REMEMBER: FREE ZONES ARE FRAGILE The enterprise zone network looks formidable, billions in investment, cross-party support, 25-year contracts, physical infrastructure, legal protections. But it’s built on foundations that can be challenged. Zones depend on: Public money (which can be withdrawn): Every zone subsidy is a political choice. Governments can choose differently. Public legitimacy (which can be challenged): Once people understand what zones are, support evaporates. The model survives through obscurity. Political protection (which can be voted out): Politicians enable zones. Different politicians can disable them. Legal frameworks (which can be contested): The legal structures enabling zones are challengeable in courts. Community acquiescence (which can be transformed into resistance): Zones assume communities won’t organize. Prove them wrong. The fragility is real. A single successful legal challenge can undermine an entire zone model. A single high-profile exposure can shift public opinion. A single election fought on zone accountability can change the political calculus. A single community successfully resisting can inspire dozens more. The Stakes This isn’t about tweaking policy. It’s about whether Britain will be a democracy or a corporate archipelago, whether public money serves public purposes or private profit, whether communities control their own development or are developed by distant corporations, whether workers have rights or are simply inputs to be optimized. The enterprise zone network is systematic, comprehensive, and intentional. But it’s not inevitable. Expose them. Challenge them. Organize against them. The alternative is a Britain where everything exists primarily to generate corporate profit, where democracy is theatre, where regions compete to offer the lowest wages and weakest protections, where public institutions serve private interests, and where resistance is structurally impossible because corporate power is embedded in physical infrastructure with 25-year contracts. That’s not levelling up. That’s not growth. That’s not even capitalism as normally understood. The window for resistance is closing. But it hasn’t closed yet. Start with one action. Then another. Connect with others doing the same. Build from there. Because the only thing more powerful than billions in corporate subsidy is organized communities that refuse to be bought. The Corporate Carve-Up of Britain: 12 Actions to Fight Back Against Enterprise Zones substack.com/@europeanpowell…

The richest man on Earth dismantled the organization that feeds the poorest children on earth. The definition of evil is being a trillionaire in a world where millions of children are starving.

American fascism has its tentacles in the UK. One of the biggest hurdles that libertarians, oligarchs, and the far-right historically came up against was academia, not so anymore. Without critical thinking, we become serfs tethered to corporate political agendas; the concentration of wealth insulated within anti-governance systems, which are remaking us in their image.

Trumpian censorship in the UK Teacher, librarians under pressure to remove books on race, identity, social justice from libraries. 200 titles pulled from one Greater Manchester school library, including books by Black authors. What are we becoming? runnymedetrust.org/blog/eras…

Also, there’s nothing wrong with treating oneself to nice things once in a while, especially when you’ve worked damn hard for it. Now freebies, that’s another matter.

EXPOSED: The Secret Israel Plot to Ban Palestine Action “This is the story of how Israel got a protest group based in another country proscribed a Terrorist organisation” @Lowkey0nline

Reminder Elon Musk received $38 billion in government welfare support.

Elon Musk can say what he likes about me but I won't stay silent whilst foreign tech billionaires, money earned off the backs of real workers, try to interfere in our democracy, incite violence in our communities and tear apart our country. Time for him to pipe down.

Anyone who cares about our civil liberties should be alarmed about the outcome today. Years of imprisonment and sentenced as terrorists — with 15 years on license — after no charges or convictions of terrorism. All this while the UK continues to send arms to a state that is committing the gravest of crimes against humanity.

The Filton 4 ruling signals a direct breach of core principles of UK justice juries decide facts, judges sentence only on what juries actually convicted. This judgment breaks that line and that’s why so many lawyers are calling it a constitutional threat. What this moment means for justice in the UK Across every major legal source reporting today, the same pattern emerges this is unprecedented, constitutionally dangerous, and signals a shift toward an authoritarian model of criminal justice. A judge has overridden the jury the foundation of British justice Multiple reports confirm that two juries refused to convict the activists of any terrorism related or violent offences, yet Justice Jeremy Johnson has ruled they will be sentenced as terrorists anyway. This is exactly what senior lawyers describe as “recategorising the offence without a trial” a direct violation of the principle that you cannot be punished for an offence you were never charged with and never convicted of. 🤔🌎☮️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿⚖️ No time to waste independence now

Gut wrenching to see four young people jailed for direct action against an arms supplier to Israel. Years in prison for protesting to save lives in Gaza, with 'terrorism' used despite no jury convicting them of it. A truly dangerous attack on the right to protest.

There's a Genocide happening in Gaza. Our Government is arresting pensioners for holding cardboard signs that say "I support Palestine Action." And Andy Burnham - labours apparent last hope - won't even acknowledge what's really happening.

2/ Jobs at the resulting Anthropic data centre: - 200. Jobs originally promised when Teesside got freeport status in 2021: 20,000. The £1/acre option sold as a "quick delivery incentive" has become the permanent mechanism for intercepting any investor before they reach the public.

5/ THE PARIS CONNECTION: Feb 2025, UK US refuse to sign the Paris AI declaration on "inclusive and sustainable AI". Everyone covered this as Vance vs Macron. It was also the regulatory half of the SAME decision. Weeks earlier, the UK had launched the AI Opportunities Action Plan, the blueprint for AI Growth Zones. Land deregulation AI deregulation = one strategy, two tracks.

6/ AI Growth Zones (Teesside is now one) stack fast-track planning priority grid access ON TOP of the £1/acre land structure. The same mechanism that yielded a few million on a port quay in 2020 now yields hundreds of millions on an AI data centre. Same trick, bigger prize.

Jeremy Johnson - in 50 years time this will be the only 1.39 minutes of your life you'll be remembered for. It'll be played in genocide museums to sum up the complicity and callous brutality of the British state in the face of the slaughter of the Palestinian people - and the courage of those who opposed it.

8/ Full essay connects: the Teesworks land scandal, the EU law mechanism that makes it possible, the Paris Summit walkout, and what it all means for any future UK-EU relationship.

7/ THE KICKER: Labour talks about "closer alignment" with the EU. But every AI Growth Zone built on this template adds another deal that EU state aid review would tear apart, with named beneficiaries facing recovery demands running into hundreds of millions. Each new zone makes "closer alignment" politically more expensive to ever deliver. The zones rollout isn't separate from the alignment conversation. It's quietly building the wall against it.

4/ So why is this legal in the UK? Not because the UK won an argument about compliance. Because on 31 Dec 2020, the Commission lost jurisdiction over Great Britain entirely. The UK didn't beat the rules, it left the building before the test was sat. What replaced it (Subsidy Control Act 2022) has no independent enforcement body. By design.

3/ THE PART NO ONE'S COVERED: this exact transaction would almost certainly be illegal under EU state aid law. The EU has a specific rule (the 1997 Communication) for public land sales: open bidding, or independent valuation. Neither happened here. This is the textbook case the rule exists for.

1/ THE TEESSIDE DEAL: Two businessmen got the right to buy public land for £1/acre in 2021. The public body that owns it spent £450m cleaning it up. This month, they sell 222 acres to Anthropic for £222m. That's a roughly 1,000x markup, captured almost entirely by two men.