Threatening to sack migrant nursing staff ‘abhorrent beyond words’, says Royal College of Nursing in response to Reform UK
Responding to Reform UK plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain for migrants, RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Professor Nicola Ranger said “Threatening to sack thousands of migrant nursing staff is abhorrent beyond words. These are people who have come to the UK to care for patients and become part of our communities. They deserve so much better than this.
“The policy of retrospectively removing people’s rights in this way would be unprecedented, leaving migrant nursing staff unable to work or access welfare, despite having paid tax. It shows neither compassion nor an understanding of the fundamental role our brilliant migrant nursing staff play in health and care. Without them, services would simply cease to function.
“As the largest nursing union, we are deeply concerned by the increasingly hostile rhetoric shown towards migrants. We urge all political parties to end this race to the bottom and instead acknowledge and celebrate the contribution of those who come to the UK from overseas.”
Nations’ plans to ramp up coal, gas and oil extraction ‘will put climate goals beyond reach’
New data shows governments now planning more fossil fuel production in coming decades than they were in 2023
Governments around the world are ramping up coal, gas and oil extraction which will put climate goals beyond reach, new data has shown.
Far from reducing reliance on fossil fuels, nations are planning higher levels of fossil fuel production for the coming decades than they did in 2023, the last time comparable data was compiled.
This increase goes against the commitments that countries have made at UN climate summits to “transition away from fossil fuels” and phase down production, particularly of coal.
If all of the planned new extraction takes place, the world will produce more than double the quantity of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with holding global temperature rises to 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
Emily Ghosh, a programme director at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) in the US, said: “Fossil fuel production should have peaked and started to fall. Every year of delay [to the peak and rapid fall required] significantly increases the pressure [on the climate].”
She said an urgent “course correction” from governments was needed, but the current and planned overproduction of fossil fuels meant the world was burning through its remaining “carbon budget” – the amount that can be emitted without permanently exceeding the 1.5C threshold – at a rapid rate.
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Gatwick given green light for £2.2bn second runway plan
Heidi Alexander approves expansion to allow 100,000 more flights a year
Gatwick airport’s £2.2bn second runway plan has been given the go-ahead by the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander.
With the privately financed project, the West Sussex hub is aiming to increase its capacity by 100,000 flights a year.
Gatwick will move its emergency runway 12 metres north, enabling it to be used for departures of narrow-bodied planes such as Airbus A320s and Boeing 737s.
The new runway is expected to add 14,000 jobs and as much as £1bn in extra economic activity.
Alexander backed the scheme as a “no-brainer” for economic growth, a government source said on Sunday, suggesting flights could take off from the new full runway by 2029.
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“A second runway at Gatwick is a disaster”
Environmentalist have slammed the government’s decision to approve a second Gatwick runway.
Green party leader Zack Polanski has said:
“Signing off on a second runway at Gatwick is a disaster. It ignores basic climate science and risks undermining efforts to tackle the climate crisis. Labour keeps wheeling out the same nonsense about growth, but at what cost? What this really means is more pollution, more noise for local communities, and no real economic benefit.
Expanding Gatwick is a tired, 20th-century answer to a 21st-century crisis. Labour’s obsession with ‘growth at all costs’ is driving us deeper into a climate breakdown and social inequality crisis.”
Rosie Downes, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth, argues that the economic case for the expansion is ‘massively overstated’:
“With emissions from aviation rising as climate extremes increasingly batter the planet with more intense floods, droughts and wildfires, it’s a struggle to see how the government can conclude expansion at Gatwick is a wise move.
“The Secretary of State says a second runway is a “no-brainer” for the economy, but the economic case for airport expansion is massively overstated. Any growth in air passengers leaving the country is likely to mean more UK tourists using their spending power overseas than anything we might gain from visitors.
Illegal settlers storm Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, hold prayers for slain US activist Charlie Kirk
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Scores of illegal Israeli settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on Sunday and held prayers for US right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who was killed earlier this month, Anadolu reports.
The Hebrew-language site Srugim reported that the ritual was led by far-right Rabbi and former Knesset member Yehuda Glick, a prominent advocate of expanding Jewish access to the site.
Kirk, a conservative activist known for supporting US President Donald Trump and Israel, was fatally shot in the neck while delivering a speech at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said illegal settlers entered the mosque in groups, performing rituals, singing and dancing inside the courtyards as preparations for the Jewish New Year gathered pace.
Wafa added that right-wing settler groups are mobilizing to bring larger numbers of illegal settlers into the flashpoint site during the holiday period.
On Saturday, the Israeli army said it would send reinforcements to the occupied West Bank amid heightened alert ahead of the holidays.
READ: Al-Aqsa preacher Skeikh Sarandah barred by Israel police from entering mosque after his brief arrest
According to Jerusalem’s Islamic Endowments Directorate, violations at Al-Aqsa have escalated sharply since far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir became Israel’s national security minister in late 2022.
Al-Aqsa Mosque is the world’s third-holiest site for Muslims. Jews call the area Temple Mount, claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem, where Al-Aqsa is located, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It annexed the entire city in 1980 in a move never recognized by the international community.
Palestinians see the settler incursions into Al-Aqsa as part of efforts to Judaize East Jerusalem and erase its Arab and Islamic identity. They insist East Jerusalem is the capital of a future Palestinian state, in line with international resolutions rejecting Israel’s 1967 occupation and its 1980 annexation of the city.
Since October 2023, at least 1,042 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in the West Bank by Israeli forces and illegal settlers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
