Campaigners take part in a Stop Rosebank emergency protest outside the U.K. Government building in Edinburgh, after the controversial Equinor Rosebank North Sea oil field was given the go-ahead Wednesday, September 27, 2023. (Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)
ROSEBANK owner Equinor have once again posted billions in profits – to the fury of climate campaigners.
The Norwegian fossil giant – which has the controlling stake in the huge oil field development in the North Sea – posted profits of £6.6 billion for the past three months.
Environmental campaigners said the firm was adding “insult to injury” with its huge profits as parts of Scotland continue to suffer from extreme weather caused by climate breakdown.
Last week, Storm Babet caused flooding that hit towns across north-east Scotland, with some evacuated residents in Angus told they would not be back in their homes by Christmas.
In September, the UK Government gave the green light for the Rosebank development to go ahead, despite fury from campaigners and across the political spectrum.
The field, which lies north-west of Shetland, contains up to 350 million barrels of oil and is expected to be in operation for decades.
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer call for ‘humanitarian pauses’ … but not a ceasefire
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that temporary breaks or “specific pauses” in the violence could allow British nationals and hostages to be freed and aid to be supplied to the Gaza Strip.
But the government has continued to back Israel’s “right to defend itself,” and resist calls for a ceasefire.
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[Zionist] Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who has also resisted calls to support a ceasefire, said on Wednesday evening that the amount of aid and essential utilities going into Gaza was “completely insufficient.”
In a statement, he called for supplies to be “urgently ramped up” and added that “we support humanitarian pauses.”
However, Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal hit out at Sir Keir, telling him to “stop playing games with people’s lives.”
He wrote on social media platform X: “Aid cannot be safely delivered without a ceasefire. Nor can infrastructure be repaired which is necessary for life.
“If you care about the lives of innocent Palestinians, then call for a ceasefire now or you remain complicit.”
Health Professionals associated with Just Stop Oil protests at the Natural History Museum 26 Oct 2023.
Two senior medical professionals have painted a dinosaur at the Natural History Museum in London. They are demanding the government halt all new oil and gas projects in the UK and are calling on health professionals and the public to march in London from the 30th October to campaign for this.
This afternoon Will Stableforth, a consultant gastroenterologist and Steve Fay, a senior physiotherapist, used a children’s powder-paint fountain to cover a reproduction Titanosaur skeleton in orange cornstarch. The two then displayed a banner which read ‘For health’s sake- Just Stop Oil.’ The two then sat and waited for police to arrive. Fifteen officers have attended the scene and arrested both men.
Speaking before the action, Will Stableforth from Truro, in Cornwall, said
“As an NHS medical consultant I’ve spent many years looking after patients with diseases which, at their root, are caused by fossil fuels. I have done everything legal I can to get our message across. Most of that has been ineffective; so it’s time to break the law. I cannot see another way at this time.”
“The climate crisis is a healthcare emergency for every single one of us. We demand an end to any new fossil fuels and immediate climate action prioritising public health rather than big business.”
This morning, over 200 health journals from around the world, have urged the World Health Organization to declare the deadly climate and nature crises as a global health emergency. The journals have come together to simultaneously publish an editorial calling on world leaders and health professionals to treat the climate and and nature crises as one indivisible crisis that must be tackled together in order to preserve health and avoid catastrophe.
Rachel Reeves engages in a New Labour tradition of plaguarism in her book. Tony ‘c********r’ Blair and Alastair Campbell engaged in huge plaguarism in drafting the Dodgy dossier and were also found out in short order.
Shadow Chancellor denies plagiarism, but at least twenty sections are identical to Wikipedia entries or slightly reworded
Rachel Reeves seriously plaguarised wikipedia in her book. Image thanks to the Skwawkbox.
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s new book is littered with examples of text lifted exactly, or very nearly, from Wikipedia, according to the Financial Times.
The paper identified at least twenty examples, with some exact and others only slightly modified, including this lengthy passage:
Rachel Reeves seriously plaguarises wikipedia. Image thanks to The Skwawkbox.
Ironically, a theme of the book is others taking credit for the work of women.
The publisher admitted that sections had been included without modification, but ‘allies’ of Reeves denied plagiarism. Her spokesperson said to the FT:
We strongly refute the accusation that has been put to us by this newspaper. These were inadvertent mistakes and will be rectified in future reprints.
Refugee charity Care4Calais is seeking to sue the government for ‘segregating’ asylum seekers at RAF Wethersfield
Suella Braverman faces a fresh legal challenge over the government’s treatment of asylum seekers held at a former RAF base that has been compared to “a military-style prison camp”.
Refugee charity Care4Calais is seeking to sue the government over its policy of warehousing asylum seekers at RAF Wethersfield, which it claims amounts to a form of “segregation” and “quasi detention”.
The legal challenge comes weeks after asylum seekers at Wethersfield – a remote, 800-acre site in Essex, ringed by security fences, guards and CCTV – told openDemocracy they had been “locked up” in solitary confinement for complaining of depression.
In a private press briefing attended by openDemocracy today, Care4Calais said it is bringing the legal challenge after hearing testimonies from its clients living at the barracks.
A pre-action protocol letter issued by lawyers representing the charity accuses the home secretary of failing to fulfil her obligations of “ensuring an adequate standard of living and health for asylum seekers” under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.
The letter states that “measures short of 24-hour physical confinement, where they substantively deprive a person of their liberty, may amount to detention at common law.”
Ali*, 24, who escaped the Taliban earlier this year, told openDemocracy that staff at Wethersfield locked him up in a room for two days after he complained that being held there was causing him to be depressed. “They’ve done this to me twice,” he said, adding that it has “happened to other people too”.
He continued: “If they go and tell [staff] they don’t feel well or they have depression… they lock them in a room for 48 hours and make them quarantine – and they’re not allowed out.
“Wethersfield is like a prison. It doesn’t feel like we’re in any kind of home or hotel room – we’ve just been thrown into a military-style prison camp.”
Two other men living at the barracks told this website of “prison-like conditions” that are affecting their mental health.
Braverman is accused of separating “asylum seekers, all or most of whom are non-British, and many of whom are also from ethnic minorities or non-white, from the wider UK population”.
Care4Calais’ legal challenge also raises the absence of an effective screening process for asylum seekers due to be accommodated at Wethersfield.
Survivors of torture and modern slavery, or those who suffer from serious mental health conditions, are routinely sent to the barracks, the charity said, but are transferred to hotels when their cases are individually raised in individual pre-action protocol letters.
In its press briefing today, Care4Calais said this has happened up to 20 times in the past few months.
Wethersfield is already the subject of a legal challenge from Braintree District Council, which objects to the Home Office’s plans to expand the site’s capacity. A High Court case brought by the council on 31 October will also hear evidence about the inappropriate use of the RAF base Scampton in Lincolnshire – which is due to open in weeks and house up to 2,000 men.
The government has until 7 November to respond to the letter, before proceedings for a full judicial review are initiated.
