The Canary is excited to share the latest edition of our letters page. This is where we publish people’s responses to the news and politics, or anything else they want to get off their chest. We’ve now opened the letters page up so anyone can submit a contribution. As always, if you’d like to subscribe to the Canary – starting from just £1 a month – to support truly radical and independent media, then you can do that here:
This week’s letters
This week we have people’s thoughts on the BBC over Christmas, an important NHS petition, and a response to an article on the Labour Party.
More on the BBC‘s coverage of Gaza
The BBC appears to have understood that Israel is no longer a supportable state and is now telling the shocking truths. The attack on Gaza is an abomination, with one clear aim – its total destruction and the slaughter of all its people. At about 7.50am this morning, one of your people naively asked the question – were Gaza’s hospitals able to deal with a boy who had shrapnel in his brain? Knowing full well the answer was no – all hospitals had been strafed and had run out of supplies, fuel and power – no hospitals, doctors or nurses exempt from slaughter or destruction.
On this Christmas period, thinking about what Christmas means to us, we are unable to watch news reports – deeply shaken and broken by the massive killing of innocent lives, the total destruction of homes and all institutions for human survival like hospitals, schools, generators, churches, mosques, universities, farms with the denial of food, water and electricity. Gaza is being laid waste and her people slaughtered. At least 20,000 in two months including 9,000 children – others shown to be taken prisoners, tortured and killed.
And the world is asking the question – posed by the team of expert analysts shown above. Why is Israel not labelled a terrorist state? Why does America give Israel its continued support (as does Rishi Sunak’s corrupted government)?
The BBC has seen the light – why does it not call Israel out as such – guilty of so many war crimes?
Ted, via email
Can you help with this NHS petition?
Deprivatise the NHS is a 38 Degrees petition to address the issue of the private finance initiatives which have been used and are bleeding the NHS each year. After I sent it to people I know, it did not get any more traction.
It appeals to the head rather than the heart. Should I restart from square one, or keep pestering people?
Bob Murphy, via email
ED: keep pestering people Bob – and we will, too, because readers can sign the petition here.
A response to the Canary article Labour leftists looking for a win should embrace the big green elephant in the room
Your writer put “If all of that energy could be channelled into a focused political movement, a truly left-wing party with progressive policies and grassroots decision-making at its core…”
Jeremy Corbyn’s general election manifestos from 2017 and 2019 have been updated by the people, not just as below by a tiny group of membership, who are only political types.
The potential new party has policies written by the public directly affected by issues in general election manifestos, utilising the peoples’ petitions, and the state pension / National Insurance experts of victims born in 1950s and now 1960s pension campaign ladies.
Your writer also said: “The overlap between Corbyn’s Manifesto – even Starmer’s ten broken pledges… Economic justice through higher taxes on the rich, abolishing tuition fees, public ownership of utilities, defending migrants’ rights, strengthening trade unions, and of course bold action on climate change”.
All this is within the potential new party www.over50sparty.org.uk – from Babe to over 50s.
The Green Party have never won more than 1 MP, let us remember.
Your writer concluded that: “Understandably many left-wing activists have abandoned Labour and cancelled their memberships, while others choose to stay inside the party machine and criticise Starmer from the sidelines. In both camps we see great swathes of disaffected but passionate activists promising to boycott the next election entirely, resigned to five more years of misery… These people have more power than they think. They’re still following politics, tweeting tweets, writing letters, signing petitions, and attending protests”.
Young people on the protests have not voted for generations.
The 1950s to 1980s born ladies have serious grievances against Tory, Labour, and Lib Dems governments since the late 1970s in a continuous timeline.
We are millions of the top voters.
Whereas the young voters include eight million not registered to vote and who, indeed, may have never registered.
We know Labour will betray the working class, who Starmer does not even know who they are, when it is obvious from who has the greatest tax breaks and who is taxed the most. For example, you are paying from January 2024, 10% worker National Insurance, but the top waged/rich are only paying worker contributions from the same threshold as those paying 40p income tax.
The Greens are the same enemies of the Grey Vote, by manifesto pledges that would have wiped out the state pension, vital money for working class women in retirement (life or death income, us 1950s ladies have seen).
So, we’re seeking a volunteer admin, please, to bring into existence the oven ready potential new party, with a fully written general manifesto already, which alone can gain the vital Grey Vote, which is the last age group sufficiently turning out to vote or even keeping registered to vote, as well as what little is left of the below age 50 voters.
This manifesto makes you the next Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan.
No mugwump of a so-called ‘broad church’.
Be as great as they from history. As admin, as MP candidates.
Contact Grey Swans pension group admin via website
www.over50sparty.org.uk
Christine Williams, via email
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