I've mentioned many money-saving lodging strategies over the years in this newsletter, but I collected them all in one place in this blog post and it's likely there's at least one you haven't considered. I mention day passes, home exchanges, credit card hacking, and alternative apartment services, but here's an easy one to try for your next trip. When booking a hotel or apartment, stay somewhere near a metro stop well removed from the main tourist zone if you'll be in a popular city. The rates are almost significantly lower for the lodging, but by extension for restaurants and grocery stores too.

Nomadico co-founder Kevin Kelly has taken several tours with Young Pioneer Tours, whose motto is "leading group tours for people who hate group tours to destinations your mother would rather you stay away from," and at budget prices. They deliver all that, famously taking small tours to restricted places like North Korea, Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and to "Unrecognized Countries" mostly in Africa. They just started offering a new tour to Least Visited Countries, mostly Pacific island "countries" that are normally very hard or expensive to reach. While these tours may sound dangerous, they don't go where it is actually dangerous. Rather they are adventurous. See a North Korea story from the founder in Perceptive Travel.

I announced last summer that a big alliance was forming that would let Jet Blue and United loyalty members seamlessly access (and earn from) each others' flights and now it looks like they've got the systems connected. This gives you many more destinations options (plus JFK in NYC) if you're sitting on a lot of United miles and opens up the world if you've got JetBlue ones instead. Eventually you'll be able to book one ticket that includes both airlines too and they say that elite status recognition will be reciprocal eventually. See the details here.

Asia is a hugely popular continent for digital nomads, especially in the desirable countries with low living costs like Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Trying to stay on legally and work remotely has historically been tough, however, and as this article on recent changes points out, "Nomads spent money locally, governments avoided costly enforcement, and everyone looked the other way." While Thailand's DTV that's potentially good for five years is far and away the best on offer now, the other countries are scrambling to compete by finally making it attractive for non-retirees to stick around legally.

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World's Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

DAYTONA BEACH, FL - Progressive American Flat Track, sanctioned by AMA Pro Racing, is thrilled to announce a special Quarters for Kids Campaign that will fund $27,000 in bike learning programs through All Kids Bike. During the 2026 Progressive AFT Season, $0.25 from every race ticket will help fund new All Kids Bike Kindergarten PE Learn-to-Ride programs.

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit, All Kids Bike provides schools with everything they need to teach kids how to ride a bike - from balancing to pedaling - as part of their Kindergarten PE class. The comprehensive, ready-to-teach program is currently teaching over 180,000 students across the US how to ride this school year.

"As huge fans of Progressive American Flat Track racing, we truly believe that inspiring the next generation of racers starts by empowering children to ride at the youngest age possible," said All Kids Bike Executive Director Lisa Weyer. "The amazing part of this Quarters for Kids campaign is that it enables AFT fans to help fund the future of the sport. Even if you attend just one race this season, you'll help 3,000 Kindergarteners discover the confidence and joy of riding a bike."

Twenty-five cents from every ticket this season will help fund the $9,000 All Kids Bike Kindergarten PE Learn-to-Ride Program in three (3) new schools. Because each program remains in a school for 10 years, this single season can ultimately help approximately 3,000 children learn to ride a bike. If the program falls short of its $27,000 goal, a donation from Tim Estenson will offset the difference to ensure all programs are fully funded, proving that Progressive AFT racing teams truly believe in the power of the All Kids Bike Program.

Don't miss the start of the 2026 Progressive American Flat Track season. The series kicks off the year with the Royal Enfield Short Track at DAYTONA I & II at Daytona International Speedway on Thursday, March 5 and Friday, March 6. 

To purchase tickets to the Royal Enfield Short Track at DAYTONA I & II, visit: https://www.tixr.com/groups/americanflattrack.

Following the season opener, the series travels to Senoia Raceway for the Yamaha Atlanta Short Track on March 21. 

To purchase tickets for the Yamaha Atlanta Short Track, visit: https://www.tixr.com/groups/americanflattrack/events/2026-atlanta-short-track-165280.   

• About All Kids Bike

The All Kids Bike Kindergarten PE Learn-to-Ride Program launched in 2018 with a simple mission: to give every child in America the opportunity to learn how to ride a bike in school. The ready-to-teach program includes teacher training and certification, a complete 8-lesson curriculum with lesson plans, games and activities, a fleet of 24 Strider balance-to-pedal bikes, pedal conversion kits, fully adjustable student helmets, an instructor bike with pedal conversion kit and helmet, two rolling storage racks, and access to a resource portal with live support for the life of the program, everything needed to teach kids how to ride a bike! Supported by the Strider Education Foundation, All Kids Bike Kindergarten PE Learn-to-Ride Programs are active in over 1,800 schools across all 50 states, teaching more than 180,000 kids to ride each year and over 1 million kids throughout the 10-year lifespan of the programs already in place. For more information, please visit www.allkidsbike.org.

• About Quarters for Kids

Quarters for Kids is a simple, powerful fundraising initiative proving that small change can make a big difference. By allocating just $0.25 per ticket or registration, participating events can collectively generate significant funding to support multiple All Kids Bike programs, impacting hundreds of kindergarten students each year. Because each program remains in a school for up to 10 years, the long-term impact can extend to thousands of children learning to ride a bike, creating lasting benefits for students, schools, and communities - showing that every ticket truly makes a difference.

• About AMA Pro Racing

AMA Pro Racing is the premier professional motorcycle racing organization in North America, operating a full schedule of events and championships for a variety of motorcycle disciplines from its headquarters in Daytona Beach, Fla. Learn more at www.amaproracing.com.

• About Progressive American Flat Track

Progressive American Flat Track, sanctioned by AMA Pro Racing, is the world's premier dirt track motorcycle racing series and one of the longest‑running championships in the history of motorsports.

The post AFT & All Kids Bike Launch $27K Quarters for Kids Campaign appeared first on Roadracing World Magazine | Motorcycle Riding, Racing & Tech News.

This is the 1968 pilot for "Justice for All," starring Carroll O'Connor as Archie Justice and Jean Stapleton as his wife Edith. The show would eventually air three years later on CBS as "All in the Family."

In this 1968 version, Archie and Edith Justice are the same fully formed characters the actors would portray in 1971's "All in the Family," with the surname Bunker. — Read the rest

The post "Justice For All": The unsold 1968 pilot that became "All in the Family" appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Enjoy the flexibility of laptop and tablet with the ASUS Chromebook CM30, now just $149.99 (reg. $329.99).

If you're currently deciding between investing in a tablet or laptop, don't bother. The ASUS Chromebook CM30 (2024) is a practical solution that can do both, thanks to its detachable keyboard. — Read the rest

The post This 2-in-1 Chromebook is now just $150 appeared first on Boing Boing.

At the start of the month, Elon Musk announced that two of his companies — SpaceX and xAI  — were merging, and would jointly launch a constellation of 1 million satellites to operate as orbital data centers. Musk's reputation might suggest otherwise, but according to experts, such a plan isn't a complete fantasy. However, if executed at the scale suggested, some of them believe it would have devastating effects on the environment and the sustainability of low Earth Earth orbit.     

Musk and others argue that putting data centers in space is practical given how much more efficient solar panels are away from Earth's atmosphere. In space, there are no clouds or weather events to obscure the sun, and in the correct orbit, solar panels can collect sunlight through much of the day. In combination with declining rocket launch costs and the price of powering AI data centers on Earth, Musk has said that within three years space will be the cheapest way to generate AI compute power. 

Ahead of the billionaire's announcement, SpaceX filed an eight-page application with the Federal Communications Commission detailing his plan. The company hopes to deposit the satellites in this massive cluster in altitudes ranging between 500km and 2000km. They would communicate with one another and SpaceX's Starlink constellation using laser "optical links." Those Starlink satellites would then transmit inference requests to and from Earth. To power the entire effort, SpaceX has proposed putting the new constellation in sun-synchronous orbit, meaning the spacecraft would fly along the dividing line that separates the day and night sides of the planet. 

Almost immediately the plan was greeted with skepticism. How would SpaceX, for instance, cool millions of GPUs in space? At first glance, that might seem like a weird point to get hung up on — much of space being around -450 Fahrenheit — but the reality is more complicated. In the near vacuum of space, the only way to dissipate heat is to slowly radiate it out, and in direct sunlight, objects can easily overheat. As one commenter on Hacker News succinctly put it, "a satellite is, if nothing else, a fantastic thermos."

Scott Manley, who, before he created one of the most popular space-focused channels on YouTube, was a software engineer and studied computational physics and astronomy, argues SpaceX has already solved that problem at a smaller scale with Starlink. He points to the company's latest V3 model, which has about 30 square meters of solar panels. "They have a bunch of electronics in the middle, which are taking that power and doing stuff with it. Now, some of that power is being beamed away as radio waves, but there's a lot of thermal power that's being generated and then having to be dissipated. So they already have a platform that's running electronics off of power, and so it's not a massive leap to turn into something doing compute."

The larger V3 @Starlink satellites that will deploy from Starship will bring gigabit connectivity to users and are designed to add 60 Tera-bits-per-second of downlink capacity to the Starlink network.

That's more than 20 times the capacity added with every V2 Mini launch on… pic.twitter.com/N0Vl9psbm3

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 13, 2025

Kevin Hicks, a former NASA systems engineer who worked on the Curiosity rover mission, is more skeptical. "Satellites with the primary goal of processing large amounts of compute requests would generate more heat than pretty much any other type of satellite," he said. "Cooling them is another aspect of the design which is theoretically possible but would require a ton of extra work and complexity, and I have doubts about the durability of such a cooling system."  

What about radiation then? There's a reason NASA relies on ancient hardware like the PowerPC 750 CPU found inside the Perseverance rover: Older chips feature larger transistors, making them more resilient to bit flips — errors in processing caused most often by cosmic radiation — that might scramble a computation. "Binary ones and zeroes are about the presence or absence of electrons, and the amount of charge required to represent a 'one' goes down as the transistors get smaller and smaller," explains Benjamin Lee, professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania. Space is full of energized particles traveling at incredible velocities, and the latest GPUs are built on the smallest, most advanced processing nodes to create transistor-dense silicon. Not a great combination.

"My concern about radiation is that we don't know how many bit flips will occur when you deploy the most advanced chips and hundreds of gigabytes of memory up there," said Professor Lee, pointing to preliminary research by Google on the subject. As part of Project Suncatcher, its own effort to explore the viability of space-based data centers, the company put one of its Trillium TPUs in front of a proton beam to bombard it with radiation. It found the silicon was "surprisingly radiation-hard for space applications." 

While those results were promising, Professor Lee points out we just don't know how resilient GPUs are to radiation at this scale. "Even though modern computer architectures can detect and sometimes correct for those errors, having to do that again and again will slow down or add overhead to space-based computation," he said.   

Space engineer Andrew McCalip, who's done a deep dive on the economics of orbital data centers, is more optimistic, pointing to the natural resilience of AI models. "They don't require 100 percent perfect error-free runs. They're inherently very noisy, very stochastic," he explains, adding that part of the training for modern AI systems involves "injecting random noise into different layers."   

Even if SpaceX could harden its GPUs against radiation, the company would still lose satellites to GPUs that break down. If you know anything about data centers here on Earth, it's that they require constant maintenance. Components like SSDs and GPUs die all the time. Musk has claimed SpaceX's AI satellites would require "little" in the way of operating or maintenance costs. That's only true if you accept the narrowest possible interpretation of what maintaining a fleet of AI satellites would entail.

"I think that there's no case in which repair makes sense. It's a fly till you die scenario," says McCalip. From an economic perspective, McCalip argues the projected death rate of GPUs in space represents "one of the biggest uncertainties" of the orbital data center model. McCalip's put that number at nine percent on the basis of a study Meta published following the release of its Llama 3 model (which, incidentally, measured hardware failures on Earth.) But the reality is no one knows what the attrition rate of those chips will be until they're in space. 

Orbital data centers also likely wouldn't be a direct replacement for their terrestrial counterparts. SpaceX's application specifically mentions inference as the primary use case for its new constellation. Inference is the practical side of running an AI system. It sees a model apply its learning to data it hasn't seen before, like a prompt you write in ChatGPT, to make predictions and generate content. In other words, AI models would still need to be trained on Earth, and it's not clear that the process could be offloaded to a constellation of satellites. "My initial thinking is that computations that require a lot of coordination, like AI training, may end up being tricky to get right at scale up there," says Professor Lee.     

In 1978, a pair of NASA scientists proposed a scenario where low Earth orbit could become so dense with space junk that collisions between those objects would begin to cascade. That scenario is known as Kessler syndrome. 

One estimate from satellite tracking website Orbiting Now puts the number of objects in orbit around the planet at approximately 15,600. Another estimate from NASA suggests there are 45,000 human-made objects orbiting Earth. No matter the number, what's currently in space represents a fraction of the 1 million additional satellites Musk wants to launch.  

According to Aaron Boley, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of British Columbia and co-director of the Outer Space Institute, forward-looking modeling of Earth's orbit above 700 kilometers — where part of SpaceX's proposed cluster would live — suggests that area of space is already showing signs of Kessler syndrome. 

While it takes less time for debris to clear in low Earth orbit, Professor Boley says there's already enough material in that region of space where there could be a cascading effect from a major collision. Debris could, in a worst case scenario, take a decade to clear up. In turn, that could lead to disruptions in global communications, climate monitoring missions and more.     

"You could get to the point where you're just launching material in, and you could ask yourself how many satellites can I afford to lose? Can you reconstitute your constellation faster than you're losing parts of it because of debris?" says Boley. "That's a horrible future in terms of the environmental perspective" In particular, it would limit opportunities for humans to fly into low Earth orbit. "Could you operate in it? Yeah, but it would come with higher and higher costs," adds Boley. 

"The entire world is struggling with the problem of how we safely fly multiple mega constellations," says Richard DalBello, who previously ran the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) at the US Department of Commerce. Right now, there is no common global space situational awareness (SSA) system, and government and satellite operators are using uncoordinated national and commercial systems that are likely producing different results. At the start of the year, SpaceX lowered the orbit of thousands of Starlink satellites after one of them nearly collided with a Chinese satellite. 

SpaceX has its own in-house SSA system called Stargaze, which it uses to fly its more than 7,000 Starlink satellites. According to DalBello, competing operators can receive SSA data from SpaceX, but to do so they must share their satellite position information. "Assuming data sharing, it is likely Stargaze can make an important contribution to spaceflight safety" says DalBello. "SpaceX is likely to have success with US and other commercial operators, but without the assistance of the federal government, other governments — particularly China — will likely be unwilling to share their satellite and SSA data." 

According to DalBello, the Biden administration was unable to make meaningful progress on the next-generation TraCSS system, in part because Congress was initially reluctant to fund the program. Meanwhile, the current Trump administration hasn't shown interest in advancing the work that began during the president's first term.  

Even if the regulatory situation suddenly changes and the world's governments agree on an international SSA system, SpaceX launching 1 million satellites along the day-night terminator would see the company effectively monopolize one of the Earth's most valuable and important orbits. Professor Boley argues we should view our planet's orbits as a resource that belongs to everyone. "Every time you put a satellite up, you use part of that resource. Now someone else can't use it." 

And as Hicks points out, even a single cascade of colliding satellites would prevent that space from being used for scientific endeavors. "You would have to wait years for that debris to slowly come back into the atmosphere and burn up. In the meantime, that debris is taking up space that could be used for climate monitoring missions or any other types of missions that governments want to launch."   

Separately, the constant churn of Starship launches and re-entry of dead satellites would have a potentially dire impact on our planet's atmosphere. "We're not prepared for it," Boley flatly says of the latter. "We're not prepared for what's happening now, and what's happening now is already potentially bad." 

According to Musk's "basic math," SpaceX could add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually by launching a million tons of satellite per year. McCalip estimates a 100-gigawatt buildout alone would necessitate about 25,000 Starship flights.  

Many of the metals found in satellites, including aluminum, magnesium and lithium, in combination with the exhaust rockets release into the atmosphere, can have complicated effects on the health of the planet. For instance, they can affect polar cloud formations, which in turn can facilitate ozone layer destruction through the chemical reactions that occur on their surfaces. According to Boley, the problem is we just don't know how severe those environmental factors could become at the scale Musk has proposed, and SpaceX has provided us with precious few details on its mitigation plans. All it has said is that its plan would "achieve transformative cost and energy efficiency while significantly reducing the environmental impact associated with terrestrial data centers."   

Even if SpaceX could and does go out its way to mitigate the atmospheric effects of constant rocket flights, those spacecraft still need to be manufactured here on Earth. At one of his previous roles, Hicks studied rocket emissions and found the supply chains needed to build them produce an "order of magnitude" more carbon emissions than the rockets themselves.   

SpaceX plans to fly its new satellites in a sun-synchronous orbit, meaning for much of the year, they'll be sunlit. Each new Starlink generation has been larger and heavier than the one before it, with SpaceX stating in a recent filing that its upcoming V3 model could weigh up to 2,000 kilograms, up from the 575 kilograms of the V2 Mini Optimized. While we don't know the exact dimensions of the company's still-hypothetical AI satellites, they will almost certainly be bigger than their Starlink counterparts. 

SpaceX has done more than most space operators to reduce the brightness of its satellites, but Professor Boley says he expects that this new constellation will be "strikingly bright" when moving through the night sky. In aggregate, he estimates they will almost certainly be harmful to scientific research here on Earth, limiting what terrestrial observatories can see.  

"You're going to see them with the naked eye. You're going to see them with cameras. It's going to be like living near an airport where you see all these things flying over just after sunset and the next couple of hours after sunset," says Manley. "I don't know if I want to have my entire sunset be just a band of satellites constantly shooting overhead."

There are good reasons to make some spacecraft capable of doing AI inference. For instance, Professor Lee suggests it would make orbital imaging satellites more useful, as those spacecraft could do on-site analysis, instead of sending high-resolution files over long distances, saving time in the process. But the dose, as they say, makes the poison.

"There's a lot of excitement about the many possibilities that can be brought to society and humanity through continued access to space, but the promise of prosperity is not permission to be reckless," he says. "At this moment, we're allowing that excitement to overtake that more measured progression [...] those impacts don't just impact outer space but Earth as well." 

The office of the Attorney General for West Virginia announced Thursday that it has filed a lawsuit against Apple alleging that the company had "knowingly" allowed its iCloud platform "to be used as a vehicle for distributing and storing child sexual abuse material." The state alleges this went on for years but drew no action from the tech giant "under the guise of user privacy."

In the lawsuit, the state repeatedly cites a text from Apple executive Eric Friedman, in which he calls iCloud "the greatest platform for distributing child porn" in a conversation with another Apple executive. These messages were first uncovered by The Verge in 2021 within discovery documents for the Epic Games v. Apple trial. In the conversation, Friedman says while some other platforms prioritize safety over privacy, Apple's priorities "are the inverse."

The state further alleges that detection technology to help root out and report CSAM exists, but that Apple chooses not to implement it. Apple indeed considered scanning iCloud Photos for CSAM in 2021, but abandoned these plans after pushback stemming from privacy concerns.

In 2024 Apple was sued by a group of over 2,500 victims of child sexual abuse, citing nearly identical claims and alleging that Apple's failure to implement these features led to the victims' harm as images of them circulated through the company's servers. At the time Apple told Engadget, "child sexual abuse material is abhorrent and we are committed to fighting the ways predators put children at risk. We are urgently and actively innovating to combat these crimes without compromising the security and privacy of all our users."

The case in West Virginia would mark the first time a governmental body is bringing such an action against the iPhone maker. The state says it is seeking injunctive relief that would compel Apple to implement effective CSAM detection measures as well as damages. We have reached out to Apple for comment on the suit and will update if we hear back.

Bobby Campbell has posted a new comic, and reports that he will be soon collecting his completion of a long series as one big graphic novel. Here's the report in the latest newsletter:

"Never mind the B.S., here's a new comic!

"Agnosis! #3 Ep. 1 - "BEFORE THE LAW"

"Agnosis! #3 is the fifth and final installment of my OKEY-DOKEY comic book series, nearly 23 years in the making, and soon to be finished and collected in one handsome volume :))) I'll be irregularly serializing the final issue as I go.

"If you need to get caught up on what came before, the entire series has been spiffed up and made more user friendly than ever before!

"https://weirdcomix.com/OKEY-DOKEY/

"OKEY-DOKEY is the forthcoming meta-modern graphic novel by Bobby Campbell, Marcelino Balao III, and Todd Purse. Featuring two intertwined comic book adventures, Agnosis! & BUDDHAFART, which weave together to form the Dream@wake_Sutra, a Discordian Hypersigil that tells the tale of the tribe as a SUN PLAY OF THE AGES in five Acts :)))"

2026 is set to be a sensational season in WorldSBK, so find out where and how you can watch it throughout the year

Opinion Palantir CEO Alex Karp has a singular mission to stand out among tech CEOs. Big talk on sales, profits, and tech potential is not enough. His gift for edgy one-liners takes him to places where execs of the past would have scarcely dared to go. Say hello to allusions to goose-stepping and innate Western superiority that we assume have audiences rolling in the aisles.…

Just when you thought Keir Starmer couldn't get any lower, he's now using the death of his brother as a justification for cutting benefits.

Writing exclusively for the Daily Mirror, Starmer shares that the "system failed" his brother. Starmer says that Nick, who died on Boxing Day 2024:

had difficulties learning when he was growing up. He spent much of his life drifting from job to job in real hardship.

The system didn't work for him. There are millions in the same boat. Held back by a system that doesn't work for them.

So you'd think, with this in mind, that Starmer would be pledging to do more for disabled people who struggle to keep a job or can't work at all.

Instead, he pushes out a fluff piece totalling just 364 words that. Like most things that come out of Starmer's mouth, it has absolutely no substance.

There's also the fact that the Mirror gave the Prime Minister the space to publish this absolutely nothing article, just bigging himself up, when for the past week he's been clinging onto Number 10 by his nails. It's a highly suspect move for a supposedly working-class paper.

Despite his brother being a disabled man who, apparently, lived in poverty, Starmer's little PR piece doesn't mention disabled poor people at all.

Obviously, he has time to swipe at Reform, even though the Labour-run DWP is already implementing nearly all the things Reform proposed for benefits in their economic plan.

He also found space to brag about lifting the two-child cap, which he and ministers could've lifted a year and a half ago but instead chose party politics.

However, as the Canary has previously reported, lifting the two-child cap can't be all the government does. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that if the government only relies on the child cap lifting and does little else, poverty will only fall by 1% by 2029.

It's a bit rich that the prime minister is using his dead, poor disabled brother to gain support at a time when Labour threatens to leave millions more in the same position. Under Starmer's Labour, the DWP plan to half Universal Credit "health" element for new claimants.

There are also longterm plans to move it over to PIP, despite the fact that PIP has nothing to do with being unemployed.

The government is also hell-bent on getting disabled people back into work, whether or not they actually can. And whilst they're doing that, they're gutting support for disabled people in work.

So it's absolutely vile that Starmer is using his brother's death to rehabilitate himself, whilst if he weren't related to him, he'd sooner spit on him than help him.

But that's what I can't get my head around, because it makes no sense that his brother did die in "virtual poverty". Starmer's a millionaire for fucks sakes. Nick died at the end of 2024, but in the tax year leading up to April 2024 alone, Starmer made £152,225.

I know family can be stubborn and proud, but something isn't adding up here. I'm not doubting that Starmer is grieving for his loved one, but if this is true, Starmer's basically admitting he let his brother die poor.

But that says it all about the way Labour and Starmer see disabled people. Why should disabled people expect real, life-changing support, when they obviously just aren't trying hard enough with the bare minimum. In Starmer's world even his own family don't deserve to live if they can't jump through every hoop the DWP throws at them.

Featured image via the Canary

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

Amid the furore over the soon-upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election, you'll probably have noticed mentions of the fact that the constituency was only created in 2023.

With this electoral boundary redraw came the fourth highest index of change — i.e. upheaval in voting makeup — in the entire northwest.

This article provides a brief overview of the ways in which that electoral makeup has (been) changed in Gorton and Denton. Beyond that, it's also a reminder that our democracy is never as simple as 'one individual, one vote'. Where that vote comes from carries enormous weight — and that 'where' is always a fluid quantity.

The Parliamentary Constituency for England redrew the electoral boundaries in 2023, including those of Gorton and Denton.

The new constituency was first contested in the 2024 general elections, with Labour's Andrew Gwynne taking the seat. Gwynne took a comfortable 18,000 votes, that's 13,000 ahead of both Reform and the Greens.

Before that point, the area included portions of the former Manchester Gorton and Denton & Reddish seats. Oh, and Burnage Ward — previously of Manchester Withington — thrown in to boot.

The constituency is now made up of two distinct lobes, connected in the middle by Reddish Bridge. The westward half, nearest Manchester itself, includes Gorton, Belle Vue, Levenshulme, and Burnage. Meanwhile, the eastward Tameside portion comprises Denton and Haughton Green.

There's also an unequal split between the number of voters in Gorton and Denton respectively. In 2024, the Manchester wards boasted 55,000 registered electors to the Tameside's 26,000.

As such, roughly two in every three voters in the constituency fall on the more urban-liberal Manchester side. Of these, 42% of voters have a university background, 42% are white, and 40% are Muslim.

Meanwhile, the Tameside section has a far higher white and UK-born population, at 83% and 86% respectively. A further 30% of the Tameside voters hold typically working-class semi/routine jobs, far higher than the national 23.5% average. 

As such, we might expect the Denton populace to be more open to Reform's populist anti-migrant messaging. By contrast, Gorton may see more of a shift to the Greens. This is especially true given that the Workers Party of Britain and Your Party - otherwise potential pulls for the Muslim vote - have stood down.

For what it's worth, the electoral history of Gorton and Denton's tributary constituencies is about as red as they come. However, given the collapse in support for Labour under Starmer, that doesn't necessarily mean a great deal.

Manchester Gorton, for its part, has remained stoically Labour-led from 1935 to its abolition in 2024. The Lib Dems managed to grab a third of the vote in 2005 and 2010, campaigning against the Iraq war, but fell off again in 2015.

Meanwhile, Denton and Reddish was itself created in 1983. Whilst it has also remained a Labour safe-seat since its inception, the Parliamentary Labour Party has typically enjoyed a much smaller margin of the vote. It has consistently averaged just above 50% of the share, rising above 60% in just three elections.

By contrast, UKIP took took third place in 2015, with 18.7%, and the Greens never made it over 4%.

Finally, Bunrage ward voters previously belonging to Manchester Withington make up around 16% of what is now Gorton and Denton. In stark contrast to much of the Northwest, Withington once tended weakly Conservative.

After swinging more strongly to Labour in the 1980s, Withington then flipped Lib Dem. Again, at the time, a large number of Muslim voters turned their backs on Labour due to Blair's warmongering in Iraq.

The fact that it's anti-war sentiment among the Muslim electorate that has previously threatened Labour's hold on the Gorton and Denton area is significant. Labour has once again haemorrhaged support among Muslims in recent years due to its enthusiastic support of Israel's genocide of Palestinians.

As such, and quite unsurprisingly, campaign group The Muslim Vote has now thrown its weight behind the Greens in Gorton and Denton, stating:

Muslim voters, alongside many others in the constituency, will play a decisive role in this by-election. This moment must result in the defeat of both Labour and Reform through unity behind a single, credible candidate.

On this occasion, we believe the Green Party offers the strongest opportunity to win, and we urge them to work swiftly with local communities, while calling on all other progressive and independent alternatives to stand aside to give the best chance of delivering a clear break from politics as usual and putting the community first.

With the two halves of Gorton and Denton breaking down into more uni-educated urbanites and strong Muslim representation in one half, and a higher proportion of the white working class in the other, the by-election could prove a study in the shifting allegiances of the groups Labour previously took for granted.

As such, what would once have been a Labour by-election shoe-in is proving a testing ground for the UK's polarised politics — and a more multi-party system as a whole.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alex/Rose Cocker

Tunisian filmmaker of The Voice Of Hind Rajab, Kaouther Ben Hania, has refused to accept an award from Berlin's so-called 'Peace Gala' over its 'perfuming' of Israel's genocide. Ben Hania's film won the award for "Most Valuable Film" at the 'Cinema for Peace' festival on 16 February.

The ceremony's organisers invited warmongering former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and gave an award to former Israeli general Noam Tibon. Tibon is an advocate of military expansion in his "beloved state of Israel" and oversaw murders of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Ben Hania gave a speech after her award was announced, but said she was not taking the trophy because the event was providing "political cover" for genocide and acting as a "perfume sprayed over violence so power can feel refined", "denigrating protesters" and "reframing mass civilian killing as self-defence":

She continued:

The Israeli army killed Hind Rajab; killed her family; killed the two paramedics who came to save her, with the complicity of the world's most powerful governments and institutions…I refuse to let their deaths become a backdrop for a polite speech about peace.

Hania said she would accept the award for The Voice of Hind Rajab "with joy" only when peace is "rooted in accountability for genocide."

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

The Green Party in south-west Wales has been in touch to voice its continuing opposition to the DARC radar project. The installation would use the same site that campaigners originally defended successfully in the 1990s. Back then the group of locals took the name Pembrokeshire Against the Radar Campaign. Now a lively and interactive website declares:

Well now for the great news. PARC is back, baby. We're here with a new generation, a new purpose, and a fight we are ready to win.

Under the name PARC Against DARC, the group has the backing of Plaid Cymru as well as the Greens and some members of the Liberal Democrats and Labour and an array of pressure groups. However, it remains strictly non-partisan.

To a lot of people it appears that the world has reached a point where lots of things need fixing. The Green Party has always advocated co-operation and diplomacy over fighting.

It is therefore angry at plans by the US to build 27 giant radar dishes on Pembrokeshire's St David's Peninsula. The sole aim of this development is for the US to have total control over space.

Amy Nicholass, Ceredigion Penfro number one candidate for the Senedd Elections, is in outright opposition to this development. She says:

The DARC proposals are a disgrace. It benefits no one except the government of the US. When the US tells us to jump, the Westminster government simply asks how high.

We need to put all our efforts into creating lasting peace, not allowing anyone to recreate Cold War tactics where none of us feel safe.

Peace is at the heart of Welsh culture. The US and Westminster should come and learn from us.

There are other, more immediate dangers associated with DARC, the purpose of which is to track and destroy enemy satellites. Should any of these satellites be destroyed, it will leave behind a lot of space debris. That can make it more dangerous for other satellites, such as for weather forecasting or telecommunications, to continue their orbits.

It is vitally important that local people have a say on matters such as this large development. A local campaign group called PARC Against DARC is very concerned about the effect it would have on the tourism industry in Pembrokeshire.

These campaigners describe St David's Peninsula as a:

true jewel-in-the-crown natural wonder and headline Welsh tourism industry attraction.

Nicholass agrees. She argues for more local power to determine large planning considerations. Nicholass also says:

We in the Green Party understand how precarious the world feels to a lot of people. We can feel grateful to live in a part of the world that is peaceful but this plan brings world disorder very close to us.

We all share this one planet and we need to be part of the conversation on how to stand up for each other in a peaceful way.

Featured image (artist's impression) via PARC Against DARC

By The Canary

If former royal, and mate of serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was hoping for any public sympathy after his arrest this morning - on his birthday - he's going to be sorely disappointed.

The family of Virginia Giuffre, Andrew's most well-known victim, welcomed the arrest as a sign that no one is above the law:

At last, today, our broken hearts have been lifted at the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty," Giuffre's family said in the statement given to CBS News.

However, Windsor was arrested on suspicion of 'misconduct in a public office'. Knowing the British state, this was more likely linked to his leaking of secrets to Epstein than his abuse of trafficked and potentially under-age girls. But the offence carries a potential life sentence, so there's that.

If sympathy is in short supply, mockery isn't - and many were wishing Andy a delighted "happy birthday" - while also pointing out the vileness of him being arrested for passing info to the rapist instead of for his crimes against the victims:

Happy 66th birthday, Andrew.

Trafficking and sexual abuse allegations against Andrew — no arrest.

Alleged misconduct in public office? Arrest.

No wonder women don't trust the police. pic.twitter.com/rUFSRLAmie

— Dr Charlotte Proudman (@DrProudman) February 19, 2026

Happy Birthday Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor pic.twitter.com/9R1Ixm0kIb

— Manxy (@Manxy) February 19, 2026

Happy Birthday Andrew you crock of shit!

Cybersecurity researchers say they've spotted the first Android malware strain that uses generative AI to improve performance once installed. But it may be only a proof of concept.…

*Pivot to AI

Viridi recently announced one of its battery energy storage systems has replaced a diesel backup generator at a wastewater facility in New York State. When we write about battery storage on this site, sometimes it is paired with solar power to store excess clean electricity. Energy storage has other applications, ... [continued]

The post Battery Storage System Replaces Wastewater Facility Diesel Generator appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The US firm Syntropic has launched three new sodium-ion battery products into the energy storage marketplace, for residential, commercial, industrial, and utility-scale use.

The post A US Sodium-Ion Battery Maker Challenges Powerwall For Home Energy Storage, And More appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Hello all, firstly I recognise this post comes from a position of privilege as I have sufficient money to meet my basic needs and some left over to save/invest.

I have had no success in financial forums trying to get people to think about the fact the financial system cannot continue. Everyone seems to believe it will continue forever.

The usual mainstream financial advice is to spend less than you earn and then invest in low-cost index funds through ups and downs in the markets, and eventually you will end up with enough money to live on for the rest of your life. But for those of us who know that most systems are on a general trajectory downwards, how do we balance the need to have money to function in the (messed up) system we have today, with the knowledge that it will all fall apart at some point?

More specifically, does anyone monitor data points that might be more 'collapse-sensitive' than the usual market data? Are there people in academia/economics/financial services who are thinking about how best a person/family can structure their finances as we await the inevitable and perhaps sudden changes in the international financial system? I am already doing what I can in terms of skills, growing food, building community, not being in debt etc. I am not in the US.

Last year's Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition was significant for a few reasons. It was the final major first-party Switch game ahead of the Switch 2's arrival in June, and the last doomed Wii U game to be granted a second life on Nintendo's infinitely more successful console. Nearly a year on, a Switch 2 update for one of the most technically impressive games Nintendo has ever published has finally arrived.

Somewhat hilariously titled Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition (you get the feeling Nintendo has started a naming convention it may come to regret here), the updated version of Monolith Soft's sprawling sci-fi RPG now supports up to 60fps performance and 4K resolution when docked to a TV.

The sprawling alien world of planet Mira, now enhanced on #NintendoSwitch2 with improved frame rates and up to 4K resolution in TV mode!

Join the fight for survival in #XenobladeChroniclesX: Definitive Edition - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, available now! pic.twitter.com/raA1XhIimC

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 19, 2026

As impressive as the Switch remake of the 2015 Wii U game was, given the frankly absurd size of its open-world setting, you could almost feel the hardware creaking under its weight every time you booted the game up, so this patch was much-needed. Unfortunately the graphical and performance enhancements aren't free for anyone who already owns the Switch version of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition. A $5 upgrade pack is available on the eShop, and the Switch 2 game costs $65 on its own. A physical version is also arriving on April 16.

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition (again, won't someone please think of us writers) was the last of a number of Xenoblade Chronicles games to make its way to Switch. It's a bit different to the other entries in the series, with its hard sci-fi story, emphasis on side quests and completely seamless open world to explore. Also, stick with the game long enough and you can eventually fly around the entire planet of Mira in a giant mech, which is as fun as it sounds.

Like the other games in the series, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a standalone experience, so don't worry about jumping in if you've never played one before. The series' signature MMO-like hybrid real-time combat system takes a bit of getting used to, but it's part of what makes these games stand out from other RPG series.

The other Xenoblade games in the Switch library, which are Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, are yet to receive Switch 2 updates, but hopefully they'll arrive eventually too.

Google's announcement that its Gemini app now writes music for you isn't just one of those "blowing my mind" product updates. It feels like a symbolic surrender to a long-standing refrain from Big Tech: creative work is now just another checkbox for a machine.  If you don't know what I am talking about, yesterday Google […]

This report belongs to a weekly series summarising the Covid situation across the UK's home nations and other countries.

Thanks for reading Seeing The Forest for the Trees! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This week's report covers the latest weekly indicators of respiratory illness activity for England, along with the most recent data for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The report also presents the data on Covid levels in selected countries in Europe and North America.

USA charts will be updated on Friday, February 20 to reflect the latest available data.

Once again the main Covid indicators in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland stayed low, indicating a low level of risk.

Flu activity levels continued to fall across all home nations, indicating that this year's Flu season is over.

In England, all main indicators of Covid activity remained well within the baseline activity level. Flu and RSV activity has also fallen and is circulating at low activity levels.

In Scotland, all indicators for Covid remained stable and at low levels. Positivity rates and hospital admissions for Flu and RSV have fallen significantly from the recent peak and are also at low levels.

In the past week, Covid hospital admissions in Wales stayed at low levels. Flu admissions continued to fall this week and are now at low activity levels.

In Northern Ireland, Covid activity increased slightly across most surveillance indicators but remained at low levels. Flu and RSV activity has fallen across all indicators.

Covid levels in wastewater remained low in most European countries that still report this data.

Covid activity in the USA for week ending February 7 remained stable this week and at a moderate level of activity nationwide, though there are significant variations from state to state. Flu activity continued to fall, but is still high in a few states.

The NHS Spring 2026 Covid booster campaign is set to run from April 13 to June 30, 2026 and will use the same eligibility criteria as the Autumn 2025 campaign.

As always, it's important to remember that the risk of hospitalisation from Covid increases significantly with age and for the clinically vulnerable. Therefore, it is important to take appropriate measures such as self-isolating when experiencing Covid symptoms and enhancing ventilation or wearing masks whenever possible.

This section starts with the latest data on test positivity rates for Covid in England. It's important to note that positivity is different from prevalence, which reflects the overall percentage of Covid cases in the general population. Appendix 1 offers a more detailed explanation of the distinction.

The following chart shows the test positivity rate for all Covid tests taken mapped against the UKHSA activity thresholds. The thresholds are based on the historical trend for Covid test positivity and, consequently, represent a relative risk. More details on this approach can be found in the Guide to Covid Surveillance Metrics.

The chart shows that the test positivity rate remained stable this week and continues to be well below the baseline level, indicating a low risk. Positivity rates remained low in all regions, with only slight differences between them.

The next chart highlights four key indicators of Covid in hospitals: weekly Emergency Department visits for Covid-like symptoms, test positivity rates among patients with respiratory issues, hospital admission rates, and admission rates for intensive care.

All key hospital indicators for Covid activity remain at historically low levels indicating a low level of risk.

The following chart shows hospital admission rates per 100,000 for the three main respiratory viruses. Covid admissions are at historic lows, while Flu and RSV cases have peaked and are at low activity levels. Both remain slightly higher than Covid, suggesting they currently pose a bit more of a risk.

While hospital admissions have fallen significantly, they still differ by age. Below are the hospital admission rates per 100,000 people by age group for Covid, Flu, and RSV for the week ending February 15, 2026.

The chart shows that the risk of hospitalisation remains highest among the very youngest age group and the elderly for both Flu and RSV. While current hospital admissions for Covid are slightly lower, the elderly remain more likely to be hospitalised.

Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) positivity rates also fell and are now just within the low level of activity.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) continue to publish weekly data on Covid hospital admissions and test positivity as well as wastewater monitoring data. The latest Viral respiratory diseases in Scotland surveillance report can be accessed here.

The following panel chart presents the most recent data for Covid levels in wastewater in blue, weekly Covid test positivity shown in red, Covid hospital admissions depicted in orange, and beds occupied by Covid patients in brown.

Once again, all Covid indicators in Scotland stayed low this week, suggesting the risk from the virus remains low.

The final chart in this section compares the test positivity rates for hospital patients with respiratory symptoms for Covid, Flu, and RSV. Flu positivity rates have continued to fall to baseline levels and are now lower than for Covid.

This week, Covid test positivity fell from 4.2 to 3.7% and activity remained at baseline levels overall. Activity is higher in those aged 1-14 compared to other age groups, although there are indications that these are decreasing. Hospitalisations have increased slightly in recent weeks with just over a half of Covid admissions being in children aged 0-14 yrs.

Laboratory-confirmed Flu cases remained at baseline activity , with test positivity remaining stable or decreasing in all age groups. Hospital admissions decreased, with individuals aged 75 years continuing to account for the highest proportion at 36.2%.

RSV cases and test positivity continued to fall and remained at a low activity level overall. Hospital admissions also decreased from 118 to 79, with the highest proportion reported in the over 75 age group (25.3%).

During the winter season, Public Health Wales publishes a weekly respiratory infection report, which is available here. The following chart provides the latest trend for weekly hospital admissions for the main respiratory viruses in Wales up to week ending February 15, 2026.

Covid hospital admissions have stayed fairly steady over the past few months and remain low. Flu cases needing hospitalisation continue to fall and are now lower than for Covid. RSV admissions also fell and are approaching low levels.

This weeks Weekly Acute Respiratory Infection Report shows that Flu activity has returned to low levels. Confirmed case numbers have decreased in the current week, as has test positivity.

In addition, GP consultations for influenza-like illness remained stable and are well below the 'low intensity' threshold. Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) activity is decreasing overall and is now at low intensity levels. Covid case numbers have remained broadly stable in recent weeks.

Public Health Northern Ireland publish a weekly surveillance report on influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and Covid providing an overview of these infections within Northern Ireland.

Covid activity increased across the majority of surveillance indicators but activity levels remain at low levels. Flu activity also has fallen across all surveillance indicators and is now at baseline levels. RSV activity fell across the majority of indicators and is now circulating at low levels.

The following chart shows the test positivity rates in Northern Ireland for the main respiratory illnesses — Flu, RSV, and Covid and RSV. Shading represents 95% confidence intervals.

The chart shows that the Covid test positivity rate for patients with respiratory illnesses, marked in blue, again increased slightly this week but stayed relatively low. Covid activity also increased across the majority of all other surveillance indicators but remains low.

Flu test positivity, shown in green, has continued to fall along with all other surveillance indicators indicating that the winter Flu wave is over.

This section looks at the latest data on Covid activity in Europe and North America. Covid levels have fallen in most countries across these regions and remain lower than those observed during earlier waves.

The following chart shows latest levels of Covid up to week ending February 12, 2026 as measured by monitoring wastewater in a number of European countries that still publish this information.

This week, Covid levels in wastewater remained low in most European countries that still share this data, with only France showing a slight increase. Note that no update was provided for Sweden this week.

The next release of data for the USA is on Friday, February 20 when this section will be updated to provide the latest information.

As of week ending February 7, 2026 Covid activity in the USA remained stable, though the situation varies across different parts of the country.

The following chart shows the weekly trend for the national key Covid indicators covering wastewater activity levels, percent of emergency department visits due to Covid, test positivity, and the hospital admission rate in the USA.

The panel chart shows Covid levels in wastewater remained stable and are at moderate activity for the week ending February 7, 2026. Emergency department visits and hospital admissions fell slightly, while Covid test positivity remained broadly unchanged.

Wastewater analysis shows that Covid levels are highest Mid West and Northeast states, while staying relatively low in the South and West regions, as illustrated in the following map. Each state is coloured based on activity levels, ranging from very high (dark red) to very low (light green), with grey indicating no data available. States with increasing activity levels are marked with cross-hatching.

The interactive map lets you hover over any state using your cursor to see more details about wastewater viral activity levels. It shows data from states nationwide for the week ending February 7, 2026.

The next chart compares the percentage of Emergency Department visits caused by Covid and Flu. It indicates that while activity for Covid is moderate, Flu activity has has continued to fall and is now at a low level nationally.

However, Flu activity varies across states, with cases increasing in 21 and decreasing in 27. While most states are experiencing moderate or low activity levels, six are still facing high or very high activity, as shown on the interactive map.

Finally, the latest data from Canada, up to February 7, 2026, shows that Covid wastewater levels are holding steady at moderate levels, flu activity has dropped to low, while RSV activity remained broadly stable.

Although the amount of data currently being published is reduced, the information available for all home nations show that Covid activity is relatively low. Flu activity had fallen from its recent peak and is now at very low levels.

Covid levels in wastewater are low across European countries In the USA, Covid activity also fell slightly but remains at high levels in a some states. Flu activity in both the USA and Canada is falling to low levels

As always, if you have any comments on this Covid Situation Report or suggestions for topics to cover, please post a message below.

Thanks for reading Seeing The Forest for the Trees! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Positivity rates are derived from the results of hospital laboratory tests conducted on patients exhibiting symptoms of respiratory diseases. Test positivity is the percentage of patients who test positive for Covid of the total number of patients tested. Since the individuals tested for this measure are not a representative sample of the general population it differs from prevalence, which is derived from a representative sample of the population.

To: Lorna Murphy, Director of Buses, TfL

From: Kevin Mustafa

RE: Why do the Mayor and TfL refuse to protect London's Bus Drivers from Institutionally Unsafe Working Conditions?

Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2026 1:20 PM

cc: Transport Commissioner; Deputy Mayor for Transport; Deputy Mayor for Social Justice and Communities, London Victims' Commissioner; TfL Walking and Cycling Commissioner; TfL Board Secretariat; TfL SSHR Panel Secretariat; TfL Chief Safety Officer; TfL Director of Bus; TfL Head of Insights and Direction; TfL Chief Operations Officer; London Assembly Transport Committee Members; CEO, London TravelWatch; Dan Tomlinson MP; Ben Coleman MP; Katie Lam MP; Olly Glover MP; Ruth Cadbury MP; Catherine Atkinson MP;  Workplace Colleague Network - London Bus Forums; Sharon Graham - Unite the Union; Journalists; Bus Drivers; Campaigners

Dear Ms Murphy,

Thank you for your perfunctory response. Kindly note that I have recirculated it to everyone who was copied on my original email, as I have also  done with my response today.

As you probably know from my earlier letters to City Hall and TfL (cf. Speaking out against London Buses' Culture of Fear, 19 August 2021), my decision to quit the buses and campaign for the Bus Drivers' Bill of Rights was inspired by the fact that, six years ago today, Bus Drivers were being abandoned by their Bus Operator employers, Unite the Union, TfL and the Mayor when they started getting sick and dying from Covid-19.  Your response confirms that, despite at least 76 Bus Drivers dying from Covid-19, nothing has changed. 

·       TfL has yet to conduct "a short-term review of shift lengths, patterns and rotas of London bus drivers" recommended by the UCL Institute of Health Equity in March 2021 and agreed by TfL to complete "by summer 2021";

·       One in Four London Bus Routes still lack Toilet Facilities at one end for Bus Drivers;

·       Compared to 2024, in 2025 the number of Bus Drivers taken to hospital from Assault/Vandalism incidents increased by 17%. 

Since (a) the Mayor has sole responsibility for Policing in London and (b) the unanimous London Assembly Motion called for the Mayor and TfL—

 "to issue a public apology to Mr Hehir and to apply pressure to Metroline to reinstate Mr Hehir or provide appropriate compensation for his dismissal"

—I think you'll find your complacent restatement of TfL's long-standing policy of ignoring Bus Driver welfare is deeply out-of-sync with both the Mayor's legal obligations and the public mood. 

According to TfL's own data, over the period 1 January 2014-31 December 2025, an average of 7 Bus Drivers per month were reported by TfL as having been injured in Assault/Vandalism incidents on London's buses, of which over one driver per month was taken to hospital. 

Since I know that many Bus Drivers don't report injuries they receive on duty, I believe TfL's numbers are underestimates. 

Over the same 11-year period, an average of 15 people per month were reported injured from an Assault/Vandalism incident on buses and about 4 per month were taken to hospital.  

I'd wager TfL's numbers of passenger injuries from Assault/Vandalism incidents are also underestimates. 

TfL's data also reveal that Bus Drivers accounted for 41% of all reported injuries from Assault/Vandalism incidents and 46% of all those taken to hospital.

As you no doubt know, over the period for which TfL has made bus safety data available for public scrutiny, Bus Drivers—on average—have only constituted an infinitesimal (0.0011%!) of the total number of annual Bus Passengers.  Hence, I think you'll agree with me that the fact that Bus Drivers are 80,000 times more likely than a passenger to be injured and 40,000 times more likely than a passenger to be taken to the hospital in an Assault/Vandalism incident on London's buses demands that TfL do more than just abdicate responsibility for Bus Drivers' safety and security. 

TfL's numbers reveal an obvious fact: Bus Drivers are not just casual victims of Assault/Vandalism incidents on London's buses, they are the primary victims of this increasing violence.

Given this well-evidenced risk, when a Bus Driver chooses to intervene to defend a Bus Passenger against Assault/Vandalism and is subsequently dismissed for gross misconduct—and the Mayor, TfL and Unite the Union do nothing—the outcome of this complacency undermines the safety of London's Bus Network for which the Mayor and TfL are legally accountable. 

And TfL's decision to side with Metroline against Mark Hehir—i.e., against someone who TfL's own data shows had the highest risk of serious injury and the most to lose from intervening in an Assault/Vandalism incident—simply re-broadcasts a clear message, that I've been familiar with— 

(a) since Bus Drivers started to sicken and die around me from Covid-19 6 years ago this month, and;

(b) each time the Mayor fails to respond to Bus Drivers' reasonable demand to incorporate the Bus Drivers Bill of Rights into TfL's Framework Bus Services Agreement:

—TfL takes no responsibility for the security and safety of London's Bus Drivers. 

Since we already know that TfL's  "incident reporting system does not specifically collect data relating to disciplinary outcomes" regarding Bus Drivers, your statement that it "would not be appropriate for TfL to intervene" rings hollow: the public record shows that TfL completely washes its hands of how Bus Drivers are disciplined by their employers.

The London Assembly Motion also calls on the Mayor and TfL—

"to set out clear guidance for transport workers protecting passengers."

I do hope the London Assembly Members copied here will take note of the clear guidance your response conveyed: 

TfL will support any Bus Operator which fires a Bus Driver who chooses to risk injury to protect Bus Passengers against Assault/Vandalism incidents on London's buses.

Why do the Mayor and TfL refuse to protect London's Bus Drivers?

Yours sincerely,

Kevin Mustafa

London Bus Safety Campaigner

Founding Member - Bus Driver Bill of Rights Campaign

-----------------ATTACHMENT------------------

From: Bus Ops FOIs & Inquiries <BusOpsFOIsInquir@tfl.gov.uk>

Sent: Friday, February 13, 2026 1:13:07 PM

To: Kevin Mustafa

Subject: RE: Subject Intervention Requested: Dismissal of Bus Driver Mark Hehir

Dear Kevin,

Please see below a response to your email from Lorna Murphy.

Dear Kevin,

Thank you for your email. As you are aware, bus services in London are delivered by private operators, such as Metroline, under contract to TfL. Operational matters, including staffing and employment decisions within individual companies, sit with those operators. As this issue relates to Metroline's internal employment processes, it would not be appropriate for TfL to intervene. You may wish to raise your concerns directly with Metroline so they can address them through their established procedures.

Yours sincerely,

Lorna Murphy