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Category: UK

  • More than 90,000 people ‘die in poverty in UK every year’

    More than 90,000 people die in poverty in the UK every year, new estimates suggest, prompting campaigners to warn that society is facing a “cost-of-dying” crisis.

    Working-age adults are twice as likely to die below the poverty line as pensioners, according to research from Loughborough University commissioned by the end-of-life charity, Marie Curie.

    The estimates suggest that in 2019, the latest year for which data are available, more than 90,000 people died having experienced poverty in the last year of their life – around one in seven of the total number who died.

    This comprises 68,000 pensioners and 25,000 working-age people who died, from any cause.

    Dying in poverty

    More than a quarter (28%) of adults of working age who died were estimated to have been in poverty, compared with 13% of those who died having reached pension age.

    The research also suggests that women, parents with dependent children, and people from ethnic minority groups are more vulnerable to poverty at the end of their life. Meanwhile, across the UK, the risk is greatest in Wales.

    The researchers used a definition of poverty from the Social Metrics Commission that takes into account people’s “inescapable costs” such as childcare. They also said poverty can both increase the risks and be a consequence of ill-health and subsequent mortality.

    This applies to those whose whose average income over the last three years (after accounting for core living costs such as childcare, housing, and disability) was less than 54% of the average UK income minus these costs.

    ‘Cost-of-dying crisis’

    Marie Curie said the figures – the first of their kind – are “shocking” and “nothing short of a national indignity”.

    The charity is calling for the state pension to be given to dying people of working age so that they do not miss out.

    It welcomed recent Government steps enabling people with a year or less to live to be given fast-tracked access to benefits. However, it also said that the system is failing to keep working-age people out of poverty at the end of their lives.

    People who are terminally ill and have jobs face having to reduce their hours or give up work altogether. This is accompanied by added costs such as higher energy bills, paying for home adaptations, and funding care.

    Marie Curie’s report, Dying In Poverty, said:

    This report shows that the UK is also facing a ‘cost-of-dying crisis’, with many more people affected by terminal illness at risk of falling into poverty as a result of lost income, higher prices and a working-age benefits system that is increasingly failing to safeguard people from poverty at the end of life.

    An undignified end

    Chief executive Matthew Reed said it “cannot be right” that terminally-ill people of working age miss out on their desperately-needed state pension:

    simply because they are not ‘old enough’ when they die.

    He said:

    No-one wants to imagine spending the last months of their life shivering in a cold home, struggling to feed themselves, their children, and burdened with the anxiety of falling into debt.

    But for 90,000 people a year that is their reality. It’s a far cry from the end of life that we’d all hope for.

    We are staggered to see the scale of poverty among dying people. Simply put, it is shocking.

    Melanie Armer, 48, who lives in the Scottish Highlands, was diagnosed with terminal metastatic bone cancer in March 2021.

    She said:

    My biggest fear is that I won’t have enough money to sustain us.

    I have a seven-year-old son and we’re having to cut back on food, electricity and gas.

    We’re having to now see if we can get nurses to come round and take my bloods here instead of going to the hospital – just to try and save money on petrol.

    ‘Shamefully high’

    According to the research, 28% of working-age women who died in 2019 had experienced poverty in the last year of their life, up slightly from the proportion of men in this group.

    This rises to a “shamefully high” 42% among working-age people from minority ethnic groups, compared with 25.4% of white working-age people.

    Juliet Stone, from Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Social Policy, said:

    Our research, for the first time, not only tells us how many people die in poverty but shines a light on who these people are, where they live in the UK, and the triggers, such as terminal illness, which push them below the poverty line.

    Although we expected to find an increased risk of poverty at the end of life, we were shocked to discover the extent to which this is happening across the UK.

    She added that the pressures on people who experience poverty at the end of their lives will only increase as the cost-of-living crisis deepens.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Counter-terrorism cops fail in their application for a Control Order against a UK anarchist

    Imprisoned UK anarchist Toby Shone won a hearing last week in Bristol Crown Court. Toby’s lawyers were contesting an attempt by the head of the police’s Counter Terrorism Division to obtain a Serious Crime Prevention Order (SCPO) against him.

    Toby’s arrest was part of a wider police operation known as ‘Operation Adream’.

    The Canary interviewed Toby from his prison cell prior to the hearing. You can read the interview here.

    Original Charges

    Toby was originally put on trial for terrorism last year. The charges – which were never proven – related to the 325nostate.net anarchist website. The original allegations were that the 325 website – which published reports of direct action – contained material ‘that would be useful to terrorists’, and that the site fundraised for ‘terrorist activities’.

    The Canary wrote at the time:

    [Toby’s] case is comparable with the 1997 Green Anarchist/Animal Liberation Front – or GANDALF – trial’, which accused the editors of Green Anarchist magazine and the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group newsletter of “unlawfully inciting persons unknown to commit criminal damage”. However, Operation Adream went one step further by charging Toby with terrorism.

    Along with the allegations mentioned above, the prosecution also claimed the 325 website was involved in distributing terrorist publications, saying that some of the material on the website fell into this category. Toby told us that the prosecution focused on a piece of writing by Italian anarchist Alfredo Bonnano called What are Anarchists?, as well as material in solidarity with two Italian anarchist prisoners. Other site content featured in the failed prosecution included letters published on 325 by imprisoned members of Greek anarchist groups Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF) and Revolutionary Struggle. These groups are not illegal in the UK, but the prosecution’s case hinged on the argument that CCF were a continuation of another group called 17 November – a group initially set up in Greece in the 1970s to resist military rule. November 17 is a prohibited group in the UK.

    Initial terrorism case falls apart

    The terrorism case against Toby fell apart in October 2021, with the Crown Prosecution Service formally offering no evidence and the court recording a ‘not guilty’ verdict. However, Toby was convicted of a comparatively minor drugs offence relating to possession of a relatively small quantity of illegal substances with intent to supply. He was sentenced to 3 years and 9 months in prison.

    Despite the fact that Toby’s conviction had nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, the Counter-Terrorism police applied for an SCPO upon his release.

    So what’s a Serious Crime Prevention Order?

    SCPO orders can be imposed by courts on people who have been convicted of ‘serious’ crimes. The orders are designed to severely limit people’s freedom by – in the words of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) – imposing “conditions considered appropriate for the stated purpose of protecting the public from serious crime”.

    The CPS lists the crimes that qualify for the imposition of an SCPO order on its website. The list includes “drug trafficking”, but the crime has to be deemed by the court to be ‘serious’ in order for an SCPO to be imposed.

    A ridiculous and repressive list of restrictions

    The planned SCPO order would have come into effect when Toby was released from prison, and aimed to place significant restrictions on his freedom. The draconian measures included having to notify the police of where he planned to live, if he planned to stay elsewhere overnight, and if he planned to have any visitors. It would also have banned him from using Linux operating systems, VPNs, and any encrypted communications. Toby would have had to register any laptops, mobile phones, or USB storage devices with the police.

    We spoke to Toby back in April, and he told The Canary how the SCPO would affect his life:

    The SCPO is a method to keep me under continuous five year investigation, and de facto house arrest. It is simply a method of repression, which is intended to intimidate me, my family and my friends. To criminalise and place under surveillance those I’m close to, and to try to force me to change the way I choose to live, and with whom. It is an attempt to force me to use cashless banking and payments. To control my use of phones, USBs and computers. Stop me using encryption and stop me from using any form of open source software such as Linux. And to stop me from using crypto currencies.

    Toby went further, and said that the order was a ploy designed to put him back in prison as soon as possible. He told The Canary:

    The order is not really intended to be complied with. It’s been drawn up in such a way as to be impossible to submit to. The aim of the ‘Anti Terrorist Unit’ is to put me back in prison as soon as possible after I am released, and try to frighten me from speaking out about what the endgame is.

    Toby Shone, you are not alone!

    A demonstration was held outside Bristol Crown Court on Friday 6 May in solidarity with Toby. Supporters chanted “Toby Shone, You are not Alone!” and “Our passion for justice is stronger than your prisons”.

    Supporters tweeted:

    A statement from Toby’s supporters implies that the prosecutor was feeling confident that he was going to win. They said:

    …there was a moment when it felt to everyone that it was going to go badly for our comrade. His lack of remorse and his commitment to anarchist practice, community and beliefs were cited as the risk factors necessitating continued persecution. The prosecution apparently believed they had won and Toby was quietly asked by his barrister if he would consider negotiating the terms of the Control Order in an attempt to mitigate it. Toby refused to agree to any form of negotiation, insisting that his team continue to fight the order in totality and in principle whatever the decision of the court.

    Living ‘off-grid’

    Thomas Coke-Smythe was tasked with the job of making the Counter-Terrorism division’s case for the Control Order. He denied that the SCPO was being applied for on the basis of the failed terrorism charges, instead claiming that they were to prevent Toby from continuing to fund his “alternative lifestyle” by dealing drugs. He said:

    [the defence case is that] the only reason the SCPO order is sought is because of the terrorism offences not proceeded with. That’s not the case. It’s clear that Mr Shone lived off-grid and relied on dealing drugs for his lifestyle, he had no legitimate source of income.

    Owen Greenhall –  a defence barrister acting for Toby – argued that the order would be an unacceptable imposition on his daily life. Greenhall said that encrypted communication was a common “feature of modern life”, with everyday apps such as WhatsApp using encryption. He argued that the requirement to notify police whenever Toby used cloud storage would mean that he would have to tell the police about every time he used a new piece of cloud storage software, such as Dropbox, Microsoft Drive or Google Drive, and to provide police with the pincodes for the accounts.

    Banning the use of TOR

    The order would also have restricted Toby from using The Onion Router (TOR) and other VPN services, which the prosecution referred to as the “dark web”. Greenhall pointed out that there were many perfectly lawful uses for TOR. He gave the example that the BBC website had suggested that its users in Russia use TOR in order to get around the Russian state’s censorship efforts.

    The prosecutor dismissed statements by Toby’s friends, who were complaining that the order would affect their lives, as “paranoia”. However, a statement by Toby’s supporters reads:

    The order would also have allowed cops and court to send his family, friends or other associates to prison for up to a year if they refused to cooperate with the terms of the order such as handing over their devices for police scrutiny if Toby had used them.

    Greenhall pointed out that the terms of the order would have meant that, if Toby was to live in a shared house, everyone visiting the house would have had to provide their details to the police. This would apply both to people visiting Toby, and to those visiting other residents.

    The judge eventually ruled in favour of the defence case. Toby’s supporters wrote:

    …after a 40 minute deliberation, High Court Judge Christopher Parker refused the order on the first count of No Necessity. He added that he was troubled by an order whose author was a Counter-Terror Unit and to whom Toby would be directly answerable, given that Toby had been found Not Guilty of terrorism charges and was serving a sentence for relatively minor drug offences. In any event, the order, he said, was draconian even for terrorist offences.

    “The revolution is inevitable”

    The Canary asked Kevin Blowe from the Network for Police Monitoring to comment on the result of the hearing. He said:

    We welcome the court’s rejection of the vindictive efforts by counter terrorism police to try again to punish Toby Shone after the terrorism charges against him collapsed.

    Their proposed Serious Crime Prevention Order would have given police wide ranging powers to indefinitely control his life on release from prison. It would have represented an extraordinary restriction on his free speech and his right to meaningfully participate in political activism

    Toby left the court amid clapping and cheers from the public gallery. As he was about to be led downstairs to the cells, he said:

    The revolution is inevitable

    “We’ll turn up the heat”

    We spoke to Toby from his prison cell in HMP Parc in Bridgend after the hearing was over. He asked us to share this statement:

    Thanks to all those who came to express their solidarity and rage at Bristol Crown Court on Friday. After 15 months of solitary confinement it was the most amount of comrades seen in a long time. Your strength and warmth stays in the heart.

    This was a major defeat and humiliation for the anti-terrorist prosecutors and police, but we should not rest easy. A state methodology has been put together which they will still use to attack others in the anarchist space when they can. Operation Adream is also still not closed and so we should remain ready. There are many lessons to be learned here and more complete analysis will come out in time.

    I am due for release in late December, and will be on license until November 2024. The prison Offender Management Unit confirmed to me that the Anti-Terrorist unit still intend to keep me under surveillance after my release. I’m sure they’ll try to take revenge, but with the love and complicity of all the comrades we’ll turn up the heat.

    Liberty and discord are one and the same.

    Toby concluded:

    Always unrepentant and always anarchist, nothing is over. Everything continues.

    Featured image via Twitter/VolterineDeclare

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Mother-of-four left in tears at having to choose between food or gas

    A mother-of-four has described how she “broke down in tears” having to pick between food and gas, as the cost-of-living crisis continues to pile pressure on families.

    Phoenix, who chose not to disclose her surname, from Crystal Palace in south-east London, said her children are being denied simple things like sweets due to the cost.

    The 33-year-old told the PA news agency:

    There’s been so many times where I’ve just broken down in tears because of having to choose between gas or food.

    My children are being denied the small things in life, like having a sweet from the shop. It’s not nice having to say no to your children.

    It has affected my emotional wellbeing… it’s enough to make you not want to be here anymore.

    Government “not helping”

    She relies on benefits and said the rising cost of living has affected everything, including her children’s education:

    I’ve gone without gas for three or four days because I’ve gone from putting on £10-£15 a week, to having to put on £30-£40 every four days

    That is a lot of money to be putting on, the rising costs just affect everything in your life, whether you’re on benefits or not.

    Even with petrol, £20 used to get me around 100 miles but these days I get around 70-80 miles maximum and then it’s gone.

    She also said:

    I have a lot of health problems at the moment and I’ve had days where I have to walk my kids to school which has made them late, or they’ve had to miss whole days.

    Households are facing soaring energy bills, inflation is forecast to hit 10% and welfare payments and wages are falling far behind the increase in prices.

    On Tuesday, the Prime Minister came under fire over a lack of short-term measures in the Queen’s Speech to help people facing soaring costs.

    In response, he warned the Government cannot “completely shield” people from the rising cost of living.

    Phoenix said the lack of support has left her feeling “helpless” and she criticised the Government.

    She said:

    I feel like (the Government) is not helping and I feel like they are playing games with us.

    I think if they had kept to their promises up until now, we probably wouldn’t even be in this situation, but they always give us false hope.

    I’ll be so honest, if I had known everything I know now back then, I probably would have chosen not to have children.

    I feel helpless and I wouldn’t want them to live this life.

    By The Canary

  • The DWP is facing an inquiry into disability assessments

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is currently the subject of an inquiry. It is about the department’s controversial health and disability assessments. The inquiry is ongoing, and it’s still asking people to submit evidence. So far, people have given some damning testimony.

    DWP: under the spotlight

    Parliament’s Work and Pensions Select Committee is investigating the DWP. As it stated, its inquiry will be looking at:

    the assessment processes for health-related benefits. These include Personal Independence Payment (PIP), Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), Disability Living Allowance (DLA), Attendance Allowance and Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit. The Committee is focusing on how the… [DWP] can improve the application and assessment processes for these benefits.

    We’re focusing on:

    • How DWP could improve the quality of its assessments;
    • Lessons from the pandemic, including whether changes DWP made to the assessment processes then should continue;
    • How DWP could make applying for benefits more straightforward for claimants

    The DWP makes people do these assessments to judge how ill or disabled they are. It then decides what rate of health/disability-related social security it will give them. However, the assessments have been controversial.

    Assessment controversies

    As The Canary has documented, the DWP’s assessments – both the Work Capability (WCA) and health ones – have been linked to at least 590 people taking their own lives. Around 90 people a month died between December 2011 and February 2014 after the DWP said these people were fit for work, often after a WCA. In 2016, the UN said of the DWP assessments process:

    the needs, views and personal history of persons with disabilities, and particularly those requiring high levels of support such as persons with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities, were not properly taken into account or given appropriate weight in the decisions affecting them.

    There are also the individual cases. Stephen Smith died of pneumonia, weighing just six stones and barely able to walk. At that time, the DWP had said he was fit for work. Smith had to get a pass to leave hospital so he could challenge the DWP’s decision. He is just one of countless deaths on the DWP’s watch.

    More evidence

    Now, the committee wants to look into the assessments further.

    So far, it has held several meetings and gathered evidence. It held a meeting on Wednesday 11 May where the committee heard evidence from:

    • The British Medical Association.
    • Charity Carers UK.
    • Marie Curie.
    • Disability Benefits Consortium.

    And the evidence people have already given the committee is damning.

    DWP: “inaccurate assessments and unfair decision making”

    For example, the campaign group Chronic Illness Inclusion gave its thoughts on the processes. It represents people living with conditions like myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), a chronic neuroimmune disease. ME is often classed as being an energy-limiting condition (ELC). Chronic Illness Inclusion said of the DWP’s assessments:

    ELCs limit both cognitive and physical activity in relation to work and daily living activities. But the descriptors for mental, cognitive and intellectual function in the WCA, like the activities of communication in PIP, can only be applied to certain diagnoses, according to the published guidance for assessors. This means assessments are effectively based on a person’s diagnosis, not on how their condition affects them, which is contrary to the stated aim of a functional assessment. This leads to inaccurate assessments and unfair decision making.

    The committee still wants more evidence. It has a list of questions it would like people to answer, which you can read here.

    DWP assessments have been failing chronically ill, sick and disabled people for years. The committee’s inquiry marks another battle in the ongoing class war meted out by the department. The more people give the committee evidence, the better the overall inquiry will be. However, if you wish to get involved, you only have until 19 May to do so.

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

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • “Green champion” Charles announces bill to lock up climate protesters

    By Ralph Underhill

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Coalition of groups highlights concerns about South Asian Heritage Month

    A number of activists and community groups have put forward an open letter that shares their concerns about this year’s planned South Asian Heritage Month. The month will run from mid-July to mid-August with a theme of ‘Journeys of Empire’. Its site explains:

    From empires such as the Mughal, the Duranni, the Vijayanagar and the British, from indentured labourers forced to travel to the Caribbean to the journeys that South Asian families made to the UK with just £3 in their pockets, we have all been affected by the journeys of empire.

    However, some activists and groups have shared a number of concerns regarding both the organisation and the delivery of the project.

    The Canary spoke to The Rights Collective to ask why it put the open letter together:

    The Rights Collective team decided to write the statement on SAHM because, after our confusing experience with the organising body in 2020, we started to hear from others who were being excluded, ignored or actively harmed by SAHM. Some people tried to reach out to the SAHM team because there was a sense of wanting to be able to talk through our concerns and possible alternative approaches. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much engagement from SAHM. It didn’t feel, to us, like they were ready to have that open dialogue or to co-create something better, something that actually challenged the systems of oppression that our communities live in.

    South Asian Heritage Month had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication. However, it is still important that we have an open discussion about how to make events like this welcoming for as many South Asians as possible.

    Open letter

    The ongoing impact of colonialism is something which white British people, in particular, repeatedly fail to reckon with. As The Canary’s Afroze Fatima Zaidi wrote:

    why is learning about British colonial history so important? Haven’t we moved on and left those attitudes in the past, where they belong? The short answer is: no. Having history, any history, taught truthfully is an important goal in itself. But with colonialism, it becomes even more pertinent, given the lasting damage it has caused and its ongoing legacy.

    South Asian Heritage Month’s choice to look at coloniality is an important one and is sorely needed in Britain. However, the open letter brings forward a whole host of concerns which bear reflection.

    The Rights Collective – a group of feminist South Asians – published the open letter. It also made it clear that it had already tried to address these concerns with the organisers of the heritage month. It made the point that disagreements are welcome:

    We are not a monolith and, as such, our experiences and perspectives will not be uniform. In that vein, it is also okay if you disagree with some of this statement or if you have had a different experience.

    The level of racial literacy is so poor in Britain that every marginalised group is often treated as a monolith. As such, when concerns arise within communities, these are often missed entirely by the mainstream media. So, what are the problems listed by the Rights Collective?

    Indian-Pakistani influence

    The Rights Collective noted that the core team of organisers behind South Asian Heritage Month:

    • are of west and north Indian heritage;

    • are from higher socio-economic / class backgrounds;

    • benefit from caste privilege;

    • tend to be located in or around London;

    • are considered able-bodied, neuronormative and heteronormative; and/or

    • are light-skinned and play into their proximity to whiteness.

    It also explained that this led to a bias towards Indian and Pakistani content throughout the month. This is often the case with events that label themselves as ‘South Asian’.

    The collective also noted that South Asian Heritage Month’s apparent exclusion of Kashmir speaks to the wider problem of erasure:

    We need to make equal room for Kashmiri and other marginalised voices. In this case, by choosing not to engage critically on topics relevant to Kashmiris, SAHM has missed an opportunity to explore topics such as the Indian military occupation of Kashmir, its subsequent colonisation by India, the role of Kashmir in facilitating and embedding Hindutva ideology across India etc.

    This also highlights what happens when cultures are treated as monoliths. South Asia is not one single thing. And the complex politics within the continent involve the deprivation of the working classes, an ignorance of the struggles of Kashmiri people, the erasure of Bangladeshi culture, and much more.

    The WOC Azadi Collective, one of the signatories, told The Canary about how harmful erasure of different types of South Asians is:

    The South Asian diaspora also does not just exist in South Asia, and it is troubling that the heritage of South Asian people across the globe, such as Afro-Asians and Indo-Caribbean people for example, seem to have been erased by SAHM.

    For a South Asian history event to be successful, it is vital that we confront both the spectre of colonialism and how colonialism has facilitated the cultural privileging of India and Pakistan at the expense of other parts of South Asia.

    Caste and colourism

    Another pattern which is common for South Asian representation in the West is the platforming of light-skinned South Asian people. Colourism is complex, and an event like South Asian Heritage Month would seem like the perfect opportunity to discuss how it affects our communities. Again, colourism has its roots in colonialism. The closer someone’s skin is to whiteness, the easier it is for them to move through the world. South Asian Heritage Month’s choice of ‘Journeys of Empire’ as a theme is vitally important. However, that journey must involve confronting colourism, or it fails to understand a central part of empire.

    The Rights Collective also brought up a lack of discussion around caste-based discrimination. It said:

    By holding a month-long series of events about South Asia without mentioning caste, SAHM simply reinforces the idea that caste-based discrimination and harm is not important…Within SAHM, the voices centered are those of dominant caste individuals, who by virtue of their positionality can already exert a considerable amount of power and privilege.

    Disability rights

    The Rights Collective noted that Chronically Brown – a disability organisation – was set to deliver an event for South Asian Heritage Month last year, but:

    After significant lack of communication in the build-up to the event, the event was removed on the day by SAHM without the Chronically Brown team being informed.

    It detailed how contact from the organisers at South Asian Heritage Month was last-minute and ignored accessibility requirements. It said:

    The performative action of trying to host such an event without actually taking a disability justice approach was not taken well by Chronically Brown or the panellists invited to take part.

    Generally, disability groups tend to erase, exclude, and ignore disabled people of colour. To see allegations that an organisation like Chronically Brown was treated in such a manner is frustrating and infuriating.

    Black History Month

    The Rights Collective also spent some time sharing its concern for the motivations behind the heritage event:

    The SAHM founders have shared that Black History Month’s existence was a major catalyst for them, leading them to question why there isn’t an equivalent for South Asian people.

    It explained:

    While we absolutely support learning about our history and heritage, modelling our own endeavours on the long-standing political work of Black people does not sit well with us, especially when SAHM itself seems to shy away from political or anti-oppressive approaches itself.

    Indeed, at last year’s heritage month, one event promised to look at the relationship between police and race. The Rights Collective said that this event:

    seemed to be framed more for improving police relations than critiquing the systemic violence enforced by such bodies.

    It is, sadly, becoming all too common for non-Black people of colour to wait until Black heritage events are running to complain about wanting events for their own communities. The least that South Asian Heritage Month could have done in this instance was to engage critically with colourism and anti-Blackness in South Asian communities, and to provide events which cover just that.

    Given how widespread and sharp anti-Blackness is globally, it is wholly unacceptable to cite Black History Month as an influence without doing any work that addresses anti-Blackness meaningfully.

    The Good Immigrant

    The Rights Collective’s open letter gave more detail on how attempts to address the above issues have not been picked up. It expressed its hope for the future that this may change:

    This is also not an attack on those who chose to participate, but a critical lens we wanted to provide for people to think through on their own. We know the amount of effort and time that goes into organising something like this, and we are hopeful about the potential this initiative holds to be truly educational, celebratory and even transformative for our communities and beyond.

    There are certainly valuable and worthy elements of South Asian Heritage Month. The Rights Collective and the signatories of the open letter, however, are pushing for a more radical politics that would help to more fully capture the legacy of South Asians in Britain.

    It said:

    we would love to see more of our radical history incorporated and focused on during SAHM 2022, looking at events such as uprisings in Northern mill towns, interrogating how privileged class and caste folks in the UK have impacted the state today… with recognition given to South Asian-led grassroots organisations.

    Playing the role of the good immigrant who only wants to talk about the food and clothes of South Asia does a disservice to the people who actually eat the food and wear the clothes of their ancestors. In Tory Britain, where South Asians are often amongst the poorest and most marginalised people, we need collective radical action that brings forward too-often-hidden discussions about what it’s like to be South Asian in Britain.

    Featured image via Youtube screenshot/South Asian Heritage Month

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Woman who felt pre-judged by the right wing media is cleared of urinating on a police officer

    Last Summer Indigo Bond’s photo was plastered over the pages of right-wing newspapers. She was accused of urinating on a police officer.

    However, on 10 May, a jury at Bristol Crown Court found Indigo not guilty of public indecency.

    Indigo was arrested after the 21 March 2021 confrontation between the police and Kill the Bill protesters outside Bristol’s Bridewell Police station. She was 19 at the time. Indigo is also charged with riot, and the jury is still deliberating over its verdict for the riot charge at the time of writing.

    You can read The Canary‘s previous coverage of her case here and here.

    A predatory bootlicking mainstream media

    Predatory tabloid photographers snapped pictures of Indigo outside her court appearance last year. Her picture ended up being published by the likes of the Bristol Post and The Sun.

    Indigo’s supporters said prior to her trial that she had already been judged by the mainstream media (MSM). The news of her arrest resulted in her being kicked off her course – which she loved – in Circus and Physical Theatre.

    The right-wing media’s treatment of Indigo was indicative of the MSM’s approach to the Bristol Kill the defendants. The MSM swallowed the rhetoric of the cops and the Tories whole. Protesters were called a “mob of animals” by Avon & Somerset Police, and ‘thugs’ by Priti Patel.

    In fact, the protesters of 21 May were fighting for our freedom, and against an ever-encroaching police state

    The MSM shamefully published the wanted pictures of Indigo and her fellow demonstrators, to aid the police’s efforts to arrest protesters. It wasn’t only right-wing tabloids that published the wanted list, the Independent stuck the boot in too.

    Eliza Egret wrote for The Canary wrote at the time:

    Being featured in a police press release doesn’t mean a person has committed a crime, yet it does scare people. Governments of domination rely on fear to keep their populations obedient. By publishing these images, the media is helping the state to control its people by attempting to make them so terrified that they won’t dissent.

    Accused of urinating on a police officer’s boots

    Indigo has been on trial in Bristol Crown Court since 2 May, accused of urinating on a police officer’s boots.

    Indigo denied the charge, saying in evidence that she had a weak bladder, and had relieved herself on the street as there were no public toilets accessible nearby.

    Two police officers – PC Rogers and PC Hume – gave evidence to the effect that Indigo had deliberately peed on them.

    However, defence barrister Russell Fraser pointed out several inconsistencies in the officers’ evidence, including that one officer said Indigo was wearing a skirt when she plainly wasn’t. Fraser argued that the “mechanics” of the alleged urination on the police line didn’t seem physically possible from one of the officer’s descriptions. He said that Indigo just “needed to urinate plain and simple”.      

    The jury in the case announced a majority verdict of not guilty on the afternoon of Tuesday 10 May.

    They are still considering their verdict for the riot charge against Indigo.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons / Pixabay

    By Tom Anderson

  • The media ignored research showing their part in the class war

    The corporate media, as well as most of its independent counterparts, have ignored a report into the industry. It shows that it has become even more dominated by the richest people. In short, amid the ongoing class war in society, the media is enacting its own version – by shutting its doors on the poorest people. But at The Canary, we’re doing something about it.

    Media: it’s an issue of class

    The National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) publishes a yearly report on diversity in journalism. Its 2022 report found that, broadly, the industry is like the rest of the working population in terms of the number of people from protected groups and minorities in it. Not that this is good enough. Because the majority of journalists are still white. And the proportion of editors who are white is above the rest of the working population.

    But the major discrepancy in the figures is class.

    The NCTJ’s research uses the government’s Labour Force Survey as its basis. It divides workers up according to the various occupational groups of their parents. These are (from highest to lowest):

    • Managers, directors and senior officials.
    • Professional occupations.
    • Associate professional and technical.
    • Administrative and secretarial.
    • Skilled trades.
    • Caring, leisure and other service.
    • Sales and customer service.
    • Process, plant and machine operatives.
    • Elementary occupations.

    The NCTJ report states that this grading system is:

    one of the key determinants of social class.

    Journalism: a playground of the rich

    So, what did the NCTJ find? Its latest report found that compared to 2021:

    • 80% of journalists had a parent in “one of the three highest occupational groups”. This is compared to 42% of all other workers. 80% is a 6% increase on last year.
    • 65% were from the top two highest groups.
    • 2% had a parent in the lowest two occupational groups. This is compared to 21% of all other workers. 2% is a fall of 25% on last year.
    • There are no working editors in the UK from the three lowest occupational groups.

    This means that the number of journalists from a poor background is over 90% lower than that of the rest of the working population. Moreover, the NCTJ research doesn’t even include journalists whose parents were reliant on social security – possibly because there aren’t any journalists like that.

    Then, you also have the NCTJ findings on education. These show that:

    • 89% of journalists hold a degree, compared to 49% of the working population.
    • 6% of journalists have low-level or no qualifications, compared to 33% of the working population.

    Essentially, the media remains a playground filled with the kids of rich and powerful people. This report is important because that lack of diversity in media directly affects all of us.

    Skewing the narrative

    Take the framing by the corporate and independent media of the so-called ‘cost of living crisis’. It’s one which has seen/will see:

    But as The Canary previously wrote, these narratives around:

    the wilful persecution of the poorest people as a ‘cost of living crisis’ helps absolve the government and corporations of any responsibility. It downplays the fact that they know their policies and inaction are hitting the poorest the hardest. So, framing forced destitution as “Tory incompetence”… means the class war we’re in the midst of becomes an almost benign entity about which nothing can be done.

    That’s why The Canary has been calling the cost of living crisis a class war. It’s the richest enacting war on the poorest.

    Don’t mention the class war

    But the media won’t call this class war. Firstly, if they did it would affect their careers: being too honest doesn’t wash in journalism. More importantly, they probably don’t even consider this. Because what the NCTJ exposed is that the majority of journalists are financially and socially secure. Their positions protect them from the worst aspects of government policy. And given their family backgrounds, they’ve probably never experienced poverty or deprivation in their lives.

    All of this is why The Canary launched Amplify. It’s a mentoring and training programme for people interested in journalism. It’s exclusively for the communities the system has marginalised – be it because of:

    • Ethnicity.
    • Sexuality.
    • Gender.
    • Disability.
    • Health.
    • Neurodivergence.

    However, all our participants have one thing in common: class.

    Time to Amplify

    We currently have 25 participants on the course. The majority of them are from the poorest social grade (E). One of the main requirements for entry into Amplify is that participants are from the poorest backgrounds. This is partly because the majority of our own journalists are working class – we know how hard it is to get into the industry.

    The Canary isn’t afraid to call a class war a class war. And as a media organisation, we’re doing something about it – hence Amplify. Sadly, the same can’t be said for our peers in the corporate media. They’re clearly quite happy in their ivory towers – looking down as the rest of us fight a class war that has raged for decades.

    Featured image via Peter – Flickr, resized to 770×403 pixels under licence CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia, Wikimedia and Wikimedia 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Queen’s Speech just waved in more corporate fascism

    With one relic replacing another (Her Maj was off sick with “mobility issues“), prince Charles filled in for his mum at the Queen’s Speech on Tuesday 10 May. However, the future king was merely a mouthpiece for the Tory government’s ongoing games of class war and corporate fascism. The legislation he revealed will further the UK’s descent into both.

    Queen’s speech: the takeaways

    As PA reported, the main takeaways from the Queen’s Speech were:

    • More anti-protest laws, including prison sentences for people “locking on” or gluing themselves to things.
    • A “register” of home-schooled kids to keep tabs on parents.
    • A bill which will allow councils to privatise public services more easily.
    • Allowing schools to become parts of council-formed academies – cementing the corporate takeover of education.
    • Not banning conversion therapy for trans people.
    • Setting fire to remaining EU laws, like environmental ones, while watering-down our human rights.
    • Pushing forward with the ridiculous HS2 project.
    • Privatising Channel Four.
    • An obvious dig at Scottish independence.
    • Banning public bodies from supporting Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movements like ones against the Israeli state.
    • Creating more debt for students by allowing adults to take out £37k loans for higher education.
    • Controlling what we do on the internet via the Online Safety Bill.

    OK, so there were a few good points – namely action on the P&O Ferries workers’ scandal and a ban on “no-fault” evictions. But overall, the Queen’s Speech was little more than an all-out assault on our freedoms. It also had no action for the poorest people in the UK.

    Cementing corporate fascism

    As The Canary has been reporting, the Tory-led government has all the signs of a corporate fascist regime. This is:

    a form of oppressive regime that removes civil liberties while handing corporations huge wealth from the public purse as well as giving them power and control over all of us.

    The government has already brought in legislation that is corporate fascistic in nature. For example:

    • The Health and Care Act will speed up NHS privatisation.
    • The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act introduces new protest powers and is incredibly racist against the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) Community.
    • The Elections Act means that voters have to show ID.
    • The Nationality and Borders Act punishes refugees and allows the government to strip people of their citizenship.

    Now, with the Queen’s Speech, it’s nearly job done for the Tories. The proposed laws will need organised and radical opposition that aims to disrupt the entire system the government operates within. As The Canary said in February:

    We need to trespass. Take direct action. Occupy property. Watch the cops. Stop evictions. Fight deportations. Block infrastructure. And ultimately disrupt the system the Tories are part of.

    Now, all of that needs to go up a gear.

    Featured image and additional reporting via PA

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Who is Jacob Rees-Mogg?

    Jacob Rees-Mogg lives a life of luxury as the rest of the country grapples with the cost of living crisis. So what makes the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency tick? Learn more in the latest in our ‘Meet the Tories‘ series.

    Video transcript

    Jacob Rees-Mogg is known for being a walking Victorian meme.

    From his views on abortion…

    I’m completely opposed to abortion

    To his thoughts on mental health and showing emotions…

    I’m not a fan of this new age drippiness

    Jacob Rees-Mogg has made a name for himself by rejecting modern liberal social views. He attributed the Grenfell disaster to a lack of ‘common sense’ on the part of the victimsAnd has positioned himself as a proud ultra-conservative Christian. Despite the media fan-fare over his unconventional wardrobe and views, he inflicts real-world harm through his parliamentary votes against the poor and disabled.

    Let’s go back to the beginning…

    Jacob Rees-Mogg was born on 24 May 1969 to a wealthy family – his father was the former editor of The Times newspaper, and later the owner of a wealthy financial investmentment company, which a young Jacob Rees Mogg was made a shareholder of when he was a teenager. He grew up in a palatial country mansion, with the same nanny his family still uses today. It was from his dad, a right wing propagandist, that Rees-Mogg learned to love and desire one thing more than anything else – profit. 

    Walking in his father’s footsteps, Jacob Rees-Mogg would go on to subscribe to a worldview known as ‘disaster capitalism’. This right-wing philosophy contends that new technologies will inevitably make societies more unequal, and therefore more chaotic… but here’s the catch! Rather than offering traditional conservative “solutions” to these problems, figures like Rees-Mogg and his father believe in exploiting chaotic situations to grow their own personal wealth.

    Remember Brexit? Rees-Mogg was among a small elite of hedge fund firms that campaigned for the UK to leave the EU. Observers have noted his firm, Somerset Capital Management – which is heavily invested in emerging markets like China and Russia – doubled its profits in the two years after the vote.  This came as a result of the fall in the value of the pound, and significantly helped Rees-Mogg’s company profits.

    Apart from making money in shady ways, Rees-Mogg has inflicted misery on millions of working families, particularly those with disabilities and those claiming social welfare. He’s voted on 12 separate occasions to lower housing benefits… He’s voted 15 different times against longer and more favourable benefits for those unable to work due to disabilities.

    These policies have led to real-world consequences. People have lost their lives to the Tories cruel campaign of targeting the most vulnerable to make the rich even richer. 

    So the next time you see Rees-Mogg acting like a Victorian caricature, remember this: he’s a real life villain using very modern tools to exploit the poor and working class in order to enrich himself and his family.

    By Andrew Butler

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Sheku Bayoh’s lawyer blasts authorities for ‘dishonesty, racism and incompetence’

    The police, their watchdog and the Crown Office operated an “unholy trinity of dishonesty, racism and incompetence” it has been claimed ahead of the opening of an inquiry into the death of a Black man who died after being restrained by officers.

    Sheku Bayoh, a 31-year-old trainee gas engineer, died in May 2015 while being held by officers who were responding to a call in Kirkcaldy, Fife.

    As an inquiry into his death opened on Tuesday, the Bayoh family solicitor, Aamer Anwar, challenged the police officers involved to give a full testimony if they had nothing to hide.

    The public inquiry, chaired by lord Bracadale, is set to examine the circumstances leading up to the incident, and the following management process and investigation into the death.

    Sheku Bayoh death
    Sheku Bayoh died in police custody in 2015 (Sheku Bayoh family/PA)

    It will also look to establish the role the father-of-two’s race may have played in his death.

    “Dishonest, racism and incompetence”

    Anwar said the inquiry would have never happened had it had not been for the “courage and perseverance of Sheku’s loved ones who have refused to walk away, be silenced, bullied or patronised”. He told a press conference:

    Over the years, it has become clear to the family that the police, Pirc (the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner), and Crown Office, has operated an unholy trinity of dishonesty, racism and incompetence, betraying the word justice.

    Kadi Johnson (Mr Bayoh’s sister) has no doubt that the way Sheku or her family were treated by the justice system would not have happened had Sheku been white, their treatment was compounded by repeated attacks from those who remain in a child-like denial about the existence of racism in policing today.

    Kadi has described Skeku as Scotland’s George Floyd, but taking the knee and Black Lives Matter will mean nothing if Scotland fails to support justice for Sheku.

    Anwar added:

    In less than 50 seconds of the first police officers arriving, Sheku Bayoh was brought to the ground, he was handcuffed and retrained with leg and ankle cuffs, and would never get up again, losing consciousness and dying.

    As Kadi said when they put her brother’s lifeless body in the ambulance, he was still shackled like a slave, with over 24 separate injuries, cuts, lacerations, bruises and a broken rib.

    Within minutes, the process of criminalising, smearing and stereotyping began to enforce an image of a mad and dangerous black man, wielding a knife and with stereotypical characteristics of extraordinary strength in an attempt to blame Sheku for his own death, but he was unarmed and never deserved to die.

    “I hope his name does not fade from memory”

    No charges have been brought because of his death, but Anwar said the family felt if the police officers involved had nothing to hide they had “nothing to fear from coming and giving a full and frank testimony to the inquiry”.

    He said the “real test of this inquiry” would be “whether this country acts to ensure that real change takes place in an unaccountable, all powerful justice system”. He continued:

    Sadly, Sheku is not by any means to first man to die in police custody but, if anything, I hope that his name does not fade from memory and that one day the name of Sheku leaves us a legacy that his children can be proud of.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The UK Is More Climate Conscious Than Ever, According To Search Engine Data

    4 Mins Read Google has released data that appears to demonstrate a shift towards climate awareness in the U.K. Users of the search engine have been looking for ways to reduce their environmental footprint, with specific methodologies starting to trend. Vintage and recycled clothing has proven to be a popular query, alongside electric vehicle searches. The revelation came […]

    The post The UK Is More Climate Conscious Than Ever, According To Search Engine Data appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • A mass trespass shows it’s the ruling class that’s trashing the countryside

    “We’re forced to pick up the crumbs from the table of the landowners,” Guy Shrubsole tells me, as we hike along a forestry track. He continues:

    We’re expected to be grateful for having access to just 8% of England, to be grateful for the little permissive footpath that we’re just walking on, at the permission of the landowner.

    Shrubsole is author of Who Owns England? and is part of the national Right to Roam campaign. We’ve joined hundreds of others to trespass on the Duke of Somerset’s land in Devon. The castle-owning duke sits in the House of Lords. And he’s part of the 1% of the population that owns half of the land in England.

    The land we’re trespassing on is off-limits to the public. It’s used as both a forestry plantation and a pheasant shoot. This trespass is part of a wider movement to campaign for our right to roam in England, to claim back our rights to walk, play, sleep and forage on our land.

    Demonising the working class

    When campaigning for our right to roam, it’s essential to acknowledge that access to nature is very much a class issue. This is shockingly apparent as we trespass on this particular piece of land, owned by one of the country’s richest men, who’s using it as a playground to shoot game birds.

    It is, of course, working class people, as well as Black people and people of colour (BPOC), who have the least access to nature. In 2020, as the pandemic hit the country and international travel was banned, many of us took holidays in beautiful parts of England to give us a break from the cooped-up cities. One of the places that people travelled to was Dartmoor, the only area in England where we’re permitted to camp freely. But we were demonised by both privileged people and the mainstream media.

    Of course, with the sudden influx of outsiders, there was outrage about tourists littering and ruining the moorland. News about tents being left on the moor made national headlines. Meanwhile, the Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) put a temporary ban on camping. Instead of appreciating that the pandemic was an exceptional period in history, and instead of posing the obvious question as to why there aren’t more spots where we can freely camp to take pressure off Dartmoor, the DNPA began a consultation on new by-laws that would restrict public camping for good.

    This nationwide demonisation of outsiders littering our beautiful moorland does, of course, play right into the land-owning elite’s hands. It suits them to portray us as incapable of looking after nature. If enough people believe that, then they won’t have to truly consider giving us the right to roam our countryside. They can go on as normal, misusing vast swathes of land for their game-bird and stag-shooting bloodsports. And they can continue the disgraceful practice of burning peat moors for grouse shooting, releasing vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere in the name of tradition.

    However, as we trespass the Duke of Somerset’s pheasant-shooting land, it’s crystal clear to all of us that it is the ruling class that’s trashing the land.

    Totnes mass trespass

     

    Shrubsole tells me:

    People often say, ‘you can’t have more people in the countryside. They’ll just trash it. They’ll create lots of litter and cause lots of damage.’ Now, often it is the landowners who are the ones causing the greatest damage to the countryside.

    He continues:

    Everybody hates litter, but let’s look at the bigger picture here. The Lulworth Estate objected to – as he called it – ‘culturally diverse’ people coming to his land [during the pandemic]. That’s what he said. There was, rightly, fury about that, because of the casual racism, saying ‘I don’t want you townies coming here, you don’t know how to behave.’ But look at how much damage is being caused by the ecosystem here at this pheasant shoot by this landowner, and by landowners like him across the countryside, and that never gets questioned.

    Bloody carcasses

    On a previous trespass in Brighton last year, Shrubsole told me about photos published in the press of piles of pheasant carcasses being thrown away after shoots. And sure enough, right next to where we are stood, there’s a small quarry, hidden by brambles, that’s being used as a mass grave for dead pheasants. As well as the bloody carcasses, there’s wire fencing that’s been discarded. And there’s even an old washing machine that’s been thrown in there. Shrubsole says:

    This is the hidden side of the countryside. Behind the ‘keep out’ signs and the barbed wire fences this is the damage that’s going on, and yet it’s the public who get blamed for littering. We really need to draw back the curtain on that and say that it’s time for all of us to feel welcome in the countryside, and it’s time for us to reconnect to the nature that we’ve been cut off from for so long.

    Shrubsole tells me that 50 million pheasants are released into the British countryside every year. And the weight of these birds is more than the biomass of all of the wild birds in Britain put together. It’s an unregulated act by those so privileged that they can do whatever they like to the land – and to wildlife – and not bear any consequences. As we walk together, we pass a giant grain-feed storage bin. With international news headlines reporting a European grain shortage, and with reports of the subsequent food poverty that’s likely to hit the UK, the irony isn’t lost on us.

    Shrubsole says:

    There’s no regulation over pheasant shooting. You try and re-release a beaver into the countryside, which was here for thousands of years before we killed it off: the amount of paperwork that re-wilders have to go through to reintroduce beavers is insane. And you don’t have to do anything if you want to release thousands of pheasants into your massive shooting estate.

    Pheasant grain feeder

    A key step in a greater struggle

    Fighting for our right to roam is just a small battle in the bigger fight for land reform. 92% of land in England is off-limits to normal people. And we’re not allowed to swim in 97% of our rivers and waterways.

    The Duke of Somerset himself is one of 30 dukes in the UK, many of whom, according to Shrubsole:

    benefit from tax breaks on their wealth and have constructed elaborate trust fund schemes to avoid inheritance taxes.

    24 of these dukes together own around a million acres of land.

    I ask Shrubsole if he thinks the right to roam is enough, or whether he feels that we should aim bigger. He tells me that the campaign is the “leading edge” in the fight for land reform, because it engages a lot of people. He says:

    I would like there to be far more awareness of who owns land. Then there’s more that needs to be done to help resolve the housing crisis, and create affordable housing, tenancy, security. There needs to be far more done about land value tax and about the ridiculous farce of farm subsidies being paid out to land owners according to how much land they own, and instead actually being obliged to do something in return for that money if they’re going to get it. And there also needs to be the community right-to-buy as they have in Scotland. So yes, there’s lots more that needs to be done.

    Of course, the Tory government is unlikely to willingly hand over this most basic of rights: the right to roam our land. It continues to take away our civil liberties right under our noses, bringing in countless new racist and classist laws.  On 28 April, the repressive Police Bill was finally passed. The new act will disproportionately target Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, criminalising anyone living in a vehicle or caravan. And on 20 April, the government announced that it had quashed a review into the right to roam in England and is refusing to publish any results.

    However, the right to roam campaign is gathering momentum fast, and more and more people are joining the struggle. As a working class person, I urge you to join us on the next mass trespass. I urge you to be an ally not only to the country’s least wealthy but to BPOC people, too, as we aim to decolonise the countryside of its middle- and upper-class whiteness.

    Featured image and article images via Eliza Egret

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Millions more households affected by food insecurity

    Around one in seven adults live in homes where people have skipped meals, eaten smaller portions, or gone hungry all day because they could not afford or access food, research suggests.

    The number of people struggling to buy food has risen by 57% in three months, according to research by the Food Foundation.

    The charity also said food bank users are increasingly requesting items that don’t need cooking. This is because they’re worried about how they will afford rising energy bills.

    The “chilling” figures come at a time when the cost-of-living crisis is increasingly hitting families who are facing rising utility and food prices. These are far outstripping the amount by which benefits have risen.

     

    Going hungry

    The charity analysed responses from 10,674 UK adults who were surveyed online by YouGov between 22 and 29 April.

    Some 13.8% said they or a member of their household had either eaten smaller meals than usual or skipped meals, not eaten despite being hungry, or not eaten for a full day because they could not get food in the past month.

    Extrapolated to UK population level, the findings suggest around 7.3 million adults live in households affected by food insecurity. This includes 2.6 million children.

    This is up considerably from 4.7 million adults surveyed in January (8.8% of respondents).

    The research shows that nearly half of households on Universal Credit have been food insecure in the past six months.

    Moreover, certain groups have a higher risk of food insecurity. These include people in households where someone has a disability, households with children, and non-white ethnic groups.

    There’s also been a rise in the number of families with children experiencing food insecurity in the past month. The figure is 17.2% in April, up from 12.1% in January.

    The Food Foundation warned that people will become more reliant on lower-cost foods that tend to be “calorie-dense and nutrient-poor”, which will risk their health.

    Catastrophic for families

    The Food Foundation is calling on the government to increase benefits in line with inflation and expand access to free school meals and the Healthy Start programme.

    Dominic Watters, a single father from Canterbury, told the charity:

    The last few months have been really tough.

    I’ve had days where only my daughter ate and I’ve had her leftovers, if anything at all.

    Anna Taylor, executive director of the Food Foundation, said the “extremely rapid rise” could be catastrophic for families.

    She said:

    The situation is rapidly turning from an economic crisis to a health crisis. Food banks cannot possibly be expected to solve this.

    The Government needs to realise the boat is sinking for many families and it needs to be fixed. Bailing out with emergency food parcels is not going to work.

    A fundamental failing

    Professor Michael Marmot, director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, added:

    If one household in seven is food insecure, society is failing in a fundamental way.

    These figures on food insecurity are all the more chilling because the problem is solvable. But, far from being solved, it is getting worse.

    A government spokesperson said:

    We recognise the pressures on the cost of living and we are doing what we can to help, including spending £22 billion across the next financial year to support people with energy bills and cut fuel duty.

    For the hardest hit, we’re putting an average of £1,000 more per year into the pockets of working families on Universal Credit, have also boosted the minimum wage by more than £1,000 a year for full-time workers and our Household Support Fund is there to help with the cost of everyday essentials.

    Shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Ashworth said:

    These are devastating findings that reveal the acute levels of hunger impacting families and children nationwide caused by the Conservative cost-of-living crisis.

    The so-called ‘cost-of-living crisis’ is part of a wider tapestry of Conservative policies that have served to entrench poverty among the working class in Britain. It has been described as a class war waged on the most vulnerable in society.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The DUP’s refusal to govern with Sinn Féin is just sectarian business as usual

    It’s both official and historic. Sinn Féin, under the leadership of Mary Lou McDonald and deputy leader Michelle O’Neill, is the largest political party in the North of Ireland. It won 27 of the Northern Ireland Assembly‘s 90 seats in the 5 May elections, as the British unionist DUP crashed to second place. O’Neill is now in line to be the North’s first minister. Sinn Féin also won the most first-preference votes. This is the first time any Irish republican political party has achieved this.

    Whilst we try to work out what this result could mean for the North’s position within the UK, the DUP appears to be have its head in the sand. The system of government in the North is such that Irish republicans and British unionists must work together. However, the DUP refuses to commit to entering government with Sinn Féin despite the historic and democratic result. Its position isn’t at all surprising. Try as the DUP might to use the fallout from Brexit as an excuse for not entering government, its thinly veiled sectarianism is fooling nobody.

    Was this the most important election?

    DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson billed this election the “most important in a generation”. Donaldson said he believed it would decide the future direction of the North of Ireland. He urged unionist voters to transfer their votes (the Assembly uses a Proportional Representation Single Transferable Vote system) to other unionist candidates. According to Donaldson, this would have helped to stop Sinn Féin from winning the election and thwarted its aim of holding a referendum on the North’s status within the UK.

    Additionally, according to Donaldson, voting in this way would demonstrate unionist opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP – the post Brexit agreement). Of course, Donaldson neglected to focus on the fact that the DUP was an ardent supporter of Brexit during and since the 2016 referendum.

    The DUP, once again, pulled out of government in the North of Ireland in February this year, citing its opposition to the NIP. It said the NIP creates a border down the Irish Sea, thereby treating the North differently to other parts of the UK. As such, the DUP claimed that it won’t re-enter government until this is resolved. However, it’s also possible that it realised support for Sinn Féin was such that the DUP would be its junior partner in government. This would be unacceptable to a unionist mindset that’s used to having the upper hand in a statelet which has been anti-Catholic from its very foundation.

    Donaldson’s plan to stop Sinn Féin failed miserably. Not only did the two main unionist parties not make gains, they in fact suffered losses. The DUP lost three seats, while the other mainstream unionist party, the UUP, lost one. The DUP’s first-preference vote dropped by almost 7%, while Sinn Féin’s increased by more than 1%. But Donaldson, in a way, may have got something right – the generation that voted in this election showed how unimportant the dominant DUP position is.

    Unionism hasn’t changed

    There can be little surprise at unionist reluctance to work with their republican neighbours as equals. Over the last few decades at least, they’ve made no secret of their feelings for their Irish Catholic and republican neighbours. From fostering suspicion to ensure that they couldn’t gain employment to comparing them to animals, there’s little doubt as to the real reason for the DUP not wanting to enter government.

    But that’s on them. The electorate in the North has shown in this and indeed previous elections that they reject such sectarian politics.

    The DUP hasn’t got the message

    24 years on and the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) has not been the stepping stone towards a united Ireland that leading Irish republicans promised it would be. However, in all my years observing politics on this island, this is without doubt the first time I can remember people from outside Irish republican circles talking about the realistic possibility of a united Ireland. Even if the shape of a potential united Ireland is something that concerns me.

    Regardless of its ineffectiveness for achieving a united Ireland, the DUP had nothing but contempt for the GFA. This is mainly because it means sharing power with its republican neighbours. Following the election result, Donaldson is still refusing to listen to the electorate, and he is instead engaging in ‘I told you so’. He appears oblivious to what has just happened to his party, and how a sectarian mindset has led it here.

    Featured image via YouTube Screengrab – Sinn Féin

    By Peadar O'Cearnaigh

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Coronavirus subvariants cause concern as government pretends the pandemic is over

    The coronavirus (Covid-19) BA.1 and BA.2 ‘Omicron’ lineages have been dominant in the UK for some months. There’s also a subvariant, known as ‘XE’, within the UK.

    But the government’s agenda in recent months has been all about “living with Covid”. Following pressure from backbenchers, the government is opposed to mask-wearing and other precautions. 

    Government all over the place

    In November 2021, The Canary reported on news that the Omicron BA.1 variant had arrived in the UK. In February, we warned of the Omicron variant BA.2 (also known as the ‘Stealth’ variant because it proved more difficult to track). Also, in February WebMD reported that according to a Japanese study (then in preprint, now published in Cell):

    therapeutic monoclonal antibodies used to treat people infected with COVID didn’t have much effect on BA.2.

    It didn’t take long before that variant became dominant. We now know of further subvariants, including XE, which is different in that it is a ‘recombination’ of BA.1 and BA.2.

    Johnson has reportedly said that in response to emerging subvariants, he cannot “take any options off the table”. Yet in regard to another lockdown, he added how he wanted to avoid that ever happening again; in other words, it’s the usual mixed messaging..

    XE ‘recombinant’

    A recombinant, which is further explained in an article in The Conversation, is when:

    two different variants infect the same cell, in the same person, at the same time. From there, they can combine their genetic material, resulting in a virus that possesses a mix of genes from both infecting “parent” viruses. This recombinant variant may then spread to other people – as has been the case with omicron XE.

    It adds:

    Recombinant viruses can exhibit marked changes in their behaviour, such as increased infectiousness, evasion of our existing immunity to the virus, or resistance to drugs.

    Though a Time article from 8 April said “The good news is that there are still relatively few XE cases”. It quotes Dr. Andrew Badley, chair of the SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 Task Force and professor of infectious disease at the Mayo Clinic:

    We’ve known about the existence of the XE variant since the middle of January… Now, two and a half months later, we’re still seeing cases, but it hasn’t exploded…

    Omicron was first identified in November, and within four weeks it was all over the world. So it’s not as dominant a new strain as Omicron was

    Other subvariants on the horizon

    In a Twitter thread, Independent SAGE member Professor Christine Pagel warns of a new wave of infections that could result from the subvariants:

    Pagel explains that South Africa is experiencing “a new wave” on the back of subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, and in the US subvariant BA.2.12.1 is “growing rapidly”:

    Further in the thread, Pagel warns that should BA.4, BA 5, and BA.2.12.1 “take off” in the UK, we will likely see a “new wave of infections”:

    Such infections, she adds, could mean thousands more people suffering from Long Covid. She also explains that with Omicron, compared to previous variants, “immunity is not that long lived & it gives less protection against non-Omicron variants”:

    Some good news – but…

    As Pagel notes, we’re currently on a downward slope, and the percentage of people testing positive for coronavirus appears to be decreasing in England, Scotland, Wales and the north of Ireland. Hospital admissions related to coronavirus are also decreasing.

    But that doesn’t mean we should drop our guard. Especially as more infections increase the risk of mutating variants that may evade existing vaccines. Additionally, Long Covid remains a significant and serious risk. It can impact patients’ quality of life over the long term, even if they don’t end up in hospital.

    Meanwhile, when it comes to coronavirus announcements, the government can be characterised as basically absent without leave. Indeed, its absence of updates on the virus is tantamount to suppression of information – information that affects all of our health and wellbeing.

    Featured image via YouTube

    By Tom Coburg

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • A grueling month for deer, as weak rules allow hunting terror to reign

    Between March and July, anyone appreciating wildlife with their dog on Somerset’s Quantock Hills must have the latter on a lead. This rule aims to limit harm by dogs to ground-nesting birds, lambs, and baby deer on open access land. Hunt saboteurs say that in practice, though, there’s an exception for some people.

    Apparently, if you’re heading to the hills with dogs to terrorise and ultimately end wild lives with a bullet, the rule doesn’t apply to you.

    Killing week in, week out

    The North Dorset Hunt Saboteurs (NDHS) chronicled the actions of the Quantock Staghounds throughout April. This is one of three staghound groups in England, all of which operate in the South-West.

    According to Keep the Ban, hunt monitors reported that the Quantock Staghounds killed three stags (male deer) between 28 March and 25 April. A report from NDHS, in collaboration with an independent monitor, said that the staghound group killed again on 28 April on its “closing meet” of the season:

    Responding to NDHS’ monitoring of a stag killing on 25 April, a Hunt Saboteurs Association spokesperson explained:

    The disgusting scenes captured by courageous North Dorset sabs are being repeated across the southwest week in, week out. There are three stag hunts and at least two buck hunts – who target roe deer – in the area. Each of these hunts rides out several times a week hunting down deer and intimidating anyone who disagrees with them. They need to be stopped.

    Different people, different rules?

    As the frequently asked questions page on Somerset County Council’s Quantock Hills website illustrates, many are surprised to see groups pursuing and killing wildlife on the “Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty”. The fact that they may witness the Quantock Staghounds, with leash-less dogs in tow, partly explains this bewilderment. As a video on the hills’ Twitter account highlights, it’s a legal requirement for people to keep dogs on leads on open access land between March and July:

    A sab from NDHS said it was baffling that the Quantock Staghounds are “allowed over the hills where vulnerable ground nesting birds are currently”. The Canary contacted Somerset County Council’s Quantock Hills team to ask why the legal rule regarding leads for dogs doesn’t appear to be applied to the staghounds. It did not respond.

    “In reality hunting is not banned”

    Another reason why people may be astonished to witness the staghounds killing wildlife is the 2004 Hunting Act. It’s supposed to prohibit people hunting wild mammals with dogs, with some limited exceptions. The Quantock Hills website says the exemptions mean that “in reality hunting is not banned”.

     

    However, exempt hunting comes with conditions that those doing it have to fulfil, otherwise it remains unlawful. For example, as the Times reported, people can use two dogs to stalk or flush out certain animals. This would be to avoid the latter causing serious damage, for meat, or for ‘field trials’. They must also have permission from the landowner and take “reasonable steps” to ensure that they kill their target “as soon as possible”. Other exemptions include that the targeted animal must be wounded or the subject of “research and observation“.

    Exploiting loopholes

    Hunts regularly faced accusations of exploiting exempt loopholes to carry on their ‘sport’ regardless of the hunting ban. The NDHS sab told The Canary that:

    From the perspective of the suffering of the deer it is no less than before the ban. They are hunted to complete exhaustion before being shot.

    The research and observation exemption is a case in point. As zoologist Jordi Casamitjana told The Canary in 2018, parliament clearly added this exemption to stop scientists being affected by the ban when doing research. But as the ban didn’t stipulate that the condition only applies to scientists, hunting groups utilise it.

    This appears, for example, to be the case for the Quantock Staghounds killing of a stag on 25 April.

    The NDHS said this hunt lasted six hours, after which the stag hid in the gorse because he “couldn’t run anymore”. After shooting the exhausted individual, NDHS said the staghounds told monitors “they were going to take blood samples”, indicating that the hunt was utilising the research exemption for this kill. The sab added that, by that point, they “could clearly see the stag’s throat had been cut and the body bled”. This is part of the ritual in traditional hunting to prepare the deer for being dismembered, known as the ‘carve up’.

    The Canary contacted both DEFRA and the Countryside Alliance about such research by hunts. We asked what oversight was in place to ensure they are using this exemption legitimately. Neither responded to our request for comment.

    Other restrictions

    Aside from restrictions in the Hunting Act, landowners and managers can also restrict the activities of hunts. On the Quantock Hills, these include the National Trust and Forestry England. NDHS highlighted that the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) also runs “several” sanctuaries there. The sab group said the Quantock Staghounds aren’t allowed to hunt on any of this land, but that it did so, on Forestry England land specifically, on both 25 April and 28 April.

    A Forestry England spokesperson said:

    The Quantock Staghounds do not have permission to access land we manage in the Quantock Hills beyond recreational horse riding like any other member of the public. If anyone believes they have witnessed a crime, we urge them to contact the police online or by calling 101 with credible and verifiable evidence including photos or videos. Similarly, if someone has compelling evidence of unauthorised access to land we manage we would like to see it.

    In its report from 28 April, the NDHS said that monitors did report the staghounds to the local Forestry Commission (FC) office, which sponsors Forestry England. According to the report, the FC operative indicated it was the second time the hunt’s activities had come into question that day.

    Failure on its own terms

    As the NDHS’s reports from April show, despite the hunting ban and its restrictions – along with further restraints imposed by landowners and management authorities – deer on the Quantock Hills continue to be terrorised by hunts. The same is true for deer elsewhere, along with foxes, mink, and hares. And there are other victims of hunting too, such as badgers. Their homes are illegally interfered with to facilitate some hunting, according to the LACS.

    As the High Court indicated in a ruling on the definition of hunting in 2009, the Hunting Act’s “aim” is “preventing or reducing unnecessary suffering to wild mammals”. This is based on the “moral viewpoint” that “causing suffering to animals for sport is unethical and should, so far as practicable and proportionate, be stopped”.

    Clearly, the Act has so far failed on its own terms. For the authorities to make good on the act’s aims, they must heed the multitude of calls from people and organisations to strengthen it.

    Featured image via NDHS

    By Tracy Keeling

  • Activists disrupt Conservative Party dinner to call Priti Patel’s Rwanda policy racist

    Activists accused Priti Patel of “racist” and “inhumane” policies over government plans to send migrants to Rwanda during her appearance at a Conservative party dinner.

    The home secretary was speaking at the Bassetlaw Conservatives Spring Dinner in Nottinghamshire on Friday 6 May. During the event, several activists stood up on their chairs and began denouncing Patel for the policy.

    The plan has received widespread criticism and legal challenges. It involves the UK sending asylum seekers it deems to have arrived “illegally” off to Rwanda.

    ‘Your racist policies are killing people’

    Footage published on Twitter by campaigning group Green New Deal shows a woman stand up and tell Patel:

    Priti Patel, your racist policies are killing people.

    Your plans to send people seeking asylum to Rwanda are inhumane, they’re inhumane and are going to ruin people’s lives.

    Another activist stood up, telling Patel the group was “disgusted by [her] treatment of refugees in the UK”.

    Three other activists stood up and mad statements before the group chanted “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here” as they were ushered out of the venue.

    Holly Hudson, a Green New Deal Rising activist who was part of the protest, said:

    I want to grow up in a society that cares and respects people wherever they come from. I am disgusted by Priti Patel’s Rwanda plan and her immigration policies. They are violent, illegal and inhumane and have been condemned across society.

    This bill is a direct act of harm to those seeking safety. Whoever we are, we all deserve safety and compassion and that’s why we took action today.

    Hannah Martin, from Green New Deal Rising, added:

    The plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is inhumane and will lead to the destruction of people’s lives and further harm those people who are seeking safety.

    Those who stand for climate justice also stand against Priti Patel’s cruel plans that demonise people who are escaping terrifying situations as they bear the brunt of the multiple crises of war, poverty and the climate catastrophe.

    These crises in the Global South are the direct result of centuries of exploitation by wealthy countries, such as the UK. We believe it is the responsibility of our Government to provide safety for people facing these situations.

    We want Priti Patel to drop the dangerous Rwanda migration plan and provide support and safety for migrants, refugees and people seeking asylum.

    Migrant Channel crossing incidents
    A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover by the RNLI (Gareth Fuller/PA)

    Ignoring lessons from Australia

    A Home Office spokesperson said:

    The world-leading Migration Partnership will overhaul our broken asylum system, which is currently costing the UK taxpayer £1.5 billion a year – the highest amount in two decades.

    It means those arriving dangerously, illegally or unnecessarily can be relocated to have their asylum claims considered and, if recognised as refugees, build their lives there.

    Our new Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda fully complies with international and national law.

    A comparable scheme in Australia inspired the UK’s Rwanda plan. It has resulted in considerable human rights violations and cost the Australian government billions since its introduction in 2013.

    By The Canary

  • Desperate need to recycle metals from gadgets as mining becomes unsustainable

    The recycling of discarded electronic gadgets must urgently be increased. Mining the Earth for metals to make new gadgets is unsustainable, scientists have said.

    A new campaign run by the Royal Society Of Chemistry is drawing attention to the unsustainability of continuing to mine for materials used in consumer technology.

    More than the Great Wall of China

    One study estimated that the world’s mountain of discarded electronics, in 2021 alone, weighed 57 million tonnes, more than the Great Wall of China.

    The society says there now needs to be a global effort to mine that waste, rather than mining the Earth.

    It points out that geopolitical unrest, including the war in Ukraine, has caused huge spikes in the price of materials like nickel, a key element in electric vehicle batteries.

    This volatility in the market for elements is now causing “chaos in supply chains”.

    Combined with the surge in demand, the price of lithium, another important component in battery technology, has increased by almost 500% between 2021 and 2022.

    The society warned that some key elements are now simply running out.

    ‘Highly unsustainable’

    Professor Tom Welton, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said:

    Our tech consumption habits remain highly unsustainable and have left us at risk of exhausting the raw elements we need.

    It is essential that governments and businesses urgently do more to develop a circular economy which can tackle the world’s growing e-waste crisis and alleviate the strain on supply chains.

    New research by the society also revealed a growing demand from consumers for more sustainable technology.

    In an online survey of 10,000 people across 10 countries, 60% said they would be more likely to switch to a rival of their preferred tech brand if they knew the product was made in a sustainable way.

    Recycling

    The survey also suggested that people did not know how to deal with their own e-waste.

    Many respondents said they worried about the environmental effect of the unused devices they have in their homes. But they did not know what to do with them or were concerned about the security of recycling schemes.

    Currently, less than 20% of e-waste is collected and recycled and is growing by about two million tonnes every year.

    Elizabeth Ratcliffe from the Royal Society of Chemistry told BBC Radio 4 that many of us were “unwittingly stockpiling precious metals in our homes”, in old phones and defunct computers. She said:

    Manufacturers and retailers need to take more responsibility…

    Like ‘take-back’ schemes, meaning people can return their electronics to a retailer and be assured they will be recycled securely.

    The society hopes to encourage people to take old and unwanted devices to recycling centres, rather than stuff them into drawers and forget about them.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Court watches footage of police brutality against Kill the Bill demonstrators

    Content warning – this article contains descriptions of police violence

    The trial of Indigo Bond is ongoing at Bristol Crown Court. Indigo was charged with riot after confrontations between police and protesters outside Bristol’s Bridewell police station last year. She was just 19 years old at the time.

    Thousands of demonstrators came out on 21 March 2021, in a show of force against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill, which became law last week. The demonstration began at a memorial for Sarah Everard, a woman who had been raped and murdered by a serving police officer just weeks beforehand. The crowd fought back after it was met with escalating violence from riot police outside Bridewell station. The police attacked with dogs, horses, riot shields, and batons

    By the end of the night, police vehicles had been set alight, and the ground floor windows of the police station had been smashed.

    Since then 85 people have been arrested, and 15 people have been sentenced to prison. The longest sentence imposed so far is 14 years. A massive support campaign has been launched in solidarity with the defendants, with over £50k raised by crowdfunders so far.

    Indigo is charged with pushing and kicking at police officers, and throwing a piece of wood and a small bottle at officers. She said in evidence that she acted defensively because she was “scared”, and that she was trying to “create space” between her and the riot police, and to “push them back”.

    Jury watches footage of police violence

    On the second day of the trial, the defence showed a video compilation which contained clips of the police violence on 21 March. It was sourced from material disclosed to Indigo’s defence solicitors by Avon and Somerset Police, which includes footage captured by the police’s own body-worn cameras, as well as police evidence gatherers. The compilation also includes video clips from a news agency and members of the public.

    The first significant incident starts just after police had donned riot gear outside the Old Fire Station near Bridewell. Police had moved in after protesters had graffitied a police vehicle and begun to rock it from side to side. The jury was shown footage of officers advancing on members of the crowd with batons raised, and shoving a press photographer with full force. The man falls back, and stumbles into the people behind him as Indigo stands nearby.

    Seconds later, the same officer advances on a woman. He has his baton raised high over his shoulder. She uses a placard pole to defend herself as he strikes her repeatedly.

    Police Constable Ewan Caulder – the officer who is seen to shove the photographer – denied to defence barrister Russell Fraser that he had lost his “composure”. Fraser questioned him about why he had pushed the photographer, asking:

    It wasn’t because he had a long lens pointing at you and you didn’t like it?

    Caulder denied this. However, Fraser said to him:

    within a short time of you arriving you have used your PAVA pepper spray, you have pushed a photographer and used your baton several times 

    Caulder conceded that he had.

    Later on, the same photographer is seen being manhandled by police, as they call him a “fucking prick”.

    Police violence escalates

    The video goes on to show officers push and shove protesters who are standing in the street near Bridewell station.

    The police form a cordon across the road by the Old Fire Station and a standoff ensues. The video shows officers hitting protesters repeatedly with baton strikes, and with the edges of their riot shields.

    One clip shows an officer raising his rectangular shield above his head and bringing it down on a protester.

    A little later, the defence show a protester on the ground. Fraser cross examined Brian Brady – the officer in the case – about what happened. Fraser asked:

    did you notice that there was a male who was on the ground?

    Brady replied

    it does appear on initial viewing that he was kicked, I can’t see if it connects

    Fraser persisted:

    In fact two officers run up and kick him

    To which Brady eventually agreed.

    The compilation includes a section of footage which was taken by one of the protesters at the front of the cordon. A woman’s panicked voice says:

    no, don’t hit, stop…

    stop hitting her…

    no, no, no, no, no, stop, stop.

    Woman knocked unconscious

    As the evening goes on, the footage shows officers repeatedly striking protesters with rectangular riot shields.

    Earlier in the case, the jury was told that police guidelines about the use of batons say that baton strikes should be at forty-five degree angles. They should also avoid sensitive areas like the head, groin and sternum. However, the video evidence clearly shows police using overarm strikes with long batons. Shortly after some of these blows take place, a female protester is carried behind the police line, accompanied by shouts of “you’ve knocked her out”. Later on, the same woman is pictured being treated inside the police station by a member of the public. She has a head wound and is screaming – she appears to have been pepper sprayed. A volunteer medic says to a police officer:

    this is not ok, this is really not ok what you’re doing

    Footage from the Ruptly news agency shows police reinforcements approaching a little later. As the line of police approaches, officers knock two people to the ground, repeatedly hitting them with riot shields, and kicking them. The footage can be viewed here from about six minutes and 20 seconds in (although it currently needs to be viewed via a VPN, due to UK restrictions on Russian state connected news agencies).

    Indigo says the police were using “unlawful violence”

    Indigo told the court that she comes from a Traveller background, and went to the demonstration because she “didn’t agree with the bill because of its effects” on Travellers. She said:

    I come from a travelling background, my grandad was a Traveller and my dad too

    Indigo also said that she went out to demonstrate because she was “upset” about the murder of Sarah Everard

    “Get them back”

    Indigo explained that she had filmed the police’s actions on her mobile phone in case anything happened to the people around her. Indigo described the police moving in:

    I remember the police pushing, the police pushed straight into the people who were closest to them

    Indigo showed photographs of injuries she had received from police batons, and told the court that she had been pepper sprayed.

    When asked by David Scutt – the prosecution barrister – why, if she was scared, she hadn’t just left and gone home, Indigo replied:

    I thought it was important to help people who were being hit worse than me.

    The court had seen a short compilation of police clips in which Indigo can be seen kicking out at officers. She explained that she wanted:

    to get them back, because I had seen them brutally hitting people next to me.

    Scutt asked Indigo about her guilty plea to a less serious public order charge. He said:

     you accepted that you used or threatened unlawful violence. 

    Indigo replied:

    I also believe that the police used or threatened unlawful violence. 

    Indigo told Fraser that the case had been hanging over her head for the past year. She said it had been “in the back of [her] mind” the whole time.

    Indigo’s photograph was circulated in the media after police identified her as having been at the protest. As a result, Indigo was asked not to come back to college, and she lost out on studying her course in Circus and Physical Theatre, something which she “loved”.

    The case continues. The court is expected to hear speeches from the defence and prosecution barristers on Monday 9 May. The jury is expected to go out to decide its verdict on Monday.

    Meanwhile, Kadeem Yarde – who was also arrested on March 21 – is midway through his own trial for ‘riot’ in another courtroom in the same building. His verdict is also expected next week.

    Whatever the outcome of the court case, the Bristol riot defendants – as well those who have already been imprisoned – need our support. It’s important that we don’t forget those who are experiencing repression, and that we continue their fight through our solidarity.

    Featured image via Eliza Egret

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • University Palestine societies express solidarity with incoming NUS president Shaima Dallali

    Palestinian societies (PalSoc) at universities nationwide have issued an open letter condemning the “smear campaign” against incoming National Union of Students (NUS) president Shaima Dallali. They are also urging the NUS to call off its investigation into allegations of antisemitism against Dallali.

    A ‘smear campaign’

    On 13 April, the NUS announced plans to open an investigation into allegations of antisemitism against the union and Dallali, who is due to take up her post in July. This was in response to an onslaught of complaints by the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), some former NUS presidents and political figures following Dallali’s election.

    The issues raised included a comment Dallali made as a teenager, which she apologised for. She also welcomed the NUS investigation, and reaffirmed her commitment to working in solidarity with Jewish students.

    However, the coalition of Palestinian societies argues that the backlash against Dallali’s election is due to her condemnation of Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism, which human rights body Amnesty International has called “a crime against humanity”.

    A coalition of PalSocs from universities across the UK have issued an open letter in solidarity with the union’s incoming elected president, saying:

    We reject the smear campaign and harassment of Shaima Dallali and wish to make it clear that Shaima, as a dedicated and committed anti-racist organiser, has our full confidence to fulfil her duties as NUS President.

    Underlining the danger and inaccuracy of conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, the coalition states:

    the liberation of Palestine is not at odds with the safety of Jewish students in the UK.

    Fears for her safety

    In April, Dallali – a young Black Muslim woman – spoke out about being subjected to racist and Islamophobic abuse online as a result of the pile-on. Violent threats resulted in the young activist fearing for her safety, and harmed her mental and physical wellbeing. 

    Dallali told the Guardian:

    Unfortunately, as a black Muslim woman, it is something that I expected because I’ve seen it happen to other black Muslim women when they take up positions in the student union or the NUS, where they are attacked based on their political beliefs or their pro-Palestinian stance.

    Indeed, Malia Bouattia faced similar backlash in 2016. Bouattia was the first Black Muslim woman to become NUS president, and was vocal about her pro-Palestinian stance

    Denouncing the NUS’ decision to investigate Dallali, the PalSoc coalition says:

    To continue with this investigation into a President who has continuously been outspoken on Israeli Apartheid is a direct decision to exclude those who stand for justice in Palestine and to ignore the grave concerns that Shaima Dallali has over her own personal safety and wellbeing.

    Hypocrisy

    Questioning the veracity of the UJS’ statement against Dallali, the PalSoc coalition highlights claims that a number of its signatories didn’t actually sign the letter, and don’t endorse its message. It also points to an open letter written by Jewish students denouncing the UJS’ response to Dallali’s election, stating that its views don’t represent the UK’s entire Jewish student body. 

    The letter in support of Dallali states that launching an investigation based on an unreliable source such as this “sets a deeply troubling precedent”.

    Furthermore, the Palestine solidarity coalition calls out the “hypocrisy” of the UJS’ “call for inclusion” while openly endorsing and defending Israeli settler-colonialism, and promoting inflammatory, Islamophobic views.

    It states:

     Quite simply, the UJS’ position to promote Zionism and claim to oppose racism is an untenable stance. 

    Hostile environment

    The open letter defending Dallali also calls attention to the fact that university campuses are increasingly unsafe places for those who condemn Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide.  

    Reflecting on this, the group says:

    Investigations launched across UK universities against students and academics have intensified a culture of surveillance, which combined with the expansive presence of the Prevent agenda within education, seeks to silence our voices against global injustices.

    Indeed, the University of Bristol sacked former sociology professor David Miller following a smear campaign in 2021. Sheffield Hallam academic Shahd Abusalama was subject to a similar campaign in January. 

    When London School of Economics (LSE) students protested their university hosting Israeli ambassador and Islamophobe Tzipi Hotovely, home secretary Priti Patel backed calls to criminalise those involved.

    Meanwhile, the UK government is trying to make boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) – a tactic once used against South African apartheid – illegal. 

    In April, former prime minister David Cameron praised an Islamophobic report targeting Muslim activists who oppose Prevent – the UK’s discriminatory counterterrorism policy. The policing bill – which is now law – will usher in further securitisation of university campuses. This will no doubt disproportionately harm marginalised students, particularly those who take a stand against injustices.

    A united front

    Denouncing the union’s failure to support victimised students, the PalSoc coalition states:

    the NUS has been routinely silent when students have most needed support from institutions that claim to stand for equality, freedom of speech and anti-racism. 

    It adds:

    An NUS that cannot protect its own President from the external pressures of groups who openly side with Apartheid is an NUS that has failed those who it seeks to represent.

    The coalition invites student societies to sign the open letter in support of its statement urging the NUS to call off the investigation, saying:

    We believe firmly in tackling all forms of discrimination and racism through a united front and call all student societies to support us in challenging an increased dependence on a culture of investigations and surveillance.

    If the NUS seeks to live its anti-racist values, it must take a stand against Islamophobia, white supremacy, settler-colonialism, and apartheid, and also must support students who vocally defend Palestinians’ right to live free from Israeli occupation.

    Featured image via Ömer Yıldız/Unsplash resized 770 x 403 px

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The DWP just lied about not being able to increase benefits

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has claimed that it can’t pay people more social security above this year’s real-terms cut of £10bn because its IT system are too old. Problem is, this is an outright lie. The Canary spoke to a former IT contractor for the department, who confirmed that its excuses were “horseshit”.

    DWP: computer says ‘no’

    The Times reported on the story. It said that “Whitehall sources” told the Treasury that “creaking government IT systems” meant that legacy benefits like Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) could not be increased more than once a year. This comes as the DWP has put up social security by just over 3%. Because of rocketing inflation, this means that it is actually cutting people’s money – to the tune of around £10bn.

    The Times noted:

    It has emerged that Sunak discussed raising payments only to be told by officials that it would be impossible. Whitehall sources said that the antiquated payments system could increase certain payments only once a year. “There were definitely discussions about how you could raise benefits but the message came back that you could only do it once a year and this was not the time of year that you could do it,” a government source said. “The system was simply not built to be flexible.”

    It also said that:

    hundreds of thousands of people remain on the old benefits system administered using an inflexible IT system operating since the 1980s.

    It is set up to change benefit levels automatically at the start of the new financial year in April.

    The Guardian also ran the story – repeating the DWP’s claims about the “antiquated” IT system. Here’s why the department is lying.

    “Creaking” IT that’s only a year old?

    The DWP began upgrading its IT infrastructure for legacy benefits in 2016 and it now works off a new system. It’s called VME-R. Without getting too technical, a case study on the issue by Micro Focus noted:

    Also, the VME-R system can now rapidly change the way benefits work. This admission comes from Mark Bell, the deputy director responsible for the project. He told Micro Focus:

    Thanks to the flexible and agile new environment we could quickly make government-mandated policy changes to allow for COVID-19, such as increasing our capacity for additional users, and supporting quicker benefit processing changes.

    DWP: 800 updates a year – just not to pay claimants more

    Perhaps the most crucial factor is the number of changes the DWP can now make a year under VME-R. The Times article claimed that the DWP said it could only change benefit rates once a year. But as Bell himself admitted in a DWP blog:

    At last count we had already delivered over 800 updates across the various platforms in the last year thanks to a more flexible implementation system. Previously we planned two major releases a year on each system.

    So, it seems that the claims by the DWP that it can’t make changes to benefit rates appears to be nonsense.

    Stopping change

    The Canary spoke to a former outsourced contractor from the original Department for Social Security (DSS) systems who designed code for the now-replaced IT. They told us:

    The DWP had a two year planning cycle to get to know how to do things quickly. So two years of learning to be faster at code and system changes. Which means, as an organisation the DWP is now more capable of rapid response.

    That two years of planning at the tail of a decade of work brings valuable skills and experience into the DWP. It could be kicked out the door in the next “reorganisation”. So, again, the DWP has no great interest in saying that “we trained people up in the DWP to make changes really fast”. Because that might oblige it to… make changes really fast.

    No technical barriers

    Overall, they told The Canary that, as an example, the moving of Winter Fuel Payments to the VME-R system in 2016:

    shows proof of concept for rapid change which can be driven by political will not technical constraints. If you can change Winter Fuel Payments in 24 hours then rerating legacy payments of any kind loses the technical barrier.

    In other words, Winter Fuel Payment transference to VME-R demonstrates something beyond the technical. The civil service is capable of delivering the technical infrastructure rapidly. It has been able to conceptually do that since 2016 and not only conceptually but practically since 2020.

    But there is one issue, this time with Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), which doesn’t come under VME-R. The Canary‘s source told us that because ESA did not exist in the 1980s, it’s already operating off modern IT anyway. They said:

    It’s effectively the code standards that the VME-R programme is updating to… so is not really requiring the VME-R process. In theory, any code for ESA should already be adaptable.

    The DWP says…

    The Canary asked the DWP for comment. Specifically, we wanted to know why the DWP is claiming its IT cannot update legacy benefit rates more than once a year. Because this appears not to be the case. A spokesperson said:

    Universal Credit is a dynamic system which adjusts as people earn more or less, and simplifies our safety net for those who cannot work. It makes it easier for people to claim support they are entitled to, is more generous overall than the old benefits, and it successfully met the demands of the pandemic in 2020.

    Parliament voted to end the complex web of six legacy benefits in 2012, and as this work approaches its conclusion in 2024 we are fully transitioning to a modern benefit, suited to the 21st Century.

    We recognise the pressures people are facing with the cost of living, which is why we’re providing support worth £22 billion across the next financial year including our Household Support Fund. Parliament voted in March 2022, to uprate benefits by the usual measure.

    They pointed The Canary to the fact that legacy benefits’ changes take “several months” to process (contrary to what the Times reported as once a year). Under Universal Credit the DWP can make the same changes in weeks. The DWP cited the volume of new claims to Universal Credit during the pandemic as being one such example.

    “Useless fuckers”

    The former DSS contractor summed the situation up:

    • DWP systems can be uprated at a technical level three times a day.
    • It requires parliament to instruct the DWP if the change involves money.
    • The parliamentary process of legislation cannot make three changes a day.
    • The decision to uprate yearly was made in 1970’s.
    • The technical systems have supported that since then VME-R simply makes faster change possible.
    • The rate of changing of benefits is limited by Parliament not the Civil Service.
    • The story is horseshit.

    Overall, they said that the story may show several things:

    First, it suggests that ministers do not really understand technology. No surprise there. They are not understanding just how rapidly they can change technical support for policies. Winter Fuel Payments being changed in 24 hours is a technical change. But it could equally be a technical change that reflects a policy change. Technology could be used to support policy.

    Second, it suggests that the civil service are not really supporting the government, technically. Because the government has no idea what support it actually needs. It is now technically possible to update Winter Fuel Payments in 24 hours. So that technical update needs the government to be able to formulate policy in 24 hours. That is a radical disconnect between ministerial ability and technical delivery.

    So, third, it suggests the government are actually very much out of their depth. Not from an ideological point of view but just from being useless fuckers. They’ve failed upwards as far as they can. That makes it dangerous for them – and us.

    It’s one thing for the DWP to lie about its IT systems. It’s another for the Guardian and Times to repeat the lie like it’s a statement of fact. But it’s entirely heinous that the DWP thinks it can lie to make excuses for not paying social security claimants more during a time of state-sanctioned class war.

    Featured image via Johnny Magnusson – Free Stock Photos and Wikimedia 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • PM under fire over ‘attacks’ on lawyers contesting Rwanda migrant plan

    The Prime Minister has come under fire for “attacks” on lawyers who are “simply doing their jobs” as the Government faces legal action over plans to send migrants to Rwanda.

    Boris Johnson claimed “liberal lawyers” will attempt to scupper the deal as Downing Street said flights for the one-way trip to the east African nation may not take place for months, in the wake of criticism and legal challenges.

    Number 10 insisted the Government was not waiting for court cases to be resolved before putting the policy into practice but questions remain as to whether it is ready to be launched, with very little detail about how it will work being made public so far.

    Officials are yet to confirm when the first flights will take off despite reports that Mr Johnson wanted to see this by the end of the month.

    “Liberal lawyers”

    Johnson said there would be “legal eagles, liberal lawyers, who will try to make this difficult to settle” but insisted the Rwanda deal was a “very sensible thing” and that this was a “humane, compassionate and sensible” solution to tackling Channel crossings.

    At the same time, the Home Office warned migrants were being cast adrift in the Channel by people smugglers using “dangerous, flimsy and unseaworthy boats”.

    Mark Fenhalls QC, chairman of the Bar Council, said:

    Attacks on men and women for simply doing their jobs are irresponsible and undermine the rule of law.

    Fenhalls explained:

    Few details of how the proposed scheme may operate have emerged but the Government has published a ‘factsheet’ that says: ‘Everyone considered for relocation will be screened and have access to legal advice. Decisions will be taken on a case-by-case basis and nobody will be removed if it is unsafe or inappropriate for them.’

    It is unclear who will be making these decisions or what criteria they be applying. But, as the Government acknowledges, the lawyers who provide legal advice in such cases will be fulfilling their professional duties.

    Sir Jonathan Jones QC, a former head of the Government Legal Department and now a senior consultant at law firm Linklaters, said it was

    not fair to blame the lawyers for bringing such challenges.

    He told the PA news agency:

    If there are legal risks (which seems very likely) the Government will no doubt have been warned about them. It’s not improper (or particularly uncommon) for the Government to proceed with a policy/decision where there is some risk of successful legal challenge.

    It’s not fair to blame the lawyers for bringing such challenges – they are just serving the best interests of their clients, as they are professionally bound to do.

    Jones also said:

    It’s certainly not fair to blame the claimants’ lawyers if a challenge is successful – by definition that is a court saying that the Government is acting unlawfully: that’s not the lawyers’ fault.

    Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said:

    The Government’s desire to treat people as human cargo and expel them to Rwanda is not only cruel, nasty and unprincipled, but it is also completely unworkable and lacking key details.

    Given this, it isn’t surprising it is facing legal challenges. Such brutal policies will do little to deter desperate people jumping on boats, because they do nothing to address the reasons people are forced to come here.

    Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, which is one of the organisations threatening legal action, accused Mr Johnson of playing

    dangerous games by inciting far-right hatred against lawyers when he knows very well that his Rwanda policy is unlawful, unworkable, neo-colonial and inhumane.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Immigration officers foiled by protesters during Edinburgh raid

    Immigration officers got more than they bargained for in Scotland last night. Ordinary citizens managed to beat Tory immigration policy after an Edinburgh raid was spotted early and attracted a large group of protesters. Eventually, the enforcement officers were rescued by local police.

    Campaigners spotted the raid was underway on social media just before 6pm on 5th May:

    Footage shows the officers being booed as they exit the building they had raided:

    Chased out

    The large group of supporters were still chanting as Edinburgh police drove the officers away – minus the people they had reportedly arrested:

    Embarrassingly, the officers were forced to ‘de-arrest’ those they had detained, according to reports:

    De-arrested

    De-arresting is a complex concept. For example, under certain conditions an arrested person may be released without the arrest being recorded. A Guardian explainer has a more in-depth analysis of how de-arresting works:

    According to section 30, subsection (7) and (7A) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, to “de-arrest” is to allow that “a person who has been arrested under any act of law at a place other than a police station, shall be released before reaching a police station if a constable is satisfied that there are no grounds for keeping him under arrest.”

    This is just the latest in a series of victories for ordinary people over the Home Office. A year ago, Glasgow activists pulled off a similar feat. Protesters physically blocked the immigration van from taking people away. Emotional scenes ensued as the released men thanked the crowd:

    These raids are another symptom of the hostile environment in the UK, but residents of cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh are showing us what real solidarity looks like.

    Let’s hope we see more of it across the country. Because it would wipe the smug smirk off Priti Patel’s face. More importantly, it’s the right thing to do.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Philafrenzy, cropped to 770 x 402, licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Seven years after Sheku Bayoh’s death at the hands of police, his family will hear what really happened

    On 3 May 2015, 31-year-old father of two Sheku Bayoh died after being restrained by police in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. Seven years later, the public inquiry into his death is due to begin on 10 May. This comes after his family’s drawn out battle for truth, justice, and accountability.

    Death at the hands of Scottish police

    On 3 May 2015, Kirkcaldy police officers responded to a call saying that a Black man was walking down the street with a knife and acting erratically. When officers arrived at the scene, Bayoh appeared to be walking away. He was unarmed and officers found no knife on him.

    Within 46 seconds of arriving, the officers had Bayoh face down on the ground. Two officers allegedly placed their full body weight on Bayoh’s upper body. They used CS spray – a gas used to incapacitate people – and batons, and shackled him in handcuffs, leg restraints, and ankle restraints. He lost consciousness, but officers kept the handcuffs and restraints in place. He died in hospital an hour and a half later.

    A post-mortem found injuries on Bayoh’s face, bruises on his body, and a broken rib.

    No truth, no accountability

    The Police Investigations and Review Commissioner (PIRC) investigation into the circumstances surrounding Bayoh’s death concluded in 2018. The Lord Advocate decided that no criminal, corporate or health and safety charges would be brought against the officers involved. However, footage later emerged that appeared to contradict the police accounts of the event.

    According to the Bayoh family’s lawyer Aamer Anwar:

    The family publicly condemned the PIRC investigators, believing that their inquiry lacked robustness, transparency, or impartiality.

    In 2019, the bereaved family submitted a request for a review of this decision.

    A seven year battle

    The Scottish government announced a public inquiry into the events surrounding Bayoh’s death in November 2019. This announcement came after pressure from Bayoh’s family, their lawyer, and INQUEST – a charity that seeks justice for the victims of state violence in the UK.

    Addressing Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) in April, Anwar said:

    No family should ever have to go through the burden of losing a loved one in police custody, and then to find out that the legal system fails them. No family should ever have to rely on their own efforts to make sure the full facts about such deaths are established and those responsible for deaths are held to account.

    Indeed, the difficult seven years it has taken for Bayoh’s family to secure a public inquiry reflects the barriers to truth and accountability that bereaved families face when seeking justice for their loved ones.

    INQUEST director Deborah Coles told The Canary:

    I think what the delay points to is the fundamental problem with the way in which deaths at the hands of the police are investigated in Scotland. And I think it’s exposed the failings of the investigation process, particularly the role of the PIRC, which has really compounded and exacerbated the trauma of the family.

    Speaking to the bereaved family’s inability to grieve until they know the truth about Bayoh’s death, she added:

    They’ve been faced by a deeply dysfunctional process that has been protracted, has placed obstacles in their way from day one, resulting in us having to campaign to try and get a public inquiry set up.

    A watershed moment

    The public inquiry will examine the circumstances surrounding Bayoh’s death, and the subsequent investigation.

    It will also seek to determine “whether race was a factor” in the police’s response. This was included in the inquiry’s terms of reference following pressure from INQUEST and others.

    INQUEST included Bayoh’s case as evidence of systemic racism in UK law enforcement in its submission to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights report following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. It placed his death in the context of vast racial disparities in stop and search, police use of force, and deaths in police custody due to “structural racism, over-policing and criminalisation”.

    Calling this a “seminal moment” in terms of police accountability in the UK, Coles told The Canary:

    It’s important that people wake up to the reality of what the police do, and that continuum of disproportionality in terms of stop and search, in terms of criminalisation, imprisonment, and then in the context of our work on deaths in custody.

    She added:

    it’s significant also for Scotland, a country that that talks about human rights a lot. I think this is a particularly important inquiry to look at human rights, racial justice, and equality issues. […] It’s a test of the Scottish government’s commitment to human rights, and the rule of law applying to police officers, which we see all too often doesn’t apply.

    Indeed, in 2021, Benjamin Monk was the first officer to be convicted for manslaughter in England and Wales in 35 years. However, there have been 1,816 deaths in police custody here since 1990. Black and racialised people are overrepresented in these figures. Meanwhile, Police Scotland doesn’t even routinely record data on the ethnicity of people killed in custody.

    Solidarity with the Bayoh family

    The public inquiry is due to begin on Tuesday 10 May in Edinburgh, seven years after Bayoh’s death at the hands of police. It is expected to go on for two years.

    STUC general secretary Roz Foyer told The Canary:

    As the public inquiry begins, we reaffirm our support for the Justice for Sheku Bayoh Campaign.

    She added:

    For seven years his family, supporters and our movement have fought to uncover the facts about Sheku’s death. We offer our firm and full solidarity to those who continue to be impacted by his passing in their courageous pursuit of the truth. Without it, we cannot ever hope for justice nor peace.

    Speaking on behalf of Bayoh’s mother Aminata, the family’s lawyer said:

    She wants people to remember him as a bright young man who any parent would have been proud of. He was a wonderful son, a wonderful brother and uncle, a loving partner to Colette and a loving father to two young boys who will now grow up without a father.

    Bayoh’s loved ones are holding a vigil in Edinburgh to mark the beginning of the inquiry at 9am on Tuesday 10 May. They are asking supporters to show up in solidarity, and to remember the life of a man who meant the world to his family.

    In Anwar’s words:

    The dead cannot cry out for justice, but it is the duty of the living to do so for them.

    We must send a loud, clear message that police can’t kill our friends, neighbours, and family members with impunity.

    Featured image via James Eades/Unsplash resized 770 x 403 px

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

  • Channel 4’s plan for an alternative to privatisation

    Channel 4 has laid out its alternative plan to privatisation, following the Government announcing its intention to sell the broadcaster out of public ownership.

    Its proposals include “levelling up” so that it becomes more “northern-based”, with the majority of its workforce based outside of London.

    Some 300 roles are already based outside London, and under the new plan this would increase to 600 by 2025.

    Channel 4’s chief executive, Alex Mahon, said they had “actively participated” in the consultation with the Government, adding:

    We also recognise that standing still in this ever-changing world is not an option. We are absolutely not here to protect some sort of status quo or anachronistic institution.

    She warned that the Government’s plans could have a potentially:

    major impact on the television landscape, on where things are made, on who makes them, on what gets funded, and on where people work.

    The Sun’s Who Cares Wins Awards
    Channel 4 CEO Alex Mahon attending The Sun’s Who Cares Wins Awards at the Roundhouse in London (Yui Mok/PA)

    Up for sale

    Channel 4 has been publicly owned since its creation in 1982 by the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, and is entirely funded by advertising.

    Under plans announced in April in a White Paper from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), the broadcaster will be put up for sale. The decision was met with widespread criticism from the creative industry and politicians alike.

    Mahon said the channel’s own plans “represent our vision” of what the station can do “whilst continuing to be owned by the British people”.

    The Government’s proposed privatisation is:

    extremely different to the proposal we envisioned, of rooting our impact more in small and medium businesses, and more across the entirety of the UK.

    She highlighted the abolition of “the publishable custom model”, which currently gives permission for Channel 4 to make its own shows and own its own intellectual property.

    Specifically, this would mean a 25% independent quota – whereas 100% of what we currently buy comes from external producers.

    This could mean the loss of around £320 million a year to the indie sector.

    The White Paper only mandates a 35% Ofcom quota of spend out of London, and last year Channel 4 voluntarily spent 50% out of London. This could mean a loss of £86 million a year in the nations and regions.

    The alternative plan

    The broadcaster’s own proposals, which were first presented to the Government earlier this year, prior to the DCMS announcement, mention that Channel 4 would “streamline” its presence in London, but “at the moment, there is no plan to make any changes”.

    Its main headquarters are in Leeds, and would look to expand its digital content production studio – 4Studio – which is also based in the city.

    It would also aim to tackle skills shortages by doubling investment in 4Skills, its training and development strategy, to £100 million over the next decade, including the establishment of a 4Skills school outside of London.

    A £1bn betrayal

    In setting out plans for the privatisation, the Government claimed that public ownership is holding the channel back from competing with streaming giants such as Netflix.

    Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries wrote that streaming services like Amazon Prime Video spent £779 million in 2020 on original productions in the UK – a figure she claimed was “twice as much as Channel 4”.

    In 2021, 13.1% of total Channel 4 viewing came from streaming, Mahon said. This is an increase from 9.2% in the previous year, with 19% of revenues coming from digital advertising.

    The broadcaster said it expects to be valued at around £500 million in a sale on the private market. Reports last month suggested that the broadcaster would fetch “at least £1 billion” for the Government’s purse.

    Channel 4 warned that privatisation would also hit the value of its supply chain. It cautioned that privatisation could knock up to £3 billion off the value of the UK production industry and other related areas.

    It added that there could also be a reduction of up to 4,000 supply chain jobs which are supported by the broadcaster amid a predicted reduction in investment.

    The group also highlighted that there is likely to be “uncertainty and disruption” during the legislative and sale process, which it predicted could take two years.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Outrage at Shell’s £7bn profits amid war and cost of living crisis

    Amid war and a cost of living crisis, the oil firm Shell are making a killing. At over £7bn, the firm’s quarterly profits are their highest ever. However, the windfall comes as oil supplies are disrupted by the war in Ukraine, and bills have soared for ordinary people.

    This is despite Russia, a major global exporter of oil, being hit by sanctions. All firms, including Shell, have reduced operations there. Campaigning groups like Greenpeace have already called for a special windfall tax on the giant’s profits.

    Outrage

    Others took to Twitter to air their views on the firm’s unprecedented quarter – including trade unionists, who called it “pure greed”:

    One economist called for a 100% tax on Shell’s massive profits:

    A professor of accounting said that the government had done nothing to intervene. This meant the gains were nothing short of profiteering:

    Meanwhile, a Labour MP suggested that the energy market was rigged in favour of the rich:

    Having a good war?

    Another social media user called for a tax to pay for people’s energy bills. They said Shell was “having a good war”:

    Even the editor of the Financial Times said an exceptional tax in a time of conflict was justified:

    Another Twitter user quipped that Shell must have only eaten cheaper brands to make such a fortune. This was a reference to Tory suggestions that people reduce the quality of their food in the cost-of-living crisis:

    Helpfully, someone else pointed out that Boris Johnson had already expressed his view on oil firm profits. Johnson previously told the BBC that energy giants “don’t want” a windfall tax – huge surprise there.

    Racket

    Oil firms are making massive profits while ordinary people are afraid to turn their heating on. Boris’s excuse that big oil doesn’t “want” to pay taxes doesn’t hold water. In theory at least, it’s the job of government to intervene in the public’s interest. There are no excuses not to enforce a windfall tax on Shell’s billions.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Shell Gas Station, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY 2.0.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • A jury in Bristol hears about the day that the city rose up against the Policing Bill

    A demonstration in front of Bristol Crown Court was held in support of Indigo Bond on the morning of Tuesday 3 May. Indigo is on trial for alleged rioting at the Kill the Bill demonstration in March 2021.

    Indigo’s trial is likely to last until the beginning of next week.

    A statement from the Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign (BARC) says:

    On March the 21st of last year, Indigo – who was only 19 at the time – took to the streets along with thousands of other Bristolians to protest against the authoritarian PCSC (Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts) Bill. This Bill – enacted into law on the 28th April 2022 – is an oppressive piece of legislation that violates our freedom to protest and directly persecutes marginalised communities.

    This Bill “couldn’t go unchallenged”

    Thousands of people came out to demonstrate on 21 March 2021, in a mass show of resistance against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill. The Bill was given Royal Assent last week, despite widespread opposition. The new Act gives the police more powers to arrest Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people, and to clamp down on public protest. It also means that many people will have to serve a larger proportion of their prison sentences, allows life sentences to be imposed on people under the age of 18, and allows young adults to be given whole life imprisonment orders.

    On 21 March, thousands of people marched against the PCSC Bill in Bristol. The demonstration happened just weeks after the brutal rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, and just days after women holding a vigil for Sarah were violently manhandled by police. The march began at Bristol’s College Green, where a vigil was being held to remember Sarah.

    The march ended with a mass confrontation with police outside Bridewell Police Station. By the end of the evening, police vehicles had been set on fire and the police station’s windows had been smashed. 62 protesters reported suffering injuries at the hands of the police on 21 March, and the protests that followed in subsequent days.

    BARC’s statement explains the context of the protest, and why the PCSC Bill “couldn’t go unchallenged”:

    The state, police and prison system is defined by institutional racism, misogyny and brutality. The past years we’ve seen so many examples of this – such as the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, which happened just days before the protest Indigo went to. This Bill, which gives the police even more power, couldn’t go unchallenged.
    Indigo is just the latest person to stand trial for riot for the events of 21 March. Last week two defendants were found guilty by juries at Bristol Crown Court. In total, 85 people have been arrested following the demonstration, and 16 people have been sentenced to prison time.

    The BARC statement continues:

    The use of these riot charges is a way for the state to clamp down on those brave enough to stand against police violence and repression.

    Resisting the “encroachment of the police state into our lives”

    Indigo’s trial got underway on Tuesday 3 May. The impression given by the prosecuting barrister was of a powerful demonstration which took the police by surprise.

    The prosecutor, David Scutt, opened his case by showing footage of police officers telling the protesters on 21 March 2021 that the protest was unlawful because of the coronavirus public health measures that were in place at the time. However, Scutt admitted that the police had been incorrect in their assumption that the protests were in breach of lockdown measures, and that in fact the legislation did not say that protest was unlawful.

    Later on – during cross examination by defence barrister Russell Fraser – the court heard that the police had sent out social media posts during the day discouraging people from protesting.

    Scutt showed footage of the demonstrators gathering at College Green. During cross-examination, Fraser pointed out that the police Operational Log for the day showed that the police had been taken by surprise by the number of protesters. By about 2:15pm, the police log states that it was “no longer achievable” to disperse the demonstrators because of the number of people who had arrived.

    Scutt told the court that at about 3pm the marchers reached Castle Park. The jury was shown footage of a speech by one of the demonstrators. They said:

    We are here for one reason, and that’s the encroachment of the police state into our lives

    The speaker then said that there was only one place for the demonstration to go, and that was Bridewell Police Station.

    The jury was shown footage of police officers attempting – unsuccessfully – to disperse a sit-down protest close to Castle Park. Then, they were shown a video of the crowd setting off towards Bridewell.

    The court also heard from police sergeant Lucy Williams, who said she had formed part of the police cordon. She claimed that the police line was eventually forced to retreat to just outside Bridewell Police Station because of the sheer number of demonstrators.

    The prosecution itemised the damage caused by the end of the night, claiming that 23 police vehicles had been damaged, valued at an estimated £160k. Scutt conceded, however, that Indigo was not responsible for any of this damage.

    The jury was shown another video of the specific allegations against Indigo, which are all alleged to have happened relatively early on in the evening, when police in riot gear formed a line across the street. She is accused of pushing and kicking at the police riot shields, and of throwing a small stick and a bottle at the police line. The court heard that, after her arrest, Indigo made a prepared statement in her police interview, saying that she had felt “scared” after officers began threatening the crowd with batons, and that she had acted defensively in reaction to the police acting “excessively”.

    “Love and solidarity”

    BARC concluded their statement with a statement of solidarity with Indigo:

    Indigo has already been pre–judged in local and national media outlets, which published defamatory stories that have negatively affected her personal life – such as being excluded from her place of education

    We stand with Indigo and all those facing repression from the state for taking a stand against police violence. They have our love and solidarity.

    The prosecution’s case continues.

    Featured image via Shoal Collective (with permission)

    By Tom Anderson

  • George Eustice was great on breakfast TV – if you’re the Tories

    The government wheeled-out minister George Eustice to do the breakfast TV rounds on Wednesday 4 May – and his appearances underscored the class war that his party is currently waging.

    If Elsie was my mum she’d be eating value brands…

    First up, Sky News‘s Kay Burley probed Eustice on Boris Johnson’s comments about Elsie. This was the story of a 77-year-old who only eats once a day and rides around on buses to keep warm because she can’t afford to have her heating on. The environment secretary said if Elsie was his mum he would tell her:

    to speak to the local authority and try to get some help from the Household Support Fund

    Elsie may well be thinking ‘thank fuck I’m not George Eustice’s mum’. Because he also had some top money-saving tips for the plebs.

    Eustice said:

    Generally speaking, what people find is by going for some sort of value brand rather than own branded products they can actually contain and manage their household budget.

    Brilliant advice from the guy responsible for food supply chains and security. Because as National World reported, some supermarkets have already hiked the price of value brands by up to 29% this year.

    You can’t afford to eat? Excellent!

    The British Retail Consortium has said that shop prices have risen at their fastest rate for a decade. But Eustice thinks its OK to trumpet the fact that the UK has:

    the lowest [household spending on food] in Europe

    Probably because we can’t afford to fucking eat, George.

    Over on Good Morning Britain (GMB), Eustice’s response to Susanna Reid’s question that the government isn’t doing enough was:

    We’ve a million job vacancies.

    As Reid summed up, the Tories are essentially saying ‘get a job or you’re on your own’. Not that this attitude is new.

    Creating an underclass

    As The Canary previously wrote, the Tories’ idea behind Universal Credit was to push:

    everyone possible into work, and those in work into more work; making welfare reliance impossible. And anyone left? It’s their own, stupid fault…

    But it would also put all those unwilling to help themselves out of poverty and welfare into one place. Sick, disabled, unemployed and low earning people would no longer be different, distinct benefit groups. They would become one, homogeneous ‘underclass’ of people.

    Class war

    Another major problem with Eustice’s comments is people’s responses to them: “hapless“, “poor excuses“, “out-of-touch” and “simply not understanding” to name a few. No, no, no! These kinds of statements imply the Tories are somehow making mistakes or don’t ‘get it’, absolving them of responsibility. The government knows full well what it’s doing. As The Canary previously reported, the government know that the poorest households are being devastated by corporate greed and their own inaction.

    Once again, this “cost of living crisis” is not a cost of living crisis but a class war. Eustice’s care-not comments across breakfast media show that – far from not understanding – the Tories literally don’t care. In fact, this class war is exactly what they want.

    Featured image via Good Morning Britain – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • BP and the Tories just laughed at the poorest people

    BP has announced a huge profits bonanza. The massive corporation saw a massive 138% increase in its profits for the first three months of the year. Meanwhile, the situation for the poorest people in the UK continues to worsen. Yet a Tory minister has again ruled out hitting the likes of BP where it hurts.

    BP: laughing all the way to the bank

    BBC News reported on BP’s profits. It noted that:

    The energy giant reported an underlying profit of $6.2bn (£4.9bn) compared to $2.6bn in the same period last year – ahead of expectations.

    BP said the increase was due in part to “exceptional oil and gas trading”.

    The rise is an increase of 138%. It comes after BP made $12.8bn (£9.5bn) profit in 2021 – not dissimilar to Shell’s $19bn profit. As author and researcher Christine Berry tweeted:

    Indeed – and the government was still claiming this on Tuesday 3 May.

    The government: ‘what crisis?’

    Dan Walker interviewed international trade minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan on BBC Breakfast. She disagreed with a so-called “windfall tax” – where the government would hit energy companies with a one-off financial sting:

    So, while BP continues to rake it in, the Tory government sits on its hands. Meanwhile, the poorest people are already facing an even bleaker winter.

    BP and the government: waging class war

    As The Canary previously reported, think tank the Resolution Foundation has said that 62%, or nearly two-thirds, of the poorest households are under what it calls “fuel stress” right now – the new term for fuel poverty. It’s forecasting that come October, when another energy price rise hits, this figure will rise to 80%:

    A graph from the Resolution Foundation showing the extent of fuel poverty for rich and poor

    But as the Resolution Foundation’s Jonathan Marshall wrote, it’s not the same for everyone:

    four in five of the poorest families face fuel stress this October, compared with just one in 50 of the richest

    All this is without soaring food prices, a real-terms social security cut of £10bn and inaction from the government.

    What do you call it when corporations like BP rake it in and the government stands idly by? It’s class war, not a cost of living crisis – and as each day passes, the situation only gets worse.

    Featured image via Global Panorama – Flickr, resized to 770×403 under licence CC BY-SA 2.0, LBC – YouTube and The Canary 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.