Rotten? co-editor and local councillor (for a few more hours) Emma Dent Coad has been looking into the cyber attack on Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) that has played havoc with with essential services.

It turns out there were red flags that should have alerted the Council to its vulnerability:

🚩Late 2024: A member of RBKC’s Oversight and Scrutiny Committee raised potential problems due to cuts to the cybersecurity budget

🚩March 2025: Auditors reported a significant risks to the implementation of the new Oracle system handling finance, HR and payments

🚩June 2025: Council residents on the Tenants Consultative Committee raised concerns over ‘gaps in IT systems’

🚩July: The Local Government Association noted that ‘RBKC operates within a complex landscape of digital platforms and legacy systems…’

🚩In August the Social Housing Regulator gave RBKC a C3 (second to worst) rating for failing to keep one-third of its homes up to standard; the repairs system was partially run by an ageing IT system

So if you’re getting harassed over rent arrears even though you’re not in arrears, don’t let them gaslight you into thinking it’s you that’s missed something obvious….

Read the full article here.

With elections this week, Vote Palestine campaigners have been encouraging residents to back candidates who have pledged to divest public money from Israel’s war machine.

A campaigner told Rotten? that as soon as they started their Golborne ward canvassing on 11^th April, they were “ambushed” by Zionist operatives. On Chesterton Road the campaigners were “pelted with both verbal and physical abuse from the five following us.”

The Zionists were part of a national network of agitators and false flaggers from far-right Tommy Robinson-aligned groups who disrupt anti-genocide actions. Here in Golborne they called the campaigners “racist” and “brownshirts.”

The campaigners are taking action following RBKC’s Investment Committee’s refusal to divest staff pension £ from arms companies complicit in Israel’s crimes. All politicians from the majority Conservative and opposition Labour parties at Kensington Town Hall refused to back a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment from the war machine tabled by an independent councillor.

For the third consecutive year, RBKC has cancelled its diplomatic reception for the 42 embassies based in the borough. With Israel represented by an openly genocidal ambassador, the soiree has had the potential to be an embarrassing flashpoint for the council since the Netanyahu regime intensified its violence against the Palestinians in 2023.

RBKC were in a no-win scenario: Go ahead with the event and be called out for supporting genocide (not a good look for a Council that claims to have ‘changed’ post-Grenfell); un-invite the Israelis and insult Tory donors, or cancel the shindig and miss out on the prestige that comes with it.

In 2024, RBKC initially defended inviting Israel and Ambassador Hotovely to the reception despite the ambassador’s genocidal statements. Anti-genocide campaigners planned a protest; questions were asked about the appropriateness of hosting Hotovely, and a few days before the event, the council pulled the plug, citing reasons of “security.”

Pressed, RBKC offered the following explanation: “We don’t comment on security matters.”

Last year, RBKC cancelled again, but claimed “it isn’t accurate to say it has been cancelled, because it is not always held annually by every mayor.”

Asked to name the other years that it had not hosted the event, RBKC pretended to only hold records going back five years, during which time only two diplomatic receptions had been held due to Covid.

A little research revealed that the only times the reception had not been held were due to Covid (2020, 2021) or genocide (or “security”).

The Council Leader and Press Office refer to the event on the RBKC website as the “annual Diplomatic Reception.”

We asked why the reception had been cancelled this year, and a Press Officer told Rotten?, “As the diplomatic reception is not an annual event, it will not take place this year.”

An ‘Israeli street food’ restaurant on Elgin Crescent, Erev, with a menu of appropriated Arab food on Elgin Crescent is co-owned by two men with close ties to the Israeli military, who are (prima facie) complicit in genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Erev has been the site of some provocative behaviour by Zionists and their allies in the far right (mentioned above), the Met Police and the media.

The Erev rabbit hole is deepening and a seemingly harmless Instagram account – Notting Hill Hoodhub was happy to platform the British far right to defend Erev following protests by local peaceniks.

In April, Hoodhub pushed a non-story that the Israeli embassy in Kensington had come under a “drone attack involving hazardous materials.”

The usually happy-go-lucky Hoodhub was moved by the non-event: “it’s quite upsetting that protests, terror attacks…are happening so close to home.”

We don’t know what “terror attacks” he is referring to. Is he just copying and pasting what his Zionist handlers send him and adding it to his astroturfed “community” page?    

Politicians pontificate over all kinds of things every day, especially when there’s a moral bandwagon to jump on. So how did our local MPs respond on their X accounts when the US and Israel inaugurated their unprovoked, illegal war on Iran by murdering the Islamic Republic’s head of state/spiritual leader and his family before committing the biggest single killing of girls (120) in recorded human history?

Dawn Butler (Brent, Lab) – said nothing

Ben Coleman (Chelsea & Fulham, Con) – said nothing

Georgia Gould (Queens Park & Maida Vale, Lab) – said nothing

Joe Powell (Kensington & Bayswater) – After the US murdered Ajtoba Khameni’s father, wife, sister, sister’s child and his brother-in-law, Powell thought it appropriate to call for sanctions on the new Ayatollah, who owns some flats in Kensington. Is JP oblivious to the large number of local Iranian families who are (or have been) solid Labour supporters?

Powell said nothing about America’s Minab atrocity.

Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead & Highgate) – expressed concern about events “unfolding in the Middle East” – nice way to describe a war of aggression, “the supreme international crime” according to the Nuremburg Tribunal, 1945/46.

Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith, Lab) – said nothing

- Yevgeny Yevtushenko

A few weeks after the mass murder, the liars all tweeted ‘Eid Mubarak’ and filled their bellies for free at community iftars. Who do they serve?

by Emma Dent Coad & Tom Charles

if you have any stories you’d like to see included in Rotten? you can email them to us at [email protected]. We are committed to not revealing the name or any other personal information of any source unless they explicitly express consent for us to do so. Whistleblowers are especially welcome to get in touch.