The legislation is an attempt to ‘drive a wedge between working people’
General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Paul Nowak took to the airwaves this morning to speak out about the anti-strikes bill which will be voted on by MPs this evening.
He slammed media accusations of union ‘scare tactics’ by laying out the reality of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill which could see workers lose their job for taking strike action.
As media presenters sought to play down the implications of the bill, Nowak said threatening workers with the sack was ‘untenable’ and that the real reason it was being put through was to ‘demonise trade unions’ and ‘drive a wedge between working people’.
“There is no public appetite at all to see nurses, paramedics, teachers, railway [ workers …] sacked for exercising what most people will think as a fundamental British liberty, the right to strike,” Nowak said on Sky News.
“To remove it would put the UK as a real international outlier.”
Between two and three hundred protesters will join a seven-day march from Arnhem to The Hague, organised by Extinction Rebellion. They will start on Sunday and walk along the A12. The march ends on 27 May, the day the group plans to block the A12 in The Hague again to protest against government subsidies to the fossil industry.
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It is the seventh time that Extinction Rebellion is planning to block the A12. At the last demonstration on 11 March, some 700 activists were eventually detained.
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Video of March 2023 protest.
During a demonstration by Extinction Rebellion on the A12 in The Hague a symphony orchestra played the second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony no.7. By doing so, the orchestra supported the demand of XR to stop the yearly 17.5 billion in fossil fuel subsidies by the Dutch government. The musicians are convinced that the beauty of music and of people connecting through music will also disappear if the climate crisis exacerbates.
At the moment the orchestra entered the road, police began to demand the protesters to leave or face arrest. Threatened by the deployment of water cannons, the orchestra decided to play anyway, which seemed to have a de-escalating effect. With this action the orchestra showed in a democratic way that beauty is tarnished.
Violinist Vera Beths : “Nature is a great source of inspiration for composers. You can find everything in it; harmony, dissonance, rhythm and form. We are in the process of disturbing this balance systematically. That has to stop. We have to start listening again.”
Activists from Italy’s Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) group turn Rome’s Trevi fountain black. Ultima Generazione is Italy’s group within the international Action Network. Italy has recently experienced extreme rain and flooding with at least 15 people killed.
Floods that sent rivers of mud tearing through towns in Italy’s northeast are another drenching dose of climate change’s all-or-nothing weather extremes, scientists say.
It is something that has been happening around the globe.
The coastal region of Emilia-Romagna was struck twice. First by heavy rain two weeks ago on the drought-parched ground that could not absorb it leading to overflowing riverbanks overnight. This was followed by the deluge that killed 13 and caused billions in damages this week.
More than 10,000 people fled their homes, some plucked from rooftops or balconies by rescue helicopters and others ferried out on dinghies.
