Ambulance strikes show government must come to the table on pay, GMB warns Parliament’s health committee

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/ambulance-strikes-show-government-must-come-table-pay-gmb-warns-parliaments-health-committee

Image of Accident and emergency

“LIFE-and-limb cover” will be provided across the ambulance service in England and Wales today to ensure patients are not put at risk during strikes, a union leader told MPs today.

GMB national secretary Rachel Harrison said that unions had been working “round the clock” to ensure there were enough strike exemptions to keep critical services running.

“Life-and-limb cover will be provided,” Ms Harrison told MPs. “The last thing that our members want to do is put patients in harm’s way.

“We will do everything within our power to ensure that communities are safe during this action.

“The government has to play their part, they have to come to the table and talk to us.”

She told MPs that ambulance workers have been forced to take strike action after raising concerns for years about ambulance delays and unsafe conditions for patients.

Continue ReadingAmbulance strikes show government must come to the table on pay, GMB warns Parliament’s health committee

Jeremy Corbyn criticises West for ‘pouring arms into Ukraine and prolonging war’

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Image of Jeremy Corbyn, Wikimedia Image, Author Sophie Brown. Sophie Brown, CC BY-SA 4.0
Jeremy Corbyn. Author Sophie Brown, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/jeremy-corbyn-ukraine-russia-invasion-b2137091.html

The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has criticised the west for arming Ukraine, arguing that its military support will prolong the war.

Countries including the UK and the US have sent Kyiv billions of pounds of weapons to help it fight off Vladimir Putin’s troops.

“Pouring arms in isn’t going to bring about a solution. It is only going to prolong and exaggerate this war,” Corbyn said, echoing the line taken by Moscow on western military aid to Ukraine.

Although the North Islington MP said he “disagrees” with the Russian invasion, he accused world leaders of using “the language of more war and more bellicose war” instead of pursuing peace.

“This war is disastrous for the people of Ukraine, for the people of Russia and for the safety and security of the whole world, and therefore there has to be more, much more effort, put into peace,” he said.

‘This is a war of propaganda’ John Pilger on Ukraine and Assange Talking Post with Yonden Lhatoo

20 min long unfortunately …

10 August 2022. This post disappears from the blog repeatedly, I don’t know why.

11 August 2022. [Technical] I’m very pleased with my current host while the last one was good when I joined but bought out and then turned useless. It’s cheap, fast and has excellent tech support. I should have flushed the NGINX cache after changing the theme to get this post displaying properly. Not sure about this theme despite it being very popular e.g. quoted text not reactive, [12/8/22 now working, think that my secret secretary should be thanked for that. I don’t know who my secret secretary is – it’s a secret ;)] could be simpler to use (how can I change the background colour in the header? why is it a different colour anyway? I want this sort of stuff to just work straight out of the box).

Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn criticises West for ‘pouring arms into Ukraine and prolonging war’

THIS IS NOT A DRILL ~ AN extinction rebellion HANDBOOK

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My copy of THIS IS NOT A DRILL ~ AN extinction rebellion HANDBOOK has just arrived. Here’s an excerpt for you from ‘The Civil Resistance Model’ by Roger Hallam.

The key lesson about all structural political change is this: disruption works. Without disruption there is no economic cost, and without economic cost the guys running this world don’t really care. That’s why labour strikes are so effective against companies and why closing down a capital city is so effective against governments. You have to hit them where it hurts: in their pockets. That’s just the way it is.

The central dynamic here is the ‘dilemma’ action. When you create a dilemma for the authorities you open up a space of opportunity which was not there previously. Within that space you can get noticed, speak truth to power, negotiate, and more.

The authorities now have a serious dilemma: let people party on the streets, or opt for repression.

The lesson then is you don’t wait until everyone is ready, because you’ll be waiting for ever. You just need to go out and do it.

Rebellions are created because some people have had enough. They are all over it and don’t care if they’re successful or not. It’s sublime madness. It ‘s the only thing that will save us now.

I care about succeeding and it’s a matter of continuing until then.

Continue ReadingTHIS IS NOT A DRILL ~ AN extinction rebellion HANDBOOK

38degrees: Increase the fines for breaking electoral law

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https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/enforce-the-laws-of-our-democracy?utm_campaign=Electoral+Commission+petition

Right now, you can be fined more for touting tickets at a football match than you can for subverting British democracy, with the max fine being £20k. The Electoral Commission imposed the maximum fine on Vote Leave – just 0.003% of its £7m budget.

Whichever way you voted on Brexit, it can’t be right that political machines with millionaire donors can break our electoral laws with impunity. The Electoral Commission has repeatedly asked for the maximum fines they can impose to be increased. But our political leaders don’t like being held to account. And so far, they’ve refused.

We could have another election or referendum at any moment – so the Electoral Commission urgently needs more power now to guard our democracy. We must make sure fines are proportionate to how much campaigns actually spend, so they act as a real deterrent. Please sign openDemocracy’s petition today and sign up to hear more about our investigations.

Continue Reading38degrees: Increase the fines for breaking electoral law

Pinned

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Conservative party leadership (and therefore also prime minister) candidate Michael Gove has admitted taking Cocaine many years ago.

Another candidate Rory Steward has admitted smoking Opium which is certainly my preference.

Here’s a video for another Conservative prime minister candidate who is obviously a Cocaine addict. Enjoy.

https://youtu.be/1_T_K1oGLaE

14/6/19 The title should instead be ‘pinged’. I suppose it could be anti-psychotic medication but it’s probably Cocaine.

Continue ReadingPinned

Just checking in

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Just checking in. Brexit poll a week from today looks bad news if the opinion polls are accurate. Nigel “No more Mr. Nice Guy” Farage’s party of bigots and climate change enthusiasts may do well. Unfortunately he has the support of a lot of angry, misguided people who somehow genuinely believe that Brexit is in their interests. He plans to try yet again to join the “Westminster elite” which he condemns after seven failed attempts. There are many unanswered questions about Farage dealings, Trump (and the Clinton emails), Assange, Cambridge Analytica, Arron Banks, the dodgy Brexit campaign donation funnelled through Arron Banks’ dodgy offshore company …

Coming soon: the great universal credit deception

After years of ministers pretending otherwise, Amber Rudd, the DWP secretary, now admits universal credit’s introduction has left people so short of cash that they have resorted to food banks. What Iain Duncan Smith hailed in 2011 as a transformation of welfare has turned into something grotesque, with massive delays and huge flaws both of administration and design, repeatedly damned by MP select committees. The independent National Audit Office judges that universal credit has neither saved public money nor helped people into work. But it has left thousands of vulnerable claimants penniless, while others starve and even lose their homes. In a House of Commons debate last summer the London Labour MP Catherine West recounted how one of her constituents had “fallen off benefits” and ended up “sleeping in a tent in a bin chamber” on a housing estate.

Such are the horrors whose very documentation by journalists the DWP letter dismisses as “unfair”. Rather than halt universal credit, as demanded by so many groups, the department’s managers now say they will respond “in a different way … very different to anything we’ve done before”.

What follows is an elaborate media strategy to manufacture a Whitehall fantasy, one in which the benefits system is running like a dream while a Conservative government generously helps people on the escalator to prosperity. It begins at the end of this month with a giant advert wrapped around the cover of the Metro newspaper; inside will be a further four-page advertorial feature. This will “myth-bust the common inaccuracies reported on UC”. What’s more, “the features won’t look or feel like DWP or UC – you won’t see our branding … We want to grab the readers’ attention and make them wonder who has done this ‘UC uncovered’ investigation.”

Not only is this a costly exercise, with a Metro wraparound going for a headline rate of £250,000 (of your money, let’s not forget), but the Advertising Standards Authority will doubtless be interested in that description of the feature. Its guidelines stipulate that“marketers and publishers must make clear that advertorials are marketing communications”

Under Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) the state – probably the Home Secretary – could make secret orders which could never be revealed. That sounds familiar somehow. RIPA has since been replaced by the Investigatory Powers Act but I’m sure that similar laws still exist. It’s a way for the state to attack people while hiding. A hypothetical example – the state could interfere in a political activist’s affairs e.g. frustrating complaints, actually denying the activist’s human rights so that the activist would be consumed with pressing more personal issues and thereby distracted from the bigger political issues. People tend to change their jobs and move away in my experience. Isn’t that the obvious thing to do if you’ve been prevented from doing your job and prevented from discussing it with anyone under threat of imprisonment? I think that the way to deal with this nonsense is to carry on regardless so that many more people become aware of these actions against democracy (even if they can’t discuss it with anyone).

Continue ReadingJust checking in