Mair Godley claims Essex councillor Carl Johnson told her she was ‘facilitating the invasion’ by giving language lessons A 78-year-old volunteer has claimed a Reform UK councillor accused her of “facilitating the invasion” and being akin to a Nazi collaborator during the second world war because she has helped asylum seekers learn English. Mair Godley and her husband, Nick, 77, a former chair of Wethersfield parish council, live near the former Wethersfield military base in Essex, where the Home Office accommodates hundreds of asylum seekers. Continue reading...
Volunteer, 78, says Reform official likened her to Nazi collaborator for teaching asylum seekers English
Source: The Guardian
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The Guardian
Chancellor targets cost of living crisis in budget for a ‘difficult moment’
Healey hopes to give ‘hope for the future’ but only modest policies are expected with important decisions deferred John Healey has acknowledged the UK faces a “difficult moment” but insisted he would put the country on a better path as he delivers his first budget on Wednesday against a turbulent global economic backdrop. But despite the international uncertainty, the chancellor will signal “fresh hope for the future” as he attempts to sound a more optimistic note, by providing households with breathing space from rising cost of living pressures. Continue reading...
BBC Politics
Chris Mason: Budget needs to go some way towards delivering PM's promises
Support on the cost of living, and in particular energy bills, as well as announcments on devolution will be central to John Healey's first Budget.
The Guardian
The Guardian view on supporting carers: the DWP’s problem is deeper than IT | Editorial
A taper is much better than a cliff-edge. But problems with carer’s allowance should have been solved years ago The reform of carer’s allowance – a benefit paid to people who spend 35 or more hours a week caring for a disabled relative – is overdue and welcome. The cliff-edge design that forces claimants in England and Wales to forfeit their entire payment if they breach an earnings limit of £204 a week by as little as a penny is wrong in principle and made much worse by the appalling way in which rules have been applied. A Guardian investigation revealed that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) failed to warn thousands of people who it knew were being overpaid. This resulted in debts and hardship, and hundreds of criminal convictions for fraud. Carers in already difficult personal circumstances described feeling driven to desperation and illness by what one called a “catch-out cu
BBC Politics
Healey to promise £15m to tackle misogyny in Budget
The Conservatives doubt whether women and girls will feel safer as a result of the funding.
The Guardian
Ella Baron on the autumn budget – cartoon
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The Guardian
Schrödinger’s racism, Nige’s latest wheeze to dodge his associates’ bigotry | John Crace
We are apparently to believe Raheem Kassam calling Kemi a ‘Nigerian scammer’ was racist and not racist at the same time Back to the future. Some of us can remember the days when the key to surviving a nuclear war was to kneel down under the kitchen table and keep your eyes closed till you were incinerated or died of radiation poisoning. Now the government wants you to hoard some baked beans and a few litres of water in the hope of getting through the next three days. But when the apocalypse does come, you can bank on there being one survivor. The politician with seemingly limitless powers of regeneration. As one party of his dies, so another rises from the ashes. Fuelled not by water and tinned food, but by alcohol and grievance. Somehow, Nigel Farage is always the victim in his own story. The man who is forever misunderstood. Continue reading...