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
The making of a mental-health activist
RUTH HUNT tells the story of a mother forced to take matters into her own hands, first to investigate her son's death and then to reform the mental-health system that failed him
The more Caroline Aldridge learnt about mental-health services, the more she became aware of poor behaviour by staff and managers on a national basis
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
CAROLINE ALDRIDGE didn’t think she would need to become an activist after her son Tim died aged 30, even though she knew he had been waiting for a long time for the right kind of treatment from the mental-health trust.
At the time she worked for the same trust, so only days after Tim had died, she offered to help so other service users and their families wouldn’t be in the same position.
Rebuffed by the trust and instead treated in a way she found deeply offensive, she began to realise her experiences were not isolated.
More from this author
By making Personal Independence Payments harder to access, Labour is creating another barrier for those already struggling with soaring care costs, workplace discrimination and prejudiced employers, argues RUTH HUNT
The NHS continues to say Covid spreads primarily through ‘droplet and touch’ while the WHO emphasises airborne transmission, meaning vulnerable patients and healthcare workers face unnecessary risks, reports RUTH HUNT
Behind the Samaritans’ promise to always listen, callers face secret restrictions and automated blocks while the charity admits setting limits without clearly warning ‘frequent’ users they risk getting cut off — or why, writes RUTH HUNT
What’s needed are more truly accessible homes, radical reform of the private sector to protect disabled tenants, and a less myopic view of the housing market focused on ‘homeowners,’ argues RUTH HUNT
