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Savage Minds ★ Written by Rumy Hasan. Recommended by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh.

Last year (in August 2025), The Future of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 came into force. 

This purports to protect the freedom of speech of students, academics and external speakers at universities in England, whereby “universities must actively promote academic freedom, ensuring campuses are places where robust discussion can take place without fear of censorship of students, staff or external speakers expressing lawful opinions” (Gov UK, 2025). 

Though this is surprising given that both the previous Conservative government, who drafted the Act and the present Labour government, who have (with some exclusions) implemented it, are not principled supporters of free speech, nonetheless, this is ostensibly a positive step and should lead the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to follow suit.

But given the recent history of the reticence, even reluctance, of UK universities to abide by free speech principles, it is by no means certain that they will comply with the new law. Two recent cases of profound importance at the University of Bristol point to important lessons in this regard. 

Continue @ Savage Minds.

Academic Freedom 🧠 Lessons From Bristol University

Pádraig Drummond ✊ It’s a hell of a strange world we’ve built when our national football team will march off the podium because a reporter tells a lie, yet happily line up for ninety-plus minutes alongside representatives of a state whose government is credibly accused of genocide.


Apparently there are principles, and then there are principles that conveniently disappear when the referee blows his whistle.

We are told to believe that football is above politics, that sport builds bridges and brings people together. Fine words, until those bridges are being built over the bodies of people who have been bombed, displaced and killed. 

The problem is not the ethnicity, religion or nationality of the players on the other side. It is the political machinery and state violence they represent, and the grotesque double standard that allows Western institutions to condemn racism in one breath while making excuses for colonialism, occupation and mass civilian death in the next.

That is the real absurdity, outrage at a lie from a journalist, but silence when the facts themselves become inconvenient. Anti-racism cannot stop at the edge of the football pitch, and opposition to imperialism cannot be something we remember only when it is politically comfortable. If human rights mean anything, they have to mean something when the victims are inconvenient, when the perpetrators are powerful, and when standing by your principles actually costs you something.

⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.

Disappearing Principles

Dixie Elliot ✊The Sinn Féiners hijacking yet another anniversary to peddle their narrative about electoralism and the so called GFA.


The fact is that the GFA was the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement repackaged by the British. The only difference being was that the GFA didn't contain the 'Council of Ireland'.
 
The Sunningdale Agreement also contained the vague promise of a referendum on Irish Unity.
Therefore at the time when Kieran Nugent refused to wear the uniform of a common criminal and wrapped a blanket round his naked body, followed by other Republican prisoners and at the time when the two hunger strikes took place resulting in the deaths of ten brave men, not only was the Republican Movement totally opposed to electoralism but we saw the Sunningdale Agreement as something only Gerry Fitt and the SDLP would have accepted.
 
How many are aware that three days after Owen Carron won the bye-election for Bobby's seat and the death on the same day of the last hunger striker to die, Micky Devine, Sinn Féin began paving the way for electoralism by announcing that they would be standing in all future elections in the North and asked people to get registered to vote?

An Phoblacht/Republican News Saturday August 29th 1981
An Phoblacht/Republican News Saturday August 29th 1981

The hunger strike was still ongoing and this hadn't yet been put to the Movement as that year's Ard Fhéis wasn't held until late October.

That was when Danny Morrison gave his ballot box and armalite speech.
 
The beginnings of the so called peace process were being put in place slowly but surely and out of sight and earshot of the brave men and women who were fighting the war.
 
It took 13 years, at a high cost in Republican and civilian lives, before we had the 1994 ceasefire followed by a victory parade on the Falls Road.
 
But nothing had been won.
 
The 1998 GFA was hailed by the Sinn Féiners as a great achievement even though it was, as I pointed out, the Sunningdale Agreement repackaged, including the vague promise of a referendum on Irish Unity.
 
So in fact Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin finally accepted what we on the Blanket Protest, in particular the ten brave hunger strikers and Kieran Nugent, believed that only Fitt and the SDLP would accept.
 
So what was it all for?
 
Sinn Féin try and silence the truth tellers by saying that we can't speak for the dead, yet they have no problem linking the dead to the disastrous path they have taken the Movement down.
 
But we can tell the truth about how it came to the end it did, with a British Prime Minister slamming the door shut on the vague promise of a referendum on Irish Unity.

The thing about the truth is that you cannot get caught out telling it.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Narrative Peddling

Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.


Before We Conform, Or Condemn, Let Us At Least Be Curious


♜One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it - Albert Camus♞ 

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Fifteen

 


Hate Theology @ 17

 

A Morning Thought @ 3287

Anthony McIntyre ☠ The pile on is one of the biggest downsides of social media. 

What once looked like the democratisation of opinion formation, to the chagrin of the elites and their virtual monopoly of information dissemination, has steadily undergone a shifting of the plates beneath public discourse. The result has often been a planet of the bots given to volcanic eruptions of malignant magma with which the tyranny of the majority club seeks to vaporise voices it does not approve.

The online pile-on which Carla Lockhart has been subjected to for years, has now spread to the streets. It is not about political vindication, but personal vilification. The vitriol vat has been so cooked up, it both steams and stinks. Stieg Larsson could have found in her experience inspiration for the title of one of his Lisbeth Salander novels.

I am not in any way enamoured to the politics of Carla Lockhart. One quick glance at the barricade and she will be positioned on the wrong side of it, shoulder to shoulder with obscurantism and holding the line against empathy. Her appearance alongside masked men - always at the ready to tear the veil from Muslim women as a signal of their virtuous opposition to mask wearing - at the Scarva genocide rally was unpardonable. Her role as chief cheerleader for the Drumcree dinosaurs not much better. Her views on abortion, immigration, the Irish language, religion, gay rights, and just about everything else run counter to my own. DUP to her oxters, there is little about the woman to warm to, politically. She deserves every salvo of polemical and political flak fired her way.

What she does not deserve is the chemical weapon of poisonous personal abuse online or off. That toxicity should be out of bounds, off limits. And despite hard hitting calls from Michelle O'Neill last year for the "disgraceful and unacceptable" abuse to cease, it has re-emerged with venom in recent days. Whatever about Drumcree, or a phalanx of masked men supporting Israel's continued breach of international law, the pernicious personal abuse directed against Ms Lockhart is hateful, the desire to trample over her face as objectionable as the determination to trample over Garvaghy Road.

What propels a female public representative to stand with masked supporters of genocide might be perplexing. Not so opaque is the type of hurt that propels the same woman to stand before the media to explain her situation in the face of a barrage of abuse not about what she thinks or says but about how the abusers scream she looks.

I see the online keyboard warriors have been dusting off their dictionaries and thesauruses to abuse me online, based solely on how they think I look.

She can be blamed for the first stand but is entirely blameless in the second.

It takes quite some courage for any woman to stand in front of a camera and be descriptively candid about the abuse she is taking in the sure knowledge that she has to open up about what hurts, exposing the wound to hyenas salivating at the prospect of another bite.

No woman should be subject to toxic abuse for how others claim she looks. It is not free speech being sought after here but a licence to bully. And bullying is always designed to smother free speech by recourse to intimidating people out of the public square. Bullying is never banter. It is the call sign of the malignant.

Carla Lockhart can be justly criticised for who she appears alongside, not for how she appears. To her son she is a beautiful mother, to her parents a beautiful daughter, to her husband a beautiful wife, to her siblings a beautiful sister. They are the people who count in this, no one else.

She has the courage to stand up and argue her case, unlike many who hide behind fake names to abuse her. It might be a case we find repugnant. If so, focus on her case, not her face. We have no business going there.

As for the way she looks, I wish I looked as slim. I would be much healthier for it.

It is entirely legitimate to have a go at Carla Lockhart, but with political intellect, not personal insult. Get off her back. Leave her alone.
 
⏩Follow on Bluesky.


The Girl Who Takes Hateful Abuse

Jim Duffy ✍ Russia is a spectacularly failing society. One image showed me that. 
 

For decades basic maintenance of the roads network has not happened as money was siphoned off by oligarchs. In a small city a couple of hours from St Petersburg heavy rain caused the complete disintegration of roads and streets that had not been maintained for decades. A report on Channel 4 news showed how an ambulance had sunk into the mud that was all that was left of a major street. Locals up to their waists in mud formed a human chain to rescue a patient on a stretcher from the back of an ambulance.

The reporting journalist explained that the city was the Russian equivalent of Manchester and the street the equivalent of Market Street. Locals explained that the streets there had not been repaired since the 1980s and the streets had completely disintegrated. Shoppers were shown walking to shops through muddy streets that were akin to muddy fields with roads that had completely disintegrated.
 
So the dereliction of buildings shown in the picture is not remotely surprising. One woman interviewed said that under communism at least the locals had normal urban streets, then joked with a smile that back then she walked on streets to shops without sinking in mud, but when they got there the shops were empty. She told the reporter that she despaired of Russia!

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Russia Failing

Barry Gilheany ⚽ The figures involved were redolent of corporate scandals such as Enron as indeed Manchester City’s conviction by the Premier League of 114 offences relating to financial probity and profit and sustainability regulations during their period of domination of English football in the 2010s. 

For the real villains of the piece were City’s corporate owners the Abu Dhabi United Group, a private investment body owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nayhan, the brother of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) president and who bought the club in 2008. For an independent commission found that between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons, City had arranged “sham contracts” as well as “relying on sham agreements to artificially inflate the club’s revenues and reduce its costs”.[1] 

The extent of these fraudulent transactions which included the disguising of sponsorship deals through investment by the Abu Dhabi United Group; a “double salary” for manager Roberto Mancini who was the first of the United Group’s appointee to bring silverware to the blue half of Manchester after a drought of 35 years and serial refusal to cooperate with the football authorities amounted to a staggering figure north of £800m. 

Possibly the only sporting scandal to match such egregious violations of sporting integrity was Lance Armstrong’s ill-gotten seven Tour de France victories but the collective and corporate character of the offending raises so much more profound issues of sporting governance. To paraphrase Brian Clough who in his first meeting with his new charges at Leeds United (conveyed so vividly in the film The Damned United), surely City players “can put all their medals and pots and pans in the bin” because they had “won them all by cheating.” Only, unlike the alleged acts of gamesmanship and sharp practice on the pitch that Clough deemed Don Revie’s squad to be guilty of, these transgressions were committed by the suits and boots in the boardroom or the gilded HQs in Abu Dhabi. 

But did Pep and the golden generation that came through the Etihad in that era know? Make of the denials from Pep what one will, but it has not just been City’s opponents in the years that the trophies rolled in who are entitled to feel cheated; it is the City fans who because of the asterisks that must now attach themselves to the trophies won between 2011 and 2018 have been robbed of the right to life long cherishment of these moments. Granted that nothing can alter the raw ecstasy of the “Aguuuuero” moment when the first title in 44 years was delivered and the memories of seeing the sublime majesty of players like De Bruyne in their pomp, the permanent tainting of such achievements will hurt deeply; the worst epithet that can be hurled at any football follower is “cheat”.

Hopefully, for the sake of the smooth running and integrity of this season’s Premier League season, the extent of the punishment to be inflicted on City will be revealed soon. Without donning the black cap of a Hanging Judge and being aware that none of City’s misdeeds materially affected my club, Leeds United, (apart from a 4-0 drubbing in the FA Fifth Round in 2012-13), as we were serving our own self-inflicted sentence in the desert of the Championship for the financial (but not illegal) mismanagement of the boom and bust era of Peter Ridsdale, natural justice demands that whatever penalties are levied fit the crime. 

At the most severe end of the penal spectrum is the punishment beating meted out to Leeds City in 1919 – dissolution of the club for its refusal to show their books to the Football League after accusations of under the table payments to players during World War I and expungement of all its results from the record. At the other end is the imposition a fine of indeterminate numerals but still likely to be of petty cash proportions for City’s uber-plutocrat owners in the Gulf which means there has to be an effective sporting sanction. At the least this would have to entail departure from the Premiership either through a swinging points deduction virtually ensuring relegation this season or direct expulsion. Should City then be made to restart in the fourth tier of the pyramid (known euphemistically as EFL League Two) as Rangers had to do in Scotland after the liquidation of the original Glasgow Rangers club in 2012 (after another saga of financial Hari-kiri which on this occasion had mortal consequences). Or should it just be the one division; as eventually happened to Swindon Town in 1990 after they were demoted to the then Football League Third Division after their triumph in that year’s Division Two promotion play-off final due to financial irregularities with the sentence being halved on appeal (Sunderland, their defeated opponents, were promoted in their place).  Whatever the severity of the demotion; a transfer ban for at least two years would definitely be appropriate and mandatory examination of their accounts by HMRC and/or the Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sports for a similar time period should also be considered.

The Manchester City mega scandal is a parable for our times in interrelated social, political, and economic aspects. While City were sweeping all before them; two of their Greater Manchester neighbours were suffering grievously on the other side of football’s divide between rich and poor. Wigan Athletic, from a town where Rugby League has always been a communal way of life, after entering the Football League in 1978 climbed the pyramid to become a Premier League side in the 2000s, playing delightful football under their coach Roberto Martinez and actually won the FA Cup in 2013 by beating City 1-0 in the Final (becoming the first club to win the Cup and be relegated from the top flight in the same season).

However after relegation and then the departure of their major benefactor, Dave Whelan the multi-millionaire owner of JJB Sports who had made extensive investments in the club, Wigan were plagued by mounting debts, difficulties in payroll obligations and potential breaches of fair play regulations for which they received points deductions totally seven points from the EFL. The key factors contributing to their plight were decreased revenue due to a further relegation from the EFL Championship; high player wages relative to income; the costs of previous management and unsustainable spending and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The cumulative impact of these woes were record losses for the season 2022/23; £19m of net debt and a £9.9m annual wage bill as of the 2024/25 season.[2]

The Metropolitan Borough of Wigan has one of the highest levels of multiple deprivation and forms part of the Makerfield Parliamentary constituency, that archetypal Left-Behind, Red Wall, Brexit voting seat now represented by Prime Minister Andy Burnham. This socio-demographic profile appears to symbolically fit the distressed profile of the football club something that cannot be lost on another of Wigan’s MP – Lisa Nandy the current Secretary of State for Media, Culture and Sports. Does she look ruefully at the regeneration of East Manchester by the Abu Dhabi United Group; the shiny apartments; trendy coffee shops and bars and pristine leisure facilities and wonder why not in her patch? But she may also reflect that the investment brought to the Etihad surrounds by the sugar daddies from Arabia is a metaphor for impact of gentrification of football and the working-class communities that used to sustain it (and who used to be so unquestioning Labour voters). There is a sense in which Andy Burnham may be hoist on the petard of his successes in his very recent previous life as Mayor of Greater Manchester because of the shining gloss of the United (no, not that one!) Group’s investment. How else can the first significant faux pas of his PM reign be explained; his first response of “real concern” at the possible loss of City’s owners while thanking them for their investment in both the club and Manchester as a whole and his reluctance to “leap to one side” on the issue.[3]

Burnham did row back on these remarks to clarify that nobody could be “above the rules” if wrongdoing were proven, before reminding all and sundry that wrongdoing had indeed been proved; albeit pending an appeal. It is possible that he was shooting from the hip; instinctively reverting to the Evertonian who fought against the points deduction imposed on his team for breaches of financial regulations in the 2022-23 season. Such tribal perspectives are dangerous territories for any politician, never mind a siting Prime Minister. While sport can never be separated from politics, it is an area to tread carefully on if in the public eye.[4]

The plight of another club in the Greater Manchester metropolis was of even greater scale than Wigan. Bury FC who had been in existence since 1885 were expelled from the EFL in August 2019 despite having achieved promotion to League One due to a failed takeover bid leaving this venerable old club unable to settle liabilities accrued by a previous incompetent ownership regime. The Football Regulator should have the power to intervene to ensure that clubs in such stricken circumstances are able to meet their financial obligations and are run as going concerns in the way that central government can send in commissioners to run dysfunctional local councils who cannot or won’t set a rate and meet minimum service delivery obligations.

The 'Citeh' scandal of course raises profound questions of accountability in football. According to the club website, Manchester City is majority owned by Newton and Investment LLC, fully owned by Sheik Al-Nahyan with a significant minority shareholding of nearly 17% held by US-based global technology investment firm, Silver Lake. How often did the board meet? Who signed off on the sponsorship deals disguised as investment from the UAE? Do minutes exist of these meetings including AGMs? Was there no one of accounting expertise and integrity to blow the whistle on City’s three figure fraudulent transactions? What records exist at Company House relating to City’s trading activities. On what basis can Sir Richard Leese, appointed an Honorary President of City in February 2023 (around the time that the Premier League investigations into their finances) after stepping down as Leader at Manchester City Council in December 2021 and the real brains behind “Manchesterism”, defend the Abu Dhabi deal as ‘good for Manchester’?[5] Basically who knew what?

Of course missing in all this are the voices of the fans. It is an unfortunate reality that supporters bodies such as the Manchester United and Leeds United Supporters Trusts only emerge after catastrophes such as the loading of debts amounting to hundreds of millions of pounds of debt onto the red half of Manchester and the financial implosion at Elland Road. It is only then that the very existence of the love objects of millions take precedence over the contents of the trophy cabinet in the concerns of fans. What sort of channels of communication existed between City’s owners and the supporters? Presumably, those of the blue sky, slick corporate Kumbaya type. If Manchester City have to experience the catharsis of banishment, redemption, and resurrection; then the supporters have to be essential actors in this morality tale of all football morality tales.

References  

[1] Catherine Neilan and Jon Ungfoed-Thomas. ‘They’re clear they’re innocent and they’re going to prove it’ The Observer 4 October 2026 p.12

[2] Tom Sherrington .Are Wigan in Financial Trouble. 25 December 2024.

[3] Rory Smith. The PM is a true football fan. It’s why he scored an own goal. The Observer. 4 October 2026 p.13

[4] Ibid

[5] Bethan Finighan. Manchester Evening News. 5 October 2026

⏩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. 

Once In A Blue Moon ⚽ Manchester City Found Guilty On All Counts

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Fourteen

 

A Morning Thought @ 3285

Anthony McIntyre ☠ answers several question put by a person with serious and authentic concerns about the standoff on Garvaghy Road

Q: I am struck by how nationalism and unionism are apparently so strongly talking past each other this week on Drumcree.

AM: It sort of confirms Paul Bew's post-GFA statement that sectarianism had not been transcended but institutionalised. There is so much animosity between the DUP and SF that it is hard to characterise the Executive as Power Sharing and easy to characterise it as Power Splitting. Sharing is being magnanimous, splitting is being parsimonious. It is zero sum politics.

Q: Nationalists are horrified by the organs of the state attempting to direct an Orange parade down the Garvaghy Road.

AM: Rightly so. Given the history, the psychological trauma indelibly ingrained in the collective Garvaghy Road psyche, who but the most insensitive bigot would insist on pushing an Orange march down Garvaghy Road, and why would a British state want to see it go down? Imagine what it would do for PSNI recruitment from the Nationalist community if the force accedes to the DUP demand to clear the protestors off the road. The Orange have an alternative route where they are welcome.

Q: The concerns of each side appear to register at zero with each other.

AM:  The Garvaghy Road residents have a concern not to be subjected to a sectarian hate march. The Orange has a concern to have a sectarian hate march. Both concerns are real. But a hatred of sectarian bigotry is on a different moral plateau to a hateful sectarian bigotry. By that standard the concern of the residents is the more authentic of the two.

If the DUP is serious about the need to respect the rule of law I would expect to hear calls from its leadership, Robinson, Lockhart et al, for Netanyahu to be arrested and to be handed over to the International Criminal Court. Demanding that Michelle O'Neill obey British law while supporting Netanyahu breaching international law is only going to land one way with nationalists.

Q: Do you think both sides are deliberately not hearing the other in order to try and capture the narrative and public square?

AM:  Both sides do hear each other but remain implacably opposed to what they hear.

Q: Also - nationalists on the Garvaghy Road said they are in immense fear of the parade on the Garvaghy Road.

AM:  If 35 elderly Orangemen dressed like normal people and walked down Garvaghy Road like normal citizens no one would notice. Once the Orange is raised, given the road's history, it transforms the psyche.

I, as an elderly republican, could assert some imaginary right to go to Frizzell's fish shop on the Shankill accompanied by 34 former blanketmen of similar age, to lay a wreath for Thomas Begley because he died there, and insist it is traditional for republicans to remember their dead. The people of the Shankill would regard it as an abomination. The thing is - I too would regard it as an abomination and would never seek to do it.

Q: But clearly 35 elderly Orangemen at 8am on a Sunday are not going to cause any trouble.

AM: I could argue the same about Frizzell's. Psychology is a huge element in power politics and is used as a weapon. It is the contempt for the community that makes this such a psychologically visceral issue for the residents.

Q: So as Stephen Nolan asked yesterday, are they not actually registering fear of what happened decades ago, rather than registering fear about what is actually on the table in 2026?

AM: I feel Stephen Nolan has persistently inflamed rather than informed so I pay no attention to what he says about anything. If you are asking the question then of course I will answer: what is on the table in 2026 is a sectarian hate march. In all walks of life we tend to take the view of let well alone; if it is not broken, don't try to fix it. Nothing in 28 years and now we have this.

Q: Do you still think this will not reignite the Troubles?

AM: While it has reignited simmering tensions that have never evaporated, I still believe it will not reignite the troubles in so far as there will be no IRA campaign resumption. Hopefully loyalism will not see any benefit to plunging Northern society back into that hell. The place is a political quagmire but nothing is to be gained by turning it into a fire pit.

Q: Might SF walk away from Stormont?

AM: SF's investment in Stormont has not yielded a good return. But the mood of nationalist Ireland is with the party on the Garvaghy Road issue so I imagine SF would want to read the room before deciding to jump. SF will probably think about how nationalist Ireland perceives Stormont rather than just thinking about how SF perceives it. At the moment I do not see an appetite throughout nationalist Ireland for SF to collapse the Executive. I do think however, it would suit SF to have the DUP collapse it.

Q: Maria Cahill has asked:

Why is IRA man Martin Duckser Lynch, who hails from West Belfast, directing the protesters at Garvaghy? What does First Minister Michelle O'Neill think of this? This is a question that the media should be asking. They won't. He comes in here after Brendan Mac Cionnaith says that they're not going to let "those fuckers down."

AM: Martin Lynch is a seasoned activist with organisational experience. He was the IRA leader in the H Blocks at a time when the prison was still quite turbulent and he managed it quite well. If I am correct, he would have been in the H Blocks at the same time as Breandan Mac Cionnaith. Link that to the instinctive sympathy across nationalist Ireland for the residents of Garvaghy Road and you have the beginning of an answer as to why he was there.

It is natural for former republican prisoners to have a keen interest in these types of events given their own history of resistance. They have always been to the fore of pushing back against intrusion by the Orange Order.

I can see no reason why Michelle O'Neill would object to his presence. He was one of many former blanket men and former republican prisoners to assemble against what many nationalists see as a hate march.

A former blanket man and hunger striker, Pat Sheehan stood up in the Stormont Assembly and challenged the DUP with the assertion that it had surrendered the leadership of unionism to Jamie Bryson.

I suspect that Michelle O'Neill would see little difference between Martin Lynch on Garvaghy Road and Pat Sheehan in the Stormont chamber - a joint enterprise where each puts their shoulder to different parts of the same wheel rolling back Orange intrusion on the Garvaghy Road.

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

A Hatred Of Sectarian Bigotry Is On A Different Moral Plateau To A Hateful Sectarian Bigotry

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


Skyrocketing charges for heating and hot water from council heat networks in Lambeth, south London, are to be challenged at a judicial review by two tenants.

Kirsty Oliveira’s heating charges rose four-fold in 2022-23, and Aida Haile’s more than doubled.

Lambeth Tenants Heat Campaign Fuel Poverty Action and the London Tenants Federation are supporting Kirsty and Aida. Jeremy Ogilvie-Harris, a barrister at the Public Interest Law Centre, will represent them at the hearing on 1-2 December.

Fuel Poverty Action’s banner on a “tax the rich” demo, June 2025. Photo: FPA

When Richard Clayton KC, sitting as a deputy high court judge in June, gave the go-ahead for the judicial review, he said the claim raises “wider issues and points of law of general public importance”.

The case highlights the scandal of extortionate charges, poor customer service, waste, inefficiency and breakdowns faced by up to 900,000 British households that rely on heat networks.

Buildings served by the networks have heat and/or hot water piped to them from a centralised boiler, and no gas boiler of their own. Such networks commonly serve whole neighbourhoods, and even whole cities, across Europe.

Heat networks have big potential for helping to tackle climate change. They can take in heat from underground, from rivers or disused coal mines, or heat that is currently dumped into the atmosphere, e.g. from power stations or industrial processes. They can be integrated with large-scale heat storage, and adapted to switch to cooling in hot weather.

As part of its Warm Homes Plan, the government wants to more than double heat network annual output, from 12.4 terawatts (TWh) to 27 TWh, by 2035.

But poor service and underinvestment has to be tackled, campaigners say, otherwise expanding heat networks will multiply problems, not solve them.

The first step must be to ensure that existing networks deliver a service no more expensive, and no less reliable, than gas boilers and electricity, consumer advocates argue.

Kirsty and Aida’s case against Lambeth highlights the lack of choice for council tenants on heat networks. They are obliged to buy hot water and heating, whatever the price – which is unregulated, unlike gas and electricity prices – and can not install their own boiler or heat pump, or switch providers.

Neither Kirsty or Aida, nor thousands of others, have meters for heating and hot water. Government rules requiring that they are installed have not been followed. Using less, or even no, heat makes no difference to the bill.

Kirsty and Aida are both secure tenants, who have been allocated social housing through the council’s duties regarding homelessness. So they had little choice about where to live. But, because welfare benefits do not cover heating and hot water, after the 2023 price hike Kirsty faced a monthly shortfall of about £350. For Aida it was about £300.

Both women face a risk of eviction, and are unable to leave their homes as they would then be declared “intentionally homeless”.

They are asking the judicial review to rule that their tenancy agreements are “unfair and unenforceable”, and that Lambeth council pay damages.

Kirsty Oliveira said in an interview: “Lambeth as whole, both elected councillors and officials, have been a big disappointment.

“We went to councillors’ surgeries, sent them letters and emails, and arranged meetings with them. They told us ‘no-one will get evicted’, but refused our requests to put that in writing.

“We have asked why the heat charges are bundled in with the rent. This is unfair, and it’s not transparent. We don’t have a choice: we can not even save money by turning it off.”

Sam Tippet of the Public Interest Law Centre said: “This case is vital for social housing tenants on heat networks across the country. Without proper price protection, working class tenants are being burdened with exorbitant costs and pushed into unmanageable debts.”

Why things are so bad

The problems Kirsty and Aida have faced – steep price increases, lack of flexibility, and poor service – are all too common. Until January this year, heat networks were exempt from oversight by Ofgem, the government’s energy regulator, and that made matters worse.

Ofgem can hold electricity suppliers and generators to legal standards, and has since 2018 imposed price caps on gas and electricity – but not on network heat.

Finally, after years of pressure from Citizens Advice, the Competitions and Markets Authority and others, the government empowered Ofgem to monitor heat networks, starting in January this year. But consumer advocates say Ofgem does not have the teeth needed to do the job.

Stephen Knight of Heat Trust said in an interview: “Heat networks are the obvious way to decarbonise urban heating at scale. But we have to change the existing consumer experience. It is not good enough, and not reliable enough.”

The first priority should be technical standards, Knight argues. These exist in draft form, but will not come into force until next year, with the slowdown due in part to “heavy lobbying” by the heat network industry.

Second, Ofgem “doesn’t have the tools in its toolbox to control prices”, Knight warned. Heat networks are typically operated by landlords, who buy fuel on the wholesale market, unprotected by energy price caps, and pass on the costs to consumers. Others along the supply chain, such as companies doing maintenance, procurement, or metering and billing services, profit.

Heat networks that don’t heat

Tenants on the Wyndham, Brandon 2 and Brandon 3 estates in Southwark, the borough next door to Lambeth – served by a heat network – know all about the need for technical standards.

Fury over constant heating and hot water outages, damp, mould, overheating and delayed or cancelled repairs brought 60 of them together at a recent public meeting to launch the Wyndham Heat Network Action Group. They are calling on Southwark council to work with a resident-led board to oversee repairs and monitor progress.

The group works with the health charity Medact, and is building links with other community bodies, and collecting and coordinating information about impacts on residents.

At the public meeting, Dr Laura-Jane Smith, a respiratory consultant at King’s College Hospital, said homes had been “severely neglected” by landlords, housing associations and councils.

People bring pictures of damp patches and black mould to Smith’s clinic, and “tell me about how it’s completely unbearably hot in summer, freezing in winter. They cough, they wheeze, they can’t breathe.”

One of the action group coordinators, Suzy Murray, said in an interview: “The network is old and we are dealing with the consequences of decades of neglect. Some tenants go for months without heating and hot water. Others suffer extreme overheating.

“Three or four years ago, I was not on a heat network, and I was paying £60 a month for electricity, hot water and heat. Now I am paying £150. Heat network users are not protected by Ofgem’s price caps, and the standard of service is shocking.”

Contractors employed by the council to do repairs are a particular problem, Murray said. They frequently botch repairs and fail to keep appointments.

In June the government completed a consultation on how to spend money from its Warm Homes Fund. The Heat Trust urged “investment in heat network remediation works, to address the shocking levels of heat loss, low efficiency and poor reliability on many existing networks”.

Copenhagen is served almost entirely by district heating. Photo: Energy Saving Trust

Stephen Knight of Heat Trust added that many heat networks, even recently built ones, are technically inefficient. Some energy content is inevitably lost in processing and transportation, but these losses are up to twice as high as they need be, so that little more than one third of the energy consumed reaches users as heat.

Prices and billing

Heat networks could and should provide heat and hot water, cheap or free, as a public service. But because the sector is in private hands, and regulation is toothless and late to arrive, they are a financial burden on users.

🔴Heat network prices are just too high. Heat Trust estimated last year that many network customers pay double the price at which households can produce heat from a gas boiler (15p/kWh versus 7.5p/kWh);

🔴More than one third of heat network customers – households with an estimated 350,000-plus people – have their heat bills “bundled” with rent and service charges, as Kirsty Oliveira and Aida Haile in Lambeth have. If they fall behind with payments to landlords or managing agents, they are vulnerable to eviction – and more than 1.2 million people in England and Wales could end up in this situation, if government plans to expand networks go ahead and the rules are not changed, Citizens Advice warns.

🔴 Deceptive and untransparent billing practices are rife. More than half of heat network users do not have their own meter, and, again like Kirsty and Aida, are charged a flat fee whether they use heating and hot water or not. The regulated system introduced this year provides for a transition to meters, but it is long and slow: retrofitting meters have “high costs” and unmetered customers will “wait a long time” to benefit, Citizens Advice says.

🔴 A host of other dodgy practices – retrospective tariff increases, unexplained charges, unaffordable repayment plans, awful customer service – can now be challenged via the regulator, but cynical providers retain the whip hand over vulnerable users, campaigners warn.

Ruth London of Fuel Poverty Action (FPA) said that people who move to homes supplied by heat networks are told it will save money, and be good for the climate. “Instead, too many find the costs are far more than other households pay, and they can’t even save by switching supplier.”

The injustice is “jaw-dropping”, and “made worse when the system is so inefficient that it isn’t really even ‘green’”, she said.

How things can change

The government’s plans to expand heat networks are part of a broader initiative, the Warm Homes Plan, that also provides for installing heat pumps, and retrofitting poorly insulated homes – and claims to right energy injustices and support decarbonisation.

But housing activists, energy researchers and others have warned that the proposals make little to no attempt to deal with the deep-going causes: decades of attacks on the public sector, the privatisation-driven housing crisis and the chronic condition of the construction sector.

It is not only heat network users who suffer “outrages at the hands of profiteering businesses and uncaring bureaucracies”, but also households with heat pumps or insulation retrofits, Ruth London pointed out. “Many more can’t afford the good quality tech that is cutting bills for the wealthy.”

The FPA has also challenged the proposals for “zoning” that are central to the government’s approach to heat networks – but that, if focused on handing the initiative to private companies, could make matters worse.

FPA’s Make Green Fair campaign aims to “ensure that everyone can access low carbon technologies that actually benefit their users”, Ruth London said.

A challenge for all campaigners is to take an integrated view of the problems: the broken housing market that underlies the misery of poor-quality accommodation for millions of people; the destruction of local government provision such as direct labour organisations; and the corporate stranglehold on electricity generation and supply.

The principles of public provision; of warmth and electricity as rights not consumer goods; and of measures to decarbonise that both help tackle climate change and make our lives better can unite powerful alliances to challenge the government’s policy that puts change in the hands of capital and thereby risks failure.

🔴 How to make our homes warmer and better, while tackling climate change, will be discussed at the Make Green Fair 2026 conference on Saturday 19 September, 10.0am to 5.0pm, in Manchester. Kirsty Oliveira will be among the speakers at the event, which is organised by Fuel Poverty Action.

The event will aim to answer the questions: “How do we fight for a clean energy system that’s fairer than the dirty fossil fueled one it replaces? How do we make sure home retrofits, insulation, heat pumps etc actually bring bills down and make our homes warm and healthy?”

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Judicial Review Challenge To Extortionate Heat Network Charges

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