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Category: Analysis

  • Red Crescent Palestinians massacre: Global rule of law masquerade is over

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Joe Gill

    It is difficult to be shocked after 18 months of Israel‘s genocidal onslaught on Gaza.

    Brazen crimes against humanity have become the norm. World powers do nothing in response. At best, they put out weak statements of concern. Now, the US does not even bother with that.

    It is fully on board with genocide.

    Israel and the US are planning the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza, knowing full well that no one will stop them.

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are sitting on their hands, despite what appeared to be significant rulings last year on Israeli war crimes by the ICC and on the “plausible risk” of genocide by the ICJ.

    Israeli anti-Zionist commentator Alon Mizrahi posted on X this week:

    “As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned Rafah action.

    “Tens of thousands have been exterminated since then, and hundreds of thousands have been injured. Babies starved and froze to death, and thousands of children lost limbs.

    “Not a word from the ICJ. Zionism and American imperialism have rendered international law null and void. Everyone is allowed to do as they please to anyone. The post-World War II masquerade is truly over.”

    Under the US Joe Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the smirking US spokesperson Matt Miller would make performative statements about “concern” over the killing of Palestinians with weapons they had supplied. (They would never use a word as clear as “killing”, always preferring the perpetrator-free “deaths”).

    Today, under the Donald Trump regime, even the mask of respect for the rituals of international diplomacy has been thrown aside.

    This is the law of the jungle, and the winner is the government that uses superior force to seize what it believes is theirs, and to silence and destroy those who stand in their way.

    Brutally targeted
    Last week, a group of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), civil defence and UN staff rushed to the site of Israeli air strikes to rescue wounded Palestinians in southern Gaza.

    PRCS is the local branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which, like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), provides essential health services to Palestinians in a devastated, besieged war zone.

    Alongside other international aid groups, they have been repeatedly and brutally targeted by Israel.

    That pattern continued on March 23, when Israeli forces committed a heinous, deliberate massacre that left eight PRCS members, six members of Gaza’s civil defence, and one UN agency employee dead.

    The bodies of 14 first responders were found in Rafah, southern Gaza, a week after they were killed. The vehicles were mangled, and the bodies dumped in a mass grave. Some were mutilated, one decapitated.

    The Palestinian Health Ministry said some of the bodies were found with their hands tied and with wounds to their heads and chests.

    “This grave was located just metres from their vehicles, indicating the [Israeli] occupation forces removed the victims from the vehicles, executed them, and then discarded their bodies in the pit,” civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said, describing it as “one of the most brutal massacres Gaza has witnessed in modern history”.


    Under fire: Israel’s war on medics.     Video: Middle East Eye

    ‘Killed on way to save lives’
    The head of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, said: “Today, on the first day of Eid, we returned and recovered the buried bodies of eight PRCS, six civil defence and one UN staff.

    “They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives. This should never have happened.”

    Nothing happened following previous lethal attacks, such as the killing of seven World Central Kitchen staff on 1 April 2024, exactly one year ago, when the victims were British, Polish, Australian, Palestinian, and a dual US-Canadian citizen.

    Despite a certain uproar that was absent when dozens or hundreds of Palestinians were massacred, Israel was not sanctioned by Western powers or the UN. And so, it continued killing aid workers.

    Israel declared Unrwa a “terror” group last October and has killed more than 280 of its staff — accounting for the majority of the 408 aid workers killed in Gaza since October 2023.

    The international response to this latest massacre? Zilch.

    Official silence
    On Sunday, Save the Children, Medical Aid for Palestinians and Christian Aid took out ads in the UK Observer calling for the UK government to stop supplying arms to Israel in the wake of renewed Israeli attacks in Gaza: “David Lammy, Keir Starmer, your failure to act is costing lives.”

    The British prime minister is too busy touting his mass deportation of “illegal” migrants from the UK to comment on the atrocities of his close ally, Israel. He has said nothing in public.

    Lammy, UK Foreign Secretary, has found time to put out statements on the Myanmar earthquake, Nato, Russian attacks on Ukraine, and the need for de-escalation of renewed tensions in South Sudan.

    His last public comment on Israel and Gaza was on March 22, several days after Israel’s horrific massacre of more than 400 Palestinians at dawn on 18 March: “The resumption of Israeli strikes in Gaza marks a dramatic step backward. Alongside France and Germany, the UK urgently calls for a return to the ceasefire.”

    No condemnation of the slaughter of nearly 200 children.

    In response to a request for comment from Middle East Eye, a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “We are outraged by these deaths and we expect the incident to be investigated transparently and for those responsible held to account. Humanitarian workers must be protected, and medical and aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely.

    “We continue to call for a lift on the aid blockade in Gaza, and for all parties to re-engage in ceasefire negotiations to get the hostages out and to secure a permanent end to the conflict, leading to a two-state solution and a lasting peace.”

    As this article was being written, Lammy put out a statement on X that, as usual, avoided any direct mention of who was committing war crimes. “Gaza remains the deadliest place for humanitarians — with over 400 killed. Recent aid worker deaths are a stark reminder. Those responsible must be held accountable.”

    Age of lawlessness
    The new world order of 2025 is a lawless one.

    The big powers and their allies are committed to the violent reordering of the map: Palestine is to be forcibly absorbed into Israel, with US backing. Ukraine will lose its eastern regions to Vladimir Putin’s Russia with US support.

    Smaller nations can be attacked with impunity, from Yemen to Lebanon to Greenland (no US invasion plan as yet, but the mood music is growing louder with every statement from Trump and Vice-President JD Vance).

    This has always been the way to some extent. Still, previously in the post-war world, adherence to international law was the official position of great powers, including the US and the Soviet Union.

    Israel, however, never had time for international law. It was the pioneer of the force-is-right doctrine. That doctrine is now the dominant one.

    International law and international aid are out.

    In the UK last Thursday, a group of youth activists were meeting at the Quaker Friends House in central London to discuss peaceful resistance to the genocide in Gaza.

    Police stormed the building and arrested six young women.

    Such a police action would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but new laws introduced under the last government have made such raids against peaceful gatherings increasingly common.

    This is the age of lawlessness. And anyone standing up for human rights and peace is now the enemy of the state, whether in Palestine, London, or at Columbia University.

    Joe Gill has worked as a journalist in London, Oman, Venezuela and the US, for newspapers including Financial Times, Morning Star and Middle East Eye. His Masters was in Politics of the World Economy at the London School of Economics. Republished from Middle East Eye under Creative Commons.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • It must be April Fool’s Day, as Rachel Reeves just said “promise made, promise kept”

    Chancellor Rachel Reeves has suggested Labour’s mantra is “promise made, promise kept” but anyone who’s been paying attention knows the opposite is true.

    First off, the idea Labour is putting “more money in working people’s pockets” is not backed up by analysis. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), the average family will be £1,400 worse off by 2030 under the government’s plans. And, relatively, the poorest will face the worst of the fresh living standards crisis.

    It looks like a small rise in the minimum wage isn’t offsetting this.

    Energy – prices up

    Ahead of the election, Labour repeatedly claimed it would bring down energy bills. Yet the Ofgem price cap is increasing by 6.4% as of April 2025. This is a choice of private profit over public good. The UK’s largest suppliers of gas made £65bn in net profit in 2023.

    Far from ‘promise made, promise kept’

    Disabled people – cut

    Labour pledged to support disabled people and consult them on changes. But then Reeves announced huge cuts to disabled people’s support in her spring statement. There were only two references to welfare in Labour’s manifesto and no mention of benefits.

    For the party that introduced the National Insurance Act of 1946 that increased and extended unemployment benefits, this was quite the omission. Indeed, it shows that Labour were hiding their cuts to disabled people’s income from the public ahead of them entering government. Hardly ‘promise made, promise kept’.

    Council tax – up

    Before the election, Labour promised to freeze council tax. Keir Starmer said:

    Not a penny more on your council tax, not a penny more than the bill you paid last year

    Yet they have signed off on rises of up to 10%. ‘Promise made, promise kept?’ Nope!

    Austerity 2.0

    In Labour’s manifesto, it reads “there will be no return to austerity”. And Reeves reiterated this at the September Labour conference. But, like George Osborne before her, chancellor Rachel Reeves has branded austerity as ‘efficiency savings’. If successive governments have already starved public services of funds, further cuts won’t help. In December, Reeves instructed each government department to find 5% savings on their current budgets over the next five years. These appear to offset other budget increases across Whitehall. ‘Promise made, promise broken’.

    End cronyism

    In its manifesto, Labour pledged to end the cronyism that the Tories presided over. Yet Labour has been handing jobs to big donors. Cayman Islands-registered hedge fund Quadrature has huge shares in fossil fuels (as well as arms and private healthcare) and it donated £4m to Labour, it’s largest single donation ever. Then, Starmer’s party made the co-chair of a board of Quadrature’s charitable foundation arm, Rachel Kyte, its climate envoy.

    Further, Labour gave its donor Ian Corfied a role as temporary director of the Treasury. He is still an adviser. And then there’s the No 10 pass Starmer gave to Waheed Alli, another donor.

    On top of that, Starmer has failed to declare so-called “informal lobbying”, casting a shadow over how corporations and individuals influence government.

    That’s all before you get to Starmer breaking every single pledge he made to become party leader. We call that bullshit personified.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By James Wright

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Chair of Labour Friends of Israel produces propaganda piece showing UK’s toxic agenda

    British MP Jon Pearce is currently chair of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). And at the weekend, he produced a nauseating piece of propaganda, revealing just how toxic the government’s genocidal agenda is.

    Labour Friends of Genocide

    Amid Britain’s participation in Israel’s Gaza genocide, Pearce was unapologetic. Well, not entirely, because he did apologise for the UK: dropping its objection to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Israeli war criminals Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant; restricting some arms sales to them; and supporting humanitarian aid for millions of Palestinian refugees via UNRWA. If you think those steps are just humane common sense, you’re right. But that’s not what LFI is about.

    Among the pro-Israel steps the government has taken that Pearce boasted about were:

    • Britain’s “surveillance flights” over Gaza in support of Israel’s genocide.
    • Blocking progress for Palestinians at the UN Human Rights Council, supposedly showing ‘balance’ in “the tragic conflict between Israel and the Palestinians” (i.e. Israel’s decades-long settler-colonial crimes in occupied Palestine).
    • Dropping the commitment under Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership to immediately recognise a Palestinian state. While a two-state solution is still most politicians’ stated preference (however unrealistic), pro-Israel propagandists tend to just pay lip service to it while actually opposing it in practice. (We’ll come back to this in a minute.)
    • Making the hostages in Gaza “our first priority”, presumably above the lives of the 17,492 children Israel has killed in Gaza, respecting international law, ending Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, or freeing the thousands of Palestinian hostages in Israel.
    • Its “desire to prioritize a Free Trade Agreement with Israel”.
    • The mobilisation of British police to limit the movement of anti-genocide protests.

    Genocide? What? Look over there!

    The only mention of war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu was to condemn the international arrest warrant against him as “morally suspect” and “legally dubious”. So despite Pearce’s assertion that “our governments won’t always see eye to eye”, he apparently didn’t feel it was necessary to state any differences Labour may have with Israel’s corrupt, far-right prime minister who has been genociding Palestinians for 19 months. In fact, there was only one mention of Gaza, and one mention of Palestine (in inverted commas). And Pearce tried incredibly hard to divert readers’ attention away from the decimation and massacres of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

    Palestine and Gaza didn’t appear in the article’s tags, but Iran did. And that’s little surprise, because Pearce said “Iran” or “Iranian” a whopping 13 times. That clearly tells you what he and his fellow pro-Israel propagandists want us to focus on.

    Pearce also managed to wiggle Ukraine and Russia in there too, mentioning the “death and destruction” as a result of “Russia’s indiscriminate bombardment of Ukrainian civilians”. So he does know how to say the words death, destruction, indiscriminate, bombardment, and civilians – just without Israel or Palestine in the same sentence.

    Ending conflict? Easy. Just give Israel everything it wants. What could possibly go wrong?

    To get “regional peace”, Pearce wrote:

    As a first step, LFI has called for our government to establish a special envoy for the Abraham Accords, with the status of an ambassador, tasked with encouraging additional countries to normalize relations with Israel.

    He also said:

    the foreign secretary has rightly recognized that the path to a Palestinian state is linked to a wider framework involving normalized relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

    The problem is that normalisation of relations with Israel has pushed justice for the Palestinians further away than perhaps ever before. Because the ‘peace process’ in the 1990s simply bought Israel time to advance its settler-colonial project further, as it clearly favoured Israeli domination and Palestinian subjugation. And the Abraham Accords under Donald Trump simply showed once and for all that Palestinians’ struggle for justice was not an obstacle to regional regimes engaging with Israel.

    The 2020 Abraham Accords were essentially business transactions which legitimised Israeli crimes and entrenched injustice. They rewarded Israel’s faithful service as an imperialist outpost for US imperialism in the Middle East. And the result was increasing settler violence in the West Bank, the rise of Israel’s most boldly colonial regime for decades, and escalating violence in the West Bank – all with impunity. With the world ignoring and sidelining the Palestinian struggle, anger and despair grew in Palestine. And Joe Biden’s continuation of Donald Trump’s ‘normalisation’ efforts made renewed conflict more and more likely.

    US actions bolstered Israel’s impunity. The worsening situation in turn sparked the violence and hostage-taking of 7 October. And Israel took advantage of the constant green light from Washington to unleash a genocidal assault on Gaza.

    Normalising colonialism brought us to this point. Only de-normalising it will change that.

    LFI is not on the fringes

    The “opaquely funded” LFI lobby group has invested a lot of money in getting British MPs on side for genocide. And its supporters dominate the top team of the current Labour government under genocide apologist Keir Starmer, who has happily embraced the pro-Israel lobby. And why wouldn’t he? Because as journalist Alan MacLeod wrote previously, LFI – which has very close ties to the Israeli state – “was crucial in smearing and defeating the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn”.

    In 2024, Declassified UK revealed that half of Starmer’s cabinet had received money from the pro-Israel lobby. Then, openDemocracy revealed that the “tax haven-based hedge fund with shares in oil and arms” that had donated £4m to Starmer’s Labour also “stood to profit” from Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Starmer’s ongoing participation in that genocide seems to be the result. And if Jon Pearce’s propaganda is anything to go by, the Israel lobby is very happy about that.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • If Labour followed the SNP’s lead, 700,000 children would be lifted out of poverty

    In a striking revelation from the London School of Economics (LSE), a newly published analysis highlights significant disparities in child poverty between Scotland and the rest of the UK, sparking critical discussions about the government’s role in alleviating economic hardship. The findings come after recent announcements of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) cuts by the UK government, which, according to their own impact assessment, are projected to exacerbate poverty levels.

    Scotland: lifting children out of poverty

    The report, spearheaded by Professor Ruth Patrick and involving collaboration with experts from the University of York, urges a re-evaluation of the current approach to child poverty in the UK.

    It posits that an investment strategy akin to Scotland’s could dramatically alter the landscape for families struggling with poverty. According to the analysis, implementing similar measures throughout the UK could lead to a reduction in child poverty rates by a staggering 700,000 children, essentially lifting them out of economic deprivation overnight.

    Currently, the Scottish government’s proactive measures, including the Scottish Child Payment, stand in stark contrast to Westminster’s actions. The weekly payment of £26.70 per child provided to low-income families in Scotland translates to a substantial annual benefit.

    For a family with three children, this could mean nearly £5,500 more in household income compared to families in England who do not receive similar levels of support.

    As the report outlines, if the UK government were to match this investment, providing an equivalent of approximately £400 per child per year, the impact could be significant. The assessment suggests that this shift in policy could lower child poverty rates by an impressive five percentage points across the country.

    The statistics reveal a troubling trend: not only is child poverty a pervasive issue, but the gulf between Scottish children’s poverty rates and those in the rest of the UK is widening.

    The DWP and Labour: consigning kids to the dustbin

    The implications of this analysis could serve as a catalyst for change, compelling the UK government to reconsider its social security strategy and address the urgent needs of families with children living in hardship.

    Speaking to the LSE, Professor Patrick emphasised the need for the UK government to adopt proactive measures aimed at families on low incomes, stating that “the current trajectory is failing children and families in poverty,” and calling for an “urgent reassessment” of policies to reflect a commitment to tackling poverty effectively.

    While the Scottish government is lauded for its child support initiatives, critics argue that the UK government’s continued cuts to social security undermine these efforts and leave vulnerable families facing an uphill battle against poverty.

    The outreach of these policies reaches individual lives, with parents left worrying about how to provide for their children due to the lack of adequate financial support mechanisms.

    The Westminster government must act

    These developments serve to highlight the contrasting approaches between the two governments and raise questions about the extent of political will to combat poverty.

    The ongoing analysis by the Changing Realities collaboration sheds light on a pressing social issue and calls into question the effectiveness of current government policies when the welfare of children hangs in the balance.

    As the debate continues to unfold, this report could potentially reshape discussions around social security investment in the UK, pushing for a paradigm shift that prioritises the wellbeing of children—particularly those living in poverty—over budgetary cuts.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • DWP PIP cuts will lead to a rise in hate crime – as one man’s story shows

    The Labour Party’s cuts to DWP Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and health-related benefits will lead to a rise in hate crimes – and Jason Alcock’s story proves this.

    When Jason Alcock shared his story of grief, living as a disabled person with several complex conditions, and the tragic loss of his beloved wife, he never imagined it would make him a target for online hate and abuse.

    But after his story was published in major newspapers, cruel and abusive trolls from the dark corners of the internet sent him vile messages, which then turned into a serious case of harassment on his front doorstep.

    This led to him fearing for his safety, and even his life.

    Jason Alcock: bereavement and health battles all at once

    In 2018 Jason’s beloved wife Paola sadly passed away from a lengthy ordeal with cancer. This turned Jason’s life upside down overnight, as he lost the love of his life, who he described as his “anchor”.

    Together for 20 years, Paola’s traumatic death left Jason heartbroken, he had lost his soul mate, and his “world”. Then just seven days after her passing, Jason was diagnosed with bowel cancer and had to have:

    40% of my upper intestines removed, and the medication they gave me after the surgery caused me to start hallucinating and seeing myself as my wife and going through her death.

    At this point, Jason was suffering from severe PTSD, associated with his wife’s death, and felt like giving up:

    I wanted to end it all, I had a plan, I was going to end it all because there was nothing to keep me in the world.

    Family and friends encouraged Jason to go out the house, to help him with his severe bereavement. But every time he tried to step out of the house, his hands would:

    just go to the place where I pushed the powerless wheelchair around for almost 20 years, and everything triggered me.

    The coping strategies that Jason had developed over the years as an Autistic person to:

    cope with everything from masking to other strategies was completely torn away from me when she passed away.

    Doctors were therefore lost on how best to support Jason during this truly challenging period in his life.

    DWP PIP benefit cuts: threatening financial support vital to Jason’s independence

    However, a mental health specialist who was treating Jason at the time, discovered that technology could help and support Jason:

    they started using technology, using virtual reality, using computer games and connecting to my special interest.

    From this moment, Jason finally started to feel like his life had begun to “turn around”, despite the fact that he was and still is reeling from the loss of his beloved Paola.

    Due to the fact that Jason has several complex conditions, including Autism, ADHD and bipolar type two, he receives several benefits to provide him with financial assistance including Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and PIP.

    These benefits enable Jason to have a level of independence and help him to be able to pay his bills.
    His mobility scooter, which Jason relies upon due to his sensory and physical needs, gives him a:

    safe space, where I can go to the local Tesco, or I can go to the local park.

    However, Jason worries about what the recent cuts to disability benefits may mean for him and believes that he will have to “cut back on things”.

    A wave of vile abuse after sharing his story

    During the cost of living crisis, Jason was hit hard and was forced to wash himself with a “wet cloth” and had to sell some of his possessions, with some of them being treasured items that had belonged to Paola.

    Therefore, Jason felt inclined to tell his story to the press, including PA media, which was then syndicated to the BBC and other publications.

    But he could never have anticipated what came next, including the vile comments from trolls.

    Discussing the media attention and the hatred that came after it, Jason told the Canary that at the time he was:

    naïve, and as an Autistic person I don’t understand the concept of deception.

    Within the articles he chose to use a picture of himself with his “computer and VR headset” to display his special interests and coping strategies as a disabled person. The articles discussed his struggles during the cost of living crisis.

    After being in the public eye and receiving thousands of comments which dubbed him as “lazy” and a “scrounger”, he said that “some of the trolls started to come onto my stream”, which took place on Twitch and YouTube.

    From there, Jason’s once therapeutic environment became a living hell, as he was consistently berated and bombarded with atrocious abuse.

    From online threats to real-world hate crimes

    At one moment, when he was streaming and playing a videogame, Jason froze. A troll had told him that they knew “where I lived”. He told the Canary how:

    At this point, I froze, I couldn’t run away.

    The troll followed this by saying that they would:

    break the solar panel in the backyard, and climb in my back window, they even said things like, we’re gonna take your wife’s ashes and put them in a pot noodle and make you eat them.

    They even cruelly alleged that Jason had “killed” his wife.

    He then contacted the police, as he was severely worried about his personal safety, but the police were unable to help as the trolls had used “VPNS”. Jason explained that:

    If you ban someone on Twitch or you ban someone on YouTube, they can get a new name in seconds and be back in and it’s all anonymous.

    From here, things only began to get much worse for Jason, as a troll emerged from the dark corners of the internet in February 2024 and turned up at “my front door”.

    Jason said the troll had:

    pushed a pack of skittles through my letter box.

    But as he was wearing a face mask, and he was not able to be identified by the police:

    DWP PIP cuts hate crime

    The troll also mentioned Paola, Jason’s late wife, and said that Paola “would have loved them”, (meaning the skittles).

    Taunted and abused, Jason also received a fraudulent and false letter from “the council” that the trolls were responsible for making. They then posted it through his door, and claimed that he shouldn’t be on benefits, and said:

    we’re going to investigate you, your benefits will be frozen.

    The abuse didn’t stop there however, as the thuggish criminals said that they would:

    report me to child safety, saying that I was a paedophile and all these things.

    Fearing for his safety thanks to negative media narratives

    After each instance of receiving this vile abuse, Jason reported them to the police and the ongoing cybercrimes investigation.

    Jason explained that unfortunately:

    they found that these people had completely anonymised their data and everything so they couldn’t find them.

    To this day, Jason doesn’t know how they:

    got my address because we looked, and we couldn’t find my address anywhere.

    For a while after the hate crimes committed against him, Jason feared for his safety and life so much that he began to put a heatproof mat under his letter box in case the trolls tried to do something much worse to him.

    Asked about whether he believes hate crimes against disabled people will rise after Rachel Reeve’s cuts to benefits like DWP PIP, he said he worries that other disabled and Autistic people will be attacked and abused because of the media’s attention on PIP claimants.

    The media often portrays disabled people in a particularly negative light. Jason feels that this then leads people who are also struggling with the cost of living problem to:

    latch onto an ‘enemy’, to latch onto someone to attack.

    Speaking on behalf of the disabled community he believes that they have been “scapegoated for everything” by the government and certain media networks which fuel an ableist hatred of disabled individuals.

    He also believes that instead of targeting “the most vulnerable people in society” we should be:

    taxing the rich and stopping all the tax loopholes.

    The Labour Party: an ‘evil mastermind’ punching down on disabled people via DWP PIP cuts

    In the 2024 election, Jason had voted for the Labour Party on the premise that:

    there would be a change.

    But instead, he believes that:

    we got an evil mastermind, the way they want to bring in an assisted dying bill, and cutting benefits, it’s like where are you going with this? Yeah, it just feels a bit weird.

    At the current moment, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that a whopping 70,000 disability hate crimes occur every year, with the work concluding that:

    people with learning disabilities and/or autism are four times more likely to be a victim.

    The abuse of disabled individuals, both online and offline, must be stopped to prevent more victims like Jason from enduring such horrific acts.

    Moreover, the government must take a firmer stance to ensure trolls are not given free rein to target vulnerable people and continuously get away with it.

    The government itself should also be wary that its particularly negative attitude towards DWP PIP claimants at the current moment could lead to a rise in cybercrimes and the harassment of vulnerable disabled people.

    Featured image and additional images supplied

    By Megan Miley

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Shocking new research shows DWP cuts could make people’s addictions even worse

    A new study conducted in Norway has brought to light alarming findings regarding individuals receiving disability benefits and their significantly heightened risk of developing gambling disorders. Of course, the study should have implications for the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) too – just as it’s about to make severe cuts to chronically ill and disabled people’s benefits. However, it’s unlikely it and the Labour Party government will take heed.

    Gambling: plaguing chronically ill and disabled people – and now DWP cuts, too?

    This extensive research, which spanned 11 years and involved national registry data from over 65,000 individuals, concluded that those reliant on disability support are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with gambling disorders compared to the general population.

    The findings have been published in the Journal of Gambling Studies.

    This study’s revelations raise pressing questions regarding the support systems in place not just in Norway but also in the UK, where many depend on DWP benefits such as Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

    Among the shocking statistics, it was noted that nearly one in five individuals diagnosed with a gambling disorder had previously received disability benefits. The disparity was even more pronounced for women, who were nearly four times more likely to develop gambling disorders compared to their non-benefit-receiving counterparts.

    The researchers speculated on several potential reasons for these troubling findings.

    The reasons

    While the study did not establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship, it suggested that the very conditions leading to the award of disability benefits—such as mental health issues and chronic pain—may simultaneously heighten the risk of developing gambling behaviours. With DWP cuts coming in the UK, these problems are only going to worsen.

    Another factor that researchers pointed out is the poverty and isolation often experienced by those on DWP-style benefits in Norway – therefore, here too.

    With limited financial means, some individuals may resort to gambling as either a form of escapism or a misguided attempt to improve their financial situation. The increased accessibility of online gambling platforms only exacerbates this issue, particularly for those with restricted mobility or social isolation.

    The data was drawn from the Norwegian Patient Registry alongside the country’s social welfare database, enabling insights into the potential prospective relationship between receiving DWP disability benefits and developing gambling disorders in the UK.

    DWP cuts: making people’s circumstances even worse

    Such population-level insights provide a compelling case for examining these issues in other nations, particularly in the UK, where gambling has become a rapidly growing concern alongside an increasingly precarious social safety net. There have been studies which have produced similar results in the UK – but they did not focus specifically on chronically ill and disabled people.

    As the DWP continues its push for welfare cuts under the guise of reform, these findings raise crucial concerns about the wellbeing of chronically ill and disabled people.

    A failure to acknowledge the unique vulnerabilities faced by DWP benefit claimants could result in inadequate protective measures. Experts advocate for the necessity of considering disability benefit recipients as a high-risk group for gambling-related harm and suggest implementing targeted screening and intervention programmes tailored for this demographic.

    This Norwegian study’s implications should not be ignored. The gambling landscape has become more complex, and for those receiving DWP disability benefits, it may present an insidious threat amidst the challenges they already face.

    The government should be taking a long, hard look at the intertwined issues of disability, mental health, and gambling disorders to ensure that adequate support systems are in place for the most vulnerable members of society.

    Instead, the DWP are just going to cut their already limited support.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Nearly a year on and severe ME patient Anna is still trapped in life-threatening domestic abuse

    Australia’s government and services have continued to endanger a severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) patient trapped in an abusive household. There, her abusers have now repeatedly infected her with Covid – while gaslighting her and withholding care, creating the perfect storm for her health to deteriorate further.

    The Canary first highlighted Anna’s appalling story in May 2024. However, since then, things have only gotten worse. Anna’s situation was already dire, but now, it has become inordinately more urgent that she finds a safe home away from her abusers. This is because every day that goes by that she remains trapped under the same roof, they continue to put her life at greater risk.

    Severe ME: more than 20 years of a devastating disease

    Anna is based in Melbourne and has lived with ME for over 20 years.

    ME is a chronic systemic neuroimmune disease. It affects nearly every system in the body and causes a multitude of debilitating symptoms.

    Crucially, post-exertional-malaise (PEM) is the hallmark symptom of ME, which entails a disproportionate worsening of many of these symptoms after even minimal physical or mental activities.

    Like many living with ME, Anna also deals with a number of other serious chronic illnesses. These include endometriosis, hypothyroidism, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), and adrenal disease, among others. And for Anna, long Covid has also compounded her condition.

    Contracting Covid-19 in May 2020 and then again in 2022 caused a relapse in her ME/CFS, essentially worsening her condition. In March 2024, family members once again exposed her to the virus. Consequently, Anna currently lives at the severe end of the disease’s scale.

    At least 25% of people live with severe ME. In these cases, people living severe ME are mostly, if not entirely permanently bed-bound or hospitalised. On top of this, they are often unable to digest food, communicate, or process information and are fully dependent on others for their care.

    Still trapped in domestic abuse eleven months on

    All the while Anna has been enormously sick and disabled with severe ME, she has also been trapped in a household where family members abuse and neglect her.

    As the Canary previously wrote:

    Anna told the Canary that her domestic abuser regularly neglects her nutritional needs – sometimes leaving her for days without food.

    On top of this, during the height of Australia’s blistering summer heat between December and February, Anna’s abuser refused her air conditioning. Like many living with ME/CFS, Anna experiences autonomic dysfunction – known as dysautonomia – which can affect blood pressure, heart rate, digestion, and body temperature. So, as Melbourne’s temperatures soared, Anna was left to suffer the impacts this had on her already horrendous health.

    Then, at the end of March, another abusive family member forced a visit on Anna. The family member’s stay ramped up the over-stimulating environment, triggering Anna’s PEM.

    This was when a family member caused Anna to contract Covid in March 2024. And predictably, her family’s abuse has only continued. In November, Anna told the Canary that her family had once again exposed her to a Covid infection. At the same time, the abusive family member that previously visited and gave her Covid – her sister – moved in next door.

    Anna reached out to the Canary over Christmas. Her family was once again putting her health at risk. In particular, while they were all sick, they were refusing to mask to mitigate the risk of her getting infected. She shared a letter with us from her GP with a list of precautions care-givers and healthcare staff would need to implement to keep her safe. This advised that:

    Ongoing measures should be taken to protect [Anna] from future serious infections including Covid-19 including

    • People wearing N95 masks when in the same room as [Anna] (including when asymptomatic) to minimise passing on any respiratory infections
    • People who are in regular contact with [Anna] are encouraged to wear N95 masks when in public, to minimise risk of bringing community-based infections into the house
    • It is recommended that all household members regularly use RATs to monitor for Covid-19 and influenza infections to identify early and asymptomatic infections

    And despite the letter detailing her specific dietary and environmental needs to keep her severe ME as stable as possible, her family have continued to ignore all this.

    Things only getting worse

    Anna told the Canary in March that her family have only continued ramping up the abuse and neglect. She explained that:

    There are mould problems, dust problems, father remodel shower without thought for me

    Crucially, he’d paid no attention to her needs as person living with severe ME, POTS, and MCAS:

    I have been debited shower chair to sit that I offered to pay for he won’t allow on top of hand held shower hose and filter for MCAS and dust filter for central heating he refuses to have cleaned.

    Her council wanted to fix the shower because the set-up is dangerous for her, having hit her head on the side of the bath multiple times. However, her father had also refused to facilitate this. To make matters worse, he has been withholding her shower chair she needs to shower safely due to PEM and POTS. Anna expressed how this compounding abuse is mounting up to put her life in real danger:

    My doctor says if they keep doing all this they will kill me.

    All the while, Anna’s sister has also been exacting coercive control over her health affairs.

    In the past month, her sister has been trying to access confidential details about Anna’s ongoing court case to access Australia’s main disability welfare programme, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Anna explained that:

    She [had] the gall to call my Dr and I don’t know who else so I’m having to go to the trouble of contacting everyone to make sure there’s no leaks and having my case made anonymous and under an unsearchable pseudonym

    Domestic abuse services failing disabled people like Anna

    In January, Anna posted more about the circumstances she is persistently facing in an abusive household:

    However, the problem is, Anna still has no way out. As the Canary detailed before, there are no options available to Anna through the usual domestic violence refuge channels. We wrote how:

    When Anna has sought help at Australia’s domestic abuse shelters, she has found they have no provision available for disabled survivors of violence. This is because women’s refuge services are generally under-equipped to address the care needs of disabled people. On top of this, services do not typically design them with accessibility in mind.

    In short, domestic violence services can’t – and won’t – help Anna because she is disabled. We previously noted how the lack of services was driving Anna to call for help from anyone in Melbourne who could spare her a room and some care. Specifically, we said that:

    Given decades of the Australian state and services failing people living with ME/CFS, change isn’t going to come from within. For that reason, Anna mused to the Canary how she hoped someone would take her in.

    However, it’s a damning indictment when one of the wealthiest countries on the planet places a chronically ill woman at the mercy of medically unqualified, albeit well-meaning strangers for care – and without assurance for her safety.

    Now though, it is literally coming to this since the Victorian state and Melbourne-based domestic abuse services are still shamefully failing her:

    No NDIS, no disability advocate, no help anywhere

    Similarly, Anna has explained to the Canary previously that living in a poor suburb of Melbourne has left her without options for in-person disability advocacy services as well. She told us how:

    I’ve tried them all. Problem is they either don’t work in my catchment or only with NDIS support.

    So, the lack of disability advocacy services in her area has left Anna to fight for herself, despite being extremely sick with severe ME.

    Moreover, as she noted, many of the disability advocacy services she has contacted will only support those accessing Australia’s disability welfare, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). However, here’s the thing: the government overwhelmingly rejects applications from people living with ME. As the Canary highlighted before:

    as of 30 June 2023, the rejection rate for people living with ME/CFS stood at 64% of those who have applied

    What’s more, we calculated that on the basis of even low-end conservative estimates for the number of people living with severe ME in Australia:

    just 0.3% of the people living with severe ME/CFS are currently accessing the NDIS.

    Unsurprisingly then, Anna hasn’t been able to get NDIS either. She explained to the Canary that after the government National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) initially rejected her application, she had to appeal this in court:

    I’d be resting as needed if didn’t have search for housing and NDIS application messed up so gone to court I’m back working on NDIS mid January because have no disability advocate but have charity legal representation. I don’t know if I can do it with no help.

    Anna summed up that a huge barrier is the huge amounts of documented health records and evidence the NDIA requires. For Anna, not only is the process of gathering this putting an immense strain on her health, but there are other issues even obtaining the evidence she needs. She expressed that:

    Well my father threw out the records I was keeping at home and most of my records disappeared when my deceased doctor clinic shut down. He wrote a summary of ever consult. That would be proof. So I have to do more work to dig up info and may still be rejected after 18 months of work.

    And to make matters worse, to get the NDIS, Anna explained how they require applicants to provide:

    proof you tried available treatments and they didn’t work… even if there is no treatment.

    Notably, the NDIA has built engaging with outdated and harmful treatments like Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) into its criteria. Of course, this is hugely problematic – not least because these could cause Anna’s severe ME to worsen even further. Medical professionals have forced Anna into both since she developed ME. It’s highly likely they contributed to her deterioration into severe ME:

    Glacial pace of change putting Anna’s life at risk – but people can help

    Close to a year after the Canary first reported on Anna’s atrocious situation, little has changed.

    As ever, the only people who’ve reached out to help Anna are chronically ill people, often themselves living with ME, or long Covid. Notably, people online have been sharing her story and setting out Anna’s urgent needs. These are:

    • A room in a quiet home with Covid conscious masking. Anna has explained that she can pay rent, but she will need some care assistance. She has already qualified for funding support for this, so can provide for meals and some care hours. There’s a prospect of Carer’s Allowance if the person can assist her long-term.
    • Once she has secured a room in a safe home, she will need a way to move safely, with consideration for her severe ME and mitigating infection risk in the process.
    • She’ll also need funding for moving costs, and aids until she has access to the NDIS.
    • Alongside all this, she needs a disability advocate with experience of complex cases who can assist her in tandem.
    • Separately, she is looking for someone in Australia, preferably in Victoria, to help do verbal communication tasks. Anna has everything they would require documented, so just needs someone to sit on the phone.

    It’s shameful that a person living with severe ME in a wealthy and enormously-resourced country can count on neither the state or specialist services to help her get care, and leave an abusive household. Change for people living with ME continues to move at a glacial pace – but people like Anna can’t wait for it – because by now, it’s already too little, too late.

    In the meantime, if you want to support Anna financially as she prepares to build a life away from abuse and are in a position to do so, her international crowd-funder can be found here. If you live in Australia you can send support to @halcionandon through Beem. Anna would be especially grateful for gift-cards through Amazon (to halcionandon@gmail.com) or Beem, to afford basics.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Wes Streeting took £53,000 from a private healthcare recruiter – and then announced 9,000 NHS redundancies

    Health secretary Wes Streeting accepted over £50,000 from a company with links to private healthcare recruitment on 3 February. Not long after on 18 February, Streeting announced he was abolishing NHS England and cutting 9,000 public jobs. This raises the question of whether the private sector would replace the public sector job cuts, with the Labour Party already increasing private provision of NHS services under Keir Starmer.

    Wes Streeting: damning donations

    Lobbyists and firms with private healthcare connections have brought in over half a million pounds to Labour’s cabinet since 2023. And that’s on top of a £4m donation to the party from Quadrature Capital, which has investments in private healthcare. More broadly, MPs have accepted £2.7m in donations from private healthcare linked companies or individuals since 2023.

    The £53,000 February donation to Wes Streeting comes from the OPD Group, which is controlled by millionaire recruitment mogul Peter Hearn. Hearn is a recruitment executive that, as well as working on senior NHS recruitment, also works on private healthcare provider recruitment.

    This is an interesting position, given the NHS and private providers are competing over staff. The very existence of the private healthcare sector takes expertise and resources away from the NHS and charges everybody more for the favour through profit.

    Streeting also accepted around £47,000 in donations from another company Hearn controls during 2023. And the Financial Times reports that, through seemingly shell companies, Hearn previously donated over £1m to Labour and prominent individual MPs like Streeting from 2014-2023.

    In total, since Starmer became leader in 2020, Labour has accepted 11 donations of one million pounds or more from an individual or corporation. In turn, those 11 donations total a whopping £23.6m from just a handful of people.

    Shocking revolving door

    It’s worth considering whether Wes Streeting will follow former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn and former Tory health secretary Andrew Lansley in the ‘revolving door’ between government and the private healthcare sector, once he is no longer in the cabinet. Both these health secretaries (one of the Blair government and the other the Tory/ Lib Dem coalition) took on lucrative roles in companies benefiting from an increase in private healthcare, after delivering such an increase in government.

    In the 2024 general election, independent activist Leanne Mohamad came within around just 500 votes of unseating Streeting in Ilford North. She stands against NHS privatisation. Meanwhile, Transparency International recommends capping donations from individuals and corporations at £10,000 per year.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By James Wright

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • It will take more than an Oscar to stop Israel’s West Bank plans

    By Leilani Farha of The New Arab

    “I started filming when we started to end.” With these haunting words, Basel Adra begins No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary that depicts life in Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank that are under complete occupation – military and civil – by Israel.

    For Basel and his community, this land isn’t merely territory — it’s identity, livelihood, their past and future.

    No Other Land vividly captures the intensity of life in rural Palestinian villages and the everyday destruction perpetrated by both Israeli authorities and the nearby settler population: the repeated demolition of Palestinian homes and schools; destruction of water sources such as wells; uprooting of olive trees; and the constant threat of extreme violence.

    While this 95-minute slice of Palestinian life opened the world’s eyes, most are unaware that No Other Land takes place in an area of the West Bank that is ground zero for any viable future Palestinian state.

    Designated as “Area C” under the Oslo Peace Accords, it constitutes 60% of the occupied West Bank and is where the bulk of Israeli settlements and outposts are located. It is a beautiful and resource-rich area upon which a Palestinian state would need to rely for self-sufficiency.

    For decades now, Israel has been using military rule as well as its planning regime to take over huge swathes of Area C, land that is Palestinian — lived and worked on for generations.

    This has been achieved through Israel’s High Planning Council, an institution constituted solely of Israelis who oversee the use of the land through permits — a system that invariably benefits Israelis and subjugates Palestinians, so much so that Israel denies access to Palestinians of 99 percent of the land in Area C including their own agricultural lands and private property.

    ‘This is apartheid’
    Michael Lynk, when he was serving as UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, referred to Israel’s planning system as “de-development” and stated explicitly: “This is apartheid”.

    The International Court of Justice recently affirmed what Palestinians have long known: Israel’s planning policies in the West Bank are not only discriminatory but form part of a broader annexation agenda — a violation of international humanitarian law.

    To these ends, Israel deploys a variety of strategies: Israeli officials will deem certain areas as “state lands”, necessary for military use, or designate them as archaeologically significant, or will grant permission for the expansion of an existing settlement or the establishment of a new one.

    Meanwhile, less than 1 percent of Palestinian permit applications were granted at the best of times, a percentage which has dropped to zero since October 2023.

    As part of the annexation strategy, one of Israel’s goals with respect to Area C is demographic: to move Israelis in and drive Palestinians out — all in violation of international law which prohibits the forced relocation of occupied peoples and the transfer of the occupant’s population to occupied land.

    Regardless, Israel is achieving its goal with impunity: between 2023 and 2025 more than 7,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in Area C due to Israeli settler violence and access restrictions.

    At least 16 Palestinian communities have been completely emptied, their residents scattered, and their ties to ancestral lands severed.

    Israel’s settler colonialism on steroids
    Under the cover of the international community’s focus on Gaza since October 2023, Israel has accelerated its land grab at an unprecedented pace.

    The government has increased funding for settlements by nearly 150 percent; more than 25,000 new Israeli housing units in settlements have been advanced or approved; and Israel has been carving out new roads through Palestinian lands in the West Bank, severing Palestinians from each other, their lands and other vital resources.

    Israeli authorities have also encouraged the establishment of new Israeli outposts in Area C, housing some of the most radical settlers who have been intensifying serious violence against Palestinians in the area, often with the support of Israeli soldiers.

    None of this is accidental. In December 2022, Israel appointed Bezalel Smotrich, founder of a settler organisation and a settler himself, to oversee civilian affairs in the West Bank.

    Since then, administrative changes have accelerated settlement expansion while tightening restrictions on Palestinians. New checkpoints and barriers throughout Area C have further isolated Palestinian communities, making daily life increasingly impossible.

    Humanitarian organisations and the international community provide much-needed emergency assistance to help Palestinians maintain a foothold, but Palestinians are quickly losing ground.

    As No Other Land hit screens in movie houses across the world, settlers were storming homes in Area C and since the Oscar win there has been a notable uptick in violence. Just this week reports emerged that co-director Hamdan Ballal was himself badly beaten by Israeli settlers and incarcerated overnight by the Israeli army.

    Israel’s annexation of Area C is imminent. To retain it as Palestinian will require both the Palestinian Authority and the international community to shift the paradigm, assert that Area C is Palestinian and take more robust actions to breathe life into this legal fact.

    The road map for doing so was laid by the International Court of Justice who found unequivocally that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is unlawful and must come to an end.

    They specified that the international community has obligations in this regard: they must not directly or indirectly aid Israel in maintaining the occupation and they must cooperate to end it.

    With respect to Area C, this includes tackling Israel’s settlement policy to cease, prevent and reverse settlement construction and expansion; preventing any further settler violence; and ending any engagement with Israel’s discriminatory High Planning Council, which must be dismantled.

    With no time to waste, and despite all the other urgencies in Gaza and the West Bank, if there is to be a Palestinian state, Palestinians in Area C must be provided with full support – political, financial, and legal — by local authorities and the international community, to rebuild their lives and livelihoods.

    After all, Area C is Palestine.

    Leilani Farha is a former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing and author of the report Area C is Everything. Republished under Creative Commons.

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Steve Coogan sums up the disaster of water privatisation – just as bills set to rise

    With the corporate cronies in the Labour government about to oversee an “awful April” where numerous bills will go up, the BBC told the country about “three ways to cushion the blow of bill rises”. It missed a key step off the list, though. So actor Steve Coogan had to add it for them.

    Speaking to BBC Breakfast about the coming increase in water bills in England and Wales, Coogan sat next to Lake Windermere – “the jewel in the crown of the Lake District National Park” which United Utilities has used “as an open sewer”. Windermere faces a toxic blue-green algae problem which is partially a result of this type of corporate pollution. And Coogan summed this up perfectly, insisting:

    This is a direct result of a 35-year-old experiment in privatisation that has failed.

    Steve Coogan later outlined the key way to improve the situation – that the BBC has failed to mention, arguing that water:

    should be taken back into public ownership so any money generated is put into the system.

    Steve Coogan: the problem is that “the system is broken”

    Regarding pollution in Windermere, Coogan said:

    United Utilities don’t have the network capacity to deal with it. And the reason they don’t have that is because of chronic underinvestment over the last 35 years, where all the profits have been paid out in dividends to shareholders and not invested in the infrastructure that’s required to keep the lake clean for ordinary people.

    He added regarding water privatisation:

    It’s a fundamentally broken system. 35 years. £80bn has been paid out in customer dividends from all the water utilities in this country. £80bn over 35 years. £80bn. And they’re talking about spending £75m here or there. It’s piffle. It’s nothing. The system is broken. Their priority will always be the shareholders.

    Demand public control

    As campaign group We Own It has explained, “Margaret Thatcher privatised water in England and Wales in 1989”. Welsh Water is now a not-for-profit organisation, and Scottish Water and Northern Irish Water remain in public ownership, but England is one massive experimentation lab for the monsters of privatisation.

    In Scotland, We Own It says “bills are lower and rivers and seas are cleaner”, and investment is higher (per household). But the private companies in charge of water in England have run up billions in debt and given even more billions to shareholders (almost entirely from abroad), all while increasing bills. And as the BBC reported, “sewage spills into England’s rivers and seas by water companies more than doubled in 2023” – particularly in poorer areas of the country. It added that “water quality is generally higher in other parts of the UK”.

    Steve Coogan is right. Privatisation has created the problems. And bringing water (and other resources) back into public control is the first step necessary to make things better.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Eight months in, Labour is failing on all measures to tackle homelessness

    The Labour Party government recently announced plans to move towards homelessness prevention. Meanwhile, local authorities are paying private companies billions of pounds to provide temporary accommodation to people experiencing homelessness – which is merely a reactive, crisis response rather than a genuine effort to address the problem.

    The scale of the crisis

    A recent analysis by Shelter estimated that 354,000 people are currently experiencing homelessness in England. This is an increase of 44,500 on the previous year. These figures do not include anyone classed as ‘hidden homeless’ – that is, anyone sofa-surfing, sleeping in cars or squats, or otherwise choosing to stay clear of homelessness charities or local authorities. This means the actual figure is even higher. 

    During Labour’s first budget announcement in October, Rachel Reeves included a measly £233m in extra funding to tackle homelessness. This was quickly followed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government announcing an additional £633.2m in December.

    This money will be given to English councils from 2025-26 through the Homelessness Prevention Grant to support them to deliver services that both tackle and prevent homelessness. This is a funding uplift of £192.9m on 2024-25. 

    However, it seems that currently the majority of funding designated for homelessness is still being spent on temporary accommodation. 

    Not so temporary

    The Conservative government promised, and failed, to end rough sleeping – which is only the most visible form of homelessness. Thousands of other people are forced to stay in hostels, bed and breakfasts, sofas, or even cars. 

    Ending rough sleeping simply makes the problem less visible. It would still exist – just out of the public eye.

    Under both the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 and the Housing Act 1996, local authorities have a duty to take steps to prevent homelessness. In England, local authorities also have a statutory duty to take steps to relieve homelessness if a household is already homeless when it approaches them for help.

    Often, both of these come in the form of temporary accommodation. This can be hostels, temporary flats, supported accommodation, hotels, or bed and breakfasts. 

    According to the most recent figures, there are 326,000 people in temporary accommodation in England, with the majority being families and children. This is a 17% increase on the previous year.

    And, in 2022–23, 18% of households in temporary accommodation in London were there for over 5 years. 

    What’s more, temporary accommodation is one of the most expensive forms of accommodation. The average rent in England costs £1,375 per calendar month. Temporary accommodation, however, is known to be far more expensive.

    An analysis by the Centre for Homelessness Impact showed that from April 2023 to March 2024, local authorities reported that they spent £2.29bn on temporary accommodation. This is compared to £770 million on all other types of homelessness activity. Since 2010, spending on temporary accommodation has increased by 406%. Meanwhile, there was only an increase of 145% in the number of households experiencing homelessness over the same time frame. 

    “Prevent households from reaching crisis point”

    The response to a recent Freedom of Information request to Croydon Borough Council laid out the average prices the council pays for temporary accommodation, per night. It stated that: 

    Rates are regularly reviewed and are subject to change at any time. The current rates are:

    Studio – £30-40, 1 bed – £50 -65, 2 bed – £70 – 80 3 bed – £75 -90 4 bed – £95-115

    This means that a month of temporary accommodation in a two bedroom property would cost £2,480. The monthly rent for a property of the same size in Croydon, according to the Office for National Statistics, would be around £1,477. This shows a 68% difference in the prices between temporary accommodation and settled accommodation. Obviously, over time that adds up. 

    Whilst Labour has only been in power eight months, there are clear steps it could be taking to turn the tide on these numbers.

    Greg Hurst, Director of Communications and Public Engagement at the Centre for Homelessness Impact told the Canary: 

    So much spending on temporary accommodation keeps households living there for very long periods. This is a really expensive use of public funds.

    He explained that many types of nightly paid accommodation – which is often not self contained – are far more expensive than other types of accommodation. This includes bed and breakfasts, hotels, and shelters. He said:

    What the government can do is prevent households from reaching crisis point. Once they do, under the Homelessness Reduction Act, councils have a duty to provide housing for households in priority need that are not judged to be ‘intentionally’ homeless.

    Years worth of damage

    One way Labour could stop households from “reaching crisis point” would be to address the damage of years of devastating Conservative welfare cuts. 

    Leanna Fairfax, PhD student in women’s homelessness, spelled this out to the Canary:

    I think it starts right back from the beginning, we need more social homes. Along with a regulated private rented system and the welfare cuts that have been implemented over the last 15 years need to be reviewed as these inter-relate with some of the issues as to why people are experiencing homelessness. Such as the benefit cap and two child limit.

    A notable solution could come in the form of the Local Housing Allowance (LHA), which is linked to both housing benefit and Universal Credit. 

    The LHA is a flat rate benefit which allows people on low incomes to pay for private rented accommodation. It’s based on age, local rent prices, and other factors such as disability status or a history of being in care. Until 2013, it automatically reflected local rent prices, but the Conservative government froze it. This meant rent prices continued to increase, whilst the benefit did not. 

    Labour recently announced that LHA will once again be frozen in 2025. Research showed that last year, the LHA was almost one-third lower than average private rent prices. However, since then average rent prices in England have increased by a further 8.8%, to £1,375. LHA rates have still not changed, meaning the gap keeps growing. 

    Controversially, private renters under the age of 35 are only entitled to a shared accommodation rate – even if they live alone. This means increasing numbers of young people are experiencing homelessness, with a 10% increase in 2023-24 compared to the previous year. 

    In North Yorkshire, the average rent on a one bedroomed property is £562 – which is one of the cheapest in the country. The LHA rate amounts to £414.24. This means that 35% of the rent is not covered .

    For under-35s, the difference is even greater as the shared accommodation rate is only £384.48 – meaning 46% of the rent is not covered.

    This means that as rents continue to increase, instead of preventing homelessness like Labour claims it is trying to do, the LHA freeze means that homelessness figures are likely to keep increasing.

    A political choice

    Ultimately, if Labour was serious about preventing homelessness, or even ending it, it would start to tackle the systemic causes that it seems to be attempting to sweep under the rug. 

    Fairfax pointed out, for instance, that systemic sexism is one factor driving homelessness:

    I think systemic causes of homelessness should be brought into discussion more. For example the role which gender plays in homelessness and how single mothers likely make up a large proportion of those new figures. The continued inequalities that women face along with the increased pressure of gender norms such as being the primary carer to children mean that women are at an increased risk to be reliant on the state and are a greater risk of the negative impacts of inadequate policies and funding.

    Moreover, the LHA is a case in point of the choices our politicians make – which both put people at risk of homelessness, and keep people in homelessness for longer. 

    Unless Labour takes a long, hard look at the societal conditions fomenting homelessness, it can’t truly claim to champion prevention, and all its actions really amount to is more tinkering round at the edges of a socio-political problem of its own making.

    Feature image shows Russ and Selma – via Centre for Homelessness Impact / Jeff Hubbard

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Shockat Adam didn’t just beat Jon Ashworth. He’s become a real progressive leader, too.

    Shockat Adam isn’t just the optometrist who helped to free Leicester from Jon Ashworth. He’s also been a consistent opponent of Israeli war crimes and prime minister Keir Starmer’s elitist government. And as part of the Independent Alliance alongside Jeremy Corbyn, he’s become a real progressive leader in parliament.

    Following the awful Spring Statement last week, he joined a number of prominent progressive figures in calling for an alternative to Labour Party austerity by signing a Dignity Declaration. This highlighted rising living costs and deepening poverty urgent crises, criticising the political establishment for letting society’s richest people “off the hook” and shielding them from the supposedly “tough choices” of austerity. Adam told the Canary:

    The country needs a real change of direction. People didn’t vote for cuts to disability benefit, or the winter fuel allowance or keeping the two child benefit cap. The government’s own figures show three million families will be worse off as a result of the spring statement, with the poorest hit hardest. The chasm between the rich and poor is ever widening and is unsustainable for a safe and secure future for our country. The ‘Dignity Declaration’ shows a different way, starting with taxing the wealthiest to rebuild public services and I am very happy to put my name to it.

    Shockat Adam: “Labour are betraying the people who voted for change”

    Shockat Adam had also said last week that:

    The Labour government talks about change and bringing growth, but its actions mean more of the same failed austerity and stalled growth.

    He added that:

    While the super-rich see their wealth growing as they gobble up public and private assets, ordinary families worry how to pay their rent and mortgages, meet the ever increasing cost of energy and water and see their public services turn to squalor.

    To end “this cycle of austerity and despair”, he said, parliament should be “taxing the wealthiest to raise the billions needed for public services and infrastructure investment”. But instead, he emphasised that:

    Labour are betraying the people who voted for change last year. We simply cannot afford another four years of more of the same.

    The Dignity Declaration and increasing unity on the left

    Last week’s declaration could help to pave the way for greater unity among progressives, which is sorely needed right now. As it stressed:

    The government claims there is no money to lift people out of poverty, yet it finds billions for war and weapons. This isn’t about scarcity—it’s about priorities. And their priorities are clear: no money for us all, endless money for war.

    To “shape our world based on human need, not corporate greed”, it called for:

    properly taxing multinational corporations and those with assets over £10 million so we can rebuild our schools and hospitals… bringing in rent controls to tackle the housing emergency… ending the disaster of privatisation in energy, water, rail and healthcare… protecting our planet by standing up to fossil fuel giants and building a new green energy system… [and] investing in welfare, not warfare.

    The Dignity Declaration comes amid numerous local and national initiatives on the left that in many cases are coordinating to help build a network that could eventually present a real challenge to the political dominance of the blue and red wings of the UK corporate party. And despite Shockat Adam being a newcomer to mainstream politics, he’s already made a very positive contribution to that struggle.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Independent who beat Labour SLAMS the party for being ‘obnoxious’ to voters

    Independent politician Theo Dennison beat the Labour Party in a local council election earlier this month. And he said one of the reasons he was able to beat his former party was that it seriously harmed its reputation by being so “obnoxious”.

    Speaking to the Canary, he said Labour had essentially made the election a choice between them and him, which he called “an absolute gift”. This was partly the case because Labour was “so obnoxious to the local press and to local residents”. And campaigners “badmouthing” him on the doorstep did “irreparable harm” to their reputation.

    Dennison’s team also tried to get “as many doors knocked as we could”. In fact, he stressed:

    You cannot do enough knocking on doors.

    While he noted the importance of getting out and speaking to voters, however, he highlighted Labour’s aversion to that.

    Labour arrogance and rule breaking

    In 2006, he said, Labour lost power locally:

    because they just stopped listening to people, started thinking they were so big and so strong they didn’t really need to do that. They got quite arrogant and out of touch.

    And this didn’t change much when they actually got back into power. As he explained:

    increasingly, between 2010 and 22, I think it became apparent that if they could get away without listening to vote they would.

    The party, he asserted, “started breaking the rules because they could rather because of an accident”. And in 2022, the candidate selection process “was riven with rule breaking, which was well supported by the regional office and by the party nationally”. In Hounslow, he stressed, “it was an absolute disaster”. And he explained that:

    while it might have been intended at one time as to have been a purge of Momentum and the like, there were no Momentum councillors to purge, so people purged everybody they didn’t like or everybody who was a threat to them in the selection battle

    He added:

    There was no attempt to keep the selection process fair.

    That’s when he left Labour and stood as an independent. And while he didn’t manage to defeat Labour in 2022 and 2024, the situation changed in 2025 as voters experienced how awful Keir Starmer’s Labour was in government.

    Labour keeps hurting ordinary people

    Dennison was highly critical of his former party, saying councillors in 2022 had been “committed to putting up the council tax, whether they needed to or not”, with a “£700m budget decided in seven minutes”. He added that there was:

    no oversight of what the office is doing, no attempt to actually set priorities for the council. It was an absolute mess.

    And at the same time, they were putting back on the council tax deduction scheme, which is the scheme that supports local households who are unable to pay their council tax. They took £7m out of the support for those poorer families in 2022, and they’ve done it again this year, taking another £4m out of their pockets.

    And then, thirdly, on the same day they were raising their own councillors’ allowances, which was, I think, not just symbolic, but entirely the priority, as far as they were concerned. And they’re going to do exactly the same thing this year. So the same problems I had in 22 are still alive in 2025, and for as long as they’re on that direction, that lack of moral compass, that lack of political direction – that will define them

    Labour has “lost track of all sense of value both nationally and locally”

    Dennison criticised the “partial interpretation of the rule book” in Labour, where the party has increasingly allowed right-wingers to get away with things it would turf left-wingers out for. This takeover, he said:

    helped, essentially, bury them as a progressive force.

    And he stressed that:

    to be successful in a democracy, a party also needs to be democratic and trust its members rather than treat them as simply fodder… They’ve lost track of all sense of value, both nationally and locally, and are seeking either a range of policy solutions which are generally untested or already failed Conservative ‘solutions’ or just stuff they’re making up as they’re going along. So I think it’s a bloody mess. And actually, I don’t really see a very positive future for the Labour Party.

    He also saw the effects of Labour’s heartlessness on voters locally. As he described:

    I didn’t have any great expectation that Keir Starmer’s leadership was going to be transformative or that progressive. And so… I don’t think I was as disappointed as many other people who had actually just believed that things could not get worse, and their experience over the first 6 to 9 months is that, oddly enough, the Labour Party seemed determined to make them worse than they had been, and the distress that actually you met on doors – people who just could not believe that that hope had been entirely false. It’s very, very palpable. And I’m not in the least bit surprised that people were just too desperate, too cheesed off, too bothered by other personal concerns to turn out and vote now.

    “Representation for local residents rather than for parties”

    The key argument of his campaign was that:

    what we really needed was representation for local residents rather than for parties. So rather than being a plain party candidate who would represent all that was good about the council and all that was good about the Labour Party to the electorate, we were very much focused on trying to express the views and frustrations of residents back to the council, which is the way it’s meant to be.

    And because the cost of living crisis was such a major issue in the ward and Hounslow in general, he said:

    We had to focus on the fact that people couldn’t afford to have another Labour councillor who would simply nod through increases in [councillors’] allowances and increases in local taxation.

    Giving tips on campaigning for others, meanwhile, he said his election agent suggested “don’t waste your time with keyboard worries”. And Dennison emphasised:

    The virtual campaign is very, very different from the real door-to-door campaign. And actually, that would be a definite you must do – you cannot do enough knocking on doors.

    The mission now? ‘To try and stop the misuse of taxpayers’ money to fund councillors’ self-serving machine’

    In his role as a councillor, Dennison insisted that he will:

    try and clean up the local Labour Party and the way the council is run, to try and stop the misuse of taxpayers’ money to fund this rather self-serving machine, to try and get a grip on the priorities of the council so that local services in Brentford and Isleworth are not just protected but also improved – at the moment, there’s quite a number of significant services under threat, try and do something about the attitude on dealing with people who frankly don’t have the household budget to actually manage at this particular time, and to stop them putting up the council tax again, or at least make it so bloody hard that they regret every single second.

    And he asserted:

    At every single meeting, I will be raising these concerns. And they can shout me down, hound me down, try and stop me speaking as much as they like, but that voice will be heard.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Independent who beat Labour SLAMS the party for being ‘obnoxious’ to voters

    Independent politician Theo Dennison beat the Labour Party in a local council election earlier this month. And he said one of the reasons he was able to beat his former party was that it seriously harmed its reputation by being so “obnoxious”.

    Speaking to the Canary, he said Labour had essentially made the election a choice between them and him, which he called “an absolute gift”. This was partly the case because Labour was “so obnoxious to the local press and to local residents”. And campaigners “badmouthing” him on the doorstep did “irreparable harm” to their reputation.

    Dennison’s team also tried to get “as many doors knocked as we could”. In fact, he stressed:

    You cannot do enough knocking on doors.

    While he noted the importance of getting out and speaking to voters, however, he highlighted Labour’s aversion to that.

    Labour arrogance and rule breaking

    In 2006, he said, Labour lost power locally:

    because they just stopped listening to people, started thinking they were so big and so strong they didn’t really need to do that. They got quite arrogant and out of touch.

    And this didn’t change much when they actually got back into power. As he explained:

    increasingly, between 2010 and 22, I think it became apparent that if they could get away without listening to vote they would.

    The party, he asserted, “started breaking the rules because they could rather because of an accident”. And in 2022, the candidate selection process “was riven with rule breaking, which was well supported by the regional office and by the party nationally”. In Hounslow, he stressed, “it was an absolute disaster”. And he explained that:

    while it might have been intended at one time as to have been a purge of Momentum and the like, there were no Momentum councillors to purge, so people purged everybody they didn’t like or everybody who was a threat to them in the selection battle

    He added:

    There was no attempt to keep the selection process fair.

    That’s when he left Labour and stood as an independent. And while he didn’t manage to defeat Labour in 2022 and 2024, the situation changed in 2025 as voters experienced how awful Keir Starmer’s Labour was in government.

    Labour keeps hurting ordinary people

    Dennison was highly critical of his former party, saying councillors in 2022 had been “committed to putting up the council tax, whether they needed to or not”, with a “£700m budget decided in seven minutes”. He added that there was:

    no oversight of what the office is doing, no attempt to actually set priorities for the council. It was an absolute mess.

    And at the same time, they were putting back on the council tax deduction scheme, which is the scheme that supports local households who are unable to pay their council tax. They took £7m out of the support for those poorer families in 2022, and they’ve done it again this year, taking another £4m out of their pockets.

    And then, thirdly, on the same day they were raising their own councillors’ allowances, which was, I think, not just symbolic, but entirely the priority, as far as they were concerned. And they’re going to do exactly the same thing this year. So the same problems I had in 22 are still alive in 2025, and for as long as they’re on that direction, that lack of moral compass, that lack of political direction – that will define them

    Labour has “lost track of all sense of value both nationally and locally”

    Dennison criticised the “partial interpretation of the rule book” in Labour, where the party has increasingly allowed right-wingers to get away with things it would turf left-wingers out for. This takeover, he said:

    helped, essentially, bury them as a progressive force.

    And he stressed that:

    to be successful in a democracy, a party also needs to be democratic and trust its members rather than treat them as simply fodder… They’ve lost track of all sense of value, both nationally and locally, and are seeking either a range of policy solutions which are generally untested or already failed Conservative ‘solutions’ or just stuff they’re making up as they’re going along. So I think it’s a bloody mess. And actually, I don’t really see a very positive future for the Labour Party.

    He also saw the effects of Labour’s heartlessness on voters locally. As he described:

    I didn’t have any great expectation that Keir Starmer’s leadership was going to be transformative or that progressive. And so… I don’t think I was as disappointed as many other people who had actually just believed that things could not get worse, and their experience over the first 6 to 9 months is that, oddly enough, the Labour Party seemed determined to make them worse than they had been, and the distress that actually you met on doors – people who just could not believe that that hope had been entirely false. It’s very, very palpable. And I’m not in the least bit surprised that people were just too desperate, too cheesed off, too bothered by other personal concerns to turn out and vote now.

    “Representation for local residents rather than for parties”

    The key argument of his campaign was that:

    what we really needed was representation for local residents rather than for parties. So rather than being a plain party candidate who would represent all that was good about the council and all that was good about the Labour Party to the electorate, we were very much focused on trying to express the views and frustrations of residents back to the council, which is the way it’s meant to be.

    And because the cost of living crisis was such a major issue in the ward and Hounslow in general, he said:

    We had to focus on the fact that people couldn’t afford to have another Labour councillor who would simply nod through increases in [councillors’] allowances and increases in local taxation.

    Giving tips on campaigning for others, meanwhile, he said his election agent suggested “don’t waste your time with keyboard worries”. And Dennison emphasised:

    The virtual campaign is very, very different from the real door-to-door campaign. And actually, that would be a definite you must do – you cannot do enough knocking on doors.

    The mission now? ‘To try and stop the misuse of taxpayers’ money to fund councillors’ self-serving machine’

    In his role as a councillor, Dennison insisted that he will:

    try and clean up the local Labour Party and the way the council is run, to try and stop the misuse of taxpayers’ money to fund this rather self-serving machine, to try and get a grip on the priorities of the council so that local services in Brentford and Isleworth are not just protected but also improved – at the moment, there’s quite a number of significant services under threat, try and do something about the attitude on dealing with people who frankly don’t have the household budget to actually manage at this particular time, and to stop them putting up the council tax again, or at least make it so bloody hard that they regret every single second.

    And he asserted:

    At every single meeting, I will be raising these concerns. And they can shout me down, hound me down, try and stop me speaking as much as they like, but that voice will be heard.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • We can’t ignore how Myanmar’s earthquake is linked to the climate crisis

    On Friday, a powerful earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale struck central Myanmar, causing extensive damage and loss of life across the region. The tremors were felt far beyond Myanmar’s borders, impacting areas as distant as Thailand and China.

    This disaster highlights the critical link between the climate crisis and the frequency of such extreme weather events, emphasising the urgent need for integrated disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies that include social cohesion and political will.

    Myanmar earthquake: devastating impacts

    Following the quake, more than 2,000 people died and significant destruction was reported, particularly in cities near the quake’s epicentre.

    In Mandalay, one of Myanmar’s historic capitals, and in other affected areas, many buildings collapsed, including structures of cultural significance. The military junta currently governing Myanmar declared a state of emergency in multiple regions following the disaster and has sought international aid.

    Mami Mizutori, former UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Reduction, has pointed out the necessity of aligning disaster risk management with the climate crisis adaptation to better equip nations for such crises.

    The repercussions of the earthquake were felt in Thailand, where a major rescue operation took place in Bangkok at the site of a collapsed high-rise building, resulting in fatalities among construction workers. The aftermath has left significant challenges, including transport disruptions as public services shut down amidst the chaos. Civilians faced severe delays and obstacles in returning home, exacerbating the already dire situation.

    Myanmar has a long history marked by decades of military rule, political unrest, and conflict.

    A long history of unrest

    The current situation was worsened by a military coup in 2021, which derailed a budding democratic transition initiated in 2015. Protests erupted against the junta’s control, leading to ongoing violence as civilians took up arms against the government. Concerns have been raised about the capability of the military to manage both the disaster response and the conflict, especially as large areas remain under opposition control.

    Humanitarian challenges are mounting, with around 1.6 million people already displaced due to ongoing violence before the earthquake struck. The combination of climate vulnerability and armed conflict has placed an enormous burden on civilians, as noted by aid worker Diego Alcantara. Despite the international community’s readiness to assist, resources for humanitarian aid remain strained, which complicates efforts to respond effectively to the growing needs.

    In the southern Philippines, particularly in the Bangsamoro region of Mindanao, similar challenges are also unfolding due to the climate crisis. The region, already grappling with historical political conflicts and cultural strife, is facing intensified threats from shifting weather patterns that affect agriculture and livelihoods. A considerable portion of the population has been affected, leading to food insecurity and financial difficulties.

    Myanmar’s earthquake is linked to the climate crisis, whether we like it or not

    Given these intertwined issues of armed conflict and the climate crisis, experts advocate for a peace-positive climate adaptation strategy. This approach aims to bridge the gap between climate resilience initiatives and conflict resolution, ensuring that recovery and adaptation efforts do not exacerbate existing tensions.

    Recommendations suggest enhancing climate-responsive social protection, employing climate-resilient farming techniques, and fostering local disaster management efforts that consider the potential for conflict.

    As climate disasters continue to unfold, it becomes increasingly urgent to implement comprehensive strategies that not only address immediate humanitarian needs but also lay the groundwork for long-term stability and resilience in vulnerable regions.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • We can’t ignore how Myanmar’s earthquake is linked to the climate crisis

    On Friday, a powerful earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale struck central Myanmar, causing extensive damage and loss of life across the region. The tremors were felt far beyond Myanmar’s borders, impacting areas as distant as Thailand and China.

    This disaster highlights the critical link between the climate crisis and the frequency of such extreme weather events, emphasising the urgent need for integrated disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies that include social cohesion and political will.

    Myanmar earthquake: devastating impacts

    Following the quake, more than 2,000 people died and significant destruction was reported, particularly in cities near the quake’s epicentre.

    In Mandalay, one of Myanmar’s historic capitals, and in other affected areas, many buildings collapsed, including structures of cultural significance. The military junta currently governing Myanmar declared a state of emergency in multiple regions following the disaster and has sought international aid.

    Mami Mizutori, former UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Reduction, has pointed out the necessity of aligning disaster risk management with the climate crisis adaptation to better equip nations for such crises.

    The repercussions of the earthquake were felt in Thailand, where a major rescue operation took place in Bangkok at the site of a collapsed high-rise building, resulting in fatalities among construction workers. The aftermath has left significant challenges, including transport disruptions as public services shut down amidst the chaos. Civilians faced severe delays and obstacles in returning home, exacerbating the already dire situation.

    Myanmar has a long history marked by decades of military rule, political unrest, and conflict.

    A long history of unrest

    The current situation was worsened by a military coup in 2021, which derailed a budding democratic transition initiated in 2015. Protests erupted against the junta’s control, leading to ongoing violence as civilians took up arms against the government. Concerns have been raised about the capability of the military to manage both the disaster response and the conflict, especially as large areas remain under opposition control.

    Humanitarian challenges are mounting, with around 1.6 million people already displaced due to ongoing violence before the earthquake struck. The combination of climate vulnerability and armed conflict has placed an enormous burden on civilians, as noted by aid worker Diego Alcantara. Despite the international community’s readiness to assist, resources for humanitarian aid remain strained, which complicates efforts to respond effectively to the growing needs.

    In the southern Philippines, particularly in the Bangsamoro region of Mindanao, similar challenges are also unfolding due to the climate crisis. The region, already grappling with historical political conflicts and cultural strife, is facing intensified threats from shifting weather patterns that affect agriculture and livelihoods. A considerable portion of the population has been affected, leading to food insecurity and financial difficulties.

    Myanmar’s earthquake is linked to the climate crisis, whether we like it or not

    Given these intertwined issues of armed conflict and the climate crisis, experts advocate for a peace-positive climate adaptation strategy. This approach aims to bridge the gap between climate resilience initiatives and conflict resolution, ensuring that recovery and adaptation efforts do not exacerbate existing tensions.

    Recommendations suggest enhancing climate-responsive social protection, employing climate-resilient farming techniques, and fostering local disaster management efforts that consider the potential for conflict.

    As climate disasters continue to unfold, it becomes increasingly urgent to implement comprehensive strategies that not only address immediate humanitarian needs but also lay the groundwork for long-term stability and resilience in vulnerable regions.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Labour is letting the stenographing MSM get away with ruining local news

    A new report has delivered a damning verdict on the UK Labour Party government’s inaction in the face of a crisis in local journalism – where corporate media has taken control and is destroying the sector with clickbait and junk.

    MSM: sucking the lifeblood out of local news

    The Public Interest News Foundation’s (PINF) Regenerating Local News study highlights a sector on life support — undermined by a toxic mix of market failure, corporate monopolisation, and policy neglect. With local democracy at risk, experts and journalists alike are calling for urgent reform — and placing independent media at the centre of any future recovery.

    The numbers are stark. Since 2005, the UK has lost more than 320 local news titles — roughly a quarter of the total. Print circulation has plummeted by 85% since 2007, and advertising revenues — the traditional lifeblood of local newspapers — have collapsed by 90%. The result is a 50% fall in the number of frontline local journalists in less than two decades.

    According to the report, this is not a natural decline. Rather, it’s “a failure of public policy,” compounded by a lack of investment and strategic thinking. Local journalism has been left to wither while tech giants like Reach PLC, Google, and Meta hoover up advertising income that once supported a thriving news ecology.

    AI slop

    Meanwhile, so-called “zombie titles” — papers owned by major corporations like Reach PLC and Newsquest — continue to dominate the market. These outlets maintain legacy brands but produce hollowed-out content with skeleton staff, little original reporting, and minimal community engagement.

    For example, the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey recently wrote on Reach-owned Birmingham Live. she noted:

    James Rodger is the content editor of Birmingham Live. He is, despite my initial disbelief, a real person. My reason for this doubt is the sheer number of articles James puts out per shift. Yesterday alone he published ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY articles.

    And honestly, they’re all absolutely fucking shit.

    Not a single one of these “articles” are of any substance or consequence. They’re the same old clickbait about supermarkets and airlines bringing in “crucial” changes, banking bullshit about payments, holiday secrets, and of course we can’t forget warnings that it might snow in winter.

    Judging by the volume of posts alone, these surely can’t have been written by a human. And if you actually click on them it’s clear to see that it’s absolute AI slop.

    Independent media innovating

    In contrast, the UK’s independent local news outlets — often run on a shoestring — are playing a vital role in plugging the democratic deficit left by the decline of traditional press. Outlets like The Bristol Cable, The Ferret, and Sheffield Tribune are producing high-quality, investigative journalism rooted in community needs.

    “These organisations are not just surviving — they’re innovating,” said Jonathan Heawood, Executive Director of PINF:

    They’re experimenting with co-ops, non-profits, and community shares. But without proper support, they’ll always be fighting an uphill battle.

    The report highlights how these smaller players are more trusted than corporate media. A 2022 Ofcom survey found that 81% of audiences trusted local news outlets to tell the truth, compared to just 63% for national outlets. Despite this, only 0.3% of the BBC’s £100m+ annual Local Democracy Reporting Service budget goes to independent providers.

    The PINF report does not mince words in its criticism of Westminster. It accuses successive governments of “failing to engage meaningfully” with the crisis in local news. Funding mechanisms such as the BBC’s LDRS and the £2m Innovation Fund have overwhelmingly favoured corporate players.

    PINF describes the current regulatory regime as “captured by legacy interests,” resulting in a system that rewards scale, not service.

    Local authorities have also contributed to the decline, with public notice advertising — worth £45m annually — often funnelled exclusively to big publishers, regardless of reach or quality. This effectively blocks independent publishers from accessing a vital source of revenue.

    Local news is ‘broken’

    “The current system is broken,” said Dr. Clare Cook of the University of Central Lancashire, a co-author of the report:

    We need policy interventions that put communities, not corporations, at the heart of local journalism.

    The report sets out a bold but achievable agenda. It calls for the establishment of an Independent News Fund — akin to the Arts Council — to distribute grants to local media organisations based on public benefit, not profit. It also recommends greater scrutiny of media mergers, more inclusive funding processes, and a reallocation of public notices to reflect real audience reach.

    Ultimately, Regenerating Local News is a wake-up call. If the UK is serious about defending democracy, it must stop subsidising corporate media giants and start investing in the grassroots outlets that are doing the real work of journalism.

    As Heawood put it:

    This isn’t about nostalgia for newspapers. It’s about ensuring every community has access to independent, accountable, and trustworthy news. The time to act is now.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • DWP caught using evidence from TWENTY years ago to punish claimants

    The National Audit Office (NAO) has released a scathing report condemning the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over its management of jobcentres, highlighting severe shortfalls, outdated models, and deteriorating performance. Most concerningly, the department is using a ‘support’ model to deal with claimants based on evidence from 20 years ago – before Universal Credit even existed.

    With significant gaps in staffing and support, the DWP is accused of consistently failing to meet claimants’ needs and government employment ambitions. Moreover, the report completely undermines the Labour government’s supposed ‘reforms’ of the DWP – showing even by it own, callous measures they won’t be enough anyway.

    The DWP: not enough staff

    The NAO report reveals a stark shortfall of work coaches in UK jobcentres, identifying a deficit of approximately 2,100 coaches in the first half of 2024-2025 alone—an alarming 10.9% below required numbers. Such shortfalls are hardly a new phenomenon; indeed, these gaps have persisted over the past three years, exacerbated by insufficient funding and challenges in recruitment and retention.

    This lack of adequate staffing means the DWP has frequently needed to prioritise certain claimant groups over others, often neglecting those in the “Light Touch” category. As a consequence, around 900,000 claimants in this group, who earn above the lowest thresholds but still require substantial support, are often left without the necessary guidance.

    Perhaps most concerningly, the NAO exposes the DWP’s outdated approach. The current support model is based on evaluations dating back to between 2005-2015, long before Universal Credit became the primary benefits system.

    Punishing claimants using a model from 20 years ago

    Specifically, the NAO noted that one of the evidence bases the DWP used was:

    2005 Jobseeker’s Allowance intervention pilots: The results of this trial showed that excusing claimants from meetings with work coaches or conducting meetings over the telephone increased the time claimants spent on Jobseeker’s Allowance when compared with fortnightly face-to-face meetings during the first 13 weeks of a claim.

    Two other evaluations were used where more punitive levels of dealing with claimants were recommended – like increased frequency of face-to-face meetings. These evaluations fail to consider current socio-economic conditions, modern employment challenges, or the broader implementation of Universal Credit. Yet the DWP will right now be punishing claimants for failing to meet this outdated regimen.

    The DWP itself admits to these limitations, yet continues to rely heavily on this outdated system.

    The repercussions of such oversight are significant.

    An absolute mess

    Regular interactions between claimants and work coaches, central to this model, have been severely compromised due to staffing shortages. Jobcentres, forced to use flexible measures to manage caseloads, frequently reduce the duration and frequency of claimant meetings, directly undermining the stated objective of providing tailored, comprehensive support.

    Labour has only committed to providing an additional 1,000 work coaches – less than half of what’s needed. Plus, it’s pledged £55 million to pilot new digital and support systems. However, the NAO report casts significant doubt on whether these measures will suffice to remedy the underlying structural weaknesses.

    The report also notes a troubling decline in jobcentres’ performance, with the average monthly “into-work” rate dropping from 9.7% in 2021-22 to just 8.2% in 2023-24. This rate is now lower than pre-pandemic levels, signaling a clear regression. Significant regional disparities persist, with Birmingham and Solihull notably struggling at a mere 5.5% into-work rate.

    Given the government’s long-standing target of achieving an 80% employment rate—a goal reiterated in its recent “Get Britain Working” white paper released on 18 March 2025—such declining performance is deeply problematic.

    The government’s reforms, which include merging jobcentres with the National Careers Service to create a new jobs and careers service, aim to prioritise genuine support over mere compliance monitoring. Yet, in light of the NAO findings, these measures appear insufficient without addressing fundamental staffing and operational issues.

    The DWP: raze it to the ground

    The NAO stresses several urgent actions for the DWP to ensure meaningful reform. It recommends a thorough evaluation of staffing shortfalls, improved accountability and performance management within jobcentres, and a comprehensive overhaul of its outdated service delivery models based on up-to-date evidence and rigorous evaluation.

    Without prompt and substantial improvements, the NAO warns, the government’s commendable ambition of an 80% employment rate will remain elusive, perpetuating cycles of unemployment, economic inactivity, and regional inequality.

    Moreover, little in the NAO report is about chronically ill and disabled people – despite the DWP’s current obsession with them. The report is centred around jobseekers and those who want to increase their hours – and the fact that currently, the DWP isn’t even getting support right for these people.

    However, what the NAO report ultimately shows is the DWP is not fit for purpose. Even by Labour’s own metrics, the department is failing – and its planned reforms will be completely insufficient.

    Of course, this is not why Labour is making the changes it is. The government is stealing money from disabled people to fuel its war machine while allowing the rich to pay less. This, in tandem with the NAO report, show a system broken and in disarray – and one that should be burned to the ground.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Opposition to the ‘DARC side’ has now hit Westminster thanks to Plaid Cymru

    As support for the campaign against the 27-dish US DARC radar array at Pembrokeshire continues to grow in momentum, PARC Against DARC says “all eyes are on Henry Tufnell MP” to declare a position on DARC once and for all. This comes as Liz Saville Roberts MP, Plaid Cymru’s defence spokesperson, tables an Early Day Motion (EDM) in UK Parliament calling for DARC radar plans to be scrapped entirely.

    The EDM, titled 975 DARC in Wales, was tabled on 19/03/25, and reads:

    That this House notes with deep concern the proposed US-UK-Australian military radar project, DARC (Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability), which would install 27 21m-high, 15m-wide parabolic radar dishes within sight of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park; believes this would severely harm the visual landscape, local tourism, and the internationally recognised natural ecology of the area; further notes the concerns regarding potential health risks posed by radiofrequency signals, as indicated by scientific studies, on residential populations located less than a kilometre from the site; highlights that DARC, as part of the AUKUS Treaty, is in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty’s prohibition on the national appropriation of space and undermines international law; warns that the deployment of anti-satellite weaponry, for which DARC is a crucial targeting device, threatens to destabilise the civilian satellite network by generating hazardous space debris of a volatile and unpredictable nature which increases the probability of damage to essential infrastructure; urges the Government to recognise that DARC lacks strategic military necessity compared to other priorities; and calls on the government to permanently withdraw its planning application for the Pembrokeshire site and any alternative UK location.

    Cross-party support against the DARC radar system

    Within its first day the EDM had achieved cross-party support including signatures from the Lib Dems defence spokesperson Helen Maguire MP, Green Party MP Siân Berry, as well as the now Independent Alliance MP and former Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

    Liz Saville Roberts MP worked closely along with her Parliamentary team as well as PARC campaigners in Pembrokeshire to draft the EDM. She said:

    At a time when the United States is becoming a less reliable defence partner, we must question whether we truly want to further entangle Wales in US foreign policy through DARC and the AUKUS Treaty. The Ministry of Defence must also address local residents’ concerns regarding high levels of radiofrequency signals. That is why I have tabled this motion in Parliament.

    The EDM comes following a similar ‘Statement of Opinion’ which was tabled by Cefin Campbell MS in the Senedd, also opposing DARC. It has gained cross-party support, having been signed by close to a third of MSs including several Welsh Labour, Plaid Cymru and Welsh Lib Dem Senedd Members.

    Silence amid security concerns

    Campaigners assert that the proposed DARC radar would give Donald Trump and the US military the ability to dominate the space domain from Pembrokeshire as well as ruin the peninsula’s landscape and environment. PARC Against DARC said:

    As DARC radar becomes an increasingly contentious issue within public mindset and yet currently has the backing of Starmer’s administration, surely our elected Labour and Conservative representatives locally cannot stay silent any longer.

    With Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Greens fully in support of the campaign, Welsh Labour beginning to show some promising support and the Senedd election period looming, how can it be right that our local elected representatives in both Westminster and the Senedd remain utterly silent on this hugely important issue which is now of grave concern to thousands of people, locally, nationally and internationally?

    Lack of accountability and an emerging ‘political vacuum’

    The campaign, along with members of the public, have contacted Henry Tofnell MP on numerous occasions, and our experience echoes that of many others as we have received reports that he has completely ignored hundreds of emails requesting answers on DARC. The group said:

    As the MP for Mid and South Pembrokeshire and therefore the MP responsible for the proposed site at Brawdy, he has a public duty to take a personal, thorough and detailed interest in this issue. Accordingly we invited Henry to table this EDM on our behalf, yet he did not even have the courtesy to respond to our email requesting this.

    There appears to have developed some kind of ‘political vacuum’ in west Wales, where much needed answers should be forthcoming, yet both local politicians in Labour and UK cabinet politicians will for ‘whatever reason’ not break cover or speak out on extremely important issues such as this and other issues.

    PARC campaigners say they intend to hand-deliver 650 20-page information booklets and personalised letters to all 650 MPs in a trip to Westminster in London, before continuing to call on politicians in both the Senedd and UK Parliament to sign the respective statements of opposition to DARC.

    Public opposition to DARC will turn the tide on politicians

    PARC Against DARC said:

    As a campaign we have said all along that just as in the ‘90s when we in the PARC campaign fought off the very similar over-the-horizon radar project in the St Davids peninsula, our campaign is growing rapidly, and can and will continue to grow in strength until there is such strong opposition to the development that it will be impossible to build.

    We firmly believe that it’s only a matter of time until that situation is reached once again, and therefore as we have said before, it would be in the best interests of our local representatives to get on the right side of public opinion before their hand is forced. There is a stark historical reminder at play here that in the 1990s the local Conservative MP actually lost his seat over the issue, and the then Conservative government in Westminster was forced to very publicly cancel the project in the face of overwhelming public opposition

    It noted that:

    Our campaign simply grows from strength to strength. We’ve held packed public meetings, we have had over 100 positive media articles, our petition has been signed by over 17,000 people  and the statement of opinion in the Senedd is signed by nearly a third of MSs.

    Now, also, with the Early Day Motion in Westminster, cross-party opposition to the proposal and volunteers around the county having hand-delivered leaflets reaching 40,000 people, the pressure’s clearly intensifying on politicians who feel it is okay to ignore the thousands of emails they are collectively receiving, and ignore residents’ requests for answers and accountability.

    They need to start thinking about the fact this is a defining issue both for their parties, their future and their legacy, but most importantly of all for the landscape, economy and safety of Pembrokeshire, Wales and the UK that it’s in all our interests to protect.

    In conclusion, PARC Against DARC said:

    We strongly urge anyone who has concerns about DARC to visit our lobbying page on our campaign website, where they can email their MSs and MPs, and ask them to support the statements of opposition in both our UK and Wales Parliaments.

    Featured image supplied

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • 150,000 MORE people set to lose DWP benefits thanks to Labour’s cuts

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has ignited a wave of fury among chronically ill and disabled people and their unpaid carers as it confirmed sweeping alterations to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) regulations.

    With these changes, a staggering 150,000 people are set to lose their eligibility for Carer’s Allowance and the carer element of DWP Universal Credit, as highlighted by the latest announcements from chancellor Rachel Reeves during her Spring Statement.

    DWP: cutting unpaid carers already pathetic benefits

    These changes come against a backdrop of significant cuts to chronically ill and disabled people’s benefits, anticipated to affect as many as 3.2 million families by 2030. According to estimates, individuals could see their annual income plummet by an average of £1,720 due to these shifts in policy.

    DWP PIP, which is crucial for so many disabled people, is split into two distinct components: daily living and mobility.

    Currently, the standard rate for the daily living part of DWP PIP requires claimants to accrue between eight and 11 points, while those eligible for the higher rate must score 12 points or more. However, a new threshold is set to be introduced in November 2026 which will require a minimum score of four points in at least one activity to qualify for the daily living component, although the mobility criteria will remain unchanged.

    Helen Walker, chief executive of Carers UK, sharply condemned the decision, describing it as “the first substantial cuts to Carer’s Allowance in decades,” and calling it an unprecedented step in the wrong direction.

    Poverty is already entrenched. Labour will make it even worse.

    In an interview with Manchester Evening News, she voiced serious concerns over the implications for the many unpaid carers already facing financial hardship.

    1.2 million unpaid carers already live in poverty, and 400,000 live in deep poverty in the UK.

    She further explained that DWP PIP functions as a “gateway” benefit, meaning that changes will have dire consequences on the entitlements and support available to those who are already in difficult positions.

    The DWP itself estimates that 150,000 unpaid carers will lose their entitlements to Carer’s Allowance or the carer’s element of Universal Credit.

    Moreover, the financial burden on carers is exacerbated by the revelation that Carer’s Allowance currently provides £81.90 a week to those who care for someone for a minimum of 35 hours per week, but that support is now dwindling. The carer’s allowance of DWP Universal Credit is £198.31 every four weeks.

    Another disturbing dimension of these reforms is the potential scrapping of the Work Capability Assessment, previously used to determine the eligibility of individuals for Universal Credit work-related support, with plans to replace it with the DWP PIP assessment.

    A concerning reduction in the DWP Universal Credit health element has also been flagged, dropping from £97 a week in 2024/25 to £47 by 2026/27, and remaining at that level until 2029/30 for new claimants.

    “This will cause huge anxiety for hard-pressed carers and their families who need every penny they can get to pay their bills,” Walker warned, emphasising the crucial role that 1.2 million unpaid carers play in the UK economy, estimated to be valued at a remarkable £184 billion a year.

    The DWP: plunging people into chaos

    Walker aptly summarised the situation by stating “they deserve so much more,” highlighting the desperate need for support for those in caregiving roles.

    In addition, the DWP’s announcement regarding Blue Badge applications following the upcoming PIP reforms has aroused concern amid fears of stricter eligibility criteria that may further disadvantage disabled individuals already struggling to maintain their independence.

    Currently, one of the major qualifications for obtaining a Blue Badge is the reception of DWP PIP, and changes to these rules could impede access to essential benefits for many with mobility challenges.

    As these developments unfold, the impact on chronically ill and disabled people and their families continues to loom large – causing untold stress and despair.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Oscars Academy response to Hamdam Ballal’s lynching and abduction shows the limits of Hollywood solidarity

    The Oscars Academy has rightfully drawn backlash over its abysmal statement over Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdam Ballal’s lynching by far-right Zionist settlers and subsequent abduction and detainment by Israeli occupation forces. Ballal is co-director of the powerful film No Other Land, which won Best Documentary Feature at the award ceremony in early March. However, Academy board members couldn’t even bring themselves to mention him – or his documentary – by name in its pitiful and hollow condemnation of the attack.

    Hamdam Ballal: Oscars issue shameful statement on abduction

    As the Canary previously reported, Israeli settlers and state forces targeted Ballal on 24 March. To start, there was no information on Ballal’s whereabouts – nor his condition after the assault – in Israeli custody. Ballal remained blindfolded at an Israeli army base for 24 hours, until Israeli forces released him on Tuesday.

    From his hospital bed, Ballal told ABC News about the attack:

    They continue attacking me for 15–20 minutes. I bleed from everywhere… I feel pain in every part of my body

    According to his Israeli co-director Yuval Abraham on X, Ballal recounted how soldiers detaining him had joked about his Oscar while torturing him.

    Initially, the Oscar Academy declined to make a public statement in support of Ballal. Abraham shamed it on X, alongside others, pressuring it to eventually put one out:

    Then, when the Academy issued this feeble statement – it didn’t even mention Ballal by name. Academy CEO Bill Kramer and president Janet Yang made the statement which preemptively and inexcusably justified its failure to unequivocally call out Israeli settlers and state forces. It did so under the calculated guise of representing the “unique viewpoints” of its 11,000 members.

    In short, it sent the unconscionable message that Palestinian lives and rights are a matter for debate, and expendable. Moreover, it disgustingly signals to Israel that it can continue its colonial tyranny with impunity – all after awarding the film-makers for exposing this very violence on screen.

    Oscars Academy: ‘many unique viewpoints’ on Zionist settlers beating its Palestinian award-winner

    Predictably, it drew warranted ire. Abraham criticised its silence and reduction of Palestinian lives to appease Zionist members:

    Documentary branch Academy member AJ Schnack also lambasted the statement. As Variety reported, he wrote:

    I am shocked and angry that you are now letting us, your members, know that you view the abduction and beating of a recent honoree as something that members will have ‘many unique viewpoints’ of. With respect, it’s a truly heinous suggestion.

    Now, more than 800 Academy members have also come out in defiance against the dire response from the institution’s leadership. In a scathing letter, currently signed by 838 members at the time of publication, they condemned the “brutal assault and unlawful detention” of Ballal and said that:

    As artists, we depend on our ability to tell stories without reprisals. Documentary filmmakers often expose themselves to extreme risks to enlighten the world. It is indefensible for an organization to recognize a film with an award in the first week of March, and then fail to defend its filmmakers just a few weeks later.

    To win an Oscar is not an easy task. Most films in competition are buoyed by wide distribution and exorbitantly priced campaigns directed at voting members. For “No Other Land” to win an Oscar without these advantages speaks to how important the film is to the voting membership.

    The targeting of Ballal is not just an attack on one filmmaker—it is an attack on all those who dare to bear witness and tell inconvenient truths.

    We will continue to watch over this film team. Winning an Oscar has put their lives in increasing danger, and we will not mince words when the safety of fellow artists is at stake.

    A non-apology to save face

    On Friday, the Academy followed up with a second statement apologising for its failures. This read:

    We regret that we failed to directly acknowledge Mr Ballal and the film by name.

    It continued with the classic gaslighting “I’m sorry YOU feel this way” non-apology:

    We sincerely apologize to Mr Ballal and all artists who felt unsupported by our previous statement and want to make it clear that the Academy condemns violence of this kind anywhere in the world.

    We abhor the suppression of free speech under any circumstances.

    In short, its half-assed ‘apology’ was arguably too little, too late, and too obviously to save face. And of course, it still couldn’t name the perpetrators – Israel. Instead, it opted for a general condemnation of violence to cover its ass.

    The Oscars: a symbol of US white supremacy and patriarchy

    What this whole sordid saga has demonstrated is that solidarity from Hollywood for the Palestinian struggle is the superficial, temporary, not even flavour-of-the-month kind, that quickly recedes when it really counts.

    Yes, more than 800 members have since spoken out against their spineless leadership. However, let’s be real. The Academy comprises nearly 11,000 members. Those 838 signees so far make up less than 10% (a little under 8% to be more precise) of the total membership.

    In reality then, over 90% of the Academy has so far failed to speak out.

    But then, this is the famous institution of the entertainment industry that in 2015 inadvertently invited the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite for its atrocious lack of diversity. Since its founding in 1929, white, cisgender men have dominated the nominations and award winners. Between 1929 to 2025, just 6% of nominees were from underrepresented racially minoritised groups, and only 7% have won an Oscar. Less than 2% of nominees were women of colour. This has little shifted in nearly a century. Just 12% of nominees were from underrepresented racially minoritised demographics in 2025; only 4% were women of colour.

    Moreover, the membership of the Oscars Academy is little better. As Digital Spy wrote, of its 10,910-strong membership in 2024:

    35% of members identify as women, 20% are from under-represented ethnic and racial communities, and 20% are from outside of the US.

    That is to say, the Oscars is largely a model of US white supremacy and cisgender heterosexual patriarchy. Its letter omitting Ballal should be recognised in that context. The Academy is accustomed to maintaining this status quo, and evidently operates token diversity over genuine solidarity.

    Not the first time Oscars members have thrown Palestine under the bus

    And needless to say, the Oscars has form on this already.

    Despite Israel’s ongoing assault and war crimes in Gaza, the March 2024 Oscars saw mostly tumbleweed from the award-winners. The sole exception was a speech by Jonathan Glazer who decried the instrumentalisation of Jewishness and the Holocaust in justification of Israel’s genocide. It’s worth noting however that Glazer’s speech was at best, a tentative criticism since it preposterously equated Israel’s brutal genocidal onslaught in Gaza and the murder of more than 50,000 Palestinians, to 7 October.

    The reaction? A letter signed by more than 1,000 Hollywood creatives, stars, and executives denouncing his speech for – ludicrously without a hint of irony – ‘hijacking’ their Jewishness:

    for the purpose of drawing a moral equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination.

    Hollywood operating as a vehicle of US imperial hegemony

    However, none of this should come as any surprise either. Hollywood is – and always has been – a vehicle of US imperial hegemony. Films operate as a mechanism of US propaganda for its militaristic colonial expansionism across the globe.

    It was only the start of this year that film mega-franchise Marvel put out its propagandistic new Captain America film. This hitched US imperial supremacy to Israel through the introduction of superhero Sabra – in essence, a personification of Israel’s apartheid regime. This was in spite of, and amid, the settler state’s continuing genocide in Gaza.

    The Pentagon’s entanglement with Marvel and Hollywood studios more broadly only cements the entertainment industry’s collusion with the US military industrial complex further.

    In this way, Hollywood movies serve as a soft power strategy for subtly reinforcing US cultural domination on an international stage. Hollywood promotes the US’s white imperial project through screen. It sanitises the US and West’s militaristic expropriation of foreign territories, and its deliberate programme of destabilisation and domination throughout the globe using glorifying imagery and narratives to seed this in the psyche of international audiences.

    A settler colonial ‘solution’ that maintains the status quo

    Despite the powerful portrayal of Israel’s ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, No Other Land doesn’t evade this co-option in service of US corporate capitalist empire either.

    There’s no denying that No Other Land is a powerful feat of Palestinian cinematography and autobiographical storytelling. The lived realities of Palestinians under Israeli occupation breaks through Hollywood’s largely impenetrable imperialistic cultural hegemony.

    However, as the Canary’s Maryam Jameela underscored, its acceptance within the Oscars Academy and Hollywood sphere owes in part to the palatable face of the project – its Israeli co-director Yuval Abraham.

    The film is punctuated with Abraham’s views, and in that way, his presence throughout presents Palestinian freedom through a settler colonial gaze. Throughout, it’s clear he’s wedded to the idea of a two state solution – and arguably, that’s what his role in the film, and at the Oscars, is there to sell.

    For instance, in one scene, Abraham asks Palestinian co-director, lead narrator and focus of the documentary Basel Adra:

    If there’s stability and a democratic state, you’ll get all the permits you want. You won’t need to ask for army permits anymore. Right?

    However, his comment is jarring against Adra’s lived experience of occupation documented in the film. “If” he heartbreakingly replied – instantly shattering the basis of Abraham’s question. Adra then went on to express the painful reality that Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing in his Masafer Yatta community only articulates for Palestinians more broadly:

    They deprive us of our rights. They have great military and technological power. But, they shouldn’t forget how once, they too were weak. They suffered like this. And they won’t succeed,
    with all their strength they will fail. They will never make Palestinians leave this land.

    At best then, Abraham’s invocation of the two-state solution is an ignorant, ahistorical, and naive notion that fails to contend with the vast disparity in power dynamics, and a socio-political climate in which Israel’s officials have repeatedly derided any such possibility anyway. At worst, it’s loaning legitimacy to the long-time Western imperialist foreign policy fiction that has propped up the Zionist settler colonial project for decades.

    Moreover, Jameela also drew attention to the false equivalence Abraham invoked over 7 October and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Both the documentary’s ending and Yuval’s speech at the Oscars is characteristic of this shameful and obtuse both siderism that pervades the Western political-media establishment discourse.

    Solidarity in big showbiz is conditional for Palestine

    Now, the Oscars meek apology is this in action once again. That it took the criticism of No Other Land’s Israeli co-director for it to issue even this half-hearted response speaks volumes once again. When push comes to shove, Hollywood only recognises Palestinian voices speaking to their own story when it’s convenient. Support for Palestinian award-winners like Ballal is and always will be conditional to the elitist circles of US stardom.

    What Ballal’s lynching and kidnap indisputably underscores is that, not even the highest symbol of US showbiz acclaim can protect a Palestinian from settler Zionist pogromists and colluding state forces. Now, the Academy’s appalling treatment also makes one other thing abundantly clear: nor will the Oscars Academy step up to protect them either.

    At the end of the day, Hollywood at large is the effective popular culture propaganda apparatus of US imperialistic soft power. It is the cultural embodiment of its colonial domination and white supremacy writ large.

    Ultimately then, is it any wonder Oscars Academy leaders disgracefully closed ranks to defend US strategic geopolitical capitalist interests that Israel represents in the region, over its Palestinian award-winner? By now, the answer to that should be glaringly obvious.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Toxic Labour is considering a RWANDA-STYLE deportation plan for refugees

    While the Labour Party has been terrible in office, it did at least drop the Tories ‘Rwanda plan’. Said plan would have seen us deporting refugees to Rwanda regardless of their country of origin. Now, it turns out Labour is considering a Rwanda-style plan which would potentially see us deporting people to Albania.

    And to think people used to argue when we said Starmer’s Labour were just red Tories!

    Labour: Rwanda revisited

    Sky News host Trevor Phillips asked home secretary Yvette Cooper:

    How close are you to a third country deal with Albania

    Cooper responded:

    Well, we already have return agreements with Albania, and that’s been an important part of the system. We’re also working across the board to increase our returns everywhere. That’s why we’ve got the 20% increase in returns already as a result of what we’re doing.

    Phillips interjected to note:

    But this is a slightly different kind of deal. It’s not just about returns . It’s about processing; it’s about, basically, telling people who… think they’re gonna get here and stay here illegally – ‘no, you’re not. You’re gonna go to Albania’… Let’s forget Rwanda, but somewhere else.

    Phillips was pointing out that this Albania deal seems to be an alternative version of the hated Rwanda plan. Cooper responded:

    So I think you’re what you’re talking about is the the arrangement, obviously, that Italy and Albania have set up, which we’ve always said we will look at. We have talked – I’ve talked to the Italian interior minister about their arrangements.

    For those who don’t know, Italy’s current government has been described as the country’s “most right-wing and Eurosceptic government since 1946”. Famously, the government before then was Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, which allied with the Nazis in World War II to wage war against an island nation you may have heard of called Great Britain.

    Yvette Cooper is having talks with their interior minister.

    Regarding their “arrangements”.

    Phillips asked Cooper if Labour want the same deal, to which Cooper responded:

    We will always look at what works.

    What does ‘works’ mean in this context?

    Because a hammer ‘works’ whether you use it to strike a nail or a finger.

    What she said next was mostly vague, but it did betray what Labour’s actual problem was with the Tories’ Rwanda plan:

    So we’ve been very clear about that. We will always look at what works. But it has to be practical things that will work, not the the gimmicks. What we saw with Rwanda was £700m be spent on sending four volunteers to Rwanda. We’ll always make sure that our approach is about what works

    Understand now?

    The Rwanda plan was an expensive gimmick that failed to deport lots of people to a foreign country they couldn’t point to on a map; the Albania plan will be a reasonably-priced non-gimmick that will successfully deport many people to a different foreign nation they once again couldn’t point to on a map.

    Jesus Christ.

    How we got here

    This isn’t the first time that Labour has said it may be open to a deal with Albania, with the Telegraph reporting in September 2024:

    Yvette Cooper has said the Government would ‘look at anything that works’ with regard to offshore schemes

    Earlier that year after Labour won the general election, the Canary’s Steve Topple noted that Labour’s objections to the Rwanda plan were far from humane:

    Labour has scrapped the Tories’ Rwanda plan. The UK Supreme Court had deemed it illegal under international law. Not that this stopped the Tories – who just changed the law. Nor was it the reason Labour has stopped it.

    Cooper this week called the Rwanda scheme, intended to deter migrants making the Channel crossing in small boats from northern France, “the most shocking waste of taxpayers’ money” she had seen. Of course, she failed to mention its illegality and inhumanity.

    On March 25, SNP MP Pete Wishart questioned whether Labour was planning its own Rwanda plan. Labour was even vaguer then than today:

    Reporting on the Cooper’s latest interview, Sky News added:

    Former Labour home secretary Lord Blunkett has suggested the government should create bespoke agreements with designated “safe” countries to deport foreign criminals and illegal immigrants, as this would override any claims through the Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

    It’s always a good sign when your government is looking for loopholes to escape our commitment to the Convention on Human Rights (especially when they’re working hand in hand with an Italian Fascist tribute act).

    Labour: proving the right is right

    When Labour copies the policies to the Tories and Reform, they tell voters that those parties have got the right idea. And if the Tories and Reform are the ones with the right ideas, why vote for the copycats?

    This is why Reform have unfortunately gone from strength to strength under Keir Starmer:

    The way things are going, if Labour doesn’t throw their leader out before the next election, it’s almost certain that Nigel Farage will.

    Featured image via Sky News

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • They knew then, they know now: why the system still protects predators

    This isn’t about failure.

    It’s about design.

    The institutions built to “protect” children have never protected all children. They’ve protected order. They’ve protected structure. They’ve protected the image of safety — not the reality of it.

    And those of us who grew up inside the lie? We learned early that the moment your truth becomes inconvenient, you’re not just abandoned. You’re actively erased.

    It was never about not knowing

    They knew. They always knew.

    And not just the perpetrators. The teachers knew. The officers knew. The social workers, the heads of department, the child protection units — they all saw what we were up against. And they chose to look the other way.

    Because to acknowledge what was happening would have meant admitting the system wasn’t safe. And safety has always been more about optics than outcomes.

    So they denied it. Not because it wasn’t real — but because it was easier not to look.

    Silence was never passive. It was strategic.

    Institutional silence isn’t a byproduct. It’s a plan.

    It’s the way reports are minimised.
    The way disclosures are rerouted.
    The way inconvenient survivors are discredited.
    The way internal policies are written to close ranks, not open doors.

    It’s why high-profile scandals only come out when someone leaks a file, not when a child speaks. It’s why abuse cases are “historical” by the time they’re taken seriously — because time protects power.

    And the silence isn’t just situational. It’s generational. It gets passed down. Normalised. Professionalised.

    Safeguarding is PR

    Ask any survivor what happened after they disclosed and they’ll tell you: safeguarding wasn’t about safety. It was about containment.

    Disclosures trigger meetings, not action. Files, not protection. Strategy, not safeguarding.

    The institution’s primary concern? Risk — but not to the child. To their image. To their funding. To their reputation.

    This is how abuse becomes admin. How trauma becomes paperwork. How children become liabilities instead of lives.

    The outcome? The child gets moved. The perpetrator stays. The service “responds.” And the cycle quietly resets.

    Risk assessments that assess everything except risk

    A child is placed with a known offender. A family member raises the alarm. A referral is made.

    What happens?

    A strategy meeting is held. Risk is assessed. But not by survivors. Not by independent advocates. By those already invested in keeping the institution running smoothly.

    And more often than not? The outcome is a managed compromise.
    Not protection.
    Not removal.
    Not accountability.

    The system isn’t designed to stop harm. It’s designed to limit exposure — of itself.

    Credibility is a construct

    We’re judged on our tone. Our memory. Our presentation.

    Did we cry too much? Not enough?
    Did we pause before answering? Did we shout? Did we make someone uncomfortable?

    This is how credibility is measured — not by what happened, but by how cleanly we survive it.

    Survivors from care backgrounds, working-class communities, neurodivergent kids, kids with trauma histories — we are repeatedly positioned as unreliable.

    Not because we are. But because we don’t fit the system’s template for the “perfect victim.” And so we are filtered out, one by one.

    The blueprint never changed

    You can look at every decade and the pattern holds:

    He grooms.
    She speaks.
    They silence.
    He walks.
    She breaks.
    And the public moves on.

    The only thing that’s changed is the medium. Now it’s Snapchat. Discord. Instagram.
    But the method remains the same — and so does the outcome.

    Media complicity: headlines over humanity

    Even when these stories do make it out, the framing tells you everything:

    “She claimed…”
    “She alleges…”
    “The accused, a respected man in the community…”

    Media outlets have long participated in the erasure. Playing neutrality while platforming doubt.
    Survivors are reported on like suspects.
    Perpetrators are “family men” and “pillar figures” who’ve had “lives ruined by accusations.”

    The press might not be in the safeguarding meetings, but they’re in the room when public perception is shaped.

    And that shapes justice.

    Protection is political

    When the state fails to prosecute, when courts hand custody to abusers, when police don’t act despite evidence — that isn’t a resource issue.

    It’s a political decision.

    Protection in this country is tiered.
    Who you are. Where you’re from. What your voice sounds like. What they think you’ll become.

    That determines the weight of your safety.
    Some children are protected as future leaders.
    Others are managed as current liabilities.

    This is how institutional protection operates — on class lines, on cultural expectations, on reputational risk.

    The custody case that should’ve broken the system

    At the Grooming Files, one survivor shared her story.

    Groomed at 13. Controlled for 17 years. She escaped. She spoke out. She built a new life. She raised concerns when her teenage daughter was left in his care.

    The result?

    He was granted full custody.

    No pause. No review. No safeguarding check.

    A survivor who lived through grooming was disempowered again — this time, by a court of law.
    And this isn’t rare.
    It’s not rogue.
    It’s the system functioning.

    Historical abuse is still present tense

    We hear a lot about “historic abuse.”

    But for survivors, it’s not historic. It’s ongoing.

    It’s the ripple effect that never settles.
    It’s the custody case ten years later.
    It’s the social worker who still works in your area.
    It’s the school that never acknowledged what happened.
    It’s the police report you never saw.

    The trauma is present.
    The silence is present.
    The consequences are daily.

    Inquiry fatigue: when truth becomes trend

    We’ve had inquiries.
    We’ve had exposés.
    We’ve had reports with executive summaries and policy suggestions.

    And what changed?

    Some new safeguarding language.
    Some job reshuffles.
    A few headlines.
    And then silence, again.

    We don’t need more apologies from people who still have power.
    We need a system that doesn’t require public outrage before it acts.

    This isn’t just a safeguarding crisis. It’s a national shame.

    The UK has spent decades perfecting the art of appearing responsive while remaining inactive.

    We have safeguarding boards and frameworks.
    We have posters and slogans.
    We have hashtags.
    But what we don’t have is accountability.

    Predators still operate within schools, homes, clubs, and churches — protected by respectability, by bureaucracy, by fear.

    Children still go unheard.
    Survivors still carry the cost.
    And the cycle still repeats.

    We’re not waiting for you anymore

    We’ve watched this system protect itself for long enough.

    We’ve watched survivors penalised for speaking while perpetrators are protected through process.

    We’ve watched organisations posture while families crumble.
    We’ve watched truths watered down until they’re palatable enough to ignore.

    We’ve had enough.

    We’re not asking for your justice.
    We’re not begging for your belief.
    We’re not playing by your rules.

    We are naming you.
    We are tracking you.
    We are refusing your silence.

    This is not an awareness campaign.
    It’s a dismantling.

    If this sounds familiar — you’re not alone.
    Submit your story to the Grooming Files here.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Sophie Lewis

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Labour-led Haringey council is waging a war against trees – but residents are fighting back

    Trees play a crucial role in creating a healthy urban environment. They improve water quality, reduce air pollution, and lower temperatures, while also providing vital habitat for wildlife. But they are experiencing multiple threats, especially in our cities – not least in Haringey.

    Haringey Tree Protectors fight a ‘war against trees’

    Gio Lozzi lives in Haringey, North London, a conservation area with a large number of street trees, and says she is saddened by the way they are treated.

    Lozzi said:

    There’s a war against trees going on. They’re facing multiple threats- being abused by residents, councils, developers and house insurance companies, and new trees are even liable to vandalism. Car is king in the UK, so lots of people moan about trees dropping leaf litter on their vehicles.

    There’s also the narrative that trees are dangerous, even though more than 1700 people get killed in car accidents every year, while you only have a 1 in 10 million chance of being killed by a tree- that’s about six people a year. You’ve got more chance of being killed by a wheelie bin. It’s crazy! Trees get a really bad wrap, and are blamed for so many things, even when drivers crash into them.

    Haringey trees
    Copyright Gio Lozzi

    There was outrage and disbelief when more than 100 trees were indiscriminately felled to build a road-style concrete bridge in Haringey’s local nature reserve, known as Parkway Walk, and the incident led to Lozzi founding Haringey Tree Protectors. The group has been involved in numerous campaigns to try and save mature trees in the area, while also raising public awareness about the threats our urban trees face, and providing advice and support to tree campaigners around the country.

    The campaign group has been fighting to save a huge 120-year-old plane tree earmarked to be felled by Haringey council after being implicated in the damage of two nearby Victorian properties, and has brought national attention to the growing problem of home insurance claims against trees – in this case by Aviva and genocide insurers Allianz.

    Insurers ‘pitting’ councils and residents against each other

    Many houses from this era were built on shallow foundations, which can lead to subsidence, especially in areas with clay soil, such as Haringey. But the insurance industry commonly blames nearby trees for the problem, which causes cracks in walls, door frames that won’t close properly, and sloping floors.

    A tree can be felled if it is implicated in the damage of a house, even if evidence is lacking or disputed and, by claiming the tree is responsible for the damage, insurance companies are able to make more money and avoid paying for expensive underpinning work on the affected property, while transferring the costs of this work to cash-strapped councils – who usually cannot, or will not pay.

    In 2022 there were more than 200 insurance claims brought against trees in Haringey borough alone, and this figure is only set to increase, as climate change worsens.

    Lozzi said that:

    Insurers are pitting council and residents against each other, saying a tree is causing damage to a house and the council needs to cut it down. Councils could resist, but ours, like many others, is nearly bankrupt at the moment, so they’re afraid to go to court.

    These insurers have billions of pounds and the best lawyers, so it’s unlikely councils will win. We thought enough’s enough. We’re going to stop the council felling this tree. We occupied it, and for the next year and a half it became a battle.

    The tree’s still standing. What’s amazing is that while all the other trees on the same road have been pollarded to within an inch of their lives recently, this tree is about to burst into its canopy, and there’s a bird nesting in the tree.

    One morning the council decided to send in security at 4am to cover the tree in scaffolding, wrap it in white tarp, and build observation platforms in it:

    Copyright Gio Lozzi

    Balaclava-wearing security guards patrolled around this fortification, just in case campaigners were thinking about climbing the tree again. This lasted a week, with 24-hour security, and cost the council £92,000. The incident outraged the local community, and eventually backfired when the home owner took out an injunction against the council.

    Various hearings have taken place, with a judicial review last summer. The judge sided with Haringey council and said the tree should be felled, but the home owner- who does not want the tree to be felled, appealed the decision, but it was refused. It is uncertain what the council will do next, but the tree is now unprotected and at risk of removal.

    Mature trees: a boost for nature, the climate, and mental health

    When left to flourish, trees provide so many benefits, not just for nature but also for our mental health and wellbeing. Trees, unlike humans, get better with age and become more valuable for biodiversity.

    Mature trees are also vital in our fight against climate change. Those with a 30 inch diameter have been shown to remove 10 times more air pollution, store up to 90 times more carbon, and possess a leaf area up to 100 times greater than a tree with just a six inch diameter.

    But, because the perceived risks posed by bigger trees are very often exaggerated, there is increasing pressure to reduce our big canopy trees, and even carry out unnecessary felling.

    For cash-strapped councils, it works in their favour to keep trees small, as less is spent on their maintenance. But trees are being pollarded in tighter and tighter cycles, which never allows the tree to regrow to its former glory.

    Lozzi said:

    They pollard the trees in our area, but do them at the worst possible time- when they are about to burst into their spring vitality. The tree surgeons just chop them. They know it’s the wrong time of year to do it, which can impact on the health of the tree, but just want the money and say they can’t get all the work done in the winter. There’s a lot of neglect, laziness and inept work that goes on, and some tree surgeons can be real cowboys. Probably the cheapest ones get the work as the council’s trying to save money.

    As in other parts of England, topping is also increasingly being used around Haringey as a method of reducing tree size, and involves reducing the whole crown of the tree so all that is left are a few stumps coming out of the trunk.

    Topping is one of the most harmful tree pruning practices, and impacts the health of the tree by reducing energy production and increasing risk of disease. This technique also makes a tree more unstable, so councils may unwittingly be making our streets more dangerous:

    copyright Jo Syz

    A public duty to consult before felling trees

    Although disease is also a threat to our trees, and is becoming much more common because of climate change, it is a very grey area. Depending on the type of disease it has, a tree can live for decades more, or even recover, but the necessary care and attention needs resources, money and proper scrutiny – which councils do not usually have.

    Because economic growth is the primary driver of our society, underfunding and understaffing of tree departments are commonplace, as is a lack of ecologists working for councils. This needs to change if we are going to be successful in fighting the nature and climate crises that are taking grip of our planet.

    One new piece of legislation which has reluctantly been taken up by councils is the public duty to consult. This gives ‘local people’ the opportunity to express their views before a street tree, which has a stem diameter of at least 8cm, is felled.

    Local authorities are duty bound to make the public aware of the consultation by placing a notice on the tree in question, providing contact information, details of the proposed tree works, any other engineering solutions that they have considered, and any proposal for replanting. There must also be a notice available for the public to see, either on the local authority’s website or made available at their offices.

    The consultation period must remain open for at least 28 days, and then the local authority is required to publish their response as soon as possible, and not later than 28 days before the proposed felling of the tree.

    However, there are certain exemptions- such as dead, diseased or dying trees and, while the Public Duty to Consult allows the public to express their views about what is happening to their street trees, councils still have the final say about the fate of the tree:

    Copyright Jo Syz

    Start a ‘tree revolution’ in communities across the UK

    Haringey Tree Protectors aims to not only create a fundamental shift in how we view and consider our mature and existing trees, but also influence future decision-making around their protection.

    Through Canopy, its new national coalition group of grassroots tree campaigners and campaign groups, the group also encourages and supports those standing up for threatened trees in their community, and provides a wide variety of valuable resources for those taking action.

    Lozzi said that:

    Uniting people through a campaign, with a wider narrative of protecting trees is a really positive thing, and it’s a passion project that’s taken over my life. If everyone does a little bit it could be a tree revolution. It’s great to see communities getting a bit braver and challenging the many wrongs being done to our trees and, when it comes to insurers, residents and people who pay insurance premiums need to hold them to account.

    They’re making a mockery of people, and people can push back and question much more than they do. If you care about nature and the trees on your street, then fight for them. Direct action is really important. People need to get more radicalized, and fight for what they believe in.

    • For more information about Haringey Tree Protectors (HTP), go here.
    • Trees are threatened with the chop across the UK. Read the tree advice sheet and get involved with saving them in your area.
    • Join Canopy if you are a tree campaigner needing advice and support.
    • Donate to Haringey Tree Protectors, who are currently supporting a legal case to put an injunction on the Oakfield Road plane tree, to stop it being felled.
    • If you live in the area and want to volunteer with HTP, go here.

    Featured image and additional images supplied

    By Charlie Jaay

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The BBC just let disgraced Justin Welby return to rub salt in survivor’s wounds

    In November 2024, then-archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigned from his position in disgrace. Welby’s resignation came after a review found he “could and should” have done more to bring a prolific paedophile to justice – a man who Welby had known since the ’70s. Now, the BBC has given Welby an opportunity to try and launder his reputation. Instead, Welby has undoubtedly made things even worse for himself, and forced victims to once again recoil from the inhumanity of the church:

    Justin Welby/John Smyth

    Welby resigned following the release of a report on abuse in the church. As reported by the BBC at the time:

    A British barrister’s “horrific” and violent abuse of more than 100 children and young men was covered up within the Church of England for decades, according to the conclusion of a damning report.

    John Smyth QC is believed to be the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church of England, a long-awaited independent review found.

    Smyth QC, who died aged 77 in Cape Town in 2018, was accused of attacking boys at his Winchester home who he had met at a Christian summer camp in Dorset during the 1970s and 1980s.

    Accusations against Smyth first came to the public’s attention following a 2017 documentary from Channel 4 (Welby was the archbishop from 2013). The BBC detailed the timeline:

    The investigation came after a report by the Iwerne Trust in 1982, which was not made public until 2016.

    Smyth was confronted about his conduct after the report compiled by Rev Mark Ruston and Rev David Fletcher.

    It found Smyth identified pupils from leading public schools including Winchester College and took them to his home near Winchester in Hampshire, where he carried out lashings with a garden cane in his shed.

    It said eight of the boys received a total of 14,000 lashes, while two more received 8,000 strokes between them over three years.

    The Iwerne Trust called the practice “horrific” but the claims were not reported to police until 2013 – more than 30 years later.

    Despite his “appalling” actions having been identified in the 1980s, the report concluded he was never fully exposed and was therefore able to continue his abuse.

    He was encouraged to leave the country and moved to Zimbabwe without any referral being made to police.

    During this time, church officers “knew of the abuse and failed to prevent further abuse”, the independent review led by Keith Makin says.

    It adds: “From July 2013 the Church of England knew, at the highest level, about the abuse that took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s. John Smyth should have been properly and effectively reported to the police in the UK and to relevant authorities in South Africa.

    “This represented a further missed opportunity to bring him to justice.”

    In Zimbabwe he was charged with the manslaughter of a 16-year-old boy, who was attending one of his summer camps. Smyth was not convicted of the offence.

    Initially, Welby refused to resign. Here’s what victim Mark Stibbe told Channel 4 in response to that:

    I think he should resign… I think there’s so much shame, so much pain, so much agony associated with this

    Welby eventually resigned in disgrace. Now he’s returned, and people are once again showing their disgust.

    ‘Forgiveness’

    The standout moment from the interview was when Welby didn’t hesitate to say he would forgive Smyth, as reported by the BBC:

    Asked by the BBC if he would forgive Smyth, Welby said: “Yes.  I think if he was alive and I saw him, but it’s not me he’s abused.

    “He’s abused the victims and survivors.  So whether I forgive or not is, to a large extent, irrelevant.”

    It’s true that forgiveness is a core tenant of Welby’s faith. However, as Welby also said in the interview that he was “absolutely overwhelmed” by the scale of abuse he encountered in the church, it’s hard to understand how Welby hasn’t questioned his faith:

     

    Of course, some are suggesting that Welby’s so-called ‘faith’ is all an act:

    The Independent covered the above-mentioned event, reporting:

    In a column for the magazine, Mr Hislop wrote he was unimpressed by Mr Welby’s appearance at the dinner.

    “Isn’t this lovely?” said Mr Welby to Mr Hislop, who replied: “It is lovely that you have resigned.” Mr Hislop said this was “not the most brilliant bit of repartee”, but an exchange of views followed and they parted on unfriendly terms.

    The Have I Got News For You host also criticised those at the gala that approached Mr Welby to comfort him and tell him he is “brave” for resigning.

    “These particular Christians were far too keen to forgive each other for their sins,” Mr Hislop wrote, “and far too slow to seek justice for the poor victims in their flock”.

    He added: “Welby seemed to me to be unrepentant and unashamed. I am not convinced he has been punished enough – unlike the poor boys his friend so mercilessly flogged in the name of Christianity.”

    The BBC also spoke to one of Smyth’s victims on the topic of forgiveness, reporting:

    One of Smyth’s victims, known as Graham – who made the 2013 complaint – told the BBC he would not forgive Welby.

    He said: “I’ve said before that, if in 2017 he had contacted us, said ‘I will come and apologise to you personally, I am sorry, I messed up’, I would have forgiven him immediately – but he never has in those terms.”

    Asked if he could ever forgive Welby, Graham said: “Not if he continues to blank us and refuses to tell us the truth. We’re the victims, we deserve to know what happened and we don’t yet.”

    In the interview, Welby attempted to shift blame on to the police:

    Pushed on why he did not do more while in office, Welby said police told him “under no circumstances are you to get involved because you will contaminate our enquiry”.

    He added: “I should have pestered them to be honest, and I see that now.”

    It’s not unfair to suspect the British police of incompetence on these sorts of investigations. In fact, many are asking why they’re not investigating Welby:

    The response to the appearance of Welby

    Many are asking why the BBC dedicated a significant section of its political programme to Welby:

     

    Others are highlighting that the disgraced Welby was a prominent voice in the efforts to smear Jeremy Corbyn and the left as antisemites:

    Back to the topic of forgiveness, it’s interesting to note that Welby doesn’t always forgive. In an interview from October 2023, he stressed that while he did blame Hamas for the terror attack on 7 October, he would not blame the Israeli government for the decades of terror they’d inflicted upon the Palestinians:

    Welby has also posed for a photograph with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

    It’s unclear if Welby would pose with Netanyahu now there’s an arrest warrant out for his suspected war crimes (or indeed if Netanyahu would want to be pictured with the disgraced Welby). What is clear is that no one wants to hear any more from this disgraced establishment stooge.

    Featured image via the BBC

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • غزة تودع رمضان بين الجوع والدموع

    We’re humbled to introduce a new Canary writer, Alaa Shamali from Palestine – but currently a refugee in Oman. We will be publishing him in Arabic – but if you right click on the screen the menu that appears should give you the option to translate the article to English. If you are reading on mobile, this will be in the burger menu (the three dots) of your browser.

    ودع الفلسطينيون في قطاع غزة الساعات الأخيرة من شهر رمضاdن، لكنهم ينهونه كما بدأوه: وسط الدمار، والجوع، والخوف.

    لم يكن هذا الشهر الكريم كغيره، فقد حلّ عليهم بينما تواصل آلة الحرب الإسرائيلية استهدافهم بلا هوادة منذ السابع من أكتوبر 2023، تاركًا خلفها واقعًا مأساويًا لم يسبق له مثيل.

    رمضان بلا غذاء ولا ماء

    مع بداية الشهر، شدد الاحتلال حصاره على القطاع، مغلقًا جميع المعابر، ومانعًا دخول المساعدات الإنسانية والمواد الغذائية. ومع مرور الأيام، تفاقمت أزمة الجوع، خاصة بعد قطع الكهرباء عن محطة تحلية المياه الوحيدة، ما أجبر السكان على شرب مياه غير صالحة للشرب في ظل شحّ الموارد وانعدام البدائل.

    موائد الإفطار تحت القصف

    كل موعد إفطار يحل في وقته دون مائدة، وغياب التجمعات العائلية، ليجلس آلاف الفلسطينيين بين أنقاض منازلهم يتقاسمون ما توفر من فتات الطعام.
    ولجأ الكثير من الناس خلال شهر رمضان إلى مخيمات النزوح التي بالكاد توفر مأوى، بينما لم تجد عائلات كثيرة ما يسدّ رمقها سوى الخبز الجاف والماء، في ظل انقطاع إمدادات الغذاء وغياب أي أفق لتحسن الوضع.

    صلاة التراويح بين الدمار والرجاء

    رغم الدمار والقصف المتواصل، لم يتخلَّ سكان غزة عن أداء صلاة التراويح. وقفوا بين أنقاض المساجد، وتجمعوا في الساحات، رافعين أيديهم بالدعاء، متشبثين بالأمل رغم كل الألم.

    تحولت المآذن إلى ركام، لكن أصوات المصلين ظلت تردد آيات القرآن، متحدية صوت الطائرات والانفجارات.

    رمضان بلا أضواء ولا فرحة

    في الأعوام الماضية، كانت شوارع غزة تتزين بالفوانيس والزينة الرمضانية، وكانت الأسواق تعج بالناس استعدادًا للعيد. هذا العام.
    خيم الحزن على كل زاوية، فلا زينة، ولا أسواق، ولا ضحكات أطفال. الدمار حلّ محل البهجة، والألم أصبح هو العنوان.

    هلال العيد.. وأمل في هدنة

    حل هلال عيد الفطر، لكن الغزيين لم يستقبلوه بملابس جديدة أو حلويات العيد، بل يتطلعون إلى شيء واحد فقط: أن تتوقف الحرب.

    بين الركام والجوع، ينتظرون هلالًا مختلفًا، هلال هدنة تمنحهم فرصة لالتقاط أنفاسهم، وتعيد إليهم بصيصًا من الحياة التي سلبها الاحتلال.

    الصورة المميزة عبر موقع الكناري

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Corbyn explains how to harness the public’s hunger for change

    In a recent speech, Jeremy Corbyn explained the role his Peace and Justice Project is playing in supporting the establishment of a progressive mass movement that can harness Britain’s hunger for change.

    Earlier in March, Corbyn spoke to the Canary at the launch event of Southport Community Independents, one of numerous locally-rooted and locally-focused groups that could eventually become the constituent parts of a new national party of the left. But he also gave a powerful and revealing speech to attendees. In it, he said progressive policies are clearly popular and possible. And he insisted that the Peace & Justice Project has been working to support the resurgence of people power step by step. These are the two major points he made.

    1) Never forget: policies of popular empowerment resonate with voters

    ‘There’s massive resonance with social justice, but you’ve got to go out and tell people about it’

    Even before Britain truly saw the vicious cronyism of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, it was already less popular than under Corbyn’s leadership of the party. And Peace & Justice Project founder believes it’s important to remember that. As he told the attendees in Southport:

    the highest ever Labour vote achieved in this country was in 2017. [And in] the 2019 result… we still achieved a far higher vote than most of the other election results of this century.

    With that in mind, he stressed:

    Don’t run away with the idea that putting forward policies (about redistribution of wealth, redistribution of power, giving young people hope – not abuse, protecting our environment – not destroying it, looking for peace rather than war) doesn’t have a massive resonance out there. But you’ve got to go out and tell them about it. That’s why we’re forming these independent groups all over the country.

    A big reason to focus on local engagement is to bypass the elitist propaganda that helped to weaken the 2017 and 2019 campaigns. And that’s one factor helped Corbyn in his own constituency in the 2024 election. Because people came from all over “to show that we were not going to allow lies and money to defeat what our message was – which is about… a society based on social justice and peace, not based on greed, racism and the nastiness that the right offer to us”.

    People’s support for “a properly functioning welfare state” didn’t stop after 2019, but Labour’s did

    Corbyn later argued that, in Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos, the argument for “a properly functioning welfare state” was clear, and millions of people duly voted for it. And he stressed that “public ownership of the public services that have been doing very well”. On the other hand, he said:

    The water industry, privatised under Margaret Thatcher, was asset stripped by the corporations. That logic has seen prices going up all over the place, the highest ever levels of pollution of our streams, our rivers, and our seas, and the appalling amount of waste because they haven’t invested enough in maintaining those pipes. I think the private sector have adequately proved over the last 30 years they’re incapable of delivering us reliable supplies.

    He also described how, on all the demonstrations and picket lines he’s been on:

    there’s a whole thirst in the generation of people in our society that are fed up with a country that has such huge degrees of inequality and poverty, that has food banks in every town and city in the whole country, and has an economic and budget process that has increased that level of inequality even since the last general election, when the opportunity was put there in front of parliament for the government to take one small step to eliminate some of the disgraceful child poverty in our country.

    But Starmer’s Labour has thrown that opportunity away, refusing to “eliminate the two-child benefit cap”, “compensate the WASPI women”, end homelessness, or “increase the level of disability benefits that are so abysmally low that more than a third of the families with a member of the family that has a disability are living in poverty”.

    Since Corbyn’s speech, of course, things have got even worse, with the government taking billions from disabled people and handing them to the arms industry. This is despite massive support across Britain for taxing the super-rich to fund vital public services.

    2) The Peace & Justice Project has been working hard behind the scenes to support the resurgence of people power

    Bread and roses. Welfare, not warfare.

    Corbyn’s formation of the Peace & Justice Project after leaving the leadership of the Labour Party was about “empowering people”, he said. This has included supporting young people with musical opportunities and backing trade union struggles. But as he argued:

    socialism, and social justice, doesn’t just come from the economic arguments, important as they are. It comes from international solidarity, but it also comes from inspiration… It is bread, but with roses too, and I think it’s important to get that message across.

    Corbyn stressed that he wants peace, and doesn’t want “conscripted soldiers from Ukraine killing conscripted soldiers from Russia”. And he asked:

    Where are the planes coming from that are undertaking the surveillance over Gaza?

    This is in reference to Britain’s participation in Israel’s genocide in Gaza via RAF Akrotiri.

    But international solidarity is key not just because of basic human compassion. It’s also because imperialist actions abroad hurt us at home too. Speaking about the government putting billions more pounds into military spending, he stressed that this would be billions “not spent on health, on education, on housing and the environment” or “trying to deal with the issues of abominable levels of poverty and dislocation in water and countries around the world”.

    Continuing the mission and momentum of 2015 to 2019

    The mission for the left and the Peace and Justice Project, Corbyn said, is “about redistribution of wealth and power within our society”. And he insisted:

    we’ve got to be able to come together to achieve these things. That’s why we formed the project.

    As part of these efforts, Corbyn and others have been “going all around the country” to try and build an “alliance of all of us that are moving in the same direction”. That means people demanding “council houses for social rent”, “decent wages, environmental sustainability, a fully funded, publicly owned National Health Service and a National Care Service”. The latter, he stressed, is vital because people are having to give up their careers, sell their houses, or get into debt in order to look after people “that ought to be cared for publicly by a National Care Service”.

    Groups around the country that have been organising for this mission need to unite “to be a coherent force in the elections that are coming up”, he argued. These include council and mayoral elections in May this year, and the national elections in Scotland and Wales in 2026. And he called these:

    huge electoral opportunities to put forward a radical alternative ahead of a general election

    To get there, community empowerment and mobilisation are essential

    Regarding the future electoral opportunities, Corbyn insisted that it’s “not about what you do then – it’s what we do now about mobilising and empowering people”. He explained:

    If you get together as a community and you are defending a hospital against closure, or you want a piece of wasteland turned into a park, or you see an empty building that would make a wonderful nursery for children to enjoy and develop from, you get together, you campaign. You don’t always win… But if you get together… and you achieve something, you’re suddenly emboldened and strengthened as a community. And you don’t get pushed around anymore by planning decisions and other things that are taken against your interests. Because it’s about community empowerment. I always wanted the Labour Party to become a community-based organisation with community organising at the community level.

    In fact, he told the Canary his efforts around community organising when he was Labour’s leader were what faced “the biggest opposition… from the Labour Party bureaucracy”.

    But now, communities all over the country are organising, and they share a clear mission. Independent and Green MPs, local parties with progressive councillors, trade unions, social movements, and high-profile political and cultural figures have just united to call for an alternative to Labour Party austerity in a Dignity Declaration. As Corbyn said in his speech, organisation is “happening all over the country”, and “these are exciting times”.

    Southport Community Independents are one example of the kind of local mobilisation and empowerment that is going on around Britain, with Corbyn thanking their leader Sean Halsall for inspiring people “with your dedication, your humanity and your honesty”. Halsall himself told the Canary that being proactive right now is the key to building “a mass party of the left” in the near future. And that’s exactly what he, Corbyn, and many others are doing to make sure positive change becomes a very real possibility.

    Watch Corbyn’s full speech below:

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Clive Lewis skewers toxic environment secretary Steve Reed over water privatisation

    Clive Lewis’ Water Bill had its second reading in parliament on Friday 28 March. The Labour Party MP skewered environment secretary Steve Reed in the exchange.

    Water privatisation: “systemic exploitation of a common resource”

    In a speech, Lewis flipped the script on Reed, who has been arguing against public ownership of water:

    They say, “I’m more interested in the purity of our water than the purity of our ideology.” I love that quote. I love it because it lays bare just how deeply the ideology of privatisation, and all that goes with it, has embedded itself. So entrenched is it within our collective consciousness that we no longer recognise it as an ideology. We no longer see it for what it is: a systemic exploitation of a common resource for private gain. Instead, it has simply become the natural order of things.

    It’s worth noting that water company owners have gifted Reed £1,786 in football tickets. The Labour leadership also used false analysis that the water industry cooked up in order to argue against water privatisation.

    In the Commons, Lewis continued:

    But how much longer can this go on? Since the crash of 2008, this ideology has been faltering under the weight of its own contradictions, yet its grip on British politics remains vice-like. Austerity, exploitation and corporate price gouging are still treated not as choices but as inevitabilities. Why? Because too many politicians on both sides of the House refuse to contemplate alternatives.

    Full privatisation of water and sanitation isn’t a thing in most other countries, so it is far from an inevitability, as the MP says. Lewis further accused Labour of propping up what is Tory ideology:

    we wrap their ideology in the language of fiscal responsibility, economic prudence and stewardship of the economy. But it is not fiscal responsibility when we balance the books on broken backs. It is not stewardship when the ship has been sold off and the crew left to drown. It is not prudence. It is power maintenance.

    In response, Labour MP Neil Coyle commented:

    There are far more [Labour MPs] since July last year than there were in 2019, with a very different approach taken in our manifestos. Does he fear that the shift in tone he is suggesting is one of the reasons that we did so badly in 2019 but so well last year?

    This argument is laughable. Labour received far more votes in 2017 and 2019 than the party did in 2024. The issue in 2019 was that the leadership capitulated on Brexit and offered a re-run of the referendum. This destroyed Labour electorally because the majority of its seats voted Brexit, particularly in the heartlands.

    Indeed, Lewis said:

    We have a distorted electoral system. Bring on proportional representation, because if we had PR, we would have had a different Government in 2019 and most definitely in 2017.

    Privatisation: lack of investment

    During the debate, Lewis also noted:

    In the 35 years before privatisation almost 100 reservoirs were built; in the 35 years since privatisation, not one major English reservoir has been built. But it gets worse, because in that same period private water companies have sold off 25 reservoirs without replacing one. Instead of investing in resilience, they have extracted value: £72 billion paid out in dividends while pipes leak, rivers choke, and the public pays the price.

    On this point, the Mirror reported in 2022:

    The GMB union says companies have sold off 232 properties in England and Wales since 2017. These included 35 ex-reservoirs of which, the union estimates, 10 were in use until recently.

    The MP for Norwich South further linked the water industry to climate change:

    If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this country, we must treat it as such: an existential conflict. In that context, the actions of these companies—selling off reservoirs, failing to invest, polluting our water—are not just negligent; they are acts that actively undermine our national water security

    And Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer later chimed:

    Privatisation is just not working. The experiment has failed… Water is a natural monopoly. For example, people who live in the south-west, as I do, cannot choose to be supplied by Yorkshire Water. I am not sure that they would want to, but my point is that when their provider gives a poor service and charges extortionate sums, they cannot take their business elsewhere. There is no fair competition. You get what you get, and you cannot get upset about it—but we are upset about it, because sewage is being pumped into our water, and we are paying through the nose for the privilege, all while shareholders profit.

    Lewis has said his bill aims to bring the debate beyond “simplistic” ideas of “privatisation vs nationalisation”. While public ownership means we can reinvest would-be profits into a better service and cheaper bills, it does not in and of itself guarantee enough investment nor correct management. Lewis believes bringing “economic democracy” to the water industry through citizens’ assemblies would solve this.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By James Wright

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Donald Trump just sent a massive f*ck you to the Global South

    Donald Trump’s administration has made the outrageous decision to withdraw from the United Nations’ Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, an initiative aimed at addressing the effects of climate change.

    The Fund, established in 2022, is the first effort designed to have wealthier nations compensate countries that suffer from the impacts of greenhouse gas pollution.

    By pulling out, the US has stepped back from its obligations to manage the harm caused by its extensive emissions.

    The US: zero accountability – more so under Donald Trump

    The Loss and Damage Fund is seen as a crucial attempt to ensure that the nations responsible for historical pollution contribute to the recovery and resilience of those affected.

    According to a report by the American Friends Service Committee, the 25 wealthy nations that agreed to support the Fund account for nearly half of all carbon dioxide emissions over many centuries. These nations, often benefiting from industrialisation, are now faced with the responsibility of helping others deal with the consequences of climate change.

    Since its inception, the Fund has relied heavily on US involvement. It has had a controlling influence, with the authority to appoint the head of the Fund’s host institution, the World Bank, which has led to concerns about the US position in decision-making processes.

    Moreover, during negotiations, the US advocated for contributions from wealthy nations to be classified as voluntary, a suggestion that critics argue undermines the obligation to support affected countries.

    The biggest emitter (and Biden was little better)

    Historically, the US holds the title of the largest cumulative emitter of carbon dioxide via fossil fuels, with an estimated 432 billion tons released from 1800 to 2023, which translates to approximately 24% of total global emissions.

    In stark contrast, the Biden administration committed a mere $17.5 million to the Loss and Damage Fund, representing only about 2.4% of the estimated financial needs for addressing global climate crisis impacts. This limited contribution has been met with criticism, especially as representatives from developing nations argue that at least $100 billion annually is necessary to support those affected by climate-related disasters.

    Independent estimates suggest that up to $395 billion is required each year for effective aid.

    The withdrawals and minimal pledges from the US leave a troubling gap in funding.

    It has been reported that under the Biden administration, the US has only contributed roughly $0.04 for every 1,000 tons of CO2 pollution produced historically—placing it last among the top ten emitters contributing to the Fund.

    Trump: fuck the Global South

    Now, Trump’s withdrawal indicates a shift towards a complete abandonment of financial responsibility for climate-related damages, highlighting ongoing tensions between the Global North and South regarding accountability in the climate crisis.

    This situation underscores the broader conversation about how historical pollution by wealthy countries has impacted nations in the Global South, who often bear the brunt of climate change consequences. The challenge remains for the international community to ensure equity in climate action and aid, addressing both the past and present responsibilities.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • BREAKING: DWP pensions row grows as Stephen Flynn’s proposed WASPI bill is pushed out of parliament

    In a critical moment for the future of millions of women across the UK, SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn introduced a private member’s bill aimed at addressing the compensation claims of the WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequality) campaigners. It highlights a growing discontent regarding the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) handling of an issue that has affected some 3.6 million women born in the 1950s.

    It is called the Women’s State Pension age (Ombudsman report and compensation scheme) Bill was on the list to be debated today, Friday 28 March.

    Yet because of other business, the bill failed to secure any time to be debated. It is now unclear how the bill will proceed.

    DWP pensions scandal: WASPI bill before parliament

    Flynn has been vocally pressing for the Labour Party and the DWP to guarantee that his bill receives the attention it requires to ensure fair compensation for the affected WASPI women.

    Speaking on the matter, Flynn said:

    With the WASPI compensation bill due before parliament today, it is essential that the Labour government ensures adequate parliamentary time so that MPs can vote to pass this bill and give WASPI women the fair and fast compensation they deserve.

    Flynn’s stern words are a direct critique of Labour’s recent actions, accusing them of breaking pre-election promises.

    The bill comes in the wake of a damning report into the DWP pensions scandal from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) released last March, which called for compensation between £1,000 and £2,950 per claimant. This recommendation aimed to rectify the injustices faced by women whose state pension age was raised by the DWP without proper communication or consideration of the societal impact.

    Despite Labour’s admissions of maladministration by the previous Conservative government, the party has yet to deliver any form of compensation, leading to allegations of betrayal from those who once supported the campaign.

    Scotland: 330,000 women affected

    A striking fact stands out in this debate: the House of Commons Library’s analysis indicates that more than 330,000 women in Scotland alone have been adversely impacted by the changes, drawing attention to a nationwide crisis that demands immediate redress.

    Yet, the Labour government and DWP are accused of stalling progress on the issue. This ignited fears among WASPI advocates that Keir Starmer may intentionally obstruct the passage of the compensation bill by failing to allocate adequate parliamentary time. Now, it seems that fear has come true.

    All this comes as WASPI women begin a legal challenge against the government and the DWP over the issue.

    Critics of the current Labour leadership have pointed to past statements from prominent MPs. Starmer himself had promised “fair and fast compensation” for WASPI women before entering office, a pledge that now seems to hang in the balance.

    Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner previously affirmed that the DWP had “failed women born in the 1950s,” stating:

    They stole their pensions. We’ve said we’ll right that injustice.

    These once fervent assurances now stand in stark contrast to the perceived inaction from within Labour’s ranks.

    The DWP: betrayal after betrayal

    Just earlier this year, Flynn’s proposal passed its first reading with a unanimous vote of 105 MPs in favour. However, Labour MPs were whipped to abstain, creating a rift within the party over which side to take on this contentious DWP issue.

    Among those indicating their support for Flynn’s bill were Scottish Labour MP Brian Leishman, along with nine other Labour MPs, demonstrating that dissent exists even within Labour in regards to the party’s current stance.

    With mounting pressure on Labour to act decisively, Flynn’s comments challenge both the government, DWP, and party leaders directly:

    I urge Anas Sarwar, and Scottish Labour MPs, to join with the SNP in backing the bill to finally deliver compensation, instead of betraying these women yet again.

    His passionate plea reflects the sentiment shared by claimants and advocates across the UK, who are tired of empty words from governments and the DWP, and are seeking substantive action.

    Yet on 28 March, parliament failed to give Flynn’s bill the time it needed to force the DWP to act. It is just another betrayal of millions of women by Labour.

    Featured image via screengrab

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.