Head of education, campaigns and organising for the General Federation of Trade Unions HENRY FOWLER explains why it is launching a fund to support trades councils and give them access to a new range of courses and resources
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Big Brother is watching the poor and disabled
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
WAR ON CLAIMANTS: Liz Kendall outside the Department of Work and Pensions, March 2025
While working people face austerity, arms companies enjoy massive government contracts, writes ARTHUR WEST, exposing how politicians exaggerate the Russian threat to justify spending on a sector that has the lowest employment multiplier
ANYA COOK reports from the Newcastle citizens’ assembly, where over 240 people gathered to create a people’s manifesto ahead of next year’s local elections – part of former mayor Jamie Driscoll’s Majority movement
Real security comes from having a secure base at home — Keir Starmer’s reckless and renegade decision to get Britain deeper into the proxy war against Russia is as dangerous as it is wasteful, writes SALLY SPIERS
The plan is to stigmatise and destabilise South Africa in preparation for breaking it up while creating a confused and highly racialised atmosphere around immigration in the US to aid in denying rights to non-white refugees, explains EMILE SCHEPERS
ALAN SIMPSON warns that Starmer’s triangulation strategy will fail just as New Labour’s did, with each rightward move by Labour pushing Tories further right
From the 1917 Balfour Declaration to today’s F-35 sales, Britain’s historical responsibility has now evolved into support for the present-day outright genocide. But our solidarity movement is growing too, writes BEN JAMAL
THE government’s Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill forces banks and other financial institutions to act as an extension of the state in snooping on the population of Britain. As is usually the case, the poor and vulnerable are the particular victims of this discriminatory proposed legislation, but the Bill fits into a wider landscape of “Big Brother,” surveillance-state government that should worry every British citizen, regardless of wealth or health.
DWP Secretary Liz Kendall, who has put forward the Bill as part of the Labour government’s wider war on benefit claimants and in particular the disabled and those with mental health issues, claims that the legislation is designed to combat fraud and organised crime. However, it will compel banks to spy on the account activity of anyone in receipt of any form of state benefits, and to report those it considers to have any form of even potentially suspicious transactions.
The mass nature of this surveillance means that it will inevitably be carried out by computers using algorithms and AI rather than by human beings, and as with all alogorithmically driven decisions there will be a significant error rate — with investigations and potentially penalties aimed at those who have done nothing wrong and had no idea they were in the government’s crosshairs until it is already well under way.
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