Junior doctors wear scrubs and masks as they sit down in a silent protest outside Bristol Royal Infirmary on the second day of all-out strike action in April 2016
JUNIOR doctors in England have voted overwhelmingly to take strike action over pay, their union the British Medical Association (BMA) announced today.
Almost 37,000 members of the union took part in the ballots with 98 per cent saying they were in favour of striking, which the BMA said will be a three-day action.
The vote is the largest turnout for a ballot of doctors by the BMA, and a record number of junior doctors voted for strike action.
BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said: “The government has only itself to blame, standing by in silent indifference as our members are forced to take this difficult decision.”
Two young supporters of Just Stop Oil, a one year old campaign demanding that the government stops granting licences for new fossil fuel projects, delivered an ultimatum letter to 10 Downing Street this morning.
Just Stop Oil youth campaigners deliver ultimatum to Rishi Sunak 14 February 2023. Image: Just Stop Oil
Hannah Hunt, 23, from Brighton announcing the delivery of the letter, made a brief speech to assembled reporters. She said:
“A year on from delivering Just Stop Oil’s Saint Valentine’s Day letter, along with hundreds of others, I face multiple trials and the loss of my freedom because we refused to stand by while our government planned the destruction of everything we love.
“We may not succeed, and we may yet bequeath a poisoned bleak inheritance – but I make this promise to those I love: for the government to win, it will have to defeat the youth of this country for we will put our bodies on the line.
“Now I am asking you to pick a side, to join me, to stand with those future generations and with all the ordinary people willing to sacrifice their freedom to protect our future. We must stop the harm that is new oil and gas.”
Phoebe Plummer, 21, from London read out the contents of the letter to the Prime Minister. It points out that according to the International Energy Agency in order to have an even chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5°C in line with the Paris Agreement, there can be no new investments in fossil fuel supply projects. [3] She said:
“One year ago our letter stressed that the government, of which you were a part, knew that breaching 1.5˚C could be the death sentence for our children and for whole countries and regions of the world.
“Since then, we have been warned by the United Nations that not only will we hurtle over 1.5˚C but also that there is “no credible pathway to 1.5˚C in place”.
“Accelerating the granting of North Sea oil and gas licences … is to knowingly plan for the death of countless millions, for the loss of entire nation states. It is an act of genocide, for which you will be held accountable.”
She went on to deliver the following ultimatum:
“Just Stop Oil is demanding that: The UK government makes a statement that it will immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK.
“If you do not provide such assurance by 10th April 2023, we will be forced to escalate our campaign – to prevent the ultimate crime against our country, humanity and life on earth..”
Shell initially said it did not expect to pay any windfall tax for 2022, as its North Sea investments meant was not considered to have made any UK profits.
But on 2 February it announced that it would pay $134m (£108m) for 2022, and expected to pay more than $500m (£400m) for 2023.
BP said it would pay $700m (£583m) in windfall tax for 2022.
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BP and Shell both received more money back from the UK government than they paid every year from 2015 to 2020 (except 2017, when Shell paid more than it received).
Shell also paid a negative amount of tax in 2021, taking its 2015 to 2021 total to -£685m of tax in the UK.
Unions warn of further action as nurses and ambulance workers down tools in biggest-ever walkout
Workers on the picket line outside Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton during a strike by nurses and ambulance staff
A“CONSTANT cycle of national NHS pay strikes will continue for as long as it takes,” unions warned today, as tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance workers downed tools in the biggest-ever health service walkout.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which began a 48-hour strike, said members at 73 health trusts across England withdrew their labour — a massive increase on the 44 that saw action in December’s first walkout.
Unite and GMB paramedics, call handlers and other staff at ambulance trusts also joined the massive industrial action, which NHS leaders said caused “huge disruption.”
Ahead of further strikes by physiotherapists on Thursday and ambulance staff — including Unison members — on Friday, union leaders urged Tory ministers to act on years of falling take-home wages, saying the situation is driving a worker exodus and endangering patient safety.
Energy companies received more than 140,000 complaints about their treatment of customers in debt last year alone, openDemocracy can reveal.
They included 33,000 complaints about the fitting or disconnecting of pre-payment meters.
Yet the energy regulator Ofgem was only forced into action this week when an undercover Times investigation found British Gas had sent bailiffs to break into vulnerable people’s homes and fit the meters by force. It has now asked energy companies to pause the practice.
The data, obtained by openDemocracy through a Freedom of Information request, has revealed for the first time the scale of alleged mistreatment of vulnerable customers since the energy price cap was first hiked in April.
“Ofgem has known about this crisis for years, and so have the companies themselves. Suppliers are not being honest when they act like they’ve just discovered it and they’re shocked, like the CEO of Centrica did yesterday,” Ruth London, co-founder of the Fuel Poverty Action campaign group, told openDemocracy.
Energy companies are required to report the number of complaints they receive from customers every month to Ofgem. Between January and October last year, they received 146,046 complaints related to disconnection and debt issues – though Ofgem has refused to tell us which suppliers received the most.
The category includes complaints from customers about their energy supply being disconnected or having a prepayment meter installed forcibly without a warrant or despite them being vulnerable.
Other examples of complaints include customers being disconnected by error or without due process and being put on debt repayment plans that are unsuitable or unaffordable.
The true number of people being ill-treated is likely to be much higher. Ofgem revealed yesterday that customers were being left on hold for hours by energy companies, leading to more than half hanging up before they could report an issue.
Ofgem said revealing how many complaints different companies had received would breach Section 105 of the 2000 Utilities Act, which states that the public disclosure of information companies supply to the regulator is prohibited in order to protect national security. The law has previously been criticised for preventing whistleblowers from raising issues about the energy sector that are in the public interest.
The regulator said yesterday that it was “unacceptable” to forcibly install prepayment meters before all other options had been exhausted, and has launched an urgent investigation into British Gas.
But charities have criticised the regulator for ignoring calls to end the practice for months.
“Lives have been and are being lost because of their silence and refusal to act on the truth they have long known,” said London.
Clare Moriarty, the chief executive of Citizens Advice, said it “should not have taken this long” for Ofgem to act.
The charity said it saw more people unable to afford to top up their pre-payment metre last year than for the entirety of the previous decade combined.
The Times reported this week that British Gas customers who had prepayment meters forcibly installed included a woman in her 50s who the company’s bailiffs were told had severe mental health problems and a mother whose “daughter is disabled and has a hoist and electric wheelchair”.
The paper’s undercover investigation also alleged that the Arvato Financial Solutions employees were incentivised with bonuses to fit prepayment meters. The boss of British Gas owner Centrica apologised and said he was “disappointed, livid and gutted” on Thursday.
Peter Smith, policy director at the charity National Energy Action, said: “The recent announcement by major suppliers that they would temporarily pause forced installations of pre-payment meters is welcome, but this was prompted by public shaming of suppliers and there is still no market-wide ban.
“We also desperately need a coherent plan to help millions of people already trapped on prepayment meters. This means rewiring the energy market to provide more affordable tariffs and finding new ways to address the underlying debt issues which are rife due to soaring energy costs.”
Richard Lane, Director of External Affairs at StepChange Debt Charity, said: “We welcome Ofgem’s move to suspend the forced installation of prepayment meters (PPMs), but it’s clear that thousands of households have been struggling with energy bills for some time now, which is evident in our own client data.
“For the people that have already been moved onto PPMs, there must be better protection to prevent self-disconnection and extreme energy rationing.”
