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Category: UK

  • Now the Guardian has run a hit-job on the CWU – but it backfired

    The Guardian seems unable to hide its centre-right, divide-and-conquer agenda anymore – once again it’s gone on the attack over striking workers. This time, it thinks it’s being subtle – when in reality a sledge hammer would be more discreet. However, it didn’t go quite according to plan.

    Guardian: shameless

    As the Canary previously reported, some media outlets have been undermining striking workers recently, when they should know better. First, the supposedly impartial BBC ran a divisive piece on the National union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) strike. It was about how people’s Christmas travel plans had been affected by the industrial action. However, one of the stories had obvious holes in it – and the BBC had to remove it.

    Then, the Guardian joined in. As the Canary previously reported:

    First, the supposedly left-wing outlet has put a call-out for stories on its website. It was around the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) Union Border Force strikes happening over Christmas.

    The Guardian was asking people if their:

    holiday travel [had] been affected by the strike?

    It wanted readers to send in their stories. This was at least the second time the Guardian had run this kind of article. A previous call-out was for hospitality bosses and workers regarding strikes more broadly. Clearly, this kind of cheap, divisive hackery suits the Guardian‘s editors, because it’s now done another one of these ‘reader stories’ requests.

    Aiming for the CWU

    This time, the Guardian has striking Communication Workers Union (CWU) staff in its sights. It tweeted:

    The shameless rag asked its readers:

    how they’re dealing with disruptions to their deliveries this winter. Were you aware of a delay when you bought the item or have you been taken by surprise? Are you doing more shopping on the high street instead?

    It was clear what workers and companies the Guardian was referring to, as it had tagged the article ‘Royal Mail’. People on social media had mixed responses. However, many people were calling out the Guardian for this obvious hit job on CWU members:

    However, as well as the CWU the Guardian call-out was also causing a pile-on against underpaid and overworked gig economy couriers, too – with some people defending posties but complaining about companies like Evri. So, the Guardian managed to not only pit Royal Mail workers against the rest of us, but also courier workers against their CWU colleagues, too.

    Divide and conquer

    As the Canary previously wrote:

    Guardian editors surely must know better than to put out content that is divisive and playing into government agendas.

    Of course, the Guardian is merely aiding and abetting the Tories with this content – at a time when the government is actively blocking resolutions to disputes for the likes of the RMT.

    But don’t worry – if you thought the Guardian couldn’t sink any lower, it just did. It also did a call-out for people who’ve ‘had to take someone to a UK hospital due to ambulance delays’. You can fully expect the shitrag to do a call-out for people affected by the nurses’ strike, next.

    Featured image via Channel 4 News – YouTube and the Guardian – screengrab

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • There’s no Christmas cheer for foxes this year as Boxing Day hunts get underway

    The Christmas period means many things to many people, but for some of Britain’s wildlife it is a time of terror. Foxes, hares and deer across the country face the grim prospect of being chased and killed during the hunting industry’s biggest day of the year. But there are also protesters across the country trying to stop this Boxing Day hunting horror from going ahead.

    Festive terror

    The Christmas period is rife with high days for the hunting industry, with Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day traditionally being seen as important days in its calendar. However, no day is bigger or more notorious than Boxing Day. With its roots in the inability of aristocrats to spend time with their families, Boxing Day sees hunts take to the streets of towns across the UK to parade their hounds, horses, and humans, before heading into the fields to hunt wildlife.

    They haven’t gone unopposed, though. Protesters and hunt saboteurs (‘sabs’) have confronted Boxing Day hunts for decades. The first sabotage attributed to the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) was on Boxing Day 1963. And today, the movement targeting Boxing Day in particular is stronger than ever.

    Sabbing a Boxing Day meet looks much like sabbing any other hunt – albeit with a greater number of hunt supporters to obstruct and attack sabs. However, 26 December is a galvanising moment for other types of anti-hunt protesters.

    A number of events are already advertised on Facebook for this year, including protests against the following:

    These protests will take to the street to remind hunts that plenty of people are disgusted by their activities. Tensions have run high in past years, though, with some instances of physical confrontation. Fighting broke out between pro- and anti-hunt individuals during the Avon Vale hunt’s parade on Boxing Day 2021, for example.

    Ban from Bungay on Boxing Day

    One Boxing Day protest this year has garnered more attention than usual. Action Against Animal Cruelty – East Anglia launched a petition asking Bungay Town Council in Suffolk to “Ban the Waveney Harriers Hunt Parade from Bungay on Boxing Day”. It received more than 40,000 signatures and led to a debate by the council, though this essentially led to its handwashing of the issue.

    The group told the Canary that it was determined to stop the Waveney Harriers’ parade because:

    trail hunting is a smokescreen and the hunts around the country actively chase and kill wildlife!

    Its efforts mirror successful campaigns elsewhere in the UK. Cheshire West and Chester Council banned hunting from council-owned land in December 2021, for example. There was also a wave of hunting bans by local councils throughout 2018 and 2019.

    Action Against Animal Cruelty – East Anglia told the Canary that:

    There has been a rise in evidence [of criminal hunting] through video footage gained by sabs and monitors, and it feels like the time has come to push for enforcement of a total ban on hunting with hounds. Getting the Waveney Harriers kicked out of Bungay is just one part of this.

    Boxing Day is an opportunity for hunts to veil their activities by pretending they are a quaint ‘biscuit tin’ pastime. Protests and campaigns to stop Boxing Day parades are essential in combating these lies.

    Organised criminal network

    While the Hunting Act 2004 banned hunting with hounds, sabs and others that oppose hunting have persistently highlighted how little has changed in the field. The hunting industry repeatedly claims to ‘trail hunt’, i.e., to follow an artificially laid scent. However, this claim has been exposed as lies not only by the weekly efforts of sabs and hunt monitors, but by the carelessness of hunts themselves.

    Mark Hankinson, former head of the Masters of Foxhounds Association, which oversaw nearly all foxhound packs in the UK, was convicted of encouraging illegal hunting in October 2021. The verdict came after the HSA published covertly recorded footage from a webinar of senior figures within the hunting industry. In December 2022, huntsman Ollie Finnegan pleaded guilty to illegal hunting while heading up the Quorn Hunt, one of the country’s biggest and most prestigious hunts. Police found messages on Finnegan’s phone that indicated a “pattern of offending over time”. These are just two of countless instances that reveal the hunting industry as an organised criminal network.

    Boxing Day hunt parades aren’t a charming community event. They’re pro-hunting propaganda designed to reinforce the smokescreen of a deeply harmful and ultimately criminal activity.

    Featured image via Jonathan Hutchins/Geograph, resized to 770×403 pixels under licence CC BY-SA 2.0

    By Glen Black

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Europe’s record 2022 wildfires screwed the climate even more

    Wildfires that scorched across Europe this year burned a record land area and stoked carbon emissions. That’s according to an update released on Tuesday 13 December by Europe’s forest fire and satellite monitors.

    Record-breaking wildfires – and huge levels of emissions

    The summer of 2022 was the hottest in Europe’s recorded history. The continent suffered blistering heatwaves and the worst drought in centuries – as climate change drives ever longer and stronger hot spells. That created tinderbox forests, increasing the risk of devastating, and sometimes deadly, wildfires. The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) said:

    The length and intensity of the heatwaves to hit Europe during the summer, combined with the general dry conditions on the continent during 2022, contributed to record-breaking wildfire activity.

    CAMS noted the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) put the total cumulative burnt area in the 27-nation EU from the start of the year to mid-November at over 785,000 hectares (1.9m acres). That is more than double the average of just over 317,000 hectares in the 2006-2021 period. CAMS estimated total wildfire emissions from the EU and the United Kingdom from 1 June to 31 August at 6.4 megatonnes (64m tonnes) of carbon, the highest level for these months since the summer of 2007. That’s more than the entire country of Greece produces in a year.

    Europe: bucking the global trend – and not in a good way

    Importantly, CAMS noted that the global trend is a decline in emissions from wildfires because of a reduction in savanna fires in tropical regions. However, it also said some parts of the world are seeing emissions rise:

    We also continue to identify and monitor significantly increased fire emissions in different parts of the world, where hotter and drier conditions are leading to increased flammability of the vegetation.

    Huge fires that raged across Spain and France meant that these countries saw the highest carbon emissions from June to August since the satellite monitor’s records began in 2003. CAMS stated that this “had a major impact on air quality in the region”.

    EFFIS has said that 2022 is likely to have seen the highest number of fires recorded in Europe since 2006. In its report on the 2021 wildfires, the organisation also included data on the 2022 burned area. EFFIS said:

    Wildfires raging from west to east and across northern, central and southern European countries offer clear evidence of the effects of climate change.

    EFFIS said it would be necessary to prepare populations to:

    live with wildfires, as they become more frequent and intense because of climate change.

    In September, the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization said the interaction between pollution and climate change would impact hundreds of millions of people over the coming century, and urged action to rein in the harm. As 2022 showed, so far Western nations are not heeding the warning.

    Featured image and additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Yoon Starmer confirms he’d rather a Tory government than an SNP deal

    Labour leader and certified yoon Keir Starmer has once again confirmed his party would not do a deal with the Scottish National Party (SNP) if there was a hung parliament at the next general election. Even a right-wing LBC hack pointed out that it meant Starmer would rather see the Tories’ “limp on” in government.

    Starmer: no SNP deal

    As Holyrood reported last year, at the Labour Party conference Starmer said of a possible coalition government or deal with the SNP:

    No deal under any circumstances.

    The context to this is that the SNP hold the majority of Scottish parliamentary seats in Westminster. Meanwhile, whilst Labour currently lead in the opinion polls, there is a chance that the Tories could eat into this. As Chris Hopkins from pollster Sevanta told HuffPost:

    if Rishi Sunak can keep narrowing that Labour lead, point-by-point, the actual results come 2024 could look very different

    Sevanta’s most recent polling gave Labour a majority of 314 – leaving the Tories with just 69 seats. However, that’s a big prediction and a long-way off. So, you’d hope Starmer would be putting the good of the public first and making sure we knew all options were on the table to prevent the Tories regaining power in 2024. But no – that’s clearly too much to ask.

    Yoon logic

    A caller to LBC asked Starmer during an interview with Nick Ferrari if he’d changed his mind on a possible SNP deal if needed. Starmer said again:

    We are not doing a deal with the SNP. I say that in capitals, I say it in bold, I said it at my party conference…

    Ferrari interrupted, saying:

    you’d rather see, somehow, the Conservatives limp-on in some extraordinary hotchpotch deal than you borrowing five-to-ten seats from the SNP and getting over the line?

    In short, Starmer said yes – spouting some unionist garbage about being ‘better together’:

    Unsurprisingly, people on social media were unimpressed by Starmer’s comments:

    Now, to be moderately fair on Starmer, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also ruled out a deal with the SNP at the 2019 general election – albeit in slightly less forthright terms. However, he seemed more open to ‘indy ref 2’ than Starmer does. So, while it looks like Labour could win the next general election, nothing is set in stone. And for Starmer to already be actively denying the people of Scotland autonomy – as well as saying he’d prefer to throw all of us under the bus than work with the SNP – is nothing short of petulant and arrogant.

    Featured image via LBC – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Richard Madeley channels Alan Partridge in car crash RMT interview

    Good Morning Britain (GMB) host Richard Madeley managed to unite much of social media against him on Tuesday 13 December. It came after the archaic TV presenter ‘interviewed’ (if you can call it that) National Union of Rail, Transport and Maritime Workers (RMT) general secretary Mick Lynch. The segment on GMB was such a disaster that some viewers thought comic character Alan Partridge had invaded their screens.

    RMT: everybody out

    RMT members were out on strike on 13 December. It was part of a series of walkouts after the union rejected a pay offer by Network Rail that was well below the rate of inflation. The RMT is taking action on:

    • 13-14 December.
    • 16-17 December.
    • From 6pm on Christmas Eve until 7am on 27 December.

    Of course, the action over Christmas won’t directly affect passengers because few trains run on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. This hasn’t stopped the corporate media fueling anti-strike sentiment, though – with the BBC pushing fake stories about the RMT disrupting people’s Christmas plans, and the Guardian using its best divide-and-conquer tactics to foment disquiet. So, to continue this trend, enter Madeley on GMB – doing his best Jeremy Paxman impression, but ending up looking more like Alan Partridge.

    A-ha! I’m Richard Madeley!

    Madeley was tasked with interviewing Lynch – no mean feat to be fair, given the RMT head’s reputation for making corporate journalists soil themselves. However, the GMB host clearly believed he’d had his Weetabix on 13 December – it’s just that no-one else thought so.

    The former This Morning presenter put it to Lynch that “many people” were:

    appalled that you are striking over Christmas, over this Christmas week.

    This seemed to be in reference to the RMT’s 24-27 December strikes. Madeley asked why the union couldn’t have taken strike action in January. Lynch began to answer by saying:

    Well, we’re not targeting Christmas. It isn’t Christmas yet, Richard. I don’t know when your Christmas starts, but mine starts on Christmas Eve.

    The GMB host then lost it. He accused Lynch of being “disingenuous”, saying “commercial Christmas starts in December”. Madeley continued to labour this point – despite it not being what he originally said in his question. Lynch attempted to answer, but Madeley continued his rant, saying:

    You said that Christmas started on Christmas Eve, and that’s nonsense. I won’t let you get away with nonsense. Christmas does not start on Christmas Eve. So, let’s just be clear. It starts in early December and that’s what we’re talking about.

    Of course, what Madeley is actually talking about is not your Christmas or mine – one that, given the catastrophic cost of living crisis, is likely to be a miserable affair. The GMB host is talking about business owners (the same class of people denying RMT members a proper pay rise) and the middle and upper classes – for whom December is all about spending. You’d be forgiven for struggling to pick up that point from Madeley’s incoherent waffle, though – as Lynch asked:

    Richard, why don’t you just interview yourself

    So, narcissist Madeley channeled the best bit of script from the 1980s Ladybird Book of Journalism:

    I’m holding you to account on behalf of the viewers

    You could almost feel his ego swell as he thought he’d duped the audience into believing he was something other than a washed-up, right-wing hack from a bygone era:

    ‘Back of the net’ – except it was an own goal for Madeley

    Sadly for Madeley, most people weren’t fooled by his piece of am-dram performance art:

    The comparisons to Steve Coogan’s comedy creation ‘Alan Partridge’ came thick and fast:

    Madeley looked and sounded like a dickhead. Of course, the broader point here is that that’s exactly what GMB bosses want. The host acting like a clusterfucking TV character is a ratings win for ITV. It’s hopefully a win for the RMT too – as Lynch came across like the rational one to Madeley’s Partridge. ‘Back of the net’, you might say.

    Featured image via Good Morning Britain – YouTube and Baby Cow – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

  • What if there was no Canary?

    At the Canary we can’t rely on the government, corporations or the corporate media to have our backs. Instead, we need to build communities of resistance. Part of doing that is having media outlets that are truly independent, run by the people for the people. They must not be afraid to speak truth to power – and that’s where the Canary Workers’ Co-op comes in.

    Amplifying marginalised people’s struggles more than any other independent outlet

    We exist to amplify marginalised people’s struggles against a system designed to keep them oppressed. The Canary doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. Most of us live what we write about – whether it’s anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, any and all other forms of racism, classism, transphobia, benefits, horrible bosses, militarism, the environment, disability and chronic illness, or police repression and oppression by the criminal ‘justice’ and prison systems. We also cover many of these issues more than most other independent media outlets. For example, in November we published, on average, more than one article a day on strikes and trade unions. We have consistently supported the Communication Workers Union (CWU), Royal College of Nurses (RCN), University and College Union (UCU) and National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) in their actions.

    On top of this, we produce more written content than nearly every other independent media outlet. In November alone, the Canary published, on average, over eight articles a day on countless topics. We’re a team of just 15 people who not only write but also run the business, do the Canary’s social media, manage our membership, calculate the accounts, make videos and most importantly look after each other’s wellbeing. We’ve still got our Newsguard trust rating, we’re still regulated by IMPRESS, and we rarely have to make any corrections.

    Why would we get ourselves gigs on the BBC?

    We do all this while nearly half the team are personally affected by disability, chronic illness, or enduring psychological distress – we’ve had the year from hell, which has been turned around by our transition to a co-op. However, we’re still the same team of writers we’ve always been: dealing with the news that matters to working-class and marginalised people

    We don’t give you wordy, pretentious insights propping up powerful people and companies. The Canary certainly doesn’t pretend to maintain a fake ‘balance’ in our coverage. We don’t see the point in parroting anything that’s liberal or Tory-lite for the sake of clicks and paper-copy sales. And why would we get ourselves gigs on the BBC when we have dedicated tens of thousands of words to slagging it off? We hope we are, and aim to continue to be, working-class and marginalised peoples’ go-to news outlet – one that they know stands on the frontline with them in their battles against a system intent on repressing them.

    But we cannot do this without your support. With the corporate media in the UK directly in bed with the establishment, and other independent outlets either folding, reducing their content, or unable to reach the number of people we do, the Canary is a crucial tool to support resistance to power for working class and marginalised people.

    You can support us for £1 a month

    Look. We know this is a ridiculous time to be asking for money. Plenty of us at the Canary have to have the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) top up our wages with Universal Credit.

    But imagine if there was no Canary. Who’d provide daily content on strikes, benefits, Labour, injustice – and yes, Corbyn, too – that wasn’t from the point of view of the corporate media? There isn’t anyone. The Canary still blazes a trail.

    All we’re asking is for £1 a month. If every person watching this became a member for just a quid every 30-odd days then the Canary could employ more writers, report from the ground on working-class and community struggles, and engage with you – our readers – even more. Plus, £1 a month will get you ad-free access, direct communication with the team, and a chance to have your letters published every Saturday – with more benefits coming in 2023, too.

    In these difficult times, radical independent media is needed as much as trade unions and community activism is. You can support us for just £1 a month. So, if you can – please do:

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Royal race row forces Sistah Space to close temporarily

    Sistah Space, the UK charity at the centre of a royal racism row, says it has suspended its work of supporting Black domestic abuse survivors. The charity has faced a torrent of toxic racist hate, forcing it to shut temporarily, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). Founder Ngozi Fulani said in a statement that the charity had been “forced to temporarily cease” many of its operations to protect clients and staff. Fulani added:

    We are overwhelmed by the amount of support and encouragement and look forward to fully reinstating our services as soon as safely possible.

    Susan Hussey, a godmother to prince William, repeatedly asked Fulani where she was “really” from at a Buckingham Palace reception on 29 November. Fulani, who is British, has been targeted by what she called “horrific” racist insults online since revealing the exchange.

    Hussey resigned from her role as a palace courtier after the row. However, as the Canary’s Joe Glenton reported at the time:

    That she has stepped down is something. However, racism will continue to run through the heart of the British establishment – it is, after all, built on colonialism and exploitation.

    Institutional racism

    The reaction on social media was, understandably, one of sorrow and rage. Actress and public speaker Kelechi Okafor said:

    Okafor also pointed out that business as usual for Britain is to deny racism at any cost:

    Journalist Lorraine King shared concern that without Sistah Space, people may well be in danger:

    Sistah Space is a non-profit that fills a gap in the domestic abuse sector by specifically providing services for African-heritage women and girls. Comedian Ava Vidal pushed back against racists claiming Sistah Space’s work is too specific:

    As Sistah Space explained on its own site:

    Black skin complexions vary across an extremely wide spectrum and because of that, not all Black people’s skin will bruise the same as their white counterparts.

    The organisation says that:

    Risk assessment questions should reflect the cultural environment of black women to better understand the danger they are facing.

    And, importantly, it states that:

    Distrust of police officers and government agencies within the Black community due to historic institutional racism that must be recognised and addressed.

    Sistah Space’s work is vital for its service users. The fact that the organisation has to close due to racist harassment is a disgrace. Even more so, it’s coming near to Christmas – a period where domestic abuse charities record spikes in domestic abuse reports.

    Solidarity and support needed

    Black Lives Matter UK expressed their solidarity with Sistah Space:

    As did Sisters Uncut:

    Hackney Cop Watch also urged everyone to support Sistah Space:

    You can find out more about Sistah Space’s work here and donate to their work here.

    It speaks to what a racist cesspit this country is that, after being the one to suffer racist abuse, Fulani is forced to temporarily close her charity to protect its staff and service users. Once again, Black women in Britain are being failed by an institutionally racist and anti-Black society.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Good Morning Britain

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ reveal very little, but the right won’t let that stop them

    New Twitter chief and exploding-car entrepreneur Elon Musk has given a team access to the website’s data archives in order to examine its content moderation actions. The investigators include former New York Times editor Bari Weiss and podcaster-journalist Matt Taibbi, amongst others.

    Their findings are being released under the hashtag #TwitterFiles, and they’re being hyped to reveal some conspiracy to suppress right-wing and fringe voices. But as always, the truth appears to be that the right is once again crying about the fact that hate speech and conspiracy theories will get you banned from social media – who’d have thought it?

    Hunter Biden’s laptop, again

    Taibbi’s first thread revolved around the removal of Donald Trump from the platform, and the controversy around Hunter Biden’s laptop. This story originally came from the New York Post and concerned now-US president Joe Biden’s son Hunter using his connection to his dad to get in with a Ukrainian natural gas company. Sordid, for sure, but hardly uncommon, or even condemned, in the world of politics. Taibbi claimed that:

    Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.

    Back in the real world, the #TwitterFiles appear to have exposed… Twitter employees scrambling to react appropriately to what seemed to be a Russian hacking operation, during an incredibly volatile political moment in the US.

    In turn, many Twitter users chose to focus on the outrage that right-wingers couldn’t freely post illegally obtained photographs of politicians’ family members’ genitalia:

    Shadowbanned

    In turn, Weiss chose to dig into nefarious blacklisting and tweet suppression:

    The problem with this masterstroke of investigative journalism is, however, that Twitter was open about the fact that it suppressed tweets. In fact, it released a blog post detailing the subject in 2018. It stated, quite clearly:

    We do rank tweets and search results. We do this because Twitter is most useful when it’s immediately relevant. These ranking models take many signals into consideration to best organize tweets for timely relevance. We must also address bad-faith actors who intend to manipulate or detract from healthy conversation.

    Nevertheless, the #TwitterFiles breathlessly reported the scandal of the suppression of… coronavirus [Covid-19] misinformation, conspiracy theorist Dan Bongino, and noted racist Charlie Kirk. If this suppression happens to sound like ‘responsible content moderation’ to you, don’t worry – you’re not alone:

    Waiting for transparency

    Finally, of course, we should remember that Musk’s newfound love of ‘transparency’ is deeply hypocritical:

    The next instalment of the #TwitterFiles will apparently focus on coronavirus and US chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci. Surely, it will be just as measured and responsible as the previous reporting under the hashtag. Maybe eventually we’ll get around to investigating why a set of hack journalists have been given access to unknown quantities of Twitter data? Don’t hold your breath, though.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Ministério Das Comunicações, resized to 770×403 under licence CC BY 2.0

    By Alex/Rose Cocker

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Guardian jumps on the anti-strike bandwagon along with the BBC

    After the BBC caused uproar for publishing a fake story about the impact of worker strikes, now the Guardian has joined in the anti-union propaganda.

    BBC: punching down against striking workers

    As the Canary previously reported, BBC News recently published an article on the National Union of Rail, Transport and Maritime Workers (RMT) industrial action on the rail network. The piece was about how ‘ordinary’ people were affected by the RMT strikes across Christmas. However, one of the stories BBC News included in the original article wasn’t true. A guy called Owen claimed he would not be able to see his son over Christmas due to the strikes. BBC News wrote:

    Having supported strikes earlier in the year, Owen says he’s now against them due to the festive strikes “ruining” his Christmas.

    “I have always been a staunch socialist…but it’s been a year now,” he says. “Enough is enough.”

    However, Owen’s claim that no trains meant no visit to his son was incorrect – because he could get a bus on the day in question. BBC News had to remove Owen’s story from its article. As the Canary wrote:

    The basic level of fact checking by the BBC is dire. Then, there’s the issue that [the] article originally only had comment from people who didn’t support the strikes – zero balance from a public service broadcaster. Plus, there’s the fact that the article got past editors in the first place…

    However, the larger problem here is that this is typical BBC establishment punching down – pitting citizen against citizen while absolving those in power of responsibility.

    You’d be forgiven for thinking the Guardian would do better than this. Well, no – it hasn’t.

    The Guardian: shaming itself

    First, the supposedly left-wing outlet has put a call-out for stories on its website. It was around the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) Union Border Force strikes happening over Christmas. The Guardian tweeted:

    It said on its website:

    Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has urged people to “think carefully” about their Christmas holiday plans because travel will be disrupted by the Border Force strikes.

    We would like to hear from people who have cancelled their Christmas holidays or travel plans because of the strikes this winter. How will your plans be affected?

    However, it’s not the first time the Guardian has run content like this recently. On 8 December, it published a call out for hospitality bosses to tell their stories about strikes impacting their industry – similar to another BBC article. Plus, in a typically Guardian-esque move, the piece also asked to hear from workers:

    As a wave of strikes hits the UK this winter, we would like to hear from hospitality owners and workers about how this will affect your business over the Christmas period. Have Christmas party reservations been cancelled due to strikes? Tell us your experiences using the form below.

    Like over-worked, under-paid hospitality staff should be siding with the boss-class over other, striking, workers.

    When it comes to the BBC, it will naturally use the argument of balance for why it published it’s anti-strike article. However, this shouldn’t be the case for the Guardian. It is a private publication which is supposed to be left-wing. Guardian editors surely must know better than to put out content that is divisive and playing into government agendas. It could have just not run the story. However, with the Labour Party also treading a similar anti-striking worker path – it’s predictable Guardian would follow.

    Featured image via Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Guardian – screengrab 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Letters to the Canary: lost political hope, Scottish independence, and Catalonia

    The Canary is excited to share the third edition of our members’ letters page. This is where we publish people’s responses to the news, politics, or anything else they want to get off their chest. However, this is a members-only benefit! If you’d like to subscribe monthly to the Canary – starting from just £1 – and get a letter published, then you can do that here:

    Subscribe here

    This week’s letters

    This week we’ve a short essay about a personal battle with political skepticism, discussion around rug policy, another response to a member’s letter on Scottish independence, thoughts on protest in Catalonia, and a look at just who the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP’s) legal team is. Don’t forget, as a member you can respond to any of these letters! Email us via membership(at)thecanary.co

    Hope becoming despair

    We live in a culture where rich people talk to each other, then pronounce from their well-funded platforms what ‘the country’ thinks. They patronise ordinary people – and if they’ve rehearsed their regional accents like Kevin Maguire, all the better. I remember how the media liked to present Brexit as a revolution by flat-cap racists and scum in tracksuits from the provinces standing around outside Greggs, with greasy hair and spots, clutching their sausage rolls in the drizzle.

    So, I really do appreciate what the Canary is trying to do. I would donate, and hope to in the future, but unfortunately, since I, along with most of the night team, walked out on the BP/M&S where I worked over the treatment of a new, young member of staff, Umar, by the management – I have been unemployed.

    I haven’t been reading your newsletter regularly because, for my mental health, I have been taking a Daoist approach to politics in this country. We live in a managed democracy where consent is manufactured. Politics is a theatre for the ruling class, legitimised by dupes who feel empowered by their non-speaking roles in the performance like starstruck extras.

    The period between 2015 and 2018, fading sadly in 2019, offered real hope to me of a democracy that might actually be responsive to ordinary people, where government might actually function for the public good rather than the hubris of careerists and the vested interests of the morbidly rich who pay them. That hope has become despair. Labour wasn’t defeated by Johnson’s Tories. They were transparently a clown-car show of corrupt and incompetent grotesques. Labour was defeated by its own party, powerful people influential in the party, their so-called allies in the ‘liberal’ media, etc.

    It’s amazing to me that the likes of James O’Brien and the debutante’s ball at the Guardian could ever be described as ‘progressive’ – whatever that truly means. They were all in when it came to defending their class privilege and fulfilling their function as the release valve when the pressure builds. 150,000 dead from austerity, yet now they call it ‘cost of living crisis’ like it’s something new. But it’s okay because twerps like John Harris in an anorak looking like he’s got lost on his way to a Happy Mondays concert will wander through litter strewn provincial marketplaces talking to the plebs for the amusement of Guardian readers.

    Meanwhile any chance of economic fairness or environmental responsibility gets dumped, along with the young and marginalised people, as Keir Starmer dances around a union flag-adorned May Pole, Rachel Reeves prepares public floggings of the poor and the oleaginous Wes Streeting prepares the piecemeal sell-off of our NHS. We’ll be told that housing plans will be passed on the 12th of Never while the politicians build housing portfolios, and striking workers will be arrested and prosecuted – while the media will still bemoan they’re too woke. TV stations will once again chime with the dulcet tones of the likes of Peter Mandelson, presumably beaming in his pronouncements from some discreetly tucked away Caribbean Island, that every servile Emily Maitlis or Robert Peston will feign not to notice while consuming his utterances with the relish of one that finds the taste of his ejaculate to be like manna from heaven.

    My apologies, this was spleen venting but you did ask, and I do feel slightly better. Back now to my practice of wu wei.

    Ross Patrick, via email – follow him on Twitter @rosspatrick_

    Drugs

    In parts of the Western world (at least) overdoses (OD) have been on the increase for decades. We are fast approaching a million deaths: completely avoidable and preventable deaths. I will get to that later, though I am sure Canary folk know how some of these deaths are prevented. Or could be.

    It seems 100% obvious to me that this is happening at a time of increased societal collapse, though proving direct correlation is difficult. But we do know that the vast majority of people seeking solace from drugs do so in stressful times related to economic and social deprivation, and insecurity. Societal collapse due to the climate emergency is already happening, it seems. Tipping points are upon us, but depending on who’s work you want to believe, what we are seeing is not only to do with the climate emergency.

    Increasing numbers of our fellow citizens are getting cancers, taking their own lives or killing themselves with drugs (legal or not). Others are sacrificing their liberty to wake us the f*ck up to all the above. And now the cost of living crisis. Friends of mine are injecting Naloxone [aka Prenoxad or Nyxoid, ed.] into people and saving their lives. It is an opiate overdose reversal medicine. And it works. It has saved many thousands around the world

    The Sackler family, who run the big pharma Purdue drug company, were fined huge amounts for lying about the impact of drugs to cause addiction.

    Normalising this as we continue to resist tyrannical corporatisation is a profound tragedy.

    Thank you Canary for banging the drums of social and economic justice.

    Andria Mordaunt MSc
    London, via email

    Catalonia: Spain has echoes of Tory UK?

    On 6 December, Day of the Spanish Constitution, a massive demonstration was held in Barcelona to reject the future reform of the penal code. The Spanish state has an improper crime in Europe: the crime of sedition, with which the politicians who organized, in 2017, the Catalan independence referendum were convicted.

    This crime, created in 1822, condemns with very high penalties mass demonstrations that prevent the enforcement of laws even if no violence is used. In Europe it would be considered an anti-democratic law because it can impede the right to demonstrate. That is why the justice systems in Belgium, Germany, and Italy, not observing violence in the investigated facts, rejected the delivery to Spain of the Catalan president Carles Puigdemont for sedition.

    For all this, and by request of the Council of Europe, Spain was forced to eliminate this crime, but wants to replace it with a new crime of “aggravated disorder”. This aims, according to the members of the Spanish Government, to be able to continue condemning any type of large non-violent demonstration made by the Catalan independence movement.

    Apparently the maximum penalties for this new crime would be lower than the previous one, but ultimately the same sentences could be reached for the organizers of the 2017 referendum (from nine to 13 years in prison). Moreover, in this new interpretation, a mass demonstration would be a crime if it is considered to “obstruct the public road”, to “intimidate” (a very ambiguous term), to “occupy a building or facility” without violence, or if “a crowd suitable to seriously affect public order” (very ambiguous) is summoned or attended. To make matters worse, the minimum sentence for this crime (which could involve participating in a non-violent demonstration) is increased to three years in prison.

    Also, the Spanish government have justified this new crime because it will allow them to extradite from Belgium the president Puigdemont – as if they had written this law ad hoc to lock up in prison the “number one enemy” of Spain.

    The pro-independence movement rejects this change of one crime for another, because a crime that had its days numbered is repealed, but is replaced by another crime that is designed to prevent the Catalan pro-independence project, without caring about violating fundamental rights. And all this for the simple fact that the ultra-nationalist Spain, which emerged from the Franco dictatorship, does not accept what this legitimate political movement proposes, and thinks that anything goes in order to maintain the unity of Spain. But that is not so: democracy and the right of the self-determination of peoples are superior values that must be respected.

    Anonymous, via email

    Another response to a member’s letter on Scottish independence – you can read the original here

    The abject failure of this English-elected government since the Nick Clegg-led Liberals guaranteed David Cameron would be PM by forming a coalition is not only a crime, it is malevolent.

    The attacks on UK citizens have been relentless since day one. Austerity was to end after five years, yet it’s still with us after 12-plus years. Carrying on, we have their privatisation of the NHS and all other parts of the health service. The insidious attack on the most vulnerable has not ceased since the criminal chancellor uttered the infamous ‘hard-working tax payers’, implying they were paying to keep the ‘work-shy, elderly and disabled’. This hate-filled rhetoric did the trick. The public took it hook, line, and Tory sinker. Now they are setting up plans for the subjugation of the working person’s right to strike, and taking away the rights of trade unions to represent us – just as Margaret Thatcher did.

    For 12 years plus, this incompetent, self-destructive Tory Party have forced unneeded austerity on us, have decimated the welfare state, have been in the process of destroying then privatising the entire health service, and murdered hundreds of thousands whilst making their cronies even richer than they dreamed – through corrupt health/pandemic contracts.

    YOU ENGLISH KEEP THEM IN POWER.

    P.J. McQueenie, via email

    DWP: department of wicked people

    I have been reading your articles on the DWP (Department for Work and Pensions), or as I call them ‘department of wicked people’.

    It is my experience that one of the main reasons that the DWP keep breaching benefit claimants’ rights is deliberate, due to one factor – the DWP legal team. It is my evaluation that they instruct – or fail to tell – the DWP to comply with claimants’ human rights, because it means that they will get many legal claims against the DWP, and that means they get paid – especially going to court. Though when this is done at the expenses of the public purse, then it’s pure abuse of money.

    So who are the DWP Legal Team?

    Well, first they are not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). I don’t think the SRA has any idea who they are – individuals or a firm of solicitors/barristers, hired by the DWP. So, the DWP legal team are unregulated.

    We cannot have an unregulated/unknown legal bunch running around making thousands, if not millions, of pounds off the public for just using the court system as an excuse for their wages.

    Anonymous, via email

    Want to get involved? Support the Canary here and we’ll publish your letters, too! Terms and conditions of publication apply.

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Pakistan’s stunning debutant Abrar Ahmed destroys England’s batting order

    MULTAN: In his dream test debut, Pakistan’s ‘mystery spinner Abrar Ahmed crushed the batting line of mighty England, bagging a rich haul of seven wickets on the first day of the 2nd Test match being played at Multan Cricket Stadium.

    The 24-year-old bowler took 7-114 and put Pakistan in a stronger position on Friday. The England batters initially played aggressively however, as Abrar began bowling they could not stand before him. He took the first wicket of Craweley who was playing at his individual score 19, while England’s total was 38.

    England won the toss and opted to bat first.

    Abrar’s bowling gave great help for his side on the dry wicket at Multan Cricket Stadium. Pakistani bowlers dismissed England for 281 inside the first two sessions.

    According to APP, England got rid of both Pakistan openers — Imam-ul-Haq and Abdullah Shafique — early before captain Babar Azam’s unbeaten 61 carried the home team to 107-2 at stumps when bad light stopped play with 10 overs still remaining in the day.

    Saud Shakeel, who scored a gritty half century in Pakistan’s 74-run defeat in the first test at Rawalpindi, was not out on 32.

    Of the 12 wickets that fell on the day, James Anderson was the only fast bowler to dismiss a batter when he found an edge off Pakistan opener Imam-ul-Haq, who departed without scoring.

    Abdullah Shafique scored 14 before edging spinner Jack Leach to keeper Ollie Pope, but Babar and Saud saw off the day with a third-wicket unbroken stand of 56.

    Babar brought up his 24th Test half-century off just 57 deliveries whereas Saud also looked in control during his undefeated 46-ball stay on the opening day.

    According to Pakistan Cricket Board (PBC), the Mystery spinner Abrar Ahmed became 252nd player from Pakistan to play Test cricketer as he was named in the XI announced by Pakistan captain Babar Azam at the toss for the second of the three Tests against England at the Multan Cricket Stadium.

    Abrar had received maiden call-up in the Test squad ahead of this series following an impressive run in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy 2022-23.

    The 24-year-old right-arm spinner won the best bowler of the tournament award and topped the leading wicket-taker chart with 43 scalps in seven matches at an average of 21.95.

    Pakistan XI for the second Test: Abdullah Shafique, Imam-ul-Haq, Babar Azam (c), Saud Shakeel, Mohammad Rizwan (vc & wk), Salman Ali Agha, Mohammad Nawaz, Faheem Ashraf, Zahid Mehmood, Abrar Ahmed and Mohammad Ali

    Overall, Pakistan made three changes from the side that played the first Test at the Pindi Cricket Stadium with Haris Rauf, Naseem Shah, who has a niggle in his bowling shoulder, and Azhar Ali being replaced with Abrar, Faheem Ashraf and Mohammad Nawaz.

    The post Pakistan’s stunning debutant Abrar Ahmed destroys England’s batting order first appeared on VOSA.

  • Hunt’s plans for bankers are an absolute joke – as a £100m fine shows

    At the same time chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the deregulation of the City of London, the financial watchdog fined a major UK bank over £100m for its weak rules around financial crime. This shows that the Tories cannot be trusted – and nor can bankers.

    Hunt: deregulation ahoy

    As Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported, on Friday 9 December Hunt unveiled post-Brexit plans to overhaul and preserve the UK’s financial services industry. He did this as he sought to boost a flagging economy facing recession. The chancellor outlined reforms which will, according to the Treasury:

    drive growth and secure the UK’s position as a world-leading financial services hub

    Under the plans, Hunt will release banks without major investment activities from a ringfencing regime that currently seeks to separate retail and investment banking arms. He will give UK financial regulators a “new remit” to help deliver economic growth. A widespread review will see the Tory government repeal “hundreds of pages of EU law”, the Treasury added. As the Guardian reported, Hunt’s review has also looked at:

    the so-called senior managers’ regime, which holds bosses personally and financially responsible for problems that occur on their watch

    Predictably, people on social media are unimpressed. Many are pointing out that banking deregulation has gone so well in the past:

    But Hunt’s plans have already been shown to be potentially disastrous. This is because, on the same day he announced them, the UK regulator fined a bank for its lack of safeguards around financial crime.

    Bankers: still can’t be trusted

    As AFP also reported, on 9 December the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) hit the UK arm of Spanish banking giant Santander with a fine of almost £108m. This was after the FCA uncovered “serious and persistent gaps” in anti-money laundering controls. The FCA said in a statement that between December 2012 and October 2017, Santander UK plc had:

    failed to properly oversee and manage its anti-money laundering (AML) systems. 

    The failures affected more than 560,000 business customers. Santander did not dispute the findings. As such, it qualified for a 30% discount – otherwise, the FCA would have fined it nearly £154m. Mark Steward, FCA executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said:

    Santander’s poor management of their AML systems and their inadequate attempts to address the problems created a prolonged and severe risk of money laundering and financial crime.

    As part of our commitment to prevent and reduce financial crime, we continue to take action against firms which fail to operate proper anti-money laundering controls.

    In response, Santander UK accepted the conclusions and apologised, adding that it had cooperated fully. The bank said it had also taken action to address the issues once they were identified. It added that its systems should have been stronger.

    The point being, at the same time UK banks are already being exposed for not having followed the current rules around proper behaviour, Hunt wants to relax the rules even further. The UK banking sector is an industry that you can’t trust as far as you can throw it – perfect bedfellows with the Tories, really. Little wonder, then, that Hunt wants to give the sector even more free rein to do whatever it wants.

    Featured image via GJ Marshy – Wikimedia, resized to 770×403 under licence CC BY-SA 4.0, and the Telegraph – YouTube

    Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • BBC News hits another low, pushing fake anti-RMT propaganda

    BBC News has had to change an article after people pointed out that part of it was blatantly false. The story was about people affected by the National Union of Rail, Transport and Maritime Workers’ (RMT’s) strikes. However, the problem with the BBC piece is that it still left more false claims in the article. Overall, it shows the entrenched pro-government bias of the supposed ‘public service’ broadcaster.

    BBC: a dodgy article

    On Thursday 8 December, the BBC published an article called:

    ‘Rail strikes mean I won’t see my son over Christmas’

    The original version, which didn’t have comments from anyone supportive of the strikes, said:

    Owen will no longer be able to see his son over the festive period due to the Christmas rail worker strikes.

    The 34-year-old from Doncaster was planning to travel to see his 12-year-old boy who lives with his mother in Derby on 27 December, but will not make it because of the walkouts.

    BBC News continued by saying:

    Having supported strikes earlier in the year, Owen says he’s now against them due to the festive strikes “ruining” his Christmas.

    “I have always been a staunch socialist…but it’s been a year now,” he says. “Enough is enough.”

    However, there was a problem with Owen’s story – as people on Twitter pointed out:

    The Canary has checked the bus times (unlike the BBC), and there are indeed buses from Doncaster to Derby on 27 December.

    So, the BBC tweeted it had made an error, once it had changed the article:

    The BBC also added in a story to the edited version from “Jamie”, who was more supportive of the strikes.

    Basic errors

    However, the article was still wrong – as one Twitter user pointed out, there was another inaccurate story in the updated version:

    Again, the Canary checked this, and indeed there’s a normal train service on the night of 15 December. Michael Race, who wrote the story, had originally put out a request on Twitter for people to talk to him:

    It seems that Race failed to fact check the claims of people who got in touch with him. This is contrary to the BBC‘s own guidelines on what it calls “user-generated content”. So, as one Twitter user summed up:

    absolutely incredible that you would publish a verifiably false bit of information in your story for the bbc. is your disinformation reporter going to do a piece on you?

    did you always grow up and get in to journalism wanting to be a lickspittle or did you just see the money?

    BBC: punching down as always

    Where to begin with all this?

    The basic level of fact checking by the BBC is dire. Then, there’s the issue that Race’s article originally only had comment from people who didn’t support the strikes – zero balance from a public service broadcaster. Plus, there’s the fact that the article got past editors in the first place – showing that when it comes to accuracy around workers, the BBC is unconcerned.

    However, the larger problem here is that this is typical BBC establishment punching down – pitting citizen against citizen while absolving those in power of responsibility. This is despite BBC chairman Richard Sharp’s claims of a “liberal bias” at the organisation. Funny he’d say that – given that he’s donated over £400,000 to the Tories. So, it seems the BBC agenda of bias towards the government and the powerful continues – even when it is blatantly biased journalism, not fit for GCSE Media Studies.

    Featured image via Sky News – YouTube and BBC News – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Complaints about social housing are through the roof

    Complaints to a government watchdog over the state of social housing properties have increased since 2020. New data shows some housing associations are performing far worse than others. Meanwhile, people are dying, and the government is failing to act.

    Awaab Ishak

    The death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak on the watch of Rochdale Boroughwide Homes’ (RBH’s) has thrust social housing back into the spotlight. Awaab died on 21 December 2020, after living in a flat infested with mould and damp. As the Canary‘s Steve Topple previously wrote:

    The coroner ruled that Awaab died due to mould exposure that RBH failed to deal with. The housing association repeatedly ignored Awaab’s family’s desperate pleas for help. Since the coroner’s verdict, RBH has sacked its boss after he refused to resign.

    The bottom line is this housing association committed what some people are saying is corporate manslaughter against him.

    Awaab and his family’s situation was fuelled by RBH’s racism and classism. The problems with social and private rental housing are entrenched across the UK. As the Canary previously reported:

    • 3.5 million currently occupied homes did not meet the Decent Homes Standard in 2020.
    • 2.2 million had at least one category one hazard – such as black mould.
    • 941,000 had serious damp.

    Now, a legal firm has gained access to figures which show the extent of social tenant complaints against some housing associations.

    Social housing complaints up

    The Housing Ombudsman is the government’s social housing watchdog. It is the body tenants can go to to complain about housing associations. Now, data obtained by civil litigation experts CEL Solicitors via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has revealed the scale of the problems in social housing. CEL has uncovered just how many complaints tenants made to the ombudsman between January 2020 and June 2022.

    CEL said in a press release that:

    London & Quadrant (L&Q) Housing Trust was the subject of 1,348 objections to the Housing Ombudsman Service between the start of 2020 and the end of June 2022. That puts the private company well ahead of its nearest rival Clarion Housing Group Limited, which racked up 885 complaint cases during the same period.

    The solicitors said the data:

    shows that complaints are set to more than double over the past three years – from 2,891 in 2020 to a projected figure of around 7,800 by the end of this year. But despite almost 13,000 being registered during that time, many of these private bodies are ignoring the plight of vulnerable people and leaving them to live with dangerous mould and serious structural issues.

    A table of the number of complaints to the Housing Ombudsman over social housing providers

    “Horrendous”

    Jessica Hampson, owner and director of CEL Solicitors, which specialises in housing disrepair litigation, said:

    These figures are truly shocking and highlight the horrendous situation millions of people in the UK – one of the richest countries in the world – are being forced to live in.

    They are also a rare glimpse into the state of property managed by housing associations, who are not compelled to share such information by law because they are private companies and not public bodies.

    Hampson continued:

    No-one should be forced to live in a house or flat that is infested by mould which can have serious health impacts, as we have seen in the heartbreaking case of Awaab Ishak.

    But we are seeing more and more families reaching out for legal assistance as they feel it’s the only way they can get something done about these devastating scenarios.

    Even then, housing associations as well as local authorities are often ignoring court orders to carry out repairs – we’ve seen cases where up to six breach orders have been needed to spark any action.

    All this comes as the government has failed to meet new house building targets. Parliament’s public accounts committee reported that the government pledged housing providers would build 180,000 new “affordable” homes by 2029. However, the committee says it will miss that target by around 32,000 homes. Crucially, of these, the committee says the government:

    has a target for just 33,550 homes for social rent.

    That is, social housing. This is despite over one million households waiting for social homes and the number of these type of properties constantly falling. Little wonder, then, that with no new properties being built, and with housing associations not maintaining the homes they do have, complaints to the ombudsman are up.

    “The tip of the iceberg”

    Hampson said:

    The worrying thing is these new figures are very much the tip of the iceberg.

    Many vulnerable people living in appalling and dangerous housing conditions either don’t know who to complain to if the housing association is not listening to them, or simply don’t have the means to lodge an objection.

    We see reports about the high salaries bosses at some of these organisations are being paid. It is therefore shocking to discover how the people relying on them for safe and habitable homes are being so very badly let down.

    The Government needs to act on this growing crisis before any more tragedies occur.

    However, the government clearly isn’t going to act. On 7 December it revealed it had watered down targets for local councils to build homes. Meanwhile, social housing is literally killing people like Awaab. Something needs to change, and quickly – however, it is unlikely to, any time soon. Social housing is, to many people, someone else’s problem or a system to be proud of. But for those of us living in it, it is invariably a grim and terrifying nightmare – one which should be a national scandal, but sadly won’t be.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

  • Ghoul Penny Mordaunt renames foodbanks thinking it’ll fool people

    Tory MP, failed leadership candidate, and current leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt has caused uproar on social media. She tweeted a video of herself promoting a new initiative in her constituency city of Portsmouth: Mordaunt is opening a handful of foodbanks. However, the MP has decided to call them something else, in a bid to make her move slightly less awful than it actually is.

    Mordaunt’s food ‘pantries’, not ‘foodbanks’

    As the News reported, Mordaunt is paying for three food “pantries” (not ‘foodbanks’ – ‘pantries’) to open in Portsmouth. She’s funding it from the royalties of a book she wrote. The News said that these pantries are where:

    people facing financial difficulties can buy heavily-discounted groceries.

    Yes, we know. That’s a foodbank – right? Well, not if you’re Mordaunt. The News continued, implying that unlike foodbanks:

    No referral is needed to access them.

    Never mind the fact that people don’t need a referral from places like Citizens Advice to access many independent foodbanks, anyway. So, what is the difference between Mordaunt’s pantries and a foodbank? The News revealed that:

    a typical weekly shop bought through them would cost as little as £4.

    Right – so you have to pay for the food. Now it’s making sense. Essentially, Mordaunt admits people are too poor to afford food, so has set up a load of discount shops under the guise of helping her community – which are foodbanks in all but name (and the fact people have to pay). Her party’s governments have caused poverty to skyrocket. Yet Mordaunt is so proud of her pantries that she filmed a video telling us all about them.

    “They’re NOT foodbanks”

    Mordaunt said that:

    Food pantries are a great scheme that can help families reduce their food bills by about £800 a year. They’re not foodbanks where you need to be referred in. They’re open to everyone, and for a few pounds a week you can get a decent shop.

    Naturally, people on Twitter weren’t having Mordaunt’s nonsense. TV host professor Alice Roberts noted the foodbank overtones of Mordaunt’s pantries, while also highlighting her cynicism:

    Someone else pointed out the gaslighting:

    And as writer Will Black implied, rebranding foodbanks is pretty ghoulish:

    Ghoul

    As Tribune Magazine wrote:

    In 2010, 60,000 food bank packages were handed out in Britain. Last year, it was 2.5 million. This is the result of political choices – and the cost of living crisis will see millions more fall into food poverty.

    The Tories have been in power all that time. So, Mordaunt would never admit that foodbanks were a scourge of successive governments – that would implicate her in the horror. Instead, this ghoul chooses to gaslight everyone who has to use them – by rebranding them and making our she has a charitable nature in the process. Mordaunt is supposed to be the palatable face of the Tories – yet here she is, running around trying to appeal to the ‘squeezed middle’ with this ‘food pantry’ dross. Beyond rancid.

    Featured image via Sky News – YouTube and Guardian News – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The DWP was back in court again. How many more legal challenges must people bring?

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was once again back in court on Wednesday 7 December. Chronically ill and disabled claimants brought an appeal involving the department’s failures during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. However, the bigger point here is that the DWP is back in court again – after years of countless legal challenges to it and its policies.

    DWP: back in court over the pandemic

    The Canary previously reported on this legal challenge to the DWP:

    During the pandemic, the DWP increased Universal Credit by £20-a-week. But it did not do the same for people on so-called legacy benefits. This included social security like Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

    We noted that:

    Several claimants brought a court case against the department over the issue. Represented by solicitors including Osbornes Law, the claimants argued that the DWP paying extra money to some people and not others was discriminatory – specifically against disabled people.

    In November 2021, a court looked at the claimants’ case – and dismissed it in favour of the DWP.

    However, the claimants weren’t having it – and brought an appeal to the Court of Appeal on 7 December.

    A court vigil

    If successful, the case could be worth up to £1,500 to every legacy benefit claimant. The court livestreamed the appeal, which you can watch by clicking through to YouTube here.

    Before the appeal, chronically ill, disabled, and non-working people, and their allies held a vigil outside the court:

    The activist known as Ben Claimant was there:

    He told the Big Issue:

    Since 2010 we have lost out through austerity, benefit freezes, increased conditionality and benefit sanctions. We’ve had our public services taken away and we’ve been demonised by politicians through the media. Not getting the £20 added insult to all those injuries. If we win this appeal then it will mean so much to millions of people. It would be a huge result for us.

    One of the claimants who brought the case against the DWP sent out an update out on social media:

    However, this appeal is not the first of its kind for the department.

    Second-class citizens

    Claimants have been forced to take the DWP to court numerous times in recent years. Invariably, these cases have seen people fighting for their basic rights. Paula Peters is an activist with campaign group Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC). She has been to many DWP court cases over the years, and was at 7 December’s appeal:

    She told the Canary:

    I stood there feeling incredibly angry, exhausted, burnt out, that from 12 years of fighting the government and DWP to save our most basic human rights. There we were again to seek justice what we are rightfully entitled to, knowing deep inside we would be back there again at some point fighting once more. It’s deliberate by the DWP, to inflict the maximum distress, suffering and hardship and discriminate against us all.

    But despite the exhaustion, I had a renewed determination, that no matter what comes next, as disabled activists, we will continue to resist this pernicious government and fight back with everything we’ve got. That feeling was renewed amongst everyone at the vigil: that we will continue the fight for social justice, our human rights and continue to get the truth out there on the horrendous impact of austerity, the pandemic and the cost of living that’s claimed countless disabled peoples lives.

    The Canary has witnessed first hand in recent years chronically ill and disabled people, and non-working social security claimants, having to fight the DWP – the government department charged with allegedly supporting their welfare. It’s perverse that they have to battle the department for their fundamental rights in the first place. However, this is indicative of a system where their treatment as second-class citizens is entrenched – and 7 December’s appeal, simply by the fact it was needed in the first place, shows little will change any time soon.

    Featured image via Paula Peters

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Corporate media peddles ‘vile propaganda’ over NHS strikes

    As trade unions announce that ambulance workers will strike on Wednesday 21 December, the corporate media has predictably gone on the attack. However, as one NHS frontline worker told the Canary, it is the Tory government which is actually to blame for the fact workers have no choice but to strike in the first place.

    Ambulance strike

    Three trade unions are taking coordinated action across most ambulance services in England and Wales on 21 December. Unison, Unite, and the GMB Union members will walk out over pay and conditions in 10 regional service areas. As BBC News reported:

    The walkouts will involve paramedics as well as control room staff and support workers, with the military on standby to help out.

    Unison general secretary Christina McAnea was on Sky News on Tuesday 6 December. As she said of her members:

    none of them want to be out on strike.

    Sadly, NHS workers have little choice. As the Canary previously reported:

    Successive Tory governments have decimated NHS staff wages. In 2010, the coalition government froze public sector pay for two years, then imposed a 1% fixed increase. This year, the Tories have capped NHS pay rises at 4% for most staff.

    For paramedics specifically, this has meant the Tories have cut their wages by around £5,600 in real terms since 2010. This hasn’t stopped the press piling on workers, though.

    Right-wing press: rabid

    As the Twitter account Socialist Action shared, the right-wing corporate media has been out in force trashing striking ambulance workers:

    For example, the rabid Express went with the headline:

    Fears ambulance strikes could put lives at risk as urgent talks with unions due tomorrow

    It noted that:

    People with emergencies that are not life-threatening who are made to wait more than six hours for an ambulance during strikes could be put at risk of dying, Steve Barclay [the health secretary] has suggested.

    Barclay said this without irony, in spite of the fact that countless people have died this year due to ambulance waiting times of up to 17 hours – which, in turn, are due to his party’s decimation of the NHS.

    A nurse speaks

    Holly Turner, a nurse from campaign group NHS Workers Say No, has some strong views on the right-wing anti-worker propaganda. She told the Canary:

    NHS staff have been subjected to continued attacks on their pay and safety at work for over a decade. They simply refuse to stand with their hands being their back whilst our health service is ripped apart, with patients dying in the process. What are we expected to do? Keep agreeing to get materially poorer year on year and watch the service disintegrate? What other options are open to us, when we don’t even have direct bargaining with the employers or the government? If the government wanted to try to avoid strikes they’d return to direct negotiations, which they are resolutely refusing to do.

    Government and right wing attacks on us are well underway, but we will not be deterred as we cannot leave the most vulnerable to suffer whilst hardworking staff are driven into poverty.

    The corporate media’s vilification of people it was encouraging us to clap for just over two years ago is highly predictable – but it also barely holds up to scrutiny.

    Featured image via the Express – screengrab and Roo Pitt – Flickr, resized under licence CC BY 2.0

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Another day, another Black kid brutalised by racist London police

    The institutionally racist Met Police are once again under fire for their treatment of two Black children. The British Transport Police (BTP) are also in the frame. However, the incident in question further shows the racist policing of Black people. The police only got involved because one of the boys forgot his free travel pass, and the cops escalated the situation rapidly.

    More police racism

    Photographer Polly Todd shared news of an incident in Bromley, London, on social media. In short, police arrested a Black child on 5 December:

    Both of the people who witnessed the police attack shared details on Twitter. Anu Obaro said in a thread:

    Obaro continued:

    FOUR ticket inspectors putting their hands on the neck and body of a child… And he was the one who had his pass. Imagine.

    His younger brother is in handcuffs at the back. Turns out he forgot his pass in his coat at his grandma’s house.

    He was traumatised and shouting for his brother, who by this point has been arrested and presumably is in one of the FOUR vehicles the police brought to the scene.

    Younger bro was eventually uncuffed and told ‘off you go and get your free pass then’.

    He rushes out of the station to school. @StephaneATweets (new friend made in a crisis) and I run after him. I speak to him and he crumbles, crying uncontrollably. We hug and I literally pick him up from the ground.

    He’s. A. Kid.

    We get him to his (private – not that it matters) school. Turns out his brother had his mock GCSEs that morning. Obvs now missed. The school were amazing – they gather round to support him, call parents etc

    In photos, you can see station staff pinning the older boy to a wall by his neck:

    Lame excuses

    BTP said on Twitter:

    Yesterday (5 Dec) our officers were at Shortlands station assisting revenue staff as they checked the tickets of two boys. One of the boys failed to present a valid ticket and provided false details.

    During the incident a member of revenue staff was pushed, and a 15-year-old male was arrested on suspicion of common assault and possessing an offensive weapon.

    As one Twitter user said, this is “copaganda” from the BTS – given there is evidence of four white adult males restraining a child, one by putting their hand on his neck. And, most people on Twitter were not having the BTP’s response either. For example, BAME Lawyers for Justice said:

    Common assault is a Mickey Mouse catch all charge and as for suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon? Sounds like a stereotypical accusation. The boy either had one or he didn’t. Has he been charged or not?

    Institutional

    Obaro summed the situation up:

    The tendency to escalate to excessive force and the ease with which our black sons are criminalised is well established but even knowing the stats, seeing it at 9am on a Monday at your local station is mind blowing. The disproportionate use of force was staggering.

    There’s a presumption of guilt from authorities re black boys and men… which results in disproportionate contact with the criminal justice system. Only ends badly for us… of course.

    It would seem obvious that you don’t de-escalate a situation by using more force. If you were surrounded by 4 men using their hands and feet to incapacitate you (WHEN YOU HAVE A TICKET) wouldn’t you be fearful?

    It’s easy to walk by & assume the boys were guilty ‘of something’, like many did. Why is that? Because you’ve been conditioned to believe that black kids are always ‘up to no good’? Oh & if they’re tall they’re men not boys? Sigh, adultification of black children.

    As the Canary previously wrote, adultification is:

    where they [Black children] are perceived as older than their years and less likely to be vulnerable by teachers and other adults, preventing them from receiving the care and protection they should have as children.

    Obaro continued:

    My heart hurts like they were my sons, because they easily could be.

    How can it be so easy to brutalise us? Seeing how shattered, afraid and humiliated they were in that moment and after – and the authorities don’t care about the damage.

    She concluded that she was:

    grateful that @StephaneATweets (who I just met that day), got video and we have photos to add balance to the narrative. As traumatic as it all was *especially* for them both, we need them to know that there’s someone on their side.

    We’ll advocate for them when adults in authority chose violence instead of the patience and understanding which seems easier to extend to everyone else but black people.

    And Obaro told the Met, BTP, and South Eastern Railways – whose station staff attacked the Black child – that:

    you have to do better. The excessive force used on these two children was not only unwarranted but an absolute abuse of power. What measures will you put in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again?

    Institutional racism: just what the system wants

    The incident comes just months after the police killing of Chris Kaba. As the Canary‘s Sophia Purdy-Moore previously wrote:

    On 14 September, new Met Police commissioner Mark Rowley inherited a force that is in special measures. This is due to a series of scandals including the rape and murder of Sarah Everard, gross misconduct following the murder of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, and the strip searches of 15-year-old Child Q and hundreds of other children.

    We saw excessive and disproportionate policing throughout the pandemic, and now face further repression through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. We can’t sit back and let this continue. Now is the time to withdraw consent from violent and discriminatory policing, and to organise for a safe and just future.

    The incident in Bromley is another in a long line of institutionally racist policing and anti-Blackness – reflecting British society more broadly. Of course, that’s exactly how the colonial power structures that govern the corporate capitalist system we live under want it to be.

    Featured image via Polly Todd – screengrab

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Tories are about to decide whether to open a new coal mine or not

    The government is set to say if it’s granting planning permission for a new coal mine. It has repeatedly delayed making the decision. However, Michael Gove is supposed to announce the outcome by Thursday 8 December. Already, campaign groups are preparing for the government to approve it.

    Whitehaven: arguments for and against

    As the PR firm Edie wrote:

    The Government was due to make a planning decision in July 2022 on West Cumbria Mining’s proposals for a new deep coal mine in Whitehaven. Cumbria County Council approved the plans in October 2020 and, for several months, the Government resisted calls to intervene with that decision. But, ultimately, a public inquiry was ordered in March 2021 with the mine’s compatibility with national and international climate targets being the key sticking point.

    The inquiry officially closed late last year and the Government had originally promised to make a final planning decision on or before 7 July.

    That date was then pushed back again and was expected to be made… just days prior to COP27 in Egypt.

    However, Friends of the Earth received a letter from the government confirming [another] delay. The environmental charity claim that a decision is now due “on or before 8 December 2022”.

    Politicians in favour of the Whitehaven mine argue it would create jobs. Some, like local Tory mayor Mike Starkie, go further. He says it fits with the government’s levelling up agenda, that it would be “the most environmentally efficient mine in the world”, and that the mine would support the UK steel industry. However, others disagree. For example, Tory MP and former COP26 president Alok Sharma says that West Cumbria Mining would export most of the coal the Whitehaven mine would produce. He also claims parts of the UK steel industry have already said the coal the mine would produce is no good for them. Of course, the larger question here is whether the UK should even be considering opening another coal mine in the first place because of the climate crisis, and coal’s highly impactful effect on global warming as well as the environment.

    A “serious mistake”

    As the Canary previously reported, the chair of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) – lord Deben – said the mine would give a “negative impression of the UK’s climate priorities”. He noted that Whitehaven:

    will increase global emissions and have an appreciable impact on the UK’s legally binding carbon budgets. The mine is projected to increase UK emissions by 0.4Mt (megatonnes) of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) per year. This is greater than the level of annual emissions we have projected from all open UK coal mines to 2050.

    Meanwhile, former National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientist James Hansen said the Whitehaven mine would be:

    in contemptuous disregard of the future of young people and nature.

    However, there are more reasons than that to object to the project. For example, as campaign group Coal Action Network exposed, the company financing West Cumbria Mining’s Whitehaven mine project is EMR Capital Investment (No3b) Pte Ltd. The company seems to be a tax-avoider, having registered one of its offices in the Cayman Islands. Moreover, Coal Action Network claims that EMR Capital only invests in projects for a few years, then sells them on.

    So, it seems there are no good reasons for the government to approve the Whitehaven mine. That’s why Coal Action Network want people to get involved.

    Keep Whitehaven coal in the ground

    The group told the Canary that it wants people to act when Gove announces the decision. It said:

    Make a sign with your reaction to the news – that might be “dismayed” or “the fight’s not over” (because it’s not!) etc.

    Take a selfie with your sign or get friends/ family/ colleagues in the photo with you.

    Tweet the photo and a caption. This could be “I reject @luhc approval of the Whitehaven coal mine – we need to #StopCoal now. @CoalActionUK”. Tag your contacts into the photo.

    It seems ridiculous that after leading COP26 and banning fracking, the government would even consider signing off on the Whitehaven mine. However, anything is possible with the Tories. So, the decision on Whitehaven will be a telling insight into their actual commitment to stopping the climate catastrophe.

    Featured image via TripodStories-AB – Wikimedia, resized to 770×403 under licence CC BY-SA 4.0

    By Steve Topple

  • Gordon Brown already showed he lied to the public with the ‘Vow’

    Like a bad smell, Gordon Brown is back again, desperately trying to keep Scotland in the stinking United Kingdom. The problem is, not everyone has short memories – and a video montage of the former PM’s comments surrounding independence and federalism gives reason enough for people not to trust Labour or Brown ever again.

    The Vow: nonsense in 2014, nonsense now

    As reader L. McGregor wrote in the Herald‘s letters page, the “Vow” was a last-minute pledge by unionists during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. It was an attempt to sway the vote towards remaining part of the UK. McGregor noted:

    All three unionist party leaders in 2014 swore to implement the Vow, devised by Gordon Brown, promising the nearest thing to Home Rule, guaranteed membership of the EU, 13 frigates starting to be built on the Clyde within a year, Holyrood’s status made legally inviolate in perpetuity, the Sewell Convention made law and more.

    Of course, a lot of this never actually happened. McGregor said:

    What did we get? On September 19, 2014, English Votes for English Laws, and since then Holyrood has been overruled several times, even taken to court to overturn the signing of a UN charter, we are out of the EU, the power to dissolve Holyrood still rests with Westminster, and Sewell is only a custom “normally” observed.

    Now, with the SNP sticking to its guns over the next general election being a de facto independence vote, unionists have rolled out the ‘Broon‘ – as he’s known – once more to try to con the Scottish public again.

    Rolling out the Broon

    Broon has delivered what some people are calling the ‘Vow 2’:

    Like some two-bit, zero-budget B-movie sequel, Broon and the Labour unionists have once again been bandying around things like “extra powers” for Scotland, as part of the party’s plans for constitutional reform. As the Herald reported, Labour’s offering for Scotland includes:

    scrapping the House of Lords, and replacing it with an Assembly Of The Regions And Nations, with an “enhanced Scottish representation” and a “constitutional role to protect the devolution settlement.” It also calls for “devolution within Scotland” with new directly elected mayors or provosts for Scotland’s major cities.

    Aren’t Scottish people lucky? Except they’re unlikely to fall for it again. This is not least because Broon had previously let slip that he seemed to realise the last Vow was actually a con.

    The art of deception

    Filmmakers Phantom Power put together a clip of all the times Broon claimed that the Vow was a kind-of federalism – and then the times when he said federalism wouldn’t work. A Sky News presenter previously challenged him over the fact that Broon previously said:

    ‘we’re going to be, within a year or two, as close to a federalist state as you can be’

    The host said people felt like Broon and the unionists “deceived” them. In response, the former PM admitted:

    look at the small print.

    As people on Twitter were pointing out, on this basis why would Scotland trust Broon and Labour unionists again?

    So, with the “yes” to Scottish independence vote currently leading in the polls, and Broon proven to be at best deceptive, many people are unlikely to fall for ‘Liebour’ and its flaccid attempts at devolution again. Scottish people seem to want independence or bust – and at this rate, with Broon at the helm of the yoon campaign, it may well be independence eventually.

    Featured image via Sky News – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Talented writers: here’s why you should join the Canary’s Amplify scheme

    Have you always wanted to be a journalist? Have you faced multiple barriers that are common in much of the corporate media? Then you’ll be excited to learn that there is a scheme that aims to address the barriers marginalised journalists face in the workplace.

    The Canary’s Amplify scheme was set up partly to bridge disability, ethnicity, and class journalism employment gaps. Its founder Steve Topple recognised a dire need for underrepresented, talented writers to be noticed. This wonderful scheme was created to assist all marginalised people.

    Amplify runs over a ten-week period, though this is not a hard and fast rule. There is a structured approach to delivering the weekly meetings and sector-based workshops. However, the needs of each individual participant are very much at the heart of the scheme. Weekly wellbeing check-ins play a big part in the nurturing of these underrepresented, yet no less talented, writers.

    A poem that speaks to the spirit of Amplify

    Amplify

    Creating and inspiring a talented crew

    Seeing and supporting the best in you.

    Motivating and drawing on our passion

    Moulding us in a diverse fashion.

    Watching us grow our writing skill,

    A gap in journalism we’ll willingly fill.

    Amplify grows us day by day

    Helping us on in the best of ways.

    Oh how proud and happy are we

    That our work is there for all to see.

    Canary your amazing scheme

    Allowed me to fulfill my dream.

    There is no more that I can say

    To pitch this in any other way,

    To our community I will beckon –

    Could this be you? What do you reckon?

    By Karen Burns

    Amplify really is a community

    Gav Pauze, a current Amplify scheme member, sums up just what Amplify gave to him:

    Above all… Amplify has given me community and that feels really powerful

    The big bonus of Amplify is the community it’s building up. It’s one in which all members can continue to support each other for as long as they want, providing them with an invaluable network that just doesn’t exist in many corporate environments.

    The Canary, of course, pays these talented writers for the articles that are published. My fellow participants are all amazing, friendly, highly talented and very supportive individuals. They are producing a diverse range of articles that are impactful and insightful – truly showing their real passion.

    Amplify allows its writers free rein over the topic they choose to write about, and it gives ample support and mentorship during the whole process. It teaches future journalists the art of pitching, media law, and the Canary’s style guide, and many other useful tips for planning and writing for an independent media outlet.

    Opening doors

    Journalism has predominantly been a very exclusive profession. We at the Canary are looking to change this. The Canary’s aim is to create a more inclusive journalism environment, which can only mean a more diverse range of topics will find their way into the media. Amplify provides content that represents and is written by marginalised people themselves.

    Amplify is truly an inspirational scheme. It means so much to those who are part of it. As Hannah Green, another Amplify member, said:

    I’ve spent my whole life feeling like I don’t fit anywhere – until Amplify

    Gav also summed up how much it has meant to him:

    I joined the Amplify program to help me step out of my comfort zone and build my confidence as an article writer, and it has done exactly that for me. Not only has it done that, but I have also met a lot of great people too

    Amplify is currently on its second round; therefore, we will soon be opening up for third-round applications for the 2023 intake.

    We really hope that anyone who may find themselves intrigued will take the plunge to join us on our exciting journey.

    Featured image via Hannah Sharland 

    By Karen Burns

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Keir Starmer backing potential human rights violations? All in a day’s work.

    Keir Starmer’s descent into Tory-lite politics has officially ended – the Labour leader has now gone full-on right-wing over refugees.

    Starmer: tag ’em

    As the Independent reported, the government is rolling out an expanded programme of electronically tagging refugees and asylum seekers – much like the state does to some people it formerly incarcerated. Asked on Sky News on Monday 5 December whether he supported the policy, Starmer said:

    I think there’s a case for tagging in particular cases.

    The Labour leader then droned on with the usual soundbites about busting criminal gangs and processing people’s claims quicker. However, none of this distracted from his support for tagging refugees. Little wonder he supports it, really, as the Independent noted:

    The policy of using electronic tags to track asylum seekers was first introduced in the UK by the last Labour government, whose 2004 Asylum and Immigration Bill included provisions to allow the tags to be used on people released from immigration detention.

    So the Tories are now simply expanding on a Labour policy. Plus, Starmer has form on racist rhetoric of late.

    A history of racism

    As the Canary previously reported, Starmer said in a speech on 22 November that:

    our common goal must be to help the British economy off its immigration dependency. To start investing more in training up workers who are already here.

    Starmer may as well have said ‘those bloody foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs’, because his inference was fairly clear. That, of course, came after he had previously said similar – but specifically about NHS workers.

    When Nigel Farage is praising you, that really should be a red flag. People on social media noted it as such. Scottish National Party (SNP) MP Anum Qaisar slammed the Labour leader:

    Someone else also reminded us that Starmer allegedly used to be a human rights lawyer:

    And as another Twitter user pointed out, maybe it’s not refugees the government should be tagging:

    Fomenting prejudice

    Meanwhile, advocacy director at the Joint Committee for the Welfare of Immigrants Zehrah Hasan told the Independent:

    Like all of us, people seeking safety here deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. As a former human rights lawyer Keir Starmer should recognise this, so it’s disappointing to see him backing the cruel and draconian use of tagging for people seeking refuge. We know that these tags violate people’s basic right to privacy and have devastating effects on people’s mental health. There is also no evidence base for these intrusive measures as almost no one vanishes from the asylum system.

    Are Starmer’s words disappointing? If you were being polite and generous, then yes. However, his rhetoric is not surprising. The Labour leader has trashed the party, and he now assists the Tories in further fomenting already entrenched racism and prejudice in the UK. He, and his supporters, should be ashamed.

    Featured image via Sky News – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

  • Sky News exposed what the public really thinks about RMT strikes

    The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) has just announced more rail strikes. Naturally, some of the mainstream media are pushing back against the strikes. However, a Sky News reporter managed to sum up the feelings of much of the public – as he dropped a nationalisation bomb live on TV.

    RMT: more strikes coming

    As the Guardian reported, the RMT has said its members will be striking:

    from 6pm on Christmas Eve until 7am on 27 December, curtailing some of the last passenger trains before Christmas and potentially disrupting a wide programme of engineering works on the railway. Most trains do not run on 25 or 26 December.

    This is on top of strikes which are happening on 13-14 and 16-17 December. The RMT announced the extra strikes after it rejected a pay offer by Network Rail that was well below the rate of inflation. So, cue the media to try and pit the public against workers – or rather, to divide and conquer us. For example, the Telegraph ran with the headline:

    Rail unions refuse to save Christmas from ‘catastrophe’ after rejecting 8pc pay rise

    The Evening Standard called the RMT “militant”, saying:

    Minister slams union after RMT boss Mick Lynch announces new Christmas walkouts

    It was a similar story on Twitter. The RMT corrected rogue Telegraph hack Allison Pearson:

    Public support for nationalisation and strikes

    However, over on Sky News, reporter Dan Whitehead told a different story. He noted that commuters:

    are not happy. Lots of them talking to me this morning, disgruntled about the strikes going on, calling for nationalisation, saying this simply can’t go on.

    It would be easy to forget amid the right-wing headlines that the public has consistently supported the nationalisation of railways. In fact, since the RMT’s industrial action, support for bringing railways back into public ownership has increased, according to YouGov:

    Polling on support for rail nationalisation

    However, it is a slightly different story when it comes to public support for striking RMT workers. In October, YouGov polling said that people were “more supportive than opposed” to rail strikes:

    But by November, this had changed –  with 47% against, and 41% supporting them. So it seems that the media narratives around striking and Christmas may have swayed some people’s opinions.

    It’s worth remembering that the current wave of strikes – from the RMT to the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and NHS workers – is not just about those workers. It’s about everyone who’s underpaid and undervalued having the will to rise up against their corporate capitalist bosses. The unions leading the way at present should be an example to all of us – whatever industry we work in, or even if we are non-workers.

    Featured image via Sky News – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Now Australia’s locking up climate crisis protesters too

    It seems it’s not just the UK state which is drifting further to the authoritarian right – authorities in Australia has just jailed a climate crisis protester for 15 months for blocking a road.

    The UK: clamping down on protest

    In the UK, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act recently came into force. As the Canary‘s Eliza Egret previously wrote:

    the act will affect our right to protest. But until we’re on the streets, we won’t know exactly what we’ll be arrested for. This is because the act is – in many sections – ambiguous, and will give police forces the freedom to interpret the law as they see fit. For example, the police will be able to impose conditions – such as when and where the protest can take place – if the noise of a protest will cause ‘serious disruption’.

    Prior to the PCSC Act becoming law, the police have been partly doing this anyway. For example, police have made around 2,000 arrests of Just Stop Oil activists so far this year – many for blocking roads. This came as courts granted government agencies and transport bodies legal injunctions to restrict Just Stop Oil protests even more. Of course, this isn’t new to 2022 – with courts sending around 18 environmental activists to jail in 2021. All this has been under successive Conservative Party governments – and with the support of the opposition Labour Party.

    Now, if you live in Australia, this may well ring some bells. This is because the government of an Australian state has just done similar to the UK.

    Australia: jailing climate activists

    As World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) reported, a New South Wales judge jailed Deanna ‘Violet’ Coco for 15 months, to serve a minimum of eight. Her crime was blocking a road during a climate crisis protest. As WSWS wrote, a judge jailed Coco because in April, in Sydney:

    she parked a truck on [a] bridge and stood holding a lit flare, intended as a distress signal. This protest blocked one of the bridge’s five city-bound lanes during the morning peak for about 28 minutes, before police removed her and others.

    WSWS also noted that the judge:

    accused Coco of engaging in “childish stunts” that had let an “entire city suffer,” even though only one bridge lane was blocked. Moreover, the protest was clearly motivated by genuine and serious concerns over the dangerous warming of the planet’s atmosphere. For this, the magistrate told Coco she was “not a political prisoner,” but “a criminal.”

    Coco was the first person to be sentenced under new laws in New South Wales. The state’s Liberal Party premier backed the judge’s decision to lock up the climate activist:

    WSWS reported that the Labor Party also supported Coco’s incarceration. However, human rights groups and the UN have condemned the judge’s decision:

    The West: losing its shit

    Much like the UK, anti-protest laws have been brewing in Australia for several years, across several states. But a judge jailing Coco marks a concerning uptick in this authoritarian crackdown. This is symptomatic of the agenda across the corporate Western world – where Germany has been arresting protesters, Holland has been jailing them, and Amnesty has accused France of unlawfully using the law against them.

    Clearly, the UK state cracking down on our freedom to protest is not unusual under our capitalist system. However, it appears that authorities are upping the ante when it comes to trying to shut ordinary people up over their concerns about the state of the world.

    Featured image via Sky News Australia – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Muslim women call for male allies to step up in UK mosques

    Muslim men are not doing enough to accommodate Muslim women in prayer spaces. Mosques usually have segregated worship places. Sometimes women will pray behind men in the same space. More often, mosques will have two separate rooms, with the men in the main prayer hall and the women in an alternative space. Based on this setup, mosques are gendered spaces, and women’s use is conditional upon the availability of space. And in some cases, mosques make no room for women at all.

    As per the latest statistics (compiled in 2017), there are approximately 1,795 mosques across the UK. Of these, 28% do not offer space for women. In most cases, when mosques do offer space, women are met with restricted access and substandard conditions. For decades, the onus has been on women to effect change – but there’s only so much they can do. It’s time for men to step up.

    The excuse

    By and large, Muslim women have been presented with the impression that it’s better for them to pray at home. While this view isn’t universal, it certainly has an impact on how women feel about attending their local mosque. The belief comes from a hadith – a record of traditions by the prophet Muhammad (PBUH) – describing a preference for women to worship at home. Yet, many Muslim women feel that has been used as an excuse to justify the current status quo.

    Tebussum Rashid, deputy CEO at Action for Race Equality, notes that she herself has fallen into this mindset:

    There’s a lovely little mosque near where I work in King’s Cross and there’s absolutely no space for women. I think to myself, the building has probably been established as a mosque many years ago for men and now, there’s probably not enough space to expand for men, never mind, women. I know that’s not an excuse, but in my head, I justified it that way – just to keep myself calm. 

    Likewise, Nafisah Atcha, organic content executive at Embryo Digital, suggests how this view has become the default way of thinking:

    I think that perception hinders women’s access to mosques. We forget that Allah has allowed women to pray from home because we have other duties. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we should be disregarded from the mosque community altogether.

    Other hadiths believe women should not be prevented from the mosque. Gender equality campaigner Julie Siddiqui says:

    It’s incredible how ingrained this idea has become – that it’s better for women to pray at home. That is a mindset. That is a whole way of thinking that is telling people that somehow women’s prayer is less important.

    During lockdown, it became overly apparent that Muslim men’s worship needs were being prioritised. A number of UK mosques were closed to women for coronavirus (Covid-19) health and safety reasons. Aasifa Usmani, programme manager for the Faith and Communities Team at Standing Together, notes how the pandemic left no option for women:

    Women’s spaces in mosques closed down to allow a wider space for men. It just shows that consulting us is not really considered important.

    For Muslim women, spaces prove impermanent and fluctuate without their input.

    More than physical space

    However, Usmani also noted that “spaces are not the be-all and end-all”. Even when spaces are created, poor conditions and an uninviting atmosphere discourage women from attending the mosque. 

    Siddiqui co-founded Open My Mosque, a campaign to highlight and speak out about inequalities in UK mosques. She describes how one visit to a mosque forced Muslim men to take notice:

    One of the male trustees had literally walked through the women’s entrance and found all sorts of things wrong, There were light bulbs out, doors weren’t opening properly, you know, all these things. He was shocked and a bit embarrassed to be quite honest. Of course, he was a good guy, but actually physically walking the route opened his eyes, because as far as they were concerned, the women’s section had lovely carpets and lots of light. But there’s stuff that goes wrong, that they didn’t even realise, and actually would not be allowed to continue to happen in the men’s area

    While the inadequate conditions have been known to Muslim women for decades, it’s not something that’s obvious to men.

    For Rashid, women can themselves contribute towards the uncomfortable feelings she experiences. She recalls how she was told to put on an abaya (a loose-fitting full-length robe) even though she was already dressed modestly for prayer.

    If women don’t have the same values – supporting, empowering and encouraging, then we’re not gonna have enough women wanting to go into the mosque. There’s an underside of judgement that other women are putting on each other about what is right and wrong. We need to focus on prayer rather than the micro-details like clothing, variations in praying and so forth.

    A community issue

    It’s not easy for Muslim women to stand publicly against injustice. On 5 September 2021, in response to two young women being thrown out of the Soho Islamic Centre, Siddiqui and the Open My Mosque team observed prayers outside the mosque. Despite the backlash, Siddiqui received hundreds of messages from British Muslim women who had experienced the same.

    Siddiqui says:

    To sort of openly shout about this stuff is not always easy. And it’s not always comfortable. But you keep your intentions clear and you remember why you’re doing it. You hear the reactions from people that are very sincere that no one else sees apart from me.

    There’s a stigma that if Muslim women speak up on these issues they’re contributing to Islamophobia. Siddiqui adds:

    We all talk about Islamophobia and the bad stuff that’s happening against us, but when it comes to our own prejudice and our own inequality and our own injustice to each other. No one wants to talk about that stuff, because that’s different.

    We have to try and push, knock at the door, literally, find our way in, but also raise these real experiences, tell the stories, do the videos, you know, take the photos, share them online. That’s how it’s done. Now, almost to a certain extent, a little bit of embarrassment works that I think works, frankly speaking, whether people like it or not, you know, that’s how these things change.

    Gender-inclusive sermons

    Although sermons are usually topical and issue-based, some Muslim women would love to hear about issues that are women-centric or concern other marginalised groups. Rashid says:

    … it’d be great if there were more women-specific topics like family life or menopause. I’d love to be able to kind of ask questions or listen or get some comfort. And I know there are women out there that are learned and knowledgeable about these things, but they don’t have the spaces created for them. You know, it’d be great if there was a sermon for women, by women.

    Whilst sermons are usually performed by men, introducing female speakers enables a sanctuary space for women.

    Likewise, Usmani says:

    But even when there are spaces, you feel that there is a lack of inclusivity like in the sermons, for example, when men talk no matter how well-meaning they are, they experience a very masculine experience. And sometimes it can become very, very monotonous.

    Usmani also notes how some mosques fail to be a safe space for minorities:

    The Muslim LGBTQI community could feel isolated and stigmatised and considered “sinful”. It is important that we validate and hear their concerns and not ostracise them. These communities have been grappling with their struggles and are often ostracised by their families and could often come across as open hostility by communities and families. Mosques should be a safe space for them to get emotional support and not to other them, Ramadhan and Eid could be very isolating for them.

    Change from the top

    Through a top-down approach, the community can work together to shift the current mindset. Rashid says:

    At the governance level, there need to be more women.

    These positions have to be more than hollow gestures, as Rashid says:

    Those already in leadership must have the intention and commitment for more inclusivity, Trustees also need to have etiquette around some of the conversations, you know, not only from a religious point of view but from a human point of view, as well.  What does accessibility actually mean? And it’s not just about the physical space – why are those spaces sidelined? Why do we have to go past the bins to get there? Why are women made to feel uncomfortable, because we have to pass the men and they might be staring at us? That’s their problem, not ours, all of that, and I want to change to behaviours and mindsets of men. And that can start at the leadership level, first and foremost. And then through that, through sermons, through behaviours, the ripple effect has to happen. There’s no point in having those spaces if the attitudes make us feel unwelcome.

    Siddiqui agrees that more women must be at the table. However, transparency is required in the recruitment system. She said:

    It’s become so common and I’ve seen it locally that, even when some of the women trustees have come forward but they happen to be related to the committee members, So how much of a challenge are these women going to give or how many of their ideas are going to be heard?

    Mosques need to go beyond lip-service and recognise women’s demands.

    Cambridge Central Mosque is one mosque with gender inclusivity at its heart. As one of the very few mosques which allow men and women to pray in the same prayer hall, Shahida Rahman tells us they’re breaking down barriers:

    It’s open to everybody, you know, regardless of what school of thought that you follow, it’s for all communities. And we do get asked the question, ‘is it a Shia mosque or a Sunni mosque?’ It’s open to everyone. It’s a prayer space. And it’s also a community space as well.

    The physical space in this particular mosque has been adapted to fit women’s needs. A mother and children room allows worshippers to join the prayers, separated by glass doors which prevent any noises from reaching the main prayer hall.

    It’s evident that Muslim women have been spearheading this campaign for decades. Only through male allyship can we collectively raise the bar by recognising gender inequality as a community issue.

    Featured image via R Haworth – Wikimedia, resized to 770×403 pixels under licence CC BY-SA 3.0

    By Uzma Gulbahar

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Holyrood dismantles UN special rapporteur’s arguments against gender recognition reform

    On 29 November, the UN special rapporteur (SR) on violence against women and girls wrote to the UK government to share her concerns regarding the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill (GRR). The Scottish Parliament, along with six women’s rights groups, have now responded – absolutely demolishing SR Reem Alsalem’s arguments in the process.

    The GRR bill will allow trans people in Scotland to acquire a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) through self-identification (self-ID). This would mean they can avoid the lengthy panel process which is currently in place in the UK. The proposed bill has now undergone two public consultations and has passed the first stage of becoming law.

    The special rapporteur’s concerns

    Alsalem raised a series of concerns which will, by now, be quite familiar to anyone who has reason to pay attention to the transphobic and so-called ‘gender critical’ discourse on the internet. In fact, many of the leading lights of this discourse appear in the SR’s Twitter follows. And, right on schedule, the letter was immediately seized upon by gender critical voices calling for the GRR Bill to be reformed or scrapped altogether.

    The BBC was quick to report on Alsalem’s letter as a ‘report from the UN’. It originally ran with the headline “UN report warns men could ‘abuse’ Scottish gender reforms”. This was later corrected to “UN expert warns men could ‘abuse’ Scottish gender reforms.” Pink News highlighted the misleading and transphobic nature of this distinction, as it lends far more weight to Alsalem’s words than they are due.

    First and foremost, Alsalem argued that:

    such proposals would potentially open the door for violent males who identify as men to abuse the process of acquiring a gender certificate and the rights that are associated with it.

    In the nine-page letter, she also raised questions around the “insufficient clarity” of the self-ID procedure, the “duty to protect women and girls against violence”, and “access to single sex spaces for women”. Alsalem also touched on the “lack of clarity on the relationship between Scotland’s Gender Recognition Act and the UK Equality Act”. Regarding this last point in particular, she said:

    While I commend the Government for listening to the voices of transwomen, including organizations that represent them, I am concerned that the consultations for this proposal do not appear to have been sufficiently inclusive of other groups of women, most notably female victims of violence.

    The insinuation here is clear: the Scottish government listened to trans women and their allies, but ignored dissenting voices. Fortunately, however, this has no actual connection to reality.

    The response

    The Scottish government responded in truly admirable fashion. It issued a 13-page response with a point-by-point takedown of the SR’s original letter. In particular, it stated unequivocally that the Scottish Human Rights Commission could not:

    identify any objectively evidenced real and concrete harm that is likely to result from the reforms. Indeed, the majority, if not all, of the concerns that have been outlined do not appear to have a relationship with the proposals that are set out in the Bill.

    Getting even more devastatingly specific, the response letter also pointed out the fact that Alsalem was contradicting the UN’s own findings on their proposed reforms. The response quoted the United Nations independent expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, highlighting that:

    Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal and Argentina are examples of states that have implemented systems based on self-identification and eliminated pathologising requirements and where the numbers and outcomes in terms of social inclusion and the decrease in violence against trans and non-binary persons are remarkable. At the other end of the scope of worries, so to speak, the theoretical concerns that were raised in the process of adopting those processes have not materialised

    In a similar vein, the response mentioned that the committee overseeing the GRR Bill asked for evidence that the proposed reforms were unsafe for women and girls. However, “no witness was able to provide concrete examples.” This part is important. People will speak in hypotheticals on the abuse of gender recognition for trans people, but can’t produce concrete proof of such fears materialising.

    Women’s groups in support

    The Scottish Parliament’s letter also pointed to the fact that there has already been a lengthy consultation on the process of the GRR Bill. Contrary to Alsalem’s assertion, the public – including many women’s rights groups for and against trans inclusion – were consulted:

    The two consultations undertaken in developing this Bill were open to all members of the public and represent two of the largest public consultations ever carried out by the Scottish Government. Responses to the consultation were subject to an independent analysis and we have published those reports

    In fact, six women’s and domestic violence organisations in Scotland wrote their own response to the SR’s letter. The response from Engender, JustRight Scotland, Scottish Women’s Rights Centre, Scottish Women’s Aid, Amnesty International Scotland, and Rape Crisis Scotland made many of the same points as the Scottish Parliament. It stated that:

    We were surprised and disappointed that your letter was issued without consultation with human rights groups or specialist violence against women organisations in Scotland.

    The letter went on to highlight the intertwined nature of women’s and trans liberation:

    We see the paths to equality and the realisation of human rights for women and trans people as being deeply interconnected and dependant on shared efforts to dismantle systems of discrimination.

    Delay, delay, delay

    This whole saga – from the two rounds of consultation, to Alsalem’s letter, to the BBC’s misleading response, and the Scottish defence – is a microcosm of the ‘debate’ around trans rights and recognition. Gender critical voices will complain that trans rights will endanger women, but cannot provide actual proof of how this would happen. They claim we didn’t hear them. But we did, and their complaints were simply at odds with the facts of the matter.

    A GRC does little beyond allowing a trans person to register their birth, get married, and die under their true gender. Making the process of acquiring one less cumbersome is surely a good thing. That this has even a UN special rapporteur up in arms would be laughable, if it weren’t such a crying shame.

    Featured image via Wikimedia/sarahmirk – Creative Commons 4.0 License cropped to 770 x 403

    By Alex/Rose Cocker

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • CWU chief says we’re in a ‘de facto general strike’. He’s not wrong.

    The head of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) Dave Ward has said that the UK is in the midst of a “de facto general strike”. A helpful industrial action advent calendar, released by Strike Map UK, shows that he’s not far wrong. However, a de facto general strike is still not a general strike – and it’s unlikely that will happen any time soon.

    CWU: pushing for “social value” for Royal Mail

    The Telegraph interviewed Ward over the CWU’s ongoing dispute with Royal Mail, and the winter of strikes happening across industries more broadly. Of note was Ward’s argument that Royal Mail needed to diversify its business – not just focus on delivering parcels. Ward said the CWU had already agreed its workers could make “24/7 deliveries”. But the CWU chief also said:

    Can a postal worker become something more than just delivering parcels? Can they become somebody who actually supports people who might be vulnerable in society? We’ve talked about calling on elderly people. Delivering prescriptions is a great idea. Where people who can’t get out and about, we actually pick up their prescription, and we deliver it.

    Ward added:

    adding social value is something that if we spent six months looking at all of the things that are absent from local communities, now, there used to be, that we could come up with a range of services.

    It is unlikely Royal Mail’s management will have any interest in this. Ward told the Telegraph he thinks the chaos at the company is being “driven by [a] potential takeover“. So workers and the CWU will continue to strike. Now, a campaign group has produced an advent calendar-style chart to show us when these and other unions’ strikes are happening.

    The “Strikevent” calendar

    Strike Map UK constantly logs all ongoing and upcoming strikes across the country. For December, when there seems to be industrial action everywhere, it’s produced a “Strikevent Calendar“:

    A calendar of all the strikes happening in December

    It looks like Monday 12 December is going to be another ‘super strike’ day – as eight unions are walking out nationally. Meanwhile, on Friday 9 December the CWU is holding a national strike rally in London:

    Aside from the major disputes, local strikes are also happening – like funeral workers in Scotland taking action against Co-op Funeralcare:

    It’s not just public and private sector workers striking, either. Staff at homelessness charity Shelter have just started a two-week walkout over pay and conditions:

    General strike? Not likely.

    So, as Ward summed up to the Telegraph:

    It’s almost like a de facto general strike taking place by the amount of disputes.

    However, of course this is not a general strike – and there is confusion over whether one would even be lawful anymore. The Telegraph claimed that only the Trades Union Congress (TUC) can call a general strike across multiple unions. It hasn’t done this since 1926. But the Guardian says that general strikes are now illegal.

    Given the Tories’ legal restrictions on strikes, and the TUC’s limp approach to industrial action and workers’ rights – a general strike is unlikely to happen. So it looks like it’s down to unions to coordinate strikes as much as possible.

    Featured image via Sky News – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • US spyware firm poised for role in new £360m NHS data platform

    In November, the Canary reported that technology developed by spyware firm Palantir would be used to manage a new NHS Faster Data pilot programme. It’s since been reported that the programme’s data will contribute to a £360m NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP). Procurement for the FDP is yet to commence, though the NHS stated that Palantir’s technology is available for transition to the platform.

    Controversies

    Palantir is named after the all-seeing stones featured in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. It’s owned by billionaire Peter Thiel, who is a board member and major investor of Facebook and was a member of Donald Trump’s transition team.

    Palantir has worked with the CIA, the FBI, NSA, the Marine Corps, the US Air Force, Special Operations Command, and West Point (US military academy). Palantir’s technology has been used in a number of surveillance and intelligence-gathering projects. They include predictive policing and tracking of immigrants.

    In 2021, Palantir’s COO Shyam Sankar boasted the company’s partnerships meant it’s “inside of every missile, inside of every drone”.

    Palantir also helped develop an aid for the spyware XKEYSCORE programme. The aid imports data from the NSA to help “investigate and visualize it through Palantir”. This aid was developed for the ‘Five Eyes‘ spy agencies (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).

    Furthermore, Palantir has worked for UK intelligence and was awarded contracts to handle vast data sets on UK citizens for British spy agency GCHQ. 

    Investigations by US journalist Barrett Brown revealed that Palantir, together with HBGary Federal and Berico, were part of a dirty tricks campaign called Team Themis. The campaign aimed to discredit WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Intercept editor Glenn Greenwald.

    Palantir and the NHS

    In 2020, at the height of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, Palantir was awarded a contract with the NHS’s datastore project. It won hands down, as it offered to do the work for a mere £1. But this was a foot in the door and within six months the value of the contract increased to £23m.

    In November 2022, the Canary reported that the company had been awarded yet another contract with the NHS – this time for its faster data programme. Instead of the usual procurement process, NHS Digital was instructed to go with Palantir’s ‘Foundry‘ software as this merely required an amendment to Palantir’s original contract.

    Now, it’s understood that data extracted from the faster data programme will be rolled into a £360m NHS Federated Data Platform. NHS England confirmed that the data extracted:

    is part of service provision under NHS England’s existing contract with Palantir for the provision of a data platform, which is a software platform (Foundry) for the secure, reliable, and timely processing of data to enable NHS decision makers to best plan use of resources and improve patient care. Those services are within the scope of the requirement for the Federated Data Platform and would be transitioned to the FDP as part of its implementation in place of the existing platform.

    What is the FDP?

    A June 2022 Department of Health paper described the FDP as “a system of connected platforms, placed in, and ultimately determined by, individual NHS organizations”.

    Dean Sabri, principal analyst for UK health and social care at GlobalData, explained that the FDP project:

    will combine all data on individual patients, waiting lists and medical trials from various sources and formats into a single platform. It will rely on the data platforms deployed at Trust and integrated care system (ICS) level to gather and correctly input the information accurately. Those systems will also need to have standards in place which enable open working through APIs.

    Or, as financial trader IG puts it:

    Palantir’s software would become the underlying operating system for the National Health Service to manage the medical data of every patient in England.

    The trader added that “many see the move as a step towards further privatisation of the NHS”.

    Done deal?

    In May 2020, Jim Killock of the civil liberties organisation Open Rights Group warned the Canary that:

    Palantir may become impossible to remove [from public service contracts], and increasingly [become] involved with personal data. They have already been granted access to ‘anonymised’ personal data – this is usually data than can be relinked to people in practice, so already promises that they wouldn’t handle personal data have been broken

    Procurement for the FDP project will commence “soon”, according to Computer Weekly. However, data extracted for the FDP is via Palantir’s Foundry. So it would be very unlikely that someone other than Palantir gets the contract.

    Featured image via YouTube

    By Tom Coburg

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • XR takes a stand against public transport that only benefits private interests

    Environmental activists have once again stopped the Airport Flyer service in Bristol. In part, they’re protesting the reduction in ‘public’ transport which doesn’t support the carbon-intensive air industry. It goes further than that, however, as the Extinction Rebellion Youth Bristol (XRYB) activists also have a list of demands:

    XR: “fair travel not air travel”

    The protest follows a similar action covered by the Canary on Saturday 5 November:

    XRYB announced the latest protest in a press release:

    At 12:30pm today, youth environmental activists blocked an Airport Flyer bus on Redcliffe Way on its way to the City Centre.

    Activists from Extinction Rebellion Youth Bristol (XRYB) blocked the bus’ path by standing around it with banners (including one reading ‘Fair Travel not Air Travel’) as it attempted to leave a bus stop on Redcliffe Way earlier today, with other activists hanging banners out the windows. The bus was returning from the airport to the City Centre, so no passengers were at risk of missing flights.

    According to Extinction Rebellion, activists blocked the bus for two and a half hours.

    Extinction Rebellions Youth Bristol blocking a bus

    Extinction Rebellion Bristol blocking a bus

    The previous action took place days before the High Court heard arguments on Bristol Airport’s expansion. We reported at the time:

    On 8 and 9 November, the High Court hears arguments on the expansion of Bristol Airport. XRYB points out that the expansion will significantly increase the quantity of carbon dioxide and equivalent greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year. XR Youth previously held a ‘die-in’ protest inside the airport terminal in March.

    Fair buses

    The protests were both part of XRYB’s ‘Free Buses, Fair Buses’ campaign that was launched in June. Alongside other groups, XRYB forms part of the ‘Reclaim Our Buses’ campaign – a coalition pushing for bus franchising in the West of England. Franchising in this instance would mean an end to unfettered deregulation, with councils regaining control over how bus services are run. An open letter to the relevant local authority reads:

    The private bus companies are entirely profit-driven, so they’re justifying the bus cuts with the falling passenger numbers, rising fuel and wage costs, and driver shortages that make the services unprofitable with no regard for the public need. Further, the financial support from the government during the pandemic will soon end and the private bus companies are not obliged to continue running services that don’t make them profits. This deregulated market is always at odds with the bus services that many in our communities need to get to work, school, shops, and health centres.

    The idea has recently received public support from several prominent figures, including Bristol South MP Karin Smyth and Green Party leader and Clifton Down councillor Carla Denyer.

    According to XRYB:

    FirstBus recently announced the cancellation of nearly 1,500 bus services a week across Bristol, continuing until at least April. This follows on from plans to cut up to 18 bus routes across the West of England … whilst also increasing the frequency of Airport Flyer buses from Bristol from every 20 to every 12 minutes.

    Free buses

    XRYB’s demands to the West of England Combined Authority and its constituent local authorities are:

    Free buses: Free bus travel within the West of England (including North Somerset) for all those under the age of 25, all students, and all apprentices.

    Fair buses: A consultation and public forum is run to identify improvements to bus routes that would best serve communities.

    XR Youth spokesperson Torin Menzies said:

    We are continuing to disrupt the Airport Flyer service because FirstBus have increased the scale of their cuts to the West of England’s buses. Our public transport network is in a dire state – FirstBus have shown that they are more interested in serving the potentially expanding Bristol Airport instead of our local communities.”

    Metro Mayor Dan Norris needs to take urgent action and introduce bus franchising in order to prevent further deterioration of these vital services – it’s time for WECA to step up and reclaim our buses.

    XRYB’s movement for free buses has also seen them placing temporary messages near bus stops:

    Given this is now the second action over buses by XRYB in a month, it’s likely there are more to come.

    Featured image via and additional images via James Ward

    By John Shafthauer

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • DWP systems crash: countless PIP claimants have not been paid

    THIS ARTICLE WAS UPDATED AT 5:05PM ON MONDAY 5 DECEMBER TO REFLECT A STATEMENT FROM THE DWP, AND AT 6:30PM ON 5 DECEMBER TO REFLECT A SECOND STATEMENT FROM THE DWP

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has had a system’s crash affecting Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claimants due to be paid today (Monday 5 December).

    PIP systems crash

    Journalist Martin Lewis picked up on people reporting that the DWP hadn’t paid their PIP. So, he ran a poll to try and get more info on this. It was inconclusive, with 5.6% of just over 5,600 people saying their PIP payment was late. However, people were tweeting at Lewis that they had experienced issues:

    Someone else reported that:

    Just been told by the call centre, that all the people that sort the payments thought they had fixed the issue Friday, they were unaware of this issue until this morning. You can hear the mayhem in the call centre, I was the 145 person the call handler has dealt with since 9am.

    They then said that the DWP had told them the crash was due to the £10 Christmas bonus payment:

    It’s a computer error, down to the extra 10 holiday payment, the 1st payment of that was due Friday, my P.I.P didn’t go in either, they are very aware of the problem causing it, and said they will pay everyone’s payment by the end of the day. I have a friend in DWP and confirmed.

    Other people said similar:

    And people were reporting that the DWP hadn’t paid their or their family members’ PIP:

    The Canary asked the DWP for comment. We wanted to know if the reports of a system crash were correct – and if so, why this had happened. A spokesperson told us:

    We are aware that some PIP claimants who were due a payment today have not received it. While this impacts a small proportion of PIP claimants, we are sorry for the disruption this will have caused.

    The issue is being urgently investigated and we are aiming to deliver the outstanding payments today.

    As of 6:15pm on 5 December, the DWP told the Canary that all outstanding payments had been issued. The Canary will keep you updated.

    Featured image via Wikimedia 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.