West Midlands Greens

The Green Party in the West Midlands offers a clean, bold and truly democratic alternative at the ballot box.

[relivingthe80s-deactivated20171]

In 2012, George Osborne claimed he wouldn’t personally gain from cutting the 50p higher tax rate because his income was less than £150k. His 2014 tax return, published yesterday, shows his income was actually £198k. So changing the rules did reduce his own tax bill, pushing it instead onto the poor.

SOMEONE’S A BIG FAT LIAR, HEY GEORGE.

[relivingthe80s-deactivated20171]

Ambulance privatisation descends into 'total shambles'

NHS investigation to be launched into £63.5m contract as union representing crews attacks situation that has left patients waiting for hours

Hundreds of patients including people with cancer and kidney failure have missed important appointments for treatment because ambulances did not arrive to take them to hospital, after privatisation of NHS non-urgent transport services in Sussex this month.

Some elderly patients have had to wait more than five hours for ambulances and been stuck at hospital for long periods after their appointments because the transport service, now run by the private firm Coperforma, has proved so unreliable.

Patients, relatives, NHS bodies and local MPs have severely criticised the service’s performance, and a trade union representing ambulance crews said it was an “absolute shambles”. The NHS organisations that awarded the four-year, £63.5m contract have now launched an investigation.

A host of problems have arisen since Coperforma replaced the NHS’s South East Coast ambulance service (Secamb) as the provider of non-emergency patient transport services on 1 April.

Cancer patients have missed oncology appointments after ambulances failed to turn up to collect them.

Patients with kidney failure have not been able to receive scheduled sessions of kidney dialysis for the same reason, with some missing two of their three treatments in a week.

So many patients have become stuck at the Royal Sussex County hospital in Brighton because their transport has not arrived that it has paid for taxis and other private vehicle suppliers to take them home.

Staff there have had to stay until midnight to ensure kidney patients arriving hours after their scheduled start time have received vital dialysis.

Coperforma crews have been left doing nothing, despite patients’ need to get to hospital, because poor mobile phone reception in parts of Sussex has meant they did not receive details of calls to attend via an app the firm saw as pivotal to the service’s smooth running.

Patients, relatives and NHS staff have faced waits of 45 minutes and more to get through to the firm’s phone lines, which have been unable to cope with demand.

Coperforma vehicles have turned up to collect patients who have already died.

Continues…

[westmidlandsgreens]

[westmidlandsgreens]

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett will be doing a local elections tour of the West Midlands later in April: - Mon 25 April - Worcester and Cannock - Tue 26 April - Solihull and Nuneaton. More details when we get them!

[infernalseason-deactivated20180]

Fitness for work assessors 'mock the disabled while earning £20k a month'

The footage was filmed for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme by a reporter who went undercover to expose the hated tests

“A fitness for work assessor for Government contractor Capita boasted he “flew through” vital welfare disability tests – earning himself £20,000 a month.

And another derided a disabled claimant as needing “help to wipe her a*** because she’s too f****** fat to do it herself”.

The footage was filmed for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme by a reporter who went undercover to expose the hated tests, which have seen thousands of disabled people wrongly stripped of benefits. …..read on

[amnestyuk]

[commiepinkofag]

[ahmedwong]

A Red Cross worker has pictured another Syrian girl (pictured) in a refugee camp in Jordan who became scared and raised her arms to surrender after mistaking his camera for a weapon.

[yunggulabjamoon-deactivated2016]

This is so heartbreaking

[isthereaguideforthis]

Children should never be living in fear.

[polis-and-recreation]

[erymanthian]

You can’t call yourself a feminist if you exclude transgender women.

[micdotcom]

‘Girl Meets World’ star Rowan Blanchard speaks out about the importance of intersectional feminism

A Tumblr user asked the 13-year-old Girl Meets World star about her thoughts on “white feminism” and the notion that the movement may exclude certain marginalized groups, like women of color and non-cis/queer women. Her full response shows she understands intersectional feminism better than most adults.

[vox]

The Panama Papers leak, explained with an adorable comic about piggy banks

It’s easy to get confused by all the headlines about the Panama Papers, a massive 2.6-terabyte leak of documents that reveals a global web of corruption and tax avoidance. But Vox’s German Lopez uncovered a great explanation of what’s happening, and it’scourtesy of brilliant redditor DanGliesack.

He uses piggy banks to help explain the main (and complicated-sounding) thing that was happening in Panama: foreigners setting up Panamanian shell companies to hold financial assets that obscure the identities of their real owners. We thought this analogy was quite fitting for a comic, so we created these illustrations to explain the key issue at the heart of the Panama Papers scandal. 

See the full comic here.

[jeremycorbyn4leader]

Because Dave loves piggys

[micdotcom]

Watch: Pope Francis urges the U.S. to embrace immigrants in impassioned plea to Congress 

[micdotcom]

This wasn’t even that long ago — and it seems like many in Congress have already forgotten it.

[justs0mestranger-deactivated202]

The austerity programmes administered by western governments in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis were, of course, intended as a remedy, a tough but necessary course of treatment to relieve the symptoms of debts and deficits and to cure recession. But if, David Stuckler says, austerity had been run like a clinical trial, “It would have been discontinued. The evidence of its deadly side-effects – of the profound effects of economic choices on health – is overwhelming.”

Stuckler speaks softly, in the measured tones and carefully weighed terms of the academic, which is what he is: a leading expert on the economics of health, masters in public health degree from Yale, PhD from Cambridge, senior research leader at Oxford, 100-odd peer-reviewed papers to his name. But his message – especially here, as even the IMF starts to question chancellor George Osborne’s enthusiasm for ever-deeper budget cuts – is explosive, backed by a decade of research, and based on reams of publicly available data: “Recessions,” Stuckler says bluntly, “can hurt. But austerity kills.”

[westmidlandsgreens]

[westmidlandsgreens]

[relivingthe80s-deactivated20171]

Between April and September 2015, Trussell Trust foodbanks across the UK gave 506,369 three day emergency food supplies to people in crisis compared to 492,641 in the same period last year.