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Category: UK

  • BBC News has been ripped a new one over its coverage of UCU strikes

    On Thursday 24 November, BBC News ran an article on the University and College Union (UCU) strike. It went down like a lead balloon with staff and people on social media alike. This is because BBC News was clearly promoting nonsense propaganda over pay – at the expense of striking workers.

    The Canary has been following the UCU’s industrial action. As we previously reported, 70,000 staff at 150 universities walked out on 24 November over pay, pensions, and working conditions. Bosses have cut workers’ pay by around 25% since 2009, while they also want to slash their pensions by 35% too. All this has led to the UCU and its members striking.

    Workers were out across the UK:

    Other trade unions showed their support for the UCU:

    Pack of lies

    Of course, despite this widespread support, our public service broadcaster couldn’t possibly have given balance in its reporting. Instead, BBC News covered the strike with what many people are claiming are a pack of lies.

    BBC News ran an article on Wednesday 23 November with the headline:

    University Strikes: Will my lectures be cancelled?

    And, true to form, the BBC changed the headline  – and it didn’t go down well:

    However, what the BBC didn’t change were its claims about university pay:

    Film studies lecturer Louis Bayman explained that the infographic from the BBC didn’t even get the basics right:

    Another Twitter user had a wry laugh, given that the BBC doesn’t seem to consider how academics are often overloaded and overstretched:

    The idea that research assistants could make almost £32k a year was laughable to anyone who’s actually worked in higher education:

    Solidarity needed

    As the latest UCU strikes kick off, this scandalous reporting from the BBC shows exactly why those of us who believe in workers’ rights need to stick together. Mainstream media can cover up the truth as much as it likes, but workers on picket lines are there to defend their rights and push back against the BBC’s lies. It’s simply not true to present academics’ wages as so high when we know that it’s actually university bosses who take home the big money. Instead, workers are the ones who are overworked. It’s more important than ever to follow the example of union leaders like Mick Lynch and show solidarity with workers no matter which union is on strike – we’re all in this together.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Evening Standard

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Keir Starmer’s week has been more right-wing than the Tories’

    Keir Starmer is the leader of the Labour Party.

    No, it’s true! Even though his actions in recent days would make you think otherwise – more so than usual, that is.

    Starmer: courting bomb-makers and trashing refugees

    Starmer has already exposed himself as a charlatan – he ditched the 10 left-wing pledges that got Labour members to elect him as leader. Aside from this, the Labour leader has consistently shown he is as centrist as they come – his purge of left-wing members being the prime example. However towards the end of November Starmer went full-on centre-right, in a series of actions which may make some Tories blush.

    On 21 November, Starmer hosted execs from arms manufacturer British Aerospace Systems (BAE) Systems in his office. The Mirror called this an attempt to “woo business”. However, as Owen Jones pointed out, courting death merchants isn’t exactly a good look:

    So, what do you do after you’ve jumped into bed with a firm that makes bombs? If you’re Starmer, you tell the victims of those bombs that ‘you’re not coming over here, taking our jobs!’. As the Canary previously reported, Starmer used a speech on 22 November to say 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.

    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. Not for Starmer, though – who continued on his right-wing journey.

    Lapped-up by the right-wing press

    The Labour leader has been heavily criticised in the past for having dealings with the Sun. Clearly, he didn’t care – on 23 November he attended the right-wing shitrag’s Who Cares Wins awards, which celebrates NHS “heroes” (don’t click the link!). One Twitter user even claimed Starmer missed his Constituency Labour Party (CLP) meeting to attend the nonsense Sun bash:

    The Sun previously helped push the Tories’ NHS privatisation agenda – so it’s the perfect, hypocritical, cynical bedfellow for Starmer. However, if you thought Starmer and the Sun were a right-wing match made in heaven – it gets even better.

    As the London Economic reported, on Wednesday 23 November, right-wing libertarian hate-rag the Spectator gave Starmer its “politician of the year” award. The Labour leader said:

    This is a real honour. I don’t expect to be endorsed by The Spectator at the next election, but I look forward to disagreeing in the battle of ideas.

    There is no “battle of ideas” with the Spectator, Starmer. It promotes racist narratives – so, no we shouldn’t ‘battle ideas’ or debate with an outlet that legitimises hate speech:

    Oh, but of course! Starmer is a racist too! So, much like the Sun, the Spectator is a perfect bedfellow for him. It’s likely that both these outlets are quite happy with that, too – given that Starmer is likely to win the next general election:

    Starmer has killed the democratic socialist elements of the Labour Party that were flourishing under Corbyn. Starmer is a con artist who has left the public with a political choice of Tory far-right politics or his own centre-right brand. That’s no choice at all.

    Featured image via Sky News – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

  • Opponents slam Troubles Legacy Bill which would let war criminals off the hook

    The Tory’s new Legacy Bill would put justice out of reach for victims of British military violence in the North of Ireland, campaigners fear. The proposed legislation had its second reading in the Lords on 23 November.

    Titled the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, the proposed law is meant to reduce criminal investigations. It would also replace proper legal processes with reconciliation committees. These would hear stories and grievances but have no legal standing.

    However, the families of those killed and hurt by British forces have been speaking out against the proposal, which some have branded a ‘Bill of Shame’:

    Justice denied

    Former Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, now a peer, told The Irish News that the bill sent a message to families that their trauma did not matter:

    By offering a low-bar immunity to the perpetrators of some of the most horrific crimes imaginable it is telling them that what they did no longer matters.

    And it is saying to victims and survivors of the Troubles in Northern Ireland that what happened to you and your loved ones no longer matters.

    This will only inflict more pain and anxiety on the already severely traumatised

    Meanwhile, senior figures in the North of Ireland clergy warned that the bill would deepen divisions between Loyalist and Republican communities. In a joint letter, Archbishops Eamon Martin and John McDowell said they were baffled that the bill even featured the word ‘reconciliation’:

    On the contrary, it will deepen division and further demoralise all but a tiny minority of those it purports to help. It seems almost as though it has been designed to fail

    Legacy of injustice

    The Legacy Bill parallels the Overseas Operations Bill, which was designed to stop war crimes prosecution relating to Iraq and Afghanistan. As The Canary wrote in 2020, the Overseas Operations Bill was an establishment stitch-up.

    Former soldiers, lawyers and human rights campaigners were all critical of that proposed legislation, and yet in the end it became law.

    The British state is intent on escaping scrutiny and challenge in relations to its wars. The danger is that its victims, whether in Ireland, Iraq or Afghanistan, become victims not once but twice.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Vommons/Gillfoto, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • ‘Armageddon’ at Royal Mail as CWU warns the end is nigh

    Postal workers are warning the public of the “end of Royal Mail as we know it”. 115,000 employees will strike on Thursday 24 November and Black Friday (25 November). The union has warned that Royal Mail is inflicting “Armageddon” on workers, as the company has essentially walked away from talks – delivering what it’s branded as a “final and best” offer. However, the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) basically said the whole thing stinks.

    Royal Mail: a catastrophic impasse of its own making

    The story of the dispute between the corporate capitalist Royal Mail and its workers and their union has had various twists and turns. For example, Royal Mail has threatened 6,000 redundancies and made legal threats. Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn and other socialist MPs supported the CWU – while Labour leader Keir Starmer turned the other cheek. However, it now appears that the dispute is at a catastrophic impasse – thanks to Royal Mail. It’s one which could see this industrial action roll-on ad infinitum.

    The CWU said in a press release that Royal Mail had made a last-ditch offer to workers; its “final and best offer”. Overall, the CWU noted the proposals included:

    • Turning Royal Mail Group into a gig economy-style parcel courier, reliant on casual labour.
    • Thousands of inevitable compulsory redundancies.
    • A wholly inadequate, non-backdated 3.5% pay increase.
    • Demands that the CWU no longer formally supports workers who have submitted employment tribunals for unlawful pay deductions during strikes.
    • Demands that the CWU be removed from the workplace and transformed into a company union to help management implement plans.
    • Later start and finishing times that will see Royal Mail abandoning the AM delivery period.
    • Cuts to sick pay.
    • Removal of Sunday premium payment.
    • The introduction of technology that will monitor postal workers every minute of the day.

    Obviously, none of this is acceptable to the CWU and its members. Not least in this is the derisory 3.5% pay increase – when inflation is running at 11.1%.

    CWU: not having it

    So, the CWU said in response that it’s arguing for the following proposals to help resolve the dispute. These include:

    • An improved 18 month pay deal including back pay for all workers.
    • A guarantee of no compulsory redundancies.
    • The restoration of previously agreed processes for voluntary redundancies.
    • A joint review of all agreements and the relationship between the CWU and Royal Mail Group.
    • Re-establishing the right of CWU reps to be fully involved and able to negotiate on local revisions.
    • An alternative business strategy that would see Royal Mail Group use its competitive advantage to grow as a company, instead of becoming a gig economy parcel employer.

    CWU general secretary Dave Ward said:

    We are disappointed that instead of reaching a compromise to avoid major disruption, Royal Mail have chosen to pursue such an aggressive strategy. We will not accept that 115,000 Royal Mail workers – the people who kept us connected during the pandemic, and made millions in profit for bosses and shareholders – take such a devastating blow to their livelihoods.

    These proposals spell the end of Royal Mail as we know it, and its degradation from a national institution into an unreliable, Uber-style gig economy company.

    “Armageddon”

    Ward continued:

    Make no mistake about it: British postal workers are facing an Armageddon moment. We urge every member of the public to stand with their postie, and back them like never before.

    The CWU action was always going to be divisive when you have a company like Royal Mail – which is arrogant and hyper-capitalistic. However, it now looks like it will move into the territory of a long-running industrial action with no end in sight – one that will test workers’ resilience to the core. This is why, as Ward said, every member of the public needs to “stand with their postie” until the bitter end – whatever that may look like.

    Featured image via the CWU – YouTube screenshot

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Support groups release a new report on how the PCSC Act affects protesters

    Anti-repression legal support groups Green & Black Cross (GBC) and the Activist Court Aid Brigade (ACAB) have released a guide to how the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (PCSC Act) affects all of us.

    The draconian PCSC Act sparked resistance across the UK last year, and an uprising in Bristol where people laid siege to the Bridewell police station, burning several police vehicles.

    The Bill went through a series of amendments before being passed this year, meaning that it can be confusing to know which parts of the Bill made it into the Act, and which didn’t.

    Now, GBC and ACAB’s guide has set out how the Act will affect protesters.

    GBC tweeted:

    Increases to police anti-protest powers

    Here are just a few of the changes to the law explained in the guide:

    • Increasing police powers to stop/control demonstrations: The penalties for breaching the parts of the Public Order Act which govern marches and processions have been increased.
    • Creating a crime of “residing on land without consent in or with a vehicle”: This will have dire consequences for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, as well as those who live on protest sites. Police have the power to seize vehicles for three months (or until the end of any criminal proceedings that arise).
    • Restricting noisy protests: Senior police officers now have increased powers to impose conditions on protests if they are ‘noisy’.
    • Allowing the police to place restrictions on protests of just one person: Previously, there had to be two people present for restrictions to be made.
    • Making the obstruction of vehicle access to parliament an offence: This will affect protests around Westminster.
    • Creating an offence of statutory public nuisance: Public nuisance previously only existed as a common law offence (i.e. an offence that has been developed through case law, rather than a statute agreed by parliament).
    • Assaulting an emergency worker: You can now be sentenced for longer – up to two years – for assaulting emergency workers (including police officers).
    • Changes to pre-charge bail: The lengths of time that police can hold you on bail has been increased, with pre-charge bail time limits increased from a starting point of 28 days to three months. You can be held on police bail for up to a year before it is reviewed by a magistrate. The Act has unfortunately increased how long magistrates can keep you on bail, up to a further 12 months. If you breach the conditions you can now be held without charge for 27 hours (up from 24).
    • New types of caution: Community and diversionary cautions replace the old type of police caution. GBC and ACAB say the main difference is that diversionary cautions will be:

    given for more serious offences, and community cautions for less serious ones. If you break the former, you will be prosecuted for the offence at which point the caution ceases to have effect. If you break the community caution, there may be a financial penalty condition added which can be registered for enforcement as a fine if you don’t pay.

    • Obstructing the highway: The maximum sentence has increased from a fine of £1000 to 6 months imprisonment. Those arrested for blocking roads can now be asked to give their fingerprints and biometric data. Its no longer a defence to say that the road you’re accused of blocking is already blocked, even if its blocked by police. 
    • Damaging monuments: In cases in which a public monument has been damaged – such as the toppling of the slave-trader Edward Colston in 2020 – defendants can be tried at the Crown Court, even when the damage done was minimal. This means people could, in theory, be given sentences of up to 10 years.

    Data gathering

    The Act makes some changes to how the police gather data on us too, namely:

    • Fingerprints: If someone has been arrested for a recordable offence, they can be told to come back to the police station and provide fingerprints.
    • Extracting information from devices:  The Act allows the police to extract data from devices if one of the users of the device gives consent. In the cases of children, this can be the consent of a parent or guardian.

    Keep on resisting

    The authors of the guide make clear that the PCSC Act – although it is extremely oppressive – shouldn’t keep people from protesting. They say:

    The law changes often; the reforms in this Act may be more notable than usual, but it doe

    s not, as many have claimed, make ‘all protest illegal’ nor does it mean you’ll be imprisoned for 10 years for using a megaphone on a march or sharing a social media post. The main thing is to not panic.

    Check out the five key messages from legal support groups for dealing with the police here.

    Featured image via Unsplash (cropped to 770x403px)

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The housing association that killed toddler Awaab Ishak can’t even admit its own racism

    The housing association responsible for the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak has admitted its staff made “assumptions” about his family’s “lifestyle” – but doesn’t have the guts to say it’s institutionally racist. But why would it, when the entire social housing sector is institutionally racist and classist, too?

    Justice for Awaab

    As the Canary previously reported:

    On 15 November, the inquest into the death of 2-year-old Awaab Ishak in 2020 concluded that the toddler died due to prolonged exposure to black mould in his family’s flat. Since 2017, Awaab’s family had complained to Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) about the damp and mould in their home, and had requested to be re-housed. RBH, the social housing association responsible for the Rochdale council flat, failed to take action. The toddler died on 21 December 2020, having been discharged from hospital two days prior.

    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. Yet even now, the organisation cannot admit its part of a system which is institutionally racist and classist.

    Rochdale Boroughwide Housing: racist

    RBH has said it will be taking action. It noted, like it and its staff don’t have access to the internet, that it:

    will share what we have learnt about the impact to health of damp, condensation and mould with the social housing sector.

    A cursory Google search could have told RBH how serious mould is for human health. RBH saying it has now learned about how mould impacts on health is bullshit – as it must have known already. However, and crucially, the organisation admitted it “made assumptions about ” Awaab’s family’s lifestyle”:

    “Assumptions” is one hell of a euphemism for what is deadly racism. Previously, in an interview with LBC, Awaab’s family’s barrister said that:

    At first, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing said that [the cause of the mould] was due to the ritual bathing practices of the family, or the cooking practices that are common among some cultures, all with no evidence.

    Describing a family washing itself as “ritual bathing” is blatant racism – as are RBH’s assertions about “cooking practices”. Of course, the coroner ruled that there was no evidence of “excessive behaviour,” as RBH alleged. However, RBH and its staffs’ assumptions about Awaab’s family based on their ethnicity – that is, RBH’s racism – is hardly uncommon.

    “They’ve just come from huts”

    In 2021, ITV News investigated racism in the social housing sector. One whistleblower from a London council housing department told it that “racism and prejudice towards tenants is rife”. ITV News noted that she said:

    If you say their surname is Muhammad or Ali or something, they’ll straightaway assume they’re from a Muslim country. And so they say they should be grateful because ‘imagine what they’ve come from’.

    We had a large number of African residents and we had a big meeting with them because they weren’t happy. And then when they were finished, all the managers were sitting around saying, ‘what are they complaining about, they’ve just come from huts’.

    The racist, colonialist mindset is entrenched in British society – as the above comment around “huts” shows. However, the institutionalised racism seen in RBH and all other housing associations kills people. As the whistleblower told ITV News:

    As soon as you hit the management level, you see racism spoken openly, whether it’s externally with the residents – they’ll make assumptions, they’ll make pre-judgments on people because of their race, their colour, their religion, their surname.

    Again – note “assumptions” as a euphemism for ‘racism,’ racism which in Awaab’s case killed him. Of course, this is not news to social housing residents. However, as is often the case, it takes the corporate media getting involved for other people to actually listen to tenants.

    Social housing: not fit for purpose

    RBH has said that:

    The problem is that millions of people who currently or historically have lived in damp or mouldy homes is not really the issue. First, like other public-facing organisations in the UK (and arguably wider society), housing associations are institutionally racist and classist. There are more Black and brown people living in social housing than there are white people. So, housing associations disproportionately expose Black and brown people to terrible social housing conditions.

    Moreover, the social housing sector in the UK is not fit for purpose. It is profit-driven; companies and councils have hollowed out the quality and quantity of properties, and the whole industry is run by people who shouldn’t be in their jobs. Like every other sector in British life, social housing specifically targets Black and brown people at every turn. Racist and classist housing associations and their staff routinely treat residents like third-class citizens. They intentionally make tenants feel that they deserve no better than to eke out their existence in life-threatening squalor.

    Social housing providers can metaphorically (and physically) paper over the cracks in their sector, but it won’t solve the underlying problems at the root of them. It is racism and classism that ultimately killed Awaab – but RBH and every other housing association bears responsibility.

    Featured image via Channel 4 News – YouTube and 5 News – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The UCU just summed up the problem with universities

    The University and College Union (UCU) and its members are preparing to strike over pay, pensions, and working conditions. If you were wondering what the issue is with the UK’s university system, then the union has an answer: bosses and the government treat it like a cash cow.

    UCU: everybody out

    As the Canary previously reported, over 70,000 staff at 150 universities are taking three days strike action by the end of the year. It’s over various issues. For example:

    university bosses have cut workers’ real-terms pay by around 25% since 2009. The pension fund that manages university workers’ retirement pots has also been acting appallingly – cutting up to 35% off people’s final pension income.

    University workers also say that the sector is rife with discrimination around pay, zero hours contracts, and unmanageable workloads. So, the UCU and its members have had enough. They are striking on Thursday 24, Friday 25 and Wednesday 30 November. Thanks to Strikemap, there’s a handy interactive map of where the picket lines will be – so people can go and support workers:

    A map of the UCU strikes

    The UCU has created a ‘pledge’ for people to sign, to show their support as well. You can sign it here. Meanwhile, university bosses aren’t happy with the strikes. Some of them are apparently threatening to deduct 100% of workers’ wages if they take action short of a strike – like working to rule. Ironic, really, given what the UCU has exposed about university bosses’ finances.

    Bosses’ cash cow

    On Twitter, one user asked UCU general secretary Jo Grady:

    Where does all the cash our kids are paying for university education go? What’s the average fulltime equivalent of students a tutor teaches? Somebody somewhere must be making a mint from education in this country.

    The union had a concise response. It said that, among other things, the university industry hold £40bn in reserves in the bank:

    Like another Twitter user, you’d be forgiven for asking why students being burdened with debt when universities make so much money:

    24 November will be a busy day on the picket lines – the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) is taking action against Royal Mail on the same date. Meanwhile, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) has also announced further strikes across December and January. The corporatisation of all these industries – be it via privatisation or profit motivation – plays its part in the workers’ strikes. This affects all of us, too – so solidarity with these workers is crucial.

    Featured image via the UCU

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Manston is empty but the Tories’ far-right policies remain

    Manston refugee detention centre is now empty, according to news reports. Some people have welcomed the news, while others have cautioned that this is probably not the end of the far-right Home Office’s deadly hostile environment policy.

    Manston: now empty

    The Guardian has claimed that the Manston centre in Kent is now “completely empty”. It noted that:

    Just a few weeks ago about 4,000 arrivals were placed there by the Home Office, almost three times the maximum 1,600 capacity of the tented site in Ramsgate.

    Manston has, at best, been state-sanctioned imprisonment for refugees. At worst, it and the Home Office have caused a man’s death. As abolitionist group SOAS Detainee Support tweeted:

     

    The man, who the Home Office has not yet named, died in hospital after becoming ill at Manston. The Home Office has referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) for an investigation.

    Manston, and the Home Office, have been dogged by further controversy – from outbreaks of diphtheria to horrendous overcrowding and conditions. As the Canary previously reported, Manston was only ever meant to hold people for 24 hours:

    However, a prison watchdog warned that authorities are detaining people on the site for a much longer period, without beds, proper healthcare, or access to fresh air and exercise. The watchdog noted reports of cases of contagious diseases such as scabies, diphtheria and MRSA within the centre.

    Now, it seems that the Home Office has moved all the detainees off site.

    This isn’t the end of the Home Office’s deadly hostile environment policy

    Sky News reported that:

    On Tuesday [22 November], Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said Manston is meant to be a temporary holding facility where people are moved on “often fairly quickly”.

    So, it seems Downing Street may have intervened in home secretary Suella Braverman’s department. On social media, people have reacted cautiously to the news of Manston being empty.

    Some people were calling for an independent investigation into Manston:

    Another Twitter user wondered:

    However, campaign group Detention Action warned that the Home Office will just replicate Manston elsewhere:

    Questions also remain about where the refugees from Manston have gone. Previously, the Home Office dumped some of them in central London for hours with no support.

    Unfortunately, Manston will not be the last time the UK government treats refugees appallingly. Sadly, the Home Office is likely to create another Manston (or force more people into it again) while claiming refugees are the problem – not it and its far-right policies.

    Featured image via Sky News – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Cleaners have successfully challenged outsourcing at London Bridge Hospital

    Radical trade union the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain declared a victory on 21 November. The union said that cleaners, catering and housekeeping staff at the private London Bridge Hospital have had success in their campaign against unequal conditions for outsourced workers.

    The union tweeted:

    Victory against outsourcing

    London Bridge Hospital is run by Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), which is the world’s largest private healthcare company. The US healthcare giant began operating in the UK in the 1990s. It now runs 30 health facilities here, including private hospitals. The company is pushing privatisation in both the US and the UK. HCA and its shareholders have made donations to both the Conservative Party and to Labour leader Keir Starmer. Meanwhile, in the US, the company also has a track record of connections to pro-privatisation politicians.

    The cleaners – who are mostly migrant workers – have been holding protests and organising against London Bridge Hospital’s unequal treatment of its outsourced staff, who are employed by multinational company Compass. These workers are paid significantly less than those directly employed by HCA.

    The union said that the move comes after whistleblowing by workers and multiple demonstrations outside HCA offices. Bosses have informed workers that outsourced staff will be moved in-house from 1 April 2023.

    “A big step”

    Marino, who is an outsourced cleaner at the hospital, said that the move is “a big step”:

    Despite risking our lives during the pandemic, we were treated like second-class citizens. We were forced to take on extra work and faced bad management from subcontractors who refused to listen to our safety concerns. Moving in-house is a big step forward in improving our working conditions and we expect HCA to give us the same terms and conditions as our colleagues.

    Marino added:

    But with the rising cost of living, we are still struggling to support ourselves. We want to build a future for our families, so we will continue to organise and fight for the pay we deserve.

    An inspiration for other outsourced workers

    Henry Chango Lopez, the general secretary of the IWGB, emphasised the importance of the cleaners’ victory for other outsourced workers in the UK:

    By coming together and campaigning for an end to this injustice, they have shown outsourced workers across the UK that workers have the power to bring an end to the scourge of outsourcing. We expect HCA to ensure that workers receive the same pay and conditions as directly employed workers.

    The campaign has already won the workers an increase in wages earlier this year, from £9.69 an hour to £10.50 an hour. However this is still well below the London Living Wage, so workers are continuing to organise and are demanding £12.50 an hour and full sick pay.

    The IWGB is calling for people to join their ‘solidarity squad’ to support workers’ future actions for better pay and conditions.

    Featured image via IWGB (with permission)

    By Tom Anderson

  • Technology developed by controversial CIA-funded data-miner to run NHS data programme

    Technology developed by US data-miner Palantir – owned by billionaire Peter Thiel – is to be used to manage a pilot of the new NHS Faster Data Programme.

    This is controversial because many of the company’s contracts are intelligence or military related. They include: the CIA, the FBI, NSA, the Marine Corps, the US Air Force, Special Operations Command, and West Point (US military academy).

    The NHS/Palantir deal

    Papers from a November 2022 NHS Digital board meeting revealed that NHS England is directing NHS Digital to use Palantir’s ‘Foundry’ technology to:

    collect patient level identifiable data pertaining to admission, inpatient, discharge and outpatient activity from acute care settings on a daily basis.

    Patients will not be allowed to prevent the transfer of their data to the new platform, because the data will be “pseudonymized”. However, that process is queried by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

    The papers predicted there would be media criticism of the deal:

    The use of Palantir to collect and process data by NHS Digital is likely to be perceived by some privacy campaigners as contentious and therefore there is a relatively high risk of media coverage and adverse comment about this.

    Contract “unlawful”?

    The instruction to NHS Digital was given despite a 2021 legal challenge by campaign group Foxglove and openDemocracy. Consequently, the government agreed not to extend Palantir’s 2020 contract beyond the coronavirus pandemic without public consultation.

    That original contract was to run the NHS datastore, worth £23m. A government blog provided a summary of the project. It encompassed a range of sources, including: 111 and 999 logged data; supply chain data; shielded patients list; Public Health England negative test results; patients listed as frail; NHS electronic staff records; coronavirus (Covid-19) related death information; coronavirus hospitalisation in England; surveillance systems; care home beds, and more.

    According to Big Brother Watch, datasets also included “racial or ethnic data”, “political affiliations, religious or similar beliefs”, “criminal offences, proceedings and sentences”, and data on “physical or mental health conditions”, as well as:

    • personal contact details (including name, personal email address, home address, home telephone numbers, emergency contact details),
    • personal details (including gender, nationality and place of birth)
    • work contact details (including work email address, work department, work telephone number, user IDs, work location details)
    • employment details (including job title, job duties, manager/sponsor, working hours, employee number)
    • any other personal data that might be useful for the nature and purposes of the Agreement

    This new instruction from NHS Digital is being justified as an amendment to the original contract. However, Foxglove director Cori Crider told the Register:

    We’re very concerned that this latest move to force more patient data into Palantir has been done with zero public input or consent. That’s not what we were told would happen in our case, and we’re seriously concerned it’s unlawful. The government will be hearing from us shortly.

    Controversial technology: tracking immigrants

    In 2016, it was revealed that Palantir was awarded a $34.6m contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE used Palantir software to allow:

    agents in the field to search through a fusion of law enforcement databases that include information on people’s immigration histories, family relationships, and past border crossings.

    Palantir also helped the Customs and Border Protection Agency create the Analytical Framework for Intelligence that “tracks and assesses immigrants” by gathering and analysing:

    biographical information, personal associations, travel itineraries, immigration records, and home and work addresses, as well as fingerprints, scars, tattoos, and other physical traits.

    In 2018, Palantir took in:

    more than $4.9 million from ICE on May 30, part of a $39 million contract that began in 2015. According to a government database search, the contract goes toward “operations and maintenance” of Falcon, Palantir’s proprietary intelligence database that tracks immigrants’ records and relationships.

    In August 2019, Palantir was awarded another contract with ICE worth $49.8m. Palantir’s software was used “to target and identify the families of unaccompanied children crossing the [US-Mexico] border in 2017”.

    Controversial technology: predictive policing

    The Verge reported that since 2012 Palantir – “founded with seed money from the CIA’s venture capital firm” – had been working with the New Orleans police department on predictive policing projects. Palantir used:

    an intelligence technique called social network analysis (or SNA) to draw connections between people, places, cars, weapons, addresses, social media posts, and other indicia in previously siloed databases.

    Palantir also provided predictive policing and related technology with:

    • The Los Angeles Police Department via the application of algorithms to target crime “hot spots” and “chronic offenders” (Wired reported how Palantir undertook similar deals with numerous US police departments).
    • The Danish national police and intelligence services to track potential terrorists.
    • California’s “fusion centers” – including the Joint Regional Intelligence Center – whose “databases would ultimately stretch far beyond terrorism, including everything from parking tickets to maps of schools”.
    • US Health and Human Services to detect medical fraud, and Homeland Security to monitor people as part of the ‘War on Terror’.
    • US special operations, including storage and analysis of a range of information, such as “cultural trends and roadside bomb data”.

    And back in the UK, the Metropolitan police also ran a trial of its predictive software.

    NHS admits risk

    Palantir technology was also used for a GCHQ project that sought to improve the agency’s ability to collect “tweets, blog posts, and news articles”. So perhaps it’s not surprising the NHS Digital board papers admitted that:

    This project does present reputational risk for NHS Digital, due to the sensitivity both of national data collections following the response to the GP Data for Planning and Research Programme last year, and previous negative media coverage surrounding NHS England’s use of Palantir for the COVID-19 Data Store.

    Indeed, the papers raise questions about privacy issues and why the government selected a surveillance technology company to manage patients’ data in the first place.

    Featured image via Flickr / Cory Doctorow cropped 770×403 pixels

    By Tom Coburg

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The German government is exposing the Tories’ war on the poor

    The German government has announced new measures to combat its cost of living crisis – exposing the Tories’ class war in the process. The German government’s actions show that governments don’t have to implement austerity as a knee-jerk response to financial crises. However, its agenda still isn’t perfect by any means – and could spell trouble for the future.

    Germany: borrowing its way out of crises

    As Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported, the German government is borrowing its way out of the cost of living crisis. Finance minister Christian Lindner stated on Tuesday 22 November that Germany will have to take on more debt than expected in 2023. He said this was to combat the energy crisis that has left Europe’s biggest economy facing “great economic uncertainty”. The government expects the German economy to tip into recession next year and shrink by 0.4%. It also thinks new net borrowing next year will climb to €45.6bn. This is more than double the €17.2bn it initially estimated. The budget plan will be discussed in the Bundestag lower house of parliament. It is set to be approved on Friday 25 November.

    However, Lindner stressed that Germany would return to its constitutionally enshrined “debt brake” in 2023. This limits annual new borrowing to 0.35% of gross domestic product (GDP). The government had lifted the debt brake at the start of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic in 2020. However, reinstating it has been a priority for Lindner, a fiscal hawk from the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP). Even so, the German government is refusing to raise taxes.

    Meanwhile, €200bn of the €300bn it will be borrowing is to help shield households and businesses from higher energy costs. Now, compare this to the UK Tory government’s response to the cost of living crisis.

    The Tories: more austerity

    UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced more austerity in his budget. As the Guardian reported, the Tory government will be cutting £28bn from public spending, as well as pushing through tax rises. Meanwhile, in the financial year 2022/23, the UK government has spent just £21.3bn on support for people due to the energy price chaos. It has also committed £40bn to business support. However, Germany’s €200bn spending dwarves this – even when you factor in its larger population.

    Hunt’s approach to the UK’s finances has been criticised by many. For example, think tank the New Economics Foundation pointed out the richest 10% are better off – while the poorest people suffer more:

    Meanwhile, professor of accounting Richard Murphy wrote that the government’s plan:

    has set up… the biggest potential economic disaster since way before living memory where household debt default will be commonplace and those owed the money – from banks, to landlords, to energy companies and more, will not be able to handle that. In other words, this will not just be a financial problem for the households involved in this disastrous situation: we face banking and corporate meltdowns too.

    So, the UK government is doing what it does best – protecting the rich while hammering the poorest – while Germany is spending far more without major cuts. However, while Germany’s approach is better, it is far from perfect.

    Germany; putting off the inevitable?

    As AFP reported, in order to keep Lindner’s commitment to the debt brake, the government has announced “special funds”. It considers these separate from the regular federal budget. Both will be financed by taking on new debt. Critics, including opposition parties, have decried the separate funds as a fiscal sleight of hand. But Lindner defended his 2023 budget – which will total around €476bn – as “solid”, and said there “was no alternative”.

    The government’s economic advisors said that Germany should temporarily raise taxes on higher earners to help finance the new spending. But Lindner again ruled out any tax hikes, saying:

    That would be extremely risky from an economic point of view and would be to the detriment of jobs and investment. Of course, Germany’s approach is far from perfect.

    Currently, Germany’s approach is all a bit ‘borrow now, worry later’ while making sure it also protects the richest people. Whilst that may bring relief in the short term, under the capitalist system the German government (like the UK ones over the past 12 years) will claim it will have to pay this borrowed money back at some point. So, Germany’s austerity may come eventually – just maybe not for the time being.

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

    Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse (AFP)

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Festival of Brexit ironically just like Brexit – a f*cking Tory disaster

    The so-called ‘Festival of Brexit’ was an unmitigated disaster according to new attendance figures. Just over 4% of the total number of people the organisers thought would attend, did – showing that essentially, most people really didn’t give a shit about celebrating everything that the Tories claim is great about post-EU Britain.

    Festival of Brexshit

    As Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported, the UK government-funded “Unboxed” festival to celebrate creativity after Brexit had fewer than three million visitors in eight months. Figures show that 2.8 million people attended UK-wide live events, well short of the 66 million projected by organisers – that’s around 4.2% of the total they hoped for. Unboxed has always denied any link to the UK’s divisive exit from the EU. The ‘Festival of Brexit’ name stuck after antiquated MP Jacob Rees-Mogg called it that. 

    The government gave the festival £120m in funding. Its free events included a disused oilrig turned into an art installation. However, executive director of the project, Phil Batty, has defended the festival. As BBC News reported, he said the Festival of Brexit has:

    been able to create joyful memories for millions of people in communities across the UK.

    Organisers said the total audience was 18 million, including 13.5 million who watched events online and on television, and 1.7 million who took part in youth activities. However, this hasn’t been enough to stop politicians asking questions.

    An “unadulterated shambles” – just like Brexit, then

    The National Audit Office, the UK’s independent public spending watchdog, announced last month that it would compile a report into the costs and benefits of the project. Its report is due to come out in the next few weeks. It was ordered after Conservative MP Julian Knight – chair of parliament’s committee for digital, culture, media and sport – condemned the festival as “an unadulterated shambles”. Oddly, this shambles was not dissimilar to the Tories’ Brexit itself – which MPs like Rees-Mogg wanted Unboxed to celebrate.

    For example, as Byline Times reported, one of the biggest negative impacts of Tory-defined Brexit has been on trade. It noted that:

    goods trade with the EU… was almost 25% lower in the first quarter of 2021 compared with the first quarter of 2018.

    Then, Byline Times also reported on how Brexit is also making the UK’s cost of living crisis worse:

    Fifty-six per cent of Brits have recently experienced food shortages on the shop shelves, according to a 2021 YouGov poll, compared to less than 18% among all other Western European countries.

    Moreover, recent polling shows 56% of people also think Brexit was the wrong decision – or maybe it was the mess the Tories made of it that’s the problem. Either way, the Festival of Brexit clearly didn’t ignite the public’s interest – and rightly so. The Tory white elephant was less about a festival and more about a cock-eyed PR stunt to shore up the idea Brexit would make the UK a colonial-era ‘Great Britain’ again.

    It serves them right that it was such a disaster – but as always, the public has to foot the bill for the Tories’ vanity projects.

    Featured image via Larry & Paul – YouTube

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Guardian just covered for Keir Starmer’s dog-whistle racism

    Keir Starmer has once again shown his party is no friend of migrants or refugees, this time during a speech to business leaders. But fear not – because the Guardian was there to make the Labour leader look a little bit less right-wing than he actually is.

    Starmer: dog-whistle racism again

    On Tuesday 22 November, Starmer delivered a speech to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference. There were various bits of dog-whistle racism, like the Labour leader saying Britain was “too comfortable” hiring foreign workers, and that this “low pay model” had to go because it “doesn’t serve working people”. However, the stand-out bit of right-wing rhetoric was when Starmer said:

    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’. His inference was fairly clear – even if it was dressed up with soundbites around hiring “skilled” foreign workers for certain jobs. However, Starmer hadn’t read the room at the CBI. Just a day earlier its head had said the UK needs more immigration to drive economic growth. So, what do you do if you’re Starmer, and not only are you sounding a little bit Farage-y but also at odds with the business lobby group you’re trying to court? Well, get the Guardian to whitewash your dog whistling for you.

    Enter the Guardian

    The allegedly left-wing rag covered Starmer’s CBI speech. However, it decided to lay cover for the Labour leader. It (probably intentionally) misrepresented what Starmer said, running with the headline:

    Keir Starmer vows to wean business off ‘cheap labour’

    The Guardian‘s Jessica Elgot provided similar cover in the opening paragraph. She framed Starmer’s “immigration dependency” as:

    Keir Starmer will say that UK businesses must wean themselves off “cheap labour” and that a low-pay model for growth is no longer working for the British people.

    It took her until the fifth paragraph to note what Starmer actually said. People on social media spotted what Elgot had done:

    Starmer’s right-wing centrism

    This isn’t the first time Starmer has used the language of right-wing racists and xenophobes thinking it will win Labour votes. As the Canary previously reported, his comments about foreign people working in the NHS were pretty appalling. On that occasion, the BBC covered for Starmer – altering a headline to make him look slightly less racist. Now, the Guardian has done similar.

    It’s almost as if Starmer’s brand of right-wing-courting centrism appeals to these outlets. This is unsurprising, given Labour’s lead in the opinion polls and potential for a general election victory. The likes of the Guardian and BBC, devoid of moral fibre, will court whoever wields political power – even if that means whitewashing their racist rhetoric. Of course, both outlets also helped ensure Jeremy Corbyn never got into power. Right-wing centrism wins every time.

    Featured image via the CBI – screengrab and the Guardian – screengrab

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Novelist Joanne Harris wins vote to remain in place as Society of Authors chair

    Novelist Joanne Harris recently won out against a vote which sought to remove her from her position as chair of the Society of Authors (SoA). The deliberation went in her favour by an overwhelming 608 votes to 143. The SoA describes itself as a:

    UK trade union for all types of writers, illustrators and literary translators, at all stages of their careers.

    On 17 November, the society held its Annual General Meeting (AGM). This attracted an unusual level of press coverage and public attention because of the recent criticism of Harris from fellow authors.

    Racist nonsense

    The accusations made against Harris were twofold. Firstly, His Dark Materials author Phillip Pullman focused on the SoA’s perceived reaction to memoirist Kate Clanchy’s 2019 work Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. Reviewers stated that Clanchy used racist, ableist, and often prejudiced language to describe the children she worked with as a teacher.

    When writers and commentators like Monisha Rajesh, Professor Sunny Singh and Chimene Suleyman criticised the book, they received a slew of racialised harassment. Pullman, in particular, commented under an unrelated tweet of Singh’s which he wrongly believed was about Clanchy. He likened the condemnation of the book to the views of the Taliban and Isis – a horrific comparison to make with regard to a woman of colour.

    Pullman was at the time the president of the SoA, though he resigned from the position, stating that he “did not feel supported”. The SoA released a statement distancing itself from Pullman’s actions. In a letter published in Private Eye, Pullman accused the society of adopting “a position of self-righteous neutrality”, and criticised Harris’ role as chair in particular. He also opined that the society itself “needs investigation, and investigation from outside at that”.

    Transphobic nonsense

    The other prong of the campaign against Harris began after fellow author Salman Rushdie was attacked with a knife onstage in August. Harris drew criticism when she posted a Twitter poll asking authors if they had ever received credible death threats. This was perceived as a sideswipe at JK Rowling, who had received threats after expressing solidarity with Rushdie.

    An open letter from Julie Bindel and others suggested that Harris was dismissive, and claimed:

    deep disquiet and anger at the Society of Authors’ abject failure to speak out on violent threats towards its members.

    A counter letter – also signed by many industry professionals – named Harris “a stalwart, fair, dedicated, and passionate” chair of the committee.

    Nevertheless, Bindel and nine other members tabled a motion to remove her from her position as chair of the SoA. They alleged that her actions were:

    not compatible with the society’s goals of protecting free expression and [its] policy of dignity and respect.

    A proxy issue

    Bindel and Rowling both stand accused of transphobia. This led many, Harris included, to believe that the vote was a kind of proxy battle for the society’s stance on its so-called ‘gender critical’ members. Harris said in a statement on Tumblr:

    Many of those who have joined the “debate” are not members. Many are not even authors. Nearly all are transphobes, though. Because that’s what all this is about.

    The issue of transphobia amongst members is quite rightly a personal one for Harris. She stated:

    I have a trans son. He came out very recently, and I haven’t discussed it online… I discovered that some of my principal detractors had found out about this. After talking to my son, and with his permission, I went public. I love my son more than words can say, and I didn’t want anyone to think that I was ashamed of him.

    In particular, she called out former academic Kathleen Stock, a prominent supporter of JK Rowling. Stock used Twitter to highlight Harris’ support for her son, as if this was some kind of ‘gotcha’. Addressing the issue, Harris went on:

    Kathleen Stock, among others, gloated that this was proof of my bias. She (rather chillingly) denounced me for having “undeclared trans-identified offspring,” and claimed that this was the “real” reason for my support of trans folk. Kathleen Stock finds it hard to believe that someone might uphold a principle without having a personal interest.

    Victory

    After Harris’ landslide victory against the motion for her removal, writers and onlookers took to Twitter to celebrate. The Chocolat author herself wondered whether the mainstream media would report her overwhelming success:

    Singh also took the opportunity to call out the clear bias of the press:

    And she speculated on the possibility of the SoA becoming free of its reactionary element:

    Meanwhile, Suleyman blasted the hijacking of the AGM:

    And fellow author Neil Gaiman offered his thanks for Harris’s hard work as chair:

    This victory illustrates the fact that, although a few reactionaries and bigots may dominate the headlines, they don’t win out when a broad section of the public is given an equal say. What’s more, this is by no means the first time that the alignment of racism and transphobia has been highlighted. It is good to see, at least, that people have been willing to speak out against the harassment directed against Joanne Harris. May she continue to do good work in support of authors in her position as a trade union chair.

    Featured image via InfoGibraltar – Wikimedia Commons, resized to 770×403 under licence CC BY 2.0

    By Alex/Rose Cocker

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Cowards England won’t wear armbands while Iran’s captain risks arrest

    England captain Harry Kane did not wear One Love armbands during their opening match. Meanwhile, Iran’s team captain Ehsan Hajsafi spoke out defiantly against his own state, potentially risking arrest. Spot the difference?

    Iran: 21 people facing the death penalty for protesting

    As the Canary previously reported, Iran has been shaken by over two months of protests sparked by the death of Kurdish-Iranian woman Jîna Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest for allegedly breaching the strict dress code for women. Agence France-Presse (AFP) noted that the Iranian state could sentence 21 people to death over the protests. Amnesty International says Iran put at least 314 people to death in 2021. Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) says the number of executions this year is already much higher, at 482 people.

    Campaigners warn that not only do the authorities plan to execute protesters on vague charges linked to alleged rioting or attacks on security forces during the demonstrations, but also step up hangings not related to the protest movement, notably of prisoners convicted on drug-related charges. Amnesty said the authorities’ pursuit of the death penalty is:

    designed to intimidate those participating in the popular uprising… and deter others from joining the movement.

    The strategy aims to “instil fear among the public”, it added, condemning a “chilling escalation in the use of the death penalty as a tool of political repression and the systematic violation of fair trial rights in Iran”. However, as well as people protesting inside Iran, World Cup players and staff of the Iranian team are also taking a stand.

    ‘We have to fight’

    SBS News reported Hajsafi said in a press conference:

    We have to accept the conditions in our country are not right and our people are not happy…

    We are here but it does not mean we should not be their voice or we must not respect them.

    He continued:

    Whatever we have is from them. We have to fight. We have to perform and score some goals to present the brave people of Iran with a result. I hope conditions change as to the expectations of the people.

    Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted his solidarity with Hajsafi, noting the captain also mentioned bereaved Iranian families:

    Hajsafi is not the only Iranian public figure to have recently taken a stand against the state. As Al Jazeera reported:

    Karim Bagheri and Yahya Golmohammadi, two former players for the national football team and current members of the backroom staff at the leading Iranian club Persepolis, were punished on Sunday for publishing posts in support of the protests on their social media accounts. Bagheri was fined 20 percent of his salary, while Golmohammadi was fined 15 percent.

    Two actresses, Katayoun Riahi and Hengameh Ghaziani, were also arrested on Sunday. They had filmed themselves without a head covering in support of the protests.

    England ‘cowardice’

    Meanwhile, Kane and the rest of the England team couldn’t bring themselves to wear a rainbow armband in case they got yellow cards. BBC News reported that:

    England, Wales and other European nations will not wear the OneLove armband at the World Cup in Qatar because of the threat of players being booked. The captains, including England’s Harry Kane and Gareth Bale of Wales, had planned to wear the armband during matches to promote diversity and inclusion.

    A joint statement from seven football associations said they could not put their players “in a position where they could face sporting sanctions”.

    “We are very frustrated by the Fifa decision, which we believe is unprecedented”…

    As one Twitter user summed up about Iran and England:

    Moreover, England’s cowardice has wider implications. As the Canary reported, a gunman killed five people and wounded 25 others in an LGBTQIA+ hate crime in the US. So, as one person tweeted:

    And, as writer Jackson King said:

    The English Football Association (FA) could have backed the England team, but failed to. The corporate capture of football is such that players dare not push the limits of protest too far for fear of losing money or advantages in the tournament. However, as the director of IHR Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam told the World Congress against the Death Penalty in Berlin recently:

    Unless the international community sends a very, very strong signal to the Islamic republic authorities, we will be facing mass executions.

    Clearly for the Three Lions, international solidarity with ordinary people comes a lowly second to their own careers – unlike Iran’s team.

    Featured image via WION – YouTube, Guardian Football – YouTube and Beanyman News – YouTube – background overlayed with separate images of the England captain and the Iran captain

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Royal Mail’s unacceptable offer leaves workers with no choice but to strike

    Royal Mail has thrown strike negotiations with the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) into chaos. It made an offer which the CWU said it couldn’t agree to. However, Royal Mail also issued an ultimatum: agree to the deal or it walks away from negotiations. Now the CWU is being forced to mobilise even further.

    Royal Mail: an unacceptable offer

    The CWU issued a press release late on 19 November. It said it had:

    been informed by Royal Mail Group CEO Simon Thompson that negotiations to find a settlement to the long running dispute on pay and change will end on Monday. This comes after the company presented documents to the union today (Saturday 19th November) with a deadline of Monday to agree to them.

    The press release followed an earlier tweet published by the CWU. It said that the documents, which were the Royal Mail’s updated offer to end the dispute, were something it “simply cannot agree to”:

    In a Facebook post, the CWU explained the situation more.

    Ridiculous demands for workers

    The union said Royal Mail’s offer made it “clear” it wanted to turn the company “into a gig economy style parcel courier, resourced over time through a self-employed model”. The CWU noted it also said:

    Royal Mail Group have refused to put in place any commitments whatsoever on job security and we believe they will now move ahead with compulsory redundancies.

    Then, the CWU detailed specifics of Royal Mail’s latest offer:

    • The pay offer remains inadequate and the 3.5% is not backdated.
    • Pay for Parcelforce – Nil.
    • Pay for Fleet – 3% – not backdated, alongside a demand to outsource Fleet work, leading to compulsory redundancies…
    • Ill health and sick pay slashed.
    • Allowances slashed.
    • Removal of Sunday premium payment.
    • A combined proposal on flexibility and seasonal variations that means the company will be in total control of when you work and when you don’t.
    • Later start and finishing times that will see the company abandoning the AM delivery period, forever denying growth opportunities and new products and services being developed.
    • Technology being used to bare down on and monitor postal workers every minute of the day….

    The union has also claimed that the company is demanding that:

    • the CWU withdraws support for members who have submitted employment tribunals for unlawful pay deductions during recent periods of strike action.
    • …local representatives and members must fully accept their revision proposals without any opportunity for these to be negotiated at local level.
    • …the CWU be removed from the workplace and will only recognise us in the future as a company union – there only to help introduce their plans.

    Meanwhile, Royal Mail CEO Simon Thompson has been mocking the CWU and its members on internal social media:

    Royal Mail strikes will continue

    The CWU has said that it will be consulting its members in the days leading up to Thursday 24 November’s strike. Plus, the union will be issuing a counter-proposal to Royal Mail. A CWU spokesperson said:

    Millions of customers and thousands of businesses are relying on the postal service. 120,000 postal workers are desperate to protect their terms and conditions. The next strikes are on Thursday – for the company to walk away from talks three days before that is reckless. We call on the government, media and all businesses to demand Royal Mail takes a serious attitude to these negotiations and matches the unions commitment to reach an agreement.

    As of 11am on 21 November the situation hadn’t changed, and it appears that the CWU and Royal Mail are now at an impasse. Thompson’s arrogance, as well as the company’s clear agenda, means workers either submit to their unacceptable demands or continue to strike. It’s clear which option the CWU and its members will take – and rightly so.

    Featured image via the CWU – YouTube 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Repression in the courts is failing to silence Palestine campaigners

    Palestine campaigners have been dragged through the UK courts over the last few months because of their intense direct action campaign against Israeli arms company Elbit Systems.

    Elbit is Israel’s largest private drone manufacturer, and manufactures the majority of the drones that the Israeli military uses to attack Gaza. It also manufactures small-caliber ammunition for the Israeli army. Campaigners have been have been taking action against Elbit for more than a decade. However, the direct action campaign gathered momentum after the formation of Palestine Action in 2020. Campaigners have vowed to push Elbit out of the UK.

    This week, three campaigners are standing trial in Southwark Crown Court, for an action in which they drenched the London HQ of Elbit Systems in red paint.

    The action contributed to the closure of Elbit’s London offices. Direct action also forced the closure of Elbit’s Ferranti factory in Oldham earlier this year.

    The campaigners are facing more than a dozen court cases against them over the next year, as a result of their persistent resistance against Elbit.

    Refusing to be silenced

    The state’s attempts to criminalise the campaigners haven’t slowed the pace of the solidarity campaign.

    On 12 November, two people entered the House of Commons and defaced a statue of Lord Balfour. The action was in commemoration of the 105th anniversary of the Britain’s 1917 ‘Balfour declaration’, which paved the way for the mass colonisation of Palestinian land, which was under the colonial rule of the British mandate at the time:

    Then, the offices of Fisher German, which is the landlord for Elbit’s Shenstone factory, were damaged twice this week:

    In Birmingham, people occupied Barclays Bank, calling for an end to investment in Elbit Systems:

    As we reported last week, a new anti-colonial rebellion is gathering momentum in Palestine. As Palestinians risk their lives to resist Israeli apartheid, it’s up to us to have their backs. The Palestine solidarity movement in the UK isn’t letting the unrelenting pressure from the police and courts stop its campaign of direct action. We need to stand with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, and defend those who are taking action here in the UK.

    Featured image is of the four campaigners standing trial in Southwark Crown Court for taking action against Elbit via Palestine Action

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Eggs are the latest thing supermarkets have a shortage of

    The government’s manufactured economic crisis means inflation has sent the price of ingredients soaring. On top of this, Britain is also contending with an outbreak of avian influenza. The result? A shortage of eggs. Two cut-price supermarket chains – Asda and Lidl – have had to start rationing how many boxes customers can buy.

    Risk to businesses

    Gursel Kirik, who serves up fried breakfasts in his cafe in central London, said a crate of 360 eggs cost him £20 to buy wholesale three months ago. Now, it sets him back £68.

    Kirik told Agence France-Presse (AFP):

    Everything is up – the energy bills, the goods we purchase. Every week it goes up so we’re really struggling.

    We can stay open for four or five months for sure because we know we’ll be able to pay our bills, but after that, I’m really worried we’ll be forced to close down.

    On Thursday 17 November, the UK government unveiled a painful new round of austerity – apparently to bring down borrowing and curtail inflation.

    Demand for eggs went up this year as people sought out cheaper sources of protein to offset soaring meat prices. Then, the bird flu outbreak worsened everything. Since 7 November, the government has required all poultry and captive birds in England to be kept indoors. That has limited the production of eggs, on top of mass culls of chickens in areas where the influenza has been detected.

    Supply shortage for Christmas

    A third of UK chicken farmers have already scaled back the production of eggs, according to industry groups. There are also warnings that the epidemic could threaten the supply of turkeys for Christmas.

    The British Egg Industry Council said that because of soaring input costs, and the refusal of retailers to pay farmers more for their eggs, “producers are struggling to break even”.

    The British Free Range Egg Producers Association protested after reports emerged that leading supermarket Sainsbury’s was importing eggs from Italy. Their chief executive Robert Gooch said:

    We have been warning for months that failing to pay farmers a price which allows them to make a profit would result in mass de-stocking or, worse still, an exodus from the industry.

    Seeing Italian eggs on the shelves is a wake-up call to all retailers that they can’t expect farmers to work for nothing.

    Enough is enough.

    Environment secretary Therese Coffey is attempting to play down the egg shortage. She told parliament on Thursday:

    But recognising there are still about nearly 14 million egg-laying hens available, I’m confident we can get through this supply difficulty in the short term.

    Brexit effect

    Earlier this year, Poultry News reported that regulation changes due to Brexit made the situation harder for dairy farmers:

    The egg industry is facing increased costs and logistical problems due to new rules for exporters now Britain has left the EU.

    Some products, such as liquid egg melange, which is usually exported to the EU for use in processing or manufacture, have been particularly badly hit.

    Industry experts are warning that the egg shortage could last well past Christmas. Experts have also said that while Brexit is not the “main driver of rising inflation”, it is still the case that this “has led to a substantial increase in food prices, which will hit the poorest families hardest.”

    This is on top of rising prices for bread, flour, pasta, milk, and cheese. Responding to latest chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s autumn budget, the Canary’s Steve Topple made the point that:

    The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said that even with the autumn statement, the UK is facing the worst fall in living standards on record.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Erol Ahmed

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Royal Mail staff are not the only postal workers striking: walk outs at the Post Office are coming

    Royal Mail staff have been hitting the headlines, and more strikes from the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) are imminent. However, they’re not the only postal workers striking – Post Office staff are also now set to take industrial action.

    Post Office strikes

    The CWU and its Post Office workers have been in an ongoing dispute with bosses for most of 2022. It’s over dire pay offers from the company. The dispute centres around workers rejecting a pay freeze for 2021/22. They also dismissed a pay offer of 5% with effect from 1 April 2022, plus a £500 one-off lump sum. The first strike was in May, followed by more actions over the summer. The last strike was at the end of September.

    As the CWU wrote on 29 September:

    With a six-month period since the result of the strike ballot (28th March) having been reached yesterday (28th September), the union is unable to call any further action until a new statutory ballot has taken place and the CWU will now being [sic] this process once again. Although, the new trade dispute will encompass pay years for both 2021 and 2022. The door of course remains open for the Post Office leadership to settle the dispute by putting forward an improved offer.

    Now, the CWU have held that ballot – and once again, workers have voted to strike.

    Everybody out

    The union said in a press release that Post Office workers:

    have voted in a national reballot by 91.24% on a 65.21% turnout to continue their industrial action. There was also a 92.36% positive vote (also on a 65.21% turnout) for “action short of a strike”, which in essence means working to rule (no overtime, and so on).

    So, what could this look like? As the Guardian reported, a previous Post Office strike in August involved:

    Staff who work in crown offices – the larger branches often sited on high streets – plus supply chain employees and admin grade workers.

    Around 1,500 Post Office workers were involved – and it’s likely that similar numbers will walk out again.

    “Betrayal”

    CWU acting deputy general secretary (postal) Andy Furey said in a press release:

    This dispute has always been about a company having respect for dedicated public servants who, as key workers, provided unprecedented customer service during the pandemic. The determination of these people hasn’t swayed, and nor has their sense of betrayal. They won’t accept their living standards being smashed by people running a service that generated tens of millions of pounds in profit out of our members’ efforts. There is more than enough money for a reasonable pay rise – implementing this real-terms pay cut has always been a management choice, not a necessity. We urge management to see sense, get into real negotiations and cut a fair deal to avert these strikes.

    The CWU has not said when the strikes will be – except that they’ll happen next year. It’s a damning indictment of the UK’s postal service that both Royal Mail and Post Office workers may well be striking at around the same time. That’s what happens, though, when successive governments privatise everything they can get their hands on – with the end result being a worsening service and terrible conditions for staff.

    Featured image via David Anstiss – Wikimedia, resized to 770×403 under licence CC BY-SA 2.0

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • This Bristol copwatcher is determined to hold the police to account

    Bristol Copwatch founder John Pegram alleges that police forces have breached his data – held on the police national computer (PNC) – numerous times. As reported by the Canary in February, Pegram seeks to take Avon and Somerset Police to court on the grounds that the force is in breach of data protection laws. He now also intends to develop a case against the British Transport Police (BTP) due to the force storing false information regarding gunshot residue on his possessions.

    Pegram is a longstanding anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigner, and founded grassroots police monitoring group Bristol Copwatch in 2020. He feels that police are targeting him due to his activism, as well as his identity as a mixed-race Black man. He’s concerned that police forces are not only storing but also sharing his inaccurate criminal records data, resulting in increased surveillance and over-policing across the country.

    Data protection

    As reported by the Canary in February, Pegram seeks to take Avon and Somerset police to court on the grounds that the force is in breach of data protection laws. Pegram’s criminal record incorrectly states that he assaulted a police officer. This means that the force is in breach of the 2018 Data Protection Act.

    Regarding the impact of the force’s abuse of his data protection and privacy rights, he told the Canary:

    In terms of trauma – they’ve done a lot of damage.

    Speaking to the Canary about Pegram’s case in February, Kevin Blowe, from police monitoring organisation Netpol, said:

    John’s case highlights Netpol’s long-standing concerns about the way inaccurate information retained on secretive police databases can have alarming real-world consequences. In John’s case, the wrong details on police records reinforces the stereotype of black communities as violent that is so prevalent in institutionally racist everyday policing.

    Indeed, Pegram’s case fits into wider patterns of the police’s surveillance of communities of colour through initiatives such as the Metropolitan police’s discriminatory gangs matrix. Established in the wake of the 2011 uprisings, the gangs matrix is a database which holds the personal data of people who the Met perceives to be ‘gang’ affiliated. It excessively and disproportionately targets young Black people. By 2017, 78% of people on the matrix were Black, despite just 27% of people convicted of serious youth violence offences being Black.

    Following a legal challenge by civil liberties organisation Liberty, the Met conceded that the way the gangs matrix currently functions is unlawful. This is on the grounds that it discriminates against Black people, and breaches people’s right to a private and family life by sharing data with third parties such as the Home Office, local authorities, and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Following Liberty’s challenge, the Met police agreed to redesign its matrix. And in October, Met police chief Mark Rowley removed the names of over 1,000 young people who the police perceive to pose little to no threat of violence from the database.

    Racist treatment

    Pegram suspects that the police have a “vendetta” against him, and have made his life difficult due to his longstanding involvement in anti-fascist and anti-racist campaigning across the country, as well as his grassroots community activism with Bristol Copwatch.

    Pegram explained that because of his work with Bristol Copwatch, he understands the extent to which police target activists, and particularly people of colour. While speaking with the Canary, Pegram highlighted parallels between his own experience and that of Bristol race relations adviser Ras Judah. Judah is a Black Caribbean community elder who Avon and Somerset police repeatedly harassed and tasered in 2017 and 2018. His experience of violent and racist policing in Bristol is depicted in a new documentary, I am Judah.

    Pegram is concerned that Avon and Somerset Police has shared intelligence on him, resulting in “racist policing responses” by other forces such as the Met and BTP.  He claims that other forces have infringed data protection regulations when collecting and handling his data, as well as his right to a private life.

    Pegram accused one BTP officer of “unsafe and racist” behaviour during his arrest and detention in 2019. Pegram told the Canary that while officers detained him in a police van, he voiced concerns about his racist treatment by officers, as well as the handcuffs being secured too tightly. According to Pegram, one officer responded by saying:

    I’ve not had to wait that long for a race card in a long time.

    And:

    The next person to beat that I’ll tell them about you. 40 minutes. You’re a hero to me.

    Pegram told the Canary that he found the experience to be “upsetting”, and characteristic of the police’s “discriminatory, institutionally racist approach”. BTP’s Professional Standards Department is currently investigating Pegram’s complaint regarding the arrest.

    Future policing

    Pegram stated that the BTP also “overstepped the mark” when processing his belongings following his arrest. Pegram suspects that the force sent his confiscated keyring to a crime scene investigation team. He suspects this because his property is recorded under the category of “Investigative samples/forensics – CSI Trace: Gun shot residue from CSI trace” on the force’s database. 

    Responding to Pegram’s complaint regarding this, a member of the BTP’s data protection team maintains that “there were no forensic actions undertaken in relation to the item”. They state that the force likely categorised Pegram’s property by mistake while transferring criminal records data from one management system to another. The force has not yet updated Pegram’s record to reflect this. However, Pegram believes that it is “unlikely that it was done by accident”.

    Either way, by altering Pegram’s criminal record without the legal grounding to do so, and failing to change his record to reflect the truth, the force could be breaching data protection regulations.

    Pegram is concerned that the inaccurate marker on his record could trigger further unfair treatment by police. He told the Canary that it implies to police that he’s “the sort of person that goes around carrying carrying a gun”. He’s concerned that this information will be shared between forces, and may impact future interactions with police. This could manifest in further surveillance, the excessive use of force, and encounters with “the sharp end of the armed police”. He told The Canary that this “is creating a lot of trauma and a lot of distress” for him.

    Pegram hopes to take legal action against the BTP regarding its potential breach of data protection regulations.

    On the path to justice

    Pegram told the Canary that through his experience, he has learnt that police “can say whatever they want about people” by holding inaccurate information on internal systems. He added that through these methods, police can “effectively ruin people’s lives if they want to”. Pegram’s concerns are heightened as the government seeks to increase police powers through cracking down on our right to protest.

    Although the ongoing ordeal has been “traumatic” and “stressful” for the activist, Pegram feels hopeful that he is now on a path “towards some sort of justice”.

    Regarding his case against Avon and Somerset Police, Pegram told the Canary:

    It’s not really about the compensation. It’s more about holding the police to account and ensuring they get the message they can’t do this to people. [9:39]

    In February, Blowe told the Canary:

    It has taken John’s enormous persistence to discover the false data that means he is routinely targeted and harassed by the police. Now, hopefully, he will raise enough funds to finally start to clear his name.

    Pegram is raising funds via CrowdJustice for the initial stages of his claim against Avon and Somerset Police. He is represented by Bindmans LLP.

    Featured image via Ethan Wilkinson – Unsplash

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The death of a toddler shouldn’t be a ‘learning experience’

    On 15 November, the inquest into the death of 2-year-old Awaab Ishak in 2020 concluded that the toddler died due to prolonged exposure to black mould in his family’s flat. Since 2017, Awaab’s family had complained to Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) about the damp and mould in their home, and had requested to be re-housed. RBH, the social housing association responsible for the Rochdale council flat, failed to take action. The toddler died on 21 December 2020, having been discharged from hospital two days prior.

    Unfit for human habitation

    A post-mortem examination revealed fungus in the toddler’s blood and lungs.

    Senior coroner Joanne Kearsley said:

    Awaab Ishak died as a result of a severe respiratory condition caused due to prolonged exposure to mould in his home environment.

    She added:

    Action to treat and prevent the mould was not taken. His respiratory condition led to respiratory arrest.

    Surveyor Daniel McVey, who inspected the property two days after Awaab’s death, told the court that it was unfit for human habitation. Despite this, RBH refused to rehouse Awaab’s family following his death. His mother was pregnant at the time.

    Responding to the inquest’s conclusions, the family’s barrister Christian Weaver shared:

    Racist treatment

    According to solicitors Kelly Darlington and Alice Wood, in the lead up to Awaab’s death, RBH suggested that his parents were responsible for the mould and damp in the flat due to their “lifestyle and bathing habits”. Highlighting the racist undertones of the association’s suggestions, Garden Court Chambers barrister Sonia Birdee tweeted:

    A statement written by Awaab’s parents addressed RBH directly, and the family’s lawyers read it out:

    Stop being racist. Stop providing unfair treatment to people coming from abroad who are refugees or asylum seekers. Stop housing people in homes you know are unfit for human habitation. We were left feeling absolutely worthless at the hands of RBH.

    No justice, no accountability

    At the inquest, RBH’s director of customer and community Nadia Khan said that Awaab’s preventable death has been a “big learning experience” for the association. Calling out this lacklustre response, social housing campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa tweeted:

    In spite of pressure to resign, RBH chief executive Gareth Swarbrick remains in his £185k-a-year position following the toddler’s death. He hasn’t apologised to Awaab’s grieving family. 

    Indicting all those responsible for Awaab’s premature death, Labour MP for Streatham Bell Ribeiro-Addy shared:

    According to a statement by Greater Manchester Tenants Union, Swarbrick landed a £41,000 rise in pay between 2019 and 2021. Highlighting RBH’s unsafe and unjust practices, the union stated that the social housing association is leaving “hundreds of good homes empty for demolition”. Disgusted, the union shared:

    We’ve seen this before

    In a statement, Swarbrick said that Awaab’s death “should be a wake up call”. But social housing tenants, including Awaab’s family, have been sounding the alarm for years.

    The circumstances surrounding Awaab’s death reflect those of the Grenfell Tower tenants. People living in Grenfell Tower repeatedly urged Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTO) to take action to change their unsafe living conditions. KCTO and the local council ignored these calls, and failed to take action which could have prevented the fire killing 72 residents.

    Grenfell United, a group of survivors and bereaved families from the Grenfell Tower fire, shared:

    The government promised change in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy. However, it hasn’t enacted any recommendations made at the inquiry.

    Furthermore, nine-year-old Ella died from asthma caused by the excessive air pollution in and around her Southeast London home in 2013. Her mother shared:

    Not an isolated incident

    Ahead of the inquest into Awaab’s death, Manchester Evening News reported that a number of flats on the same estate also had significant damp and mould. RBH is responsible for all the flats on the Rochdale estate.

    Landlords, councils and social housing associations are leaving families to languish in unsafe conditions up and down the country. Highlighting one case of many, Tweneboa tweeted:

    Sharing a thread of countless cases in which landlords, councils, and housing associations are ignoring tenants’ urgent calls regarding their dangerous living conditions, ITV News investigations correspondent Daniel Hewitt tweeted:

    Reminding us of who is ultimately responsible for the proliferation of unsafe housing in Britain, Shivani Sharma tweeted:

    We must see accountability at all levels for those responsible for the death of young Awaab. Now is the time for urgent action. It’s time to develop a housing sector that empowers communities, and ensures that every person can live in safety and dignity. This is the only way we will see an end to these unjust and preventable deaths.

    Featured image via Ben Allan – Unsplash

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Benefits increases in the autumn statement are still a real-terms cut

    Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced on Thursday 17 November that benefits will rise in line with inflation in April 2023. This includes the controversial benefit cap. While this may seem like a welcome move from the government, in reality it’s not as good as it seems. This is because people on benefits will still be no better off than in April 2021 – if not worse.

    Hunt’s autumn statement: what’s going on with benefits?

    As Martin Lewis’s Money Saving Expert reported:

    From April 2023, inflation-linked benefits will increase by 10.1%, directly in line with September’s CPI measure of inflation.This means, for example:

    If you’re a single person over 25 currently claiming universal credit, you’ll get an extra £33.83 a month, as your monthly allowance will rise from £334.91 a month to £368.74 a month.

    Commenting on Hunt’s announcement, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) said:

    Even with uprating, rates are at historic lows and households facing difficult times are increasingly not able to cover the essentials.

    As the Canary previously reported, the cost of living is out of control – and it’s hitting the poorest people the hardest. For example, in October the cost of pasta had gone up by 34% compared to a year earlier, and electricity and gas had gone up by a staggering 88.9%.

    Taking benefits back two years

    It sounds great on paper that the government is increasing benefits by 10.1% in April 2023. However, this comes after years of cuts. As the Canary reported in March, in the financial year 2022/23, think tank the Resolution Foundation said the government was effectively cutting £10bn in real terms from people’s benefits. This was because the increase in the rate in April was only 3.1%. The Resolution Foundation based this on a peak inflation rate this year of 7.6%. We now know that has been dwarfed – with inflation hitting 11.1% in October.

    The Resolution Foundation said that for 2023/24, if benefits went up again by inflation, then based on its calculation the real-terms value of them would return to April 2021 levels. The point being, this is what has now happened – albeit at a higher rate than what the Resolution Foundation forecast, but with higher inflation to boot.

    So actually, all Hunt is done is taken the value of people’s benefits back to the level of April 2021 – if that. People who are reliant on them will not see any major improvement in their finances – life will just be slightly less terrible than it could have been.

    Token gestures

    Money Saving Expert also reported that:

    The overall benefits cap (the maximum amount you can get in benefits) will also rise with inflation from £384.62 a week to £423.45 a week if you’re in a couple and or a single parent, and from £257.69 a week to £283.72 if you’re a single adult.

    That’s an increase of £38.83 for people with children. Again, this means little in the real world. As the Canary previously reported, successive governments have kept the benefit cap the same for years – meaning that it has effectively cut the benefits of people affected (outside of London) by £260 a week. Thirty-eight quid in no way makes up for this.

    The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said that even with the autumn statement, the UK is facing the worst fall in living standards on record. So, Hunt’s increase to benefits is not really much of an increase at all. There are still numbers to be crunched – but it’s immediately clear that actually, the government’s autumn statement has merely been a little less cruel for the poorest people than it could have been.

    Featured image via the Telegraph – YouTube screenshot and Wikimedia Commons/UK Government 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Another windfall for arms firms after pipeline attack fuels underwater surveillance concerns

    Arms firms could be in for a windfall in the wake of an underwater attack on a Russian pipeline. The defence media has reported that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) is preparing to pursue new underwater surveillance technology. The move follows mysterious leaks in the Baltic sea’s Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2022, which some have claimed were a result of an attack.

    The Nord Stream incident has seen a Royal Navy ship guarding critical underwater infrastructure in the North Sea amid fears of further sabotage.

    Windfall

    Defense News, a military media outlet, has now reported that the tenders for new security equipment are being prepared. They reported on 16 November:

    Britain plans to boost its undersea capabilities in the face of growing threats from Russia, with the Ministry of Defence preparing to release tender documents in the next few weeks aimed at purchasing a deep-water remotely operated vehicle.

    And the estimated costs run into the millions:

    The Defence Equipment and Support arm of the MoD is currently in the process acquiring the remotely operating vehicle in a program likely to cost the British £20 million, or $24 million.

    The main effort seems to be the purchase of an underwater drone – a spokesperson for the MOD confirmed to Defense News that the search is underway.

    Underwater warfare

    Drones have come to prominence as airborne weapons. Some, such as the iconic Predator drone, have become synonymous with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. War crimes and clandestine military practices have also been a major feature of the rise of drone warfare.

    Underwater drones are an emerging field. In 2020, the US and the arms firm Boeing developed an unmanned submersible with astonishing capabilities:

    The 15.5-meter long Echo Voyager has a range of nearly 7,500 miles. It has also deployed at sea up to three months in a test, and theoretically could last as long as six months.

    Supposedly, Voyager also can dive as deep as 3,350 meters—while few military submarines are (officially) certified for dives below 500 meters.

    The British have also been developing underwater drones. The Royal Navy and Royal Marines carried out tests in July 2021.

    A new battlefield

    Drones have long been connected with air warfare. However, the sea is also becoming a battlefield for unmanned systems – and arms makers are poised to cash in on this growing field.

    As new regions of the earth become terrain in a global battlefield, more resources will be poured into initiatives which do nothing to solve the real security issues faced by humanity: capitalist crisis, authoritarianism, and climate change.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Petty Officer 3rd Class Michael Scichilone, cropped to 770 x 403.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The CWU was right, as Royal Mail continues its ‘gross mismanagement’

    The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) has been in a protracted dispute with Royal Mail. It’s over pay and working conditions – but also about the direction the company is taking. CWU general secretary Dave Ward has called it the “gross mismanagement”. Now, it looks like he was right – as Royal Mail has just allowed notorious gig economy employer Evri to move into its business territory, just as it reported losses of £219m.

    The CWU: an ongoing dispute

    The ongoing dispute between CWU members and Royal Mail has seen various twists and turns. The company first proposed a paltry pay offer of 5.5% – but that was dependent on staff agreeing to worsening terms and conditions. The workers refused this – so Royal Mail said it would make 6,000 people redundant and strip 4,000 more jobs on top.

    Then, it offered workers a 7% pay rise – still far below the rate of inflation. However, the CWU still wouldn’t budge. So, Royal Mail took a legal route, which briefly meant the CWU had to pull some strikes. This didn’t last long, and workers are now back to walk outs again.

    The union will now continue strikes planned for Thursday 24, Friday 25, Wednesday 30 November, and Thursday 1 December. The CWU said in a press release that while it recognises that progress in recent negotiations has been made in some aspects, Royal Mail management failed to put any commitments into writing. Meanwhile, the chaos at the company continues.

    Evri: an example of “gross mismanagement”?

    Ward said in a press release:

    No business making record profits of £758m in May this year should now be losing over £1m a day in a matter of weeks without gross mismanagement. The truth is that the current senior leadership of Royal Mail have been treating employees, union representatives or future investors with a lack of integrity and transparency. Dramatic errors of judgement have been made, like announcing 10,000 job losses to threatening striking workers, abandoning previous agreements and handing over £567m to shareholders while neglecting the pay of employees who generated that profit.

    A perfect example of Royal Mail’s gross mismanagement has come to light. As the Daily Mail reported (please don’t click the link), former Royal Mail business the Post Office has done a deal with Evri. That’s the company formerly known as Hermes, which did a rebrand and name-change to try and clean-up its poor reputation. In March 2022, the Post Office ended an exclusive deal it had with Royal Mail, where only the latter would deliver parcels. Now, the Post Office has struck a deal with Evri. It will be trialling a self-service from the company in 50 branches. As the Daily Mail noted, this is the first time in 360 years that the Post Office has got anyone other than Royal Mail to deliver parcels.

    Evri (when it was Hermes) was a notorious gig economy employer. Workers had to take it to court in 2018 to win proper employment rights – and even after this, still had to fight for further, basic protections. Its workers are still classed as “self-employed plus” – and only won pension and parental leave rights this year.

    Royal Mail: “reckless”

    Overall, the question remains: how has Royal Mail stood by while the Post Office has outsourced delivery services for the first time in 360 years?

    Ward said in a press release:

    Many things remain unexplained, like giving up Royal Mail’s household name in favour of ‘International Distributions Services’, refusing the union’s offer to escalate negotiations and ignoring the unrivalled network of Royal Mail Group to create new financial opportunities. We firmly believe these reckless decisions have been informed by power struggles in the boardroom, in the full knowledge of a potential future takeover bid – backed up by the government’s green-lighting of VESA to increase their shareholding.

    Meanwhile, on Thursday 17 November, Royal Mail reported six-month losses of £219m. It blamed the strikes (naturally), and also a drop in the number of parcel deliveries. So, the company looks even more “reckless”,  as Ward said, letting Evri start to scoop up even more of its parcel business via the Post Office.

    “Couldn’t care less”

    As Ward summed up:

    Postal workers need a deal that works for them, the communities they love and the industry they loyally serve, not one that covers up for CEO and boardroom failures. The CWU – or this country – will never accept Royal Mail becoming another Uber-style gig economy courier. 32 million households and countless small businesses are relying on this dispute to be over for the Christmas period. The pattern of behaviour displayed by Royal Mail top brass suggests they couldn’t care less about resolving any of this.

    The Post Office deal with Evri sums up bosses’ gross mismanagement at Royal Mail. The company is floundering while bosses make knee-jerk decisions – even considering begging the government to let it deliver letters just five days a week. Royal Mail has become a clusterfuck. It’s little wonder, then, that workers have had enough.

    Featured image via Lionel Allorge – Wikimedia, resized to 770×403 pixels under licence CC BY 3.0, and Evri – screengrab 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Canary has launched a Mastodon independent media server

    The Canary has never been an organisation to sit quietly on the sidelines. So, with Twitter’s freefall into chaos, the team has decided to take the initiative and look elsewhere. The first thing we’ve done is launch an independent media server on Mastodon, a decentralised social platform. There’ll be other left-wing media outlets on it too – with some familiar faces already there. And of course, you’re all invited to join it too.

    Twitter’s new corporate overlord

    If you’ve missed it, Twitter is a bit of a mess. Well – it’s more of a mess than usual. As the Canary‘s Curtis Daly wrote:

    Free speech has been saved! Elon Musk has bought Twitter for a measly $44 billion. He is now our new corporate overlord.

    Aside from the ‘paying for a blue tick‘ saga, Daly noted:

    Musk has begun to lay off workers at Twitter, with the staff number reduced to around 7,500

    A lot of people aren’t happy with this – and Mastodon has already become the go-to replacement.

    Welcome to Mastodon

    The social media site has already tweeted that one million people have joined it since Musk’s Twitter takeover:

    As Digital Trends wrote, Mastodon was launched in 2016:

    by developer Eugen Rochko. And while it does share similarities with Twitter, it was designed out of frustration with Twitter’s shortcomings. Many of Mastodon’s key features could be seen as efforts to correct (or avoid) certain issues Rochko felt Twitter struggled with.

    It also went on to say:

    Mastodon calls itself “decentralized social media.” But what does that mean? Essentially, it means that Mastodon is not owned by one company as Twitter is. Mastodon is instead a social media platform that is made up of independently-run servers (known as “instances”), the members of which can still communicate with members of different instances.

    When you first sign up for Mastodon, you’re expected to join one of these instances. Creating a Mastodon account only happens from within them. Once you pick one to join, that’s when you’ll be presented with the application/account creation process. Each instance has its own set of rules and many of them are focused on specific interests.

    Corporate control-free?

    So, Mastodon appears to be free from corporate control – currently. It’s not as quick as Twitter, granted, and looks quite basic. However, it’s also not as restricted. It appears it’s up to individual servers to moderate content. But Rochko doesn’t look like he’s messing about, either:

    The Canary knows that quite a few people from our Twitter community have already joined Mastodon to complement Twitter, not to move away from it. So, we’ve decided to join in with our own server. You can join it here: https://independent-media.co.uk/

    Now, if you’re already on Mastodon using a different server but want to join ours, Screen Rant has helpfully explained how to do that:

    First, start by signing up for an account on the selected server. Once the new profile is created, sign in to the new server’s profile from a web browser. Select ‘Preferences’ from Mastodon’s homepage and open the ‘Account’ tab. Scroll to the ‘Moving from a different account’ option and click on ‘create an account alias,’ where Mastodon will prompt the user to type in the old account’s handle. This step does not do anything until the old account initiates the next step. When the aliases are created, sign in to the old account and navigate to the ‘Account’ tab. Now scroll to ‘Move to a different account’ and select ‘configure it here’ to begin the migration steps. Input the new account’s handle and the old account’s password, then hit the blue button that says ‘Move Followers.’ There is also a way to redirect the account without moving the followers by selecting the ‘Only put up a redirect on your profile’ link. Users should read the fine print for each option before making any decisions regarding redirection or moving servers.

    We’re also proud to say other independent media outlets have already joined the server. Unity News, Evolve Politics, and Milk The Cow Podcast have all got on board – with more outlets to follow – and we only launched on 16 November. So, you’ll be able to start accessing all the radical news you need in one place.

    Stop moaning, start organising

    It’s always difficult starting new things. However, the joy of Mastodon is that it’s not dissimilar to Twitter – and it’s user-friendly. Moreover, it’s an opportunity to break away from the perpetual corporatisation of social media. As Daly summed up for the Canary:

    the larger point isn’t about the fact that Elon Musk is simply an asshole, it’s the fact that one man can wield so much power. Giving one sole billionaire control of speech on a huge platform, to use it as a plaything when the website has been an important tool – not least for journalism – should never have been allowed to happen.

    So, instead of just moaning about Musk, let’s do something positive. Mastodon could bear fruit – so, why don’t we give it a try?

    Join the Mastodon independent media server – and make sure you follow the Canary too: https://independent-media.co.uk/invite/X5oAD7tP

    Featured image via Mastodon – screengrab and the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Richard Burgon already nailed the Tories’ autumn statement live on the BBC

    On Thursday 17 November, chancellor (and disgraced former NHS chief) Jeremy Hunt will deliver the Tory government’s autumn statement. It’s quite predictable that it will be austerity for most of us. However, a former member of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet has already given his alternative budget – and he did it in around 20 seconds. To sum up? Tax the rich.

    More austerity from the autumn statement

    Hunt’s budget is looking dire already. People are predicting the Tories will:

    In other words, they’ll hammer most of us with yet more austerity and income cuts. Interestingly, Hunt is also reportedly going to increase taxes which only the rich usually have to pay – like Capital Gains and on dividends. However, he hasn’t confirmed whether he’s removing the cap on bankers’ bonuses – and of course, if you ferret your money away to an offshore tax haven then a lot of this won’t affect you, anyway.

    Effectively, the Tories will now have been implementing austerity and pay cuts for over the best part of a decade – if not longer. However, a Labour MP has a clear strategy for what the government should be doing – and the Tories won’t like it one bit.

    Burgon’s budget – tax the fucking rich

    Richard Burgon was Corbyn’s shadow justice secretary. He didn’t mess around then – from taking down Nigel Farage to dragging right-wing imperialists on Question Time – and he doesn’t mess around now. Back at the start of November, Burgon appeared on BBC Politics Live. He was discussing the prospect of more Tory austerity. However, Burgon came prepared for the interview. He had already written out an alternative autumn statement – and delivered it in around 20 seconds live on TV.

    Burgon’s autumn statement said that the Tories should:

    • End non-dom status (those offshore tax avoiders we mentioned earlier).
    • Create an annual 1% wealth tax on people with over £5m in the bank.
    • Set the income tax threshold for people earning £80k or over at 45p, and for those over £125k it should be 50p.
    • Make capital gains and dividend tax rates the same as income tax rates.

    Burgon said all this would raise £40bn – which is how much the government needs to find immediately in its autumn statement (if you believe Tory maths):

    However, the Tories won’t do any of this in the autumn statement. Keir Starmer’s Labour wouldn’t do any of it either. So, it looks like the rest of us will have to cope with years more Tory cuts to public sector spending and our personal finances.

    Featured image via the Telegraph – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

  • The Tories are actually the ones dragging us back to the 1970s

    On Wednesday 16 November, the Tory government dragged the country back to the 1970s – even though it was supposed to be Jeremy Corbyn that would do so with his nationalisation and public spending. But no, the Tories have taken us back nearly fifty years – and the reason for this is inflation.

    Red scare

    Who can forgot the right-wing media’s response to Labour leaking its election manifesto in 2017? As HuffPost reported at the time, the likes of the Telegraph and the Daily Mail had a go at Corbyn’s plans:

    Of course, a Corbyn-led government might have partly avoided the mess we’re now in. However, lets forgot the 2017 Labour manifesto and instead look at the party in power – and the mess they’ve made. It’s one which has now seen inflation hit some of its highest levels since the 1970s.

    Flares, disco, and a three-day working week: back to the 70s we go

    The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on the morning of 16 November that inflation had increased to 11.1% in October. Inflation in this context is the Consumer Prices Index (CPI). The ONS said that food, housing, and energy prices were driving the rise in inflation. It noted that specifically for housing and housing costs (which includes energy), the increase was the highest on record – beating the previous one set in 1975. The ONS said that:

    In October 2022, households are paying, on average, 88.9% more for their electricity, gas, and other fuels than they were paying a year ago.

    It’s a similar story for food, with the ONS saying the increase in those prices is the highest since 1977:

    Food inflation October 2022

    When we look in detail, it’s food staples that are hammering people. The table below shows that things like bread, flour, pasta, milk, cheese, and eggs have all increased in price by percentages higher than overall inflation:

    Detailed inflation increases

    As always, it’s poor people hardest hit by inflation. The ONS noted that the cost of petrol and diesel had continued to fall – the only area of inflation where there was a significant decrease:

    Changes to inflation by indices

    As the Canary previously reported, the fall in petrol prices benefits the rich most – as the majority of poor people don’t own cars. So, the inflation chaos is all looking very Tory – and it’s only going to get worse.

    A bleak outlook for many

    Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is giving his autumn statement on Thursday 17 November. This is where he’ll set the government’s economic policies. People are predicting that Hunt and the Tories will:

    What this means is that the Tories are going to be hammering most of us with more austerity and income cuts. On top of skyrocketing inflation this will likely tip countless more people into destitution. We’ve got to this point largely thanks to the Tories – be it their disastrous Brexit, Liz Truss’s self-made economic carnage, or the decade of austerity and wage-squeezes which preceded all this. And now, we’re leaving it to them to try and get us out of this mess. 1970s Corbyn seems quite nice now, doesn’t it?

    Featured image via Steve Topple – screengrab and Richard Townshend – Wikimedia, cropped under licence CC BY 3.0

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • It’s Anti-Bullying Week and Dominic Raab shows the Tories don’t give a sh*t about it

    2022’s Anti-Bullying Week is running from 14 to 18 November. In 2020, the then-Tory government had a minister make a speech to mark the occasion. However, this year the silence has been notable. Fitting really, given the Tories are embroiled in an ever-worsening bullying scandal themselves – with Dominic Raab now at the centre of it. Raab has asked for an inquiry into the complaints and as the Guardian report:

    It follows a series of allegations, reported by the Guardian and other publications, that a civil servant and others found Raab’s manner could be demeaning and overly abrupt, and that this did at time feel like bullying.

    Anti-Bullying Week

    The Anti-Bullying Alliance (ALA) runs Anti-Bullying Week. It says on its website that:

    Bullying affects millions of lives and can leave us feeling hopeless. But it doesn’t have to be this way. If we challenge it, we can change it. And it starts by reaching out.

    ‘Reach out‘ is the focus of this year’s events. The ALA said that this:

    came about following consultation with teachers and pupils by the Anti-Bullying Alliance which coordinates Anti-Bullying Week every year in England and Wales. Teachers and children wanted a theme that empowered them to do something positive to counter the harm and hurt that bullying causes.

    However, the Tory government has clearly not been listening to Anti-Bullying Week sentiment – it’s up to its neck in accusations of horrible, appalling behaviour.

    Successive Tory governments: riddled with bullies like Raab

    The previous Liz Truss-led administration was no stranger to bullying – with senior Tory MPs physically manhandling others to try and get them to vote in a crucial debate. And, under Rishi Sunak the allegations of bullying have come thick and fast. Gavin Williamson has been accused of disgraceful behaviour towards other MPs and civil servants. This included telling a civil servant to “slit your throat” and “jump out of the window”.

    Of course, this is nothing new. Under David Cameron, the Tory Party had to conduct an internal investigation into one of its members over bullying. In a report, Mark Clarke was accused of bullying 13 people. In 2018, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed there had been over 500 complaints in three years by civil servants in government about bullying or sexual harassment towards them.

    However, it now appears that the rot in heart of government is still entrenched. Civil servants and others in government have accused justice secretary Raab of bullying. Now that he’s asked for an investigation into himself it would appear that he’s set to deny the allegations.

    Civil servants: had enough

    As Sky News reported, the union for civil servants, the FDA, is saying that the government has a bullying problem. Sky News reported that:

    Dave Penman, chair of the FDA union, said concerns have been raised about the conduct of other ministers…

    He said civil servants do not raise official complaints because they do not feel they will be taken seriously because of the way the complaints system works.

    Asked by Sky News’ Kay Burley to confirm if civil servants have told the union that several ministers in Rishi Sunak’s government have behaved inappropriately towards them, Mr Penman said: “Yes.”

    And asked if that behaviour was bullying, he said it was.

    Penman gave Priti Patel as an example. As Sky News noted, Patel:

    was found to have bullied staff but Boris Johnson, the prime minister at the time, did not respond for six months and then dismissed the findings.

    It’s of little wonder that other civil servants have recently voted to take strike action, given the toxic work culture they have to tolerate.

    No responsibility whatsoever

    The ALA says that anti-bullying work:

    doesn’t stop with young people. From teachers to parents and influencers to politicians, we all have a responsibility to help each other reach out. Together, let’s be the change we want to see. Reflect on our own behaviour, set positive examples and create kinder communities.

    The Tories have done none of this. They should be ashamed to be in government during Anti-Bullying Week – especially with a senior minister currently facing such accusations.

    Featured image via the Anti-Bullying Alliance – screengrab, Richard Townshend – Wikimedia, cropped under licence CC BY 3.0, and Chris McAndrew – Wikimedia, cropped under licence CC BY 3.0

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Anti fascists are calling for a boycott of the Scotland vs Turkey game

    The Scottish football team is set to play against Turkey on 16 November, but critics are calling for a boycott of the match.

    The ‘friendly’ game will take place in Diyarbakır stadium, in Bakur – the part of Kurdistan that lies within Turkey’s borders. One third of Sur, the old city of Diyarbakır, was destroyed by Turkish forces after local people rebelled – declaring autonomy from the the state – in 2015. The destroyed area has been intentionally gentrified by the state in an attempt to break the solidarity of the people of the city.

    The Boycott Turkey Campaign made the following statement, calling for a boycott of the Scotland vs Turkey game, and of tourism in Turkey more generally:

    Scotland v Turkey should be condemned for what it is: an extension of the [Turkish] state’s assimilation policies and an attempt to bury the struggle for freedom.

    The so-called UK government encourages domestic defence industries to partner with Turkish militarism. Their geopolitical partnerships will never pave the way to freedom, in Europe or the Middle East.

    Boycott the game and Turkish tourism. 

    In solidarity with the imprisoned.

    “Generations of genocide”

    The campaigners continued, explaining why there is a need for a boycott:

    In Turkey, the Kurdish people are the country’s biggest ethnic minority at around 20% of the population. They have faced generations of genocide, and every part of Kurdish identity, culture and language is attacked. Today, there are around 10,000 Kurdish political prisoners in Turkish prisons.

    [T]he Turkish state is attacking all left wing social movements in Turkey as well as the Kurdish people as a whole. The state is also drone-striking, bombing and gassing the guerrilla in the mountains and assassinating civilians and defense forces of the revolutionary autonomous area of Rojava / North-East Syria, which is putting the Kurdistan Freedom Movement’s anti-imperialist, revolutionary socialist principles into practice.

    Local football fans arrested for waving the Kurdish Flag

    The Boycott Turkey campaign’s statement said that Amedspor, one of the local football teams in Diyarbakır, was fined in 2014 for using Amed, the Kurdish name for the city, as part of the team’s name.

    Furthermore, six Amedspor fans were arrested for waving the Kurdish flag and chanting pro-Kurdish slogans at a match in September 2022. The Turkish Interior Ministry said at the time that they were arrested for “engaging in an act of terrorism by waving the flag of an imaginary country”.

    During the same month, a further 19 Amedspor supporters were arrested for refusing to stand during the Turkish national anthem.

    According to Boycott Turkey:

    Amedspor members and fans are not only targeted at home, but also by assassination attempts and attacks from far-right fans across the country. The team’s treatment by the state and the nationalist right-wing reflects the attitude towards Kurdish people and liberatory politics as a whole.

    Football fans in Amed have even been water cannoned by Turkish security forces during matches.

    A lifetime ban for expressing political beliefs

    One local player has received a lifetime ban from competing for expressing his political beliefs. While the Turkish military’s brutal repression against cities in Bakur was still ongoing in 2016, former Amedspor midfielder Deniz Naki received a 12-match ban for dedicating the team’s win against Bursaspor to the people who had been killed by Turkish state forces. He also had to pay a fine, and received a suspended prison sentence. He later received a lifetime ban for views he expressed on social media.

    This kind of ban is only enacted when the political beliefs expressed are critical of the state. For example, in 2019, the Turkish national team repeatedly performed salutes before matches, in support of the Turkish state’s invasion of Northeast Syria. The players persisted with these salutes, even after complaints from UEFA.

    Support the boycott, and stand with the struggle for freedom

    Kurdish academic and author Dilar Dirik explained why it is so important to boycott Turkey. She wrote:

    “Boycotting Turkey is not merely an attempt to economically disrupt a billion-dollar business empire that profits from massacre, authoritarianism and intimidation. It is also an ethical stance against the exploitation, terrorization and annihilation of the Kurdish people and other communities, targeted by the nationalist state mentality of Turkey. Boycotting Turkey means saying NO to the normalization and white-washing of dictatorship and genocidal politics.”

    It’s important that we oppose the match tomorrow. Radicals in the UK have long supported a boycott of Israeli apartheid in support of the Palestinian struggle – now we need to also extend that solidarity to our Kurdish comrades.

    Featured image via Dûrzan cîrano/Wikimedia Commons (resized to 770x403px) – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Stormzy slams the smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn

    Musician and rapper Stormzy has reiterated his support for former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – saying if the MP is a “villain” then “shit’s madder than I ever thought”.

    Stormzy: Corbyn “gets it”

    Stormzy threw his weight behind Corbyn’s Labour in the 2017 and 2019 general elections. In 2017, the musician said of Corbyn:

    My man, Jeremy! Young Jeremy, my guy. I dig what he says. I saw some sick picture of him from back in the day when he was campaigning about anti-apartheid and I thought ‘yeah, I like your energy’. I feel like he gets what the ethnic minorities are going through and the homeless and the working class.

    Stormzy was also part of the #Grime4Corbyn campaign, which aimed to get young people to support Labour. The feelings were mutual – with Corbyn presenting him with a GQ award in 2019. Now, Stormzy has given another interview to GQ Magazine. Once again, he has praised the former Labour leader – and also dragged his opponents.

    Writer Gary Younge asked Stormzy how he felt about Labour’s 2019 election loss. The musician said:

    It’s like when you encourage children to make the right decision and they make the wrong one even after you’ve explained everything. And you think, A’ight, that’s your decision… you try have your cake and eat it then… Even the way things have panned out… I’m not gonna say I told you so, but…

    Of course, things have panned out disastrously since the 2019 election – with successive Tory governments waging class war against the rest of us. So Stormzy’s reaction should not be surprising. However, the musician also pointed to a deeper issue with how Corbyn’s time as Labour leader panned out.

    “Superheroes against evil villains”

    As the Canary has documented, the corporate media vilified Corbyn. Members of his own party worked against him to ensure he was defeated. Keir Starmer booted him out based on the manipulation of a report into antisemitism under Corbyn’s tenure, and now Starmer is refusing to let Corbyn back in as a Labour MP. Meanwhile, the Tories have been busy wrecking the country. So, yeah – Stormzy is a bit pissed.

    He told Younge:

    It was really disheartening. I just thought so highly of him and I still think so highly of him and I think, Well if they can make him out to be a pagan then things are worse than I thought. I mean if he’s the villain in the grand scheme of things, then shit’s madder than I ever thought because whatever your politics or your policies, that’s one thing. But in terms of his intentions they were 100 per cent for good. I mean, if we’re talking about superheroes against evil villains, I know he was for good. And the way people spun it, I just thought, Wow, this is scary.

    Stormzy’s comments probably sum up the feelings of many people. The UK is on its knees – but it could have been so different.

    Featured image via On Demand Entertainment – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.