From Amazon’s monitored warehouse hell to delivery workers being paid per package, exploitative work destroys collaborative relationships young people need — more screen time and 12 new AI ‘friends’ will only make things worse, writes ALAN SIMPSON
The kids are coming - don’t say you weren’t warned
Last week's worldwide school strikes for action on climate change are a wake-up call for a system sleepwalking into ecological genocide, writes ALAN SIMPSON
Students from the Youth Strike 4 Climate movement during a climate change protest on Parliament Square in Westminster last Friday
The Tatar rebel argued that Western workers could be bought off, so instead a ‘colonial international’ must form a dictatorship over Europe and the US, ideas that led to his expulsion from the Bolsheviks and eventual execution, writes EDMUND GRIFFITHS
HEATHER WOOD reports back from another packed annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, where Palestinian flags flew high and solidarity with Birmingham’s striking refuse workers was central
Robinson successfully defended his school from closure, fought for the unification of the teaching unions, mentored future trade union leaders and transformed teaching at the Marx Memorial Library, writes JOHN FOSTER
A judge in a German court ruled that the ban activity imposed on renowned Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was unlawful, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR
OCCASIONALLY, just occasionally, there are weeks full of silver linings. The one that saw Britain’s first nationwide schools “climate” strikes was definitely one of them.
When Greta Thunberg began her lone climate protest outside the Swedish Parliament last August she was not to know that within six months there would be 70,000 pupils a week, across 270 towns and cities worldwide, who would be joining her. Their message was simple: “Wake up! There’s a climate emergency.” If you had followed the week’s debates in Britain’s Parliament you wouldn’t have guessed.
Politicians had been given plenty of notice that pupils would be walking out of lessons, demanding recognition of the looming climate crisis. But barely a mention of the climate protests emerged within Westminster.
It didn’t seem to matter whether Rome (or California, or South Australia) was burning, Brexit continued to fill the parliamentary corridors: 52 per cent of voters have become a binding obligation, whereas 98 per cent of climate scientists remain a matter of opinion. No wonder the kids are saying politicians are unfit to lead – because we aren’t. And as Thunberg bravely told world leaders, “When adults behave like children, children must step up and behave like adults.”
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