Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall arrives in Downing Street, London, for a Cabinet meeting, March 11, 2025
ALMOST two-thirds of disabled people on Personal Independence Payments (PIP) “will not cope” without it, a charity has warned, amid reports that the government will reduce the benefit.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is expected to unveil reforms aimed at reducing welfare costs that ministers have described as “unsustainable.”
Reports suggest that PIP, the main benefit for working-age adults both in and out of work, could be frozen rather than increased in line with inflation, delivering a real-terms cut for 3.6 million claimants.
A new analysis from Sense has found that 38 per cent of PIP recipients with complex needs are already behind on energy bills. Almost half — 46 per cent — are struggling to afford essential costs such as council tax and water, while 41 per cent are living in debt due to benefits failing to cover the cost of essentials like food.
Fifty-eight per cent of those polled reported significant ongoing extra costs due to disability and 53 per cent said their PIP payments were insufficient to cover those expenses.
Sense chief executive James Watson-O’Neill said PIP “exists because living with a disability means facing higher costs, from increased energy bills to specialised equipment and specific diets.”
“These additional expenses won’t disappear if eligibility is tightened. It will only plunge more disabled people into poverty.
“Making it harder to access benefits won’t help disabled people find jobs either. It will only deepen the struggle.”
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.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.
Trucks line up at the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip after Israel blocked the entry of aid trucks into Gaza, March 2, 2025
THE United Nations food agency only has enough supplies in the Gaza Strip to keep public kitchens and bakeries open for less than two weeks, the body said today.
Israel has imposed another blockade on Gaza to pressure Hamas into accepting an alternative ceasefire arrangement, six weeks into their fragile truce.
Israel allowed a surge of humanitarian aid during the first six weeks of the ceasefire. But the World Food Programme said on Wednesday that its stocks are low because it prioritised delivering food to the population.
The UN agency also warned that its fuel stocks would only last for a few weeks.
Palestinians said prices spiked as people rushed to markets to stock up on supplies after Israel announced the tightening of its blockade.
After more than 16 months of war, Gaza’s population is entirely dependent on deliveries of food and other aid. Most are displaced from their homes, and many need shelter.
A Palestinian child plays amid the rubble of destroyed buildings at the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, Palestine on January 2, 2025. (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)
The Knesset members are urging the Israeli military to destroy all sources of water, food, and energy—and to kill “anyone not flying a white flag of surrender.”
At least seven far-right members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, are calling on the country’s defense minister to order the total destruction of northern Gaza’s food, water, and energy sources—most of which have already been obliterated by 15 months of relentless attacks—and the killing of any Palestinian who isn’t clearly surrendering to the attackers.
In a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz dated December 31, the lawmakers assert that the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) campaign to forcibly expel Palestinians from northern Gaza—which critics have called ethnic cleansing—”isn’t being done properly” and is not “achieving the war objectives as defined by the government, which is the dismantling of Hamas’ governing and military capabilities.”
According to a translation by international humanitarian law expert Itay Epshtain on Thursday, the letter calls on the IDF to:
Destroy all energy sources including fuel, solar systems, generators, and power lines;
Destroy all food sources including warehouses, water, and water pumps; and
Lay siege and remotely kill everyone not flying a white flag of surrender.
That last demand apparently includes men, women, and children. IDF troops would then “enter gradually for a complete cleansing of the enemy’s nests,” according to the letter.
Lawmakers who signed the letter and their party affiliations include: Avraham Bezalel (Shas), Amit Halevi (Likud), Limor Son Har-Melech (Jewish Power), Osher Shkalim (Likud), Zvi Sukkot and Ohad Tal (Religious Zionism), and Nissim Vaturi (Likud).
Vaturi, the deputy Knesset speaker, previously called for Gaza to be “wiped off the face of the Earth” and argued for Israel to “stop being humane” and “burn Gaza now,” because “there are no innocents there.”
Notably, the lawmakers’ letter does not mention anything about freeing the more than 60 hostages believed to be alive and imprisoned by Hamas and possibly other groups in Gaza.
As Israeli journalist Bar Peleg reported Friday from the Jabalia refugee camp:
When the soldiers and officers in Jabalia are asked about their mission, the answer is destroying Hamas and its infrastructure, until the last terrorist is laid to rest. When they are asked, “And what about the hostages?” One soldier answered, “That concerns us, like it does everyone, but it isn’t a part of our operational considerations.”
Northern Gaza is already in ruins. As Peleg noted, “not a single habitable building remains” in Jabalia. Nearly all homes, hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure have been destroyed or damaged.
“Look at the extent of the destruction and annihilation here,” one IDF officer said. “No one has done this before.”
An IDF officer recently told Haaretz that one commander, Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, seeks to personally execute the so-called Generals’ Plan—a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza—by besieging and expelling 250,000 Palestinians from the area. United Nations officials estimate that more than 100,000 Palestinians have been forced from northern Gaza, even as the IDF says it disavows the Generals’ Plan.
Israeli policies and actions, as well as written and spoken calls for the destruction of Gaza and its people, have been presented as evidence in the South African-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister who ordered the siege of Gaza, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which in November issued arrest warrants for the pair and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
Israel’s 455-day bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza has left at least 165,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to officials there.
Picketers decorate a Christmas tree outside Rossington Colliery, while police transit vans line the roadway, December 11, 1984
CHRISTMAS 1984 was potentially a desperate time for the families of miners who had been on strike against pit closures for nine months. It turned out to be the opposite for many striking mining communities.
France’s communist-led union group CGT sent a convoy of 30 lorries, driven by volunteers and packed with food and toys, across the Channel. The union had mounted a “toy drive” among its members, and thousands had flooded in.
The convoy arrived at Dover, and the lorries journeyed to struggling mining communities in Wales and northern England.
Hundreds of miners’ support groups across the country redoubled their solidarity efforts — and the public responded generously.
The result for many striking miners and their families was the best Christmas they had ever had. And the solidarity is remembered today across the former coalfields.
In the north-east, Ian Lavery, now Labour MP for Blyth and Ashington, was a 20-year-old miner at Ellington Colliery in Northumberland. He lived with his parents and siblings. His father was a striking miner, as were two of his three brothers.
He told the Morning Star: “It was one of the best times of my life.
“At Christmas time 1984, none of us had a ha’penny — no money at all. But one thing about miners and working-class people is that they will do anything to make sure the kids have a good Christmas. Whatever the situation — on strike for seven or eight months — we would not let the kids down.
“It was fabulous to see the juggernauts arriving from France. They provided every striking miner’s kid with a toy at Christmas. Honestly, there was juggernaut after juggernaut come all the way from France. Absolutely amazing. Then there were the chickens and the turkeys. They were on the Christmas table of every striking miner. It was just fabulous.
“There were Christmas parties in every village and community.
Palestinian truck drivers and United Nations vehicles wait near the Rafah border gate on the Gazan side to cross the Egyptian side after the Israeli army took control of the Rafah Border Gate, Gaza on May 14, 2024. [Hani Alshaer – Anadolu Agency]
Over two months, just three trucks carrying food and water have reached North Gaza Governorate, where families scavenge through rubbish for scraps, Oxfam reports. While 25 trucks were granted entry by Israel, most were obstructed or delayed by the Israeli occupation military, leaving countless Palestinian civilians without aid.
Since October, Oxfam and other humanitarian organisations have been unable to deliver consistent aid to north Gaza as Israel’s intensified siege of Jabalia, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun blocks access. Thousands remain cut off without food or water, with trapped families making desperate calls for help.
One convoy of 11 trucks was stopped at Jabalia, where supplies were seized and redirected to a militarised zone inaccessible to Palestinian civilians. Another convoy of 14 trucks saw only three reach Mahdia Al-Shawa school in Beit Hanoun. Hours after distribution, Israeli forces attacked the school, forcing families to flee and shelled the building the next day.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) recently warned of a strong likelihood that famine is already occurring in northern Gaza, with famine risks spreading across the entire Strip. Families are resorting to unimaginable measures to survive, exposing themselves to disease and injury from sharp debris and unexploded bombs.
Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees in the world as its healthcare system collapses, lacking critical supplies like anesthetics.
Oxfam has condemned Israel’s ongoing blockade, warning that these actions violate international law. Aid organisations continue to call for unrestricted access as Gaza’s humanitarian crisis spirals further into catastrophe.
Oxfam warned of an “apocalyptic” situation, with famine likely underway in northern Gaza. Sally Abi-Khalil, Oxfam’s regional director, condemned the international community’s inaction, saying: “The absolute desperation of having no food or shelter for your family in the biting cold of winter. It is abhorrent that despite international law being so publicly violated by Israel and starvation being used relentlessly as a weapon of war, world leaders continue to do nothing.”
“Gaza has been widely destroyed and the entire population is suffering. The public sector has collapsed and the humanitarian system is on its knees. We plead with the entire international community – stop this, now. You have the diplomatic and economic levers to make Israel stop. Every day that passes without a ceasefire is a death sentence for hundreds more civilians.”
The Palestinian Civil Defence reports 2,700 deaths in North Gaza since October, with half of the bodies unrecovered amid relentless shelling. Over 130,000 have been displaced, most of them women and children now sheltering in overcrowded, freezing conditions in Gaza City.
Aid delivery remains severely hampered as critical crossings are barely functional. Winter weather will worsen conditions for over 1.6 million people living in makeshift shelters, with half a million in flood-prone areas. The UN reports that only 23 per cent of displaced Palestinians have received materials to shield them from cold and rain, leaving over 900,000 at risk of exposure.
Food prices have skyrocketed, forcing families into dire situations. One Palestinian man, who evacuated from Al-Maghazi refugee camp, shared: “Adults tell the kids not to play so they don’t get dizzy. One pack of biscuits is all we have for 15 grandchildren. We need shelter but a simple plastic tarpaulin costs $180. We’re doing everything we can, but it’s not enough.”
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Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support 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/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
