Politics shapes every part of daily life, from wages to air quality. Yet, too many people fall into the habit of accepting whatever the government or media say. When we challenge what we’re told, we take back control, push for better policies, and help build a brighter, fairer future.
Don’t Fall for Political Apathy or Lies
It’s easy to think “nothing will ever change” and tune out, especially if you feel like politicians don’t listen. This is what those in power want—an inactive public that won’t hold them to account.
Lies and empty promises fill TV screens, but acting as if they’re normal only makes things worse. Staying engaged and questioning their words keeps democracy alive.
- Some MPs say there is no genocide in Israel – there is. A lie.
- Some politicians say there is no proof of climate change. There is. A lie.
- Some politicians say we need economic growth. We don’t. A lie.
- Some politicians say we need to cosy up to Trump. We don’t. A lie.
- Some politicians say rising energy prices are due to oil wars. They aren’t. A lie.
- Some politicians say we have to destroy green land and wildlife to build affordable homes. We don’t. A lie.
A More Hopeful Future Is Possible
History shows people can change the direction of their country. Think of how the NHS started, and women got the vote. These acts only happened because ordinary people refused to settle for the way things were.
There is always room to make things better, even when it feels like progress moves slowly.
Don’t Let Media Bias Decide for You
Many media outlets have their own interests. They pick what gets shown and tell stories from a certain angle, shaping who and what is seen as “possible” or “acceptable.” Unbiased reporting is rare. Read widely, check the facts, and remember: You don’t have to echo the loudest headline.
Get your news instead from Byline Times, a wonderful paper and digital news source funded by citizens. No bias, ads or government interference, so you can trust the truth is written.
Challenge Politicians and Media
Politicians and big media shy away from the toughest truths, ignoring or excusing mass violence if it suits their goals. Refusing to accept their silence or excuses matters. Speaking up, asking hard questions, and making your own voice heard can change the story, even if it’s uncomfortable.
Enter your postcode at TheyWorkForYou (to find MPs and councillors) Look up how they voted on issues, then write or email them, to ask what they are going to do about issues that you feel passionate about.
Our media is awful on reporting politics. For instance, take the recent sacking of Peter Mandelson. Let’s compare the reporting by the BBC and Byline Times:
Labour MPs are expressing public and private frustration with the prime minister’s leadership. Minister Baroness Smith told the BBC ‘It is difficult at the moment given people’s insecurity and concern, for mainstream politicians to cut through. And admitted his sacking was not what was wanted (in the run-up to welcoming Donald Trump on a state visit this week). But ‘the PM was doing a good job’. BBC
This translates as ‘we are doing all we can to suck up to Trump, and the great unwashed are not understanding what a wonderful job your Prime Minister is doing’. Now let’s look at ‘real news’ from Byline Times:
Likely more what we are all thinking:
Peter Mandelson’s sacking, is an opportunity for Keir Starmer to rethink his Trump-pandering. He must square his claimed disgust about Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, with his embrace of Trump.
It casts an uncomfortable shadow over the President’s state visit to the UK, because of the questions surrounding Trump’s own association with Epstein, and a visit being hosted by the brother of Prince Andrew, whose fall from grace was caused by his own dealings with Epstein.
Vote for Change, Even in Unfair Systems
First-past-the-post and other voting systems often mean smaller parties or new ideas struggle. This can make your vote feel pointless. But even when it’s hard, voting for real change sends a strong message. Movements grow when voters break old habits and try something new. Every vote matters.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics, is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. Plato
Don’t give up control to politicians, bankers, or foreign leaders. Across the world, people have stood up to corrupt or out-of-touch governments and forced them to listen. Remember, power really sits with the public, not with the political elite, no matter where they live.
Politics, Media and the Middle East
Politics is absolutely awful, isn’t it? We have Prime Ministers and Presidents who indulge each other and those abroad who are committing genocide (while even our own BBC is like propaganda, never questioning or investigating what arms sales and cosying up to narcissistic leaders is doing). Rather than encouraging world peace and helping animals affected by war.
Sometimes even in ‘modern western countries’, politicians seem to forget that it’s still a democracy, and people can vote them out, just as they voted them in. Previous American presidents have also been unpopular, but a Gallop poll (September 2025) recently showed that Trump is the most unpopular leader in his country than any other modern president.
Yet here he comes on a state visit (boycotted by Ed Davey). Many thinking it disgraceful that he dines at a big banquet with the monarchy, when genocide is leading to mass starvation in Gaze, of innocent civilians.
There are good mediators who can likely bring peace to the Middle East. Leave it to them, never politicians (the USA foreign secretary Marco Rubio is one-country biased and that’s never a good position to start in, to try to foster world peace).
Those seeking aid are even being shot dead. Ethical Consumer has a list of brands to boycott that are profiting from genocide.
Political writer Daniel Levin (whose father had his arm blown off in the last days of the 1948 war) says rather than the now-utopian ‘one shared state’, a different vision of a two-state solution could work.
It would still contain aspects of the one-state solution (freedom of employment, movement and residency with security controls). So people could live, work and study anywhere. But only vote in their own state.
Israelis living in occupied Palestine could move back if wished to Israel (with relocation papers) or remain in Palestine and follow their laws. He also writes that more support should be given to powers that promote peace, rather than politicians, that just fuel the fire by refusing to look at peaceful alternatives.
A Land for All is the likely best solution. An idea born from peaceful discussions on both sides, it offers 15 reasons why this idea is the best solution. It acknowledges historical and cultural beliefs of both lands, provides each side with a sovereign state, Jerusalem becomes the capital of both states and the solution can be implemented immediately.
‘The Boat Crisis’ Solutions Already Known
Compassionate solutions to the ‘boat crisis’ are already known by experts, but nobody’s listening. This would stop people coming to England (and often drowning) in boats, it would stop riots with asylum seekers in hotels, and it would encourage ‘good migration’, while stopping the gangs.
Create world peace. If we collectively stop the horrors that people are fleeing from, most refugees would cease to exist (they are not ‘coming here because of benefits). Most have never even heard of the benefit system, they are often simply fleeing for their lives.
If you and your family were living on animal feed (or dragging children whose limbs had been blown off), you could try to get out, wouldn’t you? So would they.
Refugee Settlement. This does not mean waiting until people have risked their lives to arrive in England, then shipping them off to Rwanda. It means using an ordered airlift program (like Operation Pitting which helped Afghanistan refugees) and taking them to a pre-destined place where they are safe.
Here’s the biggie: At present asylum seekers register their claims in the UK on arrival. But as UK border officials already have a base in France, having this processed there would determine the genuine asylum seekers. Not only would this enable them to travel safely (or stay in France), but it would (very importantly) ‘stop the gangs’ as there would be no refugees to exploit.
Make UK employment laws stricter. One big reason why gangs bring migrants to England, is because they can take very low-paying jobs like at nail bars and car wash stations, being paid a pittance.
This could not happen in France, as the employers would go to prison. Before ‘throwing stones’ at others, UK MPs would be good to look at why gangs think they can make money by sending vulnerable people here, to be paid peanuts.
But because no politicians (or the media) are listening, it’s now giving a window to Reform UK, a party that you would likely be scared of being in government, if you knew some of their other policies. A party that does not even recognise climate change is going to lead to more extreme weather, heatwave deaths, floods and climate catastrophe, for starters.
Other policies of Reform UK include:
If you search for ‘policies of Reform UK’, you get directed to a page on the website. It has a photo of Nigel Farage, and a request to ‘please tweet this page’. Is this ‘the new efficiency’ of a government-to-be?
There is a link to a pdf file, which if you want to download it, you can view the policies in more detail. We had a look, and here are a few excerpts:
Unlocking Britain’s vast oil and gas reserves, to bring energy bills down by £500. But all climate experts (including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth) say we need to follow the advice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that there must be no more fossil development, in order to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees.
We can easily reduce bills by £500 per person by providing free insulation for every older home (new homes are fine) which would create skilled jobs). Rising energy prices are not due to oil wars, they are due to bad policy. What’s needed are:
Walkable communities (so people don’t have to rely on cars (oil) to shop at big supermarkets (that use oil to ferry pesticide (oil) foods from central distribution markets (that use oil for fridges) to ferry food back to supermarkets in lorries (oil) for people to shop at 24-hour lit grocery stores (oil).
Instead, we could have organic farmers’ markets that are walkable with low or no food miles (no oil needed). This is what Transition Towns are all about – creating local food economies and community solar panels, so places are not affected by who is invading who.
Abolish the VAT Tourist Tax.
Other countries are adding tourist tax, to stop overtourism, which is turning beautiful cities like Rome, Barcelona, Venice and Florence into litter-stewn dumps where tourists arrive in their thousands to drop litter, buy tacky souvenirs, and boost house prices so high, that locals can’t afford to rent or buy in a sea of airbnb holiday lets.
Tourism is good, if done properly. In England, we already have massive issues with over-tourism in London, Stratford-upon-Avon, The Lake District and Bath – all beautiful areas now being ruined, in the pursuit of money above all else.
To be fair, the policy to reform the tax system (from the present 20,000) to 500 pages, does seem good.
Fast-track ‘clean nuclear energy’
Nuclear energy is so antiquated and dangerous, that our own remaining plant at Cumbria is being decommissioned. New Zealand is totally nuclear-free, and we could be too. Again, it’s simple living and local economies with walkable communities that would mean less energy is needed.
You don’t just replace on fuel with another. That’s what ecologist Satish Kumar says is environmental stupidity. He quotes Einstein ‘We cannot solve our problems, using the same thinking that created them’.
The green movement’s fixation with technology, reveals that we are asking the wrong questions. The thought that we are carpeting the countryside with wind turbines and solar panels, just to power our phones is appalling. Paul Kingsnorth
A good Reform policy is to scrap HS2, a huge vanity project that has cost billions, destroyed England’s second-oldest pear tree and will kill around 22,000 wildlife yearly once built, based on comparisons with high-speed rail abroad.
We don’t need it in England (our geography is very different to where TGV operates). Barn Owl Trust says that HS2 is ‘a very expensive way of killing owls’.
Stop the War on Drivers
This is by banning 20mph zones in most places, and even banning clean air zones and low traffic neighbourhoods. So not only would you be living with boy-racers, but this would up the need for oil (see above). Other countries are going the other way, turning grid-locked cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen into the most walkable cities on earth. Safer, cleaner, need less oil.
Scrap Rewilding to Replace with Farming
Beavers at risk from Reform UK (Holly Astle)
Sewage pollution is one of England’s biggest issues right now, and a lot of it is caused by chemical-run off from farms. Reform UK policy is that ‘productive land must be farmed’ and not be used for rewilding (or solar farms).
Currently rewilding projects are helping to bring back endangered species, and using beavers to build dams, that are helping to prevent floods (which we would have more of, if we had more oil and gas, and less trees that soak up water from heavy rain). The party needs to employ an ecologist, to learn how nature works.
It also wants to ‘protect country sports’ to ‘protect the environment. Presumably this means hunting. Animal hunting also causes floods (by removing peat bogs for grouse shoot hunts) and also causes road accidents (pheasants are bred in factory farms, and have no road sense, causing huge amounts of car crashes each year).
Could the Greens Overtake Reform?
To be fair, Reform does have quite a lot of good policies too like cutting bureaucracy, scrapping the BBC tv license and looking after pensioners. But when the party gets so much airtime, it’s important that their other policies are discussed, and that other parties (Greens, Lib Dems) also get their policies aired (and rightly scrutinised).
Interestingly, the new Green leader Zack Polanski says he completely understands why people vote Reform, and aims to sweep up some disillusioned voters at the next election. Two days after winning the election by a landslide, he visited Nigel Farage’s constituency in Clacton-on-Sea for the day, to hear their gripes (something no other party leaders in England have done so far).
He was surprised to find that not only did most local Farage supporters back a wealth tax, but also safe legal routes for ‘people on boats’, which is official Green party policy.
He also told them a bit about Reform UK’s support for ‘zero hour contracts with fire and rehire (which means dismissed staff are taken back with worse pay and conditions). One local who did not know this, says he was aghast, believing that Reform policy was supposed to be about ‘standing up for British people’.
This is what happens when the mass media never challenges policies of any political party.
Music Break: Wake Up Everybody
