In 2015 the UK started charging people 5p for plastic carrier bags. Minimum wage in 2015 was £6.70 which means you could buy 134 carrier bags with an hour's wage.
Fast forward to 2026, minimum wage is £12.71 and carrier bags are now around 40p meaning an hours wage would buy you 31 carrier bags.
That's 103 less carrier bags and a 700% increase on the original price.
But only a 89% increase in wages.
We're getting robbed in this country.
DO NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT THE EPSTEIN FILES.
Does anyone else notice that no matter how many folks are posting about the Epstein files, it never trends on X?
🚨🇦🇱 BREAKING: Albanians tore down barriers at Kakome Beach in southern Albania, declaring that the country's beaches belong to the people, not oligarchs
✊️🇦🇱As opposition to the controversial Kushner-Trump resort project intensifies, public anger is spreading over the privatization of public land and protected coastal areas
🇦🇱 Albania Is Not For Sale
#SaveAlbania #Albania #FlamingoRevolution
“GEN Z DOESN’T DRINK”
“GEN Z DOESN’T DATE”
“GEN Z DOESN’T BUY HOUSES”
“GEN Z DOESN’T HAVE KIDS”
“GEN Z DOESN’T SMILE”
Maybe because:
• They graduated into a pandemic
• Job hunted into an AI apocalypse
• Entered the housing market when rates hit 8%
• Watched a world war start before they turned 25
• Got their first paycheck and lost 30% to taxes they’ll never see benefits from
• Student loans kicked in the same month rent doubled
• Were told to “just network” during two years of lockdown
• Grew up on social media designed to make them feel worthless
• Watched billionaires add trillions during COVID while they lost their jobs
• Inherited a planet that’s literally on fire
• Were promised the American Dream and handed the American Bill
But yeah.
It’s the avocado toast.
Five Muslim men were chased through Edinburgh with a machete on Friday night.
Two of them were 22 years old.
They were walking through their own city. Sighthill. Then the west. Then Leith Walk.
By the end of the night, five were injured and three were in hospital.
Tonight they are lying in those beds wondering if they will be well enough for work on Monday.
The man who did it was pinned to the ground by police, still screaming.
"I'm protecting the country from these Muslim bastards raping our young daughters."
Ask where a man learns to say that out loud.
He didn't invent it.
Three days earlier, Rupert Lowe published a crowdfunded report claiming 250,000 white girls had been raped by Muslim gangs.
The number was everywhere. GB News. X. The front pages.
Then a man took it into the street on the end of a blade.
He needed one breath to name who he hated.
Watch how long it took everyone else.
The BBC first wrote "Islamophobic attacks." Then changed it to "anti-Muslim." The right word, quietly swapped.
Sky News: "appearing to target Muslims."
LBC kept the word. The only outlet that did. The same station that dropped Sangita Myska in 2024 after she refused to soften.
Then the politicians.
Manchester synagogue, October. John Swinney, same day: "Antisemitism is an evil we must confront." He named the faith. He named the community. That was right.
Edinburgh, his own capital. Swinney: "deeply concerned" by "these incidents." Not Muslim. Not Islamophobia.
The Prime Minister, almost a day late: "appears to be motivated by anti-Muslim hatred."
The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, a Muslim woman, the minister whose department decides what this country calls terrorism. Golders Green: "a vile act of terrorism." Edinburgh: "appears."
Even her.
Still no COBRA. The threat level has not moved. And not one of them will name the attacker's faith.
When the man with the blade is one of us, his religion leads the headline before the ambulance arrives.
When he comes for us, he is a bare-chested man with a weapon.
We have watched this before.
Maysum Abdullah took a knife to the neck shielding his pupils. A hero in every paper. A Muslim in none of them.
Mohammed Algasim, a Saudi student, stabbed to death in the neck in Cambridge. His name barely printed.
And it is not slowing down. In a single week, three mosques were attacked and an imam's home was firebombed. Batley. Blackburn. Bolton. Barely a ripple.
A man knew exactly who he hated and said it in one sentence.
The press could not print it without editing it. The politicians could not say it without softening it. The state would not lift a finger to escalate it.
The whole country saw what it was. Almost no one in power would say the word.
Hands held over their mouths.
Tonight, five Muslim men are in an Edinburgh hospital.
They were victims.
They were Muslim.
They prayed, they fasted, they practised the religion of Islam.
And every word of that was stripped from the page.
If they won’t say it. We will.
ISLAMOPHOBIA.
Report: https://t.co/NTLpXVTNS2
Keep us alive: https://t.co/Z8H0Flg44Y
Substack: https://t.co/52Z6Nx1LTm
IG: @islamophobiauk
💔💔No parent should ever have to live this.
📢No human should ever have to describe it.
🔴 This is one of the most devastating moments at the UN in years.Palestine’s Permanent Representative Riyad Mansour breaks down in tears while speaking about Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, a Palestinian pediatrician who lost 9 of her 10 children in an Israeli airstrike on her home in Gaza.
Their burned bodies were brought to the hospital where she works as an emergency doctor.
Mansour, struggling to speak through tears:
“This is a horror and trauma that the mind cannot comprehend… the heart cannot bear.”
@AndrewChri62620@caitoz “The fact that this was written with some level of intellect is the scary part.”
Way to tell on yourself that you’re not smart enough to understand lmao
Some guy broke into my house and set up residence in the study room. He says his grandparents used to live in this house and now he won't leave.
My family and I tried to kick him out but he got very violent. He brings in his friends and they help beat us up if we ever try to make him leave.
They keep saying I hate the guy because of his religion. I don't even care about his religion, I just don't like sharing my house with some random outsider who broke in here out of nowhere and took my stuff.
"The poor guy just wants one room to call his own," his friends say in his defense. "You and your family have all the surrounding rooms in the house, and yet you have a problem with the guy having sovereignty over ONE room? That's kind of bigoted and evil."
He keeps throwing stuff at me and my family if we get too close to his door, saying we make him feel afraid. His friends say it's understandable because his room is surrounded by enemies who hate him just for existing, but we don't hate him for existing, we hate him because he forcibly inserted himself into our home and keeps throwing stuff at us.
And what's weird is whenever I explain my situation to normal people they completely understand where I'm coming from and agree the guy is being a dick, but if I talk to the police or the local paper they always side with the guy. Almost everyone in town hates this guy now because of how he's been acting, but everyone in power does everything they can to protect him. It's like there's a total disconnect between the authorities and the will of the public on this particular issue.
It's having a nastier and nastier effect on the community at large all across town. The police have been showing up to arrest anyone who says they think the guy's being an asshole. The paper keeps printing these obnoxious lies telling everyone that me and my family are the real criminals and the guy is actually sweet and awesome. It's really unfair.
Things have been so tense and hostile ever since this guy showed up. I honestly think it would be better if he'd never moved in here at all, but whenever I say that his friends claim I'm saying the guy should be exterminated and try to get me in trouble.
It's a real mess, man.
That guy sucks.
Very sad to learn that Mona Khalil died after weeks in the ICU following an Israeli strike that levelled her home in Mansouri. She was a very well-known environmental activist and dedicated her life to saving endangered turtles. She stayed in the south despite Israeli strikes because of her love for the land.
She was a civilian, a renowned figure but Israel targeted her house.
CNN profiled her in 2017 here: https://t.co/ZaMRnuS4zf
“I live every day to the fullest and don’t worry about tomorrow,” she told the newspaper.
I’m back in the Occupied West Bank, reporting live from the ground. Follow along here, on substack (link in bio), and IG (same handle). Lot of shit going down.
The Netherlands has completely banned conversion therapy and made the practice illegal.
People caught trying to pressure LGBTQIA+ individuals into changing who they are will get up to 2 years in jail or a $30,000+ fine.