Stormy Waters

I read the reports coming out of Manchester this morning and I am genuinely speechless. Andy Burnham’s old political machine has just been caught secretly intercepting and censoring emails sent by the public to elected politicians. What were those emails actually about? A resident was asking hard questions about the £55 million in taxpayer loans Burnham handed to Abu Dhabi property developers when he was Mayor, with zero affordable housing requirements. Instead of letting elected councillors read the concerns of their constituents, unelected bureaucrats quietly diverted the emails straight to the legal department to be buried. The politicians had absolutely no idea their personal inboxes were being filtered by the state. The council claims they had to intercept the messages because of potential litigation. It is a complete lie. Internal correspondence proves the city solicitor asked for this specific resident to be blocked months before any legal threat even existed. You vote for local representatives to hold the system accountable. But the second a citizen asks where Burnham sent public money in a Gulf state property deal, his political syndicate builds a secret digital firewall to protect the investment. This is not a functioning democracy. This is a captured corporate cartel running a cover-up for the Prime Minister, and the national media is letting them get away with it in broad daylight.