panning of television cameras to FIFA President Giavonni Infantino brought back the unpleasant reality of its geopolitics. The matches were communal moments for those who followed the progress of their teams in bars and in the ubiquitous public spaces that are fan zones. Nowhere more did the World Cup provide joyous distraction from the everyday travails and perils of existence than in Gaza where a traumatised people would gather around screens to cheer on, in particular Egypt, despite the ongoing risks to life and limb from Netanyahu’s forever war. A curious divide in partisan political allegiance emerged during the World Cup with Palestinians and their advocates supporting Spain due to Prime Minister Sanchez’s outspoken condemnation of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza and Israelis cheering on Argentina due to the ideological affinity between Netanyahu and far-right Argentine President Millei. They might just need to reflect on Argentina’ s history with Nazism including Juan Peron’s sympathies with European fascism and the refuge it afforded to Nazi war criminals including the logistic organiser of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann.

Once again, England and Scotland did not fail to disappoint; with the Scots’ pathological inability to advance beyond qualifying groups again painfully obvious. We were not even left with the heartwarming memories of an Archie Gemmill or David Narey glorious goals or how Scotland’s 1974 vintage with the spine of Europe’s top two clubs at the time, Leeds United and Glasgow Celtic, came so agonisingly close to beating Brazil and departed West Germany unbeaten. Ok, so achieving third place is incremental progress of sorts for England and the manner of that crazy 6-4 victory gave some fanfare to the common man but, given their proven experience in winning tournaments, it is much more likely that England’s Women will bring home the bacon, next year maybe, than the perennially nearly men.

But there is an elephantine presence in the room that cannot be ignored – FIFA’s stewardship of the global game and the World Cup cannot go unchallenged for otherwise schisms in the game will be inevitable. So much outrage has been caused by the prostitution of the game’s ethics such as the obscenity of the awarding of the inaugural FIFA “Peace Prize” to Donald Trump, to the stroking of other powerful egos and the awarding of the 2034 World Cup, uncontested to Saudi Arabia with yet more disruption to domestic league seasons due to it having to be a winter event and the flagrant disregard for human rights consideration. The USA could be in line to host the 2038 tournament as the transcontinental nature of 2030 held in Spain, Portugal (Europe) Morocco(Africa) and Uruguay and Paraguay (South America) makes it part of an eligible region. 

There is talk of 64 team World Cups. There is the World Champions Club Finals which is another Infantino vanity project which has attracted the ire of the international players body FIPRO and the steady descent of FIFA into a cash cow dependent on World and World Club Cups and which dispenses largesse to expanding competitors in the manner of petroleum-soaked autocracies must bring the day of reckoning closer. While running the risk of being accused of Eurocentrism, UEFA, as the collectivity of football associations most affected by FIFA prolificacy and lack of accountability, must demand a share of power in FIFA or viable collaborative arrangements. Otherwise it should withdraw its member associations. 

At the very least Infantino who heads and is the visible symbol of the institutional rot that is FIFA needs to step down. Sadly he is set to be re-elected at the next FIFA congress thanks to the pork-barrel politics that has characterised FIFA governance and decision making since Joao Havelange succeeded Sir Stanley Rous as FIFA President in 1974.

Go Giovanni, in the name of football, Go!

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter. 

World Cup Reflections

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Forty Six

 

A Morning Thought @ 3219

People And Nature ☭ Written by Simon Pirani. 
Republished with thanks from the Ecologist

The UK government’s plan to shift to electrified, low-carbon heating of homes could be heading for ruinous failure without public sector provision and community engagement.

The £15-billion Warm Homes Plan (WHP), announced in January this year, envisages replacing gas boilers with heat pumps and retrofitting homes with insulation. There is also money for rooftop solar panels and batteries, and district heat networks.
Health workers demonstrate in London, demanding action on climate change, October 2022.
Photo by Steve Eason


But the government’s plan is flawed.

On one hand, it lags way behind what climate scientists say is needed to decarbonise the built environment. On the other, its focus on heat pumps for individual households, and away from improving the housing stock, will exacerbate inequality.

The UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) estimates that, to meet the government’s emissions reduction targets by 2050, at least 15 million homes will need one or more insulation measures, eight million will need draft-proofing, and 21 million will need to swap gas boilers for heat pumps.

Heat pump installations, running at 60,000 per year in 2023, need to rise to nearly 450,000 per year by 2030 and 1.5 million per year by 2035, the CCC says.

The industry is unlikely to get halfway to that 2030 target, retorts Mars Mlodzinski, a heat pump market analyst, raising “serious questions” about the climate strategy.

And even these government targets are rejected by climate scientists as catastrophically inadequate.

To limit global heating to two degrees above pre-industrial levels – leave alone the 1.5 degrees that is far safer – a fair carbon budget for the UK (that is, the total of greenhouse gases the UK could emit from now on) would be just seven years’ emissions at the current level, professor Kevin Anderson of the University of Manchester said at the recent National Emergency Briefing on climate.

“Inequality is deeply embedded” in current UK targets, which imply carbon emissions at three times its per capita share, Anderson said.

To play a fair part in tackling climate change, the UK would need to reduce emissions by 13 per cent per year – and deploy “timely technologies”, including retrofitting homes, “like the reconstruction of Europe after the second world war”.

To assess the government’s plan, and the response to it by the labour movement and social movements, here I look at seven interlocking problems:

🔥 The shift of focus away from retrofit towards heat pumps, in response to the disastrous failures of previous schemes;

🔥The continuing absence of effective regulation, and failure to create conditions for a workforce trained and rewarded for the task;

🔥 The danger that landlords in the private rented sector will use retrofit schemes further to bully and exploit tenants;

🔥 A failure of regulation and training for heat pump installation;

🔥 The mismatch of gas and electricity prices in corporate-dominated energy markets that obstruct electrification;

🔥 The lack of coordinated, place-based approaches to retrofit, exacerbated by the hollowing out of local government and direct labour organisations;

🔥And the government’s housing policy, focused on persuading developers and construction companies to build new stock, instead of undoing the damage done by decades of marketisation, including to insulation and heating.

To develop an approach that both drives out fossil fuels and reverses decades of mounting inequality in housing, the labour movement and social movements should take all these aspects into account.

Retrofit

Retrofit is the ABC of decarbonisation in the UK, where most houses are more than a century old, and the housing stock is the most poorly insulated in northern Europe.

And for several years up to 2012, millions of homes per year got insulation and/or boiler upgrades that were insufficient in climate policy terms, but better than nothing.

Then came the poorly designed 2012 Green Deal, and in 2015, universal eligibility for supplier-led schemes was scrapped.

Plans to tighten energy efficiency standards for new homes also went in the bin. Firms doing the work folded, and the number of jobs completed annually plunged by 70 per cent.

Worse was to come. In 2022, in response to the energy price shock, the Tory government committed £1 billion over three years to expand the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme. Then the Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS), offering free cavity wall or loft insulation to some homes, was added.

Energy companies were required to finance decarbonisation of homes. They raised money from energy bills and offered grants through a patchwork of schemes that favoured higher-income households.

Contracts went to certified installers, who in turn sub-contracted to small businesses, who were motivated to cut corners, often incompetent, and sometimes corrupt.

Regulation of the schemes, by TrustMark, was a disaster. In 2024 journalists started reporting on homes trashed by cowboy operators. Alarm bells rang.

The National Audit Office found “major issues requiring remediation” in 98 per cent of homes fitted with external wall insulation, and 29 per cent of those fitted with internal wall insulation under the ECO4 and GBIS schemes.

There were “systemic” failings at every level, a senior civil servant told the House of Commons public accounts committee. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) designed the schemes “in a way that exposes it to both poor quality work and fraud”, the committee reported – and had no “credible” plan for fixing the damage.

The MPs pointed to evidence of fraud, and in April this year the Serious Fraud Office made four arrests in an investigation of three companies.

The regulatory framework for future schemes is under review by a government-appointed Retrofit System Reform Advisory Panel – but campaigners say a more drastic overhaul is needed.

The WHP, finalised as the scandal raged, shifts focus away from insulation. The government pledges to prioritise rooftop solar, clean heating, energy storage and flexibility – and funding looks set to go primarily to better-off households for heat pumps and solar panels (see below).

Retrofit of buildings’ fabric will now focus on low-cost upgrades such as double glazing, draught proofing and wall and loft insulation, especially to bring rented homes up to the government’s Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES).

This includes funding for councils to work on social housing, while landlords will be required to improve private rented homes – but on a smaller scale than under the scandal-plagued ECO scheme, which is being closed.

In a report for the Common Wealth think tank, researchers argued that expanding access to heat pumps and solar panels is essential – but that:

The plan risks missing those most in need: people living in homes that need substantial repairs to be ready for green upgrades, those struggling with energy bills but with incomes above grant eligibility thresholds, or living in older homes that require navigating more complex interventions and planning restrictions.

A neighbourhood-based retrofit strategy could shift the narrative. Madeleine Pauker, an energy researcher at the University of Sussex and one of the report’s authors, told The Ecologist: “The danger is that subsidies will flow to the more affluent owners of homes in the best condition, that are already decently insulated.”

Researchers and campaigners alike are signalling two wrong turns the WHP may take.

First, it may reinforce piecemeal, bit-by-bit retrofit, and sideline whole-building approaches that grouped together multiple insulation measures that were supported by the ECO4 scheme.

Second, politicians are suggesting that solid wall insulation is unnecessary; the CCC, for example, has dismissed it as “generally not cost effective”.

Pauker argues that, without it, Victorian and Edwardian homes will remain “cold, draughty and costly to heat”; it is complex to install but “why should complexity lead to failure?” The evidence shows that “the privatised delivery model cannot reliably handle that complexity,” and that is what needs to be challenged.

Retrofit workforce and regulation

The insulation scandal brought to a head two long-running crises in the construction industry – the collapse of regulation, and the degradation of training and education – exacerbated by the neoliberal economic policies of successive Tory and Labour governments.

People’s poorly insulated homes were made even colder and damper; poorly paid labour was left without the skills, job security and pay it needs to deliver. Two sides of the same coin.

Fuel poverty campaigners say that, for decarbonisation of homes to succeed, there must be accountability to residents. The guarantees and insurance schemes used under the previous schemes were shown to be useless.

Putting in cavity wall insulation. From the Wizard Eco web site

“Quality is integral to gaining public confidence that moving from fossil fuels to electricity can work,” James Dyson of E3G, who campaigns on fuel poverty, told The Ecologist.

People not only need installations, they need to be able to get them fixed if things go wrong. Protections need to be in place before heat pumps are installed.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition (EFPC) proposes a Warm Homes Guarantee, built around “quality advice on the right installations to deliver”, and “a promise that every upgraded home will see energy bills come down”. Campaigners argue that decarbonising homes must be place-based, and that local government must play a key role (see below).

As for labour, energy researchers and trade unionists believe that, unless the dire shortage of workers with the right skills is overcome, decarbonisation of homes is doomed to fail.

“The shortage of skilled workers in key trades such as insulation, installation, heat pump fitting, ventilation and energy assessment”, and for commissioning and programming projects, is a “critical barrier” to scaling up retrofit, a study by the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose warned last year.

The authors see the government’s £625 million construction skills package, announced last year, as an “opportunity” – although that initiative is focused on building new homes, not retrofit.

The workforce problem is not just about numbers, but about quality, a submission to a DESNZ inquiry by the Greener Jobs Alliance argued. That means “depth and breadth of training” and “monitoring and accountability to residents”.

The construction and renovation/retrofit sector is “heavily dominated by small and micro-businesses, often operating on tight profit margins”, that lack the capacity to train apprentices. Construction training, and the construction sector, is “generally organised around specific skills rather than understanding of whole house thermodynamics so that interventions in one area don’t cause problems in another”.

The private rented sector

The danger that decarbonisation funds will be misused, and/or that electrification will make life worse for residents instead of better, is magnified in the private rented sector, where upgrade grants will be paid to landlords.

The government is tightening the MEES energy standards, which will need to be met for grants to be paid – but has refused to close some loopholes that tenants’ rights groups and fuel poverty campaigners say will allow abuse.

Campaigners fear that landlords might exploit retrofit requirements to justify rent increases, evictions or conversion to holiday lets, disproportionately impacting low-income tenants – as has happened with previous retrofit schemes.

Under the new standard, landlords will have to meet a primary standard related to building fabric, and to choose between secondary standards on smart-readiness or heating systems. They will have to spend £10,000 per property, but not more – exceeding this figure is one of a long list of grounds for exemption from the rules.

When the government held a consultation on the new MEES standards last year, a coalition of tenants’ groups urged that advisory services, not landlords, have the final say in what work is done; that the cost cap be raised to £15,000; and that all exemptions except for reaching the cost cap be scrapped. All these points were ignored.

Tenants’ rights have certainly been strengthened by the Renters’ Rights Act that came into force in May this year, chiefly by abolishing landlords’ right to “no fault” evictions.

But there are still battles to be fought over the WHP, Dyson says – first, because landlords, having received a government grant to upgrade a property, can increase the rent; second, because if the work is done badly and energy bills go up, tenants’ only defence is via tortuous complaints processes under e.g. the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS), which regulates heat pumps; and third, because landlords are not required to implement changes until October 2030.

Heat pumps and networks

A decade and more of government prevarication, failed retrofit schemes and fossil-fuel-friendly disinformation has left the UK with the least developed heat pump sector in Europe by far.

The UK has about 20 space heat pumps per thousand households, compared to 53 in Germany, 169 in France and 662 in Norway, data from the European Heat Pump Association shows. In 2025 the UK had 4 sales of space heat pumps per thousand households, compared to 7 in Germany, 12 in France and 44 in Norway.

UK heat pump sales rose by 27 per cent between 2024 and 2025, and the EFPC welcomed their decarbonising potential – but added that moving on to a heat pump “should come with a Warm Homes Guarantee, with independent advice, strong consumer protections and a clear promise that homes will be more comfortable after work is done”.

The underlying causes of previous retrofit schemes’ failures – the fragility of regulation, incentives for contractors to work shoddily, the lack of workforce training – apply equally to heat pump installation.

There are fewer than 4,000 qualified heat pump specialists in the UK, compared to the tens of thousands needed to meet government targets, the Renewable Heating Hub site estimates. For training, the government’s £8 million Warm Homes Skills Programme, which provides for £500 Heat Training Grant discounts, is “utterly inadequate to the scale required”.

The WHP also sets a goal of more than doubling, by 2035, the amount of heat provided by heat networks – but campaigners say there need to be real commitments to bring down bills.

“Heat networks must deliver promised savings and genuine efficiency to residents, and store excess energy locally for cheap or free distribution,” an open letter sent to ministers in April by 50 campaign groups said.

In response to a government consultation, Community Energy England argued that intervention is needed in areas that private capital – which will happily fund schemes in new-build developments – will tend to ignore: retrofitting existing (mostly gas-fired) networks that need to move off fossil fuels; homes in a ‘heat gap’, where fitting either individual heat pumps or networks is tricky, e.g. dense terraced and mixed-tenure streets, where Rossendale Valley Energy’s pioneering example could be followed by other community energy organisations; and feasibility studies and development of other community energy schemes.

Energy bills

A more immediate obstacle to widespread heat pump adoption is that, for many households, installation would not save money, due to the way electricity and gas prices are set. The markets are regulated to benefit corporations, not to help tackle climate breakdown.

Electricity costs households roughly five times as much as gas per unit of energy (about 27.5p per kilowatt hour earlier this year, compared to 5.5p per kilowatt hour for gas).

So, even though heat pumps convert electricity to heat energy more than three times as efficiently as boilers convert gas to heat energy, a heat pump still may not be cheaper to run than a boiler.

Fuel poverty campaigners have long demanded price reform. And even the government’s own Climate Change Committee says policy costs (items related to renewables investment guarantees and other policy decisions) should be removed from electricity bills, to make electricity cheaper in comparison to gas.

The problem runs deeper, though. UK wholesale electricity prices are set so that all power generators receive the price of the most expensive kilowatt-hour bought that day: this ties the wholesale prices of cheap-to-generate renewables power to gas prices and reinforces retail buyers’ vulnerability to volatile international fossil fuel markets.

To defend ourselves from all this means to reverse decades of neoliberalism and fossil fuel companies’ political power – by public ownership of energy companies and the setting of retail prices in the public interest, for example by means of a single, publicly owned buyer of wholesale electricity.

How the jobs get done

The travesty of past retrofit schemes was “not simply a story of inadequate oversight or accountability”, Madeleine Pauker argues; rather, trying to deliver high-quality retrofit through subsidies to contractors who are “structurally incentivised to minimise costs” made widespread failure almost inevitable.

The WHP is, in one respect, a step forward. Instead of funding decarbonisation through the ‘supplier obligation’ on energy companies – who raise the money from customers’ bills, penalising the poorest – the state will pay grants itself out of general taxation.

The money will still be spent unequally, though: while £4.4 billion will go to low-income homes for the most urgently needed upgrades, most of a £5.3-billion Warm Homes Fund and a £2.7-billion boiler upgrade scheme will go in grants and loans to better-off households. Often they will have to add their own cash to pay for heat pumps and solar panels.

Neoliberal ideology pervades the plan. It is presented not as a collective challenge in the face of climate emergency, or as public action to meet social need, but as an “offer to consumers”.

Campaigners have long insisted that housing will never be transformed on the scale required without empowering local government to coordinate the work – and they welcome the greater role for mayoral authorities and local councils envisaged in the WHP. But the government has no intention of reversing the long-term trend towards outsourcing work to contractors or the obliteration of councils’ direct labour organisations.

Evidence is clearly documented that public bodies such as the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund work more effectively than contractors, and that public schemes can better integrate retrofit with other home improvements and achieve economies of scale. So far, it is being ignored. Ellen Robottom of the Greener Jobs Alliance told The Ecologist:

To meet a challenge at this scale, we need a retrofit programme that is free at the point of installation. But to get a proper upgrade under the WHP, people either have to live in a home that is practically derelict to qualify for a grant, or they have to cover much of the cost themselves. Instead of this we need a mass installation programme on one hand, and a big training programme for the construction sector on the other, coordinated by the state and funded from progressive taxation.

Housing policy

The deep flaws in the WHP can only be understood in the context of the government’s signature policy of building 1.5 million new homes – which housing researchers say, despite some welcome funding for social housing, will not solve the problems caused by decades of marketisation.[1]

A demonstration for renters’ rights, April 2026, London.
Photo by Steve Eason
 
The government’s housing policy relies heavily on large-volume private sector developers, ensuring resource-intensive, energy-intensive construction, rather than making best use of the existing housing stock.

The damage done by decades of policy aimed at turning homes into financial assets – the rundown of social housing, the expansion of the private rented sector, the relentless increase of rents and mortgages – will not be undone. Where in the 1970s the state directly funded council housing, it now transfers billions each year to private landlords via housing benefit.

This grand capitulation to private wealth means that the UK’s housing stock is used inefficiently. Housing has become less affordable not because there is an underlying shortage of space, but because the space is used inefficiently. One third of households in England have two or more spare bedrooms, but financial disincentives make it difficult or impossible for those who wish to downsize to do so.

Well-researched solutions to the housing crisis – rent controls, the transfer of homes from the private rented sector to social housing, incentives for downsizing – are ignored by a government deeply wedded to neoliberal ‘market principles’.

This is the context in which sustainable retrofit and whole-house energy efficiency are sidelined. Circular construction practices and efficient use of residentially zoned land are too. Energy efficiency requirements for newbuilds are far from what they could be with modern building techniques and what they are in other European countries.

What to do?

Our homes are central to how we live, and the need to change the way they are heated is central to tackling climate breakdown. Decarbonisation, by way of retrofitting insulation and installing heat pumps and solar panels, could and should be a powerful theme to unify action on climate with action for social justice.

It is no surprise, then, that a wide swathe of civil society – from tenants’ and housing rights organisations and fuel poverty campaigners to climate activists and trade unionists – has responded forcefully to the government’s plans.

It is vital, and difficult, to take an integrated view of the problems. However, as far as I can see there is as yet no unifying force able to bring all these campaigning efforts together.

There is a good historical reason for this, in my view. In the 20th century, the labour movement’s aspirations were voiced politically through the Labour party. But 40 years of neoliberal reaction have not only produced the interlocking problems listed above – through marketisation of housing and energy supply, degradation of local government, ruination of public construction capacity and training – but also destroyed social democracy in its 20th-century form.

The current Labour government stands stubbornly for enforcement of neoliberal norms. Many of the campaign proposals mentioned above are effectively calls to restore bits of the social democratic gains of the late 20th century, from building industry regulation and restraints on exploitative landlords to public provision via local government.

How, and whether, such reversals can be achieved in the context of 21st-century capitalism, bent on further concentration of wealth and haunted by climate breakdown, is an open question.

That is not offered as a reason to despair, but as an assessment of the difficulties we need to overcome. With this in mind, there is every reason to believe that we can build new unifying forces to achieve aims that are so obviously necessary to tackle climate breakdown and social injustice.

More about this on People and Nature

🔥Decarbonising the built environment: a global overview / Nigeria / the UK

🔥Remaking home heating in the UK: a pamphlet to download

🔥Post-election battlegrounds for climate and social justice (July 2024)


[1] In writing this part I have, especially, learned from: UCL IIPP, Homes that Don’t Cost the Earth, ‘Taking Stock: A Foundation for Future Housing Strategy’(June 2025); and Nick Bano, Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis (Verso, April 2025)

Decarbonising Homes 🏡 The Government’s Plan Is Heading For Failure

Joanne Murphy 🎯Writing in Joanne's Substack.

Another murder of a women and her daughter

I am very privileged to sit on the board of ABCLN’s Women’s Aid in Northern Ireland. During a recent discussion about the inexorable succession of murders of women and girls in the region, our CEO Gillian Robinson made the point that the next women to be killed was walking around. 

She didn’t know that she was next, but perhaps she has a suspicion, a fear. Well, that next women has now been murdered - along with her 8 year old daughter in a ‘murder - suicide’ pattern which has become so familiar to anyone paying attention.

Since 2020, around 30 women have been violently killed in Northern Ireland - a region with a population of approximately 1.9 million, giving Northern Ireland one of the highest rates of female homicide in Western Europe. Many of these deaths have occurred in domestic settings, with the perpetrator commonly a current or former intimate partner or another man known to the victim.

The pattern of these killings reflects wider evidence on gender-based violence. Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) statistics show that domestic abuse remains a significant feature of homicide cases, with female victims disproportionately represented among domestic abuse-related killings.

Continue @ Joanne's Substack.

Femicide, Misogyny And Northern Ireland

Dr John Coulter ✍ In a matter of weeks, I will clock up my first year as an accredited preacher with the mainstream Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI).

Thinking back over the opportunities I’ve had to preach the Gospel made me also reflect on my late dad’s (Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE) time in full-time ministry in PCI in the north Antrim hills, which was a theological linchpin in the north east Ulster Bible Belt in the Sixties and Seventies.

Like me guaranteeing confidentiality in journalism with sources, the same is true of pledging confidentiality to people seeking dad’s advice as a Presbyterian minister.

Apart from the one occasion when I snooped on a married man who’d had an affair with his sister in law and who confessed this to dad in the privacy of the Manse study, dad always kept the confidentiality of his spiritual counselling very close to his chest and took the overwhelming majority of people’s secrets to the grave.

But there were some incidents at the Manse which I witnessed which opened a window slightly ajar to life in the north east Ulster Bible Belt, and especially what could be classified as a ‘spiritual predicament’ for dad.

One of the most bizarre moments came when a rich farmer arrived at the rural Presbyterian Manse in a very foul temper. Those were the days when advertisements could be placed in newspapers and these was much less rigorous checking as to the validity of the content.

The rich farmer’s son was getting married to a local lass and it was certainly to be billed as one of the ‘grand weddings’ of that rural section of the Bible Belt.

If ever a wedding would be a display of the wealth of the agricultural community of the Bible Belt, it would be this one. No expense would be spared.

The furious farmer arrived at the Manse, brandishing a newspaper. Through his anger, the farmer pointed to a small advert asking for baby materials, such as a pram and cot and gave the farmer’s address.

The clear implication was that his son was having to marry this lass as he had put her ‘in the family way’ - a situation which the farmer emphasised was simply not true.

What should have been a farming ‘celebrity wedding’ in the Bible Belt, because of this advert, would be viewed as a ‘shotgun marriage’ - something which was very heavily frowned upon in the north east Ulster Bible Belt in those latter decades of the 20th century.

The farmer through his rage was demanding that my dad initiate a witch hunt to track down the culprits who had placed the advert which was seen as a terrible slur on the character of the farmer’s family.

Given the status of the role of the Presbyterian minister, quite often, no matter what the crisis, dad was always viewed as the first port of call. In this set of circumstances, my dad’s first priority was to calm the farmer down before he blamed someone and took the law into his own hands!

Ironically, it would be years later before an alleged suspect was named! Indeed, I sometimes got the impression that some folk in that Bible Belt regarded the role of the Presbyterian minister as some kind of Middle Ages Puritan Witch Finder General. That was certainly not how dad viewed his calling in the Christian ministry.

And seeking dad’s guidance or wanting him to dish out some kind of Puritanical retribution was not limited to Presbyterianism in that Bible Belt.

On one occasion, members of another denomination arrived at the Manse demanding that my dad take action because a young single female, who had had a baby ‘out of wedlock’ had decided to return and live in the Bible Belt.

What did these Puritan bigots expect my father to do - organise a public burning of the young woman at the stake? I often got the impression that the biggest challenge my dad had to face in parish life was calming the hot tempered Puritans rather than praying and counselling troubled ‘sinners’.

Quite often, too, counselling was not limited to spiritual matters. The vast majority of dad’s Presbyterian flock were farmers. Farms are, and always were, potentially dangerous places to work. So when the phone went one day at the Manse and a sobbing farmer’s wife was on the other end, dad feared the worse.

Dad did not observe the rural speed limit as he raced to that particular farm to be confronted by the farmer standing in the middle of his yard, ‘bawling his eyes out’ like a new-born baby. Dad feared the worst; that a member of the family had either been seriously injured or killed in a farm accident.

But through the snatches of conversation with the deeply sobbing, well built farmer, the accurate picture emerged. His prize pig had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and would have to be put down. The farmer simply could not bear to shoot his prize pig, and had asked his wife to phone my dad to get the Presbyterian minister to execute the pig by firing squad!

Dad was shown into an upstairs bedroom where farming clothing was laid out. He changed into the provided dungarees, was handed the rifle. The farmer - still sobbing uncontrollably - was allowed a few moments to say goodbye to the precious pig, before dad entered the shed and promptly dispatched the prize animal into eternity! After showering and dressed again in his Presbyterian clerical clothes, he was then treated to traditional tea and Presbyterian tray bakes as a reward while the farmer continued to sniff and gently sob at the dining table.

The kindness of that farming community should never be underestimated. On another occasion, I accompanied my dad while he visited a farmer to whom he had given spiritual counselling. The farmer was clearly in better spirits in coming to terms with his crisis.

He insisted dad and I inspect his magnificent flock of sheep. Out we trooped to the field adorned with what I can only describe (in my limited knowledge of sheep breeding) as a wonderful flock. As well as the farmer, we were accompanied by one of his sons.

As we admired the flock quietly grazing in the field, the soft-spoken farmer asked my dad: “Which one do you like, your Reverence?”

Now whilst my dad achieved five university degrees during his time and his early vocational skill was motor mechanics and he had even built his own light aircraft in the Presbyterian Manse, I’m sure my dad would not mind me writing that his knowledge of sheep breeding (like mine) was very limited.

Dad simply pointed to one of the sheep and replied: “That one!” Suddenly and without warning, the son produced a gun and promptly shot the indicated sheep through the head!

The farmer then told dad that the meat would be cut up for the Manse freezer within the week, and Mrs Coulter would have the sheep’s fleece cured and could be used as a rug in the Manse! While we always appreciated such generosity of those kindly Bible Belt folk, such spontaneous executions of livestock were thankfully rare!

Given the strict confidentiality which dad ensured when counselling people spiritually, apart from occasional nosiness by myself, there are only a few tales of the crises which folk faced in that Bible Belt.

The same was true of dad’s mother, my late Gran Coulter, who died in 1976. After my grandfather, her husband, affectionately known as Papa Coulter, died in 1970, Gran would spend some months of each year at the Presbyterian Manse rather than live in the family home in Stewartstown.

Gran was an old-fashioned Faith Mission stalwart and prayer warrior who believed passionately in the power of spiritual prayer. During her frequent times at the Manse, she would use the land line telephone to establish a prayer project where folk in the Bible Belt could phone her with their woes and she would pray with them over the phone.

Gran took this evangelical witness very seriously. However, on one occasion, I just happened to be passing the phone table just as Gran ended the call and could see she was very visibly distressed.

Off she scurried to dad’s study and in a clearly, almost tearful voice, said: “Bobby, I need to speak with you urgently!”

As Gran had just finished her daily prayer line, something was very clearly wrong. Gran made the mistake of not closing the study door, so nosey me could hear the conversation. Neither dad nor Gran knew I was at the door listening.

You would think I had learned my lesson from my previous escapade at being caught listening to a confidential conversation, but apart from Papa’s funeral in 1970, I had never seen Gran so distressed.

Then Gran outlined the ‘crisis’, which resulted in me having to stuff a handkerchief in my mouth to stop me laughing.

A woman had phoned Gran for a prayer request. She was a middle aged married Christian woman. Her ‘crisis’ was that her husband’s penis was too big and sex was painful. She wanted Gran to pray that God would shrink her husband’s penis so that she could enjoy sex.

Clearly, in spite of Gran being an experienced Faith Mission prayer warrior, she had never encountered a request like this and wanted dad’s advice on what she should say.

Needless to say, I was unfortunately at school when Gran phoned that woman back so I never got to hear the wording of Gran’s ‘Shrinking Penis Prayer’.

And, of course, I never asked her what she said as that would have been a clear indication I had been snooping at the study door. While I viewed myself as one of Gran’s closest grandchildren, there would be no way Gran would have approved of me breaking the confidentiality of her spiritual prayer line.

When Gran and I meet up again in Heaven, I fully intend to ask her what she said to the woman!

Weddings were always a time of great celebration in the life of a rural minister and even as the minister’s son I would get the occasional invite to ceremonies and a free meal.

However, some weddings in that rural area of the Bible Belt could be very lively affairs. In some cases, there was a tradition of the bride’s father firing a shotgun in the air before the bride left the family home for the church ceremony. It was traditional to let any wannabe suitors know that the bride was ‘spoken for’.

Quite often, the reception meal after the church ceremony would be radically delayed, because as the bride and groom stood on the church steps after getting ‘hitched’, the groom would be ‘kidnapped’ by some of his farmer friends and left - dressed in his wedding tucks - on an isolated road many miles from the reception hotel!

Worse could follow on the honeymoon night. On one occasion, on the morning after the honeymoon night, the newly married couple awoke to find two of the groom’s farmer friends crawling out from below the bed, having listened to everything which occurred during the wedding night.

On another occasion, after the honeymoon night, the bride opened the honeymoon suite wardrobe door to find one of the groom’s friends standing in the wardrobe, again having heard all the wedding night’s events.

Sometimes, ministers would exchange stories of the challenges which they had faced at weddings. Thankfully, this incident did not happen to dad. At a colleague’s ceremony, the minister read out as part of the religious proceedings - ‘let anyone with due cause as to why this couple should not be married, speak now for forever hold their peace’

From the back of the church, a young man shouted out: “I have!” Up to the front of the church marched this young man, a total stranger to all present. You could hear the murmur buzzing through the congregation - who was this stranger and what was he about to reveal?

The young man lifted the bride’s veil, and then shouted: “Oh sorry, wrong woman!” Before making a hasty escape from the church before the bride’s family and the groom could catch him.

In many Presbyterian churches in that Bible Belt, the pulpit was a central place in the church building. In my dad’s church, one past minister had insisted that when he died, he would be buried behind the pulpit.

The congregation duly carried out the minister’s wishes - then moved the pulpit to a different location in the church building. That minister’s grave and headstone can still be seen today outside Clough Presbyterian church, near Ballymena.

Until I passed my driving test and got my own car, taking a woman on a date was limited to the traditional Presbyterian church parties. But where could you take a girl if you wanted a ‘snog’.

For the minister’s son to openly kiss a girl in public was ‘not the done thing’ and would be heavily frowned upon, so where on church property could you go for some privacy at such parties? I recall once getting a severe telling off for sitting with my arm around a girl’s shoulder at a Presbyterian soiree!

The solution was simple. Take the girl through the minister’s room, and up the stairs to the pulpit. When one of my farmer chums took a girl outside for a ‘snog’, no one minded, but when the minister’s son disappeared from a church party with a girl, a full-scale search of the building would be organised!

For several years, no one thought of looking for me on the pulpit seat. Until one evening in my teens, a clever-thinking youth leader decided to actually check the pulpit - and my little ‘snog centre’ was discovered.

Needless to say, I got a dressing down for using the sanctity of the Presbyterian pulpit to satisfy my teenage sexual hormones. To spare blushes, I will never reveal the identities of the young Presbyterian lassies from the 1970s who joined me for some ‘Pulpit Passion!’

It is amazing the skills which a Presbyterian minister must acquire, especially in a rural congregation. In the early Seventies, the Clough congregation decided to renovate part of the church. The work involved the use of a bulldozer clearing trees.

However, when the vehicle arrived at the church, none of the farmers knew how to operate the bulldozer. Bedecked in his clerical collar, dad promptly climbed aboard the bulldozer and using his motor mechanical skills, proceeded to clear the ground driving the bulldozer as if he was a lifelong expert in using such a mechanical vehicle - much to the amusement of the assembled farmers.

In later life as a journalist, I was to report on the activities of the animal rights activists protesting against live hare coursing at the Crebilly ground near Ballymena.

However, as a young person I led a protest at dad’s church to protect the Presbyterian crows! Before the trees could be cleared for the renovation work at the church in those early Seventies, the crows’ nests had to be cleared.

This process involved farmers shooting at the crows nests. So I decided to lead a delegation of chums and we organised a ‘sit down’ protest under the trees as the farmers could not shoot at the crows’ nests for fear the nests would fall on us below. My ‘Save The Presbyterian Crows’ did not last long.

The Mexican-style ‘stand-off’ lasted only a few minutes as we were bluntly told to all get back inside the church hall and stop being a nuisance. But the point did not go unnoticed with me - as the minister’s son, I could encourage peers to start a rebellion!

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Dr Coulter has been a journalist since 1978 and is currently a political commentator with GB News.

Tales From The Pulpit! A Preacher’s Kid Growing Up In The Seventies Bible Belt

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Forty Five

 

A Morning Thought @ 3218

Anthony McIntyre ⚽ It was not the most riveting World Cup final ever, far from it. 


It lacked the panache and reciprocal attacking of the previous final. This was a contest where attacking football exuded the resonance of one hand clapping.

The Argentina side which emerged victorious from Qatar simply went AWOL for this one. From the kickoff they seemed determined to play for extra time and penalties. Defending in depth, kicking more than just the ball, they will be remembered for their spoiling tactics, a sending off, a post-match brawl and being all round bad losers.

On the one previous occasion when Spain had won the coveted trophy they overcame a side of Dutch thugs who usurped beauty with brutality. They did the same again.

Myself and my son headed off to the Pheasant. He favoured Argentina. Normally I do also but not this time. I was heavily swayed by the support of the Spanish prime minister for the Gazan victims of Israeli genocide and repelled by the stance adopted by the Argentinian president who backed the Nazi-like policy and practices of the Israeli government. Post World War 2, Argentina had been a safe haven for Nazi war criminals including Eichmann, a prime architect of the Holocaust. During the Dirty War in the 1970s and 80s, the regime articulated into its weltanschauung and modus operandi elements and tenets of Nazism, and was determined to refashion Argentinian society in a way that would have won the approval of Himmler. Jews taken into military custody such as the late Jacobo Timerman left harrowing accounts of the Nazi ideological hatred for Jewish people that permeated the ranks of the Argentinian military, whose barracks and officers' messes were adorned with the Swastika and other Nazi insignia. So while Dixie Elliot has pointed out the strength of opposition within Argentine society to the genocide in Gaza, it comes as no great shock to learn that the country's far right president is a fan of today's Nazis.

For all its dour skill content, I enjoyed the game. I loved the way Spain probed and pressed, always intelligent, Argentina's greatest asset, Lionel Messi, had no place in a game plan that relied solely on defence. The Spanish didn't neutralise him, Argentina did, denying the greatest soccer player of all time the creativity he is renowned for in his World Cup swan song. 

As I sat sipping brandy, my son on Smithwicks I began to wonder if the breakthrough would come or if Argentina would get their way. Spain's record on penalties had not been good so a goalless conclusion after extra time did not auger well for the men from the Iberian Peninsula. But they persisted with a threat entirely different from the violent one Argentina posed. In the end they prevailed, no doubt helped by the actions of the thuggish Enzo Fernandez who left the field of play after receiving a second yellow. That the red card of Parades was post match and not shortly after his introduction to the game will reinforce the view of many about the dubious standard of refereeing throughout the tournament. Argentina went into extra time a man down, due to the behaviour of the player who infamously taunted the French side for its multi racial complexion.


That invited reflection on the monoracial make up of the Argentina team which looked like a throwback to the 1960s English soccer team in that all the players were white. Granted, the pool of black players to draw from in the country is not large. But this is down to the back population having been effectively culled by racism. The 2020 census recorded a 0.66% of citizens identifying as Afro-descendent. In the 18th and 19th centuries black people accounted for up to 50% of the population in some Argentinian cities, and around 30% in the capital, Buenos Aires.

Spain had colonised Argentina back in the days when the Spanish could rightly be called the bad guys. The worm had turned, in New Jersey the good guys won

We left the bar. A passing car honked at us and one of its occupants yelled ‘Spain’ at my son, still in his Argentina top. I don’t know what they made of me in a Glentoran top procured for me by Beano Niblock who unfortunately died during the tournament. We laughed, Ronan didn't really care. He had turned out for Messi who on the night didn’t turn out.  The World Cup would rest for the next four years in Madrid, not Buenos Aires, with players, not thugs. The brain had bested the bully.

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

Spoilers And Bad Losers

Ukraine Solidarity Group ✊ A Digest of News from Ukrainian Sources ⚔ 20-July-2026.

In this week’s bulletin

⬤  Protest against dismissal of Ukraine Defence Minister.
⬤ Social Movement response.
⬤ Occupied territories resistance.
⬤ Russian torture of prisoners, also here and here.
⬤ Russia abducts & militarises Ukrainian children.
⬤ Russia attacks Aid Warehouses.

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Russian attacks kill 11, tourist port targeted (Kyiv Independent, July 17)

Ervin Ibragimov 41st Birthday and 10 Years Missing (Crimea Platform, July 17th)

Tortured Ukrainian lawyer held incommunicado since July 2022 for writing the truth about Russian occupation of Melitopol (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, July 17th)

12-year sentence for Ukrainian patriotism against 63-year-old pensioner in Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, July 17th)

Ukraine: Russian-Run Schools Violate Children’s Rights (Human Rights Watch, July 16th)

Russian invaders sentence Ukrainians to 6 and 16 years for defending their own country many years ago (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, July 16th)

Cancer-stricken Crimean political prisoner Tofik Abdulgaziev has been transferred from a separate cell to a medical ward (Crimea Platform, July 15th)

Main news of the week (Crimea Platform, July 15th)

Ukrainian political prisoner tortured to fabricate new charges rather than free him after 8 years of Russian captivity (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, July 15th)

Survivors of conflict related sexual violence in occupied Ukraine (Ukrainska Pravda, July 14)

55-year-old Ukrainian from occupied Crimea sentenced to 17 years on FSB-fabricated ‘attempted treason’ charges (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, July 14th)

Russia’s abduction of ten Ukrainian children from occupied Crimea (Zmina, July 13th)

Russia ignores gangrenous wound to stage second ‘trial’ against Ukrainian POW for defending Mariupol (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, July 13th)

Freedom is in our DNA: the Ukrainian Resistance Movement (Alter Pravo, July 2026)

News from Ukraine

"We have a president, not a tsar": how people with cardboard signs came out to defend Fedorov (Ukrainska Pravda, July 19th)

‘An anti-social crime’: Kyiv residents demand rollback of 275% fare increase (European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine, July 18th)

Apartments for the price of a smartphone: corruption at the Ukrainian SBI (ZN.UA, July 17)

Protest organisers call for Commander-in-Chief’s dismissal (Ukrainska Pravda, July 17)

Protests are breaking out all over Ukraine today (Bluesky, July 16th)

Thousands of Ukrainians have taken to the streets (Bluesky, July 16th)

Ukrainian union leader jailed for doing his job (Industriall, July 16th)

Ukraine has opened up arms exports – but not for all manufacturers, markets or products. What's wrong with the new mechanism? (Ukrainska Pravda, July 14th)

Progress of the war

Russia unleashes one of largest ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv (Kyiv Independent, July 19)

Russia hits amusement park in Odesa Oblast: several killed (Ukrainska Pravda, July 18th)

Russia attacks cars and pedestrians in Kherson (Ukrainska Pravda, July 18)

Russia boosts ‘shadow fleet’ defences at expense of front line units (Kyiv Independent, July 18)

Two Russian oil depots and logistics centre hit by drones (Kyiv Independent, July 18)

Humanitarian Aid Warehouses Under Attack (Tribunal for Putin, July 16th)

War-related news from Russia

Botswana citizens forced to fight for Russia (ZN.UA, July 18)

Pro-war camp turns its anger on Putin (Kyiv Independent, July 18)

Crimean political prisoner Bohdan Ziza transferred to Buryatia (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, July 17th)

Ukrainian strikes on Russia's energy infrastructure threaten federal budget (The Insider, July 17th)

Skip the exam and grab a rifle: Russia makes higher education less accessible (The Insider, July 17th)

Bedridden “Azov man” in Russia was convicted of “terrorism” (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, July 16th)

Crewing the shadows: The Insider exposes the firms staffing Russia’s sanctions-busting fleet of oil tankers and explains why they matter (The Insider, July 15th)

Capital gains: Moscow has fuel as shortages climb elsewhere (Mediazona, 15 July)

Federal security service: AI tried and stopped, for now (iStories, 15 July)

Russian army recruitment: summonses are sent out by AI, illegally, to women (Mediazona, 14 July)

No contact with political prisoner Andrei Trofimov since April (Memorial, July 14th)

Mr Putin, where is the gas? (Kyiv Independent July 14)

Comment and analysis

Vitaliy Dudin (Social Movement): ‘The dismissal of Fedorov is not the main issue. The future of Ukraine is’ (European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine, July 18th)

Weaponising negotiations against Ukraine (Kyiv Independent, July 17)

“Trying to change Russia from within gets you nowhere”: Former TV Rain journalist Pyotr Ruzavin on serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (The Insider, July 15th)

Review: Anarchists on the War in Ukraine (Freedom, July 16th)

Research of human rights abuses

Russia’s Crimes Against Journalists and Media (Tribunal for Putin, July 17th)

“He was burning in the hallway, and they laughed”: Inside Russia's systematic torture apparatus for Ukrainian POWs (The Insider, July 17th)

RSF finds evidence that two Ukrainian journalists held incommunicado by Russia may be alive — and in the hell of Kizel prison (Reporters Sans Frontieres, July 2026)

International solidarity

Report for April and May (Solidarity Collectives, 15 May)

The Illicit Crypto Corridor: Russia, Hong Kong, London (Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, July 14th)

Also not to be missed

Transnistria: how the Ukraine war is heating up Russia’s longest forgotten separatist conflict (New Eastern Europe, July 10th)

Upcoming events

Thursday, July 23, 2026, 18:00 UK and Ireland / 19:00 Central European Time / 20:00 Ukraine, on zoom: Eyewitness report from Kramatorsk: Resisting and surviving Russia’s assault in the Donbas. On-line public meeting with Ukrainian writer Victoria Belim. Register here

🔴This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. More information at Ukraine Information Group.

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News From Ukraine 💣 Bulletin 205

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