With more people dying each year and many spending their final days in institutions, researchers argue that wider access to palliative care could offer a more humane and cost-effective alternative, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
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Vicious new laws attack the homeless
We need to reject legally targeting rough sleepers immediately — not wait until Labour comes to power, writes RUTH HUNT
In the second part of her critique of Wes Streeting’s TenYear Plan for Health, HELEN MERCER looks at the central planks of this privatisation blueprint
A call from the World Peace Council to the peace movements of the world
DR HANA SAADA asks why a war crime against innocent children on this scale does not dominate the world’s coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran
From the colonial oil plunder of 1909 to the current threat of a regional inferno: Western interference in Iran forms a chain of coups, puppets, and cynical geopolitics centered on oil, says MARC VANDEPITTE
NORMA AUSTIN HART reports from a conference on on the rights of women prisoners in the Scottish criminal justice system
AN important motion was passed at Labour Party conference, which didn’t get the airtime or column inches it deserved. This motion committed the party to ending all powers to criminalise begging and rough sleeping. This would repeal many of the powers introduced in the 2014 Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act, including Public Space Protection Orders.
Over 60 councils, both Labour and Conservative, are now using Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs), with 30 per cent using orders that specifically target the homeless, under the 2014 draconian measures introduced while Theresa May was home secretary.
This is despite updated guidelines issued by the Home Office in 2017 that said: “PSPOs should not be used to target people solely on the fact that they are homeless or rough sleeping, as this in itself is unlikely to mean their behaviour is having an unreasonably detrimental effect on the community’s quality of life, which justifies imposing restriction using a PSPO.”
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Women are a vital part of the labour movement and have much to contribute, but there’s far more to be done to make sure that our sisters’ voices are truly heard, says PHILIPA HARVEY
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