There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Universal credit – a hostile environment for women
Women are more likely to be single parents and carers, which is why the attacks on welfare under the universal credit policy have been an act of political misogyny, writes SELMA JAMES and SOLVEIG FRANCIS
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
THE FURY against universal credit (UC), imposing destitution and even death, is growing, even among Tory MPs.
While all claimants will be affected, women and children are its first targets and all on low incomes are undermined. As welfare is eroded, we cannot turn down even starvation wages. Bear in mind that UC rates are frozen until 2020, regardless of inflation.
UC combines income support, jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance, working tax credit, child tax credit and housing benefit, most often claimed by women who, especially when we have children and other dependents, have the lowest incomes and are the ones who do without to meet the survival needs of those we care for.
The £37 billion siphoned out of the welfare budget since 2010 was mainly stolen from women. Women, especially single mothers and disabled women, are austerity’s biggest losers.
UC cuts children’s benefit — money for the second child is £11 lower than for the first and there is no money for subsequent children, which is a loss of £232 a month per child, for no reason except state control of fertility for low income women. This especially hits communities with larger families, for example Asian and Irish.
There is one degrading exception to the third or subsequent children being deprived of subsistence. Mothers can try to convince jobcentre strangers that this child was conceived by rape.
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