Rebecca Long-Bailey is shadow secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy
We are told Britain is getting richer, and yes, in some circles that is true. Take a look behind the statistics, however, and you see that a few people at the very top of the income scale are getting substantially richer, but at the same time businesses struggle to grow, our NHS and schools are starved of cash, and we face the worst decade for pay growth since the Napoleonic wars.
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A lawyer-turned-campaigner has released a video about Labour’s policies for the general election. And its no-nonsense approach has perfectly debunked any notion that there’s nothing to like about what Jeremy Corbyn’s party would do, if it won on 8 June.
BOOM
Peter Stefanovic is becoming well known on social media. He is getting a reputation for producing video shorts that cut through mainstream media bias; ones that tell the viewer the whole story on political and social issues. And in his latest video, he explains why Corbyn’s policies are so important:
A shameful record
And figures back-up Stefanovic’s claims about the last seven-years of Conservative rule:
Four million children are now living in poverty, a figure which rose by 100,000 in 2015/16. 67% are from working families.
Food bank usage has risen, Over half a million people were reliant on just the Trussell Trust for food packages in the six months to the end of September 2016.
In tworeports the UN heavily criticised the Tories for “grave” and “systematic” violations of disabled people’s human rights. The government, meanwhile, has severely cut their benefits.
The NHS has seen a real terms cut in the amount of money given to it per patient. Meanwhile the amount of NHS money paid to ‘independent’ companies had more than doubled to over £8bn a year by 2016.
The government has cut the number of people getting social care by 26%. And it has cut the equivalent of almost £50m from children’s mental health services.
But Labour suffered losses at the local elections on Thursday 4 May. And Stefanovic thinks this may be, in part, due to a biased media. He told The Canary:
John Kiriakou: The ex-CIA officer turned whistle-blower
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou speaks to Al Jazeera about the US's use of torture and his time in prison.
John Kiriakou worked as an analyst and case officer for the CIA for 14 years. He was later sentenced to 30 months in prison [Photo courtesy of John Kiriakou]
For 14 years, John Kiriakou worked as an analyst and case officer for the CIA, leading the team that captured senior al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002. Then, in a television interview in 2007, three years after he had resigned from the US intelligence agency, he became the first current or former member of it to publicly acknowledge that the CIA used torture, and that its use was official policy under the administration of President George W Bush.
