SOLOMON HUGHES reveals how six MPs enjoyed £400-£600 hospitality at Ditchley Park for Google’s ‘AI parliamentary scheme’ — supposedly to develop ‘effective scrutiny’ of artificial intelligence, but actually funded by the increasingly unsavoury tech giant itself
15 questions for when this is over
The Covid-19 crisis has allowed us to see the world in new ways and demand a break with laissez-faire capitalism — but will we? asks NEIL FINDLAY MSP
The new temporary NHS Louisa Jordan Hospital at the SEC event centre, Glasgow
Caroline Darian, daughter of Gisele Pelicot, took part in a conversation with Afua Hirsch at London’s Royal Geographical Society. LYNNE WALSH reports
As the regime in Iran continues to face international pressure to reduce its nuclear programme, workers continue to struggle for wages they can live on despite harsh repression of trade unionists, reports JAMSHID AHMADI
JEAN SILVAN EVANS pays tribute to the social campaigner who sang the Welsh national anthem to Khrushchev in Moscow and became Rhondda’s communist mayor in 1979
As summer nears, TOM HARDY explains how unions are organising heat strikes and cool stations while calling for legal maximum workplace temperatures — because employers currently have no duty to protect workers from dangerous heat
European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde sees Trump’s many disruptions as an opportunity to challenge the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ — but greater Euro assertiveness will also mean greater warmongering and militarism, warns NICK WRIGHT
KEITH BARLOW examines the 1975 referendum that saw Britain vote to stay in the EEC, revealing how Tony Benn understood that EU free-market principles and capital movement rules would tie the hands of any government putting people’s interests before corporate profits
THE world has changed. We cannot return to what went before as if the coronavirus crisis was just a temporary blip in a world where capitalism, the exploitation of people and resources and the dog-eat-dog survival-of-the-fittest economics is accepted as the norm.
We have huge questions to ask ourselves and our politicians and decision-makers.
Will we replace our applause for the NHS with more funding, increased staffing, better pay and lasting respect for the staff in our hospitals and communities?
Will care workers be provided with a contract that guarantees them regular hours, fair pay and conditions and an end to 15-minute care visits, allowing them time to do what they want to do — care?
Will shop workers become people society respects and we are courteous to, with laws passed to protect them from violence and abuse?
Will we see an end to year-on-year cuts to council jobs and services and will the government stop pretending that local government is fairly funded?
Will we stop hearing claims that we can cut 40,000 public-sector jobs and deliver the same services?
Will we see our teachers, support staff and school community as people and places that give every young person the opportunity to live a fulfilling life, irrespective of wealth?
Will there emerge a consensus that the payment of taxes is necessary for the creation of a civilised society?
Will we criminalise the corporate tax avoiders and evaders who starve our public services of the funds they desperately need?
Will we sit back as passive observers, watching as homeless people are returned from their temporary coronavirus respite where they have a roof over their heads, back to shop doorways and park benches?
Will we leave people’s jobs and services to the brutal savagery of the “free market” once lockdown is lifted or will we have a planned economic recovery where the state intervenes to deliver economic recovery and social justice?
Will we recognise the hugely positive role that trade unions have played in this crisis and repeal the draconian legislation that so negatively hampers their work?
Will we see the end of the ludicrous blockade against Cuba — a country whose doctors respond to every international humanitarian crisis where medical support is required, just as they have in Italy?
Will we see the lifting of the siege of Gaza and the West Bank in the name of humanity to help end the suffering of the people there?
Will we see a more caring, compassionate, rebalanced economy and society emerge from this crisis, one that cares for all of our people, not just the powerful and wealthy few?
Or will we return to underfunded services, homelessness, cuts, austerity, inequality, child poverty, food banks and global injustice?
This is the choice before our country, this is the choice for the world, this is the choice for humanity.
Neil Findlay is Labour MSP for Lothian.
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