UK
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What is Britain’s newly founded Left Unity party? By Chris Marsden
Left Unity held its founding conference in London on November 30. Advanced as a party “to the left of Labour,” what united the motley assortment of 400-plus aging cynics in attendance was a determination that any such party would not be revolutionary in its programme and intent. Continue reading
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Amnesty to sue UK intelligence over intercepted emails, phone calls
Human rights organization Amnesty International has declared it will take legal action against British security services. Amnesty claims its calls have been intercepted by UK intelligence agencies. The group has issued a claim at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) saying that the alleged actions by UK intelligence would be in breach of article 8 (right… Continue reading
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‘Whole Person Care – Labour’s big NHS idea or yet more chaos? By Shirley Rahman
Labour’s ‘big idea’ on health is to merge it with social care and maybe even benefits. It calls it ‘whole person care’. But has it thought through the implications? Continue reading
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UK food poverty a ‘public health emergency’, say leading experts
“This has all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventive action,” said the letter, co-signed by six leading public health experts, and addressed to the prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ). A group of high-profile academics has written an open letter warning that food… Continue reading
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With our history – casual racism is not an option By Alastair Sloan
Racism in Britain is deep and structural. And too often, we don’t see it. With our history, we should know better – and we should notice how we are treating Roma people. Continue reading
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Rusbridger’s inquisition: Another scene of the ‘theatrical’ spying saga by UK officials
The hauling up of Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger before a panel of MPs like a “naughty school boy” is an attempt by the UK government to deflect the issues raised by Snowden’s leaks and shirk proper debate Glyn Moody, journalist and writer, told RT. Continue reading
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UK police threaten Guardian editor with terrorism charges over Snowden leaks
British police have launched an investigation into whether the Guardian committed “potential” terrorism offenses by publishing the incriminating NSA and GCHQ documents leaked earlier this year by Edward Snowden. Continue reading
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NHS: In the days when I used to kill people… By Jeremy Fox
You hear a lot of bad things about the NHS, much of which from the Tories, the gutter press and those with a vested interest in the privatisation of health. I was braced for the worse, but what I got actually made me feel proud. We need to hold onto this. Continue reading
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Red-herring ‘inquisition’: Guardian editor robustly defends Snowden leaks to UK MPs
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger strongly defended his newspaper’s publication of the Snowden leaks in response to a hostile grilling by a UK parliamentary committee Tuesday, as MPs attempted to show that national security was breached. Continue reading
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‘Information vampires’ hoping to charge press outlets for publishing Snowden leaks
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said the officials wanted the Guardian to destroy all the information from Snowden despite the fact the data had already been disseminated to different news organizations around the world. Rather than working to correct the growing surveillance state lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic are dragging their feet and exploring… Continue reading
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UK Ministry of Defence rejects FOIA request for leaked 2001 security manual
Although the document was published by WikiLeaks four years ago, it is still considered classified material by the UK government. It would seem that the UK government does not want any officially public information out about how it has placed investigative journalists and members of the public in the same category as “terrorists organisations.” Continue reading
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Celebrating the Spirit of Envy By Alastair McIntosh
What most struck me last week about Boris Johnson’s speech canonising Margaret Thatcher and thereby, paving the way for his own beatification, was how deeply and intimately familiar it all sounded. Continue reading
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Groping in the Dark: Jack Straw and the Irrelevance of the Left By Carl Rowlands
No-one knows exactly how many people have moved to the UK from Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Baltic countries. Despite this, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said that immediately admitting workers from the 2004 EU accession countries into the UK labour market was, in his words, a ‘mistake.’ Blithely untroubled by… Continue reading
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The BBC and Government: time for some more light? By Brian Winston
The unwritten conventions of the British Constitution, anyway very much a concept cut from whole cloth by 19th century Vinerian professors of English Law at Oxford, are scarcely of a piece with the low political horse trading that has gone on at every BBC Charter renewal since the first in 1936. A BBC veto is… Continue reading
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Britain’s poorest summonsed to court to pay council tax arrears By Allison Smith
In London’s Labour Party-controlled Southwark borough alone, more than 5,000 residents were summonsed to court in October and forced to pay past due council tax plus court fees. In the Labour-controlled borough of Brent, 3,500 summonses were issued to the poorest residents. This is being repeated across the country. The Citizen’s Advice Bureau in Hull… Continue reading
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Israel — Just Another Hapless British Colony By John Kozy
When Israel is seen as an English colony, England has to be seen as primarily responsible for all of the horrors committed by its “colonists.” In fact, England and France must be seen as primarily responsible for the horrors committed by all the West in the Middle East at least since 1857, the end of… Continue reading
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Israel — Just Another Hapless British Colony By John Kozy
When Israel is seen as an English colony, England has to be seen as primarily responsible for all of the horrors committed by its “colonists.” In fact, England and France must be seen as primarily responsible for the horrors committed by all the West in the Middle East at least since 1857, the end of… Continue reading
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Dead Poppies: When Remembrance Becomes Militarism by Lesley Docksey
The ‘Remembrance’ poppy grew out of WWI and became a symbol for that dire and catastrophic war. Catastrophic, that is, for those British men who died (725,000) leaving widows and orphans behind, or the 1.75 million wounded, half of whom were permanently disabled and unable to work or support their dependents. The British Legion was… Continue reading
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Left Unity: A Report from the Founding Conference By Richard Seymour
Based on the votes, I would estimate that somewhat over 400 people gathered in Bloomsbury on Saturday to launch the new left party first suggested by Ken Loach some months ago. The attendees were disproportionately veterans of the Left, older and white, but there were a lot of them. Continue reading
