Labour Party

Morning Star: Sewage at the boat race: it’s well over time we take water back into public hands

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Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-take-water-back-public-hands

A rowing boat on the River Thames Putney, London, March 27, 2024

THE crisis of capitalism is running out of your taps and pouring into our rivers. Britain’s water industry is lurching towards calamity, poisoned by the priorities of profit and abetted by politicians in the pocket of the privateers.

The largest water company in the country, Thames Water, appears to be on the edge of insolvency after its investors refused to pump in cash essential to the company’s survival — apparently because the reluctance of regulator Ofwat to authorise even steeper increases in bills to households made it an unattractive bet.

And alarm was spread about the annual Oxford-Cambridge boat race on Saturday having to row through the sewage-ridden Thames, with doubts being cast on maintaining the tradition of throwing the cox of the winning crew in the river on health and safety grounds.

Now there are calls for the government to declare a national emergency as discharges of raw sewage into rivers and seas across Britain reach a record high.

These are the fruits of the handing over of the most basic resource to the tender mercies of monopoly capital. The sewage in the rivers is one side of the coin, the riches sitting in shareholders’ bank accounts is the other.

…

Nationalisation may be forced on the government in the case of Thames Water. But state control can only work in a context of planning, investment and a role for both workers’ and consumer interests.

That was Labour Party policy until Keir Starmer abandoned it. It is time the labour movement demanded its reinstatement.

Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-take-water-back-public-hands

Continue ReadingMorning Star: Sewage at the boat race: it’s well over time we take water back into public hands

Activists occupy government department to demand halt on Israel arms exports

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Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/activists-occupy-government-department-demand-halt-israel-arms

London for a Free Palestine activists outside the Department of Business and Trade Photo: Guy Smallman

ACTIVISTS from London for a Free Palestine occupied the Department of Business and Trade today, [yesterday] demanding that the British government stop arming Israel.

The campaigners took over the lobby in the Old Admiralty Building, chanting: “British government you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”

One protester, Maria, said: “We are going here today because the Department for Business and Trade is where the licences for British arms exports to Israel are signed and approved.

“The UK has been giving Israel diplomatic, military and economic support, which has enabled it to carry out and continue its genocide and long-term colonisation of Palestine.”

Another participant, Cynthia Allett, said: “This department arms genocide.

“As Israel prepares a ground invasion in Rafah, we won’t allow the weapons used to slaughter more Palestinian people to be supplied in our names and funded by our taxes.”

…

Many articles from the Morning Star featured today. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/activists-occupy-government-department-demand-halt-israel-arms

Continue ReadingActivists occupy government department to demand halt on Israel arms exports

Green Party responds to Attitude survey on the NHS

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Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.

Responding to a British Social Attitudes survey which finds public satisfaction with the NHS is at its lowest ever level, co-leader of the Green Party, Adrian Ramsay, said: 

The high levels of dissatisfaction with the NHS are a direct result of the Conservatives deliberately running down health services and using this as grounds for privatisation. I hear all the time from people struggling to get an appointment with their GP; unable to see an NHS dentist, while overstretched wards mean people are left in corridors and staff are overwhelmed.  

“Yet it is very clear that people overwhelmingly want the NHS to remain free at the point of use and available to all. They don’t share the Conservative or Labour appetite for creeping privatisation. 

“The public also unequivocally backs the NHS being funded by tax, with almost half believing taxes should rise so more can be spent on health services.  

“The Green Party has never had any truck with the profit motive in health care and believes in a fully publicly funded NHS. We can find the billions the NHS desperately needs to improve its services and to pay health workers properly. A tax on the super-rich billionaires and multi-millionaires can provide the funds needed to fix the NHS and so rekindle our love affair with our most cherished public service.”  

Continue ReadingGreen Party responds to Attitude survey on the NHS

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