Month: March 2024

UK News: Veteran campaigners across political spectrum believe broader redefinition could silence non-majority opinions

* Three ex-Tory home secretaries warn against politicising anti-extremism

Leading veterans of causes including LGBTQ+ rights and the anti-apartheid struggle, as well as conservative causes such as hunting, have criticised government plans to broaden the definition of extremism.

They include the Labour peer Peter Hain – who took direct action against white-only South African sports tours in the 1960s and 70s – and Tim Bonner, the Countryside Alliance chief executive and one of the organisers of the 2002 march for rural communities. Continue reading…
http://dlvr.it/T3wrRt

Exclusive: Remarks by Frank Hester, who has given £10m to the party in the past year, raise questions over his workplace behaviour

* No yawning or fingerprints on doors: the strict rules at Tory donor’s firm
* Frank Hester: computer programmer who made fortune from public sector contracts
* UK politics – latest updates

The Conservative party’s biggest donor told colleagues that looking at Diane Abbott makes you “want to hate all black women” and said the MP “should be shot”, the Guardian can reveal.

Frank Hester, who has given £10m to the Tories in the past year, said in the meeting that he did not hate all black women. But he said that seeing Abbott, who is Britain’s longest-serving black MP, on TV meant “you just want to hate all black women because she’s there”. Continue reading…
http://dlvr.it/T3wr0L

UK News: Shadow cabinet talk with Whitehall officials after Keir Starmer meets head of civil service

All members of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet are to meet top civil servants in Whitehall departments before Easter as Labour steps up preparations to form the next government, according to senior party sources.

The Observer has been told that Starmer recently held a first round of so-called “access talks” with the cabinet secretary Simon Case, the head of the civil service, at a “neutral venue” in London, to kick off an exchange of information between the official opposition and Whitehall in advance of a potential handover of power. Continue reading…
http://dlvr.it/T3tS92

Veteran campaigners across political spectrum believe broader redefinition could silence non-majority opinions

* Three ex-Tory home secretaries warn against politicising anti-extremism

Leading veterans of causes including LGBTQ+ rights and the anti-apartheid struggle, as well as conservative causes such as hunting, have criticised government plans to broaden the definition of extremism.

They include the Labour peer Peter Hain – who took direct action against white-only South African sports tours in the 1960s and 70s – and Tim Bonner, the Countryside Alliance chief executive and one of the organisers of the 2002 march for rural communities. Continue reading…
http://dlvr.it/T3tRv5

UK News: Campaigners say health service can’t provide care quickly because of underinvestment, which is allowing firms to ‘make a killing’

* Private healthcare could become ‘a new normal’ as NHS grows weaker
* ‘My GP suggested it’: Britons explain why they went private for surgery

Private hospitals are doing one in 10 of all planned NHS operations amid patients’ frustration at long delays for NHS care and political pressure to cut waiting times.

The new figures seen by the Guardian prompted campaigners to warn that the NHS is “allowing the private sector to make a killing” and is seeing more and more of its services “cannibalised” because years of underinvestment mean it can no longer provide care quickly. Continue reading…
http://dlvr.it/T3rgMs