… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: politics

  • Unions accuse multimillionaire Chancellor of ‘waging war on working people’

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    Striking members of the National Education Union (NEU) on Piccadilly march to a rally in Trafalgar Square, central London, in a long-running dispute over pay. Picture date: Wednesday March 15, 2023.

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/unions-accuse-multimillionaire-chancellor-of-waging-war-on-working-people

    THE Tories are “waging war on working people,” unions warned today as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Budget coincided with a massive day of strikes by hundreds of thousands of workers nationwide.

    Unions slammed the ex-Tory leadership candidate’s “fiscal event” for failing to tackle pay disputes across the country, with teachers, university lecturers, civil servants, junior doctors, London Tube drivers and BBC journalists all downing tools today.

    As Mr Hunt delivered his speech, thousands of workers rallied outside.

    They gathered as the Office for Budget Responsibility, which the former health secretary praised for predicting Britain would now avoid a technical recession this year, warned that people still face the biggest fall in living standards on record.

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/unions-accuse-multimillionaire-chancellor-of-waging-war-on-working-people

    Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street, London, with his ministerial box, before delivering his Budget at the Houses of Parliament. Picture date: Wednesday March 15, 2023.

    Hunt’s Budget ignored pay and public services – it’s high time the Westminster bubble was burst

    BRITAIN’S biggest strike surge in decades was the elephant in the room, almost ignored in the Chancellor’s Budget speech.

    The huge strike march winding through Whitehall wasn’t referenced by either front bench. Yet the demands for proper pay rises and investment in public services it championed speak more directly to people’s concerns than any of Jeremy Hunt’s headline announcements.

    Hunt referred vaguely to inflation as the cause of industrial disputes — before dishonestly citing it as the reason the government is denying workers the pay rises they need and deserve.

    His dishonesty didn’t end there. The government is doing everything it can to resolve the disputes, the Chancellor claimed.

    …

    Hunt’s Budget ignored pay and public services – it’s high time the Westminster bubble was burst

  • The **unofficial** Android update didn’t go well

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    Thanks for making my heightened surveillance status so obvious – you couldn’t have made it more obvious really. A dodgy unannounced Android update that refuses to install smoothly, browsers on my lappy refusing to work as before – so that I can’t make purchases from shops that I use regularly. Surely I wouldn’t notice that?

    If anyone is overseeing Sue-Ellen Braverman, please ask her why she is putting a political opponent under intrusive surveillance for me.

    15/3/23: political opponent is probably the wrong term. The point I’m making is that these actions are for political rather than any legitimate purpose.

  • BBC will not broadcast Attenborough episode over fear of ‘rightwing backlash’

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    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/mar/10/david-attenborough-bbc-wild-isles-episode-rightwing-backlash-fears

    Exclusive: Decision to make episode about natural destruction available only on iPlayer angers programme-makers

    The BBC has decided not to broadcast an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s flagship new series on British wildlife because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the rightwing press, the Guardian has been told.

    The decision has angered the programme-makers and some insiders at the BBC, who fear the corporation has bowed to pressure from lobbying groups with “dinosaurian ways”.

    The BBC strongly denied this was the case and insisted the episode in question was never intended for broadcast.

    …

    Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: “For the BBC to censor of one of the nation’s most informed and trusted voices on the nature and climate emergencies is nothing short of an unforgivable dereliction of its duty to public service broadcasting. This government has taken a wrecking ball to our environment – putting over 1,700 pieces of environmental legislation at risk, setting an air pollution target which is a decade too late, and neglecting the scandal of our sewage-filled waterways – which cannot go unexamined and unchallenged by the public.

    …

    Chris Packham, who presents Springwatch on the BBC, also criticised the decision. He told the Guardian: “At this time, in our fight to save the world’s biodiversity, it is irresponsible not to put that at the forefront of wildlife broadcasting.”

    …

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/mar/10/david-attenborough-bbc-wild-isles-episode-rightwing-backlash-fears

  • Saluting Gary Lineker: challenge state racism. Don’t conform to it

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/saluting-gary-lineker-challenge-state-racism-dont-conform-it

    THE BBC has reportedly rebuked Gary Lineker for describing the government’s anti-refugee rhetoric as “language not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the ’30s.”

    The famous footballer and presenter’s tweet has enraged Tory MPs, some of whom have called for him to be sacked. But he is not the first to have called out the grim historical precedent.

    It was child Holocaust survivor Joan Salter who confronted Home Secretary Suella Braverman earlier this year, pointing to exactly the same parallels between Nazi demonisation of Jews and the language she uses when attacking refugees.

    …

    This Tory administration is extremist. Braverman admits she thinks it more likely than not her plans breach the European Convention on Human Rights, which we as a country are obliged to respect: she doesn’t care.

    But the countering voice for a more compassionate, principled approach is absent from Westminster. Labour scaremongers over boat crossings as well to claim the Tories have lost control.

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/saluting-gary-lineker-challenge-state-racism-dont-conform-it

  • The danger ahead

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    There’s danger ahead. The Tories recent attacks on asylum seekers is going to fail since it’s totally ill-founded. Despite being very useless, I’m uncertain that the Tories are totally, absolutely uselss. Surely they know that this attack is doomed to failure? The danger is that the failure is expected, accounted for and part of a wider strategy towards what? With Sunak’s attacks on lefty lawyers i.e. an attack on the judicial process really the obvious guess is a power grab against the independence of the judiciary.

    dizzy

    9/3/23 Apologies, this should have occurred to me yesterday. Starmer is in every way as much a Tory as Winston Churchill, Boris Johnson or Tony Blair. It would be ideal for the Tories to transition to Starmer’s pretend Labour government for ten or fifteen years as a caretaker government looking after the interests of the rich and powerful. It very nearly happened after the total debacle of the short-lived Truss government but I feel that there wasn’t the demands expected for some reason ;) So, is yet another Tory debacle needed to sweep in Starmer’s new Labour (Tory) government?

    There will be a further addition to this post