This is a call to action to everyone campaigning for action on the climate crisis and a just transition:
Join a @RMTunion picket line tomorrow if you can. This is our fight and your solidarity is needed. #RailStrikes
This Govt’s attack on rail workers should be seen as part of a wider plan to suck money from the railways (euphemistically termed ‘modernisation’).
As well as attacking pay and conditions, it's part of a retreat from even the limited commitments made to net zero and at #COP26.
Our railways are a critical public service and key to fighting the climate crisis.
Amongst many actions, the Govt should be:
- Ending the failed privatisation experiment, and bringing railways into public ownership - strongly supported by the public
- Expanding investment
Creating a high quality, accessible, and safe railway system, that reaches & serves every part of our country, can only happen if we back the workers who make this service run.
They are simply asking to be paid fairly and to have good working conditions.
Sorry to @NorwichRMT that I can't join you on the picket line today. A number of factors (including no trains!) prevents me from being there. I did join the closest @RMTunion picket line to me to support striking workers, alongside @CWUnews members who were there in solidarity.
No rail workers wanted to strike; wanted disruption for the public they serve every day; wanted to lose pay.
@RMTunion members simply wanted a wage packet they can lived on and decent working conditions.
Ultimately, this Government wants to turn the public against rail workers.
This is why they tell the public you believe yourselves to be ‘special’, when the whole country is suffering. This is utter drivel with which I see two problems.
THREAD 1. Jo Biden & other western leaders are telling us we must prepare for ‘sacrifices’ in the fight against autocracy. It’s been a recurring theme throughout the conflict. I’d like to unpack this a little on.ft.com/37XLSUB
2. Putin’s kleptocratic government (it’s almost a textbook definition as opposed to being an autocracy) is both aggressive and dangerous. Standing up to it in the name of ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy’ is a very worthy ambition.
3. But how do you wield the ‘sword of democracy & liberty’ when you your own country Od either fast approaching ‘flawed democracy’ status’s (the UK ) or already judged to be a ‘flawed democracy’ (the US) ?en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy…
After today's #SpringStatement and the breathtaking failure to deal with the living standards crisis, many of my constituents and millions around our country will be not merely be forced to make a choice between eating and heating. They're going to be priced out of doing either.
THREAD
But this isn’t a crisis that started with today’s #springstatement Nor did it start with the invasion of Ukraine or the 2008 banking crash or the decade of austerity that followed. Instead, it started in 1979.
This is when the Thatcherite economic ‘revolution’ began. An political/economic system that has dominated for 50 years. One that even now dominates the limits of what our MSM will concede is possible.
In a healthy democracy Boris Johnson would by now be a former PM. The fact he's still in post - having lied to Parliament and the public last year - tells us we have a problem that goes beyond his personal qualities as a political leader, to the heart of our failing democracy.
We now know Boris Johnson and the No 10 operation either didn’t understand the lockdown rules they made, or they didn’t believe those rules applied to them.
Either of these possibilities means this PM should resign and his government fall. But they haven’t.
There has been scant empathy with the public, who largely complied with lockdown measures to protect their families and communities.
While much of the public acted in the collective interest of our country, the same can't be said of some who devised & imposed the lockdown rules.
It’s time to challenge the Tory’s false narrative that the NHS is on its knees because of the behaviour of individuals and supposedly unforseen 'emergencies'. They’re shifting the blame away from their own role in creating a public health crisis.
The NHS is there to provide universal healthcare, and the virus is with us for the foreseeable future.
The total NHS waiting list is now 5.9m & growing. This is symptomatic of the Tory's failure to build a resilient NHS that's adapted to our new reality. thelancet.com/journals/lance…
Sajid Javid blames the unvaccinated, who he says “must really think about the damage they are doing to society.”
What about the damage done by sick pay so low it can’t be lived on, and the absence of support for workers in Rishi Sunak's Omicron package?
First, there will be no free or universal care system for the elderly and disabled. The user will pay and their assets will be liquidated in the process.
Second, that general taxation will not rise, nor will it be used to force the richest to bear the biggest burden.