Our economic system is broken – and unless we break with the government’s obsession with short-termist private profit, things are destined to get worse, warns Mercedes Villalba

VIOLENCE against women and girls has now reached epidemic proportions and, to add insult to injury, the far right is using this rising tide of violence to generate civil unrest on a scale unseen in recent years.
The hateful organisations of the right, peddling fear and racism, don’t care about women either. Many are violent, thuggish men, likely to be abusing and bullying women themselves while making false and racist claims that misogyny is exclusive to immigrants and Muslims.
Prior to the shocking murders of the young girls in Southport, very few batted an eyelid at statistics revealing that violence against women and girls has risen by 40 per cent between 2018 and 2023. There was little public outrage at the press exposing the “blow jobs for promotions” scandal across the ambulance service in this country.

As more people on the left are now questioning the sex industry, HELEN O’CONNOR reports from a timely fringe at TUC Congress where women on the front line gave their perspective on why prostitution should never be considered ‘work’


