1984 hits top spot
George Orwell’s classic book about a dystopian tyranny topped Amazon’s best-sellers chart shortly after members of the Trump administration started saying things like “Alternative facts” and, “Sometimes we disagree with the facts”.
Health service bosses said that there would be no consultation on the controversial proposals which are known as Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs). England has been divided into 44 STP “footprints” and between them they must cut £22 billion by 2020.
The government, having created a crisis in social care, is now calling for increases in council taxes to make up the shortfall in cash. An investigation in the Observer in December found “that in England 58 percent of targets for improving care in people’s homes and local communities were missed”. This has also affected the NHS as people who should be cared for earlier end up at hospital instead.
Planet on the rocks
A report in December said sea ice levels have fallen to the lowest level since satellite records began in 1979. The scientists behind the annual Arctic Report Card have said the temperature is changing faster than their ability to understand and explain it! The report said: “Accustomed to advancing our scientific disciplines at what is often called a ‘glacial’ pace, we recognise that glaciers are not so slow anymore.”
National inaction
Ten thousand pounds was raised and sent along with car loads of donated clothes and essential items to refugees in Calais last month. The delegation was organised by Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) as part of its winter appeal. The group included a coach full of students from ten different campuses. The donations were given to the Care4Calais refugee support centre.
The French government has sought to play down the continuation of the refugee crisis since demolishing the camp and installing a Donald Trump-style wall.
The world we live in is turbulent. It is also polarised. Trump’s victory is a devastating signal of this.
The job of socialists is not to despair or commentate, but to look reality in the face and analyse it as a guide to action.
Fast food action in US
On 29 November tens of thousands of fast food employees, airport workers, childcare and home care providers, and university graduate students are set to hold the “largest, most disruptive protest” in the US so far. They are demanding a living wage of $15 an hour and the right to unionise.
The strikes and actions will take place in 340 cities across the US and will include civil disobedience at McDonald’s and 20 of the nation’s largest airports.
The acquittal at Sheffield Crown Court of ten Asian men accused of violent disorder is a victory for anti-fascists everywhere.
The men were arrested along with two others following their involvement in an anti-fascist protest in Rotherham in September 2015.
In the aftermath of the Rotherham child abuse scandal, the town had become a target for fascist groups, who were escorted by police in a series of provocative marches in the town.
A terrifying choice between two unpopular options confronts voters in the US this month.
When Barack Obama was elected in 2008 there were high hopes for what he could achieve. Eight years on the excitement was encapsulated in Bernie Sanders’ left wing challenge for the Democratic nomination.
The Polish government is terrified of women. Its efforts to introduce a total abortion ban have created a massive backlash with hundreds of thousands of people, mainly young women, demonstrating, taking days off and wearing black at school, college or work.
The draft law had proposed a prison term of up to five years for women who had an abortion.
