Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
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Outsourcing is a public health hazard
It is clear that the shoddy employment practices of the management companies operating in the NHS are putting us all at risk. We need to take all workers back in house today, writes HELEN O'CONNOR
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
IT should be obvious that hospitals have the potential to harbour far more germs and disease than most other public buildings. People are admitted to hospital when they are suffering from contagious disease themselves. Hospital patients are susceptible to contracting infections and they can go on to develop additional health complications as a result of increased physical vulnerability.
Preventing cross-infection in hospitals is not only key to patient recovery, it is key to protecting the workforce, so rigorous infection control should be an integral part of the running of a hospital. No-one wants hospital staff to be off sick unnecessarily or for patients or hospital staff to die from hospital-acquired infections. No patient should ever be discharged from a hospital in a worse state than when they were admitted.
The result of years of outsourcing of hospital cleaning means that staff, patients and the public can no longer feel confident that hospitals are cleaned as thoroughly as they should be. When some cleaning staff took up voluntary redundancy at St Georges hospital in 2019, GMB Union was shown pictures of the accumulating dirt and filth including rolls of dust building up underneath hospital beds on wards.
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Our members face daily abuse, being spat at, sometimes even deadly assaults, and employers fail to take the issue seriously despite the increasing danger, writes RMT general secretary EDDIE DEMPSEY
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