The retrospective legalisation of workfare has deprived rightful claimants of £130 million. Alongside the lives wrecked in its wake, the ‘emergency’ legislation has exposed a chasm at the heart of Britain's parliamentary democracy.
A new musical, Glasgow Girls, showcases the power of anti-deportation campaigns as both an expression of human solidarity and an essential device for holding states to account. But their key role, argues Jennifer Allsopp, is to build support for an asylum system that upholds the rights of all.
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Warehousing children in a prison filled with other troubled young people, often for a period of weeks, is counterproductive, inhumane and a pitiful waste of public money.
Budget week thoughts: The people who got us into this fix are holding the world to ransom by their speculative lunacy and greed. The big brake is not government debt.
This week the nuclear industry and its Westminster friends celebrated the dawning of a new age, as French energy giant EDF won planning consent to construct Hinkley Point C in Somerset. Meanwhile, in Cumbria, elderly Sellafield contracts out its dirty laundry.
Earlier this year, Cumbria county council woke up to the reality behind decades of government propaganda and nuclear industry spin and rejected a plan to bury radioactive waste in England’s Lake District.
The sensitive work of housing vulnerable asylum seekers appears to be defeating the world’s biggest security company. A leaked letter from G4S director (a former Rentokil executive) illuminates the unfolding crisis.
Landlords get richer. Women are harassed in their homes. The UK Border Agency's contractor G4S is using subcontractors who are not up to the task. The newly privatised market in asylum housing is a shambles and a warning.
Officials who identify victims of trafficking are being judged by how many people they eject from Britain. Is that wise?
Inquests, High Court judgments, reports from HM Inspector of Prisons, Medical Justice, and the UK Border Agency’s own inspectorate have all exposed healthcare failings in UK immigration detention centres, but change is a long time coming.
On International Women’s Day the Howard League appeals to UN over imprisonment of pregnant 16-year-old girl.
Today is International Women’s Day, a holiday in Russia, though possibly with few celebrations in the penal colonies where the Pussy Riot women are being held. Open Democracy Russia is proud to publish two letters from the prison blog of one of them, Maria (Masha) Alyokhina, to Anastasia Kirilenko
