Both Conservative and Labour administrations have now refused to release research showing PIP payments are vital for disabled people’s survival, exposing the ideological nature of planned welfare ‘reforms,’ writes Dr DYLAN MURPHY
Edinburgh International Festival — where do we go from here?
Festival board member ANN HENDERSON reports on the opening of a cultural behemoth determined to now embrace a more social role
Western media dismisses the National People’s Congress while ignoring its extensive consultation processes, massive public participation mechanisms, and a tiered structure involving millions of deputies, explains JENNY CLEGG
Despite caring for vulnerable children and often covering classes, support staff remain undervalued, with some earning less than supermarket workers — but GMB’s campaigning offers new hope, argues DONNA SPICER
NICK WRIGHT examines how Farage’s party has attracted five distinct voter tribes with incompatible views on economics, immigration and state intervention — presenting both a challenge and opportunity for left organising
Man-made canals like Panama and Suez face unprecedented challenges from extreme weather patterns and geopolitical tensions that reveal the fragility of our global trade networks, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
As climate change makes vast mineral deposits accessible, the island’s 56,000 residents face unprecedented pressure from Trump’s territorial ambitions while struggling to maintain their traditional way of life, writes JOHN GREEN
Student Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and threatened deportation are terrifying — but the moribund Democrats are still failing to mount any meaningful resistance against the slide toward autocracy, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
THE Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) opened last weekend, with fantastic performances and an energy which was very refreshing. In her first year as festival director, Nicola Benedetti has taken as her theme from Martin Luther King Junior’s last book Where do we go from Here: Chaos or Community?
The Hub, the building at the top of the Royal Mile by Edinburgh Castle, where the staff team is based and which was traditionally a festival hub, is open to the public, with a range of free (ticketed) events and evening performances. The opening night there, on Sunday August 6, brought some of those musicians together in warm and high-spirited performances, joined at various points by Benedetti.
Benedetti also played earlier that afternoon, with the Grit Orchestra, a unique ensemble which brings together leading jazz, folk and classical musicians, played in the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens for all to hear — in collaboration with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the performance was well received.
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Despite promises of a new era under state control, the SNP government backs massive cuts to ticket office hours while ignoring safety concerns and excluding disabled passengers from consultation, writes ANN HENDERSON
ANN HENDERSON, of RMT Scotland, reports from STUC women’s conference in Glasgow earlier this week where sisters gathered to highlight the issues facing women in the workforce
In light of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre being found to have constructively dismissed a worker who held that service users should be able to know the sex of the staff they were seeing, ANN HENDERSON argues that lessons need to be learned in order to uphold women’s rights
The 1967 Abortion Act always was regarded as a compromise — now is the time to further cement and improve the right to free, safe, legal abortions for all women, argues ANN HENDERSON
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