Former prime minister Gordon Brown speaks at a child poverty event, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Child Poverty Action Group (Cpag), at Somerset House, in central London, November 6, 2025
FORMER prime minister Gordon Brown piled pressure on Chancellor Rachel Reeves today to tackle the “shameful epidemic” of child poverty.
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Marking the 60th anniversary of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), he planned to say: “This is urgently needed to take half a million children out of poverty from April next year and to meaningfully tackle Britain’s shameful epidemic of child poverty.”
The Chancellor is expected to make changes to the two-child benefit limit in her Budget.
Reforms to gambling levies could generate the £3.2 billion needed to scrap both the two-child limit and benefit cap, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research.
Official estimates say 4.45 million children were in relative low income households, after housing costs, in the year to March 2024 – the highest number since comparable records for Britain began in 2002/03.
CPAG chief executive Alison Garnham said: “Now more than ever with child poverty at a record high, we need decisive action from government and the first step must be full abolition of the two-child limit.
“Half-measures and compromises will not shift the dial. The policy must be removed in its entirety or a generation of children will grow up cut off from opportunity.”
The sun rising behind a redundant oil platform moored in the Firth of Forth near Kirkcaldy, Fife, April 27, 2020
THE Treasury is considering changes to the windfall tax which could hand billions to oil and gas corporations, campaigners warned today.
Proposals drafted by oil and gas lobby group Offshore Energies UK suggest removing the Energy Profits Levy at the end of this year, which would save the industry a mammoth £5.8bn in tax over the next decade.
Politico, which first reported the story, said that the Treasury was weighing up energy bosses’ proposals to scrap the tax as soon as next year.
At the same time, promised investment in energy efficiency to cut household bills could also potentially be slashed.
Sources told the Guardian that the government is looking at reducing obligations under which energy firms help pay for measures such as insulation and new heating schemes.
Campaigners have suggested that the giveaway could effectively cut Britain’s energy efficiency budget by £6.4bn.
Uplift deputy director Robert Palmer said with firms already making billions while Britons struggle with unaffordable energy bills, considering scrapping measures to cut household bills while cutting taxes for profiteering oil companies would be deeply unfair.
Donald Trump urges you to 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.Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak describes his benefit to already filthy rich fossil fuel investors and how he hates poor people.
In an age of resurgent fascism, the left can fight back and win
Zohran Mamdani’s triumph in the contest for the New York mayoralty is a historic moment. He has crushed Andrew Cuomo – but more importantly, the brand of politics that the Democratic Party establishment represents.
He now has the opportunity to ensure that it is the US left which assumes the leadership of the movement against Trumpism.
He has won over half the vote, defying the opinion polls, and he is the first mayoral candidate to win over a million votes since John Lindsay in 1969.
The socialist left – the authentic, real deal, unapologetic, loud and proud socialist left – will now take power in New York City, the biggest and important city in the United States. In age of darkness, one of the great centres of the Western world has elected a socialist who stands against capitalism, against racism, against genocide.
This is a historic moment – and the consequences will reverberate not just around the United States, but across the Western world and indeed beyond. There are so many lessons that we must now learn so that what is today triumphed in New York will tomorrow take power at national level across the West – and drive back the rising tide of fascism.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and US President Donald Trump. Photos via X
“We know the heart and intent of Trump is to help us fight insecurity,” states the spokesperson of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, who has time and again demonstrated his loyalty to the West.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to go “guns-a-blazing” into Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, which he denigrated as a “disgraced country”. In a social media post on Saturday, November 1, he declared, “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet.”
“Yes sir,” War Secretary Pete Hegseth replied to his post. “The Department of War is preparing for action.”
Why? Ostensibly to “wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities” against “our CHERISHED Christians”. For over two months, the US right wing has been peddling a conspiracy about a “genocide” against Christians in Nigeria.
Championing this false claim, Senator Ted Cruz has proposed the so-called “Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act” to use “powerful sanctions and other tools” against Nigerian officials he accuses of “ignoring and even facilitating the mass murder of Christians by Islamist jihadists.”
Myth of Christian genocide
Facts, however, contradict this accusation. The majority of people killed by the Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province are Muslims, simply because they make up the majority in the northern region these Islamist insurgencies are ravaging. For the same demographic reasons, Muslims are also the majority victims of bandits who kill, loot, and kidnap in the northwest region, where the state is struggling to enforce the rule of law.
In the central region, Christian victims of violence are in the majority, not because of their religious identity but because of their occupation: farming. Amid intensifying competition over depleting land and water due to climate change, raids on farmlands by mobile herders, groups of whom are armed, are a serious problem in several African countries suffering desertification.
90% of these herders are Muslims, while in this region of Nigeria, farmers are predominantly Christian. But the violence is over resources, not faith. There is no evidence of a systematic and large-scale, religiously motivated targeting of Christians in Nigeria, where they are almost equal to Muslims in population.
“While Christians make up roughly 50% of the population, violence in which Christians have been specifically targeted in relation to their religious identity accounts for only 5% of reported civilian targeting events,” the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project reported in mid-2022.
Trump’s own envoy for Arab and African affairs, Massad Boulos, had pointed out at a summit last month in Italy to discuss counter-terrorism in West Africa that Boko Haram has killed more Muslims than Christians. Facts notwithstanding, “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria,” Trump insisted.
“Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter,” he claimed, announcing on Friday, October 31, his decision to designate Nigeria a “country of particular concern” for systematic violation of religious freedoms.
“The characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it recognize government efforts to safeguard freedom of religion and belief,” replied Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, a Muslim, married to a Christian Pastor.
A secular suffering
Under his secular regime, Christians, Muslims, and non-believers have all suffered alike, from hunger, unaffordability, unemployment, etc, as a consequence of his aggressive implementation of the IMF-World Bank prescribed reforms.
This crisis has enhanced the fertility of the ground for terror groups, bandits, and other criminal gangs to harvest more recruits, especially in the hinterlands and remote areas the state is struggling to police.
While struggling to restore security in these regions, Tinubu tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to lead the Nigerian military into a war with neighboring Niger at the behest of US ally France after its neocolonial puppet regime in Niger was ousted in mid-2023.
A year later, he unleashed his security forces on the domestic front to crush the “hunger protests” demanding a reversal of the IMF-World Bank prescribed liberalization, killing at least two dozen people. Another 1,200 protesters were arrested, many of whom were tortured in custody. Several, including minors, faced charges of treason.
Later in November, allegations of treason were leveled against Tinubu himself when the CIA objected to the release of the unredacted files of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) investigation into Tinubu in the early 1990s. Accused of laundering money for a major heroin racket in Chicago at the time, Tinubu entered into a plea bargain to avoid a trial, forfeiting USD 460,000 to US authorities.
Tinubu’s loyalty to the West, unrewarded
In response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the release of unredacted files of the investigation, “We oppose the full… release of the DEA’s Bola Tinubu heroin trafficking investigation records,” the DEA insisted. “While Nigerians have a right to be informed about what their government is up to, they do not have a right to know what their president is up to.”
Reminding that its activities are “carried out through clandestine means, and therefore they must remain secret,” the CIA objected to full release as it could “cause damage to US national security by indicating whether or not the CIA maintained any human intelligence sources related to Tinubu.”
“The CIA effectively confirmed that Nigeria’s sitting president is an active CIA asset,” remarked David Hundeyin, author of the documentary “Bola Ahmed Tinubu: From Drug Lord to Presidential Candidate.”
From his alleged contribution to US intelligence, his readiness to hurl Nigeria into war with a neighbor for France, his obedient implementation of IMF-World Bank diktats, and ruthless crushing of protests against it – Tinubu has time and again demonstrated his loyalty to the West.
But Trump is not placated. Ordering the Department of War to prepare for a military action, Trump doubled down on Sunday, adding that both airstrikes and boots on the ground were open options.
Groveling again
“Nigeria is US’s partner in the global fight against terrorism,” said Tinubu’s spokesperson, Daniel Bwala. “We know the heart and intent of Trump is to help us fight insecurity,” he groveled. “We do not see (Trump’s threat) in the literal sense… We know that Donald Trump has his own style of communication.” It was, he suggested, Trump’s way to “force a sit-down between the two leaders so they can iron out a common front to fight their insecurity”.
But he is confident that when Tinubu and Trump meet, “there will be better outcomes.” Will these “outcomes” from the suggested meeting include Tinubu’s walking back on his refusal to accept foreign nationals deported by the US? Will he throw open Nigeria’s vast critical mineral deposits for US extraction, which the establishment think tank, Brookings Institution, deems “a win-win policy”?
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Amsterdam, Netherlands – Greenpeace demands world leaders agree on a global response plan at COP30 as a new major UN report warned the global temperature is projected to rise to 2.3-2.5°C above pre-industrial era global temperatures, putting the Paris Agreement limit of 1.5°C at risk in the short-term.
The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2025 warned the world is heading towards “a serious escalation of climate risks and damages” due to a lack of ambition and action, and reports the multi-decadal average of global temperature rise will exceed 1.5°C, at least temporarily, requiring faster and bigger cuts in emissions to minimise the overshoot.
Jasper Inventor, Deputy Programme Director, Greenpeace International said: “How many warnings do we need? The time is now, but our leaders are asleep at the wheel, on a collision course to more devastating storms like Hurricane Melissa, human suffering, economic damages and climate injustice.”
“Warnings of a 1.5°C overshoot must be a rallying call for action and yet 2035 climate action plans have failed to bridge the ambition gap. We’re still only inching forward on cutting our emissions despite the demands of people and communities around the world.”
“We have the renewable energy solutions and we are making progress, but emissions are still rising, the transition away from fossil fuels is too slow, and national climate action plans are barely moving the needle. It’s time for G20 countries, above all developed countries, to grab the wheel and really lead the transition, starting at COP30, where a global response plan to accelerate action must be agreed.”
The Emissions Gap Report 2025 predicted global temperatures to reach 2.3-2.5°C by the end of the century, down from 2.6-2.8°C last year. Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement 10 years ago, temperature predictions have fallen from 3-3.5°C, but faster action is required.
Similar to the UNFCCC’s NDC synthesis report, the UNEP also warned new 2035 climate action plans will have insufficient impact in reducing emissions, especially due to the intended US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and called on G20 nations to display climate leadership.
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Former prime minister Gordon Brown speaks at a child poverty event, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Child Poverty Action Group (Cpag), at Somerset House, in central London, November 6, 2025
