Britain produced record amount of wind power in 2022 –National Grid

Fri, 6 January 2023 

Wind turbines are seen at Mynydd Portref Wind Farm near Hendreforgan in South Wales

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s wind farms contributed a record 26.8% of the country’s electricity in 2022 although gas-fired power plants remained the biggest source of power, National Grid data showed on Friday.

Britain has a target to reach net zero emissions by 2050 which will require a huge scale-up of renewable power generation such as wind and solar.

The share of wind power in Britain’s electricity mix last year was up from 21.8% in 2021, the data showed, as more wind projects came online.

The world’s largest offshore wind farm, Hornsea 2 off the Yorkshire coast in the North Sea, became fully operational in August 2022.

The wind farm can generate enough electricity to power around 1.4 million homes.

Britain’s gas-fired power plants produced 38.5% of the country’s electricity last year, up from 37.8% in 2021, the data showed.

GRAPHIC : Britain's electricity mix 2022 - https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/zjpqjeqjxvx/Pasted%20image%201673005016393.png

The rise came as the country imported less electricity, with imports making up 5.5% of the total down from 10.3% in 2021.

Britain typically imports electricity from France but this year issues with France’s nuclear fleet mean the European country which traditionally was a large exporter of power, turned a net importer in 2022.

(Reporting By Susanna Twidale; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)

UK

NHS STRIKES

Nurses’ union suggests Government meet it halfway on 19% pay rise demand

Ben Hatton
Fri, 6 January 2023 

Nurses’ union suggests Government meet it halfway on 19% pay rise demand

The Royal College of Nursing could be willing to accept a 10% pay rise, with the union’s leader calling on the Government to meet it “halfway”.

The general secretary of the Royal College for Nursing (RCN), Pat Cullen, has previously said the union’s demand for a 19% rise, dismissed by the Government as “unaffordable”, is simply a “starting point”, and that she would put any new offer to her members.

It is thought the union could be willing to accept a pay rise of about 10%.


In an interview with Times Radio’s Past Imperfect podcast, reported by The Times, Ms Cullen said: “There is a rhetoric out there that says the Royal College of Nursing is unrealistic, it’s looking for something that’s totally unachievable, it’s looking for 19%.

“Now, I could sit here all day and tell you nurses’ pay has dropped by 20% over the last decade.

“Do I believe those nurses are entitled (to 19%)?

“Absolutely, I believe they’re entitled to 19%.

“But we also understand the economic climate that we’re working in.

“And what I would say to (Health Secretary) Steve Barclay and to the Prime Minister is get into a room and meet me halfway here and do the decent thing for these nurses.”

Thousands of nurses walked out on December 15 and 20, and the RCN has said its members will strike again on January 18 and 19 unless negotiations are opened.

The planned action would take place at more NHS employers in England than the previous strikes, increasing from 44 to 55 trusts, according to the RCN.

The union has also warned that strike action could continue over the next six months unless an agreement can be reached.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The Health and Social Care Secretary wants to have an honest conversation with the RCN about what is affordable in pay settlements for next year during these challenging times, and is keen to meet for discussions as soon as possible.

“We have accepted the recommendations of the independent NHS Pay Review Body in full and have given over one million NHS workers a pay rise of at least £1,400 this year. This is on top of a 3% pay increase last year when public sector pay was frozen and wider Government support with the cost of living.”

Junior doctors set to go on three-day strike in March if industrial action approved

Fri, 6 January 2023 


Junior doctors will go on strike for the second time ever in March - if they vote for industrial action in a ballot beginning next week.

The British Medical Association (BMA) has today set the potential strike action for March ahead of a ballot starting on Monday.

Junior doctors - any doctor below consultant level - in England will walk out for 72 hours and will not provide emergency NHS care during the strike, the BMA said. It added that trusts will need to arrange emergency cover to ensure patient safety.

It is not yet clear whether the strike will go ahead, but it is understood the threshold of 50% of those balloted to strike is likely to be met.

If the strike goes ahead, it will be the second time junior doctors have walked out over pay and conditions.

The first-ever strikes happened in 2016, when Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was health secretary.

Junior doctors are calling for better pay after they were excluded from an NHS pay rise this year because their contract is subject to a multi-year pay deal that gives them a 2% rise for 2022/2023.

They have also said junior doctors in England have seen a real-terms pay cut over the past 15 years, which amounts to a 26.1% decline in pay since 2008/9.

And the BMA says the risk to patients caused by the low pay means it has been left with no option but to ballot junior doctors for strike action.

The BMA has urged Health Secretary Steve Barclay to sit down with doctors to negotiate to avoid industrial action.

Both Rishi Sunak and Mr Barclay have said their doors are open for unions to talk with them and the prime minister said all unions have been invited to sit down with them on Monday.

But the BMA says Mr Barclay is "the first health secretary for over 50 years to continue to ignore all invitations" to meet with doctors.

Read more: Who is striking and when this month?

Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson, co-chairs of the BMS junior doctors committee, said: "When we are faced with such resolute ongoing silence, and there is no agreed settlement on the table, then we are left with no choice but to act.

"Junior doctors are not worth a quarter less than they were 15 years ago nor do they deserve to be valued so little by their own government.

"Pay erosion, exhaustion and despair are forcing junior doctors out of the NHS, pushing waiting lists even higher as patients suffer needlessly.

"The government's refusal to address 15 years of pay erosion has given junior doctors no choice but to ballot for industrial action.

"If the government won't fight for our health service, then we will."

Ambulance workers, auxiliary NHS staff and nurses all went on strike in December over pay and conditions.

Nurses are set to go on strike again on 18 and 19 January, but that could be avoided after the Royal College of Nursing indicated on Thursday it would accept a pay rise of around 10%, instead of 19%, to end its ongoing dispute.

UK

Ministers could help the patients dying in NHS hospital corridors right now – they just choose not to

Rachel Clarke

The Guardian
Fri, 6 January 2023 

Jeremy Hunt, British Conservative politician
Steve Barclay British politician

With NHS staff being forced to witness our patients dying in corridors, in cupboards, on floors and in stranded ambulances, we can only thank our lucky stars that the country’s second most powerful politician is the man who last year published Zero: Eliminating Unnecessary Deaths in a Post-Pandemic NHS.

Because the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, cannot possibly stand back and permit these crisis conditions to continue, can he? He knows better than anyone – having written 320 pages on precisely this fact – that avoidable deaths are the very worst kinds of death, the ones that sicken families and clinicians to their core.

Let’s remind ourselves of how strongly Hunt feels about this subject. The blurb of his book, published only last May, rings out with moral righteousness. “How many avoidable deaths are there in the NHS every week?” he asks. “150. What figure should we aim for? Zero. Mistakes happen. But nobody deserves to become a statistic in an NHS hospital. That’s why we need to aim for zero.”


He even offers a road map towards achieving that end that, unusually for a politician, centres on radical candour. Don’t lie. Don’t deflect. Don’t spin. Don’t cover up. Be honest and open about mistakes and failures because this is the first, essential step to fixing them.

To the collective despair of frontline staff, the government’s actual, as opposed to rhetorical, response to the humanitarian crisis gripping the NHS is a perverse inversion of everything the chancellor purports to hold dear.

First, Downing Street tried to ignore it. The day after the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), Adrian Boyle, estimated that between 300 and 500 people were dying avoidable deaths every week as a result of the total collapse of emergency services, the health secretary, Steve Barclay, was chirpily tweeting about the merits of parkrun.

Next, the government tried denial, with one of Rishi Sunak’s spin doctors flatly refusing to accept the assertion that the NHS was in crisis. Perhaps to them, political spinning seems like a game. But as someone who has to hear the moans and face the anguish, I would say that attempting to dismiss real people’s avoidable deaths – their actual, unnecessary experiences of misery, indignity and terminal suffering – is a form of dishonesty so stone-cold disgraceful it shouldn’t come within a million miles of government.

Mercifully, for sheer no-nonsense, evidence-based pushback against the facile denials churned out by the government, Boyle and the RCEM vice-president Ian Higginson – both of whom are frontline emergency consultants – have been outstanding.

Take Higginson’s recent turn on Times Radio immediately after the government’s efforts to discredit those figures for avoidable deaths. The association between delayed inpatient admission and increased mortality is well established. One study shows that for every 82 patients whose inpatient bed transfer is delayed beyond six to eight hours from arrival in the emergency department, approximately one extra death occurs. So Higginson rightly condemned the unedifying “battle of machismo and denial going on” before politely posing the following – devastating – question: “Is there an acceptable number [of avoidable deaths] that our colleagues in NHS organisations and politicians are seeking? Or do we simply accept that right now patients are dying waiting for ambulances, in car parks, outside hospitals?… This is a real problem that affects real people every day of the week.”

Hunt, of course, has already provided the answer to Higginson’s first question. Zero. Zero is the acceptable number of avoidable deaths in the NHS. So how – why – are we here yet again in the wretched situation of frontline staff trying to tell the truth about patient harm while political leaders with the power actually to do something about those harms focus instead on managing optics?

The government claims it has given the NHS all the funding it needs. It hasn’t. Sunak stated in his new year speech this week that since September, “we’ve put half a billion pounds into what’s called early discharge, to help move people into the community this winter”. He hasn’t. Only £200m – 40% – of that emergency funding has actually been given to the NHS and local authorities. The remaining £300m has not materialised and will not be disbursed until, possibly, late January.

With one in seven hospital beds across England occupied by medically fit patients without the care packages they need to safely leave hospital, that is unforgivable. Because every bed space we can possibly release is quite literally a matter of life and death for the patients at home with heart attacks and strokes waiting for ambulances that never come.

Be under no illusions. If it wanted to, the government could reduce the avoidable death toll this minute. It could fund the block booking of care home beds – as it did during Covid – to discharge thousands of medically fit patients from hospitals. It could mobilise an emergency crisis force of volunteer carers to help support patients at home after discharge. It could end the insanity of the pension trap for senior doctors that forces consultants to cut back their hours unwillingly or else face punitive six-figure tax bills. Above all – if it cared about the endemic burnout and hopelessness that propels so many desperate staff these days into quitting the NHS they used to cherish – it could once, just once, break its 12-year obsession with curating NHS headlines, and tell the truth.

Because the chancellor is right. Nobody deserves to become a statistic in an NHS hospital. Yet through their collective inaction at a time when so many patients’ lives are actively imperilled, Hunt, Barclay and Sunak have all made it perfectly clear that when push comes to shove, only the right type of avoidable death really matters. The ones caused by political choices? Come on. Not only are those ones irrelevant, they don’t even exist at all.

Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor and the author of Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic

UK

Here's What The Government Has Said About Its Own Anti-Union Strike Laws

Alexandra Rogers
Fri, 6 January 2023 

Under the new laws, employers will be able to sue unions and sack workers who go on strike in certain sectors.

Under the new laws, employers will be able to sue unions and sack workers who go on strike in certain sectors.

The government is currently pledging to push through new laws that would make strikes illegal if unions failed to provide a minimum level of safety to the public.

It is a response to the crippling wave of industrial action that is gripping the UK, as nurses, ambulance staff and rail workers all walk out in a dispute with the government over pay and working conditions.

Under the new laws, employers will be able to sue unions and sack workers who go on strike in six sectors, including the health service, rail, education, fire and border security.

It has already been condemned as undemocratic and a threat to the fundamental right to strike.

Unions have already warned that they will challenge the plans in court if they are pushed through parliament.

And it seems that even government figures have expressed reservations about legislation, which could actually increase the number of strikes and exacerbate the staffing crisis that is forcing some workers on the picket line in the first place.

Transport secretary Mark Harper told the Transport Select Committee in December that the legislation would not provide a “solution” to the current wave of strikes we are seeing due to the time needed to get it through parliament.

He said that the legislation, “however quickly it is progressed...is not a solution to dealing with the industrial action we see at the moment”.

And he added: “The other thing I would say is that while that legislation may well improve the service that passengers receive on strike days, my priority is to try to ensure we resolve the industrial dispute, so that passengers don’t have strike days.

“That is how you get better service to passengers. You resolve the disputes, rather than have a slightly better service on strike days.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Gilligan, the influential former transport adviser to Boris Johnson, has said the plans are not a “game-changer — at least in rail” and could trigger “more action short of strikes” — including a refusal to work overtime or take on additional duties that keep the railways running.

The department for transport’s (DfT) own impact assessment also makes these warnings, suggesting that minimum service levels plans could in fact “increase the frequency of strikes” and industrial action short of a strike that could prove damaging.

Finally, the DfT warns that in the event that staff are sacked for failing to clock on to work on strike days, employers “may find that they are low on staff to run normal services if the situation becomes extreme”.

Labour’s shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, said: “The government openly accept this damaging, counter-productive legislation could increase disruption and strike days on the rail network.

“And the transport secretary himself admits it is no solution.

“Rather than forcing through legislation that could exacerbate disruption and undermine workers’ rights, the government should show some responsibility, get around the table and start negotiating to find a deal.”

A DfT spokesperson said: “We undertake a comprehensive assessment of risks in preparing impact assessments but this does not mean that these are likely. Identifying these risks allows us to improve the design and operation of the policy.”

“We continue to believe minimum service level legislation will be a valuable tool in minimising the impact of strike action — ensuring that those who rely on the railway to work, get to school and access healthcare still can.”
Related...

Rishi Sunak Does Not Rule Out Sacking Striking NHS Workers Under New Laws


Nurses Willing To Meet Ministers 'Halfway' In Pay Dispute


Keir Starmer Pledges To Repeal Any New Tory Anti-Strike Law

UK PM Sunak hopes for 'constructive' talks with trade union leaders


Fri, 6 January 2023 

FILE PHOTO: British PM Sunak delivers his first major domestic speech of 2023 at Plexal


LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Friday he was hoping for constructive talks with trade union leaders next week, as thousands of workers in industries from rail to healthcare take strike action in disputes over pay.

"We want to have a grown up, honest conversation with all union leaders about what is responsible, what is reasonable and what is affordable for our country when it comes to pay," Sunak told reporters during a visit to a school in London.

"We think that those conversations should happen. That's why we've invited everyone in to have those talks on Monday and I'm hopeful that those talks can be constructive."

The government has called on unions to cancel strikes while it holds talks, but also plans to bring in legislation to make key public services like ambulances maintain minimum safety levels during industrial action by staff.

Late on Thursday, Unite, one of Britain's largest trade unions, criticised the government's offer of talks as "game-playing and gimmicks" and said its planned strikes, which include ambulance workers in Wales this month, would go ahead.

Tens of thousands of workers across several sectors have taken strike action over the last few months as they demand pay rises that better reflect double-digit levels of inflation.

Among the latest to resort to industrial action are workers at the government's Environment Agency. A union representing junior doctors in England on Friday said they would walk out for 72 hours in March if a ballot for strikes is successful.

Some 40,000 rail workers began another 48-hour strike on Friday in a long-running dispute, while nurses are due to walk out again on Jan. 18 and 19.

(Reporting by William James, writing by Sachin Ravikumar, Editing by Kylie MacLellan



Mick Lynch threatens 'work to rule' if anti-strike laws come into force

Jack Maidment
Fri, 6 January 2023 

Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the RMT union, is pictured at a picket line outside Euston station in central London on January 4 - Kirsty O'Connor/PA

Rishi Sunak's new anti-strike laws will make industrial action "worse" and force unions to adopt other disruptive methods like "work to rule" to make their point, Mick Lynch has suggested.

The general secretary of the RMT union said the Government's decision to bring forward minimum service legislation to curb the impact of mass walkouts risks making "a bad situation even worse" and could result in disputes becoming "completely entrenched".

He told BBC Breakfast: "It will make them worse. We will have to resort to work to rule, we will have to resort to long term overtime bans, partial strikes that will mean that disputes will become intractable probably and it may have completely the opposite effect that this Government is saying."

Work to rule is a form of industrial action which involves employees only performing duties to the strict letter of their contracts.

Under the Government's new anti-strikes blueprint, employers would be able to enforce a basic degree of coverage in key public sectors during strike action and dismiss staff who refuse to turn up to work when ordered to.

You can follow the latest updates below.

08:33 AM
Good morning

Good morning and welcome to today's politics live blog.

Rishi Sunak's new anti-strike laws which were unveiled yesterday afternoon continue to dominate the agenda in Westminster as union bosses continue to digest what the measures could mean for future industrial action.

Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the RMT union has just been on BBC Breakfast, giving his response to the proposals while Labour's shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Pat McFadden is also on the morning round to give his opinion.

I will guide you through the key developments.

08:37 AM
'They are going to conscript our members'

Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the RMT union, said the Government's new anti-strike laws would effectively mean workers would be forced to cross a picket line against their wishes.

He told BBC Breakfast: "What they are saying is that they will sack our members if they don’t go to work, they are going to conscript our members.

"We have to name who will go to work and if those members in a lawful ballot don’t want to cross that picket line they can be dismissed individually and the union can be fined.

"We will have to see what the law says but it is not as described."

08:44 AM
Mick Lynch: Government's anti-strike laws will make industrial action 'worse'

Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the RMT, said the Government's anti-strike laws will "make a bad situation even worse" and likely force unions to take other action.

He told BBC Breakfast: "I don’t think it would be implausible, it will make strikes and industrial action completely entrenched.

"It will make them worse. We will have to resort to work to rule, we will have to resort to long term overtime bans, partial strikes that will mean that disputes will become intractable probably and it may have completely the opposite effect that this Government is saying.

"We have got colleagues from France today and they are saying that the legislation in France is not as described, the way that Mr Shapps is describing it, and in fact it has never been enforced and it is the union that sets the minimum service that they want to provide.

"They need to think again about this before they make a bad situation even worse."

08:57 AM
Union boss: Anti-strike laws 'could be completely illegal under the Human Rights Act'

Mick Lynch suggested parts of the Government's new anti-strike laws "could be completely illegal under the Human Rights Act".

The general secretary of the RMT said: "We will have to see what it says. The devil will be in the detail. They are saying it will affect every public service, they are going to target the railways it seems at the first level.

"But I think it will mean that many of our members will not have the right to strike because if you are operating a signalling system you have got to operate the whole system so they will say you have to go to work.

"Now we will have to see if that is compliant with international law. We don’t think it is. We have got QCs’ opinion that tells us that much of what they have got in mind could be completely illegal under the Human Rights Act and under the international labour convention.

"It is up to them what they put into their drafts and we will have to see what we can do about it when it comes forward."

09:07 AM
Curbing strikes will 'make the British people less free'

New anti-strike laws will make the British people "less free", according to Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the RMT union.

Told that the Government's proposals will make his life harder, Mr Lynch told BBC Breakfast: "Well, that is what it is designed to do but it will also make the British people less free.

"It is really important in a democratic society that we have free trade unions that can represent working people and represent the biggest democratic force in this country."

He added: "If they have their rights suppressed, all of us have our rights oppressed. What this is a symbol of is the Government losing the argument."

When are teachers striking in Scotland and why?

Steph Brawn
Fri, 6 January 2023 

Members of the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association (SSTA) held strikes in December and will do so again next week (Image: RADAR)

TEACHERS are set to go on strike in Scotland from next week with three unions engaging in industrial action over pay.

Here’s a guide to everything you need to know about why and when they are happening.
When are the strikes?


Primary school teachers who are members of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) will stage a walkout on Tuesday, January 10.

Secondary school teachers from that union will then follow the next day alongside those from NASUWT and Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA).

READ MORE: Keir Starmer 'inspired' by Nicola Sturgeon, Douglas Ross claims

The EIS has also organised a separate 16 consecutive days of strike action from Monday, January 16.

The dates and locations for these are:

Monday, January 16 – Glasgow and East Lothian

Tuesday, January 17 – Perth and Kinross and North Ayrshire

Wednesday, January 18 – Orkney and Fife

Thursday, January 19 – Moray and North Lanarkshire

Friday, January 20 – Angus and East Dunbartonshire

Monday, January 23 – East Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway

Tuesday, January 24 – Stirling and East Renfrewshire

Wednesday, January 25 – South Ayrshire and Edinburgh

Thursday, January 26 – Midlothian and West Dunbartonshire

Friday, January 27 – Renfrewshire and Falkirk

Monday, January 30 – Aberdeenshire and Scottish Borders

Tuesday, January 31 – Highlands and West Lothian

Wednesday, February 1 – Clackmannanshire and Aberdeen

Thursday, February 2 – Dundee and Argyll and Bute

Friday, February 3 – South Lanarkshire and the Western Isles

Monday, February 6 – Inverclyde and Shetland

What do the unions want?

The unions are calling for a pay increase of 10% and have rejected the current deal on the table which would see most staff in classrooms receive a 5% pay rise. The lowest-earning teachers would get a 6.85% increase.

Talks are taking place on Friday between unions and the government, as further and higher education minister Jamie Hepburn insisted the pay rise offered to teachers was “very fair”.

Hepburn said combined with other pay rises it would mean salaries for “most teachers” have increased by 21.8% since 2018.

Asked directly by BBC Radio Scotland on Friday if teachers would be offered more money, the minister said a “very fair and affordable offer” had been made.
Could the strikes spread across the UK?

Teachers are voting on whether to take industrial action in other parts of the UK, with an NASUWT ballot closing on Monday for staff in schools and sixth form colleges across England, Scotland and Wales.

The NAHT union, which represents head teachers and other school leaders in England and Wales, has a ballot closing next Wednesday, while the National Education Union is balloting members until next Friday.

READ MORE: Susie McCabe: 'We no longer live in a functioning British democracy'

Teachers’ pay offer is ‘very fair’, minister insists ahead of more talks

Katrine Bussey, PA Scotland Political Editor
Fri, 6 January 2023


A Scottish Government minister has refused to say if more cash could be found for teachers in a bid to prevent further strikes – which have already closed schools across the country.

Talks are taking place on Friday between unions and the government, as further and higher education minister Jamie Hepburn insisted the pay rise offered to teachers was “very fair”.

The deal on the table would see most most staff in classrooms receive a 5% pay rise, although the lowest-earning teachers would get a 6.85% increase.

And Mr Hepburn said combined with other pay rises it would mean salaries for “most teachers” have increased by 21.8% since since 2018.

Teachers, however, have rejected the offer, with unions pressing for a 10% rise.

With members of the EIS, NASUWT and SSTA trade unions all due to strike next week – affecting primary schools on January 10 and then secondary schools on January 11 – Mr Hepburn was pressed on whether more cash could be found.

Asked directly if teachers would be offered more money, the minister said a “very fair and affordable offer” had been made.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, he stressed rising inflation meant the Scottish Government budget was now worth less than when it was set, adding that the requirement on ministers to ensure a balanced budget meant that “we don’t have fiscal latitude”.

Speaking about the proposal made to teachers, Mr Hepburn stated: “If you actually look at what we have offered, it is 6.85% uplift for the lowest paid teachers, 5% for most and £3,000 for those earning £60,000 or more.

“That would representative a 21.8% cumulative pay increase for most teachers since 2018.

Asked if this was the final offer, Mr Hepburn stated: “Discussions will continue, but this is a fair and fundamentally an affordable offer and it would ensure that teachers in Scotland remain by some measure the best paid teaching staff in the UK.

“We want to make sure we have that edge for teachers in Scotland and the offer we have got on the table would ensure that.”

HE WILL OUT TORY THE TORIES
SIR Starmer may lack Blair’s charisma, but he may well change Britain more than New Labour ever did

Andy Beckett

THE GUARDIAN
Thu, 5 January 2023 


Britain seems in a strange mood as 2023 blearily begins. One of the worst periods of peacetime crisis in our modern history grinds on. Frighteningly, it is spreading into more and more areas of life that we’re used to thinking the state and business have largely under control. One of the world’s richest countries, even after the economic calamities of Tory rule, has in many ways become dysfunctional.

Yet the response from voters seems complex and relatively muted. There is fear – please don’t let me need a hospital – and frustration at how the stoppages and shortages are dragging on. There is disbelief at the country’s accelerating deterioration; but also fatalism, a feeling that Britain was due a fall after years of cost-cutting, complacency and overindulgence. There is exhaustion at the sheer length of the disruption; and scepticism about the ability of any politician to end it. But there is less overt anger than might reasonably be expected. Unlike the early 1980s, or the early 2010s – like now, both times when Tory policies were doing immense social damage – Britain is not rioting. At least, not yet.

Voters have deserted the Conservative party in the opinion polls, it is true. Support is between a third and a half lower than it was at the last election. But while this fall has produced a big lead for Labour, beneath the surface shift the polls suggest there is still a lot of flux and confusion. When YouGov asked people last month who would be the best prime minister, 39% said they were not sure, 25% said Rishi Sunak, and only 32% said Keir Starmer, despite his increasingly confident tenure as Labour leader.

With possibly two years still to go until the next election – a long time in our eventful politics – a Labour government, let alone one that solves some of the country’s problems, remains quite abstract and distant for many voters. They sense that the Tories are on their way out, but they also appreciate that before that finally happens the current crisis may well get worse. A small but growing sense of anticipation about more competent and principled government under Starmer coexists with larger fears about the present and the immediate future.

How might Labour – or perhaps less foreseen political forces – navigate this hugely unsettled period? Given the breadth and depth of the current crisis, and the long accumulation of its causes, at least some of the turmoil may well continue past the election and deep into the next government. If any politician can produce some appealing and effective solutions to Britain’s suddenly sharp decline, they could be in power for a long time. This may be why, in a speech on Thursday trailed as promising “a decade of national renewal”, Starmer said Labour would introduce “a completely new way of governing”.

There can also be more cynical responses to national crises. Recently, Boris Johnson has begun to drop heavy hints that he could act as a national saviour. In a new year message delivered in his most drawling, charming mode, he said he was “confident that things will get better” for Britain in 2023, “lengthening our lead as the best place on Earth”. It’s easy to find this optimism absurd and offensive, coming from the person responsible for so many of our current disasters. Yet Johnson has made a career out of enough people believing his promises. Unless Sunak’s low-key and disengaged premiership wakes up, it would be foolish to rule out an attempted Johnson comeback.

But the anti-crisis politicians with most potential may be outside their party, given how associated the Tories are with the chaotic status quo. The relentless Nigel Farage, the increasingly popular rightwing populists of Reform UK, or perhaps some new, millionaire-backed reactionary movement: all could use Britain’s ongoing emergencies to their advantage. In the mid-70s, an economic crisis less severe in its social effects than today’s produced a toxic flowering of new far-right groups, until Margaret Thatcher’s radicalisation of the Tories took these groups’ members and impetus away. Given that much of our media is even more rightwing and at least as panicky about the state of the country as it was in the 70s, a would-be messiah from the fringes of the right might find plenty of backers.

Starmer lacks messianic qualities. Unlike Tony Blair at the equivalent stage of his Labour leadership, in the mid-90s, Starmer can’t use personal charisma to suggest that a government led by him would be fresh and dynamic. Nor does Starmer have Blair’s advantage of only having to devise solutions for a relatively contained national crisis. In the mid-90s, public services were struggling after years of Tory underfunding, but the economy was growing and many voters were feeling quite upbeat, ready to believe Labour when it said that “things can only get better”.

The public mood is different now. And while the Blair era is clearly an influence on Starmer – from his use of Gordon Brown and David Blunkett as advisers to his shadow ministers’ revival of Blairite strategies such as being “tough on crime” and “reforming” public services – Starmer’s policy proposals and rhetoric increasingly suggest that he would go further than New Labour in trying to change the country. He feels he has no choice. As he summed up today’s Britain at the last Labour conference: “We can’t go on like this.”

He still has a careful, hair-shirt side as a politician, warning almost with relish that a Starmer government would have to “make very difficult choices”. But the state of the country is simultaneously forcing him to be more expansive. This expansiveness is not just about winning the election. If a Starmer administration produces policies that are too small for the scale of the crisis – what he calls “sticking plaster politics” – his carefully acquired reputation for competence won’t last long.

It’s also possible that he is finding being bolder quite exciting – more so than the miserably tentative “constructive opposition” of his leadership’s first phase. That a typically cautious Labour leader could end up being a conduit for public dissatisfaction with the country the Tories have created, and an architect of whatever replaces it, still feels quite an unlikely outcome. But we live in strange times.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

NATIONS NOT RESERVATIONS

Montana lawmaker wants to revisit idea of reservations

Republican Sen. Keith Regier is proposing asking Congress to study alternatives to reservations. 

 Montana Democratic Rep. Shane Morigeau, of Missoula, speaks on the floor of the state House during a legislative session on March 27, 2019, in Helena, Mont. Morigeau, now a state senator, is pushing back against a proposed legislative referendum that seeks to ask Congress to revisit the idea of Native American reservations. The draft of the bill became available on Jan. 2, 2023. 

(Thom Bridge/Independent Record via AP, File)

AMY BETH HANSON
Fri, January 6, 2023 

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A white state lawmaker in Montana is questioning whether land set aside long ago for Native Americans should exist anymore.

Republican Sen. Keith Regier is proposing asking Congress to study alternatives to reservations. The measure, submitted this week and riddled with racial stereotypes, is unlikely to pass and would have no practical effect if it did. But it's causing tensions to surface at the Republican-controlled Montana Legislature that kicked off this week.

Native American lawmakers say they're now spending time responding to the proposed resolution rather than focusing on their own legislative priorities, including extending the state’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Task Force for another two years, creating a grant program to train community-based groups to search for missing people and encouraging the state to determine the economic impact of reservations on the state’s economy.

“I hate spending energy and time on this kind of stuff because I feel like it sidetracks us,” state Sen. Shane Morigeau, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said Thursday. “But at the same time, it clearly signals to me that we have a lot of educational work to do in this state.”

WHO PROPOSED THE RESOLUTION?

Regier said the language in the resolution was written by Mark Agather, a retired businessman who is involved in conservative politics in Kalispell near the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana.

Reiger has submitted the draft to legislative staffers, but he did not respond to an email Friday asking if he would formally introduce it.

Agather didn't respond to inquiries from The Associated Press, including on whether he sought input from tribal members.

The draft resolution argues that reservations have “failed to positively enhance the lives and well-being” of Native Americans, led to substance abuse, domestic violence, welfare dependence, poverty and substandard education. It also argues tribal members who don't own land have the highest poverty rate and lowest life expectancy of any ethnic group in America.

It also argues reservations are “not in the best interests of either the Indians inside our borders or for our common Montana Citizens.”

Morigeau said that if legislators want to consider any alternative, it should be “giving the land back that was taken in the first place, not robbing the last bit of land and resources that we have.”

HOW DO NATIVE AMERICANS RESPOND?

Floyd Azure, chairman of the Fort Peck Tribe in northeastern Montana, said the draft resolution perpetuates racial stereotypes about life on the reservation when social ills, such as addiction, exist nationwide.

“Why exaggerate the reservations?" he said. He thinks some people “make themselves feel better” by attacking Native Americans.

Morigeau said the federal government over decades has failed to stamp out tribes, their culture and language through relocation programs and boarding schools. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is from Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, repeatedly has acknowledged the harm those policies that no longer exist caused and sought ways to address the trauma.

“I'm tired of hearing what other people think is best for us,” Morigeau said. “Consult and seek the advice of Indian people,” rather than imposing on tribes.

The solution to any social issues on reservations, including addiction or disproportionate rates of health problems, is not to diminish reservations, Morigueau said. “We should be building tribal sovereignty up."

WHAT ARE RESERVATIONS?

More than half — or 326 — of the 574 federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native villages in the U.S. have land set aside that's categorized as federal trust land. Often the land is referred to as a reservation, but also as rancherias in California and pueblos in New Mexico.

The largest reservation is the Navajo Nation, which spans 27,000 square miles (69,000 square-kilometers) into parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Other reservations are tiny.

All but one of Montana’s seven reservations were established prior to statehood.

Federal policies at various points in history sought to disestablish reservations and force Native Americans into cities. Today, more than 70% of Native Americans live off reservation.

Momentum has grown in recent years to restore land to Native American tribes. The Interior Department under Haaland also has opened the door for Alaska Native villages to seek trust land status.

RACIAL UNDERTONES

The resolution argues that Native American reservations were created based on race. The U.S. Constitution recognizes tribes as sovereign governments, which is a political classification.

The federal government set the boundaries for reservations under the auspices of lessening conflicts between Native Americans and white settlers.

The same race-based language used in Reiger's draft resolution has shown up elsewhere. Most notably, from critics of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act who have argued the law is unconstitutional because it violates the equal protection clause.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling this year in a case challenging the law, which gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings of Native children. Tribes fear widespread impacts if the court attempts to dismantle their status as political sovereigns.

The race-based language also appeared in a case challenging tribal gambling operations in Washington state.

PREVIOUS RACIAL TENSIONS AT THE MONTANA LEGISLATURE:

During the 2021 legislative session, Native American lawmakers saw discrimination and racism in legislative actions, such as tabling a bill to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day and threats to eliminate funding for a Native American language preservation program that was later restored.

The Republican-controlled Legislature also passed bills similar to earlier laws that had been declared unconstitutional after a judge found they made it more difficult for Native Americans to vote. And the state Senate removed a member of the Montana Human Rights Commission, leaving it without Native American representation for the first time in at least 16 years.

“Legislators, including the Indian Caucus, make every attempt to be civil. However, it’s hard when the Indian people are attacked over and over, day after day,” Democratic Sen. Susan Webber said at the time.

Republicans denied any legislation was discriminatory.

___

Associated Press reporter Felicia Fonseca contributed from Flagstaff, Arizona.

‘She has let go of the past’: dance eases the trauma for Peru’s Shining Path survivors

Dan Collyns in Mazamari
Thu, 5 January 2023 



With a hand on the shoulder of the woman in front of her, Yolanda Rivera Charete begins to sway gently. She sings “Tsame tsinane, ashintsitanakebe” (Come on women, let’s go forward with strength) in Asháninka, the language of her tribe.

Dressed in a kushma, a long clay-brown tunic, face patterned red from achiote seeds – the source of annatto colouring – Rivera Charete, 63, and 15 others, dance to remember and to show their missing loved ones what has been happening in their lives.

In this dance workshop for members of the Asháninka, Peru’s largest indigenous Amazon group, the moves celebrate resistance while lamenting those enslaved, murdered and “disappeared” by the communist guerrilla group Shining Path, which fought the Peruvian government during the 1980s and 90s.

“I feel now that I am forgetting what happened to me. I feel calm, there is not too much worry,” says Rivera Charete from a gym under a corrugated metal roof in the jungle town of Mazamari, 150 miles north-east of the capital, Lima.

Charete fled her community, Centro Tsovameni, with eight children in 1989 when Shining Path fighters tortured and murdered her cousin, Isaias Charete, the village leader. “We’ve all been damaged psychologically,” she says.

Mónica Silva, associate professor in performing arts at Peru’s Pontifical Catholic University in Lima, has been a choreographer on the Buenas Noticias (Good News) programme since October. She says the initiative, started by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), helps women connect with others who suffered during the insurgency and allows younger women to understand and support mothers and grandmothers.

“To touch and hold somebody, it’s not just about affection, it’s saying we are together,” says Silva.

“The young never lived the violence. This moment is the chance for the mum to talk about it. It’s not just about the dance, it’s about what happens in between the dancing.”

Eva Esteban, a psychologist with the ICRC, says : “Despite the disappearances, lives have gone on. What they want to do with this dance is to tell their loved ones the good news that has happened to them during the course of their life since they disappeared.

Nearly 70,000 people were killed in Peru between 1980 and 2000. Shining Path – Sendero Luminoso – was responsible for more than half of the deaths, according to Peru’s truth and reconciliation commission. Many Amazonians trapped between the insurgents and the Peruvian forces were forcibly recruited by the rebels and between 8,000 and 10,000 were violently displaced. About 50 communities disappeared and mass graves were discovered subsequently.

I didn’t live through what my mother did. But, thanks to this dance, I can see her relief. She has let go of the past

Hilda, daughter of Yolanda Rivera Charete

Before Rivera Charete began dancing, she says she felt “hard, because I was filled with the things that have happened”. But she adds: “Now, with this movement that they are teaching us, I feel looser.”

Her daughter Hilda, says: “I didn’t live through what my mother and older siblings did. But thanks to this dance, I can see her relief. She has let go of the past.”

Peals of laughter echo around the gym, as the women share a joke and rub each others’ backs. After three weeks of rehearsal, they are to perform publically in an amphitheatre in the town square.

The dances are full of movements such as slashing with a machete, casting a fishing line and weaving. “They are very in touch with movement, with nature, with the earth, with laughter,” says Silva. “They are not ashamed to have joy in the middle of the pain.”

Luzmila Chiricente, 68, is the oldest here. She was the leader of Cushiviani, an Asháninka community invaded by Shining Path in 1988. The rebels killed men, forcibly recruited boys and sexually abused girls. They kidnapped one of her five children, Juan, then 14. She never saw him again. Her eldest son, now 52, escaped by hiding in the rainforest.

“Sendero thought that by taking away my son they were going to shut me up, but I denounced them nationally and internationally,” she says. The grief remains, though.

“We can’t forget. There are some of us who have suffered a lot,” says Chiricente. When she is reminded of what happened, the past replays in her mind “like a movie”.

Chiricente is the founder of Peru’s first indigenous women’s organisation, Fremank (the Regional Federation of Indigenous Asháninka, Nomatsiguenga and Kakinte Women of the Central Jungle), and says it is vital that women support each other.

Related: ‘They attacked with machetes’: murder, mafias and illegal mining in Peru’s gold fields

“For the girls who don’t know what trauma is, the terror that happened to us, they will understand [now] so that it doesn’t happen again,” she says.

The Buenas Noticias programme began in 2019 among bereaved women in Ayacucho, the region that bore the brunt of the violence and where hundreds live without knowing what happened to their loved ones. It was adapted for the native Amazonians this year with the help of Lima theatre company La Plaza.

“Good things are also in their life – it is not all suffering,” says Esteban.

‘Tirailleurs’: France’s forgotten colonial soldiers step out of the shadows

Benjamin DODMAN
Thu, 5 January 2023 

© Bertrand Guay, AFP


The last surviving African soldiers who fought for colonial-era France will be able to live out their final days in their home countries following the French government's U-turn on their pension rights. The decision coincides with the cinema release of a film highlighting the untold sacrifices made by African “tirailleurs” on France’s battlefields during World War I.

In November 1998, just months after France’s multiracial football team lifted its first World Cup title, another legacy of the country’s colonial history passed away quietly in a faraway village north of Dakar, Senegal.

Abdoulaye Ndiaye, who died aged 104, was the last of the tirailleurs, the African riflemen who fought for their colonial masters in the trenches of northern France during World War I. He died just one day before France’s then-president, Jacques Chirac, was due to decorate him with the Legion of Honour in belated recognition of his services.


The failure to acknowledge Ndiaye’s sacrifice during his lifetime has stuck with French director Mathieu Vadepied ever since, inspiring a long-gestating project that has come to completion this week with the release in France and Senegal of his film “Tirailleurs” – whose English version is titled “Father & Soldier”.

“It felt like a symbol of France’s failure to recognise the tirailleurs and tell their story,” said the director following his film’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last year.


Read more on FRANCE 24 English

Read also:
Thiaroye 44: Investigating a colonial-era massacre in Senegal
France's forgotten African war heroes finally receive full pension rights
Hollande honours African role in France's WWI fight

Alex Jones lawyer suspended 6 months over records release


Norm Pattis, attorney for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, gives his opening statement in Jones' trial at Waterbury Superior Court, Tuesday morning, Sept. 13, 2022, in Waterbury, Conn. Pattis, on Thrusday, Jan. 5, 2023, has been suspended from practicing law in Connecticut for six months for improperly giving other Jones' attorneys in Texas confidential documents, including the medical records of relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

(H John Voorhees II/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool, File) 

DAVE COLLINS
Fri, January 6, 2023 at 8:52 AM MST·4 min read

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A lawyer for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been suspended from practicing law in Connecticut for six months for improperly giving Jones' other attorneys in Texas confidential documents, including the medical records of relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The ruling by Judge Barbara Bellis on Thursday afternoon came in the families' lawsuit against Jones for repeatedly calling the shooting a hoax on his Infowars show, which resulted in Jones being ordered to pay more than $1.4 billion in damages after a jury trial in Connecticut last year.

Bellis said New Haven-based lawyer Norm Pattis failed to safeguard the families' sensitive records in violation of her order that limited access to the documents to attorneys in the Connecticut case. She called his actions an “abject failure” and “inexcusable.”

“We cannot expect our system of justice or our attorneys to be perfect, but we can expect fundamental fairness and decency,” the judge wrote. “There was no fairness or decency in the treatment of the plaintiffs' most sensitive and personal information, and no excuse for the respondent's (Pattis') misconduct.”

Pattis said Friday in a text message that he plans to appeal the discipline and seek a stay of the punishment while he challenges it. Bellis scheduled a hearing on the stay request for Jan. 13.

“We’re looking forward to appellate review," he wrote in a subsequent email to The Associated Press.

During a hearing in August over possible discipline for the records release, Pattis invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions. In a court filing, he said there was no proof he violated any conduct rules and called the records release an “innocent mistake.”

A spokesperson for lawyers for the Sandy Hook families said they were not commenting on Pattis' suspension.

Pattis is currently representing one of several members of the Proud Boys extremist group charged criminally in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in a trial in Washington that is underway. It wasn't immediately clear how the suspension would affect the case. Pattis said he has notified the judge in Washington of the discipline.

Twenty first graders and six educators were killed in the shooting on Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut. Relatives of eight victims, as well as an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, sued Jones and his Austin, Texas-based company, Free Speech Systems, over the hoax claims, alleging defamation and infliction of emotional distress.

The plaintiffs testified during a monthlong trial about being threatened and harassed for years by people who deny the shooting happened. Strangers showed up at some of their homes and confronted some of them in public. People hurled abusive comments at them on social media and in emails. Some received death and rape threats.

The Sandy Hook families' lawyers gave Pattis nearly 400,000 pages of documents as part of discovery in the case, including about 4,000 pages that contained the plaintiffs' medical records. Bellis limited access of the records to lawyers in the Connecticut case.

In May of last year, Pattis' office sent an external hard drive containing the records to a bankruptcy lawyer for Jones and Free Speech Systems in Texas, Bellis' ruling said.

The bankruptcy lawyer, Kyung Lee, later gave the hard drive to lawyer Andino Reynal, a lawyer representing Jones and his company in a similar lawsuit over Jones' hoax claims filed in Texas by the parents of another child killed in the massacre. Reynal then sent the documents to the Sandy Hook families' lawyer in Texas.

The Texas case went to trial in the summer and resulted in Jones being ordered to pay the parents nearly $50 million in damages.

Bellis also is deciding whether Reynal should be suspended from practicing law in Connecticut, although he is based in Houston. In a court document, Reynal said he should not be disciplined, because a staff member at his firm sent the records to the Sandy Hook families' Texas lawyer by mistake.

Jones has said he plans to appeal both verdicts. Jones, personally, and Free Speech Systems are both currently seeking bankruptcy protection.