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Stop arming Israel, MPs demand

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/stop-arming-israel-mps-demand

Palestinians carry the body of a woman found under the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, March 27, 2024

‘It is utterly unconscionable for arms sales to continue’ when Israel has plausibly breached the Genocide Convention, a letter coordinated by Zarah Sultana MP tells the government

MORE than 100 MPs demanded the government halt all arms sales to Israel today because of its genocidal assault on Gaza.

The 108 MPs backed the call in a letter co-ordinated by Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana, which was also signed by 27 members of the House of Lords.

It comes as pressure mounts on the British government to give effect to the United Nations security council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza passed earlier this week.

Israel has rejected the resolution and continues its assault. MPs expressed concerns earlier this week that continuing to arm Israel would make Britain complicit in war crimes and other breaches of international law.

Signatories include ex-Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, former Labour Middle East minister Lord Peter Hain, SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn and former Labour shadow minister Jess Phillips, who resigned from the front-bench in November over the party’s refusal to back a Gaza ceasefire.

Ms Sultana said that “when Israel is ‘plausibly’ in breach of the Genocide Convention and flagrantly violates international law on a daily basis, it is utterly unconscionable for arms sales to Israel to continue.

“But the UK government is refusing to act, making it complicit in this atrocity.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/stop-arming-israel-mps-demand

Response to Rishi Sunak's extremism speech at Downing Street 1 March 2024. Second version of this image with text slightly altered.
Response to Rishi Sunak’s extremism speech at Downing Street 1 March 2024. Second version of this image with text slightly altered.
Continue ReadingStop arming Israel, MPs demand

Morning Star: The public want a better funded NHS – it’s politicians who stand in the way

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-public-want-better-funded-nhs-its-politicians-who-stand-way

BRITAIN is worried about the NHS. The latest Social Attitudes Survey shows less than a quarter of the population are satisfied with the health service. That represents a drop of 29 per cent in just three years — the fastest fall ever.

That’s hardly surprising. Waiting lists at over seven million represent months of pain for people waiting on procedures. Seeing a GP in a hurry is all but impossible in many areas. Waiting times in A&E are breaching targets wherever you look.

This suits private healthcare interests down to the ground.

The number of privatised medical procedures hit a record last year. People who can afford it are going private: people who can’t afford it, the vast majority, are suffering.

The degradation of the NHS, and the consequent pressure for “reform” in the form of ever-greater dependence on for-profit provision, follows a familiar playbook. US academic Noam Chomsky summed it up: “That’s the standard technique of privatisation: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”

People are angry about the state of the NHS, but there is certainly no public enthusiasm, or even consent, to increasing the role of private capital.

The NHS’s founder Nye Bevan famously said the NHS would last as long as people had the faith to fight for it.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-public-want-better-funded-nhs-its-politicians-who-stand-way

Continue ReadingMorning Star: The public want a better funded NHS – it’s politicians who stand in the way

Foreign Office faces legal challenge over pause in UNRWA funding for Gaza  

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/foreign-office-faces-legal-challenge-over-pause-in-unrwa-funding-for-gaza/

UK could be sued over decision to stop funding a key UN agency delivering aid to Gaza

A legal challenge is to be launched against the Foreign Office over its decision to pause funding for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency. 

On behalf of a British-Palestinian man with family in Gaza, Bindmans LLP has issued a pre-action letter to the government department warning, if funding is not reinstated by Tuesday 2, April, the client will issue judicial review proceedings in the High Court. 

The legal challenge claims that the government’s decision to withdraw funds from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on 27, January was decided, “illogically and without due consideration of evidence, of international obligations, or of FCDO decision-making frameworks”.

Funding was paused by 10 governments including Australia, the United States and Canada following allegations by the Israeli authorities that several UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks. 

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/foreign-office-faces-legal-challenge-over-pause-in-unrwa-funding-for-gaza/

‘Death Sentence for Thousands’: Israel Bars UNRWA Food Aid to Northern Gaza

Continue ReadingForeign Office faces legal challenge over pause in UNRWA funding for Gaza  

‘Heartbreaking’: Shocking decline in public satisfaction with NHS under Tories

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/heartbreaking-shocking-decline-in-public-satisfaction-with-nhs-under-tories/

‘The NHS isn’t failing, it’s being failed. What an appalling act of state vandalism’

Public satisfaction with the NHS is at its lowest ever level, plunging for the first time in the 41-year history of the survey to show less than a quarter of people are satisfied with the way the health service is currently running. 

Compared to 2010 when 70% of the public were satisfied with the NHS, the latest survey findings lay bare what 14 years of a Tory government stripping funds and resources from the NHS has had. 

Campaign group Keep Our NHS Public has called it “an appalling act of state vandalism” commenting that the NHS “isn’t failing, it’s being failed”. 

NHS workers have expressed heartbreak over the shocking decline in public satisfaction for the service under the Tories while unions have called for immediate action to address the staffing crisis.

One palliative care doctor wrote on X: “14 years of Tory government understaffing, underfunding & private sector outsourcing have trashed the NHS into a travesty of the service we want to give you.

“It is heartbreaking and so disgustingly wrong.”

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/heartbreaking-shocking-decline-in-public-satisfaction-with-nhs-under-tories/

Continue Reading‘Heartbreaking’: Shocking decline in public satisfaction with NHS under Tories

Suella Braverman to speak alongside far-right Viktor Orban at Conservative event

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/suella-braverman-to-speak-alongside-far-right-viktor-orban-at-conservative-event/

Braverman will be addressing the upcoming National Conservatism Conference in April as a keynote speaker

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman is set to deliver a speech from the same stage as Hungary’s far-right authoritarian dictator Viktor Orban.

That Braverman is so comfortable sharing a platform with the far-right Orban who has spouted bigoted far right views, speaks volumes. Orban has previously made reference to the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory which claims that there is a liberal elite plot to replace the white populations of Europe and the US through immigration and demographic growth with non-white people. 

During his time as leader of Hungary, Orban has also attacked and undermined democratic institutions and attacked the rights of LGBT and minority communities.

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/suella-braverman-to-speak-alongside-far-right-viktor-orban-at-conservative-event/

Image quoting Suella 'Sue-Ellen' Braverman reads ‘Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’.
Image quoting Suella ‘Sue-Ellen’ Braverman reads ‘Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’.
Continue ReadingSuella Braverman to speak alongside far-right Viktor Orban at Conservative event