“You must go to the rats,” the Great Owl tells Mrs Frisby in the Rats of Nimh.

Mrs Frisby, a mouse, needs help: her son is sick and she has to move out of her house at the edge of a field, because the field will soon be ploughed.

“The rats on Mr Fitzgibbon’s farm have – things – ways – you know nothing about. They are not like the rest of us,” the Great Owl says (hoots). “They are not, I think, even like most other rats.”

But most rats are, of course, like no other. Most rats, like most people, try to distinguish themselves. “Rats are genetically very similar to humans, even more closely related to us than cats or dogs are,” the National Fancy Rat Society says, driving home the similarity of the fancied to us, the fanciers, “They’re curious, intelligent, trainable, omnivorous, social, and eat their food sitting on their haunches, grasping it with their tiny front feet.”

The NFRS owes its existence to a woman named Mary Douglas who, in 1901, convinced the National Mouse Club to admit her rat to an exhibition. It won best in show. (“The judge was one Walter Maxey, a man who is widely known as the father of the mouse fancy, as Mary was later known as the mother of the rat fancy,” the NFRS history page says. Among the society’s current leaders is a woman with the surname Feline.) Rat fanciers used to tie ribbons around the necks of their pets. Charming!

In Australia, rats learned, in two years, how to kill cane toads, eat their hearts and carve out their organs with “surgical precision”, a scientist told Guardian Australia’s Naaman Zhou, a reporter committed to uncovering the (beautiful) truth about rats (and Ratatouille). Cane toads have poisonous gallbladders: the rats removed these. Using their miniature hands and pointy claws, they peeled off the poisonous skin and ate the thigh muscle. (The secret at the heart of The Secret of Nimh, the eerie, reverent movie version of the book: “We can no longer live as rats: we know too much.”)

The film Ratatouille is about a rat. It is also, naturally, about becoming an artist. “You must be imaginative, strong-hearted. You must try things that may not work,” says Auguste Gusteau, a human chef; and Remy, the main character/rat listens.

The New York Times said the film was “a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film”.

If you want to make a portrait of an artist, then, too, “You must go to the rats”, natural emissaries, natural vessels for a story of the pursuit of perfection. Except, I would argue, in the case of poetry. Poets are confounded by rats and must resort to prose to survive. Here is Matthew Sweeney:

I walked along Rue du Faubourg du Temple on the way to Belleville and I stopped at a shop selling rat poison. To my astonishment and my amusement they had a window full of stuffed rats, including four small rats standing round a table, playing cards. I liked that very much.

When I was eight, I had two pet rats. I can’t remember their names. I remember their pink wax flower ears, the way one would crawl up the sleeve of my pyjamas while I watched The Simpsons. Its cold, bony, sentient tail falling out: “And the way when you put them on your shoulder their awful tail curls around the back of your neck”, a friend tells me when we reveal to each other that both of us owned pet rats (I’d deny it to almost anyone else). Pet rats and our names written on a grain of rice inside a tiny glass vial on black cord, bought from a market.

And how when you approach their cage, or they are curious, they lift their twitching noses into the air, then lift their front paws up from the ground, and finally rise up and sit, the size and shape of a pear, on their back legs.

• Helen Sullivan is a Guardian journalist. She is writing a memoir for Scribner Australia

• Do you have an animal, insect or other subject you’d like to see profiled by this columnist? Email [email protected]

Mainstream European politicians have warned about the advance of the far right, after Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) made historic gains in France’s snap elections, bringing the anti-immigration party closer than ever to power.

Official results showed the RN and its allies received 33% of the national vote, well ahead of the leftwing alliance New Popular Front on 28%, with Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc reduced to third place with 20% of the vote. It remains unclear whether Le Pen’s party will emerge as the largest in the final round of voting next Sunday, or if the French president will be confronted with a hung parliament, leaving the EU’s second-largest economy in chaotic stasis.

After the record-breaking gains became clear, Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, warned about politicians who advocated for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and sought untrammelled power.

“They love Putin, money and power without control. And they are already in power or are reading for it in the East or West of Europe. They are joining ranks in the European parliament,” he wrote on X.

Although he did not name parties, it is understood his remarks were triggered by the French elections. The comments also followed a decision by Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, to join forces with Austria’s far-right Freedom party and the Czech populist ANO group in an attempt to create a new alliance in the European parliament.

A Kremlin spokesperson said Russia was following the results of the French elections “very closely”, but Russian officials have played down any change in relations between Paris and Moscow.

“We should not expect an improvement in relations between Paris and Moscow after the legislative elections,” said Vladimir Dzhabarov, the vice-president of the foreign affairs commission, reported Agence France-Presse citing local media.

National Rally, including under its previous incarnation as the National Front, has historically been friendly towards the Kremlin; but its current candidate for prime minister, Jordan Bardella, has said he would stand by existing commitments to Ukraine, although he would not send troops or long-range weapons.

Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen’s allies celebrated. “Felicitations,” the Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders wrote on X with a heart and two strong-arm emojis. National Rally’s advance follows Wilders’ Freedom party’s victory in Dutch elections last year that make it the biggest party in an incoming government, led by the technocrat Dick Schoof.

In Germany, Michael Roth, a prominent member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, laid some of the blame for the far right’s triumph at the feet of the German government.

“We didn’t ask ourselves enough how we could better support the pro-European liberal president, Macron,” Roth, the chair of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, told the German edition of Politico.

“We don’t show enough consideration to the political debates and problems of other countries,” he added, noting that the alternative to Macron “is indeed no longer [conservative ex-president Nicolas] Sarkozy but rather a hard-right nationalist like Marine Le Pen”.

If Le Pen gained power, “that would have dramatic consequences for us. France is the heart of united Europe. If that heart doesn’t beat robustly, the EU could have a heart attack”.

The previous German government led by Angela Merkel is widely seen as having failed to respond to Macron’s bold plans for the future of Europe after his 2017 victory.

Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, described Sunday’s French election results as a warning, but said he did not take the victory of the far right as a given.

“I think everything will depend on the socialist party, on its strength and on the unity of the left. There’s also a lesson from Spain there,” he told the Cadena Ser radio network on Monday morning. “You always beat the far right by governing and bringing in progressive policies that, one by one, give the lie to all the fake news that it spreads.”

The Environment Agency is refusing to provide campaigners with details of potential conflicts of interests with water companies held by its directors across England.

The refusal to provide the information comes after the head of the agency, Philip Duffy, admitted that freedom of information requests have been buried by the regulator because the truth about the environment in England is “embarrassing”.

Ash Smith, of Windrush against Sewage Pollution (Wasp), said the refusal to provide details of any potential conflicts of financial and business interests held by the regulator’s regional directors was inexcusable. He revealed that a freedom of information (FoI) request had been rejected by the EA on the grounds that there was no lawful basis on providing the information as it was not necessary to satisfy a legitimate interest.

The EA also said it would be unfair to individuals to disclose such information to the world at large. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is now investigating the refusal to comply with the FoI request.

In a letter to Duffy, Smith said: “Claiming that the public has no right to know and that the interest of potentially conflicted employees takes precedence is ludicrous and disgraceful … public scrutiny and transparency are vital.”

He called on Duffy not to wait for the ICO ruling on the refusal but “to set the professional standards of your organisation, apply the Nolan principles of public life and order the release of the directors interests under the Freedom of Information Act”.

Smith highlighted past cases of senior agency staff moving to work for water companies as the reason transparency was needed.

These include the former director of operations for the EA, who became a non-executive director of British Water, then an industry lobbying organisation, and was later recruited by Southern Water at the time it had been accused of illegal sewage dumping, for which it was later fined a record £90m.

Duffy, who took over as the EA chief executive last July, told an audience at the Rivers Summit last month that his officials were “worried about revealing the true state of what is going on” regarding the state of the environment.

Duffy said: “I see these letters and these FoI requests and I’ve got great volumes of them, and I see local officers going through quite a contorted processes to not to answer when they know, often, the answer but it’s embarrassing.

“They do it because they are frightened. They are worried about revealing the true state of what’s going on, they’re worried about reaction from NGOs and others, and possibly from the government, about the facts of the situation. And they’re often working at a local level but in a very nationally charged political environment, which is very difficult for them.”

The ICO, which oversees the law on the Freedom of Information Act, has warned the EA that the public have a right to have their requests answered and that transparency should be taken seriously.

Last year, theEA was served with an enforcement notice by the ICO because of evidence seen by the commissioner about its performance in relation to its statutory duties under the FoI Act.

An EA spokesperson said: “We are completely committed to complying with the freedom of information/environmental information regulations. It’s a top priority and we constantly review our performance. We receive around 46,000 requests each year. As is standard practice for public sector organisations, we make public the personal interests of all board members and executive directors at the Environment Agency, but it’s right we do not make public the interests of other employees. This is because it would be unlawful, unfair and would breach data protection rules.”

Monday marked four decades since late New Orleans furniture magnate Aaron Mintz heard a jury declare him not guilty of fatally shooting his wife in their bed, and his family is no closer to reaching a consensus on whether their patriarch was truly innocent.

Aaron and Palma “Pam” Mintz’s two children have neither forgotten nor forgiven the tabloid, media circus treatment to which their family was subjected after Pam Mintz’s death in 1984. One prominent voice in their community deemed the case “the trial of the century”, although it came a full decade before OJ Simpson was acquitted in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. So the Mintzes’ son, Bruce, and daughter, Karen, declined to reflect on the legacy of their mother’s violent death or their father’s acquittal, one of the most infamous in the lengthy history of New Orleans’s criminal justice system.

Yet sources with direct knowledge of their family’s thinking explained how a collective rush to judgment among authorities, neighbors and the news media – as they see it – robbed those closest to Aaron and Pam Mintz of approaching anything resembling the truth about whether their marriage ended in murder (as police posited) or a suicide (as Aaron Mintz, who died in 2003, always maintained).

“The pain has not faded with time – at all,” said one of the sources, who agreed to speak with the Guardian in hopes that the Mintz family’s experience reinforces lessons about the need for thorough official investigations and restraint from those chronicling high-profile trials.

Countless hours of therapy aimed at treating post-traumatic stress – and at preserving marriages strained in the case’s chaotic aftermath – were some of the lighter costs paid by those dealing with the loss of one parent and the public suspicion of another.

“For anyone who cares, words hurt,” the unnamed source said. “For a long time.”

‘Easy way to die’

Those who say Aaron Mintz was a murderer rooted their theory in well-plod tropes. As they told it, upon being confronted about carrying on an extramarital affair, the wealthy businessman grabbed his wife’s .380-caliber Mauser pistol, fired it through a foam pillow meant to act as a silencer, and shot her in the head, killing her.

The speculation is that he then wiped the pistol clean, put the gun in Pam Mintz’s grasp, tried to hide the pillow in another bedroom nearby and falsely reported that his wife – a former fashion model – had died by suicide in their bed. Police maintained that his ruse fell apart when they found the bullet-pierced, bloodstained pillow haphazardly placed behind another, and prosecutors obtained an indictment charging Aaron Mintz with murder within days of Pam Mintz’s death.

Television news cameras captured video of Aaron being led into a courtroom in handcuffs after the indictment, and it was at that moment many in the city concluded he had murdered his wife, as noted in a 1984 New Orleans Magazine article, which provides an exhaustive account of the case.

Nonetheless, with the help of his deep pockets, locally renowned criminal defense attorney Mike Fawer, and a cast of his own nationally eminent forensic expert witnesses, Aaron Mintz mounted a furious counterattack to the state’s allegations against him.

They presented evidence that Pam Mintz was being heavily medicated to treat chronic stomach pains and depression, exacerbated by a long-held awareness of her husband’s affair. Fawer established that, late in her life, she had gone to a pharmacist, and declared: “I am never without pain,” and asked if there was “an easy way to die”.

Citing what a former coroner had once said to him, the pharmacist told Pam Mintz the easiest way to die by one’s own hand was a self-inflicted bullet wound to the head. The coroner shot himself to death three days after their exchange, according to the pharmacist. Pam Mintz, meanwhile, died two weeks after her conversation with the pharmacist.

Fawer ultimately suggested that Pam had shot a hole through the pillow at the center of the case outside her home before taking her own life. Then, the defense maintained, she placed it near her in the moments prior to turning the gun on herself to incriminate Aaron Mintz in a final act of resentment.

Aaron Mintz later told a jury that he moved the pillow into the other room after finding his wife – and before reporting her death – because “I just didn’t want to see it”.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Mintz would later testify with respect to an act that authorities pointed to as indicative of a guilty conscience. “I don’t know what I was doing.”

‘Ground up in the system’

Which of the accounts triumphed in court largely came down to the forensic evidence authorities had collected – or failed to gather.

Fawer established over seven days of testimony at his client’s trial just months after the killing that police did not find any gunshot residue on Aaron Mintz after testing him for the presence of it. Though the prosecution argued that Mintz simply could have washed it off his hands before police arrived, investigators altogether failed to test Pam Mintz for the presence of gunshot residue, leaving a jury of six men and six women to wonder whether that was a tactical decision to strengthen the case for the suicide theory.

Another of the more substantial flaws with the state’s case involved investigators’ failure to find any foam particles in Pam Mintz’s head wound or around her corpse. The prosecution’s theory – that Aaron Mintz shot his wife through a pillow meant to silence the sound – meant foam particles should have been found on or near her, but they weren’t.

Despite the investigation’s shortcomings, some of Aaron Mintz’s surviving relatives to this day recall vividly and bristle at how during the trial a newscaster said on air: “Aaron Mintz is still trying to pass off his wife’s death as a suicide.”

They also remain disgusted by how another of the station’s late personalities – usually revered for his straightforward, hard-hitting delivery of the news – surprised many viewers by suddenly dubbing the action in court “the trial of the century”.

Aaron Mintz’s family members directly attribute that sensationalism to the anonymous calls they would receive while at the home where Pam Mintz died that, to them, embodied many locals’ prejudgment. “One caller kept asking Karen how she could [be] in the house where her father killed her mother,” the 1984 New Orleans Magazine article recounted.

The trial’s final night, 1 July 1984, has become anthological within some quarters of New Orleans’ legal community. Expecting lengthy jury deliberations, Fawer and his entourage headed to a leisurely dinner after closing arguments. But the jury rendered its verdict in less than five hours, forcing Fawer to make a hasty return to the courthouse.

Aaron Mintz purportedly gasped “son of a bitch”, when the jury foreman announced the acquittal. As the 2019 podcast Combat in the Courtroom put it, Fawer maybe overate, overdrank or both – and he stumbled into the judge’s chamber to vomit all over his dress shirt.

He trashed the shirt, threw on a suit jacket over his bare chest, and faced the news media outside the courthouse to discuss a verdict that, for him, proved to be career-defining.

With his chest hair gleaming under his blazer, Fawer said to journalists gathered there that Aaron Mintz “was indicted before any … investigation”.

“I do not know where the steamroller came from,” Fawer added. “I think he just got sort of ground up in the system.”

One juror told the local newspaper that the tide turned in favor of Aaron definitively when a member of the panel “raised the possibility that Palma Mintz fired a bullet into a pillow outside the house to make it look like her husband had killed her”.

Nearby, another juror declared: “The state didn’t really prove their case to me – at all.”

Aaron Mintz offered his thoughts later at a post-trial news conference, saying: “More forethought should’ve been given to the handling of the case.

“I think I should’ve been given the benefit of our system – that I was presumed innocent until proven guilty – rather than, at this trial, [us] having to prove my innocence.”

‘Hurts to this day’

Reclined on a couch in the backroom of his house recently, Fawer fields the same questions that he’s gotten about the Mintz case in the decades since.

The New York native would never say he is 100% certain his client was innocent. But he is certain there was always more evidence to support his client’s defense than the state’s allegations against him, which would have sent him away to prison for the rest of his life if proven.

Fawer acknowledges the Mintz case led to other high-profile work. Another of his famous cases was that of Curtis Kyles, who was tried five times for the same murder. One of the trials resulted in a conviction and death sentence that the US supreme court overturned because prosecutors withheld evidence – the other four ended in hung juries, with Fawer representing Kyles in three of those deadlocks.

Yet Fawer said it is easy for him to avoid becoming arrogant about some of the successes he recorded in the courtroom.

He alluded to how the jury foreman in the Mintz case, Glenn Boquet, served in the same role for the fifth and final Kyles trial in 1998. Mintz believed Boquet’s involvement could only help his client given the outcome of the Mintz case.

But he realized how wrong he was after, in a book about Kyles’ journey through the legal system, he read about how much Boquet despised the way Fawer conducted his business – the expensive suits he preferred to wear in court, the Bronx accent in which he spoke, and the theatrical way he made his arguments.

“Fuck Fawer” was how Boquet summarized his feelings for the attorney in an interview cited by the author of the Kyles book, Jed Horne. And, as Horne writes in Desire Street, Boquet said he tried to convince his fellow jurors to convinct both Mintz and Kyles – only to relent when he couldn’t persuade them.

“Shows what I know,” Fawer said, ruefully.

He said he had met relatively recently with the Mintzes’ children, who were in their 20s at the time of the trial. They described seeking a sense of closure. Fawer said he was unsure whether he had helped them achieve it.

Family sources say Fawer’s uncertainty was well-founded.

They know juries are instructed to acquit if there’s any reasonable doubt about a defendant’s guilt. But at least one member of Aaron Mintz’s remaining close family believes the acquittal morally made little difference.

“You won’t hear me say that Aaron was framed,” that source said. “Whatever happened, he is morally and ethically responsible.”

Another family member thinks that Pam Mintz has sole responsibility for her death if she indeed died by suicide, even if her husband behaved unethically and immorally.

“When people decide to do stupid things, it’s their decision,” that source said of Pam Mintz.

The sources note how Aaron Mintz in 1996 was fined $15,000 for pleading guilty to a federal racketeering charge after being accused of obtaining a license to operate video poker machines and using it to help mobsters conceal money.

He ended up marrying – and divorcing – the woman with whom he was engaged in an affair at the time his children’s mother died. His 2003 obituary, written by his son, doesn’t mention her. Her 2013 obituary doesn’t mention the Mintz patriarch.

Sources said Aaron Mintz’s second marriage was not the only one in the family which later failed at least partially under the weight of Pam Mintz’s death and the subsequent spectacle. Some of the struggles with depression and other ailments were, in essence, passed down to the next generation, who used therapy and other tools to battle them as best they could.

The sources said Aaron Mintz’s relatives cannot help but conclude that the polarized opinions between them about the meaning of their ordeal four decades earlier has at least something to do with how the truth behind their trauma took a backseat to narratives in service of other agendas – while media consumers seeking their next fix basically enabled them.

“That … can change the course of a person’s life,” one of the Mintz family sources said. “The hurt … felt then was palpable, and it hurts to this day.”

“In this city, everyone feels the decline of the North Sea,” says Chris Douglas, 39, who has lived in Aberdeen his whole life and began working as a taxi driver in the Granite City 20 years ago. He now has his own cab company, which in the past was entirely reliant on bookings from the oil and gas industry – today it’s “maybe 50%”, he says.

“You only have to look around: there are industrial estates decimated, hotels no longer trading. The good days are long gone,” he says. “And no political party is coming along to say they are going to rejuvenate the industry. There are just different plans for how to close it down.”

The oil and gasfields in the North Sea are in terminal decline. Last year, the oil basin produced 34m tonnes of oil, its lowest since production in the North Sea was established in the 1970s. As its accessible fossil fuels dwindle, big oil companies have pulled out of the ageing oil basin. And despite the government issuing a rush of licences since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the amount of oil set to be extracted is rapidly shrinking.

Meanwhile, the climate crisis – fuelled by gas, oil and coal extraction – is accelerating at a frightening speed and the world’s leading scientists and energy analysts are clear: there can be no new oil and gas projects if humanity is to avoid catastrophe.

In the far north-east of Scotland, this combination of factors could spell disaster for the almost 60,000 workers supported by the oil and gas industry, their families and communities. For the past four decades they have prospered on the well-paid, secure jobs North Sea oil has provided. But now they are looking into an abyss.

“Most of my friends went into the North Sea industry because for them, and for their fathers and their grandfathers, it has always been seen as a sure thing. Does the green economy offer that same security, the same pay?” Douglas says.

This is a crucial moment for these communities, according to Joe Rollin, a senior organiser at the union Unite, which represents tens of thousands of oil and gas workers. “We simply can’t let these workers be the coalminers of this generation, with all the devastation to lives and communities that would entail,” he says.

This is the challenge facing politicians in Westminster and Holyrood before this week’s general election. How do they manage the inevitable and urgent decline of North Sea oil and gas – and can they ensure a just transition to new low-carbon jobs that are fully unionised, well-paid and secure?

For Mika Minio-Paluello, a policy officer at the Trades Union Congress (TUC), there is a lot on the line.

“Whatever happens to the people working in North Sea oil and gas, it is being closely watched by those in different industries and sectors – not just across the UK but also in other countries – to see if we can take working people on this journey.

“It is a test case in some ways, for the whole idea of a just transition, of what happens when we decarbonise … we simply can’t have a repeat of what happened to coal workers in the 80s.”

The spectre of the miners’ plight after the pit closures in the 1980s hangs over this debate. The communities that were decimated when the then Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher closed the pits and smashed the coalminers’ union never recovered.

Arguably the stakes now are even higher. The escalating climate crisis demands a rapid end to fossil fuel production, but the populist right across Europe is on the rise and it has climate action in their sights – describing it as a remote, elite project being done at the expense of ordinary workers.

The UK’s main political parties are divided on the issue. The Conservative party is still promising to “max out” oil and gas in the North Sea by granting licences for new exploration every year. Meanwhile, Labour has promised to put an end to new licences, and raise taxes on the large profits being made by companies operating in the North Sea. The party is also promising “not a single job” will be lost during the transition.

In response, the Scottish National party has U-turned on its pledge to phase out fossil fuel licences and is trying to tread a “middle ground”, saying it will approve licences if they meet strict climate conditions – although most experts struggle to see how this could be possible.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the insurgent populist Reform UK party, is waiting to capitalise, vowing at his manifesto launch last month to axe net zero policies and fast-track licences to open up the North Sea.

“If we fail to do this transition in a way that takes communities with us, then we leave the way open for Farage and the far right,” said Minio-Paluello. “The risk of the far right culture wars building a wave of support on the back of our failure is very, very real.”

There is little doubt the writing is on the wall for the industry. Experts point out that the number of jobs supported directly and indirectly by oil and gas has more than halved in the past decade – from 441,000 to 214,00 – during which time the government has issued roughly 400 new licences in six licensing rounds.

According to the former head of the oil and gas regulator, new licences would make a difference to gas production only “around the edges”. Even BP’s former chief executive has said North Sea drilling is “not going to make any difference” to Britain’s energy security.

Ajay Parmar, a director at ICIS, a commodity data provider, says:“The UK’s oil supply decline has been in the works for decades. Labour’s policy will hasten the decline but only marginally.”

Critics of the Tory pitch to “max out” North Sea oil claim it is part of a culture war framing what will only result in workers being stranded in a declining industry with no plan to save their livelihoods or communities.

Analysts and trade unions agree that unless it is managed properly, the transition will have a devastating impact on the Scottish economy. According to a report by the consultancy EY, which was commissioned by the Scottish government, North Sea workers have an annual average salary of £88,000, while those working in the oil and gas supply chain earn an average of £51,000 a year. This is well above the average annual salary of £29,000 in Scotland – and above the £42,600 average wage of employees in the clean energy sector, according to figures from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.

As high wage oil jobs are replaced with clean energy roles, the gross value of Scotland’s employment sector could plummet from £19bn a year in 2019 to £12bn by 2050, according to the report.

For people like Dale Green, who has been working on the rigs for the past 22 years, those statistics could be life-changing.

“When I was growing up, the only option for me really if I wanted a good job, good money, was to work on the rigs,” said the 39-year-old scaffolder. “It has allowed me to move on from the council estate where I grew up and to be able to afford a decent life – to look after my children, get a house, get a car.”

Dale said he fears that unless the transition is properly managed the chances he has had will be denied to future generations.

“Taking away opportunities that someone like me has enjoyed, a scaffolder from a working-class community who grew up on a council estate – it could just decimate certain areas,” said Green.

If it wins the election, Labour plans to set up a taskforce with Scottish Labour, the big energy companies and the unions to “secure a future for every oil and gas worker”. It says the new jobs will mostly be in renewables, carbon capture and storage, and hydrogen.

The shadow climate secretary, Ed Miliband, has promised to base Labour’s planned state-backed green power firm, Great British Energy, in Scotland. And part of Labour’s £7bn “wealth fund” will be earmarked for wind power.

But the party has dropped its expertly costed £28bn-a-year green investment pledge, sparking concerns among unions and environmental campaigners about whether it had set aside sufficient funds to ensure a smooth transition away from fossil fuels.

Critics say Labour’s plans remain vague, that there is little or no industrial base in Scotland, and that there are currently very few renewable jobs to transfer workers to. They argue a well-funded, pro-active industrial strategy will be required to create the jobs in wind turbine manufacturing, installation and maintenance, as well as in the wider supply chain for renewables.

Unite says much more needs to be done. Its general secretary, Sharon Graham, refused to sign off the party’s manifesto at its “clause V” last month – in part because of fears Labour’s plans for oil and gas workers in the North Sea were too vague.

“We should not be letting go of one rope until we have hold of another,” said Graham earlier this year. “These types of transitions must have workers at the heart. Unite will not stand by and let these workers be thrown on the scrap heap.”

The union is running a grassroots “No ban without a plan” campaign across the north-east of Scotland calling for Labour to outline a more detailed and funded set of proposals before banning new licences. Last week, more than 200 small businesses published a letter backing the campaign and calling on Labour to spell out exactly where the jobs will come from.

Previously this position might have seen trade unions pitted against climate groups calling for a rapid winding down of the industry. However, behind the scenes there has been an unlikely alliance emerging. Last week, 60 leading climate organisations including Greenpeace UK, Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Oxfam UK and Extinction Rebellion signed an open letter calling for a “clear and funded” transition plan for workers and communities reliant on the oil and gas industry.

The letter, which was sent to all party leaders, is based on a report created in consultation with workers and backed by Unite, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), and Unison Scotland.

A spokesperson for Unite said it welcomed “support from the climate movement”.

“We are fully behind a transition to greener energy, but this must be a fair transition, one that has workers and communities at its heart … we will continue to work with climate groups who are calling for ambitious government action on a just transition.”

Ruby Earle, from campaign group Platform, which helped coordinate the letter, said it shows “how far the climate movement and unions have come in building relationships”.

“Government support for a just transition cannot be an afterthought. A clear and funded industrial strategy, alongside publicly owned energy, is not only essential for workers, communities, and the millions of people living in fuel poverty, but also to ensure the transition happens within climate limits.”

Jake Molloy, a former oil and gas worker and trade unionist for the best part of 20 years, who now sits on the Scottish government’s Just Transition Commission, is at the sharp end of this emerging coalition.

“If I had suggested, 20 years ago [to his colleagues in the industry] that they go and meet Greenpeace or another climate group, they would have thought I meant for a fight because these groups were seen as wanting to destroy our jobs, our communities.”

But he said that had changed in the last few years, with a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes. Molloy said this had resulted in more and more climate groups recognising that the necessary transition away from fossil fuels could not be done at the expense of ordinary working people. At the same time, some unions and workers have accepted that the transition was both necessary and – if done correctly – positive.

“More and more people on both sides are realising that this is an industrial revolution on an unprecedented scale and that we need change – change so fundamental as to strip away the ideology that we’ve worked in for the last 40 years.”

Molloy warned that the many of the much-heralded “new jobs” in renewables simply did not exist in Scotland – citing a recent windfarm development which has been built, installed and maintained entirely by overseas companies and governments.

Tessa Khan, director of campaign group Uplift, said the next government needed to “get everyone around the table – the Scottish government, trade unions, worker representatives and affected communities – to come up with a coherent plan that works in everyone’s interests.”

Crucially, she said, the transition plans must be taken out of the hands of the oil and gas industry.

“The majority of operators in the basin invest nothing in UK renewable energy, but nor are they investing in UK oil and gas production. The record profits of recent years have gone to their shareholders, not to investment in the transition. [They] aren’t interested in creating clean jobs and growing the UK economy, but in making as much money as they can for themselves, for as long they can get away with it.”

Earlier this month the supreme court in London ruled the climate impact of burning oil and gas must be taken into account when deciding whether to approve projects. Experts say this is likely to be another nail in the coffin of North Sea oil and gas, making it it harder to secure new licences. It could even threaten some of those that have already been approved, including the controversial Rosebank oil and gas field, which is to be operated by Norwegian company Equinor. A Labour source said that if the party did form the next government, and Rosebank was still in the balance, then ministers could refuse the remaining consents it needed to operate.

Molloy, who has spent years working on a just transition for his colleagues in the industry, said that whatever the result in this week’s election it was essential that politicians and corporations were not able to pit those worried about the climate crisis against those who wanted to ensure a decent future for workers, their families and communities.

“I‘ve got four grandsons who will never forgive me if I get this wrong, and I’ve been trying for considerable time to get it right, because their future – and that of millions around the world – relies on us getting this right.”

You should never flex about how much sleep you got
If someone had a headache, you would never reply: “That’s funny, my head feels great.” For some reason, any mention of insomnia will unleash a chorus of: “I slept like a baby!”; “Soon as my head hit the pillow!” It’s annoying at any time, but at festivals, the sleep-deprived hit critical mass, and they will turn. If you can sleep through anything, keep quiet about it. Let your bright eyes and dewy complexion do the talking.

Natural deodorant is no match for outdoor life
In any bucolic idyll, you might be tempted to eschew chemical assistance in favour of tea tree or bark or whatever. Fine, go for it, but after half an hour in a festival field, stomping between stages, don’t expect to smell like anything but your own sweet self.

There is limitless demand for a lesbian bar
Scissors, co-created by Laura Woodroffe, is the first lesbian bar in the festival’s history. I know, weird: were the 80s asleep? Anyway, it had it all – a hairdresser, a pool table, a secret nightclub – and anyone would join that queue. But how many people would stay in it all weekend? A lot, as it turns out.

You should shower before you go to bed – even at home
It feels so wrong, like eating cereal for dinner, or wearing your clothes inside out. But once you’ve broken with the custom of the morning being your clean-time, you’ll find this is liberating, actually. Particularly if you never liked getting wet in the first place, you can go to sleep and forget it ever happened.

Adults, given a ball, will play with it (see also: given confetti, will keep it)
They think they’re so grownup, adults, with their time-keeping and their protein shakes. Throw a giant inflatable football into a crowd of them, however, and they’ll play keepy-uppy with the demonic intensity of a cat.

You shouldn’t wait for a ­musician to tell you to hug each other; just do it
Cynic you: “Tsk, they learn this in stage school. Any time a performer needs a bit of a breather, they tell everyone in the audience to turn round and give each other a hug.”

You, hugging your friend: “Man, I love this friend. Why don’t I hug them more often?”

You, hugging a stranger: “You seem nice, would you like some chewing gum?”

Why not synthesise all these selves and just hug people more often?

10,000 steps is so last decade; if you can walk 10k, you can walk 30k
Think big. Stop being in such a rush, with your transport and whatnot.

If you lose your voice, you should try not talking
It feels like such a badge of honour, losing your voice after yelling all night, and then you get into clarifications (“I wasn’t screaming at the Bootleg Beatles, I was screaming at Little Simz”), and then you essay a fake apology (“Sorry I’m so husky, I’ve been having an insane amount of fun, you see”). The thing is, though, nobody can hear you.

What Brat Girl Summer means
Charli xcx defined the brat as someone with: “A pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra,” and it’s her album, so she should know. However, it’s taken on a life of its own, with people making their own Brat merch and appropriating the post-Covid idea of a Hot Girl Summer. To have a Brat Girl Summer, yes, first smoke and wear no underwear; beyond that, there’s no list of rules to break, but whichever one you do, it needs to be in a knowing and triumphant way.

Being in a girl band makes you immortal
No, no, I don’t mean Mel C looks great, or the Sugababes can still pull a surprising crowd. They just all have a quality of undimmable life force that makes it really hard to imagine them subject to that oldest of human frailties: mortality.

A certain type of man will cross the road to tell you why you shouldn’t like Coldplay
He probably won’t be part of your group, but he’ll overhear you talking to your friend, or maybe on your way to see Coldplay. He’ll explain how they’re very hackneyed, actually, and more like children’s entertainers these days. But then he’ll double-back and say even at the beginning, they were rubbish, and he’ll list some other bands you should like instead. These will be nothing like Coldplay. In the old days, before the internet, if he was in your house, this man would throw your Coldplay CDs out of the window. You shouldn’t have let this man in your house. In the really old days, before Coldplay, this man would have crossed the road to tell you why you shouldn’t like Philip Larkin.

In a crowd, you must learn when to stop pushing
Fortune favours the brave and all that; you definitely shouldn’t stand at the edge like a dormouse, daydreaming about the mosh. But being able to judge the exact number of dirty looks you can take before you accept your place in the crowd is a life skill, which will also serve you at busy stations and royal events.

Men’s football puts people in a bad mood; women’s football puts them in a good mood
It was a constant matter of debate, whether or not Glastonbury would show the England game on Sunday evening, and half-fans thought they should, and full-fans thought they shouldn’t, because it would stink the place out if they lost, and non-fans didn’t care, and all fans of women’s football said: when they screened the Women’s World Cup at Green Man last year, England lost, and everyone still finished in a wild good mood. QED.

The moustache is back (again)
When young men first started sporting moustaches, it was so that, if they got lost, you would know to return them to east London. For a while after that, it was ironic, and then all the men started doing it for charity. Now they’re just doing it because they think it looks nice, which a lot of them do. Well done, moustachioed men.

There’s always one person who overperceives risk
In normal life, this is the person who’ll tell you your shoelaces are undone, or that the zip on your bag is open, and you have to rectify the sloppiness and thank them, even though you were pretty happy as you were. At festivals, these people go into overdrive and see danger everywhere, their minds constantly fast-forwarding to the moment where the bin attracts a rat and then, wham, everyone has cholera.

I watched, rapt, at LCD Soundsystem, as a woman told her friends that someone had better pick up that orange, in case someone trod on it. One did pick it up. But now what? Sadly, the second lady had a low perception of risk, and she threw it and it hit someone on the head. It would have been better to leave the orange where it was.

It’s OK to settle, with food
Don’t sweat it, if you had a mac and cheese that tasted like elastic bands made of Dairylea. Your appetite is infinitely self-replenishing. It will find love again.

Fireworks never get old
You might think that unpredictability is the main component of excitement, and therefore fireworks, being entirely predictable, are no longer for you. This is incorrect. You know what Gandhi said – even a single indoor sparkler is better than no sparkler.

You know the notion: take your litter home with you? You can take your festival personality home with you as well
Perhaps you were warmer and more open, in the festive environment; readier with a smile, more tolerant of loud noises and unexpected turns of event, more positive in outlook. You know you can also be like this at home, right?

There’s a right and a wrong way to lend, steal, borrow or unplug a charger
Let’s imagine someone needs a charger: emphatically do not start: “Let me have a look.” First, find out exactly what they need; USB-C, lightning or micro or something else? Do they need the base or just the lead? The minute you say you’re going to look for something, in their heads, that means you’ll find one: so when you don’t, you’ll live on in their heart as nothing but a massive disappointment.

If you ask to borrow something, don’t over-invest in the lender, because they probably won’t have read my first rule, and the likelihood is they won’t have one.

In a power-sharing environment, never unplug anything below 25%.

There’s a trick to getting served
This is the scene; you’re right at the front of the bar, but there are 20 of you and only three staff; if you’re not confident you can be served next, field it. “That person’s next,” you say, winningly, pointing to your neighbour. You’re then guaranteed to be served after that.

You need to learn some people’s names
Anyone you’re going to see regularly – if you like the same coffee place, regularly go through the same turnstile – introduce yourself, remember whatever name comes back. That way, if you ever want to say “thank you”, it’ll sound like you mean it.

You should alternate your shoes
Always take two pairs with you, and switch them. It keeps your feet on their toes.

… and share your sunscreen
You can go wild with generosity: it’s like the magic porridge pot, sun cream – it never runs out. Also, if you have your act together, packing two of any light essentials (sunglasses, lip salve, vape juice if you’re that kind of lowlife, wet wipes) will make you much more popular than you objectively deserve to be.

It’s goodbye novelty yoga, hello (again) Joe Wicks
Power ballad yoga was the end point of silliness for the apparently ageless meditative exercise that seems to need to constantly refresh itself with goats and nudity. Joe Wicks, on the other hand, once the saviour of lockdown, now bringing his workouts to festivals, needs nothing but his own alarming energy.

The full-size adult whale was first spotted a week earlier with approximately 200 metres of rope and fishing buoys wrapped around it. In a multi-agency operation, rescuers were able to free the animal of 800kg ropes and buoys. However, because of how the rope was wrapped around the whale and safety concerns for rescuers, the crew were not able to disentangle all of the rope. Ellen Dwyer, an incident controller in the rescue team, says they are ‘pleased’ they have been able to ‘successfully remove a significant amount of weight and rope from the whale’

A humpback whale which became tangled in 800kg of fishing equipment has been rescued off the Gippsland coast, almost a week after it was first seen to be in trouble.

The whale was spotted near Loch Sport in Central Gippsland on Sunday 23 June by a commercial helicopter, but then disappeared until Friday when it was seen near Lake Tyers off the south-east coast.

A large-scale rescue operation, run by specialised whale disentanglement crews from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Victorian Fisheries Authority and Parks Victoria, began by attaching a tracker to the whale so they would not lose it again.

On Saturday the team cut off 800kg of tangled ropes and buoys, which had severely restricted the animal’s ability to swim. Police lifted the equipment out of the water with a crane to make sure it was not dangerous to other vessels or wildlife.

The DEECA incident controller Ellen Dwyer said rescuers removed approximately 185 metres of the 200 metres of rope the whale was believed to be entangled in, as the animal was “moving around a fair bit”, making it difficult for the rescue team to approach from a closer distance.

She said despite being tangled in rope and buoys, the whale was in “good spirits”.

Insp James Dalton of Victoria’s water police said the search was completely different to the ones they were used to.

“The whale was so tightly tangled in the ropes and it wasn’t travelling very far so we knew it was in real distress,” he said.

“To safely cut the ropes away, we needed to return the following day to ensure we could successfully remove enough of the rope that it could swim freely again. This was a huge team effort and we’re so happy that it had a great outcome.”

Whales are recorded to live beyond 50 years but some of the biggest risk factors to their lives are human activities including fishing gear, boats and pollution and natural predators such as orcas.

The marine tour operator Peter Lynch said “this year we expect to see more whales than in previous years”.

“It’s a recovering population and it’s another success story that Australia and Queensland should be proud of,” he said, referring to the population growth of 500 – when hunting was banned – to approximately 35,000-40,000 whales today.

As whales migrate up the east coast in search of warmer waters, more than 127,000 domestic visitors were expected to travel to see the whales.

There had already been a 37% increase in interest in nature-based tourism this year compared to 2023.

It was expected to bring $5.6bn to the Queensland economy.

“Not only is it good for tourism … [and] our visitor economy, but it educates people on the importance of the delicate ecosystem,” the Queensland tourism minister, Michael Healy, said.

The US Department of Justice is set to charge Boeing with fraud, but plans to offer the planemaker a plea deal, according to sources familiar with the matter – have infuriated the loved ones of hundreds of passengers who died in two fatal crashes five years ago.

Boeing will be granted until the end of this week to decide whether it will plead guilty to the charge and avoid trial, officials told families of those on board the fatal Lion Air flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 that claimed 346 lives.

Attorneys representing the relatives accused the federal government of cooking up “another sweetheart plea deal” with Boeing. On a conference call on Sunday, one official is said to have been asked by a family member how he sleeps at night.

Relatives were briefed on the terms of the proposed deal during the call: Boeing would pay a fine, face a three-year term of probation, and work under a corporate monitor, according to two sources.

The terms unleashed a wave of anger. “The memory of 346 innocents killed by Boeing demands more justice than this,” said Paul Cassell, who represents the families of 15 crash victims.

Erin Applebaum, another attorney acting for relatives of those lost, attacked the proposal as “shameful” and said it “completely fails to mention or recognize the dignity” of the victims.

The families will make the case to a judge, and the wider public, for this deal to be rejected, Applebaum said. “And when there is inevitably another Boeing crash and DoJ seeks to assign blame, they will have nowhere else to look but in the mirror.”

The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday. Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The two crashes of Boeing’s 737 Max, in October 2018 and March 2019, killed 346 people. It prompted the worldwide grounding of the jet for almost two years.

In 2021, the justice department and Boeing reached a controversial deal that protected the company from a criminal conspiracy charge to commit fraud that arose from the two crashes.

Earlier this year, however – as the company came under intense scrutiny after a brand-new 737 Max jet was forced into an emergency landing when a cabin panel blew off mid-flight – the justice department said Boeing had breached this agreement.

The deal it has been offered “appears to be a sweetheart deal”, said Sanjiv Singh, counsel for 16 families of crash victims, citing a request for the Department of Justice to independently appoint a corporate monitor of Boeing, rather that permit the company to nominate its own candidates. “I am stunned that the department deflected our demand and fell back on ‘oh it’s policy’,” he said.

Relatives of those who died “will strenuously object to this plea deal”, said Cassell, who described the agreement as a “no-accountability-deal”.

“The deal will not acknowledge, in any way, that Boeing’s crime killed 346 people,” Cassell said. “It also appears to rest on the idea that Boeing did not harm any victim.”

Separately, as Boeing continues to grapple with the crisis triggered by January’s cabin blowout, Reuters reported on Sunday that it had agreed to buy Spirit AeroSystems – a key supplier – in a deal which values the firm at more than $4bn.

England (4-2-3-1)

Jordan Pickford (GK) Bemused by everything that unfolded in front of him. No chance with Schranz’s goal. 6

Kyle Walker (RB) Dreadful passing and he was repeatedly exposed by Haraslin. But hurled in throw for equaliser. 4

John Stones (CB) Looked like his mind was elsewhere. Awful distribution. Knuckled down in extra-time. 4

Marc Guéhi (CB) Suspended for next round after Trippier’s hospital ball. Beaten before Slovakia’s goal. Then a big assist. 6

Kieran Trippier (LB): Unlucky not to get an assist. But lack of left foot a problem all tournament. 4

Kobbie Mainoo (CM) Did not protect defence well but he showed personality on the ball. Drove England forward. 6

Declan Rice (CM) Faced with too many runners. Struggled in possession, hit post. Better when England led 2-1. 5

Bukayo Saka (RW) Teammates too slow to find him. Flickered at times. Unselfishly played left-back and right wing-back. 6

Jude Bellingham (AM) Frustrating for long spells. Then saved England with an absurd bicycle kick. Who else indeed? 7

Phil Foden (LW) Thought he had equalised, only for VAR to intervene. Ineffective on left. Final product poor. 4

Harry Kane (CF) Had a shot blocked, missed a sitter. Off pace. Scored the winner. Work that out. 6

Substitutes: Cole Palmer (for Trppier, 66) Offered creativity after his belated introduction. Should have started. 7; Eberechi Eze (for Mainoo, 84) Flashed the ball back into the box for England’s second goal. Had to play left wing-back. 7; Ivan Toney (for Foden, 90+4) Spooked Slovakia after coming on in added time – such a smart assist for Kane, 7; Conor Gallagher (for Kane, 105), 6; Ezri Konsa (for Bellingham, 105) 7

Slovakia (4-3-3)

Martin Dubravka (GK) Barely had anything to do before England’s goals. Strong in the air, relieving pressure at set pieces. 6

Peter Pekarik (RB) Caught out of position for England’s disallowed goal. Missed a glorious chance to equalise. 6

Denis Vavro (CB) Made an important block when Kane threatened. Stood firm but resistance faltered at the end. 6

Milan Skriniar (CB) The Paris Saint-Germain centre-back shone, only for Bellingham to take over. Toney unsettled Slovakia too. 6

David Hancko (LB): Overlapped and shot wide. Had the unenviable task of marking Saka and Palmer. Kept going. 7

Stanislav Lobotka (CM) Ran midfield during the first half, knitting everything together. England could have done with his intelligence. 7

Juraj Kucka (CM) Headed on for the opener. Involved in plenty of clever moves. Picked up early booking. 7

Ondrej Duda (CM) Slovakia’s mastery of midfield owed much to them playing as a team. Fought hard but tired. 6

Ivan Schranz (RW) Continued his goalscoring form by running through to beat Pickford. Stole limelight from England’s stars. 7

David Strelec (CF) Split England with lovely ball to Schranz. Almost scored from halfway line after a mix-up. 7

Lukas Haraslin (LW) Dangerous before going off. Kept bursting behind on the left. Nutmegged Walker at one point. 7

Substitutes: Robert Bozenik (for Strelec, 62) 6; Tomas Suslov (for Haraslin, 62) 6; Laszlo Benes (for Duda, 81) 6; Matus Bero (for Kucka, 81) 6; Norbert Gyomber (for Schranz, 90+3) 6; Lubomir Tupta (for Pekarik, 109) 6.