Green Party councillors elated to win first seats
The Greens now have three councillors on Cambridgeshire County Council.
Peter Charles Rees was elected in the Newnham division, Elliot Tong in the Abbey division and Darren James Green in Romsey.
Rees said he was "absolutely elated" to be voted in and hoped to "bring the voice for the climate crisis" to decisions made by the county council.
Tong said he felt "very privileged" to have been elected to represent an area he loved.
"There is a lot of stuff that needs changing around the city," he said.
"We are seeing our infrastructure suffer greatly, we are seeing our services suffer greatly, all while taxes get higher and higher every year, which is pushing people further into poverty.
"We need to make sure we are getting residents the quality of service they deserve and actually stand up for them."
The Liberal Democrats won overall control of the county council, with 31 councillors elected to the authority.
The party has run the county council as part of a joint administration with Labour and Independent councillors for the last four years.
Lib Dem councillor Alex Beckett said: "We have been working with Labour for the last four years but it is great for us to finally be in control to be able to bring forward our proper Liberal values and make sure that we can really get things going again for all of Cambridgeshire."
The Lib Dems gained eight seats, taking their number of councillors to 31, while the Conservatives lost 11 places to now have a total of 10 seats.
Reform UK won a total of 10 new seats, with the Greens also winning the three new seats, while Labour halved its number to five. The number of Independents remains at two.
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Liberal Democrats take control of county council
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Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
My Friend Was Murdered by Political Violence Too
In June 2016, British member of Parliament Jo Cox, a close friend who worked with me at the humanitarian group Oxfam International, was murdered on the steps of her office in West Yorkshire, England. Jo was more than a rising star in British politics—she was a humanitarian, mother, friend, and a fighting force of hope in dark times. A man ended her life with a homemade gun, a knife, and a far-right ideology rooted in hatred. I still remember the phone call I got that day—the disbelief that Jo could be gone and that someone was so consumed by political disagreement that he could take her life. I mourn the loss of Jo every year in June. But this year, that sadness became shock as political violence claimed yet another lawmaker's life. The killing of Melissa Hortman, a Democratic member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and her husband Mark, and the wounding of Democratic State Senator John Hoffman, and his wife Yvette were equally senseless. I hope they bring a reckoning with the violence that risks becoming a defining feature of U.S. politics and that has yet to be properly addressed. Floral tributes and candles are placed by a picture of slain Labour MP Jo Cox at a vigil in Parliament square in London on June 16, 2016. Floral tributes and candles are placed by a picture of slain Labour MP Jo Cox at a vigil in Parliament square in London on June 16, 2016. DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images Public servants should not have to weigh the risk to their families before casting a vote or answering constituents' questions. Political violence doesn't just harm individuals—it poisons the system, scares away good people, and chips away at public trust. Some of the responsibility for building a national consensus against political violence—or at the very least not fueling the violence—sits with the president and his staff. So far this administration's instinct has been to pour fuel on the flames by demonizing its critics, its political opponents, even judges and civil servants who emerge as obstacles to its agenda. By the time rioters assaulted the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, we were well past warning signs that political violence was becoming firmly rooted in modern politics. We'd already seen an assassination attempt on Arizona Representative Gabby Giffords, and a mass shooting that nearly claimed the life of then House Majority Whip Steve Scalise at a congressional baseball game. Later, the husband of Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, was attacked in their home and Donald Trump was shot and very nearly assassinated while at a rally before the 2024 election. According to the Capitol Police, threats against members of Congress have more than doubled, from fewer than 4,000 in 2017 to nearly 10,000 in 2021. After Jo's murder, the U.K. government took immediate steps to better protect members of Parliament. Security increased at constituency offices. Parliament members were given funds to install home protection systems. Likewise, members of the U.S. Congress can now be reimbursed for home security systems, and a $2.1 billion emergency spending package after Jan. 6 helped plug gaps in Capitol security. Ramped up security is a reasonable response, but it doesn't get at the root causes of the extremism that makes protecting lawmakers from physical violence necessary in the first place. To do that, we need to build a real national consensus against political violence, and refocus the federal government on stopping violence before it happens. Beyond legislation, members of Congress and lawmakers all the way down to the local level should take care with their words that may make a policy disagreement personal. All legislators have a responsibility not to incite or advocate political violence and should condemn it whenever and wherever it happens. They should also actively speak out to dissuade others from fomenting violence and publicly counter narratives that feed into dangerous speech and promotion of violence, including in their use of social and broadcast media. Jo said in her maiden speech to the U.K. Parliament, "We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divides us." It was a courageous call to all of us. She believed in her and our own ability to work for better politics and protect the freedoms of speech and association, and that her democracy was worth protecting and fighting for. I believe our American democracy is also worth saving and that any alternative is unacceptable. Nicole Widdersheim served in the Bush, Obama, and first Trump administrations and is deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Politico
2 hours ago
- Politico
Countdown to chaos
Presented by Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Canada Playbook | Follow Politico Canada Happy Monday. Thanks for reading Canada Playbook. Let's get to it. Here's what's in today's edition: → The clock ticks toward Aug. 1. → The ethics disclosure to end all ethics disclosures. → TikTok asked Ottawa for an in-person meeting. Crickets so far in return. THREE THINGS WE'RE WATCHING TRADE DEADLINE — Eighteen days left until Aug. 1. That's when the clock is set to run out on Canada-U.S. negotiations on an economic and security deal spearheaded by Ambo KIRSTEN HILLMAN and cross-border trade minister DOMINIC LEBLANC. Unless, of course, the August date is a deadline in name only. — Public-private relationship: Canadian officials routinely refuse to comment on the horsetrading going on behind closed doors, insisting that negotiating in public is unhelpful to a productive negotiation. 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ROLLAND VAIVE and ALEXANDER LANDRY. Today's question: Who added a vegetable garden to the property of Harrington Lake, the official country residence of Canada's PM? Send your answer to canadaplaybook@ Canada Playbook would not happen without: Canada Editor Sue Allan, editor Willa Plank and POLITICO's Grace Maalouf.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Yahoo
Miliband says UK's way of life ‘under threat' amid extremes of heat and rainfall
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said Britain's way of life is 'under threat' from climate change as the Met Office said extremes of heat and rainfall are becoming the norm. The latest state of the UK climate report, published in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology, shows the impact of human-caused global warming on the UK's weather, seas, people and wildlife. From earlier spring events in nature to record warm periods in 2024, which have already been beaten again this year, Met Office experts say the UK's climate is 'notably different' from just a few decades ago. The report details the climate in 2024, and over the longer term, highlighting how the UK has warmed at a rate of about 0.25C a decade and is now about 1.24C warmer than from 1961 to 1990. For the first time, the report also found UK sea levels to be rising faster than the global average. The Energy Secretary called the findings 'a stark warning' to take action on climate and nature. 'Our British way of life is under threat,' Mr Miliband told the PA news agency. 'Whether it is extreme heat, droughts, flooding, we can see it actually with our own eyes, that it's already happening, and we need to act. 'That's why the Government has a central mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower and tackle the climate crisis.' On those who oppose Labour's green policies, he said: '(U)nless, we act on the cause of what is happening, the cause of what is changing our climate, then we will be betraying future generations.' He spoke during a visit to a project restoring a rare alkaline fen at Hinksey Heights, Oxfordshire, with Environment Secretary Steve Reed, ahead of the report's release. Conservationists told the ministers how the fen, which is part of a national effort to expand the country's best freshwater habitats, was helping to boost wetland biodiversity and sequester planet-heating carbon in the atmosphere. Responding to the report, Mr Reed told PA it 'lays absolutely bare the damaging impact of climate change on people living in this country'. But he said that through projects like the fen, 'we're tackling the problem of nature loss and also we're tackling the problem of climate change at the same time'. One year in, Labour has been fiercely criticised over its approach to the environment, including concerns around planning reforms sidelining nature in pursuit of growth. The Environment Secretary defended the Government's actions, pointing to boosting funding for sustainable farming and developing the nature restoration fund so that money from house builders goes towards more impactful landscape-scale projects. 'We'd become one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth,' he said. 'This Government is calling time on that decline.' Elsewhere, the report said that the last three years have been in the top five warmest on record for the UK. Last year was the fourth warmest in records dating back to 1884, while the year had the warmest May and warmest spring on record – already beaten by 2025's record hot spring. But Mike Kendon, Met Office climate scientist and lead author of the report, said: 'It's the extremes of temperature and rainfall that is changing the most, and that's of profound concern, and that's going to continue in the future.' The hottest summer days have warmed about twice as much as average summer days have in the past decade in some parts of the UK, according to new analysis in the report. And as the UK's climate warms, it is also getting wetter, with extremes of rainfall, floods and storms in 2024, as in recent years. England and Wales had the wettest winter from October 2023 to March 2024 on record in more than 250 years, as floods hit Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, the West Midlands and eastern Scotland. But while red warnings were issued for storm Isha in January and storm Darragh in December, observations do not currently suggest the UK is becoming stormier or windier. Overall, however, the country's weather is changing because of rising greenhouse gases pushing up global temperature, Mr Kendon said, with records being broken 'very frequently'. 'Every year that goes by is another upward step on the warming trajectory our climate is on,' he said. 'Observations show that our climate in the UK is now notably different to what it was just a few decades ago.' The report also said tide gauge records since the 1900s show sea level rise around the UK is speeding up, with two-thirds of the rise of that time taking place in just the last three decades. Dr Svetlana Jevrejeva, from the National Oceanography Centre, said the UK's coasts would start to see more events where rising sea levels combined with high tides would lead to coastal inundation, even without storms. 'This extra sea level rise contribution is leading to an increase in the frequency of extreme sea levels and an intensification of coastal hazards,' she said. To highlight the impact of the UK's warming climate on wildlife, the report drew on Nature's Calendar, a volunteer-fed database of the natural signs of the changing seasons managed by the Woodland Trust. Records for 2024 show that spring was earlier than average for 12 of the 13 spring events monitored, and the earliest in the data running back to 1999 for frogspawn appearing and blackbirds nesting. The period of the year in which leaves were on trees from spring to autumn was also longer than average, mostly because of the earlier spring in 2024. Chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, Professor Liz Bentley, said the report reinforced the 'clear and urgent signals of our changing climate'.
