Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan speaking at a march for Palestine in Liverpool to coincide with the Labour Party Conference, September 21, 2024
ANTI-WAR campaigners in Scotland have sent solidarity to railway workers “making a stand for Palestine” and refusing to drive trains built by a firm complicit in Israeli war crimes.
Stop the War Scotland joined rail unions RMT, Aslef and TSSA today in demanding that the Scottish government remove CAF from its shortlist of contractors to build ScotRail’s new fleet of suburban trains.
The company has been listed on the United Nations human rights database for its role in running the Jerusalem Light Railway and helping expand it to territory seized by Israel.
Aslef made clear that its members would refuse to drive CAF trains, a position now echoed by TSSA general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust as she urged the Scottish government to “think again.”
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
A Labour rightwinger who ran the party’s complaints department at the time it bungled numerous antisemitism complaints has been rehired to his previous job.
John Stolliday has been reinstated as head of Labour’s governance and legal unit (GLU) – the body responsible for dealing with complaints.
The role was advertised in the normal way; however, party general secretary Hollie Ridley – a close ally of Keir Starmer – is understood to have made the appointment in what multiple sources told Novara Media is a factional move before her departure from her role, which will follow the party’s upcoming conference in Liverpool.
In a post on LinkedIn in July, Stolliday said: “Honoured and delighted to have been made executive director of governance and legal at the Labour party – the party I have worked at on and off for over 15 years since I started there in 2004 – and to lead the governance unit which I worked in for so many years.”
Stolliday was director of governance and legal from December 2016 to June 2018, a period in which Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader and in which the party was mired in antisemitism allegations. The crisis would dominate media coverage of Labour in the build up to the 2019 election and pave the way for Corbyn’s downfall.
The crisis culminated in a report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) which found that Labour had breached the Equality Act in two cases, and concluded that it could have dealt with antisemitism more effectively “if the leadership had chosen to do so”. The EHRC investigation did not make any findings against Stolliday.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.
Miliband at the UN security council on Wednesday. The UK’s foreign secretary later briefed fellow foreign ministers about the UK climate report. Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images
El Niño poses critical threat to nations’ defences, says Ed Miliband in presentation to global foreign ministers
The UK has warned countries around the world that the climate and nature crises and the coming El Niño threaten their national security and defence, presenting foreign ministries with the findings of an explosive report suppressed under Keir Starmer.
Ed Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary, made a presentation to the foreign ministers of the EU as well as Kenya and other countries on Wednesday night at a private meeting during the UN general assembly in New York, based on the report by the UK’s spy chiefs that found the collapse of natural systems around the world would lead to conflict, migration and food shortages.
Miliband told the meeting, the first such discussion among foreign ministers, that the coming El Niño, which has been supercharged by climate breakdown, would test the world’s food systems as never before.
“We face an El Niño that is already set to be the most intense in living memory,” he said. “This will intensify climate shocks that compound and cascade across borders, threatening food and water security, displacing communities, putting pressure on markets and scarring economies.”
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With the backing of Andy Burnham, the UK prime minister, Miliband presented the research that found the collapse of global ecosystems such as in the Amazon and Congo rainforests, driven by the climate crisis and the destruction of nature, would have impacts on national security around the world.
Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Aviation is on track to be responsible for 80% of the UK’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
Emissions from flying have more than doubled since 1990 – driven by rising passenger numbers – even as the climate impact of every other sector in the UK economy has fallen.
The UK does not have “credible” policies in place to reverse this trend of rising emissions, says the CCC in new advice to the government on future aviation policy.
Yet, even without Heathrow expansion, the CCC says aviation emissions are on track to be higher in 2050 than they are today – reaching 38m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2).
As the chart below shows, this would account for most of the remaining CO2 from the UK economy, all of which would need to be removed from the atmosphere in order to meet the legal target of net-zero emissions.
Expanding Heathrow would add another 2.4MtCO2 in 2050, amounting to around 5% of all the UK’s emissions. (This would increase to 4.5MtCO2 when expansion is complete in 2054.)
With a final decision on Heathrow expansion expected by 2029, the government asked the CCC for its advice on whether the plan is compatible with the UK’s climate targets.
The CCC has concluded that the UK simply lacks sufficient policies to reduce aviation emissions and “expanding Heathrow would compound the problem”. In a press briefing, CCC chair Nigel Topping told journalists:
“The UK does not currently have a credible plan to reduce [aviation emissions] in line with net-zero, so that creates a serious challenge for meeting our climate commitments.”
The “jet-zero strategy”, launched by the previous Conservative government in 2022, set out plans to cut aviation emissions. However, the Labour government has since accepted that the strategy’s expectations for SAFs, electric planes and fuel-efficiency improvements were unrealistic.
The CCC says a “credible and robust net-zero policy framework for aviation” should be set out in a revised strategy, which is planned for 2027. Only then could Heathrow expansion be aligned with the net-zero goal, adds the committee.
As part of this new strategy, the CCC says the “aviation sector needs to take responsibility for its emissions”. It says policies should be designed based on the “polluter pays” principle, requiring the aviation industry to fund its own SAFs and CO2 removal.
Specifically, the committee says funding will be needed for “engineered removal” technologies, such as direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS).
These technologies are currently “not yet available at the scale required”, but are vital for the kind of permanent CO2 removal needed to mop up aviation emissions, says the CCC.
(“Natural solutions” such as tree planting are the other main way CO2 is expected to be removed from the atmosphere. However, the CCC envisages these removals offsetting the remaining methane emissions from livestock agriculture in the UK, whereas it says “engineered removals” would be required to remove and store CO2 from flights.)
The CCC acknowledges that placing decarbonisation costs on airlines would likely lead to higher ticket prices. It estimates that this could mean an increase, in 2024 prices, of around £150 for a return trip to Alicante, Spain, and £400 for a return trip to New York by 2050.
However, it says this is preferable to a public spending approach, which would result in the roughly 50% of the population who do not fly paying for flight-related CO2 removals.
In addition, the committee notes that higher costs would help to manage demand for flights, which would otherwise be expected to increase considerably over the coming decades.
Her youth-led group has raised more than £180k to fund the lawsuit.
Greta Thunberg and Swedish youth climate organisation Aurora are suing the Swedish government over its failures to tackle the climate crisis.
While Sweden has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions at a rate faster than the EU average, the country is not on track to meet its own target of net zero by 2045.
Thunberg said on Monday that Aurora has filed a second lawsuit, arguing that Sweden is failing in its legal duty to protect its citizens – especially children and the young – from the effects of climate change.
The group is demanding that Sweden take action to limit global warming to 1.5C by cutting emissions and protecting ecosystems like forests. A third demand involves accounting for emissions that it says are currently excluded from government calculations such as burning imported biomass.
“Sweden, as a rich country with high historical and current emissions, has a legal duty to lead the climate transition,” the group wrote in its fundraiser. “A safe and just world is still possible, but only if rich, high-emitting states like Sweden stop violating their duty to protect people from the devastation of the climate crisis, and start transforming their societies before 2030.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan speaking at a march for Palestine in Liverpool to coincide with the Labour Party Conference, September 21, 2024
