The lethal fire at Grenfell tower had many proximate causes, not least the defeat of a bill in Parliament that would have required landlords to render their properties safe and habitable, voted down by Tory MPs who are overwhelmingly landlords themselves. Read the rest

Last December, the accounting giant EY presented a proposal to the failing mega-business Carillion to break it up and sell its profitable parts, keeping it from collapsing and sticking the British taxpayer with billions of pounds' worth of unfunded pension liabilities. Read the rest

Lauri Love is a British man on the autism spectrum who also has depression and severe eczema, who was facing extradition to America on charges of hacking US military and private agencies. Read the rest

Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism, inaugurates his new column at Open Democracy with a history of the collapse of neoliberal capitalism and a path for a Labour victory in the next General Election, which, at this rate, could come any day. Read the rest

Kevin J Davis is the leader of the Council for the London Borough of Kingston-Upon-Thames; his son Cameron Davis's Linkedin profile shows that he is now a Trainee Development Manager at CNM Estates, a major contractor to the Borough of Kensington. Read the rest

Jeremy Corbyn's incredible, odds-defying showing in the 2017 UK general election has been attributed to a "youthquake" of first-time young voters who were drawn to the polls by his progressive policies. Read the rest

Just over a year ago, the top court in Europe ruled that the Snoopers Charter, a mass surveillance regime created by the ruling Tory party, was unconstitutional. Read the rest

MP Andrea Leadsom wants the Royal Mail to commemorate Brexit with a postage stamp. Twitter has run with the idea, shooping and tagging with #BrexitStamps, making sure to tag @andrealeadsom. Read the rest

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been living in the Ecuadoran embassy to the United Kingdom in London for more than 5 years, believing that if he were taken into custody by the UK police, he would face extradition to the USA where he would be tried for publishing details of war crimes committed by the US military. Read the rest

Scottish Limited Partnerships (previously) are notorious corporate entities whose true owners are easily disguised, making them perfect vehicles for money laundry. Read the rest

HMRC, the British tax authority, is 'struggling to deal with fallout of Paradise Papers leak,' according to Parliament's public accounts committee, whose new report describes an already understaffed agency whose workload has been increased by the preparations for Brexit. Read the rest

Wednesdbury Oak Academy in the West Midlands is an "academy school," similar to a US charter school -- a publicly funded, privately operated school, which, theory goes, is able to "experiment" with new educational techniques, by deviating from the standard curriculum, rejecting students on the basis of selection criteria, and hiring teachers without formal qualifications. Read the rest

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster (in which a building full of poor people were roasted alive because their homes had been skinned with a highly flammable decorative element that was supposed to make it easier to look at from a nearby luxury neighborhood), local UK governments have scrambled to replace the deadly cladding on other buildings with something a little less fiery. Read the rest

The countable homeless population of the UK -- the people living on the streets and in shelters, not including people sofa-surfing -- is 307,000, about 1 in 200. In some places, it's as high as one in 27. Read the rest

Two trees in a fancy neighbourhood in Bristol, UK have had strips of anti-bird spikes nailed to their branches, rendering them "literally uninhabitable" by local wildlife, according to local Green Party councillor Paula O'Rourke. Read the rest

Back in the days of the Howard Dean campaign, it seemed that the political left had a near-monopoly on brilliant, technologically sophisticated "netroots" activists, a situation that carried over to the Obama campaigns. But by 2016, the Pepe-slinging alt-right showed that earlier right-wing cybermilitias weren't just warmed over jokes with an unhealthy appreciation for Conservapedia -- they, too, could fight effectively by forming decentralized open source insurgencies that allowed autonomous activists and groups to change the political landscape. Read the rest

This week, global finance criminals Morgan Stanley published a report warning investors that a victory for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party would be worse for its fortunes than even the most shambolic, bungled Brexit (which the Tories are on track to deliver). Read the rest