It was three months ago that the Red Tories / Labour party abandoned their commitment to green policies.
Author: dizzy
Constituents launch election campaign to ‘clean Parliament of climate deniers’
‘As a country, we face urgent threats on climate and nature. We need to make policies that follow the scientific evidence.’
MP Watch, a grassroots network of constituents that scrutinise MPs and aim to make them more accountable, has launched its election campaign. The campaign aims to let constituents know if they have an MP who denies climate change exists, so they are able to vote accordingly.
The campaigners list several MPs who are associated with denying the climate emergency exists, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, Craig McKinlay, Esther McVey, Mark Jenkinson, Andrea Jenkins, Liz Truss, and Suella Braverman.
At the heart of the campaign launch is a film that lays bare the climate record of Steve Baker, Conservative MP of Wycombe, who the group describes as “climate denier number one.”
Baker was first elected as an MP in 2010 and was re-elected in 2019 with just a four thousand majority. An ardent Brexiteer, Baker was chair of the pro-Brexit group of MPs, the European Research Group (ERG), until he resigned when he was promoted to Brexit minister in 2017. He resigned from the post a year later, following the resignation of David Davis over concerns about the government’s strategy on Brexit.
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MP Watch campaign head Jessica Townsend described the aim of the campaign, as to “clean up parliament at the next election and to finally get rid of the pollution of climate misinformation.”.
“As a country, we face urgent threats on climate and nature. We need to make policies that follow the scientific evidence. Yet at this dangerous time, some in Westminster are playing politics on the issue. Frankly, it beggars’ belief.”
Benefit Fraud: The Right-Wing Lie that Refuses to Die
https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/benefit-fraud-the-right-wing-lie-that-refuses-to-die/
For many right-wing politicians and their media allies, ‘welfare cheats’ is a line that bears endless repetition.
News broke this week that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is investigating the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over its treatment of disabled people, specifically whether the department failed to make reasonable adjustments for people with learning disabilities or long-term mental health conditions when carrying out benefit health assessments.
“The DWP has been failing disabled people for decades now” and “full transparency and accountability is imperative,” said David Linden MP, the SNP’s Social Justice Spokesperson, in response to news of the investigation.
For years, successive Tory governments and the media ecosystems that support them, have demonised benefit claimants, presenting them as ‘scroungers,’ ‘frauds’ and ‘cheats.’ Who can forget the Sun’s ‘Beat the Cheat’ campaign in 2012, encouraging readers to be “patriotic” by reporting suspected benefit cheats to a benefit fraud hotline? In 2016, the then chancellor George Osborne refused to apologise for attempting to slice £4.4bn off benefits for people with disabilities, as he defended his controversial budget which led to the resignation of the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith.
Today, very little has changed, except that the country is mired in a cost-of-living crisis that has fuelled the sharpest increase in absolute poverty in 30 years.
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Disability benefit fraud a ‘non-issue’
Meanwhile, separate and more recent DWP figures show that there were almost no recorded losses to the taxpayer due to fraud in the disability benefits system in the financial year ending 2024.
Disability Living Allowance fraud was just 0.1 percent, rounded down to £0m. PIP cheating was found to be 0 percent in the same period, the data showed.
PIP overpayments represented 0.4 percent, equating to around £90m lost in a year, marking a significant decrease from the previous year, when such overpayments stood 1.1 percent (£200m). The overpayments were said to be mainly due to errors made by the department when allocating award levels at the assessment stage.
Responding to the figures, Mikey Erhardt, campaigner at Disability Rights UK described PIP fraud as a ‘non-issue.’
“New data shows what we, as disabled people, have known for years – PIP fraud is a non-issue. PIP fraud is now the lowest on record – despite the government placing fraud front and centre of their latest public announcements,” he said.
Erhardt added: “If the government is concerned about fraud, it would be serious about the £15.2bn that multinational companies hide from the UK via tax havens. Money which could fund public services that we all need and use. Instead, disabled people continue to be demonised.”
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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/benefit-fraud-the-right-wing-lie-that-refuses-to-die/
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak describes his benefit to already filthy rich fossil fuel investors and how he hates poor people. Green Party responds to new energy price cap
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time. Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer welcomed the latest energy price cap drop, but warned it still left average consumers with bills £400 higher than before the energy crisis.
Denyer said:
“Consumers are still paying for a crisis not of their making.
“Neither the Conservatives nor Labour are offering the real, practical, lasting solutions that can bring down people’s bills and protect the environment by reducing home energy use.
“Fiddling with the price cap is not enough.
“A mass programme of government-backed, council delivered home insulation starting immediately after the General Election is a win-win solution for people and the planet and offers people hope and positive change.
“We could reduce bills for the long term and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by building new homes that are easier and cheaper to heat and boosting insulation in existing homes. Insulating people’s homes means they can stay warm while using less energy, save money and produce fewer harmful carbon emissions.”
Morning Star: Corbyn’s run in Islington North is a stand for socialism – and democracy itself
Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party …
There is no risk of letting the Tories in in Islington North. This will be a Corbyn versus token-Labour contest. Given the Labour Party nationally echoes Tory policies on public spending, crackdowns on protest rights and effective support for Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, the value of having a voice for peace and socialism who has never been afraid to challenge ministers, Tory or Labour, on their actions in Parliament is obvious.
It matters that we send the bullies and political fixers who dominate Westminster politics a message that they will not always get away with it.
It matters too that re-electing Corbyn, a nationally recognised figure, sends a national message that the socialist resurgence his 2015-20 Labour leadership represented has not been snuffed out.
Majorities consistently tell the pollsters they want higher taxes on the rich, more public spending, rail, mail, water and energy back in public hands.
A deeply undemocratic political system and a deeply dishonest and manipulative media are adept at obscuring that reality. Re-electing Jeremy Corbyn will make it that bit harder for them to do so.
