January 2023

Grimly facing drought, hosepipe bans, wildfires and yet another heatwave? You won’t be comforted to know that ‘greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea level and ocean heat content all reached record highs in 2025’ (phys.org). European rivers are at record lows. The US has had its hottest July on record, as has the Sahel, Central America, France and Spain. And don’t stock up your freezer with ice cream because you could soon be facing rolling energy blackouts.

It’s not all bad news though. Water company bosses are still getting bonuses, oil companies are cashing in like never before, and tech stocks are going stratospheric.

Still think capitalism is humanity’s best hope? We say it’s time to consider the alternative.

Infantino’s “shabby, opaque, backroom deal” apparently prepared in secret with private capital is ditched after UEFA and others statement that “demonstrated to FIFA’s President that football is not for sale”.

Hang on!! Football was sold long ago and is increasingly organised to suit pay-to-view media. This explains why fans of EPL and EFL teams now ‘benefit’ from league matches on any day from Friday to Tuesday at kick-off times to suit the TV schedules (and bugger the away fans!). This is also why the mis-named Champions League has so much group-stage dross (similarly for the Copa Libertadores) to plug so many mid-week gaps.

Sadly, the sport I love is now just an interlude between ads for bookies.

You might expect that a walking trail called the Severn Way would largely be alongside the river from which it takes its name. But in fact most of the section between Shrewsbury and Telford is not along the river at all.

This is just one illustration of the extent to which there is a lack of public access to river banks in England. In almost three quarters of cases, there is no right of way within a hundred metres of the river, with most reservoirs and lakes also being off-limits.

Private ownership of land drastically restricts people’s ability to enjoy the countryside (not just rivers) and seek some relief from the recent heatwaves.

Andy Burnham pledged ‘to finally end long-term rough sleeping across the UK’. He previously aimed to prevent rough sleeping in Manchester by 2020, and in 2019 the Conservative Party manifesto committed to ending ‘the blight of rough sleeping’. Instead, in 2025 the number of people estimated to sleep rough on a single night in England was the highest recorded, at nearly 4,800.

Rough sleeping is not just about housing. Rough sleepers are among the most marginalised and victimised in capitalist society. Support services, however ‘well-funded’, can only ever offer limited palliatives as they are working within a system that pushes people into homelessness – why previous attempts to end rough sleeping have failed, despite Burnham’s ambition.