WE NEED DEMOCRACY IN THE WORKPLACE
Australia’s public servants reported hundreds of bullying allegations in recent months

Henry Belot
Sun, 9 April 2023 

Photograph: Lukas Coch/EPA

Hundreds of public servants have reported bullying, harassment and discrimination allegations since the end of the last financial year, as government departments strive to improve workplace safety.

The culture of government workplaces has come under renewed scrutiny since the Albanese government’s respect at work bill became law in November, requiring employers to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate harassment and discrimination.

In response to questions on notice from the Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie, the home affairs department revealed it received 77 formal complaints about workplace behaviour between July and February, with 29 considered to breach the Public Service Act.

The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) confirmed 10 allegations of “inappropriate behaviour” during the same eight-month period.

Related: Latest revelations of harassment at Australia’s Antarctic program raise hopes for change

“Of the 10 claims allegations internally reported, each were investigated and were found to have elements of merit. A number of these allegations remain being actively considered,” an APVMA spokesperson said.

The APVMA is the subject of an independent investigation after a Senate committee heard allegations that a senior public servant urinated on his colleagues.

In February, the agriculture minister Murray Watt said an interim report of a review into APVMA workplace culture contained “potential breaches of the public service code of conduct and other potential breaches of the law”.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade recorded 77 allegations of bullying, harassment and discriminatory behaviour during the same period, with three cases lodged with Comcare.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water reported 80 allegations of inappropriate behaviour, although many of these were lodged before the department was created by the Albanese government.

The finance department recorded 15 allegations, with three cases found to have merit, resulting in formal warnings being issued to staff. Another three cases are still being investigated.

An investigation into the culture of the Australian Antarctic Division, released last week, found 41% of about 3,000 staff interviewed saying they had experienced bullying in the past 12 months.

The volume of allegations suggest that bullying, harassment and discrimination remain challenges for the government workforce. In the 2021/22 financial year, 627 formal complaints were made across the public service.

Indigenous public servants report high rates of harassment

A separate survey of public servants revealed that one in six Indigenous employees believed they were subject to harassment and bullying in 2022. One in five believed they were discriminated against, according to the report by the Australian Public Service Commission.

The APSC survey confirms that while rates of cultural and linguistic diversity within the public service broadly reflect the Australian community, there is a lack of representation at higher levels of decision making.

There were 159,469 people employed by the Australian public service on 30 June, with 3.5% identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

In a statement provided to the Senate, an APSC spokesperson said the bureaucracy was committed to reducing racism and was developing new initiatives including a “cultural capability hub” to increase awareness.

The spokesperson said the hub will provide “the skills, knowledge and practices that employees need to perform their duties in a culturally informed way. This includes working towards eliminating racism through their own actions”.

“This is anticipated to be launched in mid-2023 and is being developed in partnership with the Apsc, the department of defence and the national Indigenous Australians agency.”

UK

People power protest stops trees from being felled

John Baker
Sun, 9 April 2023 

Angry residents in Drynham Lane protested about the Category A Ash bat protected trees being cut down. Maria Melillo,(seated) with Rosanna Melillo, and Emma and Tony Taylor. Photo: Trevor Porter 69738-1 (Image: Trevor Porter)

WILTSHIRE

A ’people power’ protest has stopped contractors from felling trees in a Trowbridge lane close to where a massive new housing estate could be built.

Complaints by residents and councillors prevented workers from felling six Ash trees in Drynham Lane affected by the deadly dieback disease.

Locals and councillors claim that felling the trees could directly influence a Redrow Homes’ planning application for 247 new homes at Elm Grove Farm.

The trees form part of a ‘bat corridor’ which, under the current Trowbridge Bat Migration Strategy, is proving to be a major obstacle that could block future housing development.

Wiltshire Times: The angry residents managed to stop this tree in Drynham Lane from being felled. Photo: Trevor Porter 69738-4

Local resident Giuseppe Melillo said: “These trees are Category 1 Bat roosting, as identified in the Trowbridge Bat Mitigation Strategy and the developer’s application for Elm Grove.

“Bats can continue to live in dead trees. I would suggest they are just made safe, if they pose a threat at all to the public.

“Under the circumstances can I ask someone stops all work immediately until an ecology assessment has been done.

“The hedges forms a commuting corridor to the trees and beyond. I cannot believe one has already been chopped down before any type of consultation.”

Trowbridge mayor Cllr Graham Hill said: “I was contacted by a resident, mainly because I stood up to the developers in a meeting and made a major issue of the Trowbridge Bat Mitigation Strategy.

“Part of the argument was the preservation of the bat corridors. These trees are a part of one of those corridors.

“They are an impediment to the developer maxing out housing density and also access so the timing is very odd.

“Trowbridge Town Council should be a consultee in works such as this and have not been alerted, and the work order was eventually tracked down to Sustainable Highways, which is a very unusual route.

“I was in a meeting at The Civic at the time that I was contacted, so went in to County and made a nuisance of myself until I got to speak to an officer.

“I was able to tell them that this was in breach of policy and may well even be illegal.

“Oddly, the work ceased straight away and, to the best of my knowledge, has not resumed.”

Wiltshire Times: Limbs from a tree that was cut down showed no signs of decay. Photo: Trevor Porter 69738-5

Local Drynham ward councillor Antonio Piazza accused Wiltshire Council of “violating” its own planning policy by allowing the work to go ahead.

He called on the council to cease the work until an investigation and consultation with residents has taken place, saying neither he nor Trowbridge Town Council had been informed about the works.

Cllr Piazza said: “I understand that officers are citing this as emergency tree works, most likely due to the ash dieback (to prevent disease and ensure safety) and residents are disputing this.

“I am unsure if officers are aware of the controversial Elm Grove Farm reserved matters planning application that is currently active at Wiltshire Council, receiving responses from consultees before facing a final vote.

“Removal of these trees, due to their association with creating the bat corridor, could potentially directly impact the decision.

“It also questions the legitimacy of several large site applications around Trowbridge, as what is the point in having a planning policy if Wiltshire Council are then going to violate it - especially when it is their own policy.

“I cannot see how the Elm Grove Farm application, and numerous other applications around Trowbridge, can go ahead when it is in direct conflict to the policy.

“However, if the trees are felled then this could directly impact the use of the policy and the final application result.”

Workers attack ‘incompetence’ as 1,000 migrants reach UK in small boats in a week

Kayla Russell

April 11, 2023

The opposition Labor Party has accused the UK government of “incompetence” and claimed its new policy aimed at stopping small boat crossings of the English Channel is not working, after official data showed that more than a fifth of all illegal crossings in the UK are made this year in the UK last week.

A month after ministers promised that some of the measures in the new law on illegal migration would come into force immediately and act as a deterrent, in the seven days to 9 in 2023.

The bill now going through Parliament would bar almost anyone arriving in the UK by small boat or other illegal route from applying for asylum and refugee protection in the UK. It obliges the government to take them out of the UK to a ‘safe’ third country in almost all circumstances. Britain has reached an agreement with Rwanda to house migrants.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made stopping illegal small boat migration one of his five priorities for the year.

Official data showed that 1,057 people were spotted crossing the Channel in small boats from France last week, bringing the total for the year to 4,850. No daily figures are available for 2022, but on a quarterly basis the 3,793 arrivals recorded in the first three months of 2023 are 16 percent fewer than in the same period last year.

Referring to the Government’s estimates of the cost of putting people up in hotels while their asylum claims are being processed, Shadow Immigration Secretary Stephen Kinnock said: “Nothing they do works and their incompetence is costing taxpayers £6million a day in emergency hotels.”

Kinnock said Labor would tackle the problem of illegal migration by reaching an agreement to return to the EU migrants who had passed through safe European countries en route to the UK. The UK had such an agreement under the Dublin Regulation when it was a member of the EU but lost it after Brexit.

A record 45,755 people were spotted secretly arriving in the UK on small boats in 2022, more than 60 per cent more than the year before.

When asked about Kinnock’s comments, the UK government called the number of people making the crossing “unacceptable” and said it had placed an “unprecedented” strain on Britain’s asylum system.

“Our priority is to stop this illegal trade,” it said. “The Government has gone further by introducing legislation to ensure that anyone entering the UK illegally is arrested and promptly deported to their country of origin or a safe third country.”

A leading immigration lawyer, Colin Yeo, said the figures suggested the new measures were not having a deterrent effect.

“Whether those arriving since March 7 know they will never be granted asylum and that the [government] will be obliged to bring them to Rwanda is unclear,” Yeo said. “Anyway, it’s clearly not stopping her from coming.”

Migrant arrivals in Italy have more than tripled from last year. Why?

Giulia Carbonaro

EURONEWS
Mon, 10 April 2023 


Better weather and a crackdown on sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia might be the reasons why more people are embarking on the perilous journey through the Central Mediterranean.

The number of migrants arriving on Italy’s shores between January and March was more than three times what the country reported during the same period last year, according to a recent report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

According to the UN agency, some 26,800 migrants reached Italy by sea in the first three months of the year, compared to 6,400 in 2022. On Sunday alone, nearly 1,000 people landed on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, often considered Europe’s gate in the Mediterranean Sea. The day before, 679 migrants arrived on the island -- while 23 drowned before reaching its shores.

Lampedusa’s immigration centre, which has the capacity to host about 400 people according to the Italian news agency ANSA, was overwhelmed with more than 1,880 migrants at its facility over the Easter weekend.

It’s not the first time that the tiny Italian island, which at the height of the 2015 Mediterranean migrant crisis saw thousands of arrivals, finds itself stretched for capacity. But the uptick in the number of migrants landing on the island and the overcrowding of its facilities is still a challenge that Lampedusa -- and the Italian government -- is struggling to handle.

But why are more migrants embarking on the perilous journey through the Central Mediterranean to Italy now?

While it’s hard to find the exact reasons that lead hundreds of individuals to seek a better life in Europe every day, there are some key determining factors that might be contributing to the surge in migrant arrivals to Italy.

Malta orders ships not to help boat in distress with 400 people onboard

The elusive promise of 'control' is steering an ever more radical UK migration policy

Better weather conditions

One crucial factor is the weather, which was likely exploited by smugglers to organise departures from countries like Libya and Tunisia. According to the UNHCR report, some 58% of all sea arrivals to Italy between January and March came from Tunisia; followed by Libya with 38% of arrivals. Last year, 51% of migrant sea crossings departed from Libya; and 31% from Tunisia.

Since the beginning of the year, weather conditions have been ideal for crossing the Mediterranean, with higher-than-expected temperatures and calm winds blowing in the right direction encouraging migrant crossings from North Africa.

Frontex, Europe’s border agency, recognised these ideal weather conditions for migration in a report released in March, which stated that “the Central Mediterranean was the most active route in the first two months of this year with nearly 12,000 irregular border crossings, double the figure from a year ago.”

According to the agency, “in February, the number of detections on this route tripled from a year ago to 7,000.” The number of arrivals in the Central Mediterranean in January and February this year was up 118% from 2022 during the same period. Most migrants arrived from Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea and Pakistan.

Tunisia: Misleading and racist content goes viral on social media leading to attacks on migrants

An uncertain political situation

While in recent years most of all sea arrivals to Italy came from Libya, the fact that Tunisia has now taken over as the main point of origin for migrant journeys might be a tell-tale sign of the changing political and economic situation in the country.

“In the past Libya was the main country of departure that tells us that there is an influence of what is happening in Tunisia in terms of the economic crisis and the crackdown on sub-Saharan nationals,” UNHCR senior public information associate Federico Fossi told Anadolu earlier this month.

In February, Tunisia’s President Kais Saied attacked the many sub-Saharan nationals in the country, accusing them -- without any evidence -- of plotting “a criminal plan to change the composition of the demographic landscape in Tunisia” and weaken the country’s Arab Islamic identity.

Tunisia's President Kais Saied ordered officials to take "urgent measures" to tackle irregular migration. - FETHI BELAID/AFP

Talking during a national security council on the subject of migration, Saied claimed that the “hordes of illegal migrants” in the country were responsible for “violence, crime and unacceptable acts” in Tunisia. The tone of the Tunisian president’s attack against sub-Saharan migrants recalls the so-called “great replacement” theory promoted by right-wing extremists in Western countries like the US and France.

There are an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia, according to NGOs. Many, after arriving in Tunisia with the idea of working there, leave for Europe due to the poor economic situation in the North African country and the mistreatment suffered.

As racist and hate speech against sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia continues to rise, encouraged by the country’s president, more people are expected to leave the country for Europe’s shores.

UK

Teachers want Ofsted’s ‘reign of terror’ abolished, union says

Rebecca McCurdy
Mon, 10 April 2023 

Delegates of the NASUWT union have called for the abolition of Ofsted in its current form 

Pressure on the school inspections system in England continues to mount as teachers called for the end of Ofsted’s “reign of terror”.

A motion calling for Ofsted to be abolished was approved at the NASUWT’s annual conference in Glasgow on Monday.

It joins the National Education Union (NEU) in calling for an immediate freeze of inspections to allow for full mental health assessments to be conducted on teachers and school leaders.

Union delegates told the conference they lived and worked in “fear” of inspections which rate schools in England between outstanding and inadequate.

It comes following the death of Ruth Perry, headteacher at Caversham Primary School in Reading, who killed herself in January while awaiting an Ofsted report which downgraded her school from the highest rating to the lowest possible.

Gherie Wedeyesus, a teacher from Brent, said: ““It’s about time we said enough is enough. You cannot label a whole school including the leadership, educators and the pupils as one word – inadequate.

“Let’s put an end to this peddler of misery. Let’s end this reign of terror and abolish Ofsted.”

Meanwhile, proposer Martin Hudson from Newcastle-upon-Tyne said: “Ofsted is a scourge of the classroom and the destroyers of teachers.”

He added: “There’s a genuine and deep-seated fear of Ofsted amongst teachers and this is completely unacceptable.”

Julie Parkin, of the same branch, said school leaders and teachers were placed under “immeasurable pressure” as they prepared for inspections.

Members are expected to remain in school until ridiculous hours of that night before in order to ensure everything is in place

Julie Parkin

She said: “Members are expected to remain in school until ridiculous hours of that night before in order to ensure everything is in place.

“And that’s without the months of preparation beforehand. Even when those head teachers don’t have those requirements of staff.

“The members themselves are made to feel that they should be upholding their part in proceedings, feeling that they can’t be seen to be letting the side down.

“The fear of dropping grades to requires improvement or, worse, inadequate and special measures leads to an increasing workload.”

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) has also indicated that it could take legal action against Ofsted following its failure to pause inspections after Ms Perry’s death.

The motion carried by the NASUWT union acknowledged that the “perceived demands of Ofsted are the major contributor to the excessive workload and bureaucracy that blights the lives of teachers”.

It instructed the union’s national executive to work with other education unions to call for an immediate freeze and launch a campaign for the abolition of the inspections system in its “current form”, replacing it with a supportive framework.

Why a former army barracks is being transformed into Austria's first eco-village

Diego Giuliani
Mon, 10 April 2023

In this article:

A former army barracks in Austria is fast becoming the country's first eco-village according to its founders.

Cambium Leben in Gemeinschaft is located in the south-eastern part of the country and is one hour drive from the city of Graz.

It has 3,000 square metres of living space and 20 hectares of farmland and is already home to some 40 adults and 20 children from all over the world, who moved there to test new ways of living more sustainably.

Italian anthropologist Rafaela Walter Bachmann is one of the community’s cofounders and said the residents in 2019 leveraged more than €2 million euros to buy the premises thanks to a crowd investment.

We found this army barrack in 2015 and are currently building the first eco-village of the country. Step by step we are testing and structuring a whole set of sustainable solutions.

“It has been a long process,” she said.

“We found this army barrack in 2015 and are currently building the first eco-village in the country. Step by step we are testing and structuring a whole set of sustainable solutions.”

Supported by the European project Houseful, the key strategy is working together. One of the ways is a so-called “Bio-Meiler”, which uses wood compost made from the waste of the community carpentry.

Compost, Eco-Village, Austria - Euronews

“If we dig here a little bit, we can already feel that it is very warm,” resident Cosmo Atef said, while plunging his hands into the compost.

“Today we don’t see any steam rising, because it’s too hot, but the fermentation process generates heat, and thanks to a pipe system that we have inside the compost pile, we use it to heat the water.”

Once it is heated by the “Bio-Meiler” the water is then fed to the nearby greenhouse, where it is funneled into a “natural wall” by a serpentine of pipe systems.

Jan Barnick has been in charge of implementing the natural solutions adopted by the community for a long time. She said it's a very efficient way of using materials around them and nothing goes to waste.

This is no ordinary wall. It is made of straw, coal, sand, and clay, this wonderful material that we can find everywhere out here. Because of its composition, it stores heat, it stores water vapor, and it stores also carbon dioxide, which is held here and doesn’t get released into the atmosphere.

“This is no ordinary wall. It is made of straw, coal, sand, and clay, this wonderful material that we can find everywhere out here," she said.

"Because of its composition, it stores heat, it stores water vapor, and it stores also carbon dioxide, which is held here and doesn’t get released into the atmosphere.”

The greenhouse itself plays a key role in the circular management of the community’s waste and resources. Inside there is a so-called “green wall”, consisting of several degrading rows of pots, with different plant species.

Green house at Eco-Village, Austria - Euronews

Marco Hartl is an environmental engineer at alchemia-nova, the company in charge of managing the green wall.

“This is a nature-based solution,” he explained.

“The plants and the micro-organisms basically do the work for us and without the use of additional energy: they filter and purify the water, from the toilets, the washing machine, and the showers so that it can be reused.”

According to EU standards, once it is purified by the green wall, the water can be reused to irrigate the 1,000 square metres of the vegetable garden of the community.

Here we grow 70 different crops, from tomatoes and lettuce to beans, peas and pumpkins. With these vegetables we feed 60 people for about eight months a year. Last year, we harvested three tonnes of vegetables and it allows us to significantly save.

“Here we grow 70 different crops, from tomatoes and lettuce to beans, peas and pumpkins,” another resident Claudia Schnirch said.

“With these vegetables we feed 60 people for about eight months a year. Last year, we harvested three tonnes of vegetables and it allows us to significantly save.”

Vegetable garden at Eco-Village in Austria - Euronews

The vegetable garden is manured with “digestate”, a natural-liquid fertiliser, made as a by-product made from the community mini-bio gas plant, the first of its kind in Austria.

“This is the place where everything flows together: the nutrients from the bio-gas plant and from the compost, and the reclaimed water. But here it is also where we ‘close the circle’,” Schnirch said.

“After being eaten and flushed down, all these vegetables get back into the recycling process.”

India now home to 75% of world’s tiger population as numbers surge

Namita Singh
Sun, 9 April 2023 

This handout photograph taken on 9 April 2023 and released by the Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB) shows India’s prime minister Narendra Modi taking a jungle safari during his visit to the Bandipur and Mudumalai Tiger Reserves, in Karnataka state (PIB/AFP via Getty Images)

The tiger population in India has steadily grown to over 3,000 since the flagship conservation programme began five decades ago, showed the census data revealed by prime minister Narendra Modi on Sunday.

According to the official figures, the numbers grew from 2,967 in 2018 to 3,167 by the end of last year.

The data revealed that the tigers in the country almost doubled in the last 17 years. While in 2006, the tiger count was at 1,411, it jumped to 1,706 in 2010.

“The success of Project Tiger is a matter of pride not only for India but also for the world,” said Mr Modi, during the 50th anniversary of Project Tiger.

“Our country has not only conserved tigers but has also given them an ecosystem to flourish. India is a country which believes in the co-existence of economy and ecology. We are also the largest tiger range country in the world,” said the prime minister as he visited the Bandipur Tiger Reserve in the poll-bound southern Indian state of Karnataka.

With the current count of over 3,000, India is home to more than 75 per cent of the global tiger population and their number is increasing by 6 per cent per annum, according to government figures.

File: Tigers are visible at the Ranthambore National Park in Sawai Madhopur, India on 12 April 2015 (AP)

India first launched Project Tiger under then-prime minister Indira Gandhi on 1 April 1973 after a census of the big cats found India’s tigers were fast going extinct through habitat loss, unregulated sport hunting, increased poaching, and retaliatory killing by people.

While it initially covered nine tiger reserves spread over 18,278 sq km, India now has 53 reserves covering more than 75,000 sq km (approximately 2.4 per cent of the country’s geographical area).

Former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi kickstarted Project Tiger at Corbett National Park on 1 April 1973 (Twitter/Jairam_Ramesh)

It’s believed the tiger population was around 1,800 at the time, but experts widely consider that an overestimate due to imprecise counting methods in India until 2006.

“The huge success and the increase in number of tigers proved how much the country thrives for saving our wildlife,” said Mr Modi as he stressed on the significance of big cats in Hindu religious texts.

“There is a mention of tigers in our mythological scriptures and even on historical carvings. They have been an important species in the ecosystem.”

This handout photograph taken on 9 April 2023 and released by the Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB) shows India’s prime minister Narendra Modi taking photographs during his visit to the Bandipur and Mudumalai Tiger Reserves, in Karnataka state (PIB/AFP via Getty Images)

Tigers have disappeared in Bali and Java and China’s tigers are likely extinct in the wild. The Sunda Island tiger, the other sub-species, is only found in Sumatra. India’s project to safeguard them has been praised as a success by many.

"Project Tiger hardly has a parallel in the world since a scheme of this scale and magnitude has not been so successful elsewhere," said additional director general of forests SP Yadav, who is in charge of Project Tiger.

India's tiger population rises above 3,000

AFP
Sun, 9 April 2023


India's wild tiger population -- by far the largest in the world -- has risen above 3,000, according to a census released Sunday, boosting efforts to conserve the endangered species.

The largest of all cats, tigers once roamed throughout central, eastern and southern Asia.

But in the past 100 years the tiger has lost more than 93 per cent of its historic range and now only survives in scattered populations in 13 countries, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The Indian census estimated there were 3,167 tigers in the wild across the country, up from 2,967 reported in the last such exercise.

Surveys are conducted every four years, using camera traps and computer programs to individually identify each creature.

The rate of increase has slowed to less than seven percent over the period, down from more than 30 percent in the previous four years.

But Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the new figure was a "proud moment".

"Our family is expanding," he said at a ceremony in the southern city of Mysuru. "This is a matter of pride not not only for India but the entire world."

Deforestation, poaching and human encroachment on habitats have devastated tiger populations across Asia but Modi said India had been able to increase its numbers thanks to "people's participation" and the country's "culture of conservation".

India is now home to 75 percent of the global tiger population and also the "largest tiger range country in the world", he added.

In 1900, more than 100,000 tigers were estimated to roam the planet. But that fell to a record low of 3,200 in 2010.

That year, India and 12 other countries with tiger populations signed an agreement to double their big cat numbers by 2022.

India is believed to have had a tiger population of around 40,000 at the time of independence from Britain in 1947.

That fell over subsequent decades to about 3,700 in 2002 and an all-time low of 1,411 four years later, but numbers have since risen steadily.

Dipankar Ghose, director of the wildlife and habitats programme at the World Wide Fund for Nature-India told AFP the latest increase in tiger numbers was encouraging.

"On the other hand it also tells us that each of us now need to work harder to restore degraded habitats, ensure safe movement of tigers through corridors and promote coexistence," he added.

abh/slb/leg

UK

An imploding health service underpins junior doctors’ radicalisation

Denis Campbell

The Guardian
Sun, 9 April 2023 

Photograph: Graeme Robertson

A four-day strike this week by junior doctors in England will pit angry medics keen to secure a 35% pay rise against government ministers who scorn their demands.

The walkout from Tuesday morning to Saturday morning will be the most disruptive in the 75-year history of the NHS.

But the action will also show how radicalised doctors have become due not just to cuts in pay but also to the Covid-19 pandemic, to poor conditions and to the frustrations of working in a health service that is slowly imploding.

Their last campaign of industrial action, in 2015/16, over their contracts and the insistence by Jeremy Hunt, then health secretary, that they should work more at weekends, is also a big, though under-appreciated, factor in their thinking.

Unlike teachers, train drivers and other public-sector workers, doctors historically have rarely gone on strike. They have also always been among the best-paid staff on the state payroll.

However, a significant fall in real-term income since 2011 has helped energise a generation of junior doctors who have voted overwhelmingly – 98% on a 77% turnout in a ballot organised by the British Medical Association (BMA) – to strike until they achieve their goal. These 61,000 medics are the NHS workhorses and their refusal to work this week is likely to lead to about 250,000 appointments being cancelled.

Dr Joanna Sutton-Klein, a member of the BMA’s ruling council and a leading figure in the junior doctors’ campaign, recalls the “mood in hospitals of despondency and despair” after Covid, and how the struggles of the NHS last winter to provide safe, quick care to patients as A&Es and ambulance services became overwhelmed, confirmed it as “a really demoralising environment to work in”.

She said: “In recent months, as various staff groups in the hospital have begun to take back their pay, the sense of despair has been replaced with an atmosphere of hope and nervous excitement.”

By “take back their pay”, she means health unions’ campaigns for big pay uplifts, including the BMA’s claim that junior – or trainee – doctors deserve a 35% salary increase to make up for the 26.2% erosion in the real-terms value of their pay they have experienced since 2008/09.

Sutton-Klein says she and colleagues are “inspired by stories of big wins by other workers in unions … [such as] the junior barristers who won 15% through indefinite industrial action and the 28% rise that Luton airport workers won this year”.

The 2015/16 strikes are important in today’s dispute for two reasons. First, many junior doctors believed they lost, because the contract they loathed was ultimately imposed anyway, despite their year-long series of walkouts. They are determined to stop history repeating itself.

Second, that perception of failure “caused significant resentment and distrust” of BMA leaders within the rank and file. “Anecdotally,” says Sutton-Klein, “I’ve talked with many doctors who quit their BMA membership following the 2015/16 dispute in anger and didn’t rejoin until this year. The strategy around the current dispute is a response to the perceived strategic failures of 2015/16.”

That strategy involves the whole of the BMA’s leadership, including its committee representing consultants (senior hospital doctors), which backs the juniors 100%. Dr Philip Banfield, the BMA’s chair of council, is a staunch supporter of their cause.

The decision to take industrial action and the first walkout over three days last month has won the main doctors’ union many new recruits. The BMA says 17,000 doctors have joined its ranks since the start of the year, taking its membership to a record figure of 184,000.

The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and other newspapers have used the fact that Sutton-Klein, the BMA deputy chair, Dr Emma Runswick, and some other avowedly leftwing doctors are playing leading roles in the BMA and its junior doctors’ committee (JDC) as the basis for stories claiming that those “radical” medics have “hijacked” the union and “used ‘Marxist’ tactics” to get themselves and other pro-strike allies into key positions.

The news sites have highlighted the success of Doctors Vote, which Runswick helped set up, and Broad Left, in getting pro-strike campaigners elected to 59 of the 60 seats on the junior doctors’ committee, and then to 26 out of the 69 positions on the union’s full council, as proof that far-left “militants” were now calling the shots at the BMA.

This Sunday the health secretary, Steve Barclay, accused “militant” juniors of plotting “maximum disruption” for the NHS in the coming week.

A report published in January by the Policy Exchange thinktank into “the activists taking over the BMA”, written by Andrew Gilligan, a former journalist and adviser to Boris Johnson, provided much of the evidence for the government-friendly newspapers’ stories.

The truth is less dramatic. While some of the JDC’s members are left wing, others are not politically active or motivated in that way at all. And the 98% vote for strikes was junior doctors’ spontaneous, not orchestrated, response to deep frustration with their lot.

“The real story here is that we’ve successfully awoken tens of thousands of rank-and-file doctors to the fact their pay has been cut and persuaded them that they should join the campaign to win it back,” says Sutton-Klein.

Unions representing nurses and ambulance workers called off their strikes, moderated their initial demands, negotiated with Barclay and emerged with a potential deal which they have now put to their members.

By contrast, the JDC and health secretary are nowhere near that point and are engaged in an increasingly bitter war of claim and counter-claim. Resolution of the most debilitating strike ever to hit the NHS looks like a distant prospect and more strikes are inevitable.

UK

RED TORIES

Why Labour’s ‘law and order’ tribute act feels hollow and overblown


Nesrine Malik
Sudanese-born journalist and author
THE GUARDIAN

Sun, 9 April 2023 

We are squarely into the campaigning for May’s local elections across England, and the dominant feeling is of being part of a bizarre exercise in which you are constantly offered things you have not asked for. The disconnect between what Labour and the Conservatives are campaigning on and people’s real lives and needs – following an extended season of strikes and painful inflation – feels more pronounced than ever.

The Tories continue to bang on about small boats and transgender issues. It’s dispiriting, but expected. But what about Labour? If you are sick with anxiety about the rising cost of your essentials, your ability to pay bills at the end of the month, or a host of local concerns such as the closing of leisure facilities, declining town centres and public service infrastructure, most of what you have got so far from the official opposition is a blitz on restoring “law and order”.

The pledge to make “Britain’s streets safe”, one of the party’s five missions, has been amplified, but its details somehow remain both vague and oddly specific. Last month, it was laughing gas. The recreational use of nitrous oxide, the shadow culture secretary said, was a “blight on our communities”, causing “littering”, “disruption” and unspecified “antisocial behaviour challenges”. In this, the party was following the government’s lead in supporting a ban, posturing on a minor matter despite what the experts – who caution against a ban – say. Cannabis also featured in a recent Keir Starmer speech, in which he spoke of it ruining lives in his constituency.

The tone of this “tough on crime” messaging is off – hyperbolic, disciplinarian, and as of last week, it stinks. On Friday, the Labour party ran an ad on social media accusing Rishi Sunak, personally, of not thinking that adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison. It managed to draw condemnation from both the Tories and several Labour figures, for being tone deaf at best, or dog-whistling at worst, at a time when south Asians are accused of being culturally prone to grooming and child abuse.

Reports over the weekend suggest that members of the shadow cabinet, including the shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, were not consulted about the ad. It’s all symptomatic of a Labour leadership that in its stated intention to appear muscular is hitting all the wrong notes.

There are real problems, real concerns about violent crime in Britain, but Labour’s approach to them is often divorced from talking about the funding crisis that has engulfed our policing, legal systems and support services – in favour of rhetorical shows of force. Spending on youth services in England and Wales was cut by 70% in less than a decade, while after only three years of austerity, 28% of organisations dealing with sexual and domestic abuse had had essential services cut. These cuts are sometimes name-checked by Labour as reasons things are in chaos, but instead of pledging to plug the holes the Tories have punched, the party offers vague soundbites about “modernisation”, “raising standards” or proposing laws “with teeth”.

The better-defined pledges are to expand the police force and give it bigger mandates to deal with sexual assault. Considering how fresh the Casey review’s findings are – which spoke of institutional bigotry in the Metropolitan police – this is not only not reading the room, but shouting over it.

The justice system in England and Wales is so underfunded, and therefore understaffed, that there are not enough judges, defence lawyers and prosecutors to process a huge backlog of cases. In some instances, cases are not being seen through because the physical state of courts is so poor, with mould, overflowing sewage and leaking roofs. Labour says Sunak doesn’t believe in locking up child abusers because “under the Tories, 4,500 adults convicted of sexually assaulting children under 16 served no prison time”. Let’s leave to one side blaming someone who’s been prime minister for half a year for figures that date from 2010, and ask: what has actually happened to prosecutions?

For child sexual abuse, they fell by 45% in the second half of the last decade. Between 2010 and 2020, there was a 25% reduction in the Ministry of Justice’s budget and cuts to victim support services. The result is an overburdened system where justice feels like a distant prospect. The same goes for adult sexual assault, where delays prompt distressed victims to drop cases altogether.

This is supposed to be easy territory for Starmer. He is, after all, a creature of the law, who says he was profoundly shaped by his tenure as director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013. Law and order is both his comfort zone and his chance to give some clear outlines to a blurry self-image. “This is personal,” Starmer has said.

That’s nice for him, but is it wise? When it comes to talking tough on law and order, as with immigration, the Tories have no reservations about promising the most draconian measures, curbing the right to protest or strike, and regularly dangling red meat in front of voters. Chasing their lead only results in the sort of abject loss of principle that brings us tawdry attack ads, and in voters’ minds may only reinforce the rightwing worldview on justice and crime that the Tories excel in exploiting.

Related: Yvette Cooper was ‘not told’ about Labour’s Sunak attack ad in advance

The second issue here is Labour’s allergy to politics that in any way violates two sacred principles: that government must be frugal, and that wrong ’uns have no one to blame but themselves. Since it has stopped presenting itself as an anti-austerity party, Labour can only really focus on crime as an issue of goodies and baddies, rather than a complex social problem that has been worsened by underinvestment in deprived communities. At the heart of going along with the “lock ’em up” mentality – egged on by the rightwing press – is the fear of being depicted as a party whose natural tendencies are to spend public money and coddle criminals.

And so, again, we skirt around the real solutions to this country’s problems. The overall effect is to create in people’s minds the image of Britain as a criminal dystopia, where people are unable to go out at night and youths huddle ominously in parks and public areas getting high and menacing the public. That is a caricature. In the real world, people want to be safe but more urgently need job security, to earn enough money to eat and keep warm, and have places to gather and find some joy, relief and support in communion with others. Instead, they are offered more cops and crackdown. Because dignity is expensive, and fear is cheap.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Women in England and Wales ‘feel pressured to opt for medical abortions’

Rachel Hall
Mon, 10 April 2023 

Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Overstretched and underfunded abortion services in England and Wales are leaving women feeling pressured into opting for the cheaper at-home pill rather than a surgical procedure, according to research.

The proportion of medical abortions – using pills – rose from 47% in 2011 to 87% in 2021, while very few abortions are now administered surgically, finds research from the London School of Economics.

Katy Footman, the research’s author, said: “It’s a big problem in terms of the experience that patients will have of their abortions because although medical abortion is a great option and very safe and effective, there are a lot of reasons why a patient might prefer or need a surgical option.”

Medical abortions involve taking a drug that causes the lining of the womb to break down, resulting in pain and bleeding. This can make it hard to keep private for people who share their space with others. Others who may prefer surgical abortion include those traumatised by an earlier procedure or who have health reasons such as blood clotting problems.

In interviews for Footman’s research, women highlighted how the stress of having an abortion was exacerbated by feeling their choice was limited and that this was especially the case for women who lacked financial resources to travel or who were unable to advocate for themselves.

Clare Murphy, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the UK’s biggest provider of abortion services, said the “undervalued and underfunded” abortion sector was “under immense pressure” because providers were unable to increase capacity to meet the rise in demand for services because of trained clinicians.

Noting that one in three women would access abortion care in their lifetime, she said NHS England should “lead system-wide collaboration to establish abortion provision as a critical area of women’s healthcare”, and for the government to speed up publication of its sexual health strategy, which was due in 2022, to “ensure the long-term sustainability of safe, high-quality abortion services in this country”.

Louise McCudden, an advocacy and public affairs adviser at MSI Reproductive Choices UK, said the abortion provider had been calling for “more reasonable funding from commissioners for abortion services and for abortion to be made part of the standard healthcare training curriculum for years”.

The LSE research found that the competitive tendering introduced by the 2012 Health and Social Care Act had resulted in lower tariffs being paid to charities providing abortion services. This incentivises the charities to offer more medical abortions, as handing out pills takes up less space in the clinic than surgical procedures, which require a setup equivalent to a smear test.

“Because abortion is quite a stigmatised health service, there isn’t the same public accountability over the way the services are being financially squeezed. They don’t get the same public outcry when patients can’t get the access they need,” Footman said.

She said there were barriers relating to the “archaic laws” around abortion, including preventing nurses and midwives from providing surgical abortions – even though they could provide the exact same procedure for miscarriages – or requiring two doctors to sign off on an abortion.

To improve the situation, she suggested, “transparent and fair costing of abortion care” was needed. This may require separate commissioning processes for medical and surgical abortions, and stronger collaboration between charities and the NHS.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are committed to improving women’s access to reproductive health services and published the women’s health strategy for England in August 2022. The ambitions set out in the strategy include creating a system-wide approach to women’s reproductive health that supports individual choice and ensures better access to services through the creation and expansion of women’s health hubs.

“The wellbeing and safety of women accessing abortion services has been, and will continue to be, our first and foremost priority.”

Cathedral provost says UK Government is 'stoking culture war'

 “The UK Government is pitting itself against the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Lucy Garcia
Sun, 9 April 2023 

Kelvin Holdsworth referred to the UK Government bringing about a culture war in one of his sermons

THE Provost of St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow has sharply criticised UK Government policy in his Easter sermon.

In the sermon yesterday the Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth referred to the government as trying to bring about a culture war around the asylum system.

He said: “In recent weeks, in between stirring up negativity towards transgender people and promoting economic policies that make food banks multiply, the government has chosen to slip in a culture war around the asylum system, using those arriving in small boats as ammunition in that culture war. The policy of refusing to consider asylum for those arriving in such boats is reckless, heartless and lawless.

“This country has legal obligations to deal with such people fairly. Re-instating a form of transportation to the other side of the world is neither fair, proportionate nor just.”

Speaking before the service, the Provost said: “The UK Government is pitting itself against the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

“The rights defined in that declaration apply to everyone including those who arrive in small boats. Indeed they apply especially to the vulnerable and the fearful however they arrive in the UK.”

Referring to economic policy decision making, he said, “Some people in my congregation donate to food banks and some use food banks. Up and down the land, people know that it is government austerity economics that have led to massive increases in the need for food banks to feed the hungry.

“Every politician at every election needs to be asked what they will do to end the need for food banks in this country.”