Richard Bingley branches out from Tories, Labour and Ukip to stand for Reform
First he was a Tory councillor, before switching to Labour.Then came a stint in Ukip, followed by a return to the Conservatives that ended in ignominy amid a row over trees.And now, the much-travelled Richard Bingley is representing Reform.If Bingley is elected to Thurrock council in Essex on 7 May, it will represent something of a resurrection for the man with a case for being Britain’s most ideologically free-ranging politician, coming three years after he quit as leader of another council – Plymouth.Bingley, then in his second stint as a Tory, resigned after the authority cut down 110 mature trees in the centre of the city under the cover of darkness, having fenced them off and deployed security guards.
He signed the order to make way for a £12m regeneration scheme in the city centre despite vehement opposition from campaigners, prompting an outcry and national headlines,Bingley responded by stepping down, saying in a statement he was “not a full-time politician”, adding: “If others feel they can run our glorious ocean city better, then that’s great with me,Over to you, I say,”Bingley might not be a full-time politician – he is also a security and terrorism expert, spending time working at Buckingham University – but he is definitely something of a committed hobbyist,He first emerged on Thurrock council in 1997, serving a term as a Conservative.
In 2006, he was back on the same council, but in another ward and representing another party – Labour.For at least some of this period, politics was Bingley’s full-time job, given he spent several years as Labour’s press officer for the east of England.He also did media duties for the trade union Unison and Campaign Against Arms Trade.But then in 2014 came an ideological about-turn and Bingley’s first liaison with Nigel Farage; he changed allegiance to Ukip, speaking at the party’s annual conference.“It was all quite unexpected,” said one Labour member who knew Bingley during his time in the party.
“It was never really explained why he dropped us and went to the other side of the spectrum.”Ukip was not a brief dalliance.In 2017, by which time Farage had stepped down, Bingley served as the party’s spokesperson on terrorism.He stood for parliament for the party in 2015 and 2017.As Ukip drifted into infighting and irrelevance, Bingley vanished from the political landscape before resurfacing in 2021 about 250 miles to the west of Thurrock, and back with his original party, as a Conservative councillor in Plymouth.
Within just nine months, amid a period of factionalism and chaos in the Tory group, Bingley emerged as leader,Little more than a year later came the fateful decision to cut down the trees, and he was gone,In a few months from now, Plymouth’s Armada Way regeneration project, for which the trees were removed, will finally open – including more trees than were felled in the first place,Amid the many changes, ideological and geographical, what of the man and the politician? Former contemporaries recall Bingley as slightly elusive, forever busy with side interests including podcasts and his security work,“The phrase I recall being used about him was that he rose without trace,” recalls one former opponent who observed him in Plymouth.
“He became leader because he was the least-worst option.And then he was gone.It looks like Plymouth’s loss will now be Thurrock’s loss.”
NAACP lawsuit accuses Elon Musk’s xAI of polluting Black neighborhoods near Memphis
A new lawsuit accuses Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company of illegally spewing toxic pollutants into the Black neighborhoods on the border of Tennessee and Mississippi.The suit, filed on Tuesday in Mississippi federal court, alleges xAI is violating the Clean Air Act due to emissions from its makeshift power plant in Southaven, Mississippi, which powers its datacenters in south Memphis. The NAACP, represented by environmental groups Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice, says xAI has been polluting the surrounding historically Black communities by using dozens of methane gas generators without permits. The organization is seeking to force the company to stop operating its unpermitted turbines in Southaven.“All too often, big corporations like xAI treat our communities and families like obstacles to be pushed aside,” said Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP
China now the ‘good guy’ on AI as Trump takes ‘wild west’ approach, MPs told
China is now the “good guy” on AI rather than Donald Trump’s US, where the technology is being pursued in a dangerous “wild west” manner, a former UN and UK government adviser has told MPs.Prof Dame Wendy Hall, who was a member of the UN’s AI advisory board and co-wrote a review of AI for Theresa May’s government, told the House of Commons business and trade committee that China was backing multinational attempts to introduce global governance of AI, in contrast to America, which had set up a race between profit-hungry companies that relied on hype.“China is doing some amazing work in AI, and in fact, at the moment they’re acting as the good guys because the US is totally against any regulation and talk about global governance,” said Hall, who is director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton. “It’s all Maga. It’s all: we’re going to win at all costs
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Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, the Guardian’s US tech editor, writing to you from my happy village in Pokopia.Artificial intelligence companies make powerful products. They also make outlandish claims.Last week, Anthropic released Claude Mythos, an AI model focused on cybersecurity, which has inspired widespread thrill and panic over how capable it is said to be
Don’t make Marshal Foch’s mistake on AI | Letters
Emma Brockes’ article struck a chord (It’s finally happened: I’m now worried about AI. And consulting ChatGPT did nothing to allay my fears, 8 April). I am reading Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat, in which the eminent French historian and soon-to-be-executed resistance worker gives a first-hand account of the collapse of the French army in 1940. He attributes the debacle at least in part to a failure of imagination on the part of the French general staff, who were incapable of grasping that technology, and war, had fundamentally changed since 1918.Brockes’ article suggests that we, and our leaders, are suffering from the same inability to understand that a technology which is currently amusingly alarming will develop in less amusing ways – the future Marshal Ferdinand Foch had, according to Bloch, earlier dismissed aircraft as being a toy for hobbyists and not of any military interest
Meta creating AI version of Mark Zuckerberg so staff can talk to the boss
If you are one of Meta’s almost 79,000 employees and cannot get hold of the boss, do not worry. The owner of Facebook and Instagram is reportedly working on an AI version of Mark Zuckerberg who can answer all your queries.The AI clone of Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and chief executive, is being trained on his mannerisms and tone as well as his public statements and thoughts on company strategy.The rationale behind the project, according to the Financial Times, is that employees could feel more connected to one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley.The Meta chief has a history of creating and experimenting with digitalised versions of himself
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