Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of the Green Party and parliamentary candidate for Waveney Valley spent the weekend talking to people affected by the flooding in Eye, Suffolk. He said “The scenes and stories of flooding I’ve been seeing and hearing from Suffolk and Norfolk residents have been deeply shocking. This is not the first time East Anglia has been flooded, and it certainly won’t be the last. Climate change experts are shouting from the rooftops that these so-called ‘once in a generation’ events will become increasingly frequent.”
“The Conservative government is letting us down badly. Not only are they not taking the issue of climate change seriously – reigning in on existing commitments – but they, and private water companies, are also failing appallingly when it comes to flood risk management. ”
“Before privatisation, public water bodies were responsible for flood defences. Now defences are at best piecemeal. This is another good reason to take our water industry back into public control.”
“We urgently need a long term and coordinated approach. This can only be achieved with a water industry focussed on investing in plugging leaks and protecting communities, not on syphoning off millions of pounds in dividends to shareholders. And rather than bulldozing planning laws, as Labour proposes, we need to reassess planning regulations which still allow for new buildings on flood plains.”
“It is clear we will need Green MPs in parliament after the next general election making the case for climate action and protecting communities.”
A CAP on bankers’ bonuses is set to be scrapped in what the TUC branded an “obscene decision” and “an insult to working people.”
Financial regulators announced today that the limit on annual payouts to 100 per cent of salary would be removed from the end of the month.
The Tories were slammed as “absolutely immoral” as the announcement was made as it emerged that one million children are living in destitution.
The Bank of England’s prudential regulation authority (PRA) said the bonus cap had been “identified as a factor in limiting labour mobility.”
Disastrous former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng first revealed plans to change the EU-wide bonus rules a year ago.
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “Rishi Sunak has shown once again that he is more interested in feather-nesting the super-wealthy than helping struggling families.
Ben Stokes (centre) grabs a JSO protestor while Johnny Bairstow carries another off the field
THREE climate change protesters who were found guilty of aggravated trespass after they ran on to the pitch during the Ashes series at Lord’s have been sentenced.
The Just Stop Oil protest carried out by Judit Murray, 69, Daniel Knorr, 21, and Jacob Bourne, 27, stopped play during the second Test between England and Australia on June 28, as security and ground staff cleaned up orange powder that was thrown on the pitch and ensured the ground was not damaged.
The three, who said they wanted to create headlines for their climate change protest and did not want to cause disruption or damage the pitch, were found guilty after a trial at City of London Magistrates’ Court.
England player Jonny Bairstow carried Knorr off the pitch, champagne corks and fruit were thrown by cricket fans at Bourne as he was led off the field, and Murray was tackled before she could reach the wicket and held down on the grass.
Israel’s trauma is not a free pass for war crimes, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE MP
IN THE wake of this month’s Hamas attack on Israeli settlements, the British government, along with other Western governments, gave vocal and emphatic backing to Israel’s “right” to “defend itself.”
This support has been undiluted even though Israel has cut off food, water and medical supplies to the civilian population of Gaza and unleashed a mass air assault on this tightly packed residential area — according to media reports, more bombs were dropped on tiny Gaza in 10 days than the US dropped on Afghanistan in its first year of operations there.
Israel has also ordered more than a million Gazan civilians, half of them children, to leave northern Gaza and cram into a tiny area against the Egyptian border.
The United Nations Office for Human Rights has condemned this as “mass ethnic cleansing” that looks set to be on an even worse scale than the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe, that saw 750,000 innocent civilians violently driven from their homes, the area that is now Israel.
The Palestinian people are now overwhelmingly a refugee population. In a clear sign of what arguably could be described as Israel’s real intent, Israeli ministers have openly called for “another Nakba” to be inflicted on Gazans.
The UN secretary-general and its Human Rights Agency have said emphatically that Israel’s actions toward civilians in Gaza are a war crime, while the UN children’s agency has condemned the appalling physical and psychological impact on children.
Yet the British government has continued to support such actions as part of Israel’s “right to defend herself,” tacking onto its statements a line saying that Israel must follow international law, as if murdering civilians can somehow be done legally.
The government’s stance was mirrored by the decision of opposition leader Keir Starmer who appeared to tell radio broadcaster LBC that Israel has a “right” to impose the cut-off on Gaza, a position which also appeared to be supported by members of Starmer’s front bench during various now-notorious media interviews.
This one-sided response of the British Establishment has also been seen in Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s order to police forces to treat even displays of the Palestinian flag as a potentially criminal act, leading to a number of arrests at Palestinian solidarity demonstrations.
The government has also pledged extensive direct military support for Israel against Gaza, a region in which children represent half of the population.
However, collective punishment is a war crime, under international law, against Gaza’s 2.5 million civilians — as is forced transfer of populations.
Demonstrators in Berlin take the streets in solidarity with Palestine (Photo: Montecruz Foto)
Germany is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian community, with roughly 80,000 Palestinians living in the country. For years, German authorities have tried to stifle Palestinian activism in the country, viewing it as a nuisance to its explicit policy of “unconditional support for Israel.” Demonstrations, such as one earlier this year to mark the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, have been sporadically banned in recent years and organizations, like the Palestinian prisoner solidarity network Samidoun, have also come under increasing scrutiny.
Yet the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine on a national level has taken on entirely new dimensions since October 7. After a small demonstration on Berlin’s busy Sonnenallee street on the evening of October 7, the German media and body politic have been up in arms about Palestinians supposedly celebrating terrorism and antisemitism on German streets.
Talking points that were two weeks ago only uttered by far-right AfD politicians are now being openly expressed by politicians from all parliamentary parties in Germany. Playing off the idea of “imported antisemitism,” the social democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz is now arguing that “we must finally deport on a large scale” residents who do not hold German citizenship and openly protest against Israel. The Christian Democrats (CDU) are even demanding that the recognition of Israel’s right to exist must become a precondition for German citizenship.
Samidoun has been made into public enemy number one, as the media presents the group as a bastion for “sympathizers of terror” that poses “a particular danger, because as a secular organization, they are building bridges between Islamists and radical leftists.” In a speech before parliament on October 12, Chancellor Scholz personally announced a ban on Samidoun along with a ban on the activities of Hamas in Germany.
In Berlin specifically, which is home to one of the largest Palestinian diaspora communities outside the Arab world, the authorities have been particularly hostile towards any signs of solidarity with Palestine. Since October 7, every demonstration explicitly or implicitly referring to Palestine has been banned, leaving the roughly 30,000 Palestinians living in Berlin with no means of expressing their anguish at the siege and bombardment of Gaza.
Solidarity groups have been trying to bypass this censorship by avoiding political statements and focusing on humanitarian campaigning, yet even demonstrations and slogans such as “Children in Gaza need help” and “Solidarity with the civilian population in the Gaza Strip” were banned. On October 13, the police went so far as to ban a demonstration registered by the group “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East” entitled “Jewish Berliners against violence in the Middle East.”
Sonnenallee, a busy street in the district in which many Arab migrants live, has become a focal point of dissent against Israel’s attack on Gaza. The police patrol Sonnenallee every evening with tight controls on the public squares. Racial profiling and brutal arrests are commonplace and often recorded and posted to social media. One particular video shows police officers stomping out a candle-lit vigil with their boots.
In a letter to all Berlin schools, the city’s Department for Education, Youth and Family set out strict guidelines on how to discuss the situation in Palestine with students. “Any demonstrative action or expression of opinion that can be understood as advocating or approving of the attacks against Israel or support for the terrorist organizations carrying them out, such as Hamas or Hezbollah, constitutes a threat to school peace in the current situation and is prohibited.” According to the letter, these may include the following: “visibly wearing relevant clothing (for example, the kuffiyeh known as the Palestinian scarf), displaying stickers and patches with inscriptions such as ‘free Palestine’ or a map of Israel in the colors of Palestine (white, red, black, green), and shouting ‘free Palestine!’ and demonstrating verbal support for Hamas and its terrorism.”
At one high school on Sonnenallee, a 61-year-old teacher attempted to confiscate a Palestinian flag from a 14-year-old student and ended up in a physical altercation with a second 15-year-old student. The parents’ association of the school tried to organize a demonstration under the slogan “No place for racism, no place for violence” as a reaction to the incident, yet it was promptly banned by the police, ostensibly as a “a precautionary measure”. The Central Council of Palestinians in Germany has since sent a letter in response to Berlin’s Department for Education, expressing their “great concern about the psychological and educational development [of their children]” in Berlin schools.
As other European states are witnessing mass protests in solidarity with Palestine, the German state has been able to use force and violence to prevent such scenes on German streets. Yet it is unlikely that the government will be able to ban these sentiments of solidarity indefinitely, especially as the images of Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza continue to circulate around the world.
