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Category: UK

  • Climate activists halt trading at Lloyd’s of London in fossil fuel protest

    Climate protesters have used superglue, chains and bike locks to block entrances to halt all trading at major insurance marketplace Lloyd’s of London:

    Extinction Rebellion (XR) said more than 60 activists had been at the central London building since 7am on Tuesday 12 April. They aim to close the business for the day.

    The environmental protest group said it is demanding that Lloyd’s of London stops insuring fossil fuel projects. It highlighted the Trans Mountain Pipeline extension in Canada, which is being insured through the Lloyd’s marketplace. Kayah George, of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and Tulalip Tribes, said:

    The Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline threatens my nation and our sacred Sleilwaut (Burrard) inlet; our place of creation. The pipeline poisons our clam beds and violates the rights of many Indigenous communities along its length and at its source.

    “End Fossil Fuels Now”

    XR said people had also scaled the outside of the building and unfurled banners reading “End Fossil Fuels Now” and “Insure Climate Justice”.

    As employees arrived for work to find the building closed, they were greeted by members of XR’s TruthTeller project. The TruthTellers invited them to blow the whistle about any planet-damaging plans being insured by Lloyds. A flier addressed “Dear Lloyds of London” noted that CEO John Neal recently backtracked on a report that promised to phase out the most damaging activities by 2030.

    The note asked:

    As a fellow human being are you happy to help him take us down this highly dangerous path? As a Lloyd’s professional, do you think it makes long-term business sense to double down on a doomed sector? If not, we invite you to speak up. We also invite you to whistleblow.

    The demand to end fossil fuel investments

    The action comes after activists from Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion closed Tower Bridge for several hours last Friday morning.

    Police were called to the bridge after protesters occupied the famous landmark and unveiled a green banner reading: “End fossil fuels now”.

    Of Tuesday’s demonstration, XR spokesperson Clare Walmsley said:

    We’re here to demand an end to all new fossil fuel investments and insurance. By underwriting the world’s most deadly fossil fuel projects, they are creating climate chaos – floods, famine, wildfires and death.

    Insuring new oil and gas projects in the North Sea will do nothing to solve the cost of living crisis either. Instead, it locks us into a system that’s already pushing millions into poverty.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Failed by the state while alive, and failed by the state in death

    Content warning: this article contains descriptions of murder and mentions of rape

    As Sabina Nessa’s killer was jailed for life, Priti Patel used the sentencing to further her own agenda. The self-promoting Home Secretary tweeted that tackling violence against women and girls was “central to my Beating Crime Plan”. But as Sabina’s sister, Jebina Islam, pointed out, the family has received no support at all from the government.

    She argued:

    Lack of support from yourself and Boris Johnson just shows how ‘important’ it is to tackle male violence to you guys.

    Sabina was horrifically assaulted and murdered by a man in September 2021. Her death is just one example of how the state has failed Black and Brown women and girls, both in life and after their death.

    Shukri Abdi

    Let’s take a few examples. There’s 12-year-old Shukri Abdi, who drowned in a river in June 2019. She was failed by the state at all levels. Just one day after her death, before they had even properly investigated, Greater Manchester Police released a statement ruling out suspicious circumstances. In fact, the Detective Inspector warned the public of the “dangers of playing near or swimming in rivers”, implying that Shukri, who couldn’t swim and wouldn’t go near rivers, had just been playing. Shukri had been bullied at school, and was last seen with a group of children by the river. The school launched their own internal investigation into the bullying, which the family stated was completely inadequate.

    In December 2020, a coroner concluded that Shukri’s death was an accident. Meanwhile, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) released a report dismissing every single one of Shukri’s mother’s complaints, stating that the police’s lack of action was not racially motivated.

    In January 2021, the lawyers of Shukri’s mother launched a civil action against the police, stating that Greater Manchester Police had failed on many levels in the investigation, and that the police were institutionally racist.

    Maz Saleem, part of the Justice4Shukri campaign, said at the time:

    The family has maintained the firm position that they have been unfairly treated by GMP from the outset due to their status as a refugee family.

    Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry

    There’s also the case of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, who were stabbed to death in a park in Wembley in June 2020. Their family had to search for the women themselves after receiving no immediate help from the Metropolitan Police. Their mother, Mina Smallman, said of the police:

    I knew instantly why they didn’t care.

    She continued:

    They didn’t care because they looked at my daughter’s address and thought they knew who she was. A black woman who lives on a council estate.

    When the police did finally come to the scene, officers took selfies of themselves with Bibaa and Nicole’s dead bodies. Mina said:

    If ever we needed an example of how toxic it has become, those police officers felt so safe, so untouchable, that they felt they could take photographs of dead black girls and send them on. It speaks volumes of the ethos that runs through the Metropolitan Police.

    In October 2021, an IOPC investigation into the force’s actions found that the level of service by the Met was “below the standard that it should have been”. These words will, no doubt, have added insult to injury for the grieving family.

    Blessing Olusegun

    And then there’s Blessing Olusegun. The 21-year-old was found dead on a beach in Bexhill on 18 September 2020. No-one has been charged with her murder. Sussex police treated the case as “unexplained” but not suspicious, with a postmortem stating that she died by drowning.

    Blessing’s mother said:

    We maintain that the circumstances of her death were suspicious and should have been treated as such by the police.

    She is working with a legal team to do:

    everything in our power to find the answers we are looking for.

    Sending messages about rape

    Speaking out about the handling of her daughters’ murders, Mina Smallman says she has been gaslit by the police. But if we look at just a few examples of police racism and misogyny, it will perhaps come as no surprise that Black and Brown women and girls are consistently failed by the state.

    Back in 2018, the IOPC began the Operation Hotton investigation into police officers’ conduct at Charing Cross police station. In January 2022, it issued a “learning” report to the Met, highlighting:

    Inappropriate behaviour by officers, including, racism, misogyny, harassment and the exchange of offensive social media messages.

    The IOPC report stated that officers attended a festival dressed as known sex offenders and a molested child, and found “numerous messages” in various police WhatsApp groups “about rape and ‘raping’ each other”. One police officer even sent messages saying:

    ““I would happily rape you”; “if I was single I would actually hate fuck you” and “if I was single I would happily chloroform you”.”

    The IOPC refused to name one ex-police officer, who:

    repeatedly used a racially offensive term during a Christmas social event while off-duty and his phone was subsequently found to contain offensive images and comments about women, people from ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.

    Another ex-police officer was found to be:

    exchanging inappropriate messages about women, drugs and domestic violence

    They were also accused of:

    sending texts containing offensive and inappropriate language, including some of a racial nature.

    Then, there’s at least 194 women who have been murdered by the police and prison system in England and Wales. Back in May 2021, Channel 4 News reported that 129 women had come forward in the last two years to report that their police officer partner was abusing either them or their children.

    Racial disparity

    Of course, we can’t ignore the fact that when a white woman or girl is murdered, the state and the media are more likely to pour their resources into a case. The Canary’s Sophia Purdy-Moore has pointed out that:

    As of February 2020, the Met Police has spent over £12m on the then 13-year search for Madeline McCann. But Aisha Ahmed from Minority Matters says that when it comes to investigating missing young people from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds, police “claim to be under-resourced”.

    Perhaps the best known example of racial disparity is the case of Sarah Everard, who was murdered by a Met police officer. The mainstream media and the public were, rightly, outraged by Sarah’s murder, and it made front page news for weeks. But as I asked at the time, where was the outrage and grief for missing and murdered Women of Colour?

    Don’t be fooled by empty promises

    As Priti Patel continues to use the murders of women like Sabina Nessa to further her own publicity, we must make sure we’re not fooled by the Tories’ empty promises to eradicate deeply-rooted misogyny and racism in the country. Patel has stated that she is:

    listening to women and girls up and down the country.

    But at the same time, she is responsible for passing new laws that actually make women less safe. She is also giving some of the country’s most violent men – police officers – inexhaustible new powers through both the police bill and the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Act, which was passed in 2021.

    It is essential that all of us shout out loud to get justice for women and girls like Shukri Abdi and Blessing Olusegun. It is vital that we fight impending new police powers which will no doubt affect Black and Brown communities the most. Enough of white silence: we all need to be allies.

    Featured image via Pour Paris, resized to 770 x 403 px, licensed under Wikimedia Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. 

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Ofsted is ‘failed project’ – union chief

    The president of the National Education Union has said that Ofsted “is and always has been a failed project” and was “absent without leave during the pandemic”.

    Speaking at the NEU’s annual conference in Bournemouth on Monday, Daniel Kebede said that Ofsted was a

    project that sends your workload rocketing and drives so much of the rot in education.

    Kebede continued:

    If what they did had any value they would prove it, but they have never published any evidence to prove that their inspections are accurate,

    He added that at a time of “rocketing child poverty” the inspectorate had been given a funding boost.

    He went on to say:

    Ofsted were absent without leave during the pandemic. They were nowhere to be seen in our schools, and they were not missed

    Incoming vote

    The union is due to vote on a motion on Monday to establish an independent, NEU-backed commission on Ofsted to report on the reliability of its inspection judgments and to campaign for a new accountability system of “collaborative support” to replace the inspectorate.

    Kebede said that the “one thing that Ofsted can accurately measure is poverty”, with schools in more affluent areas four times more likely to be awarded an “outstanding” grade than those serving disadvantaged communities.

    Kebede also said that:

    Nothing showed their contempt for working-class children more than when (Ofsted chief) Amanda Spielman said that you spent too much time feeding children during the pandemic rather than educating them.

    Kebede said he feared that Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi’s

    unnecessary new guidelines on political impartiality will deter some of our colleagues from responding to them.

    Mr Zahawi says that his intention is not to limit the ‘range of political issues that schools can and do teach about,’ but in practice his guidance will have the opposite effect.

    Child Q

    The conference will also debate an emergency motion on Child Q, the Black 15-year-old school girl who was strip searched by police at her school.

    Kebede said that what happened had not started with a strip search, but with:

    zero tolerance behaviour policies, a system that disproportionately excludes black children.

    He said he did not believe the police could provide a pastoral role within schools, stating that the police “degraded, abused and humiliated Child Q”.

    Kebede asked:

    Child Q was never in the possession of any drugs. However, I know a place where 11 in 12 toilets tested positive for cocaine. It’s a place where there is a 24-hour police presence. It’s called the Houses of Parliament. Why are you strip searching children and not strip searching MPs?

    He said that during the pandemic the country had the “worst possible Government at the worst possible time”, adding in reference to the controversial “partygate” scandal, “whilst you couldn’t even catch up with colleagues in a staffroom, this Government was sipping wine and eating cheese on the patio of Downing Street”.

    He added that the decision to run SATs in primary schools following the disruption of the pandemic was an “utterly brutal decision”.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Trans people and cancer patients ‘denied chance to preserve fertility on the NHS’

    Some transgender people are being denied the chance to preserve their fertility on the NHS due to a postcode lottery, experts have said.

    A new study found patchy care for freezing eggs and sperm. Likewise, young girls undergoing cancer treatment and women who cannot delay chemotherapy are unlikely to be offered the option to preserve their ovarian tissue.

    CCGs ‘must not discriminate’

    In 2019, NHS England told regional clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) they must not discriminate against transgender people and must take heed of the Equality Act. This followed the threat of a judicial review by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

    In guidance to CCGs, NHS England said that:

    in a significant number of cases an individual’s need for fertility preservation will arise because of the threat to fertility from cancer treatment but other patient groups affected the same way include those receiving hormone treatment or surgery for the alleviation of gender dysphoria.

    It added:

    Given the legal duties identified…CCGs must not determine which patient groups might be offered fertility preservation services on a basis which discriminates against those patients because of a protected characteristic, including gender re-assignment.

    It did, however, say that as long as CCGs complied with the law, they could form their own policies:

    taking into account local needs and relative priorities, evidence of clinical effectiveness of the intervention under consideration, and available resource.

    A new UK study was led by University College London Hospital, Oxford University Hospital and Ninewells Hospital and Medical School in Dundee. It called for a standard UK policy for those needing to preserve their fertility.

    It said that funding across the NHS is “variable”. This means that millions of people face unfair access to treatments such as the freezing of reproductive tissue, eggs, sperm or embryos.

    The struggle for services

    The study was published in the journal Human Fertility. It found that – as well as transgender people – those with fertility issues caused by things like recurrent endometriosis or autoimmune conditions may also struggle to access services.

    Researchers found that, overall, less than half (42%) of CCGs in England specified any provision for transgender patients.

    For the research, 155 UK policies were scrutinised for each of the 135 CCGs in England. This was alongside 14 health boards in Scotland, seven health boards in Wales and five trusts in Northern Ireland.

    In England, the freezing of eggs, sperm and embryos was found to be funded for patients undergoing current cancer treatment. Meanwhile, 89% of CCGs will fund freezing for benign medical conditions which may impair fertility. One in 10 will not.

    Preserving ovarian tissue, such as for children with cancer, was funded in only 7% of CCG areas. However, it is now considered routine in other countries

    There were also restrictions across the board on how many cycles of egg retrieval could be carried out. Additionally, some policies were strict on how fat people were, contrary to official guidance.

    An appeal for uniform policy

    The authors noted:

    The number of referrals for fertility preservation has risen considerably in the last few years, including referrals for people with gender incongruence … Public consultation regarding funding provision is needed and we hope that the findings from this study form grounds for debate.

    Sania Latif, from University College London Hospital, added:

    Our study highlights the disparity in fertility preservation provision across the UK.

    Variation in provision creates a lack of parity between patients and affects the holistic care of the pathology being treated.

    Notably, funding for those undergoing treatment for gender incongruence and ovarian tissue cryopreservation is inconsistent and needs to be addressed.

    This national audit serves as a tool for all stakeholders … to appeal to their local commissioners for uniformity of policy, equal access to care for patients and implementation of standardised fertility preservation provision in the UK.

    Scotland came out top for care, with a national policy to fund the freezing of all reproductive material, including ovarian tissue.

    The report can be found online at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14647273.2022.2045519

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Almost half of LGBTQ+ psychiatrists experience hostility due to identity

    Almost half of all LGBTQ+ psychiatrists in the UK have experienced hostility at work because of their identity, according to a survey.

    The survey by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which has around 20,000 members, was the first of its kind.

    The survey was completed by 2,282 psychiatrists, with 48% of the 572 LGBTQ+ respondents reporting that they experienced hostility in the workplace because of their identity.

    This number was even larger for LGBTQ+ psychiatrists from Black, Asian and other minority groups – with 58% saying they had experienced bullying, harassment or microaggressions.

    Hostile comments or behaviours, known as microaggressions, were the most common form of workplace hostility reported by LGBTQ+ psychiatrists.

    Of those who experienced microaggressions, 31% said they were also bullied and 40% said they were harassed.

    Reported microaggressions included co-workers using the wrong pronouns when referring to them or their partner despite being advised otherwise, or making derogatory comments about LGBTQ+ people and other minority groups in their presence.

    Call it out

    Just four in 10 LGBTQ+ psychiatrists who said they experienced bullying reported it to their employers. Only one in 10 made a formal complaint.

    Dr Pavan Joshi, chair of the College’s Rainbow Special Interest Group, said that no-one should be bullied at work because of their identity.

    Joshi said:

    Nobody should be bullied, harassed or experience microaggressions at work because of their sexuality or gender identity.

    Like racism, LGBTQ+ discrimination can be subtle and disguised. Discrimination against LGBTQ+ people will continue unless we each speak up and call it out.

    Joshi emphasised:

    Staying silent emboldens perpetrators. Discrimination in all its forms damages mental health. It has no place in our society including the workplace.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Rishi Sunak’s family wealth is obscene in contrast to the UK’s endemic poverty

    Poverty is on the rise in the UK. And in contrast, Tory chancellor Rishi Sunak’s family riches can only be described as obscene.

    The mainstream media has focused on his wife Akshata Murty’s tax issues and non-domicile (non-dom) status. But the real scandal is about much more than that. And it also has a Russian dimension to it.

    Obscene wealth

    The register of financial interests of MPs lists just two items for Sunak as of 17 January 2022. These are a £50,000 donation from Dean R Benson and a flat in London worth over £100k. But in October 2021, Tatler reported that Sunak has a personal portfolio worth more than £10m. That includes his London properties, his property in California, and his £1.5m manor in Yorkshire.

    But that’s not the full story. It’s believed that Sunak is worth around £200m and that Murty is wealthier than the Queen. Her stake in the IT multinational Infosys is worth around an eye-watering £690m. The Guardian also reported that Murty has an interest via her father in a “£900m-a-year joint venture with Amazon in India”.

    Moreover, Murty could have avoided paying an estimated £4.4m in UK tax on dividends earned from Infosys. That’s because she chose to claim non-dom status in the UK. However, it’s possible that that HMRC can challenge that choice.

    With all the negative publicity, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Murty has now decided to pay UK taxes on her overseas income. But will she pay the taxes she saved over the years because of her non-dom claim? The answer is that she has said she will only pay UK taxes on an “arising basis”.

    Lucrative contracts

    Infosys has reportedly won contracts with a number of publicly funded UK organisations, as well as with the UK government – altogether worth £22m. The Mirror reports that Infosys was one of several companies that between 2015 and 2021 had a share in public sector contracts worth £100m. It was also one of 12 companies that had a share in a £95m contract with Transport for London in 2015. There were several more contracts, including:

    •  £15m worth of work since 2016 for the UK’s care home regulator, the Care Quality Commission.
    • A £5m contract in 2019 with the government agency responsible for regulating medicines and healthcare products.
    • A £25m IT contract in 2022 with “the Tory-run East Sussex County Council”.

    The Mirror added that Infosys:

    was one of 12 suppliers in a £95m deal with Transport for London in 2015, at a time when Prime Minister Boris Johnson was Mayor of London.

    And it was one of nine partners in a £10m contract with Tory-run Westminster City Council last year.

    Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner insisted that Sunak should declare any potential conflicts of interest in his wife’s finances in the Register of Members’ Interests.

    Section 7 of the the Ministerial Code of Conduct states:

    Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise.

    The code further states that declarations “should also cover interests of the Minister’s spouse or partner and close family which might be thought to give rise to a conflict”.

    Sunak appears to have breached that code in both respects, which is usually a resigning matter.

    Obscene poverty

    Just as the Sunaks’ family wealth can be described as obscene, so too are the rising poverty levels he oversees as chancellor. For example, the Resolution Foundation thinktank calculated that 1.3 million more people will be in absolute poverty come 2023.

    In February, an article in The Canary reported that the National Institute of Economic and Social Research’s “forecast of one million destitute households could potentially mean over 2.2 million people will be living in the most abject poverty”.

    As for the massively increasing energy prices, The Canary’s Steve Topple quotes from a Resolution Foundation study. It concludes 62% of the poorest households in the UK are in fuel poverty. And with the further rise in energy costs flagged for October, 80% of the poorest households will end up in fuel stress. It adds:

    As ever, it is lower-income households who are disproportionately impacted by high energy costs

    Topple commented:

    1 April saw energy companies hike their prices by 54% while the government stood by and watched. However, a think tank’s analysis has helped to expose the real issue here. It’s not a cost of living crisis. The issue is that the richest people are waging a class war on the rest of us – and energy prices are their latest weapon.

    The Russian connection

    Then there’s the Russian connection to the scandal. On 13 March, Sunak tweeted:

    I am urging firms to think very carefully about their investments in Russia and how they may aid the Putin regime. I also want to make it clear that there is no case for new investment in Russia.

    What he failed to mention is that Infosys has been doing business in Russia via its Moscow office. On 24 March, when asked by Sky News if his family has potentially benefited from Putin’s regime, Sunak answered:

    I don’t think that’s the case, and as I said the operations of all companies are up to them.

    However, Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko commented in an LBC interview that with regard to firms doing business in Russia like Infosys:

    Every company has the choice to make, you can run the business as usual and make your money, but you have to live with the fact it’s bloody money, and bloody trade.

    She added that such money would “buy the bullets that are killing Ukrainian children, Ukrainian women”.

    Professor Richard Murphy, director of Tax Research UK, told the Mirror:

    Rishi Sunak is the man in charge of our nation’s finances. My question is, is he a fit and proper person to be in charge? Is he objective and able to form an uninfluenced opinion about what is best for this country, independent of Russia’s influence on his family’s fortune? I don’t think he is.

    Following weeks of sanctions imposed on the Putin regime, it was announced on 1 April that Infosys has closed its Russian office. However, its website appears to suggest otherwise:

    Infosys Moscow office

    Other guilty parties

    Of course, Sunak isn’t the only senior UK government figure with links to Russia.

    For example, there’s Jacob Rees-Mogg, who holds shares in the investment firm Somerset Capital Management (SCM). Reportedly, SCM maintains its investments with one of four Russian-operated firms has been relinquished. As for the other three, they are “in the process of exiting”.

    SCM also holds significant shares in Infosys.

    And then there’s current Tory party co-chair Ben Elliott. He co-founded Quintessentially, which caters to the stinking rich, including oligarchs. So perhaps it’s no surprise that after Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, it wasn’t long before Quintessentially deleted its Russia page. This is referred to in a Led By Donkeys video:

    Here’s an archived copy of that Quintessentially page, describing the services on offer in Russia:

    Let’s also not forget prime minister Boris Johnson’s links to Russian oligarchs, as published by The Canary via multiple articles.

    Class war – fighting back

    As Topple says, the Tories are waging a class war. And that war never ceases, though there’s been the occasional victory.

    In the late 1980s, the Thatcher government told everyone they had to pay a community charge, or ‘poll tax’, which was a fixed rate charge per adult resident. So people took to the streets, with the largest demonstration in London on 31 March 1990 (police estimated around 200,000 took part). Around 5,000 people were injured. Rioters attacked a number of chain stores, high-end shops, bank branches, cafes, and wine bars. Moreover, “Porsches and Jaguars were set on fire”.

    A video by London Weekend Television shows what happened during the riot, albeit with MSM bias.

    People also refused en masse to pay the charge. Then in 1993/4, the poll tax was abolished, replaced by the Council Tax, which was not dissimilar to the old Council Rates system.

    Today, conditions are arguably far worse – with price rises, rising energy costs, and tax increases – and some of the UK’s poorest may either freeze or starve to death. Alternatively, like the poll tax protesters some 32 years back, we fight back.

    Something has to give.

    Featured image via Press Association

    By Tom Coburg

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Government not protecting poorest from rising cost of living, says charity

    The government is not protecting the poorest people amid the cost-of-living crisis, with out-of-work benefits at historically low levels, a UK poverty charity has said.

    The 3.1% benefits increase coming into effect on Monday 11 April does not match inflation, which is expected to hit 7.7% this month. This will cause the greatest fall in the value of the basic unemployment benefit rate in 50 years, according to analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

    ‘Desperate situations’

    Associate director Helen Barnard told Sky News on Sunday 10 April:

    For a decade we’ve had cuts and freezes to benefits, and actually for eight of the last 10 years benefits have been losing value, so we’re already at a historic low.

    Although benefits go up tomorrow, they go up by so much less than the cost of living is rising.

    It means that in terms of their values, how much bread and milk you can buy in the shops, it is the biggest fall in value since 1972.

    Many people were already in “desperate situations”, struggling to afford food, heating and basic hygiene products, she said. And she recounted how some pensioners are riding the bus all day to keep warm. Moreover, long-time foodbank volunteers are now themselves relying on donations.

    It’s “humiliating for people”

    Barnard called on the government to take urgent action to prevent the situation from deteriorating further. And she criticised Rishi Sunak for failing to support the poorest people in society. She said:

    If you look at the spring statement, the Chancellor spent about £18 billion.

    Of that money, about two thirds went to benefit people in the richest half of the country.

    So he actually had the money, the issue is that the Government is not prioritising using the money they have to protect the poorest people who are facing the greatest hardship.

    ‘Too many jobs’ are low paid and insecure

    The benefits squeeze will also hit low-income workers hard. These are people who rely on benefits to top up low earnings and are now facing “incredibly difficult situations”, Barnard said.

    She said the raising of the national insurance threshold, a measure designed to help lower earners, actually harms some of them. Because their benefits are pulled away to make up for the fact that they are keeping more of their income.

    Barnard said:

    We know the majority of people in poverty now are in working households.

    One of the problems is that too many jobs are not just low paid, but they’re insecure…

    And so it is people who are really vulnerable in that situation when they’re working, who are also now struggling to afford the basic essentials and having to rely on charities for toothpaste and toilet rolls.

    It’s humiliating for a lot of people.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Emergency care and ambulances overstretched as coronavirus surge continues

    Pressures on the NHS are far from abating amid a surge of coronavirus (Covid-19) infections. Overstretched hospitals and long “trolley waits” are putting patients at risk, a senior medic has warned.

    Dr Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said overcrowding in emergency departments is delaying the transfer of people from ambulances to hospital beds.

    High rate of infections, low morale

    Pointing to staff illness and low morale amid a surge of infections, Cooksley said:

    The NHS and social care continue to be under immense strain and the system is becoming increasingly compromised.

    The reality is that we are seeing overcrowding in acute care settings with patient flow throughout the system impaired and patients stuck for long periods in emergency departments and acute medical units (AMUs) which results in worse patient outcomes.

    Due to this, paramedics are then stuck unable to transfer their patients into hospitals and get back on the road, resulting in 999 patients being left at home for longer periods without clinical assessment and treatment which potentially has a significant impact on their outcomes.

    These were problems that existed before Covid, however they are now exacerbated by high staff absence levels, fatigue and low staff morale, worsened by often not being able to deliver the standard of care they wish.

    More than 71,000 staff in acute trusts in England were off work last week because of sickness – two in five as a result of coronavirus. Meanwhile, more than a quarter of ambulance handovers were delayed by more than 30 minutes, Cooksley said.

    Overstretched and unsafe

    The government’s goal of tackling the backlog in elective, non-urgent care seems a “distant prospect” due to the strains on the ground, said Cooksley. He called for ministers to address issues in urgent and emergency care first.

    “Workforce and capacity remain the two fundamental challenges”, he said. And he called for “prioritisation of staffing in emergency departments and acute medical units to safe levels”.

    Coronavirus infections in most of the UK remain near or at record levels. About one in 13 people in England were likely to test positive in the week to 2 April, according to figures released on Friday 8 April.

    Meanwhile, free coronavirus testing for the general public ended on 1 April and the government seems to have no plans to reinstate it. Safety measures or guidelines also remain absent for workplaces, schools, shops, public transport and other public spaces, which may be a factor in the rising infection rates.

    The Society for Acute Medicine is the national representative body for the specialty of acute medicine, which receives most patients admitted as emergencies. Acute medicine helps to maintain the flow of people through emergency departments.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Sadiq Khan takes final swipe at outgoing Met chief Cressida Dick

    Sadiq Khan has said he is not “going to hide from the fact” that he lost confidence in the outgoing Metropolitan Police commissioner.

    The London mayor spoke about why he withdrew his support for dame Cressida Dick, on the day she was cheered and applauded by a crowd of police officers and staff bidding her farewell.

    Dame Cressida quit after Khan criticised her handling of racist, misogynist, and homophobic messages shared by a group of officers based at Charing Cross police station, and after a series of other scandals faced by the Met.

    Racism, sexism, discrimination, homophobia

    Her resignation came hours after she said in a media interview she had no intention of quitting. Speaking at the launch of Labour’s local election campaign in Barnet, north London, Khan said:

    In the recent past, she’s worked with many others to help us reduce violent crime but I’m not going to hide from the fact that I lost confidence in her.

    He continued:

    I’m not going to hide from the fact that we’ve had in our city a series of devastating scandals, overt racism, sexism, discrimination, homophobia, we’ve had trust and confidence from Londoners in the police service at rock bottom.

    It’s one of the reasons why I lost confidence in her and it’s one of the things I’ll be looking for in a new commissioner, how they will address some of these serious issues that, frankly speaking, the current commissioner failed to address.

    Say their names

    Fellow police employees lined Scotland Yard, clapped and cheered to say goodbye to the police commissioner. But members of the public expressed their disgust at Dick’s grand exit from the force:

    Timeline for successor

    Dick’s last day in the post will be on Sunday, after which she will take unused annual leave, with her final day of employment being April 24. Deputy commissioner Sir Stephen House will temporarily serve as acting commissioner while the recruitment process continues.

    Asked about the timeline for appointing a successor, Khan said it could take around five months.

    He added:

    I’ll be working closely with the Home Secretary to make sure we get the widest possible pool of candidates applying, we want the best possible candidate who is successful.

    He continued:

    Somebody who understands the challenges we face and also recognises the uniqueness of London, what a wonderful city we are, and how important it is to police by consent, to work with Londoners to restore confidence with women and girls in our city, but also minority communities, particularly black communities as well.

    One thing is certain: the Met will have an uphill battle in trying to restore Londoners’ confidence in the police.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • UK Covid infections remain near or at record levels

    Covid-19 infections in most of the UK remain near or at record levels, with only Scotland seeing a drop in numbers, new figures show.

    Some 4.88 million people in private households in the UK are estimated to have had the virus last week, down very slightly from a record 4.91 million in the previous week.

    The Office for National Statistics (ONS), which compiles the figures, said it is too early to say if infections have peaked in England and Scotland.

    One in 13 likely to test positive

    In England, around one in 13 people were likely to test positive for Covid-19 in the week to April 2, or 4.1 million people – unchanged from the week to March 26.

    Meanwhile, in Wales, the estimate is up from one in 14 people to one in 13.

    Both England and Wales are continuing to see record infection levels.

    In Scotland, 396,800 people were estimated to have had the virus last week, or around one in 13, down from one in 12 the previous week.

    And in Northern Ireland, the ONS described the trend as “uncertain”, with one in 16 people infected – down from one in 15.

    ‘Too early to say if infections have peaked’

    Sarah Crofts, head of analytical outputs for the ONS Covid survey, said:

    While infections remain high, there are early signs in our latest data that they may no longer be increasing in some parts of the UK.

    Across English regions, there is a mixed picture in trends and we have seen a welcome decrease in Scotland.

    However, rates in Wales continue to rise and the trend in Northern Ireland is uncertain.

    She continued:

    It is too early to say if infections have peaked in England and Scotland. We will continue to monitor the data closely.

    The ONS said the percentage of people testing positive in England has increased among those from school year 12 to age 34, and for people aged 70 and over. Infection levels have fallen for children from age two to school year six and adults aged between 35 to 49.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Sabina Nessa killer jailed for at least 36 years for sexually motivated attack

    Warning: this article contains graphic description of assault

    A sexual predator has been jailed for at least 36 years for the murder of primary school teacher Sabina Nessa.

    Koci Selamaj, 36, travelled to London from the south coast to carry out the premeditated attack on September 17 last year.

    The garage worker targeted 28-year-old Ms Nessa as she walked through Cator Park in Kidbrooke, south-east London, to meet a friend at 8.34pm.

    CCTV footage captured the moment Selamaj ran up behind her and hit her over the head 34 times with a 2ft-long metal traffic triangle. He carried her unconscious body up a grassy bank and out of view. He then pulled up her clothes, removed her tights and underwear, and strangled her before covering her body in grass.

    Ms Nessa, who taught a year one class at Rushey Green Primary School in Catford, was found nearly 24 hours later near a community centre in the park.

    Days later, Selamaj, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, was arrested in the seaside town and pleaded guilty to murder in February.

    Jailed for life

    On Friday, Selamaj refused to come to the Old Bailey and was jailed for life in his absence. Mr Justice Sweeney set a minimum term of 36 years for the “savage” sexually motivated attack.

    He said Ms Nessa was the

    wholly blameless victim of an absolutely appalling murder which was entirely the fault of the defendant.

    Her death added to “the sense of insecurity” particularly felt by woman walking through the city at night.

    He said:

    She had every right, as her family said, to be walking through the park all glammed up and out to enjoy herself after a long week at work…

    The defendant robbed her and them of her life.

    No remorse

    The judge noted the defendant’s guilty plea and lack of previous convictions. But he added:

    It is a striking feature of the defendant’s case that, clearly deliberately, it is not suggested by him that he had any remorse for what he did to Sabina Nessa.

    The judge said it was “cowardly” of the Albanian national to refuse to attend his sentencing but said he had no power to force him.

    Earlier, prosecutor Alison Morgan QC said Selamaj had been violent towards his ex-partner in the past, including throttling her a number of times.

    Three days before the attack on Ms Nessa, the defendant booked a room at the five-star Grand Hotel in Eastbourne, East Sussex, just five minutes from his home.

    At about 2.20pm on September 17, hotel staff alerted police via 101 after Selamaj checked in to his £325-a-night room. Police said they had been concerned about his demeanour and the fact he lived close by. Selamaj went on to contact his former partner in a failed bid to persuade her to have sex with him. She said in a statement that he appeared “very agitated” when they met in his car near the hotel.

    The defendant then drove his Nissan Micra to Brighton and on to Kidbrooke in south London. He used his bank card at Sainsbury’s to buy a rolling pin, chilli flakes and an energy drink. He rejected the rolling pin as a weapon in favour of the traffic triangle, which he was to use to attack Ms Nessa.

    Sabina Nessa death
    CCTV  of Koci Selamaj in Sainsbury’s buying a rolling pin before the murder (Met Police/PA)

    Ferocious attack

    He entered Cator Park shortly after 8pm and lay in wait for half-an-hour before Ms Nessa arrived en route to The Depot bar where she was due to meet a friend.

    Ms Morgan said Ms Nessa had expressed concern about being in the park after dark but decided to use the cut through that night because she was running late.

    In grainy footage played in court, Selamaj was seen running up behind Ms Nessa and launching a ferocious attack with the 2ft long traffic triangle. As he carried her up a grassy hill, they went out of shot for 20 minutes.

    Before leaving the park, he picked up pieces of the warning triangle and used wet wipes to clean a park bench near to where he launched his initial attack.

    En route back to the south coast, Selamaj dumped the warning triangle in the River Teise in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

    Police said Selamaj appeared to be “calm and collected” on his arrest.

    On being cautioned through a translator, Selamaj said:

    What will happen if I open up now and say everything?

    In mitigation, Lewis Power QC had said Selamaj had provided no explanation for why he killed Ms Nessa, adding:

    He simply accepts that he did it.

    ‘You are not a human being, you are an animal’

    Addressing her absent killer on Thursday, Ms Nessa’s parents Abdur Rouf and Azibun Nessa said in a statement:

    You had no right to take her away from us in such a cruel way.

    The moment the police officer came to our house and told her she was found dead our world shattered into pieces.

    How could you do such a thing to an innocent girl walking by, minding her own business.

    You are not a human being, you are an animal.

    Ms Nessa’s family hugged supporters as they left court.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Grenfell survivors’ group ‘speechless’ after ex-minister gets death toll wrong

    A Grenfell Tower survivors’ group has said it is “speechless” after a former Cabinet minister got the number of people who died in the fire wrong while giving evidence to an inquiry.

    Eric Pickles, who was secretary of state at the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) between 2010 and 2015, said that 96 people died in the June 2017 tower block blaze when the correct number of victims was 72.

    The politician, who was also chairman of the Conservative Party from 2009 to 2010, made reference to the victims as the “nameless 96 people” when he appeared before the inquiry into the west London tower block blaze on Thursday.

    “Utter disregard”

    Following his remarks, survivors’ group Grenfell United criticised him for what it branded his “utter disregard” for victims and called for his removal from Government and the House of Lords:

    Eric Pickles’ disrespect at the inquiry has left us speechless. How dare he refer to our loved ones we lost that night as ‘the 96 nameless’. 72 people died in Grenfell and none of them were nameless.

    His utter disregard for what happened and to those no longer with us is horrifying, given that he had the ability as Minister of Housing to reform building safety.

    The group added:

    Eric Pickles must be removed from Government and The Lords. Otherwise, Government continues to show the contempt it’s always had for people’s safety in this country.

    Grenfell Tower fire

    Campaign group Grenfell United said it was left ‘speechless’ (Grenfell United/PA)

    Lessons not learnt

    The former MP for Brentwood and Ongar made the mistake at the end of his evidence while answering if there was anything he would have done differently.

    Pickles told the inquiry:

    My answer, one I obviously prepared because I had watched you doing this and I realised I was going to be asked – is entirely different from the one I am going to give.

    He referred to the coroner’s recommendations following the 2006 Lakanal House fire in Camberwell which killed six people and injured 20 more.

    The first report from the Grenfell Inquiry found that lessons from the Lakanal House fire had not been learned by the time of the Grenfell disaster eight years later.

    Pickles said:

    What I was going to say is maybe I should have put in the letter the simple sentence ‘and I accept the coroner’s recommendations’ – would that have changed things?

    And your diligence, and your choice of examples, has made me come to the view, I don’t think it would have made any difference whatsoever I think.

    There was a kind of mindset that existed in parts of the department that just simply ignored what was happening, made a view about what we were and came to it.”

    He said that the inquiry should “never lose sight” that “this isn’t about deregulation”.

    Named

    Instead, he said it was about the “nameless” victims of the Grenfell Tower fire:

    It comes down to Michelle (Udoaka, who died in the Lakanal blaze) and to the nameless 96 people who were killed in the Grenfell fire.

    It’s them who we should think about when we’re arguing the toss.

    Ultimately, as I’ve said earlier, the dead deserve the dignity of being remembered by name and the dead deserve the dignity of a solution.

    And I am sure you will come to that.

    Seventy-two victims of the Grenfell Tower fire have been named and accounted for.

    Busy Pickles

    Earlier on Thursday, the second and final day of his evidence, Pickles also appeared to become frustrated with how much of his time the inquiry was taking up.

    He told lead counsel to the inquiry Richard Millett QC:

    By all means sir, feel free to ask me as many questions as you like, but could I respectfully remind you that you did promise that we would be away this morning and I have changed my schedules to fit this in.

    I do have an extremely busy day.

    But this is more important than anything, but I would urge you to use your time wisely.

    Mr Millett replied:

    Right… may I please have an answer to my question?

    However, at the end of his evidence in the afternoon Pickles thanked the inquiry for the “professional and courteous” way he was treated.

    Activist and rapper Lowkey tweeted on Pickles’ schedule:

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Blair thinks Labour shouldn’t represent labour!

    Tony Blair has emerged from his crypt to give another “hot take” on the Labour party, and this time – no joke – he thinks it’s a mistake for the Labour party to be aligned with labour unions.

    By Curtis Daly

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Welcome to the Tory “energy mix”

    tory energy mix

    By Ralph Underhill

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Conversion therapy U-turn adds to onslaught of transphobia

    Over the past week the government has continued its ongoing transphobia with yet another decision which has been criticised by campaigners. This comes amongst a backdrop of TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) who have bolstered formal inequalities for trans people with a concerted campaign of harassment and abuse. The government’s abandonment of trans people is a threat to the safety of all trans people.

    In the latest of a long run of U-turns, the government backtracked on promises about conversion therapy. In 2018, Theresa May promised to abolish conversion therapy – as did Boris Johnson later on. However, last week, Johnson performed a characteristic U-turn and set the government on course to ban conversion therapy for gay people, but not for trans people.

    Social media users took to Twitter to express their hurt and anger at the decision:

    Conversion therapy

    Only a handful of days later, over 100 organisations withdrew from the Safe To Be Me conference in protest at this decision. The event was going to be the first of its kind, a global LGBT conference marking 50 years of London Pride.

    A number of organisations, including the Terence Higgins Trust, National AIDS Trust, and LGBT Foundation released a joint statement:

    The Government’s decision to exclude trans people from the ban on conversion therapy is completely unacceptable. Trans rights are human rights – progress without or at the expense of trans people is not progress. We stand together and will not be divided.

    As HIV charities and community groups we stand in solidarity with Stonewall and the whole LGBT+ sector and will not be supporting or attending the upcoming global LGBT+ ‘Safe To Be Me’ conference unless the Government reverts to their promise of a trans-inclusive ban.

    Stonewall UK also released a statement:

    It is apparent that trans people have once again been sacrificed for political gain.

    It continues:

    Conversion therapy is happening to LGBTQ+ people in the UK right now, and every day without a ban is a day where LGBTQ+ people remain at risk of lifelong harm. Trans people are amongst the highest risk groups in our community – the latest research from Galop shows that 11% of trans people have been subjected to conversion practices by their own families.

    The fact that over 100 organisations withdrew in protest at the government’s shameful decision should send a message. That message, however, may well be ignored.

    Further guidance

    Also earlier this week, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published guidance which says that trans people can be excluded from single-sex services if “justifiable and proportionate“.These single-sex services can include toilets, changing rooms, and housing shelters. The Guardian report that:

    the justification could be for reasons of privacy, decency, to prevent trauma or to ensure health and safety.

    Dr. Nat Thorne, research associate at the Nottingham Centre for Transgender Health posted the following open letter:

    The Trans Legal Project, a network of free legal advice, posted on social media about the guidance:

    The argument around trans people and toilets, in particular, has become a focal point for TERFs. The EHRC are fanning the flames of a moral panic which harms the daily lives of trans people.

    Doubt on independence

    The EHRC’s independence has come under question, and this is no surprise given that the commission is sponsored by the Government Equalities Office. Indeed, Stonewall UK and the Good Law Project have brought a submission to the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions. If successful, they could block the EHRC from being able to make representations to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

    The Good Law Project’s Jolyon Maugham told the BBC:

    The EHRC is subject to a level of oversight and micro-management from the department which is just not consistent with being a UN Human Rights Institution.

    The government’s possible involvement with the EHRC is destabilising to the already weakened stance of the EHRC. Cara English, Head of Public Engagement at Gendered Intelligence, told Dazed Digital:

    For the past few years, it’s been increasingly obvious that there isn’t going to be anything positive towards trans communities coming out of the EHRC…we don’t have faith in them as the watchdog of human rights for the UK. They are simply failing in their duties towards trans and non-binary communities.

    Spineless

    Johnson’s U-turn on conversion therapy is yet another concession to right-wing talking points. Johnson is backtracking on promises to abolish conversion therapy. Not only that, he is using trans communities for political point scoring.

    Keir Starmer, in a characteristic fence-sitting exercise, has in the past said that “trans women are women” according to legal statutes. This restates legal realities, but does little to address the social and cultural harm done to trans people through a lack of solidarity. Starmer also struggled to answer questions about trans rights during an LBC interview, betraying Labour’s inability (or unwillingness) to support trans rights decisively.

    Trans activists, campaigners, and communities have repeatedly had to explain and account for their humanity. Trans rights are human rights. However, this past week has been a crushing demonstration of just why the UK is known as TERF island. Excluding trans people from formal equality is a disgusting display from the government. Leaving campaigners and activists to mobilise against this is all too familiar with this political leadership.

    Featured image via Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona/Unsplash – free to use under Unsplash License, cropped to 770×403

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Housing refugees in a filthy and decrepit military barracks must end immediately says parliamentary group

    The Home Office has failed to tackle “fundamental problems” with housing asylum seekers at Napier Barracks and the site should be shut down immediately, according to MPs and peers.

    The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Immigration Detention reiterated calls for the closure of the 130-year-old military site, which has been dogged by allegations of poor conditions, after a visit in February.

    It comes as the House of Lords is due to debate how planning permission was granted for the Home Office to use the barracks until at least 2026, despite it initially being billed as temporary accommodation during the coronavirus pandemic.

    “Filthy” and “decrepit” barracks

    APPG chairwoman Alison Thewliss, the SNP MP for Glasgow Central, said:

    Residents in the barracks are living in the most dreadful of circumstances, and this must end.

    Two watchdogs previously described parts of the barracks near Folkestone in Kent as “filthy” and “decrepit”, highlighting “fundamental failures” in housing asylum seekers there. Six of those who used to be housed there won a legal challenge against the government as a High Court judge ruled their accommodation was inadequate.

    The Home Office insisted “significant improvements” have been made and claimed it would be an “insult” to suggest the site is not fit for asylum seekers as it had been previously used to house military personnel. But during the pandemic hundreds of people at the site contracted coronavirus, leading to accusations that health advice had been ignored. The department has since declared the accommodation is safe.

    People seeking asylum – Napier Barracks
    MPs and peers have reiterated calls for the site in Kent to be closed (Gareth Fuller/PA)

    “Unsuitable for use as asylum accommodation”

    After the visit, the MPs and peers “remain deeply concerned” about the conditions and welfare of those living on the site and are

    firmly of the view that Napier and other sites like it are fundamentally unsuitable for use as asylum accommodation, and do not allow a person to engage effectively with their asylum claim,

    That’s according to the APPG’s findings.

    Their report called on the government to see that the barracks is:

    closed as asylum accommodation with immediate and permanent effect, and that people seeking asylum accommodated at Napier are moved directly to decent, safe housing in the community that allows them to live with dignity.

    The group’s report said:

    Changes introduced by the Home Office have not addressed the fundamental problems of the site. This is despite a ruling by the High Court that the site did not meet minimum standards for asylum accommodation, and numerous and repeated concerns expressed by other bodies including independent inspectors, parliamentarians, charities and residents themselves.

    Last year the Home Office confirmed it will also process and house people, including those who have crossed the English Channel to the UK, for up to five days at part of a disused Ministry of Defence (MoD) site at Manston Airport near Ramsgate.

    Featured image via – YouTube screengrab

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Stolen Darwin Notebooks, Missing for Decades, returned in a pink bag.

    Web Desk:

    According to BBC, the two stolen notebooks written by Charles Darwin have been mysteriously returned to Cambridge University, 22 years after they were last seen. The small leather-bound books are worth many millions of pounds and include the scientist’s tree of life sketch.

    Their return comes 15 months after the BBC first highlighted they had gone missing and the library launched a worldwide appeal to find them.

    “I feel joyous,” the university’s librarian Dr. Jessica Gardner says. She grins broadly as she breaks the news. In fact, she cannot stop smiling.

    “They’re safe, they’re in good condition, and they’re home.”

    But who returned the two postcard-sized notepads is a real whodunit. They were left anonymously in a bright pink gift bag containing the original blue box the notebooks were kept in and a plain brown envelope. On it was printed a short message: “Librarian, Happy Easter X.”

    Inside were the two notebooks, wrapped tightly in cling film. The package had been left on the floor, in a public part of the library with no CCTV, outside Dr. Gardner’s office.

    “I was shaking, but I was also cautious because until we could unwrap them, you can’t be 100% sure,” says Gardner.

    An agonizing delay of five days followed between finding the package and the police granting permission to open the cling film, examine the notebooks and confirm they were genuine. She admits she had feared the notebooks would not be returned in her lifetime.

    “I thought it might take years. My sense of relief at the notebooks’ safe return is profound and almost impossible to adequately express. “I was heartbroken to learn of their loss and my joy at their return is immense.”

    The notepads date from the late 1830s after Darwin had returned from the Galapagos Islands. On one page, he drew a spindly sketch of a tree, which helped inspire his theory of evolution and more than 20 years later would become a central theory in his groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Rishi Sunak’s family is accused of ‘sheltering’ from UK tax

    Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s family has been accused of “sheltering” itself from paying tax in the UK after it emerged his wife holds non-domiciled status.

    Akshata Murty, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, confirmed the arrangement that means she is not legally entitled to pay tax in Britain on foreign income.

    Murty, the fashion-designer daughter of a billionaire who married the chancellor in 2009, insisted she pays taxes on all UK income and said the set-up is required because she is an Indian citizen. However, experts disputed this.

    England v India – cinch Second Test – Day One – Lord’s
    Chancellor Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty watch a Test match at Lord’s (PA)

    Her tax status is a “choice”

    Professor Richard Murphy, the Sheffield University academic who co-founded the Tax Justice Network, questioned her statement, insisting that being a non-dom (non-domiciled) is a “choice” she can relinquish. He said:

    Domicile has nothing to do with a person’s nationality,

    In other words, the claims made in the statement issued by Ms Murty are wrong, and as evidence, just because a person has Indian citizenship will never automatically grant them non-dom status in the UK.

    Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq said Sunak had “big questions to answer”:

    Trade union Clare Hepworth asked:

    While emeritus professor of accounting Prem Sikka added:

    Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng defended the arrangement as “in order” as he struck out at the scrutiny of her finances as “completely unfair”, but was unable to rule out the status being used to reduce tax.

    Sheltering income from UK taxes

    Labour frontbencher and shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband, said questions were legitimate as Sunak’s immediate family “are sheltering a large part of their income from UK taxes”. Murty confirmed her “non-dom” status after the Independent website first reported it on the day the chancellor’s national insurance hike took effect on Wednesday.

    The arrangement means her permanent home is considered outside the UK despite the Sunaks occupying Downing Street. Miliband told BBC Breakfast:

    The issue here that Rishi Sunak needs to answer – and I think we do need to be cautious about people’s spouses being brought into public domain but I think it is a legitimate question – which is, at a time when people are facing incredibly strained finances and Rishi Sunak is raising taxes, he says to pay for public services, we’ve got his immediate family sheltering a large part of their income from UK taxes.

    I think there is a legitimate public question about whether that is the right decision because he’s the guy asking us to pay more in taxes.

    Kwarteng rejected the allegation as untrue, saying “sheltering sounds as if you’re evading things”. He told BBC Breakfast:

    I think she’s been very clear, she’s been very transparent, the Chancellor’s been very transparent, and this non-dom status has been part of the UK tax system for more than 200 years,

    Royals attend British Asian Trust reception – London
    Akshata Murty attends a reception to celebrate the British Asian Trust at the British Museum in London (Ian West/PA)

    Pays taxes abroad

    The cabinet minister said she pays tax “abroad” but was unable to say where, when asked if she pays all foreign tax in India or in a tax haven such as the Cayman Islands. Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if Murty is a tax avoider, Kwarteng responded:

    I don’t know anything about her tax affairs.

    What I do know is that she has been very clear about the fact she’s an Indian citizen, once she’s lived here for 15 years the non-domiciled status falls away so that will happen in a few years, I don’t know when.

    As far as I’m concerned that’s good enough for me and I think we can move on from that story.

    A spokeswoman for Murty confirmed she holds non-dom status after reports surfaced. The spokeswoman said:

    Akshata Murty is a citizen of India, the country of her birth and parents’ home,

    India does not allow its citizens to hold the citizenship of another country simultaneously.

    So, according to British law, Ms Murty is treated as non-domiciled for UK tax purposes.

    She has always and will continue to pay UK taxes on all her UK income.

    It is understood Sunak declared his wife’s tax status when he became a minister in 2018 and the Treasury was also aware so that any potential conflicts could be managed. Murty is listed on LinkedIn as being director of capital and private equity firm Catamaran Ventures, gym chain Digme Fitness and gentlemen’s outfitters New and Lingwood. She is also reported to hold a 0.91% stake in Infosys, which was founded by her now billionaire father.

    By The Canary

  • We need to question the NHS mental health services

    We need to have an open and honest conversation about how the NHS deals with mental health. Amplify participant NJ takes a look at the current state of mental health services and what can be done to improve them.

    By NJ Desu

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Government official who helped write Covid-19 rules fined for Cabinet Office party

    Fines for breaking coronavirus laws have reportedly been issued to people who attended a leaving party for a senior official who helped write coronavirus laws.

    The Daily Telegraph reported that some of those at the farewell event for Kate Josephs, who was director-general of the Cabinet Office’s Covid-19 taskforce, have been handed fixed-penalty notices (FPNs).

    The drinks event was held in the Cabinet Office on 17 December 2020. This was a time when London was under Tier 3 restrictions, banning indoor socialising.

    Meanwhile, the “one rule for them and another for everyone else” was highlighted by David Lammy:

    Apologies not good enough

    So far, 20 fines have been issued following Scotland Yard’s investigation into alleged lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street and Whitehall.

    Josephs, who is on discretionary leave from her role as chief executive of Sheffield City Council, has not commented on the Telegraph report.

    In January, after news of the gathering emerged, she said she was “truly sorry” about the event.

    On the evening of 17 December, I gathered with colleagues that were at work that day, with drinks, in our office in the Cabinet Office, to mark my leaving the Civil Service.

    I am truly sorry that I did this and for the anger that people will feel as a result.

    Sheffield City Council brought in an independent investigator to examine the situation. A cross-party committee is looking at the findings.

    A council spokesman said:

    The committee will need to meet again once they have had time to properly consider the contents of the investigator’s report.

    Until then, the committee needs to focus on its work.

    Josephs is under no obligation to tell the council if she has received an FPN.

    The identities of people issued with FPNs will not be disclosed by the Metropolitan Police. However, Downing Street has said it will confirm if Boris Johnson or cabinet secretary Simon Case are handed a fine.

    Head of ethics fined

    The reports about fines over Josephs’ leaving came after a former senior official became the first person to confirm they had received an FPN as a result of the partygate investigation.

    Former deputy cabinet secretary and Whitehall ethics chief Helen MacNamara said she was “sorry for the error of judgment I have shown”.

    She was reported to have received the fine in connection with a leaving do held in the Cabinet Office on June 18 2020.

    MacNamara, who now works for the Premier League, said:

    I am sorry for the error of judgment I have shown. I have accepted and paid the fixed penalty notice.

    MacNamara was in charge of Whitehall propriety and ethics at the time. The Telegraph reported that she was given a £50 fine after police concluded she had broken Covid-19 laws by attending a leaving party for Hannah Young, a Downing Street aide.

    Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that others had been fined for a gathering held on the eve of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral last year.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Plans to privatise Channel 4 slammed as ‘economic and cultural vandalism’

    The government has said it will proceed with plans to privatise Channel 4, the broadcaster revealed in a statement.

    The channel is currently owned by the government, though it receives its funding from advertising.

    A spokesperson for Channel 4 said it was “disappointed” with the decision. They also stated that it would “continue to engage” with the Government on the process to “ensure that Channel 4 continues to play its unique part in Britain’s creative ecology and national life”.

    Support for Channel 4

    Many people have been tweeting their support for Channel 4. MP Richard Burgon pointed out that the broadcaster received no public funding and blamed an ideological agenda for sale:

    We Own It described the plans as “economic and cultural vandalism”:

    This view was also echoed by Labour MP Zarah Sultana:

     

    Significant public interest concerns

    The statement from Channel 4 asserted:

    With over 60,000 submissions to the Government’s public consultation, it is disappointing that today’s announcement has been made without formally recognising the significant public interest concerns which have been raised.

    Channel 4 has engaged in good faith with the Government throughout the consultation process, demonstrating how it can continue to commission much-loved programmes from the independent sector across the UK that represent and celebrate every aspect of British life as well as increase its contribution to society, while maintaining ownership by the public.

    Recently, Channel 4 presented DCMS (the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport) a real alternative to privatisation that would safeguard its future financial stability, allowing it to do significantly more for the British public, the creative industries and the economy, particularly outside London. This is particularly important given that the organisation is only two years into a significant commitment to drive up its impact in the UK’s nations and regions.

    The statement continued:

    Channel 4 remains legally committed to its unique public service remit. The focus for the organisation will be on how we can ensure we deliver the remit to both our viewers and the British creative economy across the whole of the UK.

    The proposal to privatise Channel 4 will require a lengthy legislative process and political debate. We will of course continue to engage with DCMS, government and parliament, and do everything we can to ensure that Channel 4 continues to play its unique part in Britain’s creative ecology and national life.”

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Changing the official list of coronavirus symptoms two years too late is a political decision

    After two years of inaction and incompetence, the government has finally changed the list of coronavirus (Covid-19) symptoms that the public should look out for. The NHS now lists twelve possible symptoms on its website. At the beginning of the pandemic, it listed just two symptoms, which it then updated to three symptoms. This makes it one of the most woefully incomplete symptom lists of any country in the world.

    Back in April 2020, I questioned the government’s motives for failing to provide the public with an accurate list of Covid-19 symptoms. In July 2021 I questioned why the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) still refused to update the list.

    It’s all about timing

    It’s likely to be no coincidence that the government changed the list just days after ditching free coronavirus testing for the public, and after it announced that people no longer need to self-isolate. It is a political decision to consistently ignore two years of advice from prominent scientists.

    If the NHS advice had been this extensive over the last two years, more of the public would have been eligible for a free PCR test. More people wouldn’t have dismissed their symptoms as “just a cold”. This would, most likely, have increased the official coronavirus figures in the country. According to the latest figures, our small island has had the fifth highest number of coronavirus cases in the world so far, despite being the 21st most populated. Imagine if the government had given us the proper advice: our rates would probably have shot up even further. This would, of course, have looked like a massive failing for Boris Johnson. And it would have been even more proof of what we already know: he has blundered at every step of the pandemic.

    It would also have ground a number of businesses to a halt, as more people would have had to take time off work, and forced corporations to grant more sick leave. But the Tory government’s priority is profit, no matter the cost. To keep the economy running, you need workers. And it seems that in order to keep workers working, the government withheld information on symptoms. This comes on top of the fact that the government flouted WHO guidelines on how long to quarantine for.

    Now, even though more people will fit the NHS’s symptom-checker, it’s unlikely to affect our confirmed coronavirus figures. Because at a time when people are struggling to pay to heat their house or to boil their potatoes, they’re not likely to pay for a coronavirus test.

    Now that nobody is legally obliged to self-isolate, the NHS is advising the public that:

    You can go back to your normal activities when you feel better or do not have a high temperature.

    This vague advice is likely to see corporations cracking down on employees who need to take more than a few days off work. It’s also likely to see unfair – but perfectly legal – dismissals.

    The Canary contacted the DHSC for comment, but the government department told us to contact the UK Health Security Agency. At the time of publishing, we’d received no reply.

    At a time when coronavirus rates are at a record high, and when ICU admissions are rising once again, the government continues to act irresponsibly. It continues to prioritise the economy and corporate wealth over the country’s most vulnerable people. This comes as absolutely no surprise. With the impending Covid-19 Inquiry, some might be hopeful that the government will be held accountable for the way it has handled the pandemic. But don’t hold your breath.

    Featured image via via Alan Santos/PR under Creative Commons 2.0 license, resized to 770 x 403 px

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Here’s all the latest news on the policing bill

    In March 2021, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill crashed into our lives. A mammoth and draconian piece of legislation, the bill attacks protesters, criminalises the lives of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities, and entrenches racist policing strategies with measures such as Serious Violence Reduction Orders.

    A mass movement was born, aided and abetted by vicious police attacks on the vigil for Sarah Everard on Clapham Common and at Kill the Bill protests in Bristol. The message was, and is, clear. The police abuse the powers they already have.

    Over a year has passed, and the bill has not yet become law. So what’s happening in parliament and on the streets?

    It’s a game of ping pong

    In parliament, the bill is currently ping-ponging between the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Yes, it sounds trivial, but it’s the official term our democracy uses to describe the process when legislation bounces between the Commons and the Lords. Our rights are reduced to a game of table tennis.

    While the majority of the bill has now been accepted by both houses, the Lords are fighting over the provision to give police the power to impose conditions on protests deemed too noisy. The last reading was on 31 March in the House of Lords; it was the third time the Lords rejected the bill.

    Because parliament takes more holidays than the rest of us could dream of, the House of Commons is now on its Easter break and won’t return until 19 April. So the bill is in limbo until then.

    Along the way, there have been several victories. Not least getting the majority of the more draconian protest amendments chucked out in the first reading in the Lords. As these amendments originated in the Lords, the House of Commons couldn’t add them back in.

    But these were minor victories. The majority of the bill is still unchanged from the original legislation proposed a year ago. And the one amendment that did get through in the Lords made things even worse –  changing the penalty for highway obstruction from a fine to a six-month prison sentence. Meanwhile, neither house challenged the provision to criminalise trespass with intent to reside in a vehicle – a provision that could see homes seized from GRT people and their lives outlawed.

    Credit is due to Green peer Jenny Jones, amongst others, who’ve worked tirelessly to oppose the bill in the Lords. But the fact that the Lords is now only arguing about one small part of the bill – the power to impose conditions on noisy protests – shows that we cannot rely on parliament to safeguard our rights.

    On the streets and in our communities

    The real resistance to this bill has come from the grassroots – on the streets and in our communities. This started with mass protests that saw thousands demonstrating in every corner of the country. As the bill has progressed through parliament, the conversation has changed to how we respond when it becomes law; how do we act in solidarity with each other, and how do we become ungovernable?

    Sisters Uncut, who led the way in the original opposition, have been setting up CopWatch groups across the country to monitor the police. As the group told The Canary:

    This training is vital right now because the government is planning to increase police powers. As we saw in the case of Sarah Everard (Wayne Couzens arrested Sarah using new COVID regulations), increased police powers mean increased, unaccountable police violence.

    If passed, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will make all marginalised communities – Gypsy, Roma and Travellers, sex workers, Black and brown people, women and anyone protesting – less safe.

    Every stop and search must be treated as a kidnapping, which in turn could become another death in custody.

    We must resist together. The police are the perpetrators and we must keep each other safe. Sisters Uncut is holding training sessions on police intervention, and the launch of a nationwide network of CopWatch patrols.

    It’s time to withdraw consent

    Meanwhile, the coalition of groups that came together to oppose the bill is now working on what that opposition will look like once it becomes law. These are exactly the conversations we need to be having. How do we take power away from the police and the government? How do we empower our communities? Moreover, how do we withdraw consent, and what will this look like in practice? Initiatives like CopWatch are a great starting point and a practical way to do this.

    The class war is raging. The cost of living crisis is biting. More and more people will be taking to the streets. We cannot continue living in a system where the rich get richer and profit from the misery the rest of us are facing. It’s no wonder the Tories want to give the police so many new powers; they know the dissent they’ll be facing.

    Unfortunately for the Tories, the less people have to lose, the more risks they’ll be willing to take. It’s time for all of us to withdraw our consent before it’s too late.

    Featured image via Eliza Egret

    By Emily Apple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Extinction Rebellion in fourth day of protests at Esso West oil facility

    Climate change campaigners have staged a protest at an oil facility near Heathrow Airport on their fourth day of action.

    Extinction Rebellion said that around 30 protesters returned to the Esso West oil facility in West London at 4am on Monday 4 April. This is part of their campaign to urge the government to stop using fossil fuels.

    In a statement, the group said they were blocking the entrance with two bamboo structures and two large banners that said “Join Us – London 9th April” and “Stop Fossil Fuels Now”.

    XR
    Around 30 people occupied the space outside the facility (Extinction Rebellion/PA)

    Countrywide protests

    A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said the force is aware of the protest and officers are at the scene.

    Since 1 April, Extinction Rebellion and a second campaign group, Just Stop Oil, have staged a number of protests at oil terminals and refineries across the UK.

    Over the weekend Just Stop Oil blocked oil depots in Grays, Purfleet, Buncefield, Tamworth and central Birmingham.

    More than 80 people were arrested in Essex over the weekend. 14 were held in Staines in Surrey, and six were arrested in Birmingham.

    XR
    A campaigner stands in front of a tanker at the west London facility (Extinction Rebellion/PA)

    Our last chance

    Andrew Smith, from Extinction Rebellion, said:

    We’re here to say that climate action cannot wait. Right now, governments are choosing to exploit the crisis in Ukraine to hand out oil licences and continue the fossil fuel economy that’s destroying us.

    The reality is, the UK public wants faster action on climate as the energy crisis hits. We know what is happening and what needs to be done – by acting in favour of corporate interest over the will of the people, the Government is showing contempt for the people who elected them.

    How long ago did our Prime Minister say Cop26 was our last chance to save humanity? And now they’re sidelining climate policy once again. This is not living in reality.

    The group stated that further action is expected on 9 April in London’s Hyde Park.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Metropolitan Police officer charged with sexually assaulting colleague on duty

    A serving Metropolitan Police officer has been charged with sexually assaulting a colleague while on duty.

    PC Joseph Demir is from the the North West Basic Command Unit. On 9 March, he was charged by post with sexual assault, the force said in a statement.

    Misogyny

    The force has recently come under extensive scrutiny for its apparent culture of misogyny. This is following the kidnapping, assault and murder of Sarah Everard by serving Met Police officer Wayne Couzens, and officers sharing images of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.

    Domestic violence charity Solace Women’s Aid said on Twitter:

    The alleged incident

    The incident is alleged to have occurred on 10 March 2020. At the time, Demir was a student officer at Hendon Training School. The offence was reported on 1 July 2020, and it appears that Demir has carried out his duties as normal during this time.

    Demir has not been suspended. However, he has been placed on restricted duties. He was charged following an investigation by the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards.

    He’s due to appear at Willesden Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday 5 April.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Tory MP accused of sexual assault, drug use, and dodgy dealings

    Content warning: this article contains descriptions of alleged sexual assault which some readers may find distressing.

    David Warburton, the MP for Somerton and Frome, has had the Tory whip withdrawn pending an investigation into allegations about his conduct. The MP stands accused of sexual harassment, drug use, and failing to declare a loan from an ‘unfit’ Russian financial adviser.

    Shocking conduct

    Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS) is examining the claims about Warburton, who sits on the backbenches. The Telegraph said the ICGS received a report claiming the MP had behaved inappropriately. He’s reported to deny any wrongdoing.

    A photo shows what appears to be Warburton sitting besides several lines of cocaine:

    A report in the Sunday Times details allegations of Warburton inviting himself to a drunk woman’s house where he snorted several lines of coke. As the Sunday Times also noted:

    Only a few years ago, in the House of Commons, Warburton condemned the “appalling” exploitation of young people involved in the sale of drugs and the “intimidation, violence and criminal incentives” they face. He has also called for international action in “tackling the drugs trade” and criticised “double standards” in politics.

    The allegations in the paper include the following:

    She recounts that as she became less drunk she grew uncomfortable that the pair were alone together and retreated to her bedroom to put on her pyjamas in an attempt to encourage his departure. When she emerged, she says, Warburton was naked. He allegedly explained that he always slept nude and climbed into her bed. Fearful of how he might react, she did not push him away, she says, or demand that he leave.

    Despite her repeated and explicit warnings, before and during his visit, that she did not want to have sex with him or do anything sexual, Warburton allegedly ground his body against hers and groped her breasts. The woman says she lay frozen until the MP fell asleep, snoring loudly.

    More allegations

    The report also notes:

    two other women have taken action against similar conduct by Warburton. Both former aides, they had to sidestep his parliamentary office, in no small part because the person responsible for handling HR issues is his wife, Harriet, whom he employs on a publicly funded salary that could be up to £51,000 a year.

    And that:

    Warburton is not only alleged to be a risk to women. Evidence suggests his conduct could fall short of the rules governing standards and transparency in public life. He borrowed £100,000 from a Russian businessman without declaring it, a decision that could lead to an investigation by the parliamentary commissioner for standards.

    The man who lent him the money is Roman Joukovski, a financial adviser who has specialised in offshore tax advice and providing tier-one “golden” investor visas to foreign citizens, including oligarchs and the family of Kazakhstan’s dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev. In 2014 the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) refused to certify him as a “fit and proper person”, limiting his ability to provide certain kinds of financial advice, and one of his businesses was recently forced into insolvency after a separate FCA ruling.

    Journalist Gabriel Pogrund commented further on the harassment allegations against Warburton:

    “Whip removed”

    Warburton is cited as telling the Telegraph:

    I have enormous amounts of defence, but unfortunately the way that things work means that doesn’t come out first.

    I have heard nothing whatsoever from the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme. I’m sorry, I can’t comment any further.

    A spokesperson for the Whips Office said:

    David Warburton MP has had the Conservative Party whip removed while the investigation is ongoing.

    Warburton was first elected in 2015 with a majority of 20,268, or 53% of the vote. According to the MP’s website, at 18.3%, this represented the largest constituency swing to the Conservative Party. He was re-elected in 2017 and 2019. He is the current chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Music and was previously a member of the Commons European Scrutiny Committee.

    Response

    Sarah Vine – columnist for the Daily Mail – described the situation mildly as a potential “mid-life crisis”:

    Others also commented on the situation:

    The BBC initially had far less to say on the matter, however:

    Warburton has reportedly now been admitted to a psychiatric hospital:

    Additional reporting by PA

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Coronavirus cases hit record high as free testing ends

    Coronavirus (Covid-19) cases have hit a record high as free testing came to an end. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said the most recent weekly figure suggests 1 in 13 people in the UK had coronavirus. The ONS said that this means there have been over 4.9 million cases in the last week.

    This news about rising cases came as the government ended free testing for coronavirus. As of Friday 1 April, most people have to pay for tests. Exceptions include prison staff and NHS workers.

    The pandemic never ended

    The report was broken down into each UK nation. England was estimated to have had 4,122,700 cases. Meanwhile Wales had 212,000. Northern Ireland had 123,000 cases, and Scotland had 451,200.

    The ONS stipulated that the figures were for those in private households and excluded communal settings including hospitals and care homes.

    Meanwhile, experts raised concerns that the new wave presents a clear danger to public health. Epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding said the new surge had caused more people to be sent to hospital than the last Omicron wave:

    Another doctor warned only days ago that Boris Johnson’s declaration of victory over coronavirus was premature:

    As one Twitter user pointed out, the end of free testing couldn’t have come at a worse time:

    Two days prior to the release of the ONS figures, the Department for Education (DfE) put out guidance saying children and young people should only self-isolate for three days if they test positive (not even if they just have symptoms) for coronavirus. It’s a policy that will likely further contribute to the rapid spread of the virus.

    Meanwhile Dr Julia Grace Patterson of Every Doctor UK said about the organisation’s petition:

    Senseless and irresponsible

    An end to free testing at a time when infections have reached a record high is both senseless and irresponsible. And it has the potential to wreak havoc on public health in the UK. This is particularly egregious given the eye-watering amounts of public money spent on a test-and-trace system that was a resounding failure.

    But the government continues to ignore calls to reinstate free testing and any other safety measures. The latest data on infection levels suggests that it’s certainly time to tone down optimistic talk about the end of the pandemic. Burying our head in the sand isn’t going to make it go away. The pandemic is still here, and until the government acts accordingly it’s putting the health of millions of people at risk.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Ermell, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY 4.0.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Pass rising energy prices on to profit-driven providers, say protesters

    Protesters across the UK have urged the government to pass rising energy prices on to providers instead of low-earning workers.

    “Suffering”

    Around 100 people waved signs reading “tax the rich” and “freeze energy bills, not people” at a Downing Street protest on 2 April. Among them was former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. And similar demonstrations were staged across the nation. In Belfast, campaigners called for every household in the north of Ireland to receive £1k to help mitigate increasing fuel and food costs.

    At Downing Street in central London, demonstrators made speeches asking the government to freeze energy bills and boost benefits. Protester Isabella Fula, 17, from north London, said the rising cost of living was “a huge problem for many people”. Speaking near Downing Street, she said:

    A lot of people that I know are suffering from it personally, and a lot of people that once lived in my area have now moved out due to raising rent and energy bills. People aren’t earning enough to support themselves and buy food, or even pay for bills which are increasing by the minute.

    I’m here to protest the rent and the rise in it, and try to aim for a better tomorrow.

    The protest comes after Cabinet minister Brandon Lewis said the government can’t “completely nullify” the impacts of global pressure on energy prices but will offer support where possible. Lewis’s performance drew criticism online:

    Corbyn said Lewis’s comment shows the government is “out of touch with the reality of people” facing poverty due to the rising cost of living:

    “Out of touch”

    Corbyn told the PA news agency:

    I think it’s a very out of touch statement from a Government which is pretty out of touch with the reality of people as well.

    I’m meeting people who are terrified of the next bill, so the very least we need is a price cap on energy, and then we need to say, well look at the profits of energy companies and look at the difficulties of people living.

    I was in a food bank this morning talking to people there that don’t want food that they have to cook, because they can’t afford to turn the gas and electricity on to cook it.

    This is the 21st century and we’re the fifth richest country in the world – it’s simply wrong and the Government must intervene.

    Cost of living crisis
    Jeremy Corbyn speaks at a Downing Street protest over the rising cost of living (James Manning/PA) 

     

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • A constitutional convention could be the Scottish left’s secret weapon

    May 2022 will see voters in Scotland elect all 32 local authorities. The SNP is hoping for a repeat of last May’s success at the national elections, where it solidified its position in government and its voting base among the working class. Meanwhile the predicted Green surge was more of a slight ripple. And Alba’s “max the Yes” strategy fizzled on the launchpad, while Scottish Labour continued to lose seats and ground.

    The left has struggled to make any ground in Scotland since the 2019 general election. Polling still has Labour neck-and-neck with the Tories, and the SNP retains firm control of Holyrood after 15 years in power. As the only socialist party at Holyrood, if Scottish Labour fails to win the support of the working class then socialist representatives in parliament and local authorities will become rarer and rarer. The decline of socialism in Scotland will continue. And if the SNP considers victory in these council elections as widespread support for independence, the push for a second independence referendum will gain traction. Other options, such as further devolution or a federal model, will be ignored.

    Leftists in Scotland and across Britain need to wake up to how dangerous this is. When the SNP dominates the debate, by prioritising nationalism above all other policies, the left’s electoral prospects and working class communities suffer. Scottish Labour cannot effect socialist policies like a just climate transition or publicly-owned public transport if its insistence on unionism bars it from government. So the left needs to set out a coherent, radical, and electable alternative to a second independence referendum. Through a constitutional convention, leftists could formulate an alternative which will have popular support.

    Devolution and the constitutional question

    Support for Scottish independence has been building amongst working class voters since the 2014 referendum. This is evidenced by multiple reports, including those showing that around one in three Scottish Labour voters and over half of Scottish Labour members support a second independence referendum. SNP MPs and MSPs now represent historical Labour seats despite SNP parliamentarians mostly coming from managerial bourgeoisie backgrounds. The state of Labour in Scotland is dire.

    Despite all this, the party distracts itself with factionalism, foreign wars, or attacks on the party’s youth wing. By dismissing any change to Scottish Labour’s position on independence as “fantasy“, the Labour movement risks losing touch with reality. The party is refusing to acknowledge a looming constitutional crisis or how broken the current setup is – a view shared by many voters.

    The constitution of the UK is a mess. Examples include how Scotland and Wales are disproportionately represented in Westminster. Both have more MPs per capita than England and constituencies of wildly varying sizes. Moreover, Scottish and Welsh voting patterns fail to follow nationwide patterns. This shows how the issues and concerns of these voters are different to nationwide issues.

    Representation at Westminster has been described as “bankrupt“. One line used in both popular debate and the official Yes campaign is that Scotland doesn’t “get the government it votes for“. Yet hardly anybody gets the government they vote for, and nobody likes it. Nobody likes the electoral system either. The current constitution utterly fails to benefit the people of Scotland, and it’s also failing its primary purpose of holding the UK together.

    This goes further than Scotland, though. Lopsided devolution has left England with less power over its own affairs than the UK’s other three nations. Proposals like ‘English Votes for English Laws‘ were intended to give English MPs veto power over legislation which only affected England. These came to the fore when the balance of power at Westminster depended on the DUP or SNP. But they were only to be retreated again with the Tories’ ‘crushing‘ 2019 majority. The constant conflation of England with the UK overshadows how a centralist, unionist system harms England. Moreover, power, culture, wealth, and jobs all gravitate towards London. And unaddressed feelings of powerlessness and disenfranchisement, however nebulous or untrue, lead to geopolitical shocks like Brexit. So the system must be seen to be doing something about the imbalance of power in the UK. Redistribution of power must be seen to be believed.

    A constitutional convention and democratic federalism

    What the Labour left must bring to the constitutional debate is a third option. An option that breaks the divisive unionist-independence binary and is also electorally beneficial, as it differentiates Labour from both Tories and SNP. An option that is visible, participatory, and democratic.

    Constitutional conventions are used by democracies in crisis and renewal to define themselves going forwards. Scotland itself hosted the 1989 Scottish Constitutional Convention. This was a meeting of several Scottish parties along with “churches, unions, business, and industry“. The aim of the convention was to design a plan for devolved Scottish government. Despite initially endorsing the convention, the SNP later withdrew as neither Labour nor the Lib Dems were willing to consider independence as a proposal. Since then, the once-perceived importance of the convention has faded in the public consciousness.

    A UK-wide constitutional convention including all parties, civil and community groups, and representatives of the people would avoid these shortcomings. And it would be politically impossible for the SNP to refuse if they wish to make headway with undecided voters. It’s also important that Scottish independence is put forth as a serious and viable option on the negotiating table. This is not to say a new independence referendum should never take place. Rather a constitutional convention would allow all involved to clearly define and explain their positions and solutions to the situation the UK is in.

    Conveners could widen the scope of such a convention to address pressing constitutional issues. Topics could include the Northern Ireland protocol, a devolved English parliament, the North-South economic divide, or a federal Britain. All of these need wide, public debate. It would allow English people to properly develop an understanding of Scotland and the union. And everyone would be able to voice their opinions on the union. A convention could craft a model of Britain that is suitable for the modern era.

    A convention would also benefit the independence movement itself. Any second referendum would no longer rehash old arguments from 2014. It would be an actual plebiscite (a public vote) on a new constitutional settlement. Three options could be put to the Scottish people:

    • To retain the status quo.
    • To accept a new federal constitution (so-called ‘devo max‘).
    • Or to support Scottish independence.
    Scotland and the left

    If nothing changes, the Scottish left faces a long, dismal slide into obscurity and irrelevance. Nationalist positions in council, at Holyrood and at Westminster, are secure. Nationalist rhetoric plays just as well now as at the 2011 election. While factional psychodrama plays out at a UK-party level, Scottish Labour has an opportunity to reshape the debate. A constitutional convention will offer a new, unifying proposal.

    Conventions aren’t the only way to effect populist constitutional change. Labour’s ongoing Constitutional Commission will hopefully shape the party’s position in future. Leftists need to represent working-class communities in the activities of the Electoral Reform Society. And they need to participate in the democratically horizontal Peoples’ Assembly. But a deep-seated and seemingly intractable problem requires a radical solution – a total overhaul of the current British constitutional settlement.

    The fact remains that for the past 12 years, the pro-independence movement has consistently been able to contrast the SNP’s social democratic incrementalism with Tory austerity and greed. Unionism ties the left in a Gordian knot, opposing the UK government whilst defending the union to the Scottish people. For the sake of the working-class, the left must think outside the box to defeat both nationalism and capitalism.

    Featured image via Wikimedia, under CC SA4.0

    By George Taylor

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Police pursuits are fatal – it’s time to stop them

    On 6 April 2021, 17-year-old Ronaldo Johnson died as a result of injuries sustained during a pursuit by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) officers. Johnson’s untimely death was one of an increasing number of pursuit-related deaths in England and Wales. In spite of this, the government seeks to increase protections for police involved in road traffic incidents through its draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill – known as the policing bill.

    Deaths by police pursuit

    On 31 March 2021, Johnson suffered life-threatening injuries sustained due to a pursuit by GMP. The boy – who was travelling with friends as a backseat passenger – died in hospital on 6 April.

    In October, Johnson’s grieving family spoke out about the lack of support provided by the police and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). Their quest for justice and accountability is ongoing.

    As reported by grassroots cop-watching group Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP), Johnson’s untimely death contributed to GMP’s increasing number of deaths from police pursuits. Johnson was one of eight such deaths in Manchester between September 2020 and May 2021.

    On 24 March 2022, 40-year-old Paul Parker died at the scene also following a pursuit by the force.

    NPMP warns that if GMP continues at this rate, the force is set to reach a “record high” number of road traffic deaths.

    Increasing pursuit-related deaths nationwide

    These tragedies in Manchester are part of an increasing trend of deaths related to police pursuits and road traffic incidents across England and Wales.

    According to INQUEST, there have been at least 436 deaths during or following police pursuits in England and Wales since 1990. An additional 151 deaths were caused by police road traffic incidents during this period.

    The IOPC’s latest statistics show that in 20 fatal police-related road traffic incidents in England and Wales in 2020/21, 25 people died. This represents an increase in the number of fatalities from the previous year.

    Young men – particularly those from racially minoritised backgrounds – are significantly overrepresented in these figures.

    Even with these alarming figures and recent tragedies in mind, the government seeks to further increase officers’ powers and protections when pursuing members of the public.

    As NPMP explains, the draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill includes amendments to the 1988 Road Traffic Act. Under the new legislation, police officers would no longer be viewed as regular drivers in the eyes of the law. This has the potential to protect officers from liability in dangerous and careless driving cases. Also, this would include incidents that result in death or serious injury.

    End police pursuits

    People can join NPMP’s demo at West Didsbury Police Station, Manchester, in memory of Johnson and all those killed following police pursuits. This will take place at 4pm on the one year anniversary of Johnson’s untimely death on 6 April. The demo will be followed by a panel discussion and organising led by affected friends, families, and campaigners.

    Horrific incidents such as Sarah Everard’s rape and murder at the hands of serving officer Wayne Couzens, and the heavy-handed policing at her vigil have contributed to the widespread understanding that the police don’t keep any of us safe. Vile police misconduct over photographs of the bodies of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman reflect the institutionalised misogyny and racism in policing. The recent abuse of Child Q highlights the harm and violence that officers routinely inflict on children and young people.

    We must urgently resist police violence in all its forms. It’s time to follow in the footsteps of NPMP, Sisters Uncut, Kill the Bill, and others. This begins with withdrawing consent from policing and becoming ungovernable.

    Featured image via Steveknowstheroad22/Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, resized to 770×403

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.