Andy Burnham plans to remove the automatic annual link between the state pension and earnings. The change would allow less generous increases, while workers are advised to make up for inadequate retirement provision by saving more. The employers who’ve profited…
Barclays has announced a reduction of around 5,000 jobs and a profit of £2.3bn for the three months to September. The profit is higher than it was a year ago. Nevertheless, it falls a little short of the forecasts, and…
Melanie Sloan, lead author of a study of more than 6,600 people with autoimmune conditions, asks doctors to say “I believe you” to patients whose symptoms they cannot see. We are still having to demand that medicine take a woman’s…
Nigel Farage has announced that a Reform UK government would immediately deport 90,000 asylum seekers and reject all new asylum claims for five years. The Guardian introduces these proposals with the warning that “Children and mothers would not be exempt”….
Many English councils have discovered a splendid economy: remove the parking machines, save the cost of maintaining them, and make the motorist pay a private company to collect the money. Where the app is compulsory, the company is spared even…
Thousands marched through central London on Saturday against three years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Britain’s part in sustaining it. Organisers put the turnout at 250,000. The demonstrators demanded an end to British arms supplies to Israel. For the…
Wes Streeting’s remark that mental health conditions were being “overdiagnosed” came during a discussion of disability benefit cuts. What a convenient explanation for cutting benefits! If the growth of distress can be attributed to an excess of diagnoses, the government…
Housing associations say they could build another 41,000 homes outside London over ten years, including 25,000 for social rent, if the government provided an additional £5.3 billion from its housing programme. Work on 15,000 of the homes could begin within…
“It’s working families.” Rosemary Ashworth, deputy chief executive of The Hygiene Bank, is describing the people who can no longer afford the products they need to keep clean. Among them are people who previously felt financially secure. Working families! The…
“Wear more clothes,” the Education Authority advises the staff and pupils of north of Ireland’s schools. Gas is dearer, electricity is dearer, and so the child must come to class more thickly wrapped. The authority has discovered a remarkably simple…
