New London Fire Brigade recruits go through their paces during a drill at a Fire station in East London, July 21, 2022
FIRE and rescue services can no longer ensure public safety, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has warned as it revealed the full extent of Tory cuts across Britain.
Between 2010 and this year, 21 per cent of front-line firefighters’ jobs — 12,000 — have been axed due to government cuts, new data shows.
The FBU also found that 4,000 firefighters have both a full-time and an on-call contract and are counted as two workers in the data, meaning that firefighter numbers available are even lower than the data suggests.
The union said response times to life-threatening fires had slowed by three minutes, from 6.11 minutes in 1995 to 9.13 minutes in 2023.
FIRE and rescue services can no longer ensure public safety, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has warned as it revealed the full extent of Tory cuts across Britain.
Between 2010 and this year, 21 per cent of front-line firefighters’ jobs — 12,000 — have been axed due to government cuts, new data shows.
The FBU also found that 4,000 firefighters have both a full-time and an on-call contract and are counted as two workers in the data, meaning that firefighter numbers available are even lower than the data suggests.
The union said response times to life-threatening fires had slowed by three minutes, from 6.11 minutes in 1995 to 9.13 minutes in 2023.
Downing Street has billed the speech tomorrow as “a direct message to the working people across Britain.”
In it, Sir Keir is expected to develop the line of attack that Chancellor Rachel Reeves began when she accused the Tories before the summer recess of leaving a £22 billion black hole in this year’s budget.
Sir Keir will claim government has to take “unpopular decisions” to rebuild the country from “rubble and ruin” left by the Tories, saying: “We have inherited not just an economic black hole but a societal black hole.
“And that is why we have to take action and do things differently.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to reporters on a tarmac in Doha, Qatar on August 20, 2024. (Photo: Kevin Mohatt/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
“You are currently arming, funding, and defending a genocide in Gaza. That is how history will remember you.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was accused of stark hypocrisy on Saturday after he condemned the Myanmar military’s genocide against the Rohingya people while simultaneously aiding Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip.
Marking the seventh anniversary of Myanmar’s vicious ethnic cleansing of the stateless Rohingya, Blinken wrote on social media that “the United States continues to honor the victims and stand with the survivors as they seek justice and accountability for these atrocities.”
Blinken also issued a statement highlighting the U.S. State Department’s “extensive documentation of the atrocities and abuses committed against Rohingya and all civilians”—a sharp contrast with the Biden administration’s reluctance to assess Israeli atrocities against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“You are currently arming, funding, and defending a genocide in Gaza,” Middle East researcher and analyst Assal Rad wrote in response to Blinken’s statement. “That is how history will remember you, not your empty words.”
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) also weighed in, telling Blinken to “just stop trying to act like you care about genocide or human rights.”
Under Blinken’s leadership, the U.S. State Department has approved massive arms transfers to Israel—including a recent $20 billion sale—and provided diplomatic cover for the country’s far-right government on the world stage, dismissing as “meritless” the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Israel has killed more than 40,400 people in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas-led attack. Most of those killed in Israel’s assault have been women and children—including thousands of infants and toddlers.
“According to documents and sources who spoke with Haaretz,” the Israeli newspaper reported last September, “the government-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and the Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems maintained their trade with Myanmar despite an international arms embargo on the country, and despite a 2017 ruling by Israel’s High Court of Justice and the Israeli government’s own 2018 statement saying it stopped such sales.”
“Israel’s longstanding relations with the different regimes controlling Myanmar have involved arms trade since the mid-20th century,” Haaretz continued. “Even in the years in which the country was openly ruled by its military junta, Israel refused to stop the trade. The trade was maintained through the Rohingya genocide of 2016-17.”
SIR KEIR STARMER has been engulfed in a new cronyism row after it emerged the millionaire TV mogul Waheed Alli was given unrestricted access to No 10 after donating £500,000 to Labour.
Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden could not say today why Lord Alli had been granted the pass, which is normally reserved for officials and staff.
…
The Labour government has faced criticism for handing top jobs to some of its most prominent backers.
Others with ties to Labour or Labour-supporting think tanks have also been appointed to Civil Service roles, leading to anger over its politicisation.
In the run-up to the election Lord Alli, a television executive who was ennobled by Tony Blair in 1998, gave Sir Keir tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of personal donations, including £16,200 worth of work clothing, £2,845 worth of glasses and £36,400 for private office costs and accommodation.
He worked as the party’s chief fundraiser for the general election, having been hired by Sir Keir in 2022, having personally donated £500,000 to Labour since 2020.
Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike on Zibqin in southern Lebanon on August 25, 2024. (Photo: Kawnat Haju/AFP via Getty Images
“Looks like Israel is now escalating in Lebanon in a major way in the hopes of kicking off a major war in the north that has thus far been kept to more limited exchanges,” warned one analyst.
Israel’s military deployed around 100 fighter jets to launch a massive bombing campaign in southern Lebanon on Sunday, endangering tens of thousands of civilians and heightening the chances of an all-out regional war.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) characterized the wave of airstrikes as an effort to preemptively “remove the threat” posed by a purportedly imminent Hezbollah attack, but observers argued the Israeli bombing marked a serious escalation that could further undermine hopes of a cease-fire deal in Gaza.
“Looks like Israel is now escalating in Lebanon in a major way in the hopes of kicking off a major war in the north that has thus far been kept to more limited exchanges,” wrote political analyst Yousef Munayyer. “Just as negotiations for a cease-fire were reportedly advancing.”
Hezbollah said Sunday that it had fired hundreds of drones and rockets at Israeli military sites in retaliation for the assassination of one of the group’s senior commanders last month. Hezbollah said the “first phase” of its response was complete and rejected the IDF’s claim that it preempted the group’s retaliatory action.
The Associated Press reported that “by mid-morning, it appeared that the exchange had ended, with both sides saying they had only aimed at military targets.”
“At least three people were killed in the strikes on Lebanon,” AP noted, “while there were no reports of casualties in Israel.”
Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, wrote on social media following the attack on Lebanon that he “sent a direct message to dozens of foreign ministers worldwide, urging them to support Israel against the Iranian axis of evil and its proxies, led by Hezbollah.”
Israel's Foreign Minister making it crystal-clear what they're trying to do, if it wasn't clear already: escalate wildly in order to expedite a war, and then beg other Western powers to back them to a hilt when Hezbollah inevitably responds to a huge attack on Lebanese soil. https://t.co/ahfxH44gY1
Sunday’s dangerous back-and-forth, described by one newspaper as the two sides’ biggest exchange of fire since the 2006 war, further intensified concerns that the region is moving toward the precipice of an all-out conflict as Israel’s U.S.-backed assault on the Gaza Strip continues with no end in sight.
A White House spokesperson said Sunday that U.S. President Joe Biden is “closely monitoring events in Israel and Lebanon.”
“At his direction, senior U.S. officials have been communicating continuously with their Israeli counterparts,” the spokesperson said. “We will keep supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and we will keep working for regional stability.”
One senior U.S. official said Israel did not give the White House advance notice of the Lebanon attack.
Monica Marks, professor of Middle East politics at New York University Abu Dhabi, wrote that the White House’s claim to be promoting regional stability “lands like a bad joke” given ongoing U.S. support for Israel’s “escalatory acts.”
“Lives on the ground are at stake. So are [Democratic presidential nominee Kamala] Harris‘ chances and Biden’s legacy,” Marks added. “D.C. is playing Middle East roulette.”
Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon came after another horrific day in the Gaza Strip, where the IDF killed dozens of Palestinians in southern Gaza. “Among the dead,” according to the AP, “were 11 members of a family, including two children, after an airstrike hit their home in Khan Younis.”
The atrocities preceded a fresh round of high-level cease-fire talks, negotiations that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly thwarted with hardline demands.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that “Israel and Hamas were sending senior-level delegations to Cairo this weekend as U.S., Qatari, and Egyptian mediators prepared for a high-stakes summit they hope will break the deadlock in negotiations for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.”
“Hamas officials arrived in the Egyptian capital Saturday, while Israeli media reported that a team led by the head of Mossad, David Barnea, would travel there Sunday,” the Post added. “The summit, also on Sunday, will include CIA Director William J. Burns, Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.”
