Last night I woke up to hear absolutely thundering rain, it went on for ages and ages. It was all over Britain I heard. Unfortunately it seems like it caused a landslide and that caused a train to derail and crash. “Only” three people were killed but man, what an incredibly sad and awful thing to happen. I’ve seen people on Twitter pointing out that if not for the pandemic and lockdown the train might have been full and the death toll much higher, which is… I honestly don’t know how to feel about that.
An MP has called for a “system change” after she was stopped by police while travelling in a car in east London.
Former shadow equalities minister Dawn Butler accused the Met Police of racial profiling after the stop on Sunday.
Labour MP Ms Butler told BBC Breakfast she had agreed to meet local police commanders to discuss “taking the bias out of the system”.
The Met said the stop was a mistake caused by an officer incorrectly entering the car’s registration number.
Ms Butler said it had been 20 years since the Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which described the Met Police as “institutionally racist”.
“It’s about time we changed the system so it works for everyone and it’s effective,” she said.
Something a bit good-er (the word ‘nicer’ doesn’t seem right) from my neck of the woods, in an attempt to counteract all the awful things going on today.
‘It’s taken so long – now it’s too late’: Grieving family slam DWP over mam’s benefits fight. Andrea Eastwood’s family said she was refused PIP while undergoing chemotherapy for leukaemia. A grieving family has slammed the Department of Work and Pensions for forcing their terminally ill mother to spend the last year and a half […]
Oh but the clapping! They all did a lot of clapping.
Right now, living in Britain with medically vulnerable family it feels like a big dark cloud is constantly over your head. It’s unfair and it’s fucked up and I can’t even imagine what it’s like for people who don’t have any sort of safety net.
“Mask Nazism.” What an unbelievably ignorant thing to say. Where do you even start with someone who believes being asked to wear a mask for the sake of other people is equivalent to oppression and genocide?
Shamima Begum is being allowed back into the UK to plead her case. Certain parts of the media are delighted that they get to froth at the mouth about it.
See, here’s the thing, I don’t like Shamima Begum. She sounds like a horrible person. But even if you think someone is shitty their human rights still apply, you know? You don’t take away their right to a fair trial.
You also don’t make them stateless. That may have indirectly led to the death of her baby and that’s what gets me most of all. People are saying “serves her right” and “those are the consequences of her actions” as if her child was only an extension of its mother and nothing else. The death couldn’t possibly serve a baby right because a newborn baby has done nothing wrong. A baby has done no actions for there to be consequences of. It really gets to me.
Perhaps the people saying that have flawless family trees, and are otherwise accepting of the idea that a child deserves to suffer for the crimes of its parents. But I imagine most of them would be horrified if you suggested that to them, and never once make the connection.
Anil had also been reluctant to speak, saying he feared for his family’s safety. But he agreed because he was so angered by the treatment of workers. While his wife looks after their two children, he has been working about 40 hours a week for £200, about £5 an hour.
There was no canteen, and rats and mice were visible on the factory floor, Anil claimed. There was no hand sanitiser until last week, and the single men’s toilet had no soap. “They have put us in danger,” he said. “If I feel sick, I make my family sick. I put them in danger too.”
Since the second lockdown began, though, the pattern in Leicester has shifted. If the North Evington area where many of the city’s factories are based was previously beset with risky working practices and almost no scrutiny, this week an abundance of attention has come just as many workshops went dark.
