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
Food crises and the spectre of collapse
We need alternative modes of food production, but these won’t come out of an adherence to today’s corporately rigged markets or from a politics desperate to become more anodyne by the day, warns ALAN SIMPSON
Tractors pass in front of the Coliseum in a farmers’ protest in Rome, Italy, February 15, 2024
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
“Tractors to the left of us, Tractors to the right.
Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.”
This isn’t how Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade poem opens up, but residents of across Europe’s capital cities could be forgiven for thinking it should have done.
In Brussels, people had to run the gauntlet of tractors lining both sides of streets around the European Parliament; all part of farmer protests against cuts in fuel subsidies, land set-aside obligations and low-cost food imports.
The protests kicked off everywhere. Germany, France, Romania, Portugal, Greece, Poland, Britain and the Netherlands, all witnessed demonstrations about farming in crisis.
More from this author
From Amazon’s monitored warehouse hell to delivery workers being paid per package, exploitative work destroys collaborative relationships young people need — more screen time and 12 new AI ‘friends’ will only make things worse, writes ALAN SIMPSON
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
ALAN SIMPSON warns of a dystopian crossroads where Trump’s wrecking ball meets AI-driven alienation, and argues only a Green New Deal can repair our fractured society before techno-feudalism consumes us all
As the ‘NRx movement’ plots to replace democracy with corporate-feudal dictatorship, Britain must pursue a radical alternative of local food security and genuine wealth redistribution to withstand the coming upheaval, writes ALAN SIMPSON
