A UK Socialist's blog

Jeremy Corbyn: Peace and solidarity must guide us in building a united international left

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/peace-and-solidarity-must-guide-building-united-international-left

PEACE: Former Labour Party leader and now independent MP Jeremy Corbyn speaks at a London rally for Palestine, September 11 2024

Speaking at the Podemos congress over the weekend, JEREMY CORBYN MP outlines three crucial areas for building a powerful leftist movement across Europe: opposing austerity, promoting peace and combating the far right

AS we look to build a united left across Europe, there are three key issues that can form the basis of a strong, powerful movement: anti-austerity, peace and opposition to the far right.

Europe is heading toward a renewed era of austerity. We have witnessed attacks on wages and conditions all over Europe. Working-class living standards have fallen. Wages have stagnated. Meanwhile, there are more billionaires than ever before.

Inequality is not inevitable. It is the result of decisions that governments take to take money from the many and give it to the few. Last week, the British government celebrated its 100-day anniversary.

In that time, it has made two supposedly “tough” choices. One is to keep children in poverty by retaining the two-child benefits cap, refusing to lift 250,000 children out of poverty. The second decision was to cut the winter fuel allowance for 10 million pensioners.

We are told that these have been “tough choices.” Every day, my constituents make tough choices. Tough choices like deciding whether to heat their homes or put food on the table. Tough choices like taking out a loan to pay for this month’s rent. Tough choices like selling their home to pay for their family’s social care.

The government knows that there is a range of choices available to them. They could introduce wealth taxes to raise upwards of £10 billion. They could stop wasting public money on private contracts. They could launch a fundamental redistribution of power by bringing water and energy into full public ownership.

Instead, they have opted to take resources away from people who were promised things would change. There is plenty of money, it’s just in the wrong hands — and we will not be fooled by ministers’ attempts to feign regret over cruel decisions they know they don’t have to take.

Austerity is not a tough choice. It is the wrong choice. The British government tells us there is no money. At the very same time, they are committing to raising defence expenditure to 2.5 per cent of GDP.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/peace-and-solidarity-must-guide-building-united-international-left

Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn: Peace and solidarity must guide us in building a united international left

Removing caps on benefits could save the government billions of pounds, study finds

Image of Keir Starmer and a poor child.
Zionist Keir ‘Kid Starver’ Starmer. Image thanks to The Skwawkbox.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/removing-caps-benefits-could-save-government-billions-pounds-study-finds

REMOVING caps on benefits could save the government billions of pounds rather than cost money, a progressive economic think tank says.

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) report, published today, says that the cost of benefit caps could be outweighed by the gains to be made from abolishing them.

Gains include easing extra pressure on the NHS and other services resulting from the poverty caused by the caps, according to the experts.

The benefit cap was introduced in 2013 by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government and limits the amount of benefits a household can receive.

The two-child limit was introduced by the Tory government in 2017. It restricts the application of child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in households.

The NEF estimates that axing the caps could save £1.5 billion a year over the next five years alone through lower demand on public services.

In the longer term — in 20 or 25 years — children lifted from poverty could have estimated future net earnings of £920 million a year higher, with an extra £490m returned to government through taxation and reduced spending on social security.

“In reducing child poverty rates, pressures on the NHS, schools and social services will reduce, enabling the reallocation of resources to other areas of high demand,” the report states.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/removing-caps-benefits-could-save-government-billions-pounds-study-finds

Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Continue ReadingRemoving caps on benefits could save the government billions of pounds, study finds

Palestine supporters take to the streets as slaughter in Gaza continues

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/palestine-supporters-take-to-the-streets-as-slaughter-in-gaza-continues

Smoke rises following Israeli bombardment on the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, October 20, 2024

THOUSANDS OF Palestine supporters took to the streets in towns and cities across Britain on Saturday in a renewed wave of anger against Israel’s continuing slaughter in Gaza.

The protests were followed a day later by at least 87 people being massacred by an Israeli air attack on the city of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.

Local reports say most of those killed were women and children.

With no ceasefire on the horizon and the death toll mounting across Gaza and Lebanon, Palestine support groups called for no let-up in the protests and in support for the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

In London more than 30,000 demonstrators rallied, packing Trafalgar Square and Whitehall to hear speaker after speaker vilify Israel for its genocide and the Westminster government for failing to halt the flow of weapons from Britain’s arms firms to Israel.

Elsewhere protests ranged from the Orkneys to the Isle of Wight, from small vigils and die-ins in local communities to marches in towns and cities involving many hundreds, all with the same call — an end to the slaughter.

Organisers of the London protest — who include the Palestinian Forum in Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, the Muslim Association of Britain, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and Stop the War Coalition — called for an immediate end to Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the lifting of Israel’s brutal blockade trapping over 400,000 Palestinians in northern Gaza under relentless bombardment.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/palestine-supporters-take-to-the-streets-as-slaughter-in-gaza-continues

Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government's support for Israel's Gaza genocide.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.

Continue ReadingPalestine supporters take to the streets as slaughter in Gaza continues

Who is really endangering art?

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/who-really-endangering-art

JAILED: Eco-protesters support Anna Holland and Phoebe Plummer as they are sentenced on September 27 2024 for throwing tinned soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the National Gallery in 2022

Just Stop Oil has been criticised for targeting the work of Van Gogh, but it’s inaction on climate that’s putting great paintings at risk, argues LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

ON the occasions when activists from Just Stop Oil have targeted works of art or historical landmarks, there has been an outcry, both from horrified onlookers at the time and later in the press and the courtroom.

The British government is intent on cracking down on protest, even if it’s an action intent on trying to save us all from the ravages of runaway climate chaos.

Keir Starmer confirms that his government is cnutier than Suella Braverman on killing the right to protest.
Keir Starmer confirms that his government is cnutier than Suella Braverman on killing the right to protest. This image does not appear in the original article.

“They are pathetic, they are self-defeating, and they need to feel the full force of the law,” pronounced Keir Starmer of Just Stop Oil activists in June. “That is what will happen if we have an incoming Labour government.”

The fact that these “antics,” as Starmer referred to them, had continued was “a failure to grip criminal justice,” he said. Now Starmer and his version of the Labour Party are in power, and climate protesters are being duly gripped, tried and sentenced.

Because in today’s world, climate activists are criminals. As one of Just Stop Oil’s self-described foot soldiers put it, “Slow-walking across Waterloo Bridge becomes an offence that goes to crown court.”

Throwing soup at glass-enclosed paintings by Van Gogh is just the most high-profile of the various direct actions being carried out to demand immediate and effective measures to drastically reduce carbon emissions.

A sensible government should have arrived at such a realisation on its own, thus obviating the need for Just Stop Oil not only to toss soup but to exist at all.

Instead, the Starmer government’s latest move is to squander £22 billion on one of the most useless (along with nuclear power) of all the supposedly “green” climate solutions — carbon capture and storage (CCS).

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/who-really-endangering-art

Continue ReadingWho is really endangering art?

North Atlantic’s Largest Marine Protected Area Created by Portugal’s Azores Islands

https://www.ecowatch.com/portugal-azores-islands-marine-protected-area.html

Dolphins off the coast of the island of San Miguel in the Azores. Juan Miguel Cervera Merlo / iStock / Getty Images Plus

The regional assembly of the Azores Islands — a nine-island archipelago in Portugal — has approved the North Atlantic’s largest marine protected area.

Its creation will allow Portugal to meet the United Nations goal of safeguarding 30 percent of the planet’s land and sea by the end of the decade.

“We have acted in advance of the international conservation goals for 2030 with the creation of the largest marine park in the North Atlantic, with fully protected areas and highly protected areas,” Bernardo Brito e Abreu, maritime affairs adviser to the Azorean government, told Reuters.

The new marine sanctuary will encompass nearly 115,830 square miles, providing protection for its vast and unique biodiversity — including deep-sea corals and hydrothermal vents.

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https://www.ecowatch.com/portugal-azores-islands-marine-protected-area.html

Continue ReadingNorth Atlantic’s Largest Marine Protected Area Created by Portugal’s Azores Islands