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This Labour budget is austerity by another name

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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.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/31/this-labour-budget-is-austerity-by-another-name

Jeremy Corbyn, MPs and politicians from the Green party, Plaid Cymru and others respond to the budget.

Labour’s first budget punishes the “working people” they claim to support. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves promised to deliver real change to the electorate, after 14 years of Tory rule. This week, they have broken that promise. This budget is austerity by another name.

While we welcome the government’s decision to invest in school and hospital buildings, it is extremely disappointing that these investments have been undermined by a swathe of public sector cuts, cruel attacks on the worst off, and a dogmatic refusal to redistribute wealth and power. These are not “tough choices” for government ministers, but for ordinary people who are forced to choose between heating their home and putting food on the table.

Labour is raising defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP while telling us there is no money to lift 250,000 children out of poverty. This is a lie. There is plenty of money – it’s just in the wrong hands. The richest 1% in the UK hold more wealth than 70% of Britons. By refusing to impose a wealth tax, this government has chosen to force vulnerable communities to pay the price for years of economic failure, instead of making the richest pay their fair share. Labour’s first budget shows us whose side they’re on.

Years of austerity and privatisation have decimated our public services and pushed millions into poverty, disproportionately impacting women, people of colour and disabled people. Making millions of children, working, retired and disabled people poorer damages our entire economy and stretches our public services. An austerity economy is a false economy.

We, along with nearly 100 progressive Independent and Green politicians across the country, are calling on the Labour government to: 1) introduce wealth taxes; 2) abolish the two-child benefit cap and stop attacking welfare recipients; 3) reverse cuts to winter fuel; 4) restore the £2 bus cap; and 5) invest in a Green New Deal.

We refuse to believe that child poverty, mass hunger and homelessness are inevitable in the sixth largest economy in the world. A progressive movement is growing up and down the country, demanding a real alternative to this race to the bottom between Labour and the Tories, which has seen the new government perpetuate decades of austerity and rampant corporate greed.

The Tories’ collapse allowed Labour to come to power with the lowest vote share ever won by any single-party majority government. Labour haemorrhaging votes to progressive independents and Greens in their heartlands should be a lesson to this government: you are wrong to believe that progressive voters have nowhere else to go. Our movement is growing every day – and you ignore the demand for a real alternative at your peril.


Jeremy Corbyn MP Independent, Carla Denyer MP Green party co-leader, Adrian Ramsay MP Green party co-leader, Sian Berry MP Green party, Ben Lake MP Plaid Cymru, Ann Davies MP Plaid Cymru, Liz Saville Roberts MP Plaid Cymru, Llinos Medi MP Plaid Cymru, Zack Polanski Green party deputy leader and London assembly member , Leanne Mohamad Independent candidate for Ilford North, Jamie Driscoll Former North of Tyne mayor, Andrew Feinstein Former ANC MP and Independent candidate for Holborn and St Pancras, Leanne Wood Former leader, Plaid Cymru, Beth Winter Former Labour MP for Cynon Valley, Hilary Schan Chair, We Deserve Better and Independent councillor in Worthing, Anthony Slaughter Wales Green party leader

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/31/this-labour-budget-is-austerity-by-another-name

This blog has previously experienced copyright take down notices. I am republishing this letter in full on the basis that the original authors have and retain rights of copyright and that they have indicated that they wanted it published by submitting it to the Guardian newspaper.

Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Continue ReadingThis Labour budget is austerity by another name

“No treatment, no pain relief, no escape,” UN says on healthcare in Gaza

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Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Source: Munir al-Bursh/X

Intensified Israeli attacks have devastated hospitals and healthcare in Gaza, with patients left to suffer amid a blockade of medical resources and repeated denials of evacuation permits

Conditions in Gaza’s healthcare system, already critical, have further deteriorated under Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) attacks on hospitals in the north. Following the forced closure of the Indonesian Hospital, only two hospitals, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan, remain partially functional. Al-Awda is difficult to access due to damaged road infrastructure, while Kamal Adwan endured a violent raid on October 25-26.

Both have in their care more patients than they can objectively provide care to. During the raid on Kamal Adwan, Israeli soldiers detained or disappeared 44 male staff members, with dozens still imprisoned. According to the UN, by October 29 only two doctors – the hospital director and a pediatrician – remained at Kamal Adwan to manage care for 150 patients without surgical, anesthesiology, or intensive care support. Despite appeals, Israel continues to block access for additional medical teams, supplies, and life-saving essentials.

Read more: 100,000 Palestinians trapped in northern Gaza amid ongoing Israeli massacres and siege

Medical evacuations remain practically non-existent. Since May, only 127 children have been permitted to leave Gaza for critical care. Thousands more injured children face indefinite waits for permits. UNICEF recently expressed what can only be described as desperation, calling out Israel’s bureaucratic “indifference” that leaves children suffering without relief or hope. And, while it is possible to know how few children were allowed to leave Gaza for medical care, Israel does not keep records of how many were denied. “When a patient is denied, there is nothing that can be done,” the agency said. “Trapped in the grip of an indifferent bureaucracy, children’s pain is brutally compounded.”

The situation is far beyond agony for children like Elia, a four-year-old girl who suffered severe burns and multiple amputations after an Israeli rocket attack. Hospitalized for over 40 days, she was admitted along with her mother, Eslam, who sustained similar injuries. Eslam died as a result of the attack in which she and her daughter were hurt, and only then was Elia granted medical evacuation, but without a clear timeline.

Children including infants with cancer and malnutrition, as well as 12-year-olds in need of bone surgery, have been repeatedly denied the right to be transferred to a place where they can access adequate care. “No treatment, no pain relief, no escape,” Elder said of the situation.

Read more: Final phase of polio vaccination in Gaza suspended amid Israeli attacks

There are no healthy people left in the Gaza Strip: those not suffering physical injury are either going hungry or struggling with mental health effects of trauma. Respiratory diseases, jaundice, and diarrhea are rampant due to destroyed sanitation infrastructure and chronic malnutrition. Without an immediate and lasting ceasefire, conditions are expected to worsen further.

Concerns include missing the thresholds set for the polio vaccination campaign, after the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners were forced to suspend the final phase of a polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza due to escalating IOF violence. While WHO has expressed hopes to resume vaccinations from November 2 to 4, it remains to be seen if Israeli authorities will guarantee the necessary safety assurances.

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.

Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue Reading“No treatment, no pain relief, no escape,” UN says on healthcare in Gaza

Morning Star: The good, the bad and the ugly in the Labour Budget

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-good-bad-and-ugly-labour-budget

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.

…

So-called austerity is best understood as a massive transfer of wealth — from public to private, from the many to the few, as the fortunes of the super-rich ballooned while Britain endured the longest wage squeeze since the Napoleonic wars.

This is a grotesquely unequal country in which big banks and energy giants post the largest profits in their history, in which the richest 1 per cent own more than the poorer 70 per cent of the population put together, in which millions rely on foodbanks while the number of billionaires increased by a fifth during the Covid crisis alone.

When Reeves gives with one hand and takes away with the other — as PCS leader Fran Heathcote notes she does by offering a 1.7 per cent increase in departmental spending, while setting a 2 per cent savings target for those same departments — she cites pressure on the public finances that could be relieved easily through higher corporation tax, a financial transactions tax or a wealth tax. As Unite’s Sharon Graham notes, a 1 per cent tax on the richest 1 per cent would raise £25 billion, filling the so-called “black hole” in the budget at a stroke.

It is a choice to keep children in poverty with the two-child benefit cap, to pick pensioners’ pockets with the winter fuel payment cut and to continue Tory “reform” of the work capability assessment — estimated to cost over 400,000 people with mobility or mental health problems over £400 a month.

It is a choice to echo Tory hysteria over benefit fraud, when the amount lost to this is less than goes unclaimed in social security payments people are entitled to. Giving the Department for Work & Pensions power to remove money directly from bank accounts will likely increase non-take-up of benefits by people who need them but understandably fear their personal finances being exposed in this way.

And it’s a choice to hike the cost of a bus ticket by 50 per cent while maintaining a fuel duty freeze — when governments across Europe are making public transport cheaper because it is essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-good-bad-and-ugly-labour-budget

Continue ReadingMorning Star: The good, the bad and the ugly in the Labour Budget

At Least 20 Children Among 93 Killed in Horrific Israeli Massacre in Northern Gaza

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

People remove a body from the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya, Gaza on October 29, 2024.
 (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)

“Put simply, those children who have survived so far are running out of time,” said one aid group. “We are pleading with the international community to urgently intervene.”

Israeli forces on Tuesday bombed a crowded residential building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, killing around 93 people—including at least 20 children—in the latest atrocity in a region that has been under heavy military siege for weeks.

Eyewitnesses described an appalling scene at the building decimated by the Israeli strike. One person who was helping to remove victims from the rubble told Reuters that there were “body parts hanging on the walls.” Another eyewitness said that “most of the victims are women and children.”

The Israeli strike on the residential building—which was reportedly sheltering roughly 200 displaced people—also wounded dozens, but hospitals in the region are overwhelmed and barely functional after relentless Israeli raids and attacks, leaving them unable to handle an influx of bombing victims.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, the director of nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, told Al Jazeera that “more than 150 dead and wounded had arrived after the attack.”

“However, he warned that many of those injured may die because of a lack of resources,” the outlet reported. “Israeli forces detained dozens of medical staff at the hospital last week, leaving only three doctors.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1851243781451895240

Israel’s attack in Beit Lahiya was one of a number of massacres committed in recent days in northern Gaza, where an estimated 100,000 Palestinians are trapped with virtually no access to food, medicine, and other essentials.

“There is nothing. You are talking about tens of days that they are not receiving any supplies,” said Mahmoud Alsaqqa, Oxfam’s food security and livelihood lead in Gaza. Alsaqqa said people are “starving to death” in northern Gaza as Israel impedes humanitarian aid shipments and moves to ban the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency.

Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, noted Tuesday that “in the last day, Israel passed bills that would block most aid delivery in Gaza and the West Bank and bombed a building sheltering displaced civilians, reportedly killing mostly women and children.”

“Yet [U.S. President Joe] Biden keeps arming Israel counter to U.S. and international law,” Williams wrote on social media.

“Every possible step must be taken to secure a definitive cease-fire and to ensure adherence to international law.”

Internet blackouts in the region, meanwhile, have made it difficult for aid workers and reporters to relay news of northern Gaza’s dire conditions to the world.

“Communication between hospitals, health workers, and aid agencies is becoming sporadic, and ground fighting has made travel increasingly dangerous, making it hard to coordinate care and treatment and accurately collect casualty data,” The Guardian reported Tuesday. “The civil defense service suspended activities last Wednesday after crews were attacked by Israeli forces and tank shelling destroyed their last fire engine.”

Last week, Save the Children decried deadly Israeli attacks on 13 residential buildings in the Jabalia refugee camp and warned that “the threat of attacks and lack of fuel and supplies have left rescue services unable to operate” in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave.

“Attacks by Israeli forces across the Gaza Strip have killed scores of people, including many children and an 11-month-old baby,” said Jeremy Stoner, Save the Children’s regional director. “The attacks have targeted a school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat, Kamal Adwan Hospital, and residential homes in Khan Younis—the very places where children are supposed to be safest, protected under international law.”

“Put simply, those children who have survived so far are running out of time. We are pleading with the international community to urgently intervene,” Stoner added. “Every possible step must be taken to secure a definitive cease-fire and to ensure adherence to international law. Governments must stop fueling the conflict with a supply of weapons and ammunition.”

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staffer Hasan Suboh was among those killed in the wave of Israeli attacks on residential homes in northern Gaza last week, the humanitarian group said in a statement Monday.

“Hasan’s tattered MSF vest, which he wore all the time, was found under the rubble,” the group said. “This vest symbolizes Hasan’s commitment to helping people in distress, but more globally it also symbolizes healthcare and humanitarian assistance.”

“To see it destroyed,” MSF added, “is representative of how in this war, Israel, the U.S. government, and the rest of Israel’s allies have disregarded the protection of healthcare workers, and ripped the rules of war to shreds. The claim that humanitarian workers are protected, that civilian lives are protected, has once again been exposed as a lie for all the world to see.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that his active support and that of UK's air force 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/O74hZCKKdpA
Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that his active support and that of UK’s air force 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/O74hZCKKdpA
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 and the UK government and military's active participation in 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 and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Continue ReadingAt Least 20 Children Among 93 Killed in Horrific Israeli Massacre in Northern Gaza

Many Children Among Hundreds Killed, Wounded in Latest Israeli Bombings of Gaza

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A man carries a child wounded in an Israeli strike on a school housing forcibly displaced Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp, on October 24, 2024 in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Palestine. (Photo: Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Our ambulances can’t transfer wounded people,” said one overwhelmed hospital director. “Those who can arrive by themselves to the hospital receive care, but those who don’t just die in the streets.”

A devastating wave of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Thursday have killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians, including many children, according to local and international media reports.

Citing Gaza Civil Defense officials, Palestine’s Quds News Network reported Thursday that at least 150 Palestinian civilians were killed or wounded by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombardment of around a dozen apartment towers on Al-Houja Street in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Local and international media outlets earlier reported at least 17 Palestinians were killed and dozens more wounded by an IDF strike on the al-Shuhada school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

Medical staff at the al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat—where many people killed and wounded in the strike were taken—told Al Jazeera that 13 children under age 18 and three women were among the dead.

The IDF said the strike targeted a Hamas command-and-control center. However, survivors and eyewitnesses said that all of the dead were women and children.

Gaza Notifications published the names of 16 people killed in the attack, including at least five children—the youngest of whom was a baby, just 11 months old.

The outlet said a total of 203 Palestinian civilians have been killed so far on Thursday, and that “all medical and rescue operations have been completely halted by the military administration.”

“The Israeli army has warned that ambulances and rescue teams will be directly targeted if they attempt to continue their operations, effectively blocking any humanitarian efforts,” the site added.

Gaza’s Government Media Office reported 34 Palestinians including 11 children were burned alive in an IDF strike on a youth club-turned shelter in the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.

Israeli forces have also reportedly attacked hospitals and healthcare workers throughout Gaza. The Palestine Chronicle reported that IDF troops opened fire on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, “with sick children inside.”

Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital’s director, told Al Jazeera that IDF tanks surrounded the facility and “directly targeted” it, severely damaging the intensive care unit. On Wednesday, Abu Safia said there were more than 150 wounded people in the hospital, including 14 children in the ICU or neonatal ward.

“There is a very large number of wounded people, and we lose at least one person every hour because of the lack of medical supplies and medical staff,” he said. “Our ambulances can’t transfer wounded people. Those who can arrive by themselves to the hospital receive care, but those who don’t just die in the streets.”

The Palestinian Ministry of Health also said several of its employees were wounded by Israeli artillery strikes on Thursday.

Earlier this month, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report detailing how “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

Israel’s ongoing offensive in northern and central Gaza has killed or wounded more than 2,000 Palestinians this month alone, according to Gaza officials. Since last October, Israel’s war on Gaza—which is the subject of a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice—has left more than 153,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing; millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened; and most of the coastal enclave in ruins.

Thursday’s strikes came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the Middle East, where he is set to take part in cease-fire negotiations with officials from Israel, Egypt, and Qatar in the Qatari capital Doha.

“Going back to the negotiations on ceasefire and the hostages, one of the things we’re doing is looking at whether there are different options that we can pursue to get us to a conclusion, to get us to a result,” Blinken said Thursday.

The United States is Israel’s primary international backer, providing billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover including multiple vetoes of United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingMany Children Among Hundreds Killed, Wounded in Latest Israeli Bombings of Gaza