A round of progressive news...

1.How Climate-Friendly is Liz Truss’s Cabinet?-Desmog

DeSmog has a piece analysing just how climate friendly Liz Truss’s cabinet is, after Jacob Rees-Mogg lifted the ban on fracking. The website highlights how Truss could also go ahead and break a campaign promise not to press ahead with drilling projects without local community consent.

The worst fears of climate campaigners have been realised, with reports that Truss will also not be attending the crucial COP27 climate conference in Egypt. Add to that a huge round of new licences for North Sea oil and gas extraction – and no further windfall taxes on energy companies making bumper profits – and it’s clear the former Shell manager has few qualms about going all-out for fossil fuels.

The piece does a brilliant job of going through the positions and past statements of the cabinet on climate change. The likes of Suella Braverman have vowed to “suspend the all-consuming desire to achieve Net Zero by 2050”, while Nadhim Zahawi’s links to the oil industry are set out in damning detail.

2. Government Refuses to Release Correspondence Sent to The Times Over Axed Carrie Johnson Story-Byline Times

You may remember that the Times dropped a story in June about Boris Johnson allegedly trying to recruit his now wife Carrie to a £100,000-a-year job when he was Foreign Secretary.

Johnson’s plan, it was reported, fell apart, allegedly, when three of his close advisors learned of the idea and threatened to resign.

The New European reported in the summer that “after initially choosing not to make any comment about the story when Walters had approached her office, Carrie had her aides barraging The Times’s legal department with threats when it was discovered the story had made it into the paper”.

Byline Times reports that the Cabinet Office has refused to release correspondence which would help determine what happened.

The paper reports: “Walters defended the story, after it was pulled, saying that he stood by it “100%” and that it had been confirmed by multiple sources. “I was in lengthy and detailed communication with Number 10 at a high level… and Mrs Johnson’s spokeswoman for up to 48 hours before the paper went to press. At no point did any of them offer an on-the-record denial of any element of the story,” he said.

“The pressure subsequently applied to The Times following publication is therefore intriguing. However, the Cabinet Office has refused to release this correspondence, after a Freedom of Information request by Byline Times.”

3. Revealed: New climate minister ran firm promoting gas guzzlers-openDemocracy

England’s new climate minister Graham Stuart owns a publishing company that specialised in promoting gas guzzlers, openDemocracy reveals.

The MP for Beverley and Holderness chairs and owns 80% of CSL Publishing Ltd, which produced magazines specialising in “marine and automotive brands,” including 4×4 Mart, which claimed to be the “UK’s top magazine for buying and selling 4x4s”.

openDemocracy reports: “The fashion for 4x4s and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) has done real damage to the climate, according to a recent report from the International Energy Agency.

“Since 2010, the total number of such vehicles being sold annually has gone from 11 million to 36 million. According to the same International Energy Agency report, this trend has wiped out any gains made by the introduction of battery-powered engines.”

4. Labour must stand with working people, and show solidarity with trade unionists-LabourList

Mick Whelan, the chair of Labour Unions, has written an opinion piece for LabourList, in which he urges the Labour Party to show solidarity with trade union members as the cost of living crisis deepens.

Highlighting the Labour Party’s proud history of nationalisation, Whelan writes: “Britain’s railways were nationalised in 1948 by Clement Attlee’s great reforming post-war Labour government, which brought the UK’s strategic heavy industries and our key public utilities into the public sector. Partly, because the private sector had failed. Partly, because the Labour government had to rebuild a shattered economy after the Second World War. And, partly, because they wanted to remake Britain as a better and fairer country that worked properly for everyone.”

Whelan also highlights how the link between trade unions and the Labour Party is crucial in getting the party into government.

5. University Workers Are Ready to Fight Like Never Before-Tribune

‘University bosses have spent the last decade attacking pay and pensions and stripping bare the conditions that once formed the basis of a career in higher education’, writes Jo Grady, the general secretary of the UCU, for Tribune.

It comes ahead of the biggest ever strike action in higher education by the UCU next week with college teachers left insulted with a 2.5% pay ‘offer’, amid a cost of living crisis.

Grady sets out how university staff have had enough of pay cuts ‘attacks on pensions, and the endemic precarious employment practices that have defined the past decade in higher education’.

The piece highlights how a historic shift is taking place in the higher education sector, with workers across the movement draw strength from one another’s fights.

The general secretary said: “Between them, vice chancellors take home £44 million in annual remuneration, with individual pay packets as high as £519,000. With staff at the start of their careers taking home £37,000 a year, and often less, it’s hard to avoid the sense that these bosses are quite consciously taking the proverbial.”

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

Comments are closed.