Working Too Long Is Killing You
Long working hours led to 745,000 deaths worldwide in 2016. As we emerge from the pandemic, we urgently need to reclaim our free time – but the only way to do it is through worker organising.
United Kingdom (UK)
United Kingdom: Animal Rights Group Blockades McDonalds
Environmental activits are blockading four McDonald's distribution centres in a bid to stop deliveries to the fast food giant’s restaurants across the country this weekend.
Animal Rebellion say that some 50 demonstrators have used trucks and bamboo towers to stop lorries leaving depots in Hemel Hempstead, Basingstoke, Coventry and Heywood in Greater Manchester.
They have poured fake animal blood over signage with some protesters dressed as the chain’s mascot, Ronald McDonald.
Demonstrators say they are targeting the chain because of its “role in the climate emergency" and are demanding McDonald’s – which has 1,300 restaurants across the UK – commits to being fully plant-based by 2025.
UK Threatens To Charge Palestine Action With Terrorism
Emily Arnott from the group Palestine Action told The Electronic Intifada that she found the suggestion “absolutely ridiculous.”
Arnott confirmed that members of London’s Metropolitan Police recently interviewed her in a Manchester police station. A Metropolitan Police officer “implied that what Palestine Action is doing could be considered [to be] terrorism and that we could be charged under terrorist offenses,” she said.
The interviewing officer said the amount of damage allegedly caused by Palestine Action “could possibly push it into the remit of alleged terrorist offenses, but they would not be considered terrorist offenses at that time,” Arnott explained.
Arnott has been charged with conspiracy to commit criminal damage against property belonging to Israel’s Elbit Systems in the UK and its property manager Jones Lang LaSalle.
Oxford University Has Pledged To Divest From Fossil Fuels
There are signs Oxford University is slowly “getting it” when it comes to climate change. Last year, it committed to selling its multimillion-pound investments in oil and gas companies, after years of student campaigning, and more recently it launched an ambitious Sustainability Strategy.
But a 12-month-long investigation we’ve just published shows how much deeper the ties between the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the industry run.
We knew departments in our university took money from fossil fuel companies, but we were shocked by the sheer scale: since 2015, Oxford has received over £8.2 million in research grants and £3.7 million in donations from the sector. And numerous academics hold positions within the industry at the same time as teaching and conducting research at the university.
The Right To Protest Wasn’t Given – It Was Won
United Kingdom - Over the last few weeks, the brutal policing of protests in Bristol has been profoundly disturbing. The right to peaceful assembly and protest are fundamental principles of any democracy, and the rich history of dissent in this country show us that they literally can change the course of history. Nobody knows this better than the people of Bristol, a city whose radicalism has seen it on the frontlines of change.
The Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 drew national attention to racism in public life, playing a key role in securing the enactment of subsequent race relations legislation that outlawed racial discrimination in public places, housing and employment. This radicalism has been with us in recent years, with last summer’s wave of Black Lives Matter protests seeing the removal of Bristol’s statue honouring the slave owner Edward Colston.
Thousands Take To The Streets Saying ‘Kill The Bill’
Thousands took part in a weekend of action against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The size and passion of the demos shows that people are willing to fight to stop this bill, which the Conservative government tried to sneak through under the cover of the coronavirus (Covid-19) health crisis.
50 demonstrations were called across the UK.
The proposed Police Bill is arguably the biggest attack on our freedoms since the Public Order Acts of the ‘80s and ‘90s. The controversial bill passed its second reading in parliament during March. The bill will give the police unprecedented draconian powers to arrest protesters, and will criminalise trespass, effectively outlawing the livelihoods of the UK’s Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities.
Why Is The United Kingdom Raising Its Nuclear Stockpile Limits?
On March 16, the United Kingdom announced it was significantly raising a self-imposed cap on its overall nuclear stockpile, from a previous target of 180 warheads by the mid-2020s to a new cap of 260. The decision was outlined in the United Kingdom’s Integrated Review, a landmark strategic update, which also said the country will no longer declare the size of its operational warhead stockpile (previously 120), or the numbers of warheads and operational missiles deployed on submarines (previously 40 and no more than 8, respectively). A previous review in 2015 had left open the possibility of a future change in nuclear posture, although the vaguely phrased caveat was not much noticed at the time.
Report: UK School Textbooks Altered To Favour Israel
The international publisher Pearson has paused further distribution of two textbooks used by UK high schools after a group of academics said in a report that they distorted the historical record and failed to offer pupils a balanced view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The report found that alterations had been made to text, timelines, maps and photographs, as well as to sample student essays and questions.
It concluded that "school children should not be supplied with propaganda under the guise of education" and called for their immediate withdrawal.
The textbook alterations were made last year after an intervention by the Board of Deputies of British Jews working together with UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).
Extinction Rebellion Sprays Bank Of England With ‘Oil’
City of London - Several people have been arrested as Extinction Rebellion’s ‘Fossil Fool’ protesters sprayed the Bank of England with fake oil to highlight the “societal collapse” the activist group say global financial institutions are driving the planet towards.
XR’s latest theatrical protest saw suit-clad activists descend on the heart of London’s financial district, demanding the Bank of England regulate the banks which continue to fund fossil fuel companies.
The biodegradable fake oil, a mixture of black pond dye and guar gum extracted from beans, was sprayed from fire extinguishers onto the grand entrance to the bank. A sign reading ‘No More Fossil Fools’ has since been removed.
UK’s Vaccine Rollout Is A Reminder That We Need Universal Healthcare
London - Dr. John Lister watched in horror as the United Kingdom’s Covid-19 mortality rate climbed above 1 per 1,000, one of the highest death rates in the world since the start of the pandemic. So, when the 71-year-old Briton was informed he would receive the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in late January, he could hardly contain himself.
“It was a great moment of excitement when I got the notification,” Lister tells In These Times.
Lister, a health policy expert and associate professor at Coventry University, was one of 15 million people in the United Kingdom to receive a Covid-19 vaccine before February 15, thanks to a vaccination program that has consistently ranked among the three fastest in the world.
Solidarity With Palestine Activists Being Prosecuted
On Wednesday, six activists from the Palestine Action campaign appeared at Highbury Magistrates Court charged with conspiracy to commit criminal damage and burglary, in connection with their actions at the London headquarters of Israeli arms company Elbit Systems last year.
Outside the court room around a dozen protesters representing various groups showed up in solidarity while inside, the judge committed the case to trial at Crown Court.
Elbit Systems has been the target for direct actions at various sites around the UK, but back in 2016, after their Shenstone factory was closed down by occupiers, the company decided not to appear in court at the last moment and the trial collapsed.
End US-UK Nuclear Collusion
On March 16, the United Kingdom announced (in its Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Foreign Policy and Development titled Global Britain in a Competitive Age) that it will increase the limit on its nuclear arsenal for the first time in decades. Instead of maintaining a cap of 180 warheads (as it had previously stated), the UK will increase its stockpile cap to 260 warheads – a 40% increase. The review also broadens the role of nuclear weapons to include the possible use of nuclear weapons to address emerging technologies (cyber attacks).
New Study: School Streets Improve Air Quality
London, UK - Closing the roads around schools to traffic at pick-up and drop-off times has reduced polluting nitrogen dioxide levels by up to 23 per cent and is strongly supported by parents, new research published by the Mayor Sadiq Khan reveals.
To measure the air quality benefits of the new School Streets, 30 cutting-edge sensors from the Breathe London network were installed at 18 primary schools across Brent, Enfield and Lambeth to record nitrogen dioxide levels. The air quality monitoring project, funded by FIA Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies, was launched in September 2020 to give the most accurate indication yet of how the School Streets scheme is working.
Since April 2020, almost 350 School Streets have been delivered across London with funding from Transport for London (TfL) and the boroughs to tackle children’s exposure to air pollution and improve their health.
Educators’ Safety Struggle Rekindles Collective Workplace Action
United Kingdom - Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously said that “a week is a long time in politics.” In early January, even a week was too long, as current Prime Minister Boris Johnson performed a dramatic 24-hour U-turn on the question of schools reopening after the Christmas break.
On Sunday, January 3, Johnson told journalists “there is no doubt in my mind that schools are safe,” part of a media campaign to get schools open and people back to work. But by the next day, he described those same schools as “vectors of transmission” for Covid. He included their closure in the nationwide lockdown, except for the children of key workers (the British term for essential workers) and those designated “vulnerable.”
What spurred this sudden conversion? Had Johnson finally seen sense and prioritized lives over the profits of corporations? Were the nearly 100,000 Covid deaths in the United Kingdom playing on his mind?
Health Care For Trans Youth Is Under Attack In The UK
Fourteen years ago, Susan Evans left her job as a psychiatric nurse at the UK’s Tavistock GIDS clinic (the Gender Identity Development Service for child and adolescent patients) where she’d been working between 2004 and 2007. Her reason for leaving, she said, was her discomfort with the clinic providing hormone replacement care to older trans teens. She thought the clinic should be providing psychotherapy rather than “affirming” trans youth.
Following the British government proposing reforms for the Gender Recognition Act in 2015, a wide range of new anti-trans organizations were formed targeting different areas of trans rights, health care, sex education and inclusion policies in schools. Within this growing interest in organizing against trans rights and health care, twelve years after she left the Tavistock clinic, Susan Evans connected with a parent (named in the case as Mrs. A) who claimed she was concerned that her child might one day be referred to the Tavistock for treatment.