Does widespread and uncontrolled use of AI change our relationship with scientific meaning? Or with each other? ask ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
The Tory war on the sick, disabled and chronically ill
Rishi Sunak’s ‘clampdown on sick-note culture’ reflects the sickness of the ‘elites’ and the capitalist system they run, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE MP
WHY AREN’T YOU AT WORK: Rishi Sunak prowls the wards of North Devon District Hospital, September 2023
The biggest strike in global history is a template for our future. The silence tells you all you need to know, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE
KEITH FLETT highlights the inimical role of the strategist who helped shape Tony Blair’s ascent and whose political blueprint continues to echo in the era of Keir Starmer
70 years on from Khruschev’s closed-door address to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s 20th Congress, Kenny Coyle talks to academic and writer RICHARD SAKWA about the significance of this political bombshell, in which Stalin’s ‘cult of personality,’ abuse of power and mass repressions were denounced
Small Prophets finds Mackenzie Crook conjuring tiny prophetic beings from working-class malaise, writes STEPHEN ARNELL
IT’S a shocking fact, not known nearly widely enough, that around half of disabled people claiming Employment and Support Allowance have attempted suicide at some point in their lives, and too many because of the government’s onerous work capability assessment (WCA) scheme.
The figure was 43 per cent seven years ago, according to NHS Digital’s Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, and, while no more up-to-date figures have since been published, the numbers will only have gone in the wrong direction as the government has pushed harder and harder to force claimants of out-of-work disability benefits into work.
What is known, however, according to information presented to the Commons work and pensions select committee in 2022, is that over just a three-year period before then, the WCA had been linked to 600 suicides.
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DYLAN MURPHY reports that far from helping people back into work, the sanctions regime is inflicting unnecessary trauma on working-class families
Labour will find increases in the state pension age are unacceptable, just as cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, personal independence payments and universal credit are — it needs to change direction immediately, writes PCS general secretary FRAN HEATHCOTE
While claiming to target fraud, Labour’s snooping Bill strips benefit recipients of privacy rights and presumption of innocence, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE, warning that algorithms with up to 25 per cent error rates could wrongfully investigate and harass millions of vulnerable people
A new report by Amnesty International pulls no punches in highlighting the Labour government’s human rights violations of those on benefits, says Dr DYLAN MURPHY