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Spoof ads of Sunak shaking oil-soaked hand appear across London

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/spoof-ads-sunak-shaking-oil-soaked-hand-appear-across-london

A spoof ad of Sunak shaking oil-soaked hand Photo: Fossil Free London

PARODY adverts mocking Rishi Sunak for giving public money to oil giants have appeared across London’s bus stops.

The Prime Minister is shown shaking an oil-soaked hand next to a Conservative logo with the words: “A helping hand for those in need: £3.75 billion public money to oil company Equinor if Rosebank oil field goes ahead.”

The spoof ads have been spotted in Hackney, Southwark and Tower Hamlets so far, and come after Fossil Free London campaigners last week delivered giant gifts to the Norwegian embassy to represent the £3.75bn tax breaks developers of the North Sea’s Rosebank field could receive.

Norway’s state-backed oil and gas giant Equinor would be among the firms set to profit while the taxpayer picks up almost all the costs of the development.

Earlier this month Mr Sunak claimed a planned expansion of oil and gas drilling in the North Sea was “entirely consistent” with the government’s goal to reach net zero by 2050.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/spoof-ads-sunak-shaking-oil-soaked-hand-appear-across-london

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Morning Star: Our NHS at 75: we have still faith, now we need to fight

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People on Warren Street in London, ahead of a Support the Strikes march in solidarity with nurse 11 March 2023
People on Warren Street in London, ahead of a Support the Strikes march in solidarity with nurse 11 March 2023

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/our-nhs-at-75-we-have-still-faith-now-we-need-to-fight

Image reads Accident & Emergency, A & E

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Today the NHS is in a deep crisis. Its millions-long waiting list condemns patients to seriously delayed treatments, often painfully, sometimes dangerously. Its hospitals are so overloaded ambulances line up outside, waiting hours to discharge patients.

Those who can afford it are going private: the number paying for private hospital treatment has risen by nearly a third since 2019.

This raises demand for trained medical workers in the private sector, with reports earlier this year that doctors were being offered £5,000 to recruit NHS colleagues to undertake private work, accelerating a vicious cycle in resource competition when the NHS already carries over 100,000 vacancies.

The logic is towards a two-tier healthcare system in which those who can pay get faster treatment while the “universal” health service is reduced through under-resourcing to basic cover for the poor.

Preventing this means challenging the two main drivers of NHS decline: underinvestment and privatisation.

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NHS sign

Since Tony Blair first introduced private provision within the NHS, the service itself has become a lucrative source of private profit. Extortionate PFI contracts, state collusion with big pharma over drug prices and reliance on private providers all waste NHS money.

The last risks turning our health service into a commissioner rather than a provider of services, a brand name that masks a for-profit health system.

That betrayal of Bevan’s vision is the current prospectus from both Tories and Labour. Saving the NHS means building a mass campaign for real solutions to its twin crises: a serious increase in investment, and an end to all private-sector involvement.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/our-nhs-at-75-we-have-still-faith-now-we-need-to-fight

Continue ReadingMorning Star: Our NHS at 75: we have still faith, now we need to fight

Morning Star: Starmer’s NHS ‘vision’ dodges the three big issues: investment, pay, and privatisation

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Image of Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum, Davos
Image of Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum, Davos

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/starmers-nhs-vision-dodges-three-big-issues-investment-pay-and-privatisation

EVERYONE who works in or depends on the NHS should be deeply concerned at Keir Starmer’s vision for the service.

Like so many cheerleaders for public-sector “reform” — which has invariably meant fragmentation and privatisation over the last 40 years — he accuses those calling for higher investment of avoiding the big issues. Yet that is what he is doing.

Starmer dodges questions on NHS pay, despite ongoing disputes involving doctors, nurses, paramedics, porters and domestics.

These disputes have prompted the biggest strikes in NHS history this year — but Labour is “not focused” on pay rises, he says.

That’s not good enough from the leader of a party founded to represent organised labour. Especially since we know from his previous comments that they regard inflation-proofed pay demands as “unaffordable.”

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Starmer says the NHS cannot cope with more years of Tory government, and he is right. But on a prospectus like this — no promises on investment, no promises on pay, blind faith in “technology” and continued exploitation by the private sector — its agony would continue on his watch, too.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/starmers-nhs-vision-dodges-three-big-issues-investment-pay-and-privatisation

Continue ReadingMorning Star: Starmer’s NHS ‘vision’ dodges the three big issues: investment, pay, and privatisation

Climate experts call for urgent action as 1.5°C global rise predicted over the next five years

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Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/climate-experts-call-urgent-action-15c-global-rise-predicted-over-next-five-years-0

ENVIRONMENT experts called for urgent action from Westminster today after scientists predicted a 66 per cent chance that a global average temperature of more than 1.5°C will be recorded over the next five years.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) also said there is a 98 per cent chance of the hottest year on record being broken during that time.

Report co-leader Dr Leon Hermanson said that the 1.5°C mark above pre-industrial levels has never been crossed before, with the current record being 1.28°C.

He said that the record will likely come from a combination of greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Nino event, a heating of the eastern Pacific which affects rainfall and temperature globally.

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Green Party co–leader Carla Denyer urged Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to “do the right thing” and end the plans to open the new coal mine in Cumbria and oil field in Rosebank as well as dropping “all new climate-wrecking oil and gas licences immediately.”

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/climate-experts-call-urgent-action-15c-global-rise-predicted-over-next-five-years-0

Continue ReadingClimate experts call for urgent action as 1.5°C global rise predicted over the next five years

‘Inflammatory, polarising and dehumanising’

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/braverman-slammed-for-using-abhorrent-and-divisive-rhetoric

Braverman slammed for using ‘abhorrent and divisive’ rhetoric as anti-refugee Bill debated

SUELLA BRAVERMAN was slammed by anti-racists and migrant rights campaigners today after saying that those coming to Britain through non-government approved routes “have values at odds with our country.”

As the Illegal Migrant Bill returned to the Commons today, the Home Secretary said: “We are seeing heightened levels of criminality when related to the people who’ve come on boats, related to drug dealing, exploitation, prostitution.”

The Bill, dubbed the anti-refugee Bill by human rights groups, will change the law so that those who arrive in Britain on small boats and other dangerous routes will be detained and removed to the country they were trying to get away from or to a third country such as Rwanda.

It is expected to pass in the Commons but could face obstacles in the Lords.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/braverman-slammed-for-using-abhorrent-and-divisive-rhetoric

Continue Reading‘Inflammatory, polarising and dehumanising’