Newly revealed documents reveal that MI5 taught Brazilian secret police the techniques deployed by the 1964-85 military dictatorship in horrific prisons like Rio de Janeiro’s House of Death. SARA VIVACQUA reports
JEREMY HUNT’S first Budget was a continuation of the stream of austerity policies that has been almost uninterrupted since 2010. They represent yet another attack on ordinary people struggling to get by. At the same time, the commitments to growth are meaningless without any effective policies to deliver them.
Perhaps worst of all, rather than attempting to tame inflation, the government has used it to impose accelerated real-terms cuts in public spending including public-sector pay. They also plan more of the same.
The verdict from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was damning. They described the outcome as Britain facing “its biggest fall in spending power for 70 years as the surging cost of living eats into wages.”
The 2025 Budget shores up the PM’s political position with headline-grabbing welfare U-turns, but with no improvements on offer to declining public services or living standards, writes MICHAEL BURKE
The BBC and OBR claim that failing to cut disability benefits could ‘destabilise the economy’ while ignoring the spendthrift approach to tens of billions on military spending that really spirals out of control, argues DIANE ABBOTT MP
Under current policy, welfare cuts are just a small downpayment on future austerity, argues MICHAEL BURKE
Exempting military expenditure from austerity while slashing welfare represents a fundamental misallocation of resources that guarantees continued decline, argues MICHAEL BURKE



